Being and Becoming: A Field Approach to Psychology

Being and Becoming A Field Approach to Psychology

Arthur W. Combs began his professional career in the public schools of Alliance, Ohio in 1935. To improve his skills in helping students, he sought a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Ohio State and spent the next ten years operating a psychological clinic and training students in counseling and psychotherapy at Syracuse University. During this period he developed the conviction that therapy is essentially rehabilitative and the more important task lies in prevention— helping people before they get sick. This concern led him back to education and he accepted a position at the University of Florida in 1951. In the 23 years following he was, at various times, Professor of Education, Chairman of the Foundations in Education Department, and Director of the Center for Humanistic Education. In 1975 he left Florida to devote full time to writing and consulting in education and psychology and the private practice of psychotherapy. He returned to academia for a five-year period in the 1980s as Distinguished Professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Most recently he explored the common features of paradigm shifts in psychological thought and science generally. Dr. Combs considered himself both a product of and contributor to the Humanist Movement in psychology and education. With Donald Snygg in 1947, Dr. Combs invented a perceptual field theory for psychology, a systematic framework for the study of persons. Most of his career has been devoted to the applications of perceptual-experimental thinking to research and practice in education, counseling, and the training of persons for the helping professions. Dr. Combs was past president of the New York State Psychological Association, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and recipient of the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Service to Contemporary Education as well as the Buhler Award for Groundbreaking Contributions to Humanistic Psychology. Speaking and consulting appearances have taken him to every state and seven foreign countries. His writings include 23 books and monographs and more than 150 articles on psychology, counseling, and education. His works have been translated into Spanish, Hebrew, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. This book is dedicated to the memory of Arthur W. Combs. His contribution to the field of psychology as well as his commitment to his students and colleagues will be remembered by his many friends.

Being <wBecoming A Field Approach to Psychology Arthur W. Combs, PhD

PAPERBACK

Copyright © 1999 by Springer Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, Inc. Springer Publishing Company, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 Cover design by Mimi Flow Acquisitions Editor: Bill Tucker Production Editor: Jean Hurkin-Torres 06 07 08 09 / 5 4 3 2 1

New ISBN 0-8261-0262-X (pbk.) © 2006 by Springer Publishing Company. Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Combs,Arthur W. (Arthur Wright), 1912Being and becoming : a field approach to psychology / by Arthur W Combs. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8261-1257-9 (hardcover) 1. Psychology—Philosophy. 2. Unified field theories. I. Title. BF38.C715 1999 150.19'84—dc21 Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing.

98-54240 CIP

Contents Preface

vii

1 Being and Becoming

1

2 Awareness

16

3 Discovering the Self

33

4 Meaning and the Self

54

5 Challenge and Threat

71

6 The Body: Vehicle of the Field

88

7 Time and Opportunity

101

8 Goals, Techniques, and Values

112

9 Human Capacities

130

10 Learning and Change

143

11 Self-Actualization and Health

161

12 Troubled Selves

176

13 Some Implications for Human Relationships

191

14 Organizations as Living Things

207

15 Field Theory in Historical Perspective

225

16 The Exploration of Meaning in Research

240

Epilogue: Criteria for a Perceptual Psychology

255

References

257

Index

267

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Preface

I

n 1949, Donald Snygg and I proposed a field theory for American psychology. We titled it Individual Behavior: A New Frame of Reference for Psychology. Over the years that followed, the field approach we suggested was widely used by applied workers but largely ignored by theoretical and academic psychologists. Finding little response from psychologists, after 10 years I turned to working with educators and counselors who found my contributions pertinent and useful. During the next 25 years I made several attempts to interest mainstream psychology in a field approach in such papers as "Why the Humanist Movement Needs a Perceptual Psychology" and "Toward a Viable Psychology of Meaning," with little response. More recently, three events have encouraged me to believe that the time is ripe for psychology to adopt a field approach to human personality and behavior.

1. The Failure of Behaviorism. For 50 years the psychological profession sought understanding of persons and behavior in the concepts of stimulus-response and behavior modification. Behaviorism seemed to provide a clearly observable, even countable approach to understanding people and their behavior. As time went by, however, enthusiasm for behaviorism began to fade. It became increasingly clear that behavior is only symptom, the product of events inside persons, and that the behavioral approach was limited to statistical understanding. It could suggest that the "chances are" people may behave thus or so but left us unable to say what a given person would be likely to do. It is now clear that the behavioral approach is no longer adequate to provide the fundamental understanding about people and behavior currently required. 2. The Needs of Applied Workers. The latter half of the 20th century has witnessed an enormous growth of professional workers engaged in all sorts of activities related to human relationships, mental health, and education. At the same time, it has become increasingly evident that behaviorism is limited in its ability to provide adequate understanding of vii

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personality and behavior. As a consequence, practitioners, both in and out of psychology, have sought the causes of behavior in people's knowledge, feelings, attitudes, hopes, fears, beliefs, and aspirations—the things that make us human. This shift in the locus of understanding from behavior to perception has proved to be far more useful for workers confronted with the complexities of human personality and behavior outside the laboratory. As a matter of fact, the role of feelings, attitudes, hopes, fears, and the like as causative agents is already operating in field theory. This is true whether the practitioner is aware of doing so or not. Human feelings, and attitudes, for example, are, in actuality, attempts of a person to describe his or her personal experience or perceptual field. Seeking the causes of behavior in the person's internal life in such terms is to operate in a field frame of reference. 3. The Expanding Use of Field Theory in Science. Modern science is currently engaged in a major paradigm shift from the linear thinking of Newton and Descartes to an understanding of the world in terms of relationships, organizations, and fields. Like the psychologists' exploration of behavior, physical scientists have chased the study of matter down to its tiniest manifestations in waves and particles, only to find that matter disappeared into field forces. The concept of a field is a scientific device to cope with relationships not directly observable. It has become a common and necessary tool in quantum physics, astronomy, and biology. Human beings are also organizations, and because experience occurs inside of persons, it is not available for direct observation. Accordingly, a field approach to the study of persons and their behavior seems a natural for psychology. As a matter of fact, Snygg and Combs's proposal of a field frame of reference for psychology in 1949 predates the use of the field concept by many physical scientists. With the collapse of behaviorism, psychology is in need of a comprehensive, theoretical framework capable of bringing together the work of its basic scientists and those practicing in the applied fields of human activity. I believe the time is ripe for a more general application of field theory in the profession, and this book is my contribution to that end. In this volume I have updated and expanded the field approach first stated with Donald Snygg in 1949. In doing so I have drawn heavily on the 1959 edition of Individual Behavior and a number of my publications since. My intention in this volume is to show how a field theory may contribute to our understanding of persons and their behavior in the simplest, clearest terms of which I am capable. The 1959 edition of Individual Be-

Preface

ix

havior contained 619 references to the literature, and Perceptual Psychology in 1975 cited an exhaustive 1,164. For ease of reading this book and to avoid the tedium of citing all those references again, I have limited documentation to crucial notes at the end of each chapter. For readers needing more explicit documentation, I will be glad to supply a copy of the 1975 list on request. Please address Arthur Combs, 1925 28th Avenue #46, Greeley, CO 80631. The absence of a gender inclusive pronoun in our culture forces writers either to refer to "him or her," "his or hers," or speak of matters in the plural. In a volume that must so frequently talk about individual persons, referring to them in the plural is inappropriate and the repetitive use of "him or her" and "his or hers" is banal. I have chosen, therefore, to refer to individuals of either gender with male pronouns in odd-numbered chapters and with female pronouns in even-numbered chapters. In the 1949 proposal, Donald Snygg and I stated: "As an outline of a theory we expect that, like everything else in science, this frame of reference we propose may undergo shifts and changes as it is subjected to wider consideration. As fallible human beings we can only hope that this is, 'if not the truth, then something very like the truth.' " In that spirit I offer this outline as a possible starting point for a field theory for psychology.

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CHAPTER 1

Being and Becoming

THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURE Throughout history the ways people have dealt with human problems have always been deeply affected by the beliefs they held about what people are like and why they behave as they do. In Western cultures our beliefs about human nature have generally taken one of three forms: people are basically evil, people are primarily good, or people are battlegrounds of good and evil. People Are Basically Evil The concept of original sin has been a primary tenet of Judeo-Christian religious sects for generations. This view maintains that human beings are fundamentally sinful and must, somehow, be made good. People were regarded as essentially perverse, likely to revert to their unhappy basic instincts at any moment. They had, therefore, to be saved, converted from their innate bestial qualities to more civilized or enlightened understanding. Through the ages this basic idea about human beings had enormous influence on all aspects of human interactions. Operating from such an assumption, persons could not be counted on to behave in desirable fashion of their own volition. They had, therefore, to be controlled or directed, for salvation was at stake. Persons had to be led, taught, converted, or coerced to see the light and behave in proper fashion. 1

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Being and Becoming

Because people could not be counted on to do the right thing, techniques offeree and coercion were commonplace in human affairs. Indeed, they were deemed a "right" of the privileged and powerful. The "people are evil" view permeated all walks of life. It was a guiding principle of early Western culture and religion. Clear distinctions were made between the anointed and the fallen, rich and poor, nobility and peasant, professor and student, officer and soldier, boss and worker. It was a principle of government. It determined the relationship of bosses and workers, defined the tasks of husbands and wives and the raising of children. The schools it spawned were grim and forbidding places where "spare the rod and spoil the child" was the order of the day and learning was sought through techniques of reward and punishment. With the advent of science, techniques of control and direction were given the corroboration of research and "scientific proof." The idea was further endorsed by a psychology of stimulus-response and behavior modification. Control, direction, and the manipulation of forces became the model for dealing with things and persons everywhere in Western culture. There are many in today's society who staunchly cling to the people-areevil belief. It is only recently that people have begun to ask where this leads us, is this the way we really want to go, and is there a better way. The Belief That People Are Basically Good In the 1700s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher, questioned the control-and-direction philosophy of the people-are-evil view and passionately called for an alternative conception. He railed against the brutalizing treatment of human beings, coercive education, formal gardens, rationalism, and absolutism. Instead, he claimed, nature was essentially good and so were people at birth. If persons turned out badly, it was due to the distorting effects of the experiences to which they were subjected in the course of their growth and development. His ideas contributed to the birth of democratic thought and deeply influenced the thinking of some of America's founding fathers. The positive view of humanity advocated by Rousseau was a radical notion in its time, and it found hard going in opposition to the ages-old influence of established religion and the everyday evidences of evil apparent in aspects of the culture. It also ran counter to the control-and-direction thinking of science and its increasingly accepted role as authority for the natural world.

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3

The "Battleground" Concept Of Human Nature In the latter half of the 1880s and early 1890s, Sigmund Freud proposed a variation on the people-are-evil concept. He described human beings as forever engaged in a battle between the id, the dark forces of innate nature, and the superego, the higher qualities of enlightened understanding. He conceived of persons in a constant state of conscious or unconscious tension between instinctual drives or current desires and the more civilized patterns of behavior deemed appropriate by society. This conception created an enormous stir in its heyday, especially because it brought the role of sex in human personality and behavior (long a strict taboo) into open discussion. To aid people in coping with the internal warfare between id and superego, Freud invented psychoanalysis, the forerunner of modern psychotherapy and counseling. The idea of persons eternally engaged in a struggle against inherent tendencies led many psychologists and philosophers to the belief that the primary human drive was for survival. Human beings, they argued, are eternally aware of the inevitability of death, and much of their behavior is therefore motivated by attempts to avoid that fearsome specter. Even when the fear of death was not clearly apparent in people's behavior, they maintained that it existed unconsciously in the form of existential anxiety. Fear of dying was a primal fear, and the avoidance of death was perceived as a basic human characteristic, the motivating force for much of behavior and the underlying cause of much human stress and mental illness. Such a view of humanity's nature requires us to be continually alert in order to combat or control the environment in which we live. Human nature in this view is thus conceived as reactive or defensive in an inherently hostile universe.1 The concepts of human nature stated above have had profound effects on modern cultures, particularly in the Western world. Their influences can be observed in all aspects of modern society: home, workplace, government, religion, and human affairs. They provide the guidelines from which most persons in our culture still seek solutions for personal and social problems. This book takes a different view of human nature, based on what we know of the universe itself.

4

Being and Becoming AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW The Nature of Organizations

Modern science regards the universe in which we live as a vast organization made up of innumerable other organizations acting and interacting ad infinitum. The outstanding fact about an organization of whatever variety is the fact of its being. Every organization has an identity and tends to maintain its organization until something causes it to change. This identity also has force or influence of some shape or extent. A rock remains a rock until something happens to make it change. Just being a rock on a mountainside, however, can cause an avalanche. A rock in the water can divert a stream. In David's sling it can slay a Goliath. Even if it is broken up into grains of sand, each grain continues to be and exert a force, if only by taking up space, scratching a lens, or, with trillions of other grains, creating a beach. Every organization has identity or being and more or less force or potential. Organizations are much more than the sum of their parts. They have an identity and existence all their own. An automobile, for example, is made up of steel, fabric, paint, upholstery, plastic, and much more. A pile of its parts, however, is quite different from the assembled and working vehicle. A car has an identity, qualities, and functions far beyond the sum of its parts. A study of its parts cannot tell us what it is, for example, nor can it tell us where it has been, where it will go next, or even where it is now. An automobile is a new thing, with characteristics all its own. An organization has identity and can be treated as a separate event. The tendency to maintain identity is inherent in the very nature of organizations. Wherever we turn, organizations show this same enduring quality. The simplest atoms tenaciously resist disruption, and heavenly bodies maintain their orbits until something causes them to change. Even then, although one organization may be destroyed, its component organizations continue, for the universe and all its subsidiary organizations are constantly in search of order. This produces a universe of endless diversity.2 Even when organizations seem to be in helter-skelter disarray, students of chaos tell us, they are, in actuality, in the process of reordering themselves to a new identity.3 The concept of a universe and its subsidiaries constantly in search of order provides the basis for a new understanding of the nature of human beings. For many generations people have conceived of the universe as an implacable foe against which human beings must constantly struggle for per-

Being and Becoming

5

sonal survival and to wrest from it the necessities and perquisites for successful living. More recently, scientists have helped us to see our relationship to the universe in a more positive light. The universe, they tell us, is not a malevolent force against which we must constantly struggle. Instead, the universe is a vast living organization, continuously expanding into ever greater diversity.4 It is composed of innumerable acting and interacting self-organizing systems, forever maintaining and creating new order and identities. Human beings in this vast system are themselves living organizations forever in search of the maintenance and enhancement of order or identity. From this perspective, we humans are not at odds with but are participating members of the universe, with the same limitations and potential for fulfillment. We do not need to fight such a universe: we need to understand it and live with it in harmony. This field approach to psychology finds its roots in that conception.2 Living Things As Organizations Some organizations and all living ones are self-regulating; that is to say, they are circular organizations that tend to maintain themselves.5 Physicists have given this process of self-regulation the name autopoiesis, which means self-making.6 So in the case of living things the characteristic of organizations to maintain identity becomes the maintenance of the self. Because living things are also organizations, they too are parts of the universe and participate in its drive for order. Whereas the maintenance of organization in nonliving things is mostly limited to physical forces, living things have the advantage of awareness and the vastly increased potential for acting that that provides. Even the simplest forms of life, like an ameba floating about in a drop of water, have the capacity to sense events outside themselves and to act accordingly. This increases the possibilities for maintenance exponentially. It makes it possible for even single-cell life to move toward food and away from danger. The organism is not only better able to maintain itself, it also can seek enhancement or fulfillment, a drive toward health. With the development of increased mobility and sense organs during the course of evolution, higher life obtained vastly increased possibilities for maintenance. These life forms were not only capable of responding to events around them; they became self-regulating systems capable of independent action and of enhancing themselves.7 The expansion of awareness beyond the senses to include ideas, values, feelings, thought, and the

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Being and Becoming

capacity to comprehend the self made it possible for human beings to seek fulfillment in boundless new dimensions. The fundamental drive for maintenance and enhancement was expanded to include the organization of ideas and the self. We shall have much more to say about the development of awareness and its crucial role in human personality and behavior in the next chapter. Persons as Organizations Life is not a mechanical function but a never-ending, creative process of being and becoming, of seeking fulfillment. Human beings participate in this driving creative force, which originates in the universe itself. A person is an organization continuous with the larger organization of the universe in which he exists. Indeed, a person is an organization within a whole series of organizations leading outward to the larger structure of the universe. This is familiar to schoolchildren, who sometimes make a game of addressing themselves as "John Smith, 105 Main Street, Santa Barbara, California, U.S.A., North America, the World, the Solar System, the Universe." These are some of the larger organizations in which an individual participates. What is more, each of the organizations of which persons are a part has, in turn, its effect on the person and his behavior. The man illustrated in Figure 1.1, facing in one direction, can look out from himself to a series of ever larger organizations of which he is part, ending in the universe itself. But this is not the only way man participates in organization. Like the universe itself, he too is an organization made up of smaller organizations. His physical being, for example, is composed of a large number of smaller organizations, such as the skeletal, respiratory, digestive, excretory, and reproductive systems, among others. These orga-

Figure 1.1

Being and Becoming

7

nizations are diagrammed on the opposite side of Figure 1.1; in turn, they are composed of organizations of cells, which are organizations of chemical elements, which are organizations of atoms and so on, ad infinitum. Man thus appears to be an organization in a long chain of organizations extending within and without himself as far as we have learned to see. The Dynamics of Organization In this continuity the more intimately related the organizations, the more direct and specific is the effect of a larger organization on a smaller one. In the case of John Smith, above, John's family organization, the Smiths, will more intimately and directly affect young John's life and behavior than will his neighborhood group, which is represented by his street address. John's neighborhood, in turn, will probably affect his behavior more intimately than will his city, state, or nation. Each one of these larger organizations, however, will have its effect on John and will play a part, less specifically but no less surely, and be reflected in his behavior. In the same manner, John's personal organization will affect the organizations of which he is composed. What John eats will affect the organization of his digestive system and, less directly but no less surely, the cellular organizations of which that system is composed. Each human being is affected by the larger organizations of which he is a part. The reverse effect is also true. An organization made up of many parts is affected by the parts of which it is composed. The introduction of a new element or change in an old element necessarily affects the total organization. The birth of a child into a family, for example, markedly changes the organization of the family in many ways, as any new parent can surely attest. Change in the family organization affects the community, city, state, and nation in which the family participates. In this sense, people as organizations are both affected by and affect the organizations in which they are involved. By their very existence, people produce changes in the universe of which they are members. Maintenance of Organization in Persons The drive toward maintenance and enhancement of self is a characteristic of protoplasm, the very stuff of life. It exists in every cell of our bodies. It is a fundamental drive toward health. The art and science of medicine is predicated on that drive. The physician seeks to remove, destroy, or immobilize the causative agent of disease and to help build the resources of

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Being and Becoming

the organism to the point where the body can readjust itself. The physician or surgeon ministers to the process, but no doctor ever cured a person. It is the body itself that brings about the cure through its own drive to maintain organization. This action has often been referred to as "the wisdom of the body" or "the healing power of nature." Counseling and psychotherapy, too, are based on this important principle. Counselors do not cure clients; they assist them in the search for new and more effective ways of being and becoming. So the fundamental drive of the universe becomes translated in living things to a drive toward fulfillment or health. Physicians and counselors know that their patients or clients can, will, must move toward health, //the way seems open to them to do so. The task of doctor or counselor is to minister to that process, to facilitate the if, to improve the patient's odds. If the drive to maintain organization is seen in a purely physiologic sense, the only possible conclusion is that the fundamental motive of human behavior is the preservation of the physical body. But this conclusion is inadequate because many things people do are not directed at physical survival. If physical survival was what people need to maintain, there would be no suicides, nor would anyone ever join the army, fly a plane, or climb a mountain. Nor would people eat too much, drink too much, or stay up late. Knowing what we do about the spread of disease, we would even avoid such dangers as shaking hands, appearing in public places, or kissing those we love. Human beings do not live in a physical world alone. The universe in which we live is also a universe of ideas, values, societies, and people. Persons are as much involved with those organizations as with physical ones. Like the larger organizations of which we are part and the smaller ones of which we are products, we maintain the organizations we are. The self we seek to maintain is not just the body but the self of which we are aware, the self we have come to consider our personality or being, that unique person known as John Smith or Sally Jones. This self of which we are aware is called the phenomenal or perceived self, and we shall examine it in much more detail in later chapters.

THE BASIC HUMAN NEED From birth to death the maintenance of the perceived self is the most pressing, the most crucial, if not the only task of existence. Maintaining this personal organization, however, requires more than mere survival.

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We live in a changing world, a world in which the organizations we are composed of and are part are continuously shifting. Such a world requires a changing self if it is to be successfully maintained. Each of us must, therefore, not merely flow with events. Because we are aware of the future, we must seek maintenance of ourselves for the exigencies of tomorrow. The self, therefore, must be built up and enhanced to cope effectively with the future. And because the future is unknown or uncertain, no degree of self-actualization will ever be enough. Human beings are by nature insatiable. We must constantly seek enhancement. Though the maintenance and enhancement of the self are two different words, we do not have two basic needs. Both words relate to the same function—the construction of a more adequate self. I may shore up the timbers of my home to keep it from collapsing or I may plant trees to improve its looks. One maintains the structure; the other enhances the property. Both have a common result—a more adequate, better functioning dwelling. In the same manner, I seek to become the most adequate person I can. I may do this by seeing my dentist to have my cavities filled, by reading a new book in my profession, by buying some new clothes, or by writing a book. I am always seeking to be the Tnost adequate person I can be. We can define our basic human need, then, as a need for the maintenance and enhancement of the self. It represents in us the expression of a universal tendency. In this book, whenever we refer to people's basic need, we mean that innate driving force in each of us by which we are constantly seeking to make ourselves ever more adequate to cope with life.

A FIELD CONCEPT OF THE NATURE OF HUMAN NATURE Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this chapter, we can now state the nature of human nature from a field psychology view as follows: Human nature is neither good nor bad. A child at birth just is. The morality of his behavior in later life is a judgment made according to the norms of his society and/or religion. It is not an inherent quality. Human beings are unique organizations continuous with the universe itself. Like the universe and all other organizations, human beings are forever in process of maintaining and enhancing their identity or self. From such a premise this field psychology must reject the concept of inherent evil, the battleground explanation of Freud, the psychoanalytic notion of an existential fear of death, and Rousseau's idea that people are

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naturally good. Nevertheless, if one concedes that the drive for maintenance and enhancement is essentially a drive toward health, we agree that the nature of humanity is surely more positive than negative. So, although we disagree with Rousseau on technical grounds, we would applaud his compassionate, caring regard for humanity. The Concept of Identification At first glance it may seem a dismaying conclusion that the fundamental drive of human beings turns out to be the maintenance and enhancement of self. One may be revolted at so selfish a concept of human nature and ask, "Whatever became of altruism, self-sacrifice, and love as human motivators?" But the self is not a static or rigid entity. Quite the contrary. Each of us has the capacity to define ourselves in larger or smaller terms by processes of inclusion or exclusion. The drive for self-maintenance and enhancement is not selfishness if the self is inclusive of others. When infants are born, they are tyrannical creatures with little concern for anything but themselves. In the course of growth and development, however, children learn to identify or feel "one with" their parents, siblings, neighbors, relatives, and, in time, with "my school," community, town, state, or nation. Some saintly persons even achieve a feeling of oneness with all humankind. What is more, persons whom we include in our concepts of ourselves are treated as ourselves, and the need to maintain and enhance is extended to them as well. When I feel one with others, then what I do for me I do for them, and what I do for them I do for me as well. When that state is reached, the question of selfishness disappears. Selfishness is a matter of the inclusiveness of one's self. Altruism, love, concern, and other such positive human qualities are matters of the inclusiveness of self, feelings of identification or oneness. For a person to maintain and enhance his own organization adequately also requires that he seek ever greater adequacy of the organizations of which he is part. The juvenile delinquent seeks the maintenance and enhancement of the gang of which he is a member but feels hostility and rejection toward those segments of society in which he feels he has no place or that threatens his existence. The well-adjusted woman has a broadly encompassing self, which is by no means restricted to her personal being but which is also concerned with the welfare of others. What she does to achieve personal adequacy contributes also to the adequacy of society. In later chapters of this book we shall examine this proposition much further.

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The Continuity of Life With the Universe All the innumerable organizations of which we are made and in which we participate are interrelated. So what happens to any person happens to all those organizations of which he is composed. This continuity of organizations is a deeply meaningful concept. We are each expressions of the universe. Who we are and what we do is not an isolated event of little import but has its effects on a far greater stage. We owe our existence to organizations far bigger than ourselves, and we affect them in turn. No human being, therefore, is ever unimportant. Each person is a unique, participating organization within the larger framework. Nor do we live in vain. What we do or do not do has inevitable effects on the world we inhabit. This is a psychological description of a person's relationship to the universe. It has important parallels, however, with the beliefs posed by many theological groups. For example, if the enormous field organization we call the universe is conceived as divine, then, indeed, human beings are "created in the image of God" and deeply influenced by "the Holy Spirit." A basic tenet in Buddhism is the need for persons to find peace through being and becoming. Because science, philosophy, psychology, and theology is, each in its own way, searching for the nature of truth, it should not surprise us if they sometimes arrive at similar conclusions. Only One Human Need? Looking at human behavior from an outsider's point of view, people seem to be motivated by an enormous diversity of needs. Many students of human behavior in past times have postulated a multitude of human needs as well. Looking at behavior from the person's own viewpoint, however, apparently diverse goals are quite harmonious. But what about suicide, one might ask. Is that not a denial of the need to maintain and enhance the self? Not at all. We must remind ourselves that the self we wish to maintain is not the physical self but the phenomenal self, the self that is perceived. Many a suicide has destroyed his body in order to avoid damage to the phenomenal self by remaining alive. So persons may take their lives today to avoid what seems like inevitable damage to the self tomorrow. Most young people commit suicide because they feel there is no hope left. This is why attempted suicide has been termed a cry for help. The soldier in wartime is not torn between a desire for self-destruction and a desire for self-preservation as he faces the coming battle. On the con-

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trary, he is concerned solely with the adequacy of his phenomenal self. Although the situation will vary from individual to individual, it might roughly be described as follows: He may risk death on the one hand to preserve himself from becoming the kind of person who "lets his buddies down," and on the other hand, to enhance his self-concept by being the kind of person who is "one of the gang," or as brave as the others. Many of us place our physical selves in jeopardy to achieve a more adequate concept of ourselves. What we believe about people's behavior plays a crucial role in determining our behavior toward them. Hence, the concepts we hold about what people are trying to do must inevitably affect the way in which we attempt to deal with others. Inaccurate or conflicting concepts of human need will, of necessity, result in inaccurate and inconsistent behavior on our part. It is important for anyone required to cope with the behavior of others to have the simplest, most accurate understanding of human need of which we are capable. Numerous and overlapping concepts of human needs are confusing and difficult to work with. We must have a broad and accurate concept of human need for the simple reason that we behave according to what we believe to be true. Perhaps an even more important reason for finding the simplest possible definition of human need is in the very nature of the concept of need. When the psychologist speaks of need, he usually means some very basic, fundamental, even incontrovertible goal of human behavior. Such a concept of need denotes an absolute necessity for human welfare so that satisfaction of a need cannot be denied without the most dire results. This makes the concept of multiple needs an unfortunate and even highly dangerous principle. For example, if one conceives a very homely girl as suffering from a "need" to be attractive, what shall one do to help her adjust? If a need to be attractive is truly basic, therapy must be directed toward the attempt to improve her appearance; but this may be a task defying all the skill of a Hollywood makeup artist. Similarly, if abusive behavior is regarded as a "need" to vent one's anger, what hope is there for treatment? What we believe to be true about people's need will directly control our own effectiveness in dealing with other people. Too narrow or inaccurate a view of what people are striving for may even make it impossible for us to deal effectively with society's human problems. Two Views of Motivation Motivation in our things-oriented culture is usually regarded as the things we do to get others to do what we would like them to. Such a conception,

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however, is more a question of management than motivation. Motivation in this field view is not a matter of what we do to people; it is a process inherent in the organism, a matter of perceptions, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs. It should be clear from our discussion of need in this chapter that from the point of view of the person, himself, he is never wnmotivated. When people seem to us to be unmotivated, it is not because they are really so. We simply do not understand how things seem to them. The child who writes a letter to a friend during math class is not unmotivated, only not motivated to do what the teacher wishes. From the outsider's point of view it may seem highly doubtful that other people are always motivated to seek personal adequacy. Yet this is exactly what proves to be true the moment we look at situations with which people are confronted through their own eyes. The delinquent, taunting the police, sassing his teachers, and walking about with a chip on his shoulder hardly seems to the outside observer as pursuing personal adequacy. Rather, he seems to be perversely seeking his own destruction. When one gets to know delinquents better, however, it becomes clear that such swaggering behavior is an outgrowth of deep feelings of inadequacy. Seen from his own frame of reference, the delinquent's behavior may be compared to "whistling past a graveyard." It is a pathetic attempt to convince himself and the world around him of an adequacy he does not feel. People who really feel positive about themselves have little need to prove it. What we believe about motivation is a matter of vital importance in the treatment of individuals or social problems. How we behave toward other persons or what we advocate as appropriate treatment of social problems will be very different if we operate from the belief that people are always seeking personal adequacy or the belief that they are behaving out of hostility or stupidity. A Hopeful View of the Universe For early human beings, the maintenance and enhancement of the self required spending a major portion of their time and energies just keeping body and soul together. They had to find ways to control the environment in order to provide the necessities for survival, comfort, and safety for themselves and those they cared about. The manipulation and control of things was the primary road to maintenance and enhancement. With the development of science and industrial productivity, our culture has succeeded in controlling the physical world in ways undreamed of by our forebears. We have learned ways to control our environment so well that

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Being and Becoming

we can produce veritable rivers of goods and services in unbelievable quantity and quality. It is not surprising, then, that our success at controlling events should result in a culture that regards the universe as essentially hostile, hence having to be controlled. Beginning from such an assumption, citizens have become obsessed with the production, control, and enjoyment of things and seek to cope with all problems by techniques of manipulation and control. Other cultures, like the American Indian, for example, have a much friendlier view of the universe and seek to live in harmony with it. More recently, we have become aware that all is not well with the culture we have created. We find ourselves confronted with enormous new problems, largely created by excesses growing out of our things-oriented, manipulation-and-control view of the environment. That preoccupation, in turn, has confronted us with serious problems, such as the depletion of natural resources and ever increasing human concerns like war, peace, human rights, prejudice, poverty, and a hundred other evidences of breakdown in political, social and human interactions.8 This field psychology regards the universe from a far more hopeful perspective. It vitally changes our understanding of the world we inhabit and our relationship to it and to each other. The universe, we have seen, is a great organization constantly seeking order and fulfillment. It is not a static universe but a constantly unfolding one, forever engaged in defining itself anew and creating endless diversity as it does so. The universe and all its subsidiary members are organizations in continuous process of being and becoming. Such a universe does not have to be controlled; it has to be understood and lived with harmoniously.2 The being and becoming of the universe finds personal expression in the organism's need for maintenance and enhancement of the self. As organizations participating in the universal natural order, persons strive to be who they are and to become what they may. People do not have to be made to do this; fighting the universe is an exercise in futility. The process requires only facilitation. It calls for helping, aiding, assisting, and creating positive conditions for growth. To grow a healthy plant one must get the best seed possible, plant it in fertile soil, surround it with the best possible growing conditions—food, light, and so on—then get out of its way to let it grow. Depriving it of what it needs or insisting that it be what it is not can only discourage or distort its healthy growth. It may even destroy it altogether. The principles are almost identical for the growth of human beings.

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15

Parents, teachers, physicians, social workers—anyone interested in individual or social welfare and the persons they seek to influence—are not antagonists; they want the same things. Both parties seek the same end: maintenance and enhancement of the individual, fulfillment of the drive toward health. How well we are able to facilitate those processes will depend on the accuracy and adequacy of our understanding of the human beings with whom we come in contact. Contributing to that end is the goal of this field approach to the study of persons.

BEING, BECOMING, AND AWARENESS Who a person is, what he becomes, and how he behaves or misbehaves is a product of two events: (1) the fundamental drive toward adequacy and (2) the nature and extent of a person's awareness. In this chapter we have observed that the universe and all its organizations are characterized by the maintenance of organization, a process of being and becoming. This fundamental drive is a given, a fact of life. There is not much we can do to change it. We can only ignore it, impede its function, or facilitate its expression. It is a constant motivating force, characteristic of the universe itself. The nature of persons and how they behave or misbehave is a product of the interaction of our basic need for being and becoming and our personal fields of awareness. The basic need of human beings is a given. The nature and extent of awareness is another matter. The existence of awareness is also a given for human beings but infinitely more open to change and influence than the drive for being and becoming. There is much we can understand about awareness and much we can do with that understanding to help ourselves and our societies achieve ever higher levels of fulfillment. The remainder of this book is devoted to the exploration of the nature and functions of our field of awareness and what it means for human growth and fulfillment.

CHAPTER 2

Awareness

THREE WAYS TO STUDY PERSONS Human beings are extraordinarily complex organizations. Throughout history we have tried to study them from two primary perspectives. The first is to examine their parts. We have done that very well and in great detail. We know an enormous amount about the human body and its various systems, down to its most minute cellular and chemical makeup. But as Earl Kelley once said, "Our bodies are just the meat house we ride around in." Persons are much more than the sum of their parts. Although physical study of the body has provided us with important insights, it still cannot provide understanding of particular personalities or their behavior. The second approach seeks understanding from the study of people's behavior. This, too, has provided us with valuable data about the ways people behave. But behaviors are what people do. They are products or symptoms of persons in action. They help us categorize people, even help us predict the behavior of persons in groups, so that we can say "the chances are" that people will behave thus or so. They do not, however, help us truly understand who a particular person is, how she became so, or why she behaves or misbehaves as she does. From these two modes of study we know something about the physical parts that make up a personality and the behaviors persons engage in; but we still don't understand the space between: the dynamic nature of persons. In chapter 1 we described human beings as self-regulating living organiza-

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tions, products of the universal drive toward being and becoming, on the one hand, and the organism's awareness on the other. The basic need of persons for the maintenance and enhancement of self provides the motivating force; but the peculiar nature of persons, how they come into being, and why they behave as they do is a function of the person's awareness. How shall we go about exploring the nature and functions of a person's awareness? We are all aware that our own behavior at any moment is a function of how we see ourselves, how we perceive the situations we are in, and what we are trying to do. But all these factors lie inside us and are not open to direct observation. Is there a way by which we can understand the nature of a person's awareness? Yes, there is.

THE FIELD CONCEPT Many of the complex events we hope to understand in nature and science can be dealt with only through an understanding of interrelationships and forces. Relationships and forces, however, are difficult to observe. They cannot be neatly isolated, controlled, or manipulated like things. To cope with such intangible matters science has invented the concept of field. The field concept has made it possible to study phenomena in new ways for many branches of science; including astronomy, physics, biology, anthropology, and sociology. In similar fashion, to improve our understanding of ourselves and others, psychologists can explore the nature of human beings and their behavior as field organizations. A field is a device widely used in science to deal with forces or events that are not clearly understood and cannot be observed directly but nevertheless behave in observable, even predictable ways. A familiar example is the field of a magnet or an electric current. Although we do not know the exact nature and dynamics of magnets or electric currents, we can work with them anyhow because they behave in observable and predictable fashion. The fact that an event can be utilized in an orderly way is sufficient to make it useful to modern science. Whatever its origin, the field of an organization has its own reality. That is to say, a field can be treated as an event in its own right and can be studied without reference to the material events that brought it into being. In this book we will use the field approach to explore the awareness aspect of personality and behavior.1

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As we saw in chapter 1, modern science conceives of the universe and all its parts as layers upon layers of interacting organizations. These organizations are also referred to as fields or systems and, in the case of living organisms, as self-regulating organizations. All organizations have four characteristics: identity, stability, fluidity and force. In this volume I have chosen to refer to a person's perceptual organization as her "perceptual field" in order to emphasize not merely an organization but the fact of its force or impact in the production of behavior and personality. The Perceptual Field There are two frames of reference from which we can study persons. We can seek understanding by examining people and their behavior from the viewpoint of an outsider, or we can make our explorations from the person's own perspective. For several generations psychologists were preoccupied with the outsider approach. From that frame of reference they concentrated attention on the person's behavior and the external forces that seemed responsible. This mode of attack led to stimulus-response or behavior modification studies usually referred to as behaviorism. As these studies advanced over the years, it became increasingly clear that behavioral thinking was only a partly right idea. People do, indeed, seem to behave in response to the external forces exerted on them, but not always. If I have two tickets to this week's football game and offer them to someone, I will get very different responses depending on how that someone perceives my offer. A football fan will accept them with pleasure. Someone who already has another engagement for that day may decline my offer with regret. Someone else, who believes football is a violent sport, may be revolted at my offer. Still another, who sees a chance to make a profit, may accept my tickets and promptly sell them to someone else. It is apparent that people do not behave directly in terms of the stimulus but to its personal meaning. Because partly right ideas produce partly right results, they encourage users to continue their explorations in the vain hope that, if they just try harder or work more carefully, then, surely, the hoped-for results will materialize. Partially right ideas encourage investigators to continue their searches long after they should be abandoned for some more adequate approach. As a consequence, behavioral thinking continued to be employed long after many psychologists had abandoned that view and turned to more fruitful strategies. The most promising of these was to explore behavior from the point of view of the person's own perceptions or experience.

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The Perceptual View of Persons and Behavior In the person-centered perceptual field frame of reference we attempt to observe the person and her behavior from the point of view of the individual herself.2 As a matter of fact, that is what almost all people, professional psychologists or laymen, do as soon as they are confronted with the task of dealing with someone's behavior: "What does she want?" "What is she thinking?" "How does she feel about this?" These are some of the questions they ask as they try to put themselves in her place and to understand and anticipate her behavior. We take it as a matter of course that people's ideas, emotions, and opinions have an effect on their behavior, and we are consequently alert and sensitive to them. People do not behave according to the facts as others see them. They behave according to the facts as they see them. What governs behavior from the point of view of the person herself are her unique perceptions of herself and the world in which she lives, the meanings things have for her. A kindergarten child, trying to tell his teacher how pretty a little girl looked in her brand-new party dress, stammered, "She was pretty as ... pretty as ... pretty as a mother!" as he searched his mind for the prettiest thing he could think of. The fact of the matter is, from an outside observer's point of view, this child's mother could only be described as a very homely woman! To this little boy, however, his mother is the epitome of beauty and the criterion by which loveliness is to be judged. How this mother looks to other people is largely irrelevant information in trying to understand this child and his relationship to his mother. If we look at our own behavior at the moment of behaving, we find, at once, lawfulness and determinism. From the point of view of the behaver herself, behavior is caused. It is purposeful. It always has a reason. Sometimes the reasons are vague and confused, in which case behavior is equally vague and uncertain; sometimes the meanings are extremely clear and definite. But everything we do seems reasonable and necessary at the time we are doing it. Even the most bizarre behavior makes sense when seen from the viewpoint of the behaver. Jon Swenson was admitted to a mental hospital in New York City years ago with the notation, "Walking the streets nude." Odd behavior? Not at all from the patient's view. Here's the story as compiled by his case worker: Jon came to this country from Sweden shortly before World War I, intending to work, save his money, and send for his parents. When the war broke out, he entered the merchant marine to "do something for my new country." He spent the next two years as a stoker, firing the

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Being and Becoming

boiler on a ship ferrying supplies to our allies and our own forces in Europe. Throughout the war, stoking the boilers three decks below the waterline was an extremely dangerous job because all merchant ships at the time were under constant threat of submarine attack. Also the Allies needs were so great that the moment a ship was unloaded, it turned around for another trip. When the war ended, Jon landed in New York to find that his parents had died and his fiancee had married someone else. He was alone in the city, with no friends. Jon got a job in a department store—stoking the boilers three floors below the street level. After a few months he began to hear voices and asked a bartender what he should do. The bartender sent him to a mental hospital close by, which admitted him for observation. The hospital kept him for three or four days and released him with the diagnosis "acute anxiety." Jon went back to work stoking the boilers. After two weeks he started to hear voices again and returned to the hospital, which refused to admit him. They told him that he was not a serious case and that, if he changed jobs, his anxiety would probably go away. Jon returned to his job, but the voices got worse. Again he sought advice from the bartender. "Go back to the hospital," the bartender said. "I can't," Jon told him; "I tried and they won't take me." "Well," said the bartender, " I'd make them take you." Jon thought about that for awhile, stepped out of the bar, shed his clothes, and began to walk to the hospital. Before he'd gone a city block, he was picked up by the police and taken there! Bizarre behavior, indeed, but hardly unreasonable from Jon Swenson's perspective. When we look at other people from an external, objective point of view, their behavior may seem irrational because we do not experience things as they do. Even our own behavior may, in retrospect, seem to have been silly or ineffective. Think, for example, of some awkward or embarrassing thing you have done or said. Looking back at it, it may now seem stupid or inappropriate. Before the event, you may even have been quite certain you would never behave in that way. But at the instant of behaving, each person's actions seem to her to be the best and most effective acts she can perform under the circumstances. If, at that instant, she was aware of how to behave more effectively, she would have done so. The Perceptual or Phenomenal Field In this book we shall use the field concept to refer to that more or less fluid organization of meanings existing for every individual at any instant. We call it the perceptual or phenomenal field. By the perceptual field, we

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mean the entire universe, including herself, as it is experienced by a person at the instant of action. It is each individual's personal and unique field of awareness, the field of meaning responsible for every behavior. The concept of complete determination of behavior by the perceptual field may be stated as follows: All behavior, without exception, is completely determined by and pertinent to the perceptual field of the behaving organism.3 The perceptual field also has been called the personal field, the field of meaning, the experiential field, the private world, the behavioral field, the psychological field, the individual's life space, and the phenomenal field. The last term is derived from a school of philosophy known as phenomenology, which holds that reality lies not in the event but in the phenomenon; that is to say, in the individual's experience of the event. In this book we will occasionally use the term phenomenal field synonymously with the term perceptual field, only because this synonym will serve to avoid repetition. The Perceptual Field as "Reality" The perceptual field is the universe of naive experience in which each individual lives, the everyday situation of the self and its surroundings that each person takes to be reality.4 No matter what we are told, our own perceptual field will always seem real, substantial, and solid to us. It is the only field and the only reality we can directly experience. It includes all the universe of which we are aware, including not only the physical entities that exist for us but such other entities as justice, injustice, and public opinion. It also includes experiences of love and hate, of fear, anger, and human compassion, that do not exist outside the experience of persons. So strong is our feeling of reality with respect to our perceptual field that we seldom question it. We accept that how it seems to us must truly be so. When others do not see things as we do, we are quite likely to jump to the conclusion that they must be either stupid or perverse; for what is right and proper appears to us so clear that no other conclusion seems warranted. Our perceptions always have the feeling of reality at the instant of behaving. The phenomenal field is far richer and more meaningful than the objective, physical world. We invest the things about us with all sorts of meanings; these meanings are for each of us the reality to which we respond. The perceptual field is much more in that it includes many things not physically present. The most detailed perceptual field, however, includes only a very few of the vast (practically infinite) number of objects, details, and meanings that are present or that might be present in the fields of other

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Being and Becoming

individuals in the same physical situation. For instance, if any of us began to make a close study of the room in which we are at this moment, it is probable that we could spend months, years, or even a lifetime making a series of discoveries about it, even though we may think we are already very familiar with the room.

THE FIGURE-GROUND CHARACTER OF FIELD ORGANIZATION The meaning of any event is always a result of the relationship of the event to the totality observed. This relationship of the part to the whole is called the figure-ground relationship. The accompanying illustration, Figure 2.1, will show some of its salient points. If the whole illustration is seen as a candlestick there is relatively little detail. As soon, however, as the observer looks for details in the base of the candlestick, the details in the top fade into ground. To illustrate, the observer will note that the figure is always something. As long as any part of it is figure, it has meaning. It is either a vase, a candlestick, two faces, or at least an undifferentiated object. When the illustration is seen as two faces,

Figure 2.1

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23

there is a striking change in the character of the area between the faces as it fades into ground. When the illustration is seen as a vase or a candlestick, the same area emerges into figure, and a previously nonexistent solidity emerges. This process of emergence of figure from ground is known as differentiation; it makes possible change in our perception of events. Perhaps one of the best examples of differentiation is to be seen in our experience at a movie. Entering the theater we perceive the screen and its content as ground, the aisle and seats as figure. Having found a seat we perceive the screen more precisely as we make ourselves comfortable. At this stage we are still aware of our surroundings, of the edge of the screen, even of the screen as a screen. Shortly, however (if the movie is a good one), the images on the screen move into exclusive figure so that we lose practically all awareness of the ground surrounding us, to the extent that we feel so "alone" with the images on the screen that we may cry unabashedly in a manner in which we certainly would not had all the strangers around us been clearly in figure. The use of these illustrations should not mislead the reader into thinking that figure exists only in the visual aspects of the field. It may occur in any sense field or in any combinations of sense fields. In taste perception, for example, the figure-ground relationship can be observed when we attempt to bring into clearer awareness some particular component of a tasty dish whose recipe we are seeking to guess. In connection with the sense of hearing, the relationship may be observed when, lying in bed, we suddenly become aware of a dripping faucet or a rattling window that only a moment ago caused no annoyance to us at all when it existed as part of the ground of our perceptual field. The movement of perceptions in and out of figure in the perceptual field is not limited to sense impressions. Anything in the field can become figure, including bodily fatigue, pain, and abstract ideas. Although we may rapidly alternate events in figure, they are never in figure simultaneously. We may perceive Figure 2.1 as a candlestick or as faces but not as both at once. How an individual behaves at any moment is always a function of the total perceptual field in existence at that time. The meaning of any event is always a product of the relationship of the figure to the total ground of which it is a part. Differentiation and Levels of Awareness The intensity with which events are experienced in the perceptual field will be a function of differentiation and levels of awareness. Although the

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Being and Becoming

perceptual field includes all the universe of which we are aware, we are not aware of all parts with the same degree of clarity at any moment. For instance, we walk through the living room without paying specific attention to the exact location of the lamps and the chairs, but our behavior indicates that we are aware of them. We do not bump into them. We know they are there even though we may be intent on other matters. Awareness of these objects is at a low level of clarity, adequate for the purposes of the moment. If our needs change, however, the same chairs we were only vaguely aware of a moment ago, may emerge into very clear figure—for example, if someone suggests redecorating. Until this moment the reader, if she is sitting down, has probably been aware at only a very low level of her point of contact with whatever it is she is sitting on. Were she not aware that she is firmly in contact with something she would not behave as she does; she would be busily trying to keep herself from falling over backward. The reader also may discover that now that we have drawn her attention to her point of contact, the perception may be in very clear figure. Other low-level-awareness phenomena, like breathing, the feel of the tongue in the mouth, or of the toes inside our shoes also can be brought into clearer figure when necessary. This process, by which aspects of the perceptual field are brought into clear figure, is called differentiation. At any moment perceptions in the field may exist at any and all levels of differentiation from the vaguest to the sharpest. We have said that behavior is always determined by the nature of the perceptual field at the instant of behaving. At whatever level of awareness perceptions exist in the field, they will have their effects on the person's behavior. When we perceive clearly and sharply, behavior is correspondingly direct and efficient. When we perceive only vaguely, then behavior too is likely to be fuzzy and inaccurate. Perceptions at low levels of awareness, it is true, will affect behavior with less precision than perceptions more clearly in figure; but as long as they exist at all in the perceptual field, they contribute to behavior. The mass activity elicited by a fly buzzing around the face of an uneasy sleeper is an example. In the sleeper's field the fly functions as a vague, relatively undifferentiated annoyance, and her response is made accordingly. When the level of awareness is sharpened, and the fly, as source of annoyance, has been clearly perceived, behavior similarly becomes more precise and direct. It should not be supposed that all meanings existing in the phenomenal field at low levels of awareness can always be called into clear figure or

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reported to other people. Not at all! Many aspects of experience are destined to remain in ground all our lives. Consequently, it may never be possible to bring them into sufficiently clear figure to relate them to others. However, reportable or not, behavior is always a product of the total field; therefore, even vague awarenesses play their part in behavior. Early in this century, Freud noted this effect on behavior and based a great deal of his theory of psychoanalysis on what he called the "unconscious." Much of people's behavior, he observed, was motivated by events discernible by him but denied by his patients. He concluded, therefore, that behavior was often controlled by unconscious impulses. Freud's description of behavior produced from low-level awareness as unconscious has turned out to be most unfortunate. The terms conscious and unconscious leave the impression of a clear-cut dichotomy instead of a continuous gradation of awareness from sharp and precise perceptions to vague and indistinct ones. The term unconscious also has been used by some people as though there were perceptions of which the individual is unaware. Some have also described the unconscious as a kind of "place" (even, sometimes, as a dark closet) where one could hide away things one does not want to look at. These are unfortunate aberrations of the perfectly useful idea that behavior may be significantly affected even by perceptions at low levels of awareness. In this book we shall avoid the use of the terms conscious and unconscious because of the unfortunate connotations they have gathered about them.5 Differentiation: the Process of Field Change Each of us is constantly searching her field for details and meanings that will better enable her to satisfy need. This process involves a continual change in the perceptual field by the constant rise of new characters into figure and the consequent lapse of other characters into ground, in the manner described above. From the point of view of the behaver, the process is one of increased awareness of details and is therefore called differentiation. An example of differentiation, or change in the field, may be seen in the process of becoming aware of an object. When persons are shown a figure or group of figures for varying lengths of time and asked to reproduce what they see, the first awareness is ordinarily of a vague, relatively undifferentiated whole, which then differentiates in more or less orderly fashion into more detailed parts. Because the properties of a newly emerging object are determined by its relationship to the rest of the field, at this

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Being and Becoming

stage it can easily be and frequently is distorted and misinterpreted. Illusions, hallucinations, and many cases of mistaken identity, as well as the common errors of proofreading, result. Who has not made errors like speaking to a friend only to discover that the person is a total stranger? Who has not been surprised to discover that a sign she thought said one thing actually, on closer examination, said something quite different? In the same way that the figure is constantly shifting in size, it is also changing in character as new characteristics and entities arise and differentiate from ground. Because precision of behavior can result only from precision of figure, this emergence into figure is the basic cause of more effective behavior. Change in behavior occurs with differentiation in the perceptual field. Thus, learning, problem solving, remembering, forgetting, and the like are all aspects of the process of differentiation. Differentiation, as we have been describing it, seems to correspond to a process of analysis. But, it may be asked, do we not synthesize as well ? Do we not also see examples of generalization? To answer these questions, it is necessary to remind ourselves that the perceptual approach to understanding behavior is concerned solely with the problem of how events are perceived by the person. What seems like integration, synthesis, or generalization, observed from an objective point of view, becomes from the person's own frame of reference, simply another form of differentiation. When a person, for example, perceives that "all these things have this aspect in common," what is occurring is not an "adding up" of separate and discrete perceptions. Rather, the person has differentiated from her field of perceptions the unifying principle that "all these things have this aspect in common." Thus, what appears on the surface to be integration or synthesis is, from the behaver's own point of reference, only a further differentiation of the relationship of events to each other.

THE PERMANENCE OF PERCEPTIONS Behavior, we have said, is the product of the total field of perceptions open to the person at the instant of behaving. The perceptual field is continuously being organized and reorganized in the light of new perceptions or differentiations as long as the person lives. Once made, differentiations in the field probably remain forever. Awareness is an irreversible process. One cannot w/texperience what has been experienced. For persons work-

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ing in helping relationships, this fact has fascinating implications. It means that any good thing one does for another person—is forever. This statement may prove startling to the reader who knows that she has forgotten things. Nevertheless, there is evidence that this statement is true. Once an event has been experienced, the experience cannot be reversed. Perceptions once experienced form the groundwork for all later perceptions. A number of experiments on forgetting have demonstrated this point. One of the most interesting was that of Burtt, who read his infant son long passages of Greek poetry. In later years, Dr. Burtt had his son learn a number of passages from Greek poetry by heart. Among the passages the child learned at ages 8,12, and 16 were some he had heard as a baby. He learned those passages more quickly than the passages he had never heard before.6 Forgetting, it would seem, is not so much a fading out of what we have learned as it is a matter of organization of the perceptual field in which some perceptions have become less capable than others of being called into clear figure on demand. Although it seems true that the effect of perceptions is permanent, it should not be supposed that we mean they are solid and unchangeable or that they lie fallow in the field until called on. The perceptual field is an organization continuously changed and modified by the perceptions occurring within it. New perceptions make changes in the total field. As the total field changes, moreover, changes are produced in the perceptions within the field as well. Thus, a person's experiences exert an irreversible effect on the field. It should not be assumed, however, that the original event can always be recalled just as it happened. Isolated perceptions, like the Greek passages of Burtt's experiment, may remain unchanged for long periods. Had these been brought frequently into figure over the years, they would undoubtedly have changed considerably. I recently visited my childhood neighborhood, which I had not seen since I was eight years old. I found it extremely difficult to recognize and was particularly shocked to discover that what I remembered as a bright, sunny, spacious neighborhood with considerable distance between houses was now a neighborhood of narrow streets, dark and overhung with trees, and houses practically on top of each other. My perceptions, originally made when the neighborhood was new, when trees had just been planted, and when distances seemed longer because my legs were shorter, had changed but little in the years that passed. Had I returned more often to the old neighborhood in the years between, the likelihood is that my perceptions would probably have changed, and I might have been less shocked.

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THE EFFECT OF PAST OPPORTUNITIES ON FUTURE PERCEPTIONS The perceptual field as it exists at any moment has a controlling and determining effect on other perceptions that the person can experience. We have already seen that many perceptions are dependent on previous ones. This means that the opportunities for perceiving that the person has had in the past have a vital bearing on possible further perceptions. This effect of past experience can be demonstrated in the use of the old-time stereoscope. When different pictures are exposed to the left and right eye under controlled conditions, persons tend to see what their past experience "sets" them to see. Thus, when a group of teachers from north and south of the border looked at a picture of a bullfighter with one eye and a baseball player with the other, the Mexican teachers "saw" the bull fighter and the American teachers "saw" the ball player. The state of the perceptual field at any moment sets limits on what further events may be perceived. New perceptions are dependent on antecedent experiences. If that seems somewhat depressing, we need only to remind ourselves that our previous experience has also made it possible to perceive events we might not have been able to perceive without that experience. Previous perceptions both limit the new events we can perceive and open vast new possibilities for further perceiving. The fact that I have been a psychologist for 50 years probably means that I shall never become famous as a dress designer. My perceptions of the past do not permit me to comprehend the fine points of that profession. I must be content with admiring the product of others. On the other hand, the experiences I have had that made me a psychologist have opened a vast horizon of possible new perceptions not open to people without that experience. Because of my experience, I perceive events differently from my colleagues in engineering, business, or homemaking. For them, as for me, perceptions narrow possibilities in some directions and open new vistas in others.

SYNTHESIS, GENERALIZATION, AND PERCEPTION OF ABSTRACT EVENTS It is the differentiations a person is able to make in her perceptual field that determine the nature of her awareness—both the direct perceptions of concrete events apprehended through our sense organs and the percep-

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tions of complex events understood only through the medium of abstract thought. In this book, the word perception is used to refer to any differentiations a person is capable of making in her perceptual field, whether an objectively observable stimulus is present or not. There seems little need for more than one process to explain these events. Differentiations in the phenomenal field resulting in perceptions of seeing, hearing, smelling, or feeling are precisely the same as those made in conceiving, knowing, or understanding. Although the subject matter varies, the process is the same.

COMMON PERCEPTIONS MAKE COMMUNICATION POSSIBLE If the perceptual fields of different individuals were completely private, there would be no way of knowing another person's field, and the understanding of another's behavior would, of course, be impossible. When I whistle to a dog or call to a friend, however, the dog or my friend, in a large percentage of cases, behaves as if the sounds I make in my perceptual field are also present in theirs. In other words, changes in my own field are often accompanied by behavior on the part of others that indicate that a change has also taken place in their perceptual fields. It is probable that this relationship arises in the following way: each of us is born into a situation in which certain common characters and objects exist. For example, both the Eskimo and the South African tribesman are born into a world where things will fall if they are dropped, where there is ground under their feet, where there are people around them, where there are forms of precipitation, where there are colors and sounds to be experienced. Even among people as remote from one another as these, there is considerable agreement about the things they experience. There is even more agreement among people in the same culture, who have many more common aspects as potential characters of their perceptual fields and of their individual "realities." Thus, communication is possible through that part of the phenomenal field that is common to two persons. For instance, among most members of Western society there are common gestures that make some communication possible although the spoken languages are different. However, they can do so only when the physical gesture has the same phenomenal significance. I once had a most embarrassing example of this fact on a lecture tour in Brazil. I arrived in Brazil knowing only one word in Portuguese, obrigado, which means thank you very much. I had a marvelous interpreter for my

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speeches who was also my hostess during my stay in Brazil. My first speech was enthusiastically received by the audience, and at its conclusion I was surrounded by Brazilians telling me of their appreciation. Knowing no Portuguese, I could only reply obrigado over and over, which I repeatedly accompanied with a common American gesture meaning "OK," "Yes, we agree," by making an O with my thumb and forefinger. Later that evening my hostess-interpreter chided me, "Art, don't ever do that again! In Brazil, that is a very obscene gesture! It's equivalent to 'mooning' someone in the U.S.!" What a response to all those nice people trying to congratulate me! Communication is essentially the process of acquiring greater understanding of another's perceptual field, and it can take place only when some common characters already exist. In speech, for instance, communication is possible only to the extent that the objective physical sounds or characters have the same meanings in the two fields. An American cattle fancier found his ability to communicate with a Scottish dealer much enhanced as soon as he discovered that "coo" did not mean cow, as he had inferred, but calf. The same words often have very different meanings in the perceptual fields of different individuals. Even strangers of the same general culture often have difficulty communicating, but old friends who have shared many experiences can understand one another's fields so well that they can often communicate and anticipate one another's behavior without using words at all. The well-known phenomenon by which twins communicate with each other in a private language is possible because of the mutual nature of so much of their experience, People who have common experiences tend to have common characteristics in their phenomenal fields and, as a result, show common tendencies in their behavior. Consequently, one finds at a social gathering the skiers, the bridge players, the teachers, the businessmen, or those who have been to Europe forming into groups despite the best efforts of a hostess to "mix them up." We feel more comfortable with persons whose phenomenal fields have much in common with our own. Because we see alike, we also behave similarly, and we can thus predict more easily what the other will do and how she will be likely to react to our own behavior. It is through the area of overlap in our respective fields that communication becomes feasible. EMPATHY: READING BEHAVIOR BACKWARD At first glance it would seem that understanding another person's perceptual field must be impossible because it cannot be observed directly. As a

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matter of fact everyone learns how to infer the nature of other people's phenomenal fields very early in life. Knowing how adults are thinking and feeling is a survival skill for little children. Very young children may be heard warning one another to "Watch out for Daddy. He's not feeling good." Or telling a teacher, "Jenny's feeling sad because her momma is sick." Everyone makes these kinds of inferences automatically, without thinking about the matter. We do it by reading behavior backward. If it is true that all behavior is a function of the phenomenal field, then, by observing the behavior of others carefully, we can infer something of the nature of a person's field by asking ourselves such questions as" How would one have to see the situation to behave like that?" "What does that behavior suggest about this person's feelings about herself?" or "What does Helen seem to be trying to do?" From such observing and inferring over a period of time we can often come very close to the nature of some of the most important parts of another person's field. The process is called empathy: sensitivity, trying to see things as others do, or "walking in another person's shoes." Empathy is not a skill we have to learn. We all have learned it long ago and use it constantly without being aware that we are doing so. Almost everyone, for example, tries to understand how their wives, husbands, lovers, bosses, friends, or enemies are thinking and feeling and is able to do so with more or less certainty. Such information is vital to our own need satisfaction and provides the data from which to select our behavior in such relationships. A major problem in human relationships comes from the fact that, as we become adults, we utilize empathy selectively. We use it with folks who are important to us for whatever reason but neglect to do so with those less likely to fulfill or threaten our basic need. We may fail to be sensitive to the feelings and beliefs of children or persons outside the income, ethnic, educational, religious, or racial groups with which we are identified. So we may identify only with white people, not blacks; Jews but not gentiles; lower or upper social or economic levels, and so on. Persons in the helping professions, like teachers, counselors, nurses, social workers, and many members of the clergy, depend on their empathic skills to understand their clients, patients, or parishioners. Empathy is a primary requirement for success in the helping professions. Other occupations, like advertising, personnel management, politics, and public relations, make use of inferences gathered from reading behavior backward, purposefully and systematically, to provide data for the prediction and control of behavior. Research scientists in such fields as psychology,

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anthropology, sociology, and political science make similar inferences about people's perceptual fields but do so with great rigor and control to assure maximum reliability of their observations.

THE VARIABLES OF PERCEPTION Every human being is a unique organization in the process of being and becoming. What people are like and why they behave as they do is a function of the basic drive toward maintenance and enhancement of the self and the nature of each person's field of awareness. In this chapter we have postulated that all behavior, without exception, is determined by the perceptual field at the moment of action. To understand other people and to use ourselves effectively as instruments for human welfare (our own or others), we must understand as clearly as possible the factors that determine the processes and functions of the perceptual field. Some of these factors have been known and studied for generations by several disciplines. The importance of other factors bearing on perceptual processes have been appreciated and subjected to experimental scrutiny only more recently. In the following chapters we shall examine seven of the known variables affecting the perceptual field for the light they shed on human personality and behavior. Before delving into the details of the perceptual frame of reference some readers may prefer, at this point, to explore the origins and history of the perceptual frame of reference and its relationships to other sciences. They can do so by skipping to chapter 15, "Field Theory in Historical Perspective."

CHAPTER 3

Discovering the Self

P

ersons, like all other self-regulating organizations, are forever engaged in being and becoming. But what is this "self around which the organization revolves? How does the self come into being, and what are some of the forces that shape its development and functions? Of all the perceptions existing in the phenomenal field of any person, by all odds the most important are each person's perceptions of self. As we observed in chapter 1, people behave according to (1) how they see themselves, (2) how they see the situations they confront, and (3) what they are trying to do at the moment of acting. Of these, the phenomenal self—how people see themselves—is the most permanent and dynamic. The situations people are involved in may change from moment to moment; so may a person's purposes shift from situation to situation. The person's perceptions of self, however, are always there, the star of every performance, the focal point around which all else revolves. Indeed, the phenomenal self is so important in the economy of each human being that it gives continuity and consistency to personality. It defines who he is and provides the central core around which all other perceptions are organized. When the individual's phenomenal self is understood, the diverse behaviors of people become more consistent and understandable.

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THE NATURE OF THE SELF Concepts of Self The ways in which the self may be defined are practically limitless. Individuals may see themselves as men or women, children or adults, Republicans or Democrats. More specifically, a particular individual may see himself as George Jackson, owner of a 20-foot sailboat, who lives at 627 Blackmoor Street in Allegheny, Missouri. These are descriptions that serve to differentiate the self from all other selves. They make it possible to distinguish a unique individual out of the mass of humanity. Each of us is possessed of a large number of such ways of describing and distinguishing ourselves as unique among other people. These are descriptions of the self that the individual shares with others. People also have many other ways of seeing themselves that are of little importance to outsiders but are unique perceptions of the person himself. There may even be concepts of the self in a particular person that would be highly surprising to others. George Jackson, whom we have mentioned above, may see himself, among a thousand other perceptions, as a ukulele player, a great wit, a neat dresser, or a young man. Outsiders might be quite surprised to know of these concepts George has of himself if indeed they were interested at all. They might even find it funny that George considers himself a great wit, recalling the times they have been bored with his long-winded stories. Concepts of the self may be held in common by the individual and by outsiders, or they may be the peculiar perceptions of the person's own private world of experience. The perceptions people have of themselves do not stop with description alone. Much more important, people perceive themselves in terms of values. We do not see ourselves simply as fathers or mothers, students or cabdrivers. We see ourselves as good fathers or mothers or as bad fathers or mothers. We see ourselves as A, B, or C students and as successful or unsuccessful cabdrivers. People regard themselves as attractive or ugly, fat or thin, adequate or inadequate, or in terms of a thousand other descriptions of greater or lesser degree of value or importance. Whatever the ways of describing oneself, each individual has developed large numbers of such perceptions. These more or less separate perceptions are called concepts of self. By concepts of self we mean those more or less discrete perceptions of self that the individual regards as part, or characteristic, of his being. They include all perceptions the individual has differentiated as descriptive of the person he calls / or Me.

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The varied ways in which an individual perceives himself are by no means of equal importance in the peculiar economy of a particular human being. The particular concepts of the self held by a person may vary, especially in centrality and clarity. Centrality of Self-Definition Some self-perceptions appear to be much more central, or basically part of us, than others. If only because our society expects very different conduct from men and women, we are reminded of our sex dozens of times a day. As a result, our concepts of ourselves as man or woman are usually related to the very core of being. They seem to the person as basic and fundamental truths. What is more, because they seem so basic, he resists with great determination any attempt to change them. Other concepts of the self may not be so strongly defended because they do not seem quite so important in our particular organizations. A man may regard himself, for example, as a man, as a Presbyterian, as a teacher, as a smoker, and as a driver of a 1994 Dodge. He may also regard himself as an American citizen, as younger-looking than his age, as a good tennis player, and as the life of the party. Each of these perceptions will seem to the individual to be more or less true, and he will energetically resist attempts by an outsider to change them, depending on how basic the concept seems to him. Thus, it may be quite easy to change the above person's concept of himself as the driver of a 1994 Dodge. We could, for instance, buy him a 1998 model. If he does not particularly value his concept of himself as a good tennis player, we might change it fairly easily if we could manage to get him thoroughly trounced a few times. Changing his concepts of himself as a man would probably be next to impossible. Clarity of Self-Perception Concepts of self also vary in sharpness or clarity. Self-perceptions may range all the way from concepts that are vague and barely discernible to concepts that are clear and sharply in focus. The mother in the psychological clinic, for example, may be quite certain that she is Jimmy's mother. This is a perception of herself in clear figure. However, whether she is a "good mother" may be far less clear to her. Indeed, it may be this very lack of a clear concept of self that causes her difficulty. The adolescent moving through the teens is at first highly doubtful of his status as an adult and only slowly comes to see himself in that role clearly and sharply. In early

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adolescence a male may not be quite sure whether he is a man or a boy, and thus he behaves in terms of his confusion. Little by little, as he grows closer to his 20s, his concept of himself as an adult comes more and more sharply into figure, and his behavior as an adult becomes more precise and predictable too. The self is differentiated with greater and greater clarity throughout life. We are continually discovering who and what we are. At any moment, we will find the concepts of self held by a particular person to vary widely from concepts in clear, sharp figure to concepts so vague and fuzzy as to be inexpressible by the person in question.

THE PHENOMENAL SELF AND SELF-CONCEPT Each individual has had literally hundreds of thousands of more or less discrete perceptions of self. This myriad of self-perceptions does not exist in the perceptual field as a mere enumeration of ways of seeing one's self. Rather, the concepts of self that each individual holds exist as an organization, the individual's own private conception of himself in all his complexity. This organization of all the ways an individual has of seeing himself we call the phenomenal self. We also call it the perceived self. The Phenomenal Self In Figure 3.1 we have diagrammed the perceptual field representing all of an individual's perceptions by the circle ABC. The perceptual field, as we have seen, includes all of a person's perceptions, including those about self and those things quite outside self, the not-self. Within the total perceptual field we may think of a second and smaller circle, B, including all those perceptions an individual has about self irrespective of their importance. This circle encompasses all those perceptions of self that we have called the phenomenal self. As we have just seen, perceptions of self vary widely in their importance or centrality in the personality. Many of our concepts of self have little or no immediate value to us at a particular moment. Thus, if one turns his attention to his little toe, he can become keenly aware of that member of the body and regard it as a distinct part of self. This perception may have little real value, however, in understanding large or characteristic aspects of a person's behavior.

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Figure 3.1

The Self-Concept To describe the organization of those very important or central perceptions of self, which are involved in a great deal of a person's behavior, it is helpful to differentiate the perceptual field further to include only those perceptions about self that seem most vital or important to the person (diagrammed in our figure as circle A). We call this organization the selfconcept. In this way we may extract from the phenomenal field those particular concepts of self that are such fundamental aspects of the phenomenal self that they seem to the individual to be "he," in all times and places. This is the very essence of a person; its loss is regarded as personal destruction. Whatever the self-concepts for any individual, they are the very core of personality. The self-concept is the self "no matter what." Victor Raimy, who first defined the self-concept in 1943, said of it: "The self concept is the more or less organized perceptual object resulting from present and past self observation . . . [it is] what a person believes about himself. The self concept is the map which each person consults in order to understand himself, especially during moments of crisis or choice." The self-concept thus serves as a kind of shorthand by which the individual may symbolize and reduce his own complex organization to workable and usable terms.1

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This shorthand description of a complex self is helpful to outsiders, too. The self-concept can be used as a convenient approximation of the personality of a person. Psychologists, for example, find the self-concept useful for studying individuals because it represents the most stable, important, and characteristic self-perceptions of the person. In this way the psychologist is able to achieve a more or less accurate understanding of an individual's behavior in a wide variety of settings. Though we may sometimes use the self-concept as a convenient device for understanding an individual, it should never be forgotten that people always behave in terms of the total phenomenal field, never in terms of an isolated part. The self-concept is a useful approximation of a larger organization; it is not synonymous with it. The phenomenal self as a discrete physical entity does not exist. Like the concept of the atom or the concept of electricity in the physical sciences, the phenomenal self is a field inference that makes it possible for us to deal with a complex function not directly observable. A person infers from his experiences who he is, depending on his experience with the world about him, but most particularly from how people who inhabit that world treat him. All these perceptions contribute to his phenomenal self. To the person the phenomenal self is always real. Outside observers also may infer the nature of the phenomenal self or of the self-concept from the nature of the individual's behavior. A Source of Confusion Many people have used the term self-esteem as though it was synonymous with self-concept. This is unfortunate, for it tends to trivialize the self-concept by creating the impression that the self-concept is a more or less easily modified opinion of one's self, a matter of self-regard, approval, or self-liking. That leaves the impression that the self-concept can be easily changed. The self-concept in the field view of psychology, however, always refers to the central core of the phenomenal self, the personal organization of beliefs about self that seem to the individual to be who he truly is.2 A second source of confusion is more serious because it has resulted in inaccuracies in much psychological research. Many investigators have assumed that one may explore the self-concept by simply asking a person to describe his self-concept. Such "self-reports" are then treated as accurate indices of a subject's self-concept. Self-reports are certainly affected by a person's self-concept but are by no means trustworthy indicators of the

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self. A self-report is a behavior, a symptom or product of the perceptual field. Self-reports are the replies we give to the question "Who are you?" How we answer such a question may or may not have relevance to our true beliefs about self. All sorts of factors may distort a self-report. What I am able to say about myself is only a report, determined only in part by my self-concept. We have seen that a person's behavior is always a function of the situation he is in and the purposes he has in figure. The request for a self-report, for example, assumes that all our concepts of self are directly available to us, an observation at odds with our definition of the selfconcept. What I will tell you about my deepest feelings, for instance, will depend on all sorts of factors in the situation as I perceive it, to say nothing of the limits imposed by my attitude about the whole affair, including whether I believe the request for my report is "anybody's business."

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHENOMENAL SELF Consistency of the Self Like all other perceptions, the phenomenal self has the feeling of reality to the individual. His perceived self seems to him to be truly who he is. However, it is probably not possible for the individual ever to perceive the total organization of his self-perceptions clearly at any one moment. Rather, he perceives those aspects or concepts of self that emerge into figure from time to time as he goes about the daily business of satisfying fundamental need. The phenomenal self is not a mere collection of self-perceptions existing without relationship to each other. Rather, it is an organization, a relationship of perceptions or beliefs to one another, resulting in a new entity that transcends the sum of its parts. An organized self must necessarily be a self-consistent one. It would be hard to conceive of a stable, effective, integrated personality characterized by inconsistency. We have described the fundamental need of the organism as the search for adequacy. Other things being equal, the degree of internal consistency in the phenomenal self will determine in large part the degree of adequacy a particular personality may be able to achieve. The search for maintenance and enhancement, then, must necessarily involve the individual in a search for self-consistency as well.3

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Stability of the Phenomenal Self It is characteristic of organizations that they resist change. This is true of the phenomenal self as well. Casual observation of the behavior of the same individual in various situations would lead one to believe that the self undergoes wild and fluctuating changes in differing situations. For example, the overbearing foreman who browbeats, threatens, and curses his men may become a fawning, obsequious lackey the moment the plant supervisor appears on the scene. From an outsider's viewpoint, it would appear that his self has undergone a very decided shift. From the point of view of the foreman, his phenomenal self may have undergone no change whatever. Regarding himself as being of a level of competence, authority, and ability greater than that of his workers but less than that of the plant supervisor, his behavior in the two situations can be observed to be a natural and expected outgrowth of such a concept in either case. If the self were newly structured by every momentary situation, any degree of consistency of behavior would become an impossibility. To be able to deal with life at all, a person needs a firm basis from which to operate, and the maintenance of his phenomenal self is essential. The very operation of his fundamental need for maintenance and enhancement leads to a high degree of stability. Anyone who has ever attempted to rebuild a child's feeling of competence once he has developed a concept of himself as incompetent and inadequate can testify to the difficulty of bringing about such changes. Even a phenomenal self in which the individual regards himself as very inadequate, stupid, or inept will often be defended to the last ditch. Almost anyone knows how difficult it is to convince the person with severe inferiority feelings of his true level of worth. He is likely to be pleased by praise, even highly embarrassed, but continues to act in the same old ways. Any college counselor is familiar with such people, who, when told of a high score on a test, for example, reply, "There must be some mistake. That couldn't be me. Are you sure?" To accept such statements about themselves would require that they do things they do not feel able to do. The very existence of the individual's need to maintain self imposes a selective effect on perceptions. Once the phenomenal self becomes established, experience thereafter can be interpreted only in terms of that self. Thus, all perceptions that are meaningful to the individual derive their meaning from their relation to the phenomenal self already in existence. Obviously, this selective effect contributes to making the phenomenal self less likely to change. The man who sees himself as misused and interprets

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41

all his experience in the light of that fact is not likely to change his position with any degree of readiness. As far as he is concerned, everything that happens to him is further proof of how right he was in the first place. In the same way, the child who feels rejected may interpret his parents' mildest rebuke as further evidence to prove what he already thinks—his parents don't love him. Still another factor contributing to the stability of the perceived self is the corroborative behavior it produces. Because behavior is a function of the phenomenal field, people behave in terms of their self-concepts. This can produce a kind of vicious circle, in which a person, believing he is only x much, behaves as though he were. Other people, seeing him behave only x much, treat him as an jc-much person, which only proves to the individual what he thought in the first place. Millions of citizens in our culture are caught on such unhappy carousels, creating enormous social problems for society.4 The phenomenal self with the self-concept at its core represents our fundamental frame of reference, our anchor to reality. Even an unsatisfactory self-organization is likely to prove highly stable and resistant to change. To say that it is stable, however, does not mean that it is incapable of change.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHENOMENAL SELF How the Self Comes into Being It is likely that some kind of perceptual field exists for every individual, even before birth. The precise character of this prenatal field must of necessity be closed to our understanding. We can do little more than speculate about what it must be like as the organism's awareness develops from the primitive reactivity of the single cell to the awareness made possible by the highly specialized sensory equipment of the human fetus. Whatever the exact nature of this early field, it seems probable that it is vague and undifferentiated. The major development of the phenomenal self begins with the birth of the child into the world of which he is going to become a part. It seems likely that James's description of the child at birth as existing in a "blooming, buzzing confusion" is a highly realistic description of the field of a newborn infant. As the infant is plunged suddenly into a world of sight,

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sound, taste, smell, and feeling, perceptions must be, at first, a hazy matter. It is a fascinating experience to watch a young child throughout the months after birth as, bit by bit, he organizes and orders his movements with greater and greater accuracy and precision. Research in child development, whether investigating sucking, locomotion, or the ultimate development of language, illustrates this trend from generalized behavior to precise operation. Once his equipment for sensing taste, smell, sight, and hearing begin to function at birth, vast new potentialities for differentiation become available, and the child launches on a voyage of exploration destined never to cease throughout his entire life span. Among the earliest differentiations made by the infant are those concerned with the discovery of self. This is a long and involved matter of exploration and discovery, probably beginning with the differentiation of what is "me" and "not me." The earliest differentiations of self from the rest of the world are of a tactual, kinesthetic sort, made as the child explores his physical being and his contact with his surroundings. As a result of such explorations he discovers several things: these fingers are "me," but these blocks are not; all this within the confines of my skin is "me," but what lies outside my skin is "not me." Bit by bit, as experience increases, the self becomes more and more clearly differentiated from the remainder of the perceptual field.

Language and Interactions Differentiations are at first made slowly and with much difficulty, but with the development of language the process of self-differentiation is vastly accelerated. The development of language and the ability to communicate by means of words opens new frontiers of experience. Language makes it possible to experience vicariously what would otherwise have to be experienced slowly and painfully. It even makes possible experiences one could never otherwise have. Few of us have the problems of queens or presidents, but we can differentiate and understand them through the spoken or written word. Language provides a "shorthand" by which experience can be symbolized, manipulated, and understood with tremendous efficiency. Above all, the possession of language vastly facilitates the differentiation of self and the world about. As the child grows and explores himself, he discovers that he is male or female, tall or short, fat or thin, blond or brunette. Some of these perceptions he arrives at through his own explorations. Other concepts, particularly those that have to do with values, he acquires from his interactions with peo-

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pie about him. He discovers not only what he is but also what he is not and attaches values to these differentiations. He perceives himself as "good" or "bad," adequate or inadequate, handsome or ugly, acceptable or unacceptable, depending on the way he is treated by those who surround him in the growing-up years. He learns about himself, not just from his own explorations but through the mirror of himself represented by the actions of those about him. Although some of the individual's experience of self may be achieved in isolation from other people, by far the greater portion of his self arises out of relationships with others. Human personality is primarily a product of social interaction. We learn who we are and what we are from the way we are treated by those who surround us—in our earliest years by our families and in later years by all those people with whom we come in contact. People are continually discovering and rediscovering themselves from birth to death. Effect of the Family or Early Caregivers No experience in the development of the child's concepts of self is quite so important or far-reaching as his earliest experiences. It is the family that introduces a child to life and provides him with his earliest and most permanent self-definitions. Here it is that he first discovers those basic concepts of self that will guide his behavior for the rest of his life. In examining these effects of the family or early caregivers on the individual's self-definitions we are likely to be particularly struck by the traumatic events: births, deaths, family upheavals, or stand-out periods of happiness or unhappiness. These are, of course, vital experiences in the life of the individual and have important bearings on his perceptions of self. Of even greater significance, however, are the everyday interactions with early caregivers, which often seem too prosaic and commonplace to notice. Yet it is these very experiences that probably have the deepest and most profound effects on the development of the self. Traumatic events in the lives of people are, of course, important, but we have often overvalued them. Far more important for most of us have been those events so trivial that we cannot remember them when asked to recall them at a later date. Indeed, it may even be true that the traumatic events in our lives were traumatic only because of their relationship to the more fundamental and basic feelings about self acquired in the prosaic humdrum of daily life. For example, the death of a grandfather may be accepted with little or no trauma by the child who felt adequate and accepted in his family but would seem an irreparable loss to the child for whom such a grandfather

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represented the only love and acceptance in a family setting where such treatment was lacking from mother and father. The reverse also may be true. Events that sometimes seem to an outsider as deeply traumatic and shocking may actually appear to the child who experiences them as only momentarily distressing if he has had much experience of adequacy in the everyday interactions with his family. Fundamentally well adjusted youngsters show a surprising ability to take even the most shocking experiences in stride, with an aplomb that seems almost callous to adults. Some years ago the author worked with a 12-year-old girl brought to our psychological clinic following an abusive encounter with an elderly man in her home community. The parents of the child were fearful that she had suffered some irreparable psychological damage as a result of this experience and brought her to the clinic for study. To the amazement of everyone on our staff, after complete psychological study and a number of play-therapy sessions, we could only conclude that the child had suffered no major permanent damage. She was a thoroughly normal 12-year-old, poised and charming as she could be. When asked, she discussed her unhappy encounter simply and matter-of-factly. She expressed a wish that it had never happened, described her assailant as "that nasty old man," then turned her attention to the more interesting business of present projects and events. Her experiences in her family had apparently provided her with so basic a feeling of adequacy and worth that she was able to accept her abusive experience without being crippled by it. Many are victimized, and some come to perceive themselves as victims.

HOW THE SELF CHANGES We have seen that the self-concept is a stable organization. To say that it resists change, however, does not imply by any means that once it is established no further changes are possible. The person's fundamental need requires change in his concepts of self. One cannot be truly adequate in a changing world without adapting to the changes going on about him. A static self-concept existing in a moving world would soon be out of touch with the world about it. An adequate self must be stable but not rigid; it must be changing but not fluctuating. It is probable that change is constantly occurring in the self-concept as a person perceives the reactions of others to himself.

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Changes in the phenomenal self and self-concept occur in the same manner as do all other perceptions in the perceptual field, by the process of differentiation driven by the person's basic need for maintenance and enhancement. People can, will, must move toward health if the way seems open to them to do so. Change is therefore inevitable once the person has differentiated that a new concept leads to more effective need satisfaction. Awareness of Inconsistency The first step in the acquisition of new concepts must, of course, be some sort of experience inconsistent with existing self-perceptions. The varying roles a person is called on to play in the course of his interaction with his culture make it inevitable that sooner or later he will be subjected to experiences at odds with his existing self-organization. This inconsistent experience may be perceived by the individual at any level of awareness. Thus, a person may be quite clearly aware that his new experience does not jibe with his existing phenomenal self. Perceptions that are inconsistent with existing concepts of self may be experienced by the individual, dimly and indistinctly, as "doubt," a vague feeling of stress or tension, as a feeling that something is wrong, or more specifically, as a feeling of threat, inadequacy, or failure. This inconsistency also may be experienced in a positive sense, as when one feels a sense of elation at a new skill mastered or new status achieved. The ability to perceive difference between the self that the situation requires and the phenomenal self is dependent on one's ability to see himself as others see him. As a member of a particular group or culture the person participates in its observation of himself, and he becomes more or less able to see himself as others see him or at least to see himself as he thinks others see him. As a child grows older, he learns not only to behave in one way or another but also to evaluate his behavior in terms of the culture in which he is reared. When he takes a piece of forbidden candy, he knows that his behavior is not acceptable. He not only behaves in a certain way but becomes able to interpret his behavior objectively, that is to say, in terms of the values of the culture in which he operates. This objective evaluation of his behavior may not affect his concept of himself. For example, though he may evaluate his act of taking the candy as stealing, he may continue to regard himself as a "good" boy. This is often what seems to occur in many delinquents. Even though they may accept the label of "liar"' or "thief," this acceptance is subject to the selective effect of the need

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for maintenance of self, which leads the child to defend himself by believing that his lying and stealing are "smart" or "good." General Conditions for Change in the Self Generally speaking, whether or not change is likely to occur in the perceived self seems dependent on at least three factors: 1. The relation of the new concept to the total economy. We have already seen in the preceding pages that not all concepts of self have equal value in the peculiar organization of a particular individual. Less important concepts of self (from the behaver's own view, of course) will be more easily changed by new experience than will more central or personal concepts of self. 2. The relationship of the new concept to the person's need. The phenomenal selves possessed by each of us are our nearest and dearest possessions. It follows that new concepts of self that seem to the individual to satisfy need are more likely to be accepted into his personality structure. Experiences that seem to the behaver to be threatening to his existing concepts of self (even if such experiences seem enhancing to the outsider) are likely to be rejected with great vigor. This means that other things being equal, change in the self is most likely to occur in situations that do not force the person to self-defense. Change can and sometimes does occur under threat, but generally speaking, the absence of threat increases the mobility of the self-concept. 3. The clarity of the experience of the new perception. Change in the self-concept can occur as a consequence of some new experience of self. The more vivid such an experience, the more likely it is to result in changes in self-perception. In general, firsthand experiences are likely to be much more effective in producing self-concept change than are symbolic experiences. What happens to us directly is much more vivid and clear than the words that people speak to us. The experience of failing an examination, for example, is far more real than a parent's warning of the possibility of failure. External Influences on Change Human beings are born into a culture and live in one the greater part, if not all, of their lives. The culture in which we grow up is so completely and inextricably a part of our experience as to play a major role in determining

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the nature of the concepts of self developed by each of its members. Even our definitions and values with respect to the purely physical aspects of our environment are colored, interpreted, and valued one way or another by the culture into which we are born. The so-called objective facts that surround us are likely to be no more than the interpretations of the culture in which we are raised.4 The inclusion of the meanings of his culture applies not only to things or events but to self as well. The self-concept of most people will be found to have many elements of similarity with what other people think of them. The child who is surrounded by parents, teachers, and friends who regard him as adequate and capable comes in time to adopt as his own much of their definitions of him. To regard himself as anything else would lead him into behavior unacceptable to his circle and would be unlikely to reach his maximum need satisfaction. At first glance this would lead one to believe that a person must always conform to his culture, but the concepts of self that people possess are not always what one might expect from the culture they live in. We need but look about us to observe that many persons have developed meanings about themselves quite different from those we might expect from the cultures in which they move. A person does not live in a single culture but in a whole series of cultures at any moment. We might describe these as subcultures within a culture. At any moment a person may be living in a family, a school, a workplace, a community, a church, a state, a nation, or a world subculture. What is more, the demands made on the person by these various subcultures may differ very widely. Because the individual may be raised in a subculture, his self-concept develops as a function of that subculture. When he moves from it into some larger group at a later date, his selfconcept may no longer be consistent with the demands of the new group. His actions may continue to be appropriate to the self-concept he derived from the previous group and may appear to him to be completely adequate. To the new society his actions may appear to be "queer," "unusual," or even totally unacceptable, depending on how far they deviate from the expectations of the new social group. The self-concept also may change as a consequence of personal experience unrelated to the culture. For instance, the teacher who has come to expect a particular behavior of a child may sometimes be quite bewildered by a sudden change in his behavior. Although the classroom situation may not have changed, the child's behavior becomes quite different because his concept of himself has changed. In a certain school, Peter had always been a very shy and retiring child who never raised problems for the

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teacher. He was quiet, orderly, and gentlemanly. In fact, the child seemed to be repressed and almost fearful of those around him. From Peter's own point of view, he was unimportant and pretty much incapable of dealing with his fellows, As a result he took a back seat and showed very little "push." Peter had been subjected to a great deal of bullying by a group of neighborhood boys of whom he was in mortal terror. He was unused to combat and did not know how to defend himself. Whenever he could, he scurried home through back streets to avoid his tormentors. One day, however, the gang caught him. They pushed him around and called him names till Peter was wailing in tears. Finally, the leader of the gang knocked him down and sat on his chest while the rest of the boys stood around and jeered. Peter was terrified. When the leader threatened to kill him it was too much. Peter lashed out in desperation. In a frenzy of fear he threw the leader from his chest and sailed into him. Much to his surprise he discovered himself beating up his tormenter, while the gang that had been jeering at him a moment before was now yelling encouragement. Having knocked the leader down in the first rush of his terror, he now pounced on him, grabbed him by the hair, and beat his head on the ground. In a few moments the leader of the gang was sobbing with pain and begging to be let off. Peter let him go and left the field of battle as a hero. For months afterward the gang, impressed with his ferocity, treated Peter with respect. Peter's impression of himself changed too. He gained confidence; he was looked up to and was no longer afraid. He became more active, got into more mischief, and even went so far as to defy his teacher in front of his newfound friends. All of this was puzzling to the teacher, who was unaware of Peter's new status. Peter's concept of himself had changed, whereas the school situation had not. Internal Experiences and Change Change in self-concept also can come about as a consequence of differentiations within the perceptual field. Such changes, or insights, are familiar to almost anyone who, at one time or another, whether suddenly or gradually, has become aware that his perceptions of self have changed. One can observe such changes quite clearly in the course of psychotherapy as a client says, "Oh, now I see"; "You know, I don't believe that about myself anymore"; or "By golly, I'm really better than that." Counselors help clients achieve such changes, in part, by helping them explore their selfperceptions in the sheltered atmosphere of counseling. Similar changes in

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self-perception happen to everyone from time to time throughout life as we continually seek for the maintenance and enhancement of the self. Resistance to Change Unless awareness of discrepancy between the perceived self and cultural demand occurs, it is certain that chances of change in the self are very slight. Almost everyone is familiar with examples of such lack of insight in everyday life. We see illustrations in such common expressions as "Ye gods! Can't he see what he's doing?"; "You'd think he'd know better"; and "Yeah! Just try and tell him." The individual's perceptions of self seem truly to have blinded him to the external evaluation of the facts. The differentiation of new perceptions of self is comparatively easy when the economy of a person does not already contain self-perceptions in that area. When no preexisting concepts of self interfere, the differentiation of new concepts is a simple concomitant of the kinds of experiences to which the individual may be subjected. Thus, repeated instances of success or failure in a particular area may quickly result in a self-concept as adequate or inadequate with respect to that matter in a child who has no preexisting concepts. The same experiences of success or failure experienced by a child who already has strong perceptions of self in that area may result in no appreciable change in the self-concept whatever. We have already seen in an earlier chapter that the fundamental need of each of us is to maintain and enhance the self. The self-concepts we seek to maintain, furthermore, are those currently in existence. The stability of the phenomenal self thus makes change difficult by causing us (1) to ignore aspects of our experience that are inconsistent with it or (2) to select perceptions in such a way as to confirm the concepts of self we already possess. As a result, changes produced by events inconsistent with welldifferentiated self-concepts are likely to be slow and laborious, if indeed they occur at all. What is more, the greater the importance of a particular concept of self in the economy of the individual, the more unlikely it is that any given experience will produce a major change. A child with a long history of unhappy experiences develops a concept of self that is not easily open to change, and the harm that took so long to build up may take a long time to be reversed. Persons who must work with deeply disturbed children often become discouraged or disillusioned because their well-meant acts of kindness or sympathy are rebuffed by the very children they seek to help. Such discouragement is the product of the

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worker's own misunderstandings, however, and not a function of the perversity of those they work with. The child who has become a truly tough delinquent as a result of a lifetime of frustration, neglect, and failure develops a feeling about himself that he is unliked, unwanted, unacceptable, and unable. He has learned, too, that other people are not trustworthy. Expecting such a child to respond immediately to a single statement, "I like you, Jimmy," is like expecting to reverse Niagara Falls with a teaspoon! All his previous experience has taught him that he is unlikable and unacceptable and that people are untrustworthy, particularly when they say the very things he would like so desperately to believe. The worker who approaches such a child in this way had better be prepared to back up his spoken words by behavior, for he is certain to be tested if he is attended to at all. Unfortunately, what often happens is something like this: The naive worker approaches the child with a statement like that above, meaning in all sincerity what he says. The child finds such a statement completely inconsistent with his concepts of self and is impelled to reject the idea. At the same time, his experience has shown him that people are not to be trusted. As a consequence of these perceptions he rejects the proffered help or affection and may even attack or insult his benefactor. The astounded worker, seeing himself rebuffed so violently, may conclude the child is incorrigible or may haul off and slap him for his impertinence— thereby proving to the child what he believed all along! Self-concepts differentiated as the result of long and adverse experience do not change in a moment. Nor do they change as the results of words alone. Gradual Change in the Phenomenal Self Whereas changes in peripheral aspects of the self-concept may sometimes occur fairly quickly, changes in the important or fundamental concepts of self usually change only slowly and gradually. Such shifts may even occur so imperceptibly that the individual himself, lacking the evidence of some striking event, may never be aware that any major change has occurred and may assume that he always had the same beliefs he has now. Sometimes, too, the change in the ways others treat the individual is so gradual that he is hardly aware of it and cannot put it into words. It is rare, for example, that the adolescent is suddenly conscious of being grown-up. In fact, it is more likely to be true that he still regards himself as a child far longer than is justified by his general development. This often results in

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behavior extremely annoying to adults who wonder why he doesn't grow up or "act his age." In time, with repeated evidence of their new status, however, most adolescents achieve a differentiation of the self more adequate to their new social position. It seems likely that gradual changes of this sort, as a result of repeated experiences, represent the most frequent type of change in the concept of self. Even changes in the self that at first glance seem to be quite rapid often turn out to be really quite gradual. "Sudden" insights are more often than not likely to be based on a whole series of prerequisite differentiations so prosaic as to be unnoticed but establishing the foundation that made the insight possible. Traumatic Change Changes in the self-concept also may occur, though much more infrequently, with traumatic shocks, in which the entire organization of the person is threatened. This is well illustrated in the following case of a young woman from the files of a psychological clinic. As a child she had been happy and carefree. She felt quite secure in her position and conceived of herself as a "good girl." One evening her parents had a wild party, and she was put to bed with instructions that she was not to get out of bed under any circumstances. Curiosity, however, was too much for her, and she got up, lay on the floor, and watched the evening's proceedings in the room below through the grating in the floor. Here she fell asleep and in the night was overcome by coal gas fumes in the house. In the morning, she was discovered by her mother, who was furious at her misbehavior. The child hung between life and death for several days, during which time her mother did not let her forget that she would never have been in that condition had she been a "good girl" and done as she was told. This single incident was of such a traumatic nature that the child revised her self-concept and accepted her mother's definition of herself. Even by the time she went to college, she was thoroughly convinced that she was indeed a very "bad" person. She had apparently developed a concept of herself as "guilty" and bowed to her mother's slightest whim because she felt she "owed" it to her. She had given up the career as a dancer she had wanted before her narrow escape, to enter religious education in the hope of someday "saving" herself. Thus, under the traumatic shock of possible complete destruction, a fairly violent change in the phenomenal self was brought about.

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THE FORCE OF PERSONALITY As we observed in chapter 1, every organization has force, influence, or direction. So does the self-regulating organization we call a person. This force, as it is experienced by outsiders, is called a person's personality. So a person might be described as manly, forceful, loving, introverted, impressive, athletic, weak, crafty, outgoing, or any of a thousand other descriptions. Defining personality is a notoriously difficult task. Almost everyone who talks of personality expects others to know what they mean. And generally speaking, other people do know what they mean, but the concept is hard to define clearly. There is good reason for this vagueness, for the force of any person's organization is as unique as the person himself. Conclusions about personality arise from a complex mix of perceptions made from the observer's views of a particular person's physical traits or characteristics and inferences the observer makes about the person's perceptual field, all more or less modified by the observer's own perceptual field, including such factors as his own goals, values, prejudices, beliefs, cultural expectancies, and the like. It is notorious that we tend to like in others the things we wish for ourselves and dislike those characteristics we have struggled with in ourselves. So far as the person himself is concerned, his phenomenal self is who he is. He spends his life seeking fulfillment of that self and judges himself in the degree to which he is successful or unsuccessful in that endeavor. He perceives his self primarily in terms of personal adequacy, his positive or negative feelings about self and his personal evaluations of his ability to cope with his world of experience. In later chapters we will see how this is related to the achievement of good or ill health. The force of a given human personality is far more lasting than one's physical organization. Sooner or later the physical organization disintegrates and returns to the universe from which we all arise. The force of one's self, however, may go on far longer. For outstanding figures like Christ, Galileo, Genghis Khan, Abe Lincoln, Mary Magdalene, Joan of Arc, or Eleanor Roosevelt, the force of their personalities may continue through centuries. We observed in chapter 1 how organizations are affected by their parts and affect the organizations of which they are composed. We have also seen that perceived events are permanent in the field. If that is true, the impact of important persons on our perceptual fields makes changes in our very selves. Therefore, interaction with a valued parent, counselor, teacher, lover, or religious figure may produce changes

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in the perceptual fields of both parties in the encounter so that each is changed by the experience. These changes, in turn, extend to the persons each touches thereafter. This bestows a kind of immortality on the impact each of us exerts in the course of our lives. Our need to maintain and enhance ourselves extends beyond our own perceptual fields. We are not indifferent to the effects we have on others. We want to maintain and enhance ourselves in the perceptual fields of those who are important to us as well. Such effects are important contributors to our own maintenance and enhancement. We humans are social organizations, and the fulfillment of self we seek is deeply entwined with the organizations of others. Even unhappy persons contemplating suicide almost always raise the troubling question, "What will people think?" They are aware that the impact of their selves goes on although their bodies are left behind. For some that thought alone is enough to turn them back from the brink.

CHAPTER 4

Meaning and the Self

KNOWING AND BEHAVING In chapter 2 we observed that behavior is a function of perception. Knowing (cognition), however, is not enough to affect behavior in and of itself. There is a vast difference between knowing and behaving. Most of us know a great deal better than we behave, and it is notorious that people do not misbehave because they do not know better. We behave in terms of the meaning of what we know, and that meaning is derived from the perceptual field. Modern brain research tells us that the brain is not just a switchboard or computer. Rather, it is a magnificent organ that serves to make meaning of experience. It not only receives and transmits information; it interprets information and relates it to the needs of the organism. It does this through the operation of the perceptual field. Like any other organization, the perceptual field is a new entity, more than the sum of its parts. It is the relationship of ideas, concepts, or experiences in the total perceptual field but especially their relationship to the phenomenal self, which gives meaning to experience. This function of the phenomenal self is a vital phenomenon for understanding behavior change and learning.1

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THE PHENOMENAL SELF AND MEANING Only when some relationship to self is perceived is an experience likely to have any marked effect on behavior. The meaning and importance of events is determined by the relationship between them and the phenomenal self. Imagine for a moment all possible experiences as being arranged along a line, as in Figure 4.1, from those that have a very close relationship to self at one end to those having little or no relationship to self (as perceived by the behaver, not an outsider, of course), at the other end. Now, keeping this diagram in mind, let us suppose that I am driving my car to work on any morning. It is a pleasant morning, and I am in no hurry. I am driving at a moderate speed along the highway, listening with half an ear to my radio. What is coming to my ears from the radio at the moment has very little relationship to me and little or no effect on my behavior. I hear, for instance, the morning livestock quotations from the local stockyard. As I am not a farmer, meatpacker, or buyer of meats, this information has little or no relationship to me (point F in Figure 4.1). Having no perceived relationship to me, this information passes through my awareness with little or no effect on my behavior. It goes in one ear and out the other, as the saying goes. It does so because it has no personal meaning. Now, let us suppose that the next item of information that comes over the radio has a relationship to me approximate to that of point E on our diagram. I hear this morning's weather report. It is going to rain this afternoon. This affects my behavior slightly as I shrug and comment to myself, "A good thing we aren't planning a picnic." Next I learn of a bad accident, which has just been reported at the corner of Fifth and Oak Streets (point D). The announcer goes on to say that Mrs. Ethel Martin, who was driving one of the cars, has been taken to the hospital in serious condition. Because I am, myself, a driver at the moment, it has somewhat more relevance for me. I perceive a mild relationship to my self, and I react mildly to the information. I

Figure 4.1

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may say to myself, "Another accident. Something needs to be done about that." I may even look about me uneasily or slow down for a mile or so. Because I do not perceive any important relationship to myself, however, this item of information has comparatively little effect on my behavior. Let us suppose, however, that this same item of information is perceived as having the relationship to me roughly indicated by point C. Let us suppose, for example, that I know Mrs. Martin. I met her once at a student reception last year. She is the wife of one of our department graduate students. Now the information, which previously had little or no relationship to me, is seen in a different light. Mrs. Martin is the wife of one of our students. Because she has a more or less definite relationship to me, this information affects my behavior more markedly. I am distressed at the news. It starts a whole chain of thoughts about Bill Martin, his family, his relations with the staff, his ambitions, his background, and a thousand other details. The news occupies my thoughts for most of the rest of the way to the office and continues to affect my behavior even after I arrive there. I talk to others about the accident. I ask questions about whether Bill knows about it yet and what we might do to be helpful. I inquire a bit among the rest of the staff as to Bill's financial condition, with an idea that he may need special help in this emergency. If Mrs. Martin were even closer to me, let us say point B on our diagram, it is possible that my behavior would be even more markedly affected. If, for example, Mrs. Martin were my next-door neighbor, with whom our whole family has been on good terms for many years, the information about her accident would have much more meaning (closer to self) and the resulting behavior it set in motion would be much more extensive and personal. My very good friends are in a sense part of me, and what happens to them is of vital concern to me. So on hearing what has happened to Mrs. Martin, I may be deeply shocked. I call my wife to discuss what we can do to help. I find it difficult to stop thinking about Ethel all day long. I make plans with my wife and neighbors to take care of the Martin children, to lend Bill Martin a car. When I get home, I check my neighbor's home, move their empty trash cans from the curb to the back door, pick up the tools Bill left in his driveway, and congregate with my neighbors to discuss the details all over again. Finally, let us suppose the information I hear over the radio has a relationship to me indicated by point A on our diagram. Let us suppose that Mrs. Ethel Martin is the married name of my daughter! Now the relationship of this simple piece of information has a vital and direct relationship to myself. Its meaning is critical, and the behavior I exhibit may verge on the violent as I forget about everything else and drive directly to the hospital.

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Events acquire their meaning from the relationships we perceive between them and the perceptual field, especially our phenomenal selves. Generally speaking, the more closely related an experience is perceived to the phenomenal self, the greater will be its meaning and its effect on behavior. What creates meaning for a person is the relationship of events (perceptions, ideas, thoughts, and experiences) to the existing field. In the illustration above we have concentrated on the relationships of events to the self, the most crucial factor in meaning. But meanings also exist for us that seem to have little relationship to self, as, for example, when one perceives a new fact about math, history, or astronomy. The meaning of such differentiations in the field, although not immediately related to self, are still functions of interrelationships in our field of awareness. Whether the new concepts seem meaningful will be determined by what previous experiences we have had and our interests, values, and attention. Whether new perceptions in mathematics, for example, have any meaning in my field will depend on the capacity of my field to incorporate it. Some of the factors determining such access will depend on what previous perceptions I have acquired in the basic concepts of mathematics.2

THE BASIC PRINCIPLE FOR LEARNING The discovery of meaning is a vitally important principle with wide implications for every aspect of human behavior. It is the fundamental problem of learning, and it explains why it is that so much of schooling has little effect on us. We might even define learning as the discovery of personal meaning and rewrite the above principle as follows: any information will affect a person's behavior only to the degree to which she has perceived its relationship to herself. Most of us learned at one time such facts as the principal exports of Venezuela or the capitals of the 50 states, but most of us have long since forgotten these, along with thousands of other similar bits of information whose relationship to ourselves never became very clear to us. Indeed, it is in this principle that we find the greatest single problem for education. There is a vast difference between knowing and behaving. Education has been highly successful in gathering information and making it available to students. It has been far less so in helping students make information so much a part of themselves that they behave differently as a result. Events that do not seem to have a relationship to self are likely to be ignored if, indeed, they are perceived at all. It is only when events are perceived as

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having some relationship to self that behavior is changed as a result of perceiving.

PERSONAL MEANING AND EMOTION Every human activity is accompanied by some degree of physiologic response. Our bodies automatically adapt to provide the energy required to carry out the activities called for by the perceptual field from moment to moment. We might illustrate this by our behavior as we rise in the morning to go about our daily business. When we are asleep, the energy output required of our bodies is very small. We need only to "keep our motors turning over" as it were. When the alarm clock sounds, we are confronted with the necessity for more activity. We have to move, and this movement requires more energy than we have been expending. Our body processes must be speeded up to take care of the new requirement. As we go through the accustomed activities of dressing, putting on makeup, eating breakfast, we need still more acceleration. Later on in the day we may find ourselves confronted with exciting or threatening situations that call forth even higher degrees of acceleration of bodily processes, as we receive a letter from a sweetheart or narrowly escape being run down while crossing the street. At these times we may find our hearts pounding, our faces flushed, our breath coming faster. We feel excited. This state of excitement or acceleration we call emotion. When our cave-dwelling ancestor walked down a forest trail and came face to face with a bear, it was important to have available the necessary energy to deal with this sudden emergency. She needed accelerated body processes, whether she fought with the bear or ran from it. Even in our modern lives we need this kind of quick energy to make it possible for us to deal with emergencies like avoiding an oncoming car, getting out of the way of a falling tree, or running to catch a train or plane. Emotion in these situations has survival value. At other times, however, the effects of increased body tone may be more embarrassing than helpful. The person who is called "on the carpet" by her boss has little need for great acceleration of her body processes. Under the circumstances neither fighting nor running is appropriate. Similarly, in making a speech one needs some increase in bodily activity. Too much, however, can be downright embarrassing or even incapacitating. Release of large amounts of energy with no appropriate outlet can be a very exhausting experience. Accelerating an automobile motor on the

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open road gives a smooth, exhilarating ride. Speeding the motor with the brakes on shakes the car in unbearable fashion. Much the same sort of thing happens to human beings under the stress of great emotion. It is probably the increased consciousness of personal power and effectiveness resulting from heightened body activity that causes people to like excitement, adventure, and change, to ride on roller coasters, travel for pleasure, and go on blind dates. By placing ourselves in situations that automatically demand a moderate rise in body tonus, we secure a sense of well-being and physical power that is very satisfying to our fundamental need for enhancement. Emotion As Tension In the past there has been a tendency to regard emotion as a cause of behavior. This appears to be a confusion of the symptom and the cause. Some writers, for example, have spoken of a child's aggressive behavior as being a result of its anger or a mother's overprotection as a result of her love for her child, and it is extremely frequent to find references to behavior occurring because the individual is afraid. It is probably more accurate to say that emotion is a state of tension or readiness to act. This tension represents the reaction of the organism to the possibility of need satisfaction (self-enhancement) or the perception of threat (maintenance of self.) Thus, emotion is a behavioral manifestation of the organism's attempt to satisfy need. As is true of any other behavior, tension or emotion may be regarded as an outcome or symptom of the activity of the organism in seeking the maintenance and enhancement of the self.3 What the individual describes as her emotion is actually her account of her personal relation to the situation. The greater the personal reference, the greater the degree of emotional experience. It is well known, for example, that stage fright is a function of personal reference. The greater the attention to self, the greater the likelihood of crippling emotional reactions. If the speaker can use a common technique and get her mind off herself, such emotional responses quickly disappear. Almost any schoolchild is familiar with the stunt of getting another child to blush by focusing the latter's attention on herself. The blusher may also be aware that she can quickly reduce her tension if she can turn her attention and that of others away from herself. It is interesting that the physiologic changes that occur under "emotion" are the same no matter how the individual may describe the emotion

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she is experiencing. A high degree of emotion is accompanied by a whole series of physiologic changes, among which are (1) sweating of the palms of the hands; (2) increased activity of certain glands, particularly the adrenals, which make it possible for the blood to coagulate more rapidly; (3) release of blood sugar, which provides large stores of quick energy; and (4) increase in heart rate and breathing, which makes great exertion possible should it be necessary. These changes occur, moreover, whether it is fear, anger, or the ecstasy of a first kiss that we are experiencing. Regardless of our description of the experience, our purely physiologic response to important events is the same. The same increases in excitement or emotion occur in the face of enhancing experiences as well. For example, Betty Caldwell has a fiance in the armed forces overseas. He writes to say he will be home next year. Not much excitement in that. Later, he writes he will be home next month. That is better, and Betty begins to feel the quickening of emotion. The excitement rapidly builds as Helen hears, "He's coming home next week!" "He's on his way!" "He's back in the country!" "It's time to go to the airport!" "Here comes his plane!" "Oh! There he is!" The closer the hopedfor event, the greater the emotion experienced. The reader may have found herself participating in Betty's emotion. Feeling and Emotion Most of us, in the course of our daily lives, make no distinction between our "feelings" and our "emotions." In attempting to communicate with other people we talk about hate, anger, love, fear, anxiety, appreciation, or grief without stopping to define more precisely what it is we mean. Other people, in turn, grasp pretty effectively what we are trying to say. Whether we talk about feelings or emotions is, in everyday life, a matter of no great moment. The important thing is that we be able to communicate effectively with other people so that they understand something of what it is we are experiencing. However, when we are trying to understand the nature and dynamics of behavior more specifically, we must distinguish between emotion and feeling more precisely. Because a person's bodily self is always a part of her perceptual field, a very large part of what a person describes as feeling is made up of her awareness of the bodily conditions she differentiates in the field at that moment. Our body states are always with us and always in some degree a part of the phenomenal field. This includes, of course, awareness of our state of tension or acceleration, which we described as emotion above. Al-

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most all of the feelings we express convey to our hearers some sense of our physical status. For example, when I say, "I feel fine," what I am describing is the nature of my field at that moment, including the state of my body. This is my way of expressing to others the vague organization of the physiologic conditions existing within me at the moment, as well as my knowledge of having achieved something noteworthy. If I am pressed for further description, I might say, "I feel vigorous", "my body tone is up" or "I feel I could lick my weight in wildcats." On the other hand, when I feel "blue", if pressed I would probably tell you that I feel" funny in the stomach", "tired," " heavy in the chest," and so on. The more intense the feeling, the more this awareness of body state is conveyed. The terms, rage, hate, love and fright all carry strong feelings of body state even to the listener. Some psychologists have rather plainly, though inelegantly, described these kinds of words as gut words because they seem to include so very large an experience of our visceral states. Feelings as Field Indicators In chapter 2 we postulated that all behavior is a function of the phenomenal field at the moment of acting. This field of personal meaning is extraordinarily complex and cannot be fully comprehended by the person who owns it nor can it be described to an outsider. The best we can do is approximate our field condition or refer to it symbolically. When we speak of our feelings, we are trying to convey the personal meaning of an event for us. When we say we are "so mad at Jim," we are trying to communicate to someone else the particular meaning our interaction with Jim has for us. The feeling "so mad at Jim" is the best we can do to translate the full flavor of our perceptions about our relationship and ourselves at a particular instant. Similarly, when we say, "I was scared stiff!" or "I wanted to sink through the floor," we are attempting to communicate either to ourselves or to others the peculiar meaning of a particular situation as we experienced it. Feelings are thus a kind of shorthand description of our perceptual fields at a particular moment. The complexity of the phenomenal field at any moment is a great deal to attempt to express in a single word or two, and it is not surprising that most of us feel our spoken words never quite convey the full flavor of what it is we experience. What lover has not complained that the words "I love you" were inadequate to express what she truly felt about her partner. To express perceptions of ourselves and the state of our respective fields we speak of feeling angry, tired, blue, happy, in love, anxious,

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afraid, grateful, and a thousand other feelings. These represent our attempts to convey to others the personal meanings events have for us. They are our attempts to translate our own perceptual fields in a way that can be understood by others. The Intensity of Feelings Experienced The person under tension is seeking satisfaction of need. The feeling of tension is a result of her awareness, either of menace to her organization or to the possibility of self-enhancement. The intensity of the feelings experienced will vary widely, depending on at least the following factors: (1) the perceived relationship of an event to the phenomenal self, (2) the psychological immediacy of the event, (3) the clarity of the perception, and (4) the person's feeling of adequacy to cope. The first of these factors (1) we have already explored. We might state it as follows: The intensity of feeling experienced by the individual will be roughly proportional to the perceived importance of the relationship of the event to the self. The second factor, the psychological immediacy of the event, will be the nearness in time and space of the threatening or enhancing object. When we speak of the "nearness" of an event, it should be clear that we are speaking of closeness as it appears from the point of view of the behaver, not an outside observer. This is a matter of psychological rather than physical immediacy. The tiger that I see through my binoculars a mile off will cause me much less concern than the one on the other side of that bush. The tiger behind the bars at the zoo may be no farther away than the one behind the bush, but in terms of my own perceptions it is, even so, at a very safe distance. A third factor affecting the degree of emotion or excitement is the clarity with which the situation is differentiated as dangerous or enhancing to the phenomenal self. One can stand in the midst of a sunny field enjoying the country air without feeling in danger as long as one does not know that the field is impregnated with radioactive fallout. An event unperceived is unexperienced and calls for no response. This is not just an all-or-none problem, however. Clarity of perception is a matter of degree, and the feeling experienced is likely to be roughly equivalent to the clarity of perception, other factors being equal. Thus, a vaguely perceived danger may produce a mild degree of feeling. The clearer the perception of menace or enhancement, the greater the accompanying experience of emotion is likely to be.

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The degree of feeling experienced depends on the individual's evaluation of the amount of enhancement or threat to herself she perceives. The novice at flying may be quite upset by the very thought of leaving the ground, but after such an experience she may seek further opportunities to fly because she enjoys the excitement. The pilot of her plane, on the other hand, may be quite bored with it all and find her job monotonous and dull. Because the threat or enhancement involved in any situation is for each of us a completely unique function, it is clear that the feelings we experience must also be different for each of us. The degree of emotion or feeling experienced will be determined very largely by the individual's feeling of adequacy to deal with the event she perceives herself confronted with. The things we feel adequate to cope with do not have an emergency character. They seem far less frightening and distressing than those things that seem beyond our control or capacities. Individuals who feel generally adequate suffer the incapacitating effects of emotion much less than do persons who feel generally inadequate. Persons with concepts of themselves as generally unliked, unwanted, unacceptable, unable, and unworthy often find the tension so great that they may be unable to operate effectively and efficiently. Instead, they are in a continual state of emergency, and the emotions they experience are destructive rather than helpful in maintaining and enhancing themselves. Feelings and the Causes of Behavior Often feelings, which are really descriptions of perceptual field states, have been confused with causes of behavior. Actually, they represent no more than a person's differentiation of a part of her field in symbolic and often highly stereotyped terms. As descriptions, it is clear that they cannot be causes of behavior. When a person says, "I did it because I felt like it," what she is describing in a vague way is her perceptual field at the moment of acting. When she says she felt angry and struck her assailant or felt afraid and fled from the scene, her behavior was not motivated by the feeling but was a result of the perceptions existing in the perceptual field at the moment. In either case, her bodily state was probably identical, for we know that the physiological aspects of any emotion are always the same in kind, though they may differ in degree. As a matter of fact, if the threat to her organization was very great, she was probably not even aware of her feelings. It is a common experience that in moments of great stress we may act with extreme vigor and are often surprised to find we did not feel afraid till the moment of crisis had

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passed. This is probably because we were not aware of our body state during the moment of crisis and only became so when sufficient leisure was reached for attention to be directed to body conditions. Our behavior is the result of the perceptual field, not the feeling that describes the field. It should not be supposed that the feelings reported by an individual are necessarily the same as those she experiences. What an individual feels is an internal experience going on in her own private world. What she chooses to reveal of this sanctuary to an outsider may have a more or less accurate relationship to the feelings she really possesses. Even with the best of intentions, it is likely that she can never succeed in conveying the full flavor of her perceptual experience to another. It is even true that a large part of our time and effort is spent in preventing other people from knowing what it is we are feeling about particular matters. Most of us want to keep our private worlds intact, and even those whom we love and trust most can never be fully admitted to this inner sanctum. Feelings as experienced and feelings as reported to other people are by no means one and the same. Some writers have made a distinction between "intellectual" behavior and "emotional" behavior. They point out that some things we do seem to be the result of our thinking about things, and other activities seem to be the outcome of how we feel about things. This is a false dichotomy. We cannot separate intellectual from feeling functions. All behavior is always a function of the total perceptual field at the moment of behaving. No behavior can ever be purely intellectual or emotional. All behaviors are a product of our perceptions, and all involve a greater or lesser degree of acceleration or tension. That is why purely cognitive or information processing explanations are inadequate for a comprehensive understanding of human being and becoming.

FIELD THEORY IN PRACTICE Clinical psychologists, counselors, psychotherapists, social workers, and teachers have increasingly sought the causes for personality and behavior in their clients' and students' feelings about themselves and their worlds. In light of our discussion here, about feelings as shorthand descriptions of the phenomenal field, such human relations workers are operating in a field theory format, although this description of their work will probably come as a surprise to many of them. Most human relations practitioners have ar-

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rived at a perceptual field approach to understanding persons in pragmatic fashion. They operate from such a frame of reference "because it works." The field theory we have been exploring in this volume was first stated in 1949, but only recently has it begun to be widely recognized. Many professional workers, however, have been using a field frame of reference for years without recognizing it as such.

SOME PROFESSIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF FEELING AS FIELD INDICATORS The relationship of feelings to behavior that we have been exploring can serve as a rough indicator of the probable effect of attempts to teach people or affect their behavior. Because emotion becomes greater with the relevance of information or experience to self, we may conclude that those things we try in order to change behavior or affect learning that elicit no emotion are signs that our efforts have failed. On the other hand, efforts to induce learning or behavior change that are accompanied by emotional response probably indicate that our efforts are touching a chord. There is a widespread belief among many teachers and administrators that there is no place for feelings or emotions in the classroom, that lessons must be provided with complete objectivity. In light of our understanding of emotion, this seems a guarantee of irrelevance.

FEELING, EMOTION AND THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD In this discussion we have talked primarily of the individual's own feelings. We have said that the words she uses to describe her feelings are shorthand symbols by which she tries to convey something of the nature of her perceptual field to others. Other people use similar words to describe the state of their perceptual fields as well. We thus become aware not only of our own perceptual fields but also, to some degree, of the fields of others through this kind of communication. But language alone is by no means the only source of information about the perceptual fields of others. We are able to understand a great deal about how other people feel from the clues they give us through their behavior. Observing other people's behavior (including, of course, what

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they have to say, which is a kind of behavior, too), we are able to infer something of what they are feeling, and this makes it possible for us to understand something of the nature of the perceptual field that lies behind their actions. We described this process in chapter 2 as "reading behavior backwards." The ability to feel like another or to place oneself in another's shoes is called empathy. It is a talent possessed in some degree by all of us, although some of us have developed it far more than others. It is an important factor in communication and in effective human relations. Inferring the nature of people's feelings is also useful for psychologists, teachers, counselors, and many other professionals as a way of studying or understanding the phenomenal fields of persons they work with. Although perceptual fields are not open to direct observation, through the use of inference from people's behavior it is often possible to obtain valuable insights into the nature of persons. That understanding, in turn, makes it possible to construct appropriate strategies for effecting behavior change. When a teacher understands that a child feels that nobody likes her, there are things a teacher can do to help that child change her self-concept and so affect her behavior. The teacher can begin, for example, by demonstrating her own acceptance and care for the child. She can also arrange for experiences both inside the classroom and outside that are designed to help the child change her unhappy belief about herself. Understanding people's feelings gives valuable clues to understanding behavior and provides the basis for effective treatment. It makes a great deal of difference in working with a juvenile delinquent, for example, whether one focuses on her behavior or her concepts of self. Looking at the child's unacceptable behavior leads to the conclusion, "That's got to stop!" If stopping the behavior is the goal, then techniques of reward or punishment seem called for. For a child who believes she is unwanted or uncared for, such treatment may only prove what she already thinks. Understanding the child's true feelings about herself calls for a whole new set of strategies. Making inferences about the self-concept is fundamental for the practice of some forms of counseling and psychotherapy. Carl Rogers, for example, introduced a form of therapy designed to help clients explore their perceptual fields by concentrating attention on the "recognition and acceptance of feeling" about themselves and their experience. In the process of exploring such feelings, clients were helped to perceive themselves and their situations in new and more satisfying or productive ways. Rogers originally developed this approach to therapy in 1951 "because it worked," often remarkably well. Later, the concentration of attention on the client's feel-

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ings has come to be understood as a vital strategy for helping clients explore their perceptual fields or personal experience.4 Understanding people's feelings has also had wide use for commercial and political ends, both positive and negative. It provides the basis for advertising and industry, for example. Industries are established to fulfill people's needs, and advertising is designed to make persons aware of their needs or to create new ones. Dictators have often used awareness of people's needs to elevate themselves to power as the leader essential to achieving satisfaction of those needs. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used his awareness of people's needs to propose programs of social security, welfare, and protection against bank closings that have lasted for years.

SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL ACTION Understanding the importance of the self calls for a major shift in the way we seek to cope with our great social problems. It is characteristic of our things-oriented culture to treat most such problems reactively, after the fact. Concentrating on behavior, society seeks to control or change the unacceptable or aberrant behavior observed. Our culture seeks the solutions to many social problems by focusing on symptoms, trying to change behavior directly rather than dealing with the causes of behavior in the perceptual field or phenomenal self. Although attacking symptoms can sometimes influence changes in people's perceptions, it is an indirect, hitor-miss approach to behavior change. Worse still, because it sometimes seems to get results, it encourages continuing to operate from the same basic assumptions and so diverts attention from more promising frames of reference. If the field approach to understanding persons and behavior we propose is accurate, then truly meaningful change must be sought in people's perceptions of (1) themselves, (2) the situations they confront, and/or (3) the purposes they seek to fulfill. More effective solutions to social problems must be directed toward the following: 1. Approaches that are helping or facilitating rather than directing or coercive. Because people's perceptions lie inside them, they cannot be directly changed. They can only be influenced or facilitated in the process of change.

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2. Attempts to produce change in the present must concentrate on change in the perceptions of persons about themselves, their dilemmas, or their goals or aspirations. This is often difficult and time-consuming but much more likely to be successful than concentration on behavioral symptoms. Even so, for some people the perceptual field may be so firmly established and have existed for so long a time as to be beyond the professional and/or financial resources of a society. This is a sad but realistic fact of life. 3. A far more humane, affordable, and promising approach to our great social problems must aim at prevention, helping, and facilitating the development and nurturance of healthy, caring phenomenal selves in the formative years of growth. This is a proactive strategy, difficult to sell in the things-oriented manipulation of forces culture like ours. Meanwhile, we continue to spend more on jails and prisons than on schools, more on public protection than on parental aid and education, more on the outcomes of personal frustration and despair than on study and change in the societal, economic, and corporate values that spawn such problems.

SOME EFFECTS OF SELF ON PERCEIVING The very existence of the self in the perceptual field not only vitally affects the process of perceiving but exerts its influence on the selection and accuracy of whatever else is perceived. At any instant, the things possible for us to perceive are almost limitless. Yet we do not perceive in any such chaotic fashion. What we perceive is always organized and has meaning, and that meaning derives from the phenomenal self. Men see what is appropriate for them to see, and women see what is appropriate for them. We need but look about us to see thousands of examples of this selective effect. The same political candidate is seen quite differently by the Democrat or Republican. Professors do not see college student behavior in the same way that parents do, students do, or the city police do. Little boys in our society are raised quite differently from little girls and come to see themselves quite differently as a result. When little boys fall down and bump their noses, we are inclined to say, "Here now! Boys don't cry!" So little boys learn that it is not proper to display their emotions. When little girls fall down and bump their noses, however, it is a very different matter. We pick them up and comfort them as best we can. So little girls discover that crying is acceptable female behavior. In later life the results of these self-concepts may make it difficult for a young wife to un-

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derstand why her husband is "such an unfeeling brute" or make it hard for a husband to understand why his wife gets "so upset over little things." The ways we see ourselves, once established, continue to select our perceptions throughout our lives. We are only beginning to discover the extreme importance of this fact in dealing with human problems. Every day brings to light some new and intriguing consequence of self-perceptions. People behave in terms of the self-concepts they possess, and this fact is tremendously important to anyone who must work with people. Many, if not most, problems that persons bring to the psychological clinic are primarily brought about by unfortunate concepts of self. The profound effects of the phenomenal self on a person's abilities may be seen in any reading clinic. It is becoming increasingly rare in these days of periodic eye examinations and continuous checkups on child health to find youngsters unable to read because of faulty vision. Most of the cases coming to the reading clinic are poor readers who have nothing whatever wrong with their eyes. They are children who, for one reason or another, have come to believe they cannot read. What is more, because they see themselves as nonreaders, they approach the task expecting to do badly, and an unhappy vicious circle gets established that goes something like this: Marie has been poorly taught to read and develops the belief that she is not good at reading. Because she feels she is a poor reader, she avoids reading and thus avoids the very experience and practice that might make it possible for her to learn to read better. When asked to read, she does so without confidence, expecting to make mistakes, and consequently she does. These mistakes are noted by persons around her and by herself and corroborate her impressions. Her teacher, seeing her read so badly, may make the mistake of saying that she felt Marie was doing poorly or sending her home with a low grade on her report card—which simply proves what Marie has been thinking all along: "I don't read well." A very large part of remedial reading instruction is directed at helping children or adults to perceive more accurately and effectively, not only words on the printed page but, even more important, new and more adequate concepts of themselves.

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CIRCULAR EFFECT OF THE PHENOMENAL SELF This effect of the perceived self on behavior, it should be understood, is not limited to children. A great many of us are the unwitting victims of our self-concepts just like the poor readers mentioned above. It is even possible that readers of this book may be laboring under unfortunate concepts of themselves as unable to make a speech, do math, drive a car, swim, or remember people's names. Indeed, this limiting effect of our phenomenal self on perception sometimes produces great tragedies. A given phenomenal self perpetuates itself by permitting only such perceptions as are consistent with its already existing structure. People limited by their self-perceptions behave in ways that seem to corroborate the self-concepts they already hold. They seem almost to be asking for proof of what they feel about themselves, and indeed, they often get just that. The individual who feels that she is incapable of successfully making a speech perceives so many flaws in everything she does and turns her attention so intensely upon herself, expecting to fail, that she may stumble and falter or become tongue-tied with stage fright, which, of course simply serves to demonstrate how right she was in the first place! Perceptions are selected that are consistent with the perceived self of the behaver. Such selection occurs, furthermore, without regard to whether such perceptions seem to be complimentary or self-damaging in the eyes of an outside observer. Because the first need of the person is to maintain her perceived self, perceptions inconsistent with what she believes are unlikely to occur because they would not fit her self-structure. There are literally millions of people who are prisoners of their own perceptions of self. Vast numbers believe they are able to do far less than they really can. As a result, they remain chained to unhappy, unproductive, and unsatisfying ways of life. The cost to our society from such crippled selfconcepts is enormous. Can one conceive the kind of world we might have if we could find the means to release ourselves and others from the slavery of impaired concepts of self? Here is a waste of human resources compared with which our losses in warfare or automobile accidents seem small indeed.

CHAPTER 5

Challenge and Threat

T

o live effectively and efficiently in our modern society requires that we be able to cope successfully with the situations in which we find ourselves. It requires also that we be able to adapt and change our behavior to fit the varied requirements of the moment. This kind of adaptability can occur only if we have a perceptual field maximally open for our use. Because behavior is a function of the perceptual field, effective, efficient behavior can occur only from the widest possible field of perceptions. Whatever restricts and inhibits the field will have serious effects on a person's ability to cope with life. We have already examined two vital factors affecting the perceptual field, namely, the basic need for maintenance and enhancement and the nature and functions of the self. We turn now to a third major influence on the field: the effects of challenge and threat.

THE PERCEPTION OF THREAT OR ENHANCEMENT The phenomenal field is continuously ordered by the person's need for maintenance and enhancement of the self. Any event that seems to be related to the satisfaction of that need will have a strong effect on the rest of the perceptual field. This change in organization normally has the effect of increasing the availability of perceptions related to need. What affects need satisfaction compels attention and cannot be overlooked. Everyone 71

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has experienced the way in which attention becomes narrowed to some pleasant event that we may be experiencing or anticipating. It is well illustrated by the ordering of our perceptions when we are preoccupied. Under a very high degree of concentration the area of the phenomenal field open to differentiation may be quite narrow, and perceptions will be confined to this fairly limited area. A commonplace example is our failure to differentiate the clock's ticking in a quiet room. As attention wanders from the book we are reading, we may suddenly become aware of the ticking, which has certainly been available for differentiation all the time. As we narrow our field again to resume reading, the perception of the clock's ticking is no longer a major part of our field. This narrowing of the field can often be observed in counseling as well. Clients are often so anxious to achieve a particular goal that they repeatedly rush blindly straight for it, being unable to perceive any more adequate manner of approach. They are like the chicken that is so intent on reaching the food dish on the other side of the fence that it keeps sticking its head through the wire instead of going around the barrier. T\innel Vision Narrowing of the phenomenal field when need is strongly affected has been called tunnel vision because the effect on perception is very much like looking at an event through a tunnel or tube. Events at the end of the tunnel are clearly seen, while surrounding events are blocked out of the field of vision. Because of this effect, some perceptions are very clearly experienced. Other perceptions, which one might make in the periphery of vision if attention were not so closely oriented, however, become unavailable. Although it is often a desirable and necessary thing to be able to concentrate on a particular perception or series of perceptions, the narrowing of the field also can make it more difficult to perceive events from a broader perspective. Anyone who has ever been in an automobile accident may have found himself saying later, "The only thing I could see was that big truck coming at me!" Another example: When one of my children was asked at dinner, "What happened in school today?" She replied, "Nothing! Was my teacher mad! Wow!" In the face of an angry teacher her perceptions narrowed to the object of threat. Tunnel vision also can be observed in connection with events providing a high degree of personal enhancement. In the reach for important goals, people can be so preoccupied as to be unaware of almost all else. In the excitement of the game, athletes have been known to ignore serious in-

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juries, for example. Similarly, parents may find such fulfillment in the occupations they are engaged in as to be unaware of the needs of their children. Many a child in our culture grows up feeling unappreciated or unwanted simply because his parents were too enthralled with satisfactions involved elsewhere in their lives. Self-Defense In addition to the effect of tunnel vision, a second major factor restricting perception is brought about by the fundamental need to defend ourselves against attack. Under threat we have no choice but to defend our selfconcepts when they seem to us to be endangered. Our phenomenal self, after all, is the only self we know. Without it we have no identity at all. Small wonder, then, that under threat we rush to its defense. We make excuses for our weaknesses, defend ourselves from criticism, and if pushed far enough, may strike out violently in retaliation against those who seem to be threatening us. One need only look about him to see numerous examples of self-defense occurring in people everywhere. The child confronted with his misbehavior insists on his innocence with vehemence, though he and we both know he did what he is accused of. Husbands may defend with vigor against threats to their self-concept when wives cast aspersions about thinning hair or rounding figures. Wives are equally defensive about their appearance or competence. Teachers are likely to be defensive when confronted with suggestions that they might be unfair or incompetent. The hotter the argument gets, the more firmly people defend their existing position. Attempts to defend the phenomenal self are not restricted to a person's self alone. People seek to maintain not only their immediate selves but also those selves with which they are identified. I defend not only me but my child, my wife, my town, my country, and those who are identified with certain institutions or ideas. These are all extensions of myself, and in defending them I am only attempting to defend myself. Under threat we tend to close ranks and gather about us whatever strength we can. The defense of the self-concept provides a degree of stability to the self and makes the maintenance of identity possible. In this way self-defense plays a vital and important role in need satisfaction. In the kind of world we live in, however, it can and often does have negative and destructive effects as well. These two factors, tunnel vision and the necessity for selfdefense, can contribute to making behavior static and unresponsive to the changing requirements of the world. This nonadaptive, inflexible kind of

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behavior under stress has come to be known as rigidity. Many research psychologists have demonstrated that rigidity is a concomitant of a person's experience of threat and shows itself in decreased efficiency on intellectual tasks, intolerance of ambiguity, and an inability to "shift gears" appropriately in moving from one situation to another.1 Some experimenters have found rigidity to be closely associated with authoritarianism, dependency, and ethnocentrism. Threatened people have a need to defend themselves by identification with strong institutions and figures, building up the prestige of their own groups and weakening that of others. It must be apparent that the kind of rigid behavior produced by tunnel vision and self-defense is a far cry from the behavior required for a great deal of modern living. Much of our adjustment to modern life requires not self-defense but self-change. To live effectively in a technological, shifting, mobile society like ours requires the maximum of adaptability and resourcefulness. This is true whether we are talking about a person's adjustment to home, school, society, the world of work, or international relationships. The achievement of a democratic way of life especially requires a free and open field of perceptions, untrammeled and unrestricted as can be.

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE The two effects of threat about which we have been speaking often lead to what has been called the vicious circle. A phenomenal self that is incompatible with the demands of a social situation often leads to behavior not acceptable to the culture. People respond by rejecting or attacking the behaver, and this in turn forces him to greater defense of his position. The more violent the perceived attack, the keener the necessity for defense of the self. Furthermore, aggression of the society against a person may result in aggression of the person toward society or its members in turn, and an unhappy state of attack and counterattack becomes established. One of the clearest examples of this vicious circle in operation may be observed in children who feel more or less rejected by parents. The child who has developed a concept of himself, whether justified or not, as unwanted, unloved, and unappreciated may become aggressive toward his parents and seek to regain self-esteem by punishing them or in some way demonstrating mastery over them. In this process he may utilize a wide variety of techniques, such as temper tantrums, negativism, or any one of

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a thousand other fiendish devices. Parents, in turn, may be shocked, disgusted, or angry at such behavior and punish the child in an effort to make him conform. Their punishment is likely to be seen by the child only as further proof of what he already believes. Threat to self forces him to defend his position and his concept of himself is more firmly entrenched than ever. So the cycle may be repeated over and over.

THE INTENSITY OF THE EXPERIENCE OF THREAT The effects of the experience of threat on a person's perceptual field occur not only when threats are perceived as violent or traumatic. Any experience of threat, even of the mildest sort, seems to produce an impairment of the efficiency of behavior.2 Other things being equal, however, more serious threats are likely to produce more drastic and damaging effects. In general, the degree of threat experienced appears to be affected by at least the following four factors: 1. Importance to the Self. It is important to recall here that we are speaking of danger to the self perceived by the person, not that observed by an outsider. From an outsider's viewpoint a person may appear to be under no threat whatsoever; yet from the person's own viewpoint he may be extremely threatened. A great many of our human relations problems stem from this fact. For example, the upper-middle-class female schoolteacher lives in a different world from her preteenage boys. The values uppermiddle-class women place on politeness, furthermore, are by no means shared by teenage boys. Thus, the teacher who calls a child before the class to make introductions may, from her point of view, be helping George to get along in life. From George's view this situation may appear as an excruciatingly painful threat to himself as a "cool dude." The threats we feel are personal matters, the products of our own perceptions, and the degrees of threat we experience will be directly proportional to the importance of the peculiar aspects of self that seem to be threatened at the moment. 2. Immediacy of Threat. A second factor affecting the degree of threat experienced will be the immediacy or closeness of the threatening event to the self. The examination coming next month seems much less threatening than the one tomorrow morning. Generally speaking, the closer the danger perceived to the self, the greater will be the degree of threat experienced. That statement seems a simple enough axiom, but it should be

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recognized that we are speaking here of perceived, rather than objective, immediacy. The immediacy of threat to self is a function of the person's own unique perception, not the externally observable "facts." 3. Clarity of Threat Perception: Fear and Anxiety. Events perceived in clear figure are sharply experienced, whereas events differentiated only vaguely or as part of the ground of the field are less precisely experienced and result in vaguer, more diffuse kinds of behavior. Other things being equal, the experience of threat will be roughly proportional to the degree of clarity with which the disturbing event is perceived. The relationship can perhaps best be illustrated in the distinction between fear and anxiety. Both of these words refer to the feelings we have when we are confronted with some sort of threat to self. Fear is the word we use to describe those situations in which the threatening object is clearly and sharply in figure. When the threatening perception cannot be clearly differentiated, people speak of being anxious. Anxiety is thus a state of being threatened in which the threatening events cannot, for whatever reason, be clearly and precisely differentiated. This undifferentiated aspect of threat that makes people feel anxious is the very thing that makes it difficult to deal with. Anxious people cannot bring what is threatening them into clear figure and, as a result, cannot cope with the threats they feel with any degree of success. Helping people who feel anxiety to see and understand, clearly and sharply, the threats they experience is, in fact, a basic task of psychotherapy. To accomplish this the therapist first establishes a threat-free atmosphere, then assists the client to explore his perceptual field until the client is able to pinpoint the cause of his distress. That brings the threat into sufficiently clear awareness or figure to be dealt with appropriately. This is likely to be a painful process for the client, for the more clearly a person perceives the danger to self, the greater the degree of threat he is likely to experience, No wonder therapy is often an extremely painful experience. When dangers to self are clearly and sharply in figure in the field, we say we are afraid. When the dangers we perceive are only vaguely or diffusely differentiated, we say we feel anxious. These two states represent the two ends of a continuum, but of course, there may be many stages of clarity of differentiation between the two. Other things being equal, the threat experienced by a person will depend on the clarity with which he is able to differentiate the dangers to which his phenomenal self is exposed. 4. Threat as a Function of Adequacy. Finally, the degree of threat experienced will be a direct outgrowth of how strongly a person sees himself as able to cope successfully with the emergency he is confronting. People

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who see themselves as adequate are likely to experience less threat than those who feel inadequate. Threat exists only when there is some feeling of inadequacy to cope. The degree of threat experienced will be an inverse function of the amount of adequacy felt by the behaver.

THREAT AND CHALLENGE It is the feeling of personal adequacy that distinguishes threat and challenge. When people feel completely adequate to deal with the problems that confront them, there is neither challenge nor threat. Behavior is likely to be quite perfunctory or routine. We do not ordinarily feel either threatened or challenged by the breakfast set before us. There is no question of our adequacy to deal with the matter, and we behave toward it with little feeling of any kind but satisfaction. Generally speaking, we feel challenged when we are confronted with events that interest us and in which we feel we have a chance of success. That is to say, we feel challenged when we are confronted by situations in which we feel fairly adequate but in which we also see some opportunities for testing or enhancing our adequacy. There may even be some small degree of threat involved in the possibility that we might fail. Such a situation is exciting and challenging because the problem is perceived as one within our capacities and having important opportunities for self-enhancement. Let us take the example of a person asked to make a speech. When one is asked to make a speech and feels fundamentally adequate to the task, the request may seem like an exciting and challenging opportunity to test one's adequacy, even as a means of building that adequacy further. There also may be a tinge of threat involved in the possibility that "it might not go over." Feeling fundamentally adequate to the task, however, the person sees it as an opportunity for enhancement and further experience of adequacy. Hence, he is challenged by the opportunity afforded. Chances are that, feeling so, he will behave in a confident manner, will feel unthreatened by the experience, and will carry it off successfully. People feel threatened when they are confronted with situations or ideas they feel inadequate to cope with. The person who feels deeply inadequate when asked to make a speech feels unequal to the task, and the necessity to perform publicly holds nothing but threat for him. The more inadequate he feels, the stronger and more paralyzing is the threat he experiences. He tries to escape the necessity of appearing through one excuse or another. If

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not successful in this, he approaches the speech with fear and trepidation. He may even be so frightened by the threat to which he has exposed himself as to be immobilized by his fear. We say then that he is a victim of stage fright. This failure may only serve to cause him to feel more inadequate than ever. A vast majority of the threats we experience in modern life are not physical but social. We are less often threatened by things than by people. Such threats, furthermore, are seldom effectively dealt with by direct concentration on the threat itself. When one is threatened by his boss, it seldom pays to tell him so. Direct attacks on many of our modern threats often serve only to jam the machinery and increase the likelihood of making further errors. In addition to increased errors and lowered efficiency, the experience of threat also may be accompanied by rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity. People under stress seem unable to cope with ambiguous or unsolved problems. They feel a need to have things definite, certain, and in clear figure, even though this may be sacrificing accuracy.

SOME POSITIVE EFFECTS OF NEED ON PERCEIVING It should not be supposed that the restricting effect of need on perception is all bad. On the contrary, the ordering of perception has an important value to the organism, making it possible to achieve need satisfaction. When a speeding car is bearing down on us as we cross the street, it is no time for us to be musing about the beauties of spring. We need to be keenly aware of the threat to our existence and to deal with it precisely and quickly. Concentration on a limited part of the field under threat often helps us to cope more effectively with emergency situations. The organism's reaction to threat has great survival value. Indeed, when confronted by threatening experiences the brain actually "downshifts" to more primitive levels of operation. This has the effect of putting the organism on a war footing, which makes it possible to deal more effectively with crisis situations.3 The same crisis reactions also can be a severe handicap to adjustment in our society. Many of the adjustments we must make in our daily lives are not simple or direct problems of our physical relationship to things. Rather, they often involve subtle and complex relationships, frequently not clearly or directly discernible. Our forefathers could become angry at a stalled mule and might even get results by kicking him. The angry driver

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who kicks his stalled automobile, however, may gratify his feelings but is unlikely to improve his transportation. If perceptions were not organized, we would be at the mercy of every momentary shift of attention. Our fields would make no sense without organization or force. We would be so continuously distracted by the myriad changes in the external environment to which we are exposed at every moment of our waking lives as to make it almost impossible ever to accomplish anything. Restriction of the phenomenal field may have adverse effects on our capacities to behave effectively. More often than not, however, it facilitates our adjustment and assists us in coping with life by ordering and organizing our perceptual fields so that we are not at the mercy of every fleeting perception that comes to us.

THE SOURCES OF THREAT As we have said, people feel threatened when they perceive themselves inadequate to deal with the situations in which they are involved. This feeling of inadequacy is a product of how the individual sees himself, the situations in which he is living, and the interrelationships of these two. People may experience threat as a product of the inconsistency between self and the experience of the external world or as a result of inconsistencies between two aspects of self. Threats Arising from Perception of the Situation Threat to a person may arise when, for one reason or another, his social group begins to treat him in ways incompatible with the ways in which he has grown to perceive himself. This failure of expectancy may occur slowly, as in the case of the young man who conceives of himself as a "great man with the ladies" but who in reality is not. Because of such a self-concept he may be led to act in ways extremely obnoxious to the fairer sex. His tales of his conquests, his condescending air, and his arrogance may even turn eligible women away from him. After numerous attempts to get dates and a sufficient number of cool refusals, coupled with a few occasions in which he is unable to find any companion for himself at all, our young man may begin to become quite conscious that something is wrong. He feels tension and threat. Almost everyone has had experience with this sort of slow change in perception of life situations. The

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adolescent's changing perception of the reaction of those about him toward himself is a type of experience through which all of us have lived more or less successfully. People also may be threatened as a result of very rapid changes in the world about them. The loss of a marriage partner in an accident, for example, may suddenly confront the individual with perceptions extremely unacceptable and threatening. Threats also may occur when we change our jobs from one place to another. I well remember the shock of returning to graduate school as the lowliest of graduate students after a position of responsibility and authority in my home community. Such changes in the perception of life situations may suddenly present a person with concepts he cannot accept into his existing organization. It is important to remember that the production of new and inconsistent differentiations does not depend on change in "real" situations alone. It is quite possible for such differentiations to arise even though society continues to accept the individual on the same familiar basis. The pain experienced by many college students going home for the first time after a long period at college is a case in point. The treatment one gets from parents and friends is apparently no different from what it has been in the past, yet because it is threatening to the student's new concept of self as an adult, the perception of this treatment may be radically changed and result in considerable anguish for the student. Similarly, the differentiation of a new idea may be extremely disturbing and even threatening. Many a student raised in a fundamentalist home has found the idea of evolution extremely disturbing because it is perceived by him to be inconsistent with his previous ways of thinking about self and his relation to the universe. This is likely to be even more disturbing when others, whom he considers to be important, accept the idea without batting an eye. People may feel inadequate because the circumstances they find themselves in suddenly seem overwhelming. Like the child lost in the city streets, people may sometimes feel threatened because the world they perceive is just too big and inexorable. This may happen because the concepts they have of themselves are inadequate, or it may be that the situation to which they find themselves exposed will permit no other interpretation—like the psychologist whose diagnosis of a young man was "As a result of my investigation, I can only conclude that you feel inferior because you are!" There are situations to which any of us may be exposed that permit no other perception but that of our own inadequacy—at least at the moment we are called on to respond.

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Threat from the Unknown People may feel inadequate not because things seem comprehensibly dangerous but sometimes precisely because they are unable to comprehend whether they are dangerous or not. To cope with life effectively, one needs to have a clear picture of the situation to which it is necessary to make an adjustment. The infant who is placed on the toilet and demanded to produce may be quite unable to comprehend the strange behavior of the adults who surround him or what it is that is expected of him. Putting pressure on him to respond only increases the feeling of inadequacy, and the whole process of toilet training may fail. Adults, too, feel inadequate when they are unable to grasp the meaning of the situations in which they are involved. People in an office may feel threatened when they do not know what is going on in the conference in the employer's office. Students feel threatened when they are unable to determine whether they have passed or failed the examination. It is a common experience to be afraid of the dark, for it is difficult to deal with the unknown. It makes one feel inadequate. Throughout history, men have sometimes sought to escape this kind of threat by giving unknown events some kind of meaning, almost any kind of meaning, rather than be faced with the threat of the imponderable or incomprehensible. Thus, lightning was often attributed to the gods and insanity to possession by the devil. Events without meaning or whose meaning is vague and unclear may cause feelings of inadequacy and threat in the perceiver. Situations sometimes seem incomprehensible to the perceiver not because meanings are unclear but because meanings that do exist are too vacillating or rapidly shifting to make it possible to deal with them. The fulfillment of need requires an organized perceptual field. We feel more adequate when things stand still long enough for us to be able to comprehend them. The substitute teacher who must fill in in the middle of the semester often runs into this problem. The children, not comprehending the meaning of this new teacher, begin to try him out. They seek to discover the limits to which they can go. They try getting away with first one thing, then another. They keep on testing the limits until they have discovered where this teacher stands. When the substitute teacher helps the children to understand quickly and precisely what kind of person he is and how far they can go with him, he soon establishes an effective working relationship, the children feel secure, and the class gets under way again. If, however, he is vacillating and indecisive, if he permits things one day and

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"cracks down" on them the next, it becomes difficult for the children to discover the meaning of the situation, and they feel inadequate to deal with it. Not knowing what to expect, they feel threatened and tense and so continue their explorations in an attempt to find out where the teacher is now. It has sometimes been said that people can adjust to almost anything as long as it stands still, and there seems to be much truth in the statement. Threat from Inconsistent Perceptions of Self The effective satisfaction of need requires an organized self. However, the fact that the phenomenal self has many aspects frequently makes the achievement of self-consistency a difficult matter.4 Differentiations leading to enhancement of one aspect of the self may at the same time threaten others. A person may thus be placed in a position wherein his perceptions of what he has done as an expression of one aspect of self are seriously inconsistent and hence threatening to another concept of self. As a consequence, he may show signs of tension arising from the threat he perceives. The more seriously the self is threatened by such differentiations, the greater will be the person's feeling of threat and distress. Threat from Multiple Enhancing Perceptions A young minister came to conceive of himself as a successful preacher and a scholar. He made a very brilliant record in theological seminary, and indeed, at the seminary he was both an excellent preacher and scholar. When he accepted his first charge in a small rural community, however, he was almost a total loss to his congregation. In that community, to be considered an excellent preacher required a homely, nonscholarly approach. His talents as a scholar were completely unappreciated. His most eloquent sermons went for nothing. When he was a successful preacher, he was most unscholarly; when he was most scholarly, he was a total failure as a preacher. The poor man became more and more distraught at his lack of success and was at a loss as to how to deal with it. Unfortunately, his concept of himself as a scholar brought about a reaction to him in that community that belied and threatened his concept of himself as a speaker. Similarly, if he had been a good preacher in that community, his concept of himself as a scholar would have been threatened. Threats arising from such inconsistencies are sometimes described as "conflict." It should be pointed out, however, that the term conflict is an external description. It is an outside observer's description of what he ob-

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serves. The behaver himself does not experience conflict. He experiences threat to self from one or more self-differentiations that he is unable to accept at that moment. Such threatening differentiations may occur in rapid sequence and even be described by the person, himself, as conflict. In so doing, however, he is making an external observation of his behavior just as any outsider would. To state that the minister, in the example above, is in conflict with himself leads us to a ridiculous state of affairs. There is nothing conflicting about differentiating oneself as a good speaker and a scholar. Some of our most successful clergymen are both. Where inconsistent definitions of self exist in the same individual, it will be observed that one of these exists only at a low level of differentiation. Antagonistic concepts of self cannot exist at high levels of differentiation at the same time unless one is regarded as not-self. When two differentiations are perceived to be enhancing to the individual and can be achieved simultaneously or in rapid order, little or no feeling of threat is likely to be experienced by the individual, and he operates to realize the enhancement perceived. If, however, the two differentiations about self are not capable of realization simultaneously or in quick order, a great degree of threat to need satisfaction may ensue. This is especially true where the realization of one may force the abandonment of another. The instant one is abandoned, it becomes threatening to need satisfaction and demands attention. The enhancing differentiation that is realized satisfies need, but the enhancing differentiation not realized threatens the self greatly. A good example of this is to be observed in the young woman in love with two men. Conceiving of herself as being loved by Jack and loved by Harry is enhancing to self. The decision to marry either Jack or Harry, however, immediately threatens self with a loss of the other. When adequacy can be achieved equally well through either of two goals, movement toward goal A means abandonment of goal B. The instant goal B is relinquished, however, the woman is threatened by its possible loss. So she moves to recapture it and now may find the same situation reversed. As a result, she may vacillate back and forth between her two suitors, unable to settle on either because of the threat of the loss of the other until such time as either Jack or Harry is perceived as more enhancing than his rival. Multiple Threatening Perceptions of Self An even more threatening situation exists when the individual has two or more differentiations, all of which are highly threatening. For the sake of

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simplicity, let us suppose that only two such perceptions occur. In this situation the individual has no opportunity for self-enhancement whatever. This is the state characteristic of many neurotics. An excellent example is to be observed on any college campus in what is sometimes called term-endneurosis. The student who begins to feel failure bearing down on him is faced with two negative differentiations, each of which is threatening. To stay at college and fail is unthinkable. It threatens his concept of himself. On the other hand, to withdraw from college and go home to face his parents and their expectations is also unacceptable. He is a failure if he remains; he is a failure if he leaves. Either situation is intolerable and threatening, but what is even worse, one or the other is inevitable. As the term progresses and the full realization of his jeopardy becomes greater, the necessity for defense of self becomes more pressing, and the student's activity becomes wilder and wilder. He engages in frantic behavior. Effective study becomes impossible. Finally, he may literally wear himself out and collapse before exams in "nervous exhaustion," and the school physicians send him home. This exhaustion is usually short-lived, because the moment the student arrives at home he is met with the sympathy of parents, the reassurance of relatives, and exclamations of "Poor boy, he worked too hard!" The threat and tension under which he has been operating disappears. He feels quite adequate once again, and with a little rest he makes a quick recovery. Another seriously threatening situation may arise when one aspect of self becomes differentiated and is recognized as inconsistent with another highly differentiated aspect. Antagonistic or derogatory perceptions of self produce feelings of threat and consequent defenses against such perceptions. Such inconsistent concepts of self may be kept from confronting each other in two ways. In the first place, the two concepts may be differentiated as applying to two different social situations. This is characteristic of the man who conceives of himself as a "good" and "religious" man on Sundays, in deacons' meetings, and on religious holidays but conceives of himself as a "good businessman" on weekdays. Sharp business practices, dishonesty, and even gambling may thus comfortably be engaged in on weekdays, but Sunday finds the same person sitting in a pew and piously following the dictates of his Sunday self-concept. To conceive of himself in his Sunday self-concept on Monday would prove extremely threatening to the weekday self-concept and so must be strongly resisted. He also may be deeply disturbed if his minister calls on him at his place of business during the week, for this brings into figure concepts of self and of role out of touch with present experience.

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Threat from Low-Level Differentiations of Self A second way in which inconsistent self-concepts may be prevented from confronting each other is through keeping one concept at a low level of differentiation so that it never appears in very clear figure. We have seen that differentiations may be kept at a low level if they appear too threatening to the individual. When one concept of self exists at a low level of differentiation and is antagonistic to another clear definition of self, the potentialities for threat are tremendous. If the individual behaves at some time in terms of his low-level differentiation, he may find that he has committed an act extremely threatening to a more clearly differentiated aspect of self. Such an act may bring an inconsistent concept of self into clear and inexorable figure, resulting in violent shock. The following case illustrates how this may occur. A young woman considered herself a "good Catholic" and conscientiously observed the rules of her religious faith. As she grew older, however, she desired more and more to marry but had very little opportunity to realize her goal. Finally, she met a man of her own religious faith who previously had been divorced. When he proposed, she was delighted, and although she understood the ban of her church against marrying a divorced person, she was so intent on her objective that this disturbing thought never appeared in very clear figure. For a while after marriage things went well, until one day a priest pointed out to her very clearly the position of the church. This brought the entire question into clear and inescapable figure, in which both aspects of self were threatened by what she had done. To give up her husband was a threat to her concept of herself as a happily married woman and to keep her husband was a threat to her concept of herself as a good and conscientious Catholic. For a time she desperately vacillated back and forth between these two concepts of herself, with tension steadily building. Finally, unable to find an acceptable solution, the poor woman collapsed and had to be hospitalized. Many of the bizarre or maladaptive behaviors one may observe in mental hospital patients are products of extreme feelings of threat. The behaviors displayed are often defense maneuvers, designed to protect an inadequate self in its struggles against what seems like a hostile environment. Many have their origins in dynamics similar to the kinds of threats we have been describing, carried to extremes. To most mental patients, the behaviors they exhibit seem necessary to cope with the threats they experience.

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A self under threat has no choice but to defend itself. The very existence of threat makes the solution of problems more difficult. Resolving a threatening situation requires exactly the opposite of suppression and tunnel vision. It requires freedom to examine and to differentiate any and all aspects of the field in the search for a more adequate self. Behavior Change under Threat Although it is true that behavior under threat is likely to be rigid, narrow, and defensive, this does not mean that it is impossible to change—far from it. Throughout history, people have discovered that threatening is an effective tool for changing others' behavior. Since time immemorial parents, teachers, priests, and political leaders, to say nothing of businessmen and military leaders, have used this method of dealing with people. We have seen that threat leads to tunnel vision and the defense of the self. The effect of threat, then, is one of concentrating and restricting the area of the perceptual field to which an individual is responding at a particular moment. People under threat are likely to behave rigidly and unquestioningly and with a direct (perhaps even violent) response to the threats they perceive. This characteristic makes threat a most effective device for dictators. People under threat are likely to be so busy responding to obvious threats that they have little opportunity to explore those that are less obvious or that are purposely obscured by those in power. Every dictator has been keenly aware of the importance of giving people a clear-cut enemy. People can and do learn under threat. Unfortunately, what people learn under threat is likely to be narrowly focused on the nature of the threat to which they see themselves exposed and may even lead to seeing threats where they do not exist. The effect of threat is to concentrate attention on the threat perceived rather than on the broader circumstances to which the threat is attached. For example, threat may prove a useful device in teaching a child not to cross the street. It does not help much, however, in teaching him why he should not do so. Indeed, one of the important effects of threat is that it restricts "looking." It is the perfect device of the manipulator, for it provides a means by which human beings can be prevented from exploring widely, while at the same time attention is held rigidly and unquestioningly to those events the manipulator desires. It is the perfect tool for a regimented society. A free society requires independent, thinking people of wisdom and perspective; it requires unthreatened citizens, people who are challenged

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but not threatened. A complex, interdependent society like ours requires people who are flexible, not rigid; who can perceive broadly rather than narrowly; who are not so bound to the necessity of self-defense that they have little time or energy to devote to the problems of their fellow human beings. In our kind of society not all possibilities can be readily foreseen, and it is necessary for us to be able to rely not on the brains of a few but on the interacting creative efforts of millions. Rigidity, narrowness, and preoccupation with self-defense are the very antithesis of what a fluid, open, dynamic modern society requires. Fear and threat have no place in such a society.

CHAPTER 6

The Body: Vehicle of the Field

T

he fourth and most self-evident factor affecting the perceptual field is the organism in which the process occurs. The physical body in which each of us is more or less tenuously housed makes perceiving possible. We must have eyes to see, ears to hear, taste buds to taste, and olfactory end organs to enable us to distinguish odors. Even these organs, however, would not be sufficient without the marvels of our brain and nervous system. Modern research tells us that our brains are remarkable organizations, whose primary function is to make sense of our experience, to create meaning. At one time it was thought that the brain was a complex switching system that worked much like the telephone. More recently, it has been compared with a giant computer. The discovery of meaning, however, is a far more awesome phenomenon than such mechanical marvels. The discovery of meaning transcends the physical organization in which it occurs. Indeed, awareness and the sharing of meaning we now know is not limited to the brain and nervous system but occurs throughout the entire organism. The immune system, for example, has been described as the organism's organization to ensure the maintenance and enhancement of the self.

PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS ON PERCEIVING As we have seen in chapter 1, organizations are affected by their parts and affect their parts as well. But organizations also transcend the nature of

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their parts to become new realities. It is therefore unlikely that we shall ever be able to understand a person in physical terms alone. Nevertheless, the physical organism obviously sets limits on the perceptual field and contributes to its functions. We can, after all, perceive only those things we have the equipment to perceive. Dogs and birds can hear highfrequency sounds that most human beings cannot. We cannot perceive like honeybees, navigate in the dark like bats, or find our way home like pigeons. Our physical equipment sets broad limits to the kinds of things we can perceive directly. Within these broad limitations, however, human perceptions can be extremely varied and extensive. Human perceptions extend far beyond our experiences of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We have ideas, values, concepts, perceptions of relationships, and meanings that far transcend the limitations of our sense organs. We must, of course, have eyes to see and ears to hear. But given the necessary equipment for seeing and hearing, what we see and what we hear is affected little by the structure of our eyes and ears. The structure of the eye tells us that we can see. It tells us nothing about what is seen. We are broadly limited by our fundamental physiology, but the variety, the richness, and the almost limitless patterns of human behavior can never be understood exclusively in terms of the physical organism. The vast development of the physical sciences has been, perhaps, the most outstanding achievement in man's development in the past hundred years. We are impressed by these achievements and inclined to carry over the principles of the physical sciences to all other aspects of living. Our physical selves, of course, have important effects on our abilities to perceive; and to understand human behavior we need as keen an awareness of these limitations as modern science can give us. We must, however, see such limitations in their proper perspective, without overvaluing or underestimating them. With those reservations in mind, let us examine what effects the physical organism has on perceiving.

AWARENESS OF THE PHYSICAL SELF The perceptual field contains many perceptions of our physical selves that make it possible to be aware of what is going on within us and to move our bodies from place to place. Some of these perceptions, like the feeling of pain experienced as a result of a pinprick, are sharp and clear. Many other perceptions will be so vague that we cannot describe them to others. We may, indeed, not even be able to feel them very clearly ourselves. An

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example of such vague perception is our awareness that we are off balance and so we adjust our body posture automatically, although we could not put into words precisely what we felt that led us to make the necessary movements returning us to an upright position. Most of the perceptions we have about our physical beings we can report only vaguely if at all. There are at least three reasons for this: 1. The first reason has to do with the relationships of larger and smaller organizations discussed in chapter 1. We spoke of the nature of our physical selves as a series of organizations, ranging from single cells to tissues to organs to systems to the body proper. Any change in a suborganization directly affects its immediate parent organization, with intensity diminishing as it becomes more remote in the chain of organizations. The same seems true of our awareness of the physical self. We are most keenly aware of the larger or more immediate organizations, and we are less keenly aware of the minute or remote ones. 2. A second factor making for the vague character of many bodily perceptions has to do with need. A great many of our perceptions about our bodily processes are vague because there is no real need to bring them into clear figure. Many of these perceptions could be clearly enough perceived as to be reportable if we wished to turn our attention to them. Many of us have had the experience, perhaps in church, of having our stomach rumble in an embarrassing way. Following such obstreperous behavior of our digestive system we may become keenly aware of a great many more vague rumblings and movements going on within us as we turn our attention from the sermon to our bodily selves. We can perceive our heartbeat quite clearly if we listen for it. Though we are always aware of our muscle tensions (otherwise we could not move), we do not ordinarily maintain these perceptions sufficiently clearly to be able to report them to others. Nevertheless, we can bring many into clear focus simply by concentrating on them. If it were sufficiently important to us to spend our time on it, we could undoubtedly bring many more aspects of our physical selves into clear perception. Many perceptions about our physical beings are not reportable because we lack the necessary symbols by which we can communicate what we feel to others. We do not have words adequate to convey some perceptions. We cannot report any definite place "where it hurts" when our doctor asks us. Indeed, we may not be sure what it is that hurts or even whether it hurts at all. Sometimes our awarenesses are extremely vague, as when we complain of being "kind of sick," "nauseated," or "blue."

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3. Many other perceptions are reacted to so quickly that we are unable to describe them; their experience is so fleeting that it is impossible for us to grasp them. Who can describe, for example, what she feels when she corrects her stride to regain her balance while walking? We just do not have the language to enable us to report such perceptions. Indeed, the experience may be so vague that we cannot grasp its meaning even for ourselves, much less to be able to report it to others.

PHYSICAL ENDOWMENT EFFECTS There can be no doubt that one's physical endowment has important effects on one's perceptual field. Some of the factors affecting the perceptual field will be open to manipulation. Others will lie outside our control, or at least they will be beyond our control by any means of which we are now aware. Most obvious of the factors affecting perception is the effective operation of the sensory equipment that makes perception possible. The adequate functioning of eyes and ears is essential for visual and auditory experience. One does not expect a blind man to see nor a deaf one to hear. Possession of the necessary equipment for taste, smell, and touch is important for perceptions to occur in these areas. People lacking such essential physical equipment for perceiving live in a world different from the rest of us. Let us not make the mistake, however, of supposing they have fewer perceptions than we. Though their perceptual fields may be limited in respect to visual or auditory perceptions, those fields may be far richer than ours in other respects. Interesting experiments with the blind and the deaf have demonstrated how such persons may develop common perceptual abilities to a degree of proficiency much higher than that of those who can see and hear. The functioning or nonfunctioning of essential sensory equipment is usually dramatic and easily recognized. Perhaps more common and certainly less simple to recognize are instances in which there is impairment of function rather than outright loss. The nearsighted child who cannot see as far as the blackboard but only as far as her book is missing important perceptions available to other children, but her difficulty may be overlooked by her teachers and her parents. She may not even be aware of her problem since she has always seen this way. If she thinks about it at all, she may assume that this is the way other people see things. The sense organs we possess provide us with the means by which we perceive the world about us. We assume that what we see and hear is what

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is there to be seen and heard. Our perceptions are our own personal "realities." We are rarely led to question them. The writer is "red-green blind." This is a form of color blindness in which a person is unable to see red and green as vividly as other people do. I did not know of this defect until my senior year in college, when one of my teachers gave a test of color vision to the class. I can recall painful instances during my childhood on family expeditions to pick wild strawberries. It always seemed that others could fill their pails much more quickly than I could fill mine. I became the object of much annoyance to other members of my family, who shoved me aside with such comments as "For heaven's sake, move over, you big lummox. You're standing right on 'em!" I remember, too, how irritated adults were if they sent me to the store to match a spool of thread. I could never do it right. Neither my parents nor I knew that I was color-blind, and thus we all behaved as though I could see normally. Even today it is difficult for my friends to understand that my perceptions are different from theirs. When people hear that I am red-green blind, they may pick up a red object and ask, "What color is this?" When I answer, "Red," they are crestfallen and say, "But I thought you said you are color-blind!" When I assure them I am color-blind, they ask, "Well, how do you know it is red?" To this I always reply, "Just as you do. I have always heard the color you are pointing at called red, so that is what I call it too. However, the fact that I call it red does not mean that I see the same as you. Suppose I ask you, 'How do you know this is red?' " For each of us our own experience is real. We cannot know our senses are impaired without some standard of comparison.

LIMITATIONS OF THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM The existence of a normally functioning sensory apparatus is an obvious requirement for effective perception. Less obvious but no less essential to the process of perceiving is the existence of an adequate nervous system behind our sense organs that makes possible the communication and interpretation of stimuli. We know a good deal about the physiology and growth of the nervous system, and we know something of the transmission of nerve impulses. However, the process of converting these simple impulses into the complex meanings of our perceptions is a mystery that still eludes us. Just as a person may be born with certain weaknesses or impairments of her sensory equipment, so too she may be born with deficiencies in her

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nerve structure. We know something about a few of these anomalies, but much still remains to be discovered. Disturbances affecting the central nervous system include certain types of glandular dysfunction. Children suffering from severe thyroid deficiencies in early childhood, for example, may develop a malfunctioning body that seriously impedes their efficiency in perceiving. Impairment also may be caused by a mechanical injury to the brain or the spinal cord. Injuries of this sort may occur in the process of birth or may be the result of an accident or illness later in life. Other types of damage that we know produce serious limits on perceiving can result if the organism has been deprived of oxygen for any reason (anoxia). This sometimes happens to deep-sea divers who dive too deep or remain down too long. It occurs, also, to persons overcome by gas. Lack of oxygen apparently causes destruction of brain cells, giving typical symptoms of brain damage. A further limitation of the nervous system on perceiving may be observed in cases of cerebral palsy. In this and similar disorders, damage to the nervous system may cause muscles to work in opposition to each other, causing a spastic kind of movement instead of the smooth operation of muscle groups characteristic of most of us. In recent years we have come to understand that certain diseases like encephalitis lethargica can have effects on perceiving such that marked behavior change may occur following an attack. Similarly, we know now that any disease accompanied by high fever, especially in early childhood, may be followed by a more or less serious impairment of intellectual functioning. Anyone who has had the misfortune to be seriously ill at some time in her life may have experienced the distortion of perception characteristic of delirium. This, too, is a physical effect on perception; it occasionally happens when a person has a high fever. She may have wild delusions or hallucinations of weird happenings to herself or to the world around her. Fortunately, most of us have relatively intact and functioning nervous systems that make it possible for us to perceive with ease and accuracy. Indeed, it is remarkable that, despite its complexity, the human nervous system manages to function as well as it does.

LIMITATIONS OF GENERAL HEALTH Most of the effects discussed above that our physical structure has on perceiving are obvious and dramatic. They are effects we are not likely to miss. Perhaps even more important, because much more likely to be

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missed, are the less readily observable effects on perception resulting from debilitating but not disabling physical impairments. Any physical disturbance that seriously reduces energy reserves of the organism affects the scope of perception. When an individual is sick enough to be confined to bed, it is easy for us to understand how her abilities to perceive may be restricted by her inability to get around. Listlessness or lack of interest may have similar effects. Whatever decreases alertness has inevitable effects on perceptive efficiency. Lesser degrees of illness, in which the individual is handicapped but not incapacitated, also may have their effects, for whatever depletes our abilities to get around and become involved with life must necessarily affect our perception. We know, for example, that the physical and mental development of children is closely related. Even intelligence, which is the ability to perceive effectively and efficiently, seems closely related to general physical well-being. Studies of genius have shown us that children with high IQs are also generally taller, heavier, healthier, and in every way superior to average children.1 Intelligence has even been known to increase with improved nutrition. Whatever affects the general level of efficient bodily functioning also may affect the individual's perceptual field. Limitations of general health, such as malnutrition, chronic focal infections, or long-continued fatigue, may affect perception in at least three ways: 1. By reducing mobility. When energy levels are depleted, we do not move around as much as when we are well. We prefer to hoard our limited energy and to avoid activity. It is quite possible for people to perceive richly and broadly although confined for a lifetime to a small space, but other things being equal, most of us perceive more richly and more effectively when our freedom of movement is unhampered. When we are fatigued, malnourished, or suffering from disease or chronic focal infections, we do not feel like exerting ourselves. Such inactivity saves energy but also has restricting effects on our perceptual fields. 2. By reducing interest. Interests are a vital factor in controlling the richness and variety of the perceptions we make. Any physiological condition that affects the degree or intensity of interest, whether directly or indirectly, must have its accompanying effects on the ability to perceive. Thus, when disease, malnutrition, focal infections, fatigue, or any other debilitating factor depletes energy levels, interest levels will be sharply lowered and perception restricted. The woman who is ill and tired is not

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interested in going to a meeting, attending a lecture, or getting involved in an activity and so loses an opportunity for perceiving. Indeed, if she is very ill or in great pain, she may find it almost impossible to perceive more than her own unhappy state. 3. By focusing attention under deprivation. One of the prime requirements for satisfaction of the need for maintenance and enhancement of the self is the healthy condition of the physical organism that does the perceiving. Because need has an organizing or limiting effect on our perceptions, we would expect that when the operation of our bodies is seriously impaired, there should be an organization of our perceptions with respect to such threats. This is exactly what seems to occur. We may go for long periods unaware of some portion of our bodies as long as it is operating smoothly or effectively. However, the moment some part of our physical self is injured or begins to function badly, we immediately become aware of that part, and our attentions are directed to it. All of us have had experiences of this sort, in which our perceptions become focused more or less intensely on some portion of our physical bodies momentarily out of order, such as when we have injured a finger. Before the injury we took our fingers for granted and accepted their functioning without question. But when we have mashed a finger in the car door or hit it with a hammer, our perceptions suddenly become concentrated on the injured member of our organization. Indeed, we may momentarily be incapable of perceiving anything else. Even long after the first shock of injury has passed, we are keenly aware of our hurt finger during the period of convalescence. Similarly, our perceptions become organized whenever our physical selves suffer deprivation. When we are hungry, our perceptions become focused on food, and when we are thirsty, our perceptions are concerned with drinking fountains, the kitchen sink, or mountain streams. Several psychologists have carried out interesting experiments by systematically depriving subjects of food or drink for long periods and examining the effects of such deprivation on perception. Subjects report an increasing concern for food or drink as the degree of deprivation increases until consciousness itself begins to be affected. They report spending many hours daydreaming about delicious food, memorizing recipes, or imagining sumptuous banquets. They became uninterested in other people and protected their places in the food line. On shopping trips they bought cooking utensils for which they had no real need.2

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THE EFFECT OF DRUGS ON PERCEPTION Alcohol and drugs, which are often used as a means of escape from the crueler facts of life, seem to create a feeling of well-being by reducing the clarity and sharpness of perception or by temporarily providing a feeling of strength and freedom of action. These effects can be clearly observed in the use of alcohol. It is a common observation that light "social drinking" at a party helps to loosen the tongues of the guests and make them more at ease, especially when they are strangers to one another. As people become less able to perceive the reactions of others and experience a lessening of awareness of their own tensions or inadequacies, their inhibitions are relaxed and feeling tone is enhanced. With a deadening of awareness of self, individuals do not have to face so sharply the distasteful fact of not being what they would like to be. They are relieved of normal burdens of selfconsciousness and can behave in a less inhibited fashion. When an individual is in complete stupor, unpleasantness can be escaped entirely. One of the effects of fear and anxiety is to restrict the individual's perceptual field. Anything, therefore, that tends to eliminate anxiety thus seems to leave the individual freer to perceive both herself and the world about her. Some narcotics seem to produce this effect of well-being, not by the dampening of perception alone but by temporarily giving the individual additional reserves of energy, which, in turn, add to the person's feeling of well-being and adequacy. Alcohol, for example, is quickly converted to energy in the body, and this is experienced as an increase in strength or power so that the person may feel more capable. The feeling of strength may be augmented as the drug counteracts the effects of fatigue. Narcotics that are accompanied by dreaming may produce an added sense of well-being through fantasy, which permits the individual to be, for a while, almost anything she pleases. Such effects are not limited to narcotics. To a lesser degree, they may be produced by food or fatigue. Anyone who has ever worked with young children must surely have observed how quickly active youngsters react to food. A child who has been whining and irritable may, in a few minutes, be transformed into a fairly pleasant human being by being given a betweenmeals snack of milk and cookies. Apparently, the sense of well-being induced by the restoration of energy gives the child a different perception of herself and her world. Beyond a certain point the chemical products of fatigue seem to produce a deadening of awareness similar to the narcotic effects mentioned above so that the behaver has a spurious feeling of

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capacity that can sometimes prove highly dangerous. Automobile drivers, for example, after long hours at the wheel seem to become less aware of the need to stop. They feel, instead, quite capable of going on when they had much better not.

EFFECTS OF BODY STRUCTURE The general body structure with which we are endowed may not affect our perceptions directly, but it has important indirect effects on the nature of our perceptions. Our bodies provide the vehicle from which perceptions are made. We have already seen that what is observed is in large measure a function of the point from which observations occur. The tall man sees things quite differently from the short man for the simple reason that his eyes are higher above the ground. Some years ago, on a trip to New York, I got so engrossed in a mystery thriller that I did not notice the people who got on the plane and took seats around me. When the plane landed, of course, everyone stood up. When I stood up with the rest of the passengers, I was struck with a moment of panic, for everywhere I looked I was seeing belt buckles! I have always been a man of average height. Now, suddenly, I was a pygmy among giants. For a moment I had a very strange feeling that my whole world had lost its stability until I noticed that all the men standing around me carried bags marked "New York Knicks," the name of a professional basketball team. Almost any aspect of our general body structure or condition can have an indirect effect on our perceptions. Our weight, skin color, strength, sex, and appearance may affect perceptions. These will be particularly marked if our society has developed expectancies about them. Thus, the perceptions of the self held by stout women in Russia, where stoutness is acceptable, are quite different from that of the stout young American woman who must live in a world that values the slim, svelte figure. Our perceptions are deeply affected by our sex. Men and women do not perceive alike. From the moment of birth our society begins to impress on the child the fact of maleness or femaleness, what is expected of boys and girls, of men or women. Similarly, the values we place on appearance have inevitable effects on the individual's perceptions. We call some people ugly and some beautiful. Some kinds of skin blemishes are regarded with horror or disgust. The structure and appearance of our physical beings is the platform of perception and has vital effects on

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ways of perceiving. Any kind of physical handicap may have an effect on the perceptive field. Speech defects or various forms of physical abnormalities may deeply modify the perceptions of the individual afflicted with them. Perceptions of self and of the world are inexorably affected by the mere presence of such handicaps. For some, the handicap may even become the central aspect of their lives. Our folklore is replete with tales of persons who have spent their lives compensating for the existence of a personal inadequacy.

EFFECT OF BODY CONDITION ON THE PHENOMENAL SELF Because the physical body is the most constant aspect of our experience, it is not surprising that it should play a very large part in defining the phenomenal self. In the course of our development we learn to differentiate more or less strongly the particular aspects of body condition, which are, in turn, more or less important in the definition of the phenomenal field. Which aspect we differentiate most strongly is likely to be a function of the phenomenal self. Thus, in our culture men are more likely to be concerned with physical vigor, whereas the particular figure in vogue or facial beauty is likely to be most strongly differentiated for women. Frequently, children are far more concerned with physical size and strength than with other aspects of the body; adolescents are mainly interested in those aspects that make for successful competition for the attention of the opposite sex. For most people the smooth-running body in good condition is likely to give a feeling of enhancement. It makes its owner feel adequate, competent, and in control of situations. Poor physical condition, on the other hand, may result in the definition of the phenomenal self as in some fashion humiliated. This is a frequent symptom of people with a physical handicap. I once worked with a young girl who was frightfully conscious of the size of her nose. In my estimation her nose was not in the least unusual, but she regarded it as a constant badge of shame and humiliation. She finally had plastic surgery, which, in her opinion, helped her a great deal by reducing her nose, although no change was apparent to me. It is clear that she was attending to an aspect of her body dictated by her concept of herself. Furthermore, a slight change in this bodily characteristic apparently resulted in considerable change in her phenomenal self.

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EFFECT OF THE PHENOMENAL SELF ON BODY CONDITION It seems evident that the effect of the body on the phenomenal self is not the only direction in which this body-self relationship can operate. The reverse situation is also frequent: the phenomenal self profoundly affects the bodily condition of the individual. This is particularly evident in the field of psychosomatics, in which physical anomalies often appear as the result of psychological stress. Physicians have discovered an increasingly long list of human ailments that seem to have their origin in the affective, emotional, or psychological life of persons. The study of the interrelationship between behavior and the physical organism in which behavior occurs is destined to play an increasing part in the practice of medicine and psychotherapy. In my experience one of the most interesting examples of the effect of the phenomenal field on physical condition was the case of a young woman who had been overprotected all her life by a very domineering mother. At college she had stuck very closely to another girl very much like herself. Immediately after graduation her friend left to be married, but this young woman returned to her home. Within a few days of graduation she developed eczema on one hand, and it rapidly spread to cover her entire body, particularly her face. Obviously, in such a condition it was impossible for her to seek a job. She traveled about from doctor to doctor and from clinic to clinic without success. When she went to camp, her eczema disappeared completely, but as soon as she returned to the city it returned in full force. During psychotherapy I observed that this skin condition became less and less pronounced while we talked. However, the slightest reference to her condition or any attack on her organization would bring it back. Eventually, this client came to achieve some insight into her personal problems but found it difficult to admit their psychological origins even to herself. To admit any such shenanigans would be a threat to her concept of herself as a brilliant student of psychology. The fact that people in whom she had faith thought her condition was psychological was disturbing, however. It was necessary for her to rid herself of the condition without accepting the cause as psychological. This she did by adopting a diet fad she heard about from someone she met on the street. Within a week her skin cleared up. Since then she has found a job and moved on to a better adjustment in other ways as well. It is significant that, in spite of discontinuing her absurd diet, her condition has not returned. From many examples of this type it appears that in certain kinds of physical disturbances, real

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changes in the bodily condition of an individual may be brought about by changes in the phenomenal self.

THE PROBLEM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT The two-way relationship of personality and physical condition has important implications for both psychologists and biologists. The problem of nature or nurture has intrigued people for at least five generations and continues to be discussed today. Almost everyone agrees that human personality and behavior is surely a function of both physical endowment and environment or experience, but the question of which of these is predominant in the production of a human being remains a moot question, sometimes even the subject of heated controversy. The fact is, we need all the information we can acquire about both the physiologic and environmental contributors to human personality. What is more, the probability remains that we shall never be able to understand the nature of persons from either of these positions exclusively. Physical science has made enormous strides in helping us understand the nature of the body and its processes, but the nature of persons and the causes of behavior continue to remain a mystery. On the other hand, psychologists have explored the nature of behavior as a function of environmental factors with great thoroughness but only partial success. As we have seen in chapter 2, field theory is a third alternative. It recognizes the contributions of both physical and environmental events in the development and functioning of persons but seeks the roots of personality and behavior in the phenomenal field. In chapter 1 we observed that organizations transcend the sum of their parts and must be understood as new and separate entities. If human beings are field organizations, this means that in all likelihood we will never be able to understand human personality and behavior solely from a study of either nature or environment. Even if someday it becomes possible to understand persons in chemical or physical terms, parents, teachers, counselors, lovers, friends, enemies, or fellow workers will still have to interact with each other in the here and now without stopping for a blood sample, urinalysis, EMR scan, or DNA reading. On the other hand, the discovery that behavior is only symptom, that people behave according to their perception of events rather than to the stimulus itself, rules out the possibility of sufficient understanding of persons in terms of environmental factors. A field approach to the study of persons presents a viable alternative.

CHAPTER 7

Time and Opportunity

T

he physical body provides the vehicle that makes perceiving possible. The fundamental need for adequacy provides motive and direction. These factors impose important limits on perception and behavior. But these alone are insufficient to explain the richness and diversity of human perception or the variety of behavior produced by the perceptual field. In previous chapters we have explored four of the seven major factors affecting the perceptual field, namely, need, the self, threat and challenge, and the body. In this chapter we shall explore two more: time and opportunity. It is a commonplace observation that people behave differently depending on the time and place in which they are involved.

PERCEIVING TAKES TIME Other things being equal, what an individual is able to perceive in any situation will depend on the length of time he has been exposed to the event. This principle is familiar to anyone who has ever studied a painting. The longer one looks, the more he is able to differentiate. The reader may test this for himself by looking intently at the floor, the ceiling, or the walls of his room. He first sees the grosser aspects of the object. Very quickly, however, he will find he is noting more detail. Looking at a wall, for example, one may first perceive its general shape and color. Looking longer, one may become conscious of the texture, of parts of the wall, of relationships, 101

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cracks, inequalities in the paint, and so forth. The same effects may be noted with our other senses. The more often one hears a piece of music, for example, the more he perceives. With each hearing, different nuances, not heard before, may come into figure. Considering the effect of time on perceiving, we must keep in mind that we are speaking of the duration of the individual's experience with an event rather than the observer's. Although it may appear to an outside observer that a person is confronted by an experience, from the person's own point of view he may have no contact with the experience whatever. A child may sit in school all day, apparently exposed to the curriculum, but may actually experience quite different aspects of the situation. While the teacher labors under the delusion that a child is being exposed to arithmetic, he may actually be admiring the pretty girl across the aisle, examining the names of former students carved on his desk, or even, in fantasy, be hunting bears in Alaska. In considering the time of exposure to an event, we must see the problem from the point of view of the behaver. The time required for perception varies tremendously, from a fraction of a second to generations. For example, tachistoscopic studies have shown that it is possible for a person to differentiate single words exposed in such machines at speeds of as little as one hundredth of a second. Subjects who are shown an object for very short periods of exposure report only seeing "something there." As the time of exposure is increased, they may be able to perceive the object vaguely; and when exposure has been increased to a full second or more, quite complicated perceptions can be made. The perceptions we make of many events in the external world around us can be made with great speed. On the other hand, human beings lived with gravity for thousands of years before it was perceived and stated as a principle of physics. People had been looking at the sun for a long time before Copernicus helped us to perceive that the earth went around the sun instead of vice versa. A second factor affecting the time required for perception has to do with the fact that most perceptions a person makes are functions of previous perceptions. Before one can perceive the mechanics of multiplication, for example, he must have perceived addition. Many of our perceptions are based on long series of previous discriminations extending back to our earliest beginnings. It seems axiomatic that to make differentiations a person must have lived long enough to do so. A great many of our difficulties in communication seem to stem from our failure to recognize the importance of time in perceiving. The speaker who moves too fast loses his audience and makes himself ineffective.

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Communication may fail because the audience has not yet had sufficient previous experience to perceive the new aspects conveyed by the speaker. Because new perceptions derive their meaning in large part from already existing perceptions in the field, the time required to perceive a given event will be affected by the existing field. Listening to a lecture in the new field of mathematics of complexity would leave most of us hopelessly unable to comprehend because of lack of prior necessary differentiations at earlier periods in our lives.

OPPORTUNITY AFFECTS PERCEIVING For perception to occur there must be an opportunity. We are accustomed to believing that what we perceive is so. Our perceptions seem to us to be an accurate picture of what exists. When we perceive a chair, we believe the chair exists, so much so that we are willing to sit down on it. We can see for ourselves that the chair holds us up. What is more, other people in whom we have confidence also believe the chair exists. We can confirm our experience of the chair by testing our perception with our other senses; we can feel the chair with our hands, we can hear it when we move it, we can even smell it and taste it if necessary. Best of all, we can corroborate our impressions from the reports of other people whom we trust and who agree that what we perceive is true. There is a vast world of people, things, and abstract ideas that we can see, hear, feel, measure, or perhaps only think about, that seems to us real and objective. This is the environment in which we live; it provides much of the raw material of our experience. It also provides many opportunities for perception, which may be more or less concrete or physical contacts of the individual with his world or which may be vicarious experiences. Concrete Opportunities for Perception In the first place, the perceptions possible to any individual will be limited in part by the person's own direct experience of the environmental factors to which he has been exposed. Eskimos ordinarily do not comprehend bananas; nor African bushmen, snow, because neither has had the opportunity to experience them in his environment. In a similar way, each of us has come to perceive many aspects of the physical environments in which we have lived. The major sources of concrete experiences are the following:

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1. The natural scene—the geographic and geologic features about us such as rocks, rivers, seas, mountains, and plains, as well as the recurring tides and our experience of night and day. 2. The constructions of human beings—the highways, harbors, buildings, machinery, furniture, signboards, papers, autos, the internet, satellites, television, and a million other items. 3. The world of living things—animals, insects, plants, microorganisms. 4. The experience of the self—one's own physical, emotional, and thinking being. 5. The interaction with others—the social existence of persons and the impact of other people upon them. Vicarious Opportunities for Perception Perceptions may occur in the individual's field as a consequence of exposure to the experience of others, through reading, conversation, movies, and other means of communication. The development of language, especially, makes possible vast opportunities for perceiving on a symbolic level what we could not otherwise hope to experience. Although I cannot directly perceive that it is dangerous to expose myself to rays from a nuclear accelerator, I can differentiate this notion through what others whom I respect have told me. Many of our perceptions are acquired through this kind of symbolic exposure. Certainly, most of our formal schooling falls in this category, which may explain, in part, why so little of it is effective in changing behavior. Ideas that we have not differentiated as related to self from the broad background of our perceptual field are apt to remain isolated from the rest of the field and have little effect on behavior. What people perceive is necessarily limited by the opportunities to which they have been exposed in the course of their growth and development. What is perceived is not what exists but what one believes exists. Stated in terms of field dynamics, objects and events impinging on our perceptual fields are perceived in the way that best fits the field of that instant. We can draw illustrations of this principle from many experiences of daily life wherein we hear or see what we consider reasonable to perceive. Vague impressions of another person may be put together so that we believe we see a friend only to discover, after we have hailed him, that he is a total stranger. We often jump to apparently reasonable conclusions even though these conclusions may later prove to be wrong. This characteristic of peo-

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pie to perceive what fits into their mental picture rather than what exists creates problems constantly for our courts in determining the credibility of witnesses. It is often difficult to recognize whether a witness is reporting what actually happened or what he believes "must have happened." Because the perceptual field is always organized, what is perceived must be the product of this organization. If perception occurs at all, it must occur with meaning. Meaning is given to events by the relationships in the perceptual field in which they occur. The words read by each reader of this page have different meanings. Even the same reader when rereading the page will perceive differently. Reading is not so much a matter of taking meaning from a book as bringing meaning to the printed page. What is perceived is determined by the unique perceptual field of each person, which includes much more than the direct experience of our senses. What is perceived is what we have learned to perceive as a result of our past opportunities and experiences. This principle is effectively illustrated by the experiences of congenitally blind persons whose sight is restored by surgery. After the removal of congenital cataracts, for example, children cannot at once identify objects by size and shape. It takes time to learn this. Differentiation of color is even slower. Children raised in extreme isolation demonstrate the principle when they are placed in a new and enriched environment. The function and purpose of bathtubs are not obvious if one has not been brought up in a culture that uses them. Anyone who has ever visited a church different from his own may recall his struggles to comprehend what was going on in the service and the way in which it became clear when he learned to interpret the symbolism correctly. When we are faced with incongruous events, we tend to perceive them in the way that is most familiar or meaningful to us at that moment. The meanings we have previously learned are often highly stable and difficult to change. Experiments of changing child attitudes toward people of other nationalities by showing the child movies, for example, demonstrate that, though new information may temporarily change child values, when the pressure to change has passed, perceptions gradually revert to earlier forms. Apparently the proverb "seeing is believing" is not as surefire an indication of what is so as we are led to believe. Indeed, the existence of the principle that perceptions are largely learned calls for a reexamination of some of our most cherished and time-honored beliefs and practices in human relationships.

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CULTURE AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR PERCEIVING It is not physical situations alone that force perceptions on us. For most of us, social demands are far more frequent and pressing. Demands are imposed on a person by his family, his friends, his community, and his nation—in short, by every life situation with which he is faced. Consequently, a very large portion of the perceptions we are able to make is a direct result of the particular cultures and subcultures in which we have been raised. The experience of the individual in meeting the demands of life in his particular culture plays a large part in determining the richness and variety of perceptions in his phenomenal field. Many of these perceptions will be similar to the perceptions of his fellows in the same society. This is important, because it is only on the basis of common meanings that it is possible for one person to communicate with another. If similar meanings did not exist for members of a common culture, communication with others would be extremely difficult, and need satisfaction would be impossible. Knowledge of the meanings of objects existing in the culture is essential to need satisfaction. It will be equally true of the concepts, values, ideas, and other abstractions existing in the particular culture in which a person is brought up. What were new ideas and concepts in former times are matter-of-fact perceptions for people today. The matters the students of one generation learned to perceive with difficulty and painstaking effort are calmly accepted by the next. The germ theory of disease, the concept of evolution, or the controversy over nature-nurture, all difficult concepts for persons in former times, are used as the accepted basis for new explorations in our time. The culture we live in has vital effects on the discrimination, conceptualization, and evaluations we learn to make of things we see about us. The Family as Culture Transmitter The human infant is born into an existing society—a structured, more or less organized society in which all individuals are bent on maintaining their own organizations. The search of these persons for need satisfaction produces a society that not only is responsive to the demands of its members but also enforces on its new members its own peculiar framework. From the moment of birth, if not before, this social pressure begins its work. Immediately on arrival, socially acceptable differentiations are imposed on the infant. For example, we present blue booties to a newborn boy, pink

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booties to a girl. Even the physical behavior of the child is subject, almost at once, to social control. Babies may be fed on schedule, subjected to hospital routine, and very shortly are taught "proper" habits of elimination, eating, and sleeping by their parents, who, as products of their society, are guardians of its values. From them we learn to define the world about us in terms of the culture into which we are born. We apply the labels of our culture to things and people around us. We accept also the values, taboos, and moral concepts of our culture and subcultures. The meanings of these things become part of our own "reality." A child can see himself only in terms of his experience and the treatment he receives from those responsible for his development. He is likely, therefore, to be strongly affected by the labels that are applied to events by other people. As his experience with them contributes to need satisfaction or frustrates such satisfaction, he is likely to perceive things as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, friendly or hostile, and so on. Once such perceptions have become part of his perceptual field, they may persist as important determinants of behavior for the rest of his life. Such values, in turn, affect his perceptions so that even the things he sees and hears may become functions of his cultural experience. Persons with whom we are strongly identified provide us with concepts in terms of which we make judgments about the world around us. In some instances this identification may be so strong that even the ordinarily stable world of things may be perceived awry by contrast. This use of our experience as yardstick for judgments is common in daily life. We are familiar with the child who believes his father is right and the world is wrong or the mother who believes "they were all out of step but Jim!" Many of us have experienced, too, how our concept of a decent standard of living increases with our income. Cultural Variations The ways the individual learns to differentiate people differ widely from culture to culture. What we call man, is hombre to the Spanish, homme to the French, and inuk to the Eskimo. The same is true of other objects. What they are called, what they are described as, and even their meanings may differ in different cultures. Certainly, the American ideal of a "man" is far different from that of the Frenchman, the Spaniard, or the Eskimo. Even what is included in the definition of self may vary from culture to culture. The Wintu Indians, for example, have a much more holistic concept of the self than we do. They do not make the kinds of distinctions we

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do between the self and the body. The Wintu Indian is so much more anchored to his environment than we are that when he is bitten on the arm by a mosquito he does not speak of his right or his left arm; he scratches his "east" arm going downstream and, later in the day, coming upstream he scratches his "west" arm. Even the same objective events may be perceived with varying degrees of differentiation in different cultures. Though we have only one word to describe snow the Eskimo has several words to designate varying conditions and properties. The precise character of snow is of far more importance to the Eskimo than it is to us. Similarly, the Masai, an African tribe whose economy is based on cattle, have 17 words referring to different conditions of a cow. In such a society a cow carrying a calf is not to be lightly confused with a cow that is not. There are differences between the perceptions of rural and urban children, children from the North and children from the South, from mountain and valley, from seaboard and plains. Nor are such differences confined to children. Adults, too, are limited in their perceptions by environmental factors. During the World War II, I worked in an induction station receiving men from the mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, and southern Ohio. An intelligence test in use at this station was composed of a series of five pictures, with instructions to cross out the picture in each series that did not belong with the others. One set of five pictures showed a trumpet and four stringed instruments, a guitar, a harp, a violin, and a bass fiddle. Many of the men crossed out the harp because they had never seen one or because, as they explained, "all the others are in our band." On the basis of these tests we cannot assume that these men were less able to make differentiations or had perceptive fields less rich than that of their examiner. We can only suggest that their perceptions were formulated in a culture different from those who had made up the test. Presumably, had the mountain men made a test and administered it to the psychologist, the psychologist would have appeared rather dull. No one is ever free from the effect of culture on perceiving. We are continuously sensitive to those around us and to the meanings of events for them. These meanings become a vital part of our own reality. The individual's perceptions tend to become more and more like the perceptions of the important people in his world. Acting on other premises or basing his behavior on perceptions unacceptable to them would make him and his behavior unacceptable to these important people and thus frustrate his search for adequacy. We can observe this in the ways in which people defend their points of view and the groups they belong to. Americans defend

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the perceptions of Americans even when they subsequently discover them to be wrong. For some people, it is inconceivable that Americans could ever be wrong. Cultural Differences and International Understanding The effects of culture on the beliefs, values, and self-concepts of people create serious problems for human relationships and international understanding. People's experiences always seem real to them, so whatever has been differentiated as a result of a particular culture always seems right, proper, and natural. It is easy, therefore, for people raised in one culture to fail miserably to understand those raised in another. The problem of intercultural communication is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the difficulties encountered when new techniques are introduced into old, established cultures. With the best of intentions, attempts to "help" people of foreign cultures often have failed primarily because the helping agencies failed to appreciate and adjust to the unique values and beliefs of the people they wanted to help. To further understanding of these matters and to help innovators behave more effectively, UNESCO published a book titled Cultural Patterns and Technical Change.1 It describes a number of instances in which good intentions went awry because of failure to understand that things are perceived differently in different cultures. The following are some of the more amusing of these incidents. The British, who regarded the hill tribes of Burma as filthy because they took almost no baths, were, in turn, considered dirty by the Indonesians because they bathe only once a day! The Western handkerchief for pocketing mucus is considered revolting by a number of other societies. Among the Zuni it is customary to go to bed only when one is ready to die. Imagine then the consternation of the Zuni tribesman with a cold who is ordered to bed by the white man's physician. In one community the proposal to install a pump as a labor-saving device for the women of the village was met with unexpected opposition until it was understood that in that village water carrying was a time-honored mark of womanhood. Our Culture's People Problems In the late 1930s, Arnold Toynbee, a student of cultures and civilizations, pointed out that cultures go through periods of rise into a plateau of seeming fulfillment, followed by a time of decline or disintegration.2 During

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the fulfillment period the culture's very successes begin to create serious problems for the culture, which become increasingly critical as the culture declines. Something like that seems to be happening in our own thingsoriented, manipulation-of-forces culture. For example, the invention of the automobile, a vital and essential part of our American way of life, is a two-edged sword. On one hand it has freed us to move about as never before and added immeasurably to the ease and enjoyment of life. At the same time it has also eliminated railroads, destroyed the neighborhood, scattered families, practically eliminated public transportation except in large cities, killed more people yearly than died in the Gulf War, and saddled citizens with enormous public and private expense for highway construction, insurance, maintenance, fuel, and storage, to say nothing of the costs to human health of a sedentary lifestyle. Our things-oriented, manipulation-of-forces culture has made us a consumer society. Fewer and fewer citizens are engaged in the production of necessities like food, clothing, and shelter, while persons employed in entertainment, services, finance, government, or security become an ever increasing proportion of our workforce. We have created a culture in which we interact daily with thousands of other people and are totally dependent on thousands more to keep us alive and functioning. We live in an "information age": we are bombarded with information on all sides and have fewer and fewer opportunities for intimacy, relationships within which to sort out what it means. As one wag said of New Yorkers, "In New York City, people don't know their neighbors, but they suspect them!" All this depersonalization comes at a price. Citizens become so preoccupied with things and the manipulation of forces that persons, too, are treated as objects. Human values become distorted or ignored.3 Education centers on curriculum rather than students. Medicine treats disease rather than patients. The legal system becomes increasingly adversarial, concerned with winning at any cost. Government seeks to cope with problems reactively rather than humanely and proactively. Corporations are more concerned with the "bottom line" than human values. We spend more on prisons than on education or child care. The major problems are no longer thing problems. Our primary problems have become overpopulation, famine, social security, poverty, war, peace, prejudice, the ozone layer, the rain forests, pollution, ethnic and religious conflict, terrorism, aging, employment, conservation, ecology, and most recently, crime, violence, welfare, drugs, corruption, health services, and weapons of mass destruction. Even the atom bomb is a people problem; it's not the bomb we need fear but the people who might use it. We

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cannot cope with such problems by treating them as things. They require a person-centered, rather than a things-oriented, frame of reference. We are in the midst of a great paradigm shift in modern science, from the physical sciences to the social sciences. Our culture has practically solved the agesold problems of food, clothing, and shelter that have dogged humankind for a million years. We now have the know-how to feed, clothe, and shelter the entire world if we have the will to do so. Our major problems have become people problems, not only socially but individually. Millions of citizens suffer from self-concept problems induced by the culture through parents, institutions, daily associates, the workforce, or government. They grow up feeling unliked, unwanted, unworthy, and inadequate for any of thousands of reasons. Millions more are ill-informed to live efficiently in the worlds they must confront. Still others grow up with too little feeling of responsibility or concern for others, values on which a successful democratic society depends. In chapter 3 we saw how perceptions of self and others tend to corroborate themselves once they are established. Such feelings are acquired so subtly that most persons are hardly aware that their personalities are being molded by the very cultures they live in. Most of the clients who come to the counselor or psychotherapist suffer feelings of inadequacy, believing they "ought," "should," "must" be something different than who or what they are. They are being and becoming casualties of a things-oriented culture learned from mostly well-meaning parents, teachers, and associates in the course of growing up. The ballooning growth of the counseling industry is no accident. It is a response to the cries for help from citizens wounded by a things-oriented culture who are in need of an intimate relationship within which to explore new and more fulfilling ways to see themselves, their problems, and their relationships.

CHAPTER 8

Goals, Techniques, and Values

CONSTANCIES IN THE FIELD Although each of us is motivated at all times and in all places by the same basic need for adequacy or the maintenance and enhancement of self, the expression of this need in different people is as varied as human beings themselves. Some people seek the maintenance and enhancement of the self in possessions and thus spend much of their lives collecting things like money, houses, shells, old automobiles, or human heads. Others find adequacy in the ideas and concepts of religion, law, science, literature, art, or music. Still others find adequacy in various sorts of activities, such as running, driving, eating, farming, swimming, building houses, taking dope, or sleeping. These "constancies" in the perceptual field by which individuals seek to achieve the maintenance and enhancement of self we call goals, techniques, values, and beliefs. They are the differentiations people make to achieve need satisfaction. The character of these differentiations determines in very large measure the personality structure and behavior of a person.

THE CREATION OF STABLE MEANINGS From her interaction with the physical world around her, each person learns to perceive when she is right side up or upside down, in warm places or cold. She also learns to orient herself in space by perceiving herself in 772

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relationship to objects in the environment. These perceptions become the individual's "anchors to reality" and provide a stable base for behavior. Such constancies provide the individual with standards for judgment and meaning. Most of us, for example, have come to rely on the horizon as a fixed point of reference for many of our perceptions. Similarly, we judge distance, weight, time, and appropriateness of behavior with reference to important or stable aspects of our own experience that can serve as bases of comparison. We do not, however, rely only on our experience of the external world to provide us with standards of judgment. We actively invest some objects, events, or concepts with stable meaning, or constancies, to comprehend the world about us. The use of personal experience as frame of reference is done so smoothly and naturally that often we do not even perceive that we are doing it. When, however, we must behave without the use of such guides, we become keenly aware of their importance. It is difficult to localize or pin down an experience when we do not have access to our usual points of reference. When anchorages are lost or when they become too variable to be depended on, sane people become quite ill. This seems to occur in seasickness, when many of one's normal anchors to reality become unpredictable and even the horizon seems to leave its moorings. Our perceptions of the physical world are generally adequate because inadequate perceptions of the physical world tend to be self-correcting. I may be unhappy because I arrived at my friend's party just as the party was breaking up because I missed the proper turn and lost my way. But when I go there again I shall still have to make the same turn and I shall be able to differentiate clearly and rely on my differentiation. Physical matters have a high degree of predictability. The same stability often cannot be found in people, and consequently, adequate frames of reference are harder to discover. Thus, a child finds it easier to adjust her perceptions about the streets she must cross on her way to school than to discover what her teachers or relatives expect of her. Streets stay where they belong, but people sometimes refuse to stand still long enough for us to know what they are about. Need satisfaction is impossible in an unpredictable world. The development of dependable constancies and anchorages is essential to the individual's very existence. Despite its difficulties, establishing constancies with respect to people is essential for successful living in an interdependent and social world like ours. Because we are so dependent on other people for need satisfaction, we must work out effective relationships with them. To do this it is necessary to invest other people with elements of consistency and predictability.

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As a consequence, we classify people. We give them roles, status, prestige, and authority, which provide handy reference tags to help us deal with them. The particular constancies differentiated by a particular person are the product of her experience with the important people in her world as she grew up. From those around her she learns about authority figures and what to expect of men and women. She develops expectancies about black people and white people, about labor and management. In time these expectancies may become so firm as to serve her as maps or guidelines.

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF GOALS In the course of a person's growth and development and as a product of her experience with the world around her, certain aspects of the perceptual field become more or less clearly differentiated from the remainder of the field because they satisfy need. These differentiations are called goals. The newborn infant has few if any goals beyond the extremely undifferentiated one of maintaining organization. In time, however, with the differentiation of the objects, persons, and sounds that accompany the satisfaction of her basic need, goals become more clearly defined. In time they become permanent and characteristic parts of her personality and are evident in so much of her behavior that other people are able to predict with great accuracy what she is likely to do in a given situation. This goal differentiation is amusingly illustrated in the use of the word "Daddy" by a friend's young son. The child's first use of this word was greeted in his family with much pride in his accomplishment until it was discovered that thunder arriving at mealtime was also "Daddy" to him! Apparently he had differentiated the word as meaning a loud sound, of which his father was but one producer. Similarly, a child's other goals become differentiated in the course of time with developing satisfaction from food, water, persons, toys, and the like. Even the concept of "mother" is not exempt from this process of gradual differentiation from the remainder of the field. Specific persons such as father, mother, sister, aunt, or grandmother, with the special meanings our society attaches to them, take considerable time to differentiate. In the course of differentiation of the child's goals from the remainder of the perceptual field, it is apparent that not all children develop the same patterns. In fact, the opportunities and circumstances of growth present so vast a number of possibilities for differentiation that it is unlikely that any

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two individuals ever have identical goals. Thus, a very young child may differentiate "bed" as a source of security; another may come to differentiate the same object as a place to play, to have a bowel movement, to be fed, or as a place of punishment. Even where two children appear to have the same goals, it will probably be discovered on further examination that wide differences exist. In similar situations there cannot be like goals for different children because each one sees her situation from her own unique point of view. This is true, even for identical twins in apparently identical situations, for a moment's reflection will make it clear that each twin is a part of the other's environment so that twin A's environment contains twin B, but twin B's environment instead contains twin A. Living in the midst of a particular family group the child tends to adopt the goals of those who are important in satisfying her need. Thus, she may become a Republican, a Methodist, an outdoorswoman, or a gypsy, depending on what is important to the people who surround her. This process of differentiating goals similar to (but not completely like) those of the group in which the individual moves gives a certain degree of continuity and similarity of goals among the various representatives of the same culture.

DIFFERENTIATION OF TECHNIQUES It is probable that very little human behavior is the result of direct movement toward goals; rather, it moves through a series of subgoals to reach its major goal of need satisfaction. If crossing the street to a friend's house is our goal, we cannot reach it without achieving a series of subgoals in the process. For example, it may be necessary for us to descend the stairs, open the door, reach the curb, avoid a car, and so forth. Such chains of goals that provide the means of achieving adequacy we call techniques. During her growth, the child develops many techniques that make it possible for her to reach the goals she has differentiated. Techniques, like goals, are designed to maintain and enhance the self. Everyone develops highly characteristic techniques. One person may characteristically placate people and win their goodwill by flattery; another may seek to maintain selfassurance by dominating and criticizing others. Our friends can usually recognize and identify the particular techniques that we are most apt to use—as when they say of us, "She would!"

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Techniques become differentiated in the perceptual field of the individual in the same manner as that described for the differentiation of goals. At first such techniques may be extremely generalized but with the passage of time they tend to become more and more refined. In any case, techniques are always the result of a person's striving for need satisfaction. Thus, the young child who feels frustrated by someone and desires revenge or mastery over the object of her frustration may at first be openly aggressive—fighting, kicking, and laying about her generally. In time, as she discovers that this technique does not bring real satisfaction of her need because of the violent reaction of others, she may come to differentiate a modified technique of attack on a verbal level, expressed perhaps in tattling or verbally abusing the object of her aggression. Because even this behavior is likely to bring censure as she grows older, she may learn to modify her technique still further as she discovers that she can reach the same end through gossip or undercover slander of her tormentor. Eventually, she may even be able subtly to get others to do what she wishes while she remains in the background

DIFFERENTIATION OF VALUES AND BELIEFS We have seen that the process of differentiation of goals and techniques within the perceptual field is always related to need satisfaction. Some goals and techniques are differentiated as positive or satisfying and hence to be sought. Others may be differentiated as negative, destructive, or humiliating to the self and therefore to be avoided. In the experience of the young child these differentiations are made with a high degree of specificity, but before very long she begins to differentiate that some goals and techniques are more or less alike in their abilities to yield or inhibit need satisfaction. She perceives that some objects, goals, or techniques have similar properties; this differentiation of common value serves as a kind of frame of reference for making further differentiations. We call these frames of reference, which are more or less clearly differentiated in the perceptual field and which serve as maps or guides for behaving, values and the person who has them may call them beliefs. Values and beliefs are important constancies in the perceptual field. They provide the guidelines for further differentiations or perceptions and the basis for much of our behavior. Whereas goals and techniques apply to specific aspects of behavior, values or beliefs are differentiations of a

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generic rather than a specific character and thus affect a much wider field of behavior. Accordingly, a person's values and beliefs are of great importance in understanding the behavior of others. Much of the work of counselors, social workers, and teachers is directed toward understanding the beliefs of their clients and students. They do this by "reading behavior backward," a process described in chapter 2, which provides insight to the perceptual fields of the persons they seek to aid. When they do this, they are utilizing field theory for understanding their clients or students whether they are aware of doing so or not. No one can convey to others the full nature of her perceptual field at any moment. The best we can do to communicate the nature of the constancies existing in our field is to speak of our values or beliefs, which are a kind of shorthand to convey to others the complex meanings of important aspects of our fields. They may be so clear to us that we can speak of them with passion and commitment. Or they may exist at such low levels of awareness that we can state them only vaguely if at all. Nevertheless, they are vital factors in determining our personality and behavior. This use of people's values as important clues to their behavior is not confined to psychologists or professional people. All of us become highly sensitive to the values of those around us in the course of our development. Very early we recognize the crucial character of values and beliefs in affecting a person's behavior. This provides us with guidelines to the behavior of others and makes possible a degree of prediction of what they will do. Even young children discover that "Uncle Joe likes kids" or that "Mother doesn't want me to grow up" and are thereafter able to adjust their behavior in terms of these inferences. In this sense we are all behaving in terms of field theory.

THE CLARITY OF VALUES It should not be supposed that all of an individual's values or beliefs can be clearly and precisely stated by the person. Values differ greatly in the degree of clarity with which they are perceived. Some values will be quite definite and precise in a person's perceptual organization so that she may be able to express them aptly and succinctly in the symbolism of words. Others will be so vaguely differentiated that the person may be quite unable to report the nature of the value determining her selection of perceptions. This latter state of affairs is illustrated in instances in which outsiders

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may be able to perceive a value affecting our perceptions that we ourselves may be quite unable to identify clearly. It also may happen that a person will lay claim to the symbol of a value or belief acceptable to her social group but be so vague in her differentiation of its meaning that the value has little effect on her behavior. It is a common thing, for example, to hear people claim to value democracy while behaving in most undemocratic ways. Values affect the perceptions of particular individuals depending upon the extent of applicability they seem to have to the behaver. Some values, for example, may be differentiated as applying only to a limited number of situations or goals. Such values might be a dislike of pickles, a disapproval of people who "scratch off at traffic lights, or an appreciation of double camellias. Values and beliefs also may be so extensive as to affect almost every area of one's life, such as a belief that calls for respecting the dignity and integrity of people or a concern for justice and fair play. There may be any degree of applicability between these two extremes, for example, when a general value espousing the dignity and integrity of persons is carefully circumscribed to apply only to one's own religious or national group or when a specific belief is extended to generalities and we assume that "they must be nice people because they support the Boy Scouts."

THE PERMANENCE OF GOALS AND VALUES When goals have been differentiated and have served to aid the person to the satisfaction of need, they tend to persist as a part of the field organization of that person. The degree of this persistence is likely to be a function of the degree of differentiation from the remainder of the field. Generally, the more the achievement of the goal serves to bring the organism to the satisfaction of basic need, the greater will be its differentiation from the remainder of the field and the more likely it is to appear as a goal on future occasions. This is particularly well illustrated in connection with negative goals. Negative goals, which become differentiated in the field as objects to avoid, threaten the organization of the person. Her need, however, is to maintain her phenomenal self. Hence, such threats are likely to be very strongly differentiated—so strongly, in fact, that often a frightening object may be experienced only once, to be avoided ever after. This may frequently be observed in childhood fears that persist far into adult life and may continue for the entire life span. Goals that seem to the individual less strongly related to need satisfaction are less clearly differentiated and may

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be easily displaced. I will give up the idea of going to the movies tonight when friends drop in to see me, because going to the movies was only mildly related to making me feel adequate anyhow. Ask me to give up my job, my marriage, or other goals of vital importance to me, and my reaction will be very different. A second major factor contributing to the permanence of goals and values has to do with the selective effect such differentiations have on perception. The emergence in the perceptual field of any goal or value determines to a great extent what related matters are likely to be differentiated thereafter. The possession of any goal or value has both a narrowing and expanding effect on capacities for differentiation. The person who has differentiated "country music" as desirable and valuable and "long-hair" music as boring and unpleasant has made a differentiation that cannot help but affect her behavior and further experience. Having these values she will avoid concert music and listen to country-western songs. This effectively closes her off from some kinds of experience while at the same time it opens up new possibilities in the area she has learned to value. The decision to become a schoolteacher probably shuts the door to the possibility of becoming a great physician, but it opens up vast new areas of exploration unknown to the physician. By controlling the opportunities we have for further perceiving, the differentiation of goals and values tends to perpetuate itself in our perceptual fields.

THE EFFECTS OF GOALS AND VALUES ON PERCEIVING Once established, goals and values have critical effects on perceiving. Indeed, the peculiar patterns imposed on perception by goals and values produces much of the uniqueness of behavior we have come to describe as the individual's personality. The goals, values, and techniques we have differentiated as leading to need satisfaction serve us thereafter as reference points to the achievement of adequacy. Once clearly differentiated, they exert a selective effect on later perception and thus markedly affect behavior. As a consequence of this crucial relationship, many psychologists have been led to experiment with the effects of goals and values on perception, and a vast literature has accumulated on this topic.1 Perhaps the most striking and commonplace examples of the effects of values on perception are to be found in the differing perceptions of men

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and women. The two sexes in our culture often have widely differing values, which, in turn, have selective effects on the perceptions of the two groups. Men brought up to value machinery are often appalled at the lack of care and respect given mechanical equipment by women. Similarly, women raised to be deeply sensitive to social and interpersonal matters are sometimes shocked at what seems like unthinking, unfeeling attitudes of men. Several interesting researches have demonstrated that women seem to depend more on visual frames of reference in orienting themselves to the world around them, and men rely more heavily on kinesthetic and tactual experience.2 In an experiment in which subjects thought they were about to see words related to animals, they read sael as seal and wharl as whale. The same subjects, expecting to see words related to boats, saw sael as sail and wharl as wharf. Several experiments have demonstrated that people perceive words of greater personal value more quickly than those of less importance to them. In our society certain four- and five-letter Anglo-Saxon words are strictly taboo in polite society, and experimenters have demonstrated that the reaction time to such words is considerably greater than the reaction time to less value-laden words. There seem to be no aspects of perceiving unaffected by values.3 The effect of values on perception has important implications in all types of social problems. It has been shown, for example, that those persons whose values favor a certain event or outcome tend to expect such desired outcomes. Thus pro-welfare observers may see the same poorly clad man as a "forgotten man" and an object of sympathy, whereas anti-welfare observers see in him a "wastrel getting just what he deserved." Prejudice, group conflict, and breakdowns of moral judgment and communication are frequently the unhappy societal products of unfortunate values. The dynamics of value development and change lie at the very heart of our great social problems and are the primary data of sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, and others interested in social change. Goals and Values Affect Reasoning and Learning Goals and values have important effects on reasoning and learning. I remember the Kentucky moonshiner to whom I once administered the Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence test, who could not tell me how many pints there are in a quart although he had certainly been taught this fact in his early schooling. Knowing that my client did a considerable business in bootleg liquor, I framed the question differently asking, "Well, how do

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you sell your liquor?" He smiled tolerantly and replied, "Oh boss, I just sell it by the jugful!" In his community to have done otherwise would have been to risk bankruptcy. In a culture where a jug is the standard container for spirits, there is no need to know about quarts. In a fascinating series of studies on human reasoning, Maier demonstrated how the values people hold may interfere with their ability to solve problems. Given two sticks and a clamp and instructed to make a hat rack, some subjects were unable to solve the problem, apparently because they could not differentiate the clamp as a hook. Others, used to seeing pliers as a tool, were unable to solve problems that required the use of the pliers as a pendulum.4 Another experimenter has demonstrated that positive and negative values affect students' learning of psychology. Students who have values similar to the values of their instructors seem to get higher class marks than students whose values differ from the values of their instructors although their marks are based on objective tests derived solely from textbooks. Goals and the Level of Aspiration and Interests There seems almost no limit to the variety of ways in which goals and values affect behavior. Even the hopes, aspirations, and interests toward which persons strive will be determined by the goals they have differentiated in the perceptual field and the strength of the values they attach to them. The things toward which people aspire will, in the final analysis, depend on the degree to which they perceive goals as contributing to the maintenance and enhancement of the self. The kinds of interests people hold are also a function of the goals and values that seem important to them. We are interested in what serves to satisfy need. As long as goals and values lead to need satisfaction, they remain important to us and we are interested in the objects or events they represent. When, however, such goals and values no longer provide us with feelings of adequacy, new interests arise as expressions of shifting patterns of goals and values. A good example of this may be seen in the child learning to roller-skate. Other children like her skate, and to maintain and enhance her phenomenal self she too wants to roller-skate. When she puts on her new skates, however, she finds skating much harder than she had expected and, very likely, Mother Earth less comforting than she had been led to believe. But the reactions of those about her are encouraging, and she is told that she is doing well. This evaluation is at variance with what she feels, but it results in further efforts and commendation while she is

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developing her skill. She is interested in learning to skate. Eventually, the time comes when she has developed some degree of skill and regards herself as able to skate or even as a good skater. Now, however, the commendation and plaudits of others are likely to be far less strong or frequent, and her ability to skate is taken for granted. Much of the satisfactions involved are lost. Unless others have taken their place, it is likely that her interests and desire to skate will disappear. Goals: Challenge and Threat Observations of this sort of behavior have caused people to think that we are interested in the things that are problems to us, and that we are likely to lose interest when they are no longer problems. This seems partly true, and there is good reason for it. The feeling of personal adequacy derived from any accomplishment is always enhanced if there is a possibility of failure. The things we know we can do are less challenging than those we have yet to try. The adolescent who can't dance when this is expected in her group feels that learning to dance is a problem; and the adult who desires to keep up with her neighbors finds figuring out how to get a new car an interesting problem. It sometimes happens that people set goals for themselves that are far above their capacities. This is characteristic of some college students. College students must have been fairly successful at school; otherwise they would not have reached college. Having been successful and having differentiated goals and values in these terms by comparison with less brilliant contemporaries in the grade- and high school years, many come to college expecting to operate on the same level. College students, however, are usually more highly selected, and the competition for grades is much keener than the student has ever experienced before. Her level of aspiration being higher than the conditions of her new environment warrant, she sets goals in terms of what was previously normal for her. This may bring her lower grades than she is accustomed to receiving. Not to reach her goals is a threat to her organization. She may then insist on the goals all the more strongly because they are under attack. She may even raise them. Until she can readjust her level of aspiration according to her new environment or call on new reserves of energy and application, she is likely to suffer severe feelings of inadequacy and failure. Fortunately, most college students are able to make this adjustment in a reasonable period of time. Occasionally, however, people with unrealistic goals are unable to accept

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their own limitations and continue to strive for impossible objectives for most of their lives.

SOME EFFECTS OF TECHNIQUES In the course of her development, everyone comes to differentiate both positive and negative techniques and to utilize or avoid such techniques, depending on whether or not they lead to the satisfaction of basic need. Thus, the child who has been subjected to extremely severe punishment administered consistently over a period of time may differentiate techniques for reaching her goals by meekness or fawning as attention-getting devices. At the same time, she may differentiate aggressive tactics as techniques to be avoided at all cost because they result in behavior on the part of others that threatens the self. Such techniques may, furthermore, become an integral part of the individual's field organization with or without repetition. Although the majority of techniques probably become differentiated with repeated behavior, they are not a direct result of repetition. Indeed, they may become effectively differentiated with no repetition whatever. In traumatic or highly emotional situations, for example, a single incident may result in a relatively fixed differentiation.

CONSISTENCY OF TECHNIQUES In everyday life many people utilize the same techniques to arrive at many different goals. The go-getter may find aggressive techniques so useful in satisfying her needs that she applies them almost indiscriminately to every activity. She runs down her business rivals, dashes from place to place, hangs a DO IT NOW sign in her office, bids wildly in her bridge game, and may even apply aggressive techniques to courtship as she attempts to interest a man with various acts of seduction. Still another person may find a technique of suppression best leads to the satisfaction of need; she may literally swallow her pride, even when she is seething within. The opposite aspect of the relationship of goals and techniques may be possible, wherein a person may utilize differing techniques to arrive at the same goals. A woman seeking to build up her self-esteem may try to accomplish this by gossiping about her neighbor, buying herself a new

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dress, powdering her nose, striving for a career, or raising ten children. For both goals and techniques the determining factor of persistence lies in the degree to which it is differentiated, either positively or negatively, with respect to need satisfaction in the total field. CLASSIFICATION OF TECHNIQUES Attempting to maintain and enhance the self, a person differentiates many techniques in the course of experience that lead more or less adequately to achieving this end. For the most part these techniques are concerned with what the layman calls boosting self-esteem, which is another way of saying enhancement of the self. For practical purposes it is convenient to classify such behavior in a number of categories. It should be recalled in any such classification, however, that there are probably no pure cases of the use of any of these techniques. Techniques can be roughly divided into three major categories: (1) mastery over people or things, (2) identification with a powerful individual or membership in a potent group, and (3) physical change in the body organization. Mastery over People Among the most primitive of mastery techniques is the use of physical force. Direct aggression or the wielding of superior force is still a major means of achieving mastery for many people. Although physical size is no longer as important for mastery as it once was in adult society, the clenched fist is still a favorite technique even of many adults for achieving fundamental goals. The technique may be disguised as legal action, social position, employer-employee relationship, or presumed superiority of knowledge as in a teacher-pupil relationship, but the principle is the same. The force compels although the club has given place to more genteel devices. From the social point of view the use of direct aggression is a particularly bad technique because it sets up a whole chain of aggressive reactions in which each victim attempts to forget her own humiliation by using her power to humiliate others. A man who has been humiliated at work may come home to bully his family; his wife, to regain her lost self-esteem may nag at him and the children, who, in turn, seek self-enhancement by aggressive behavior in the neighborhood.

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Symbolic Techniques of Force To maintain its own organization, our society frowns on the use of direct physical aggression by its members. Therefore, in the course of her growth, a child may acquire symbolic techniques that are quite as effective as the most primitive ones. Such aggressions are often expressed in play. A large part of a child's time in play therapy, for example, may be spent in such symbolic activities as breaking balloons, playing "accident," knocking down blockhouses, or making clay figures of mother and father to be smashed to bits. Adult symbolic aggressions are less obvious than those of the child. Veiled techniques, such as gossiping, whispering campaigns, excessive blame, or even "constructive" criticism should not deceive the observer. If people cannot satisfy their needs by one technique, they must turn to more successful ones. There are a great many ways to enjoy mastery over others that may be more or less disguised, and they are often not only accepted in society but encouraged. Games of all kinds are primarily played to give the participants and their supporters an opportunity to enhance the phenomenal self by defeating worthy opponents. Ordinary polite conversation may be used by the speaker to build up her self-concept by dominating the listener, while the listener is waiting for her opportunity to act as an authority. The humorist, Strickland Gilliland, once said, "If you see one man talking to another on the street, it is not a conversation. The other fellow is just waiting to tell about his operation." Kidding, ribbing, hazing, and practical joking are further methods by which the individual may take advantage of a social situation to feel superior. Because it is essential that either the victim or the audience be important, ribbing, like gossip, is often a kind of flattery, and many young girls are well aware that the insults of preadolescent boys are really compliments of a rare character. An interesting variation of the use of subtle aggression is often seen in clinical experience with the negative or dawdling child. This is a form of aggression put to effective use on a larger scale by Gandhi and his followers in India and has been used in our own country by labor in strikes and slowdowns in industrial disputes. In all of these cases the technique is useful to gain a feeling of power over those who would force one action or another on the individual or the group. The adoption of a negative "you can't make me do it" attitude is a potent means of regaining feelings of competence and independence.

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Fortunately for the human race, domination of others is not the only way in which people may build up and reinforce their phenomenal selves. Another way of achieving adequacy lies in the mastery of things. To achieve this end it is necessary that the individual have a feeling that she is able to do something that gives her power over her surroundings. At all ages, but especially in childhood, the control may be destructive, as when young children enjoy themselves by banging on the kitchen pans or tearing up the family magazines. Much of the pleasure in building with blocks comes from the pleasure of knocking them down. Among adults, too, such destructive attempts at mastery are not uncommon. Building contractors report that their men enjoy wrecking a building more than building one, probably because the destruction is faster and more spectacular, thus providing greater awareness of personal power. For most adults, however, it is probable that the greatest amount of mastery over things is gained from constructive behavior. The engineer takes pride in his bridge; the architect, in his building; the small home owner, in garden arrangements produced with her own hands. It is probable that the inexorable breakdown of jobs to more and more minute details in assembly-line production has destroyed the opportunity for mastery over things for many workers. As a consequence some industries have attempted to reverse this trend by giving workers opportunities to work with larger units of the product involving a number of processes; and some industries have turned to assigning a group to produce a unit, leaving workers free to rotate the tasks within the group as they please. It is probably true that handling giant machines in modern industry contributes to the feeling of power for some people. So does "knowing computers" as many a parent can attest who must suffer the embarrassment of watching his young daughter click-click to a rapid solution and beam—"See, Dad. It's easy!" Approval of Others The second group of techniques to maintain and enhance the phenomenal self is so universally used and is so different from the dominating techniques we have been discussing that some writers contend that it must be due to a completely independent motive, which they have called the need for social approval. For a number of years, during infancy and childhood, we are almost completely dependent on adults for the satisfaction of our

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physical and psychological welfare. Children who win the goodwill and attention of adults are fed, clothed, and comforted. Children who incur ill will are punished, ignored, or humiliated. As a consequence, the sympathy and goodwill of other people are vitally necessary to every child, and much of this feeling of need for others survives into adult life. From a practical point of view, the adults in our present highly specialized economy are almost as dependent on other people as children are. Even if this were not true, it is not likely that any adult having had the normal experiences of childhood could fail to gain a feeling of security and self assurance from the approval of people she respects. If the technique of seeking the approval of others were motivated, as many suppose, by an independent drive for social approval, then the approval of one person or group should be as satisfying as the approval of another. If, on the other hand, it is simply an alternative method to secure a consciousness of self-worth, then we should prefer the approval of the individual or membership in the group that seems most important to us. There is evidence that this is the case. People often travel long distances to see famous personages and thus identify themselves with success. The politician who said, "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em," was simply expressing a common type of behavior. Even in times of peace, the less powerful members of a group tend to seek security by identifying themselves with a powerful group or a dominant leader. In the United States, attempts at identification with a strong group or leader are by no means uncommon; advertisers find that it pays to have their products endorsed by public figures. Many people like to use the soap their movie idol uses or eat the breakfast cereal approved by an all-American fullback. Persons tend to seek self-esteem through winning the approval of groups or individuals they believe to be important, but they tend also to withdraw from groups that no longer contribute to their feelings of importance. It is a common observation that, when an individual has achieved the highest office in an organization, her ardor for the work of that group often disintegrates rapidly, and she may soon break off her relations completely. Body Change A third major group of techniques is that in which a person seeks some form of bodily change that contributes to redefining self in a more powerful and less humiliating light. Some addictive drugs and alcohol provide temporary surcease by simply eliminating for a while the need to confront one's problems or painful perceptions. Some make possible greater

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feelings of adequacy by seeming to increase one's physical strength, power, or command by suppressing or stimulating awareness. The same effects occur in thrill situations quite aside from the use of drugs. Often the excitement attendant on thrills results in increased body tonus, which is exhilarating to the person and is likely to give a feeling of increased power or effectiveness. Such boosts are often consciously sought and paid for in amusement parks. Indeed, in some people this feeling becomes almost a permanent goal in life, and much of their time is spent in a search for thrills. Gambling is a familiar example of this device. In the excitement and anticipation of winning or losing, the gambler is able, for the moment, to forget her feelings of inadequacy and incompetence and get a feeling of heightened tonus. Lotteries and policy games are most popular in the poorest sections of cities, apparently because they furnish many people with the only hope of achieving property or power. Economically, these people cannot afford to gamble, but psychologically they cannot afford to not gamble.

TECHNIQUES, ROLES, AND TRAITS The roles people play in life are to a great extent the product of the particular techniques an individual has differentiated as appropriate for a person like herself. The techniques that each of us differentiate are always an expression of our fundamental need to maintain and enhance the self. As a consequence, techniques are often valuable clues to the self-structure of the individual. When we know enough about her techniques, it is often possible to make remarkably good inferences about the nature of the self to which a person's techniques are related. From the point of view of the outside observer, the characteristic behavior produced by the individual's pattern of techniques, goals, and values provide the basic clues to understanding her personality. When we wish to describe another person, we usually do so by describing her traits. We describe someone, for example, as a devoted mother, a fine swimmer, a hard drinker, or a person of great sensitivity and feeling, depending on what we have observed about her. These traits are the manifestations of the individual's techniques of achieving need satisfaction, as they can be observed by the outsider in overt activity of one sort or another. Psychologists often find it useful to describe human personality in terms of traits. For many purposes it is enough to know that individuals are likely

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to behave in a particular fashion under given circumstances. For more precise understanding of human beings, however, the trait approach to personality has, more often than not, proved disappointing. Behavior we observe in others, like the symptoms of disease or the rumble of thunder in a storm, are but the manifestations of dynamic processes within the organization we are observing. Sometimes it will be enough to deal with such surface indications. For deeper and more precise understanding, however, it will be necessary to penetrate behind the behavior trait to more dynamic factors in the unique character of the individual's personal self and the goals, techniques, and values through which the self is expressed.

CHAPTER 9

Human Capacities

I

n the preceding chapters we have been systematically examining the factors that influence the perceptual field. In particular, we have given a good deal of attention to seven variables having important effects on perceiving: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The physical organism (chapter 6) Time (chapter 7) Opportunity (chapter 7) The effect of need (chapter 1) The phenomenal self (chapters 3 and 4) Challenge and threat (chapter 5) Goals, values, and techniques (chapter 8)

Factors 1, 2, and 3, are well known to us in our common experience and have also been extensively explored in the psychology of the past 70 years. These are factors affecting behavior that lie very largely outside the person and are open to manipulation by those who surround him. Throughout human history they have provided the primary bases through which people have sought to control or affect the behavior of their fellows. The latter four are factors added in a field approach to the study of persons. They are factors inside the behaver and are open to external manipulation only indirectly and in limited degree. These four are functions of the phenomenal field and have only in recent years been greatly appreciated for the vital bearings they have on behavior. There may be others of which we are not 130

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now aware, for field psychology is not very old, and it is only in fairly recent years that the problems of perception have been intensively or widely studied.

A FIELD APPROACH TO HUMAN POTENTIAL All behavior, we have said, is determined by the perceptual field of the behaver at the moment of behaving. How effectively a person is able to behave at any moment will depend on the perceptions available to him at the instant he is called on to act. If that statement is true, it means that human capacities and abilities are a function of the perceptual field, and the factors controlling human capacities will be those that govern the processes of perceiving.

A NEW PERSPECTIVE Historically, we have been accustomed to think of human capacities as the direct products of heredity and the strength, agility, or health of the physical organism. Of course, when we are thinking of purely physical capacities these observations hold true. One cannot jump, for example, without legs, and how far one can jump will depend on the strength and health of the body doing the jumping. We have also seen, however, that human behavior cannot be understood solely in terms of physical structure. Our physical bodies provide the vehicles for perception and behavior and set important limits on some types of behavior. They do not, however, provide a sufficient cause for understanding all behavior. One must have the necessary structure of the throat in order to speak, but what one says is not to be understood in terms of the laws of heredity or the physiological makeup of the individual alone. Although the physical organism is essential for behavior, we must search elsewhere for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of human capacities for behaving or misbehaving. Previous generations of psychologists were deeply impressed by the successes of the physical sciences and often pined for the kind of precise measurements those sciences were able to utilize. It seemed only reasonable to earlier psychologists that human behavioral capacities must be limited in the same fashion that physical capacities are, because both occur in the physical organism. To conceive of a limited organism capable of almost

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unlimited behavior seemed too mystical for scientific belief. Accordingly, psychologists of former times were almost unanimous in describing human capacities as the direct product of the individual's heredity and physiological structure. This potential, moreover, was conceived as fixed and immutable. Many human abilities were conceived as inborn and hence unchangeable. A child could fail to achieve his inherited capacity, but he could certainly never exceed it. In more recent years many psychologists have come to have grave doubts about this fatalistic conception of human abilities. Human capacities seem capable of far more change than previously thought. Programs enriching the environments of children deprived of affection and evidence of personal worth, for example, have shown measurable improvements in intelligence. Intelligence ratings also have been found to change positively following play therapy and negatively after long periods in restricted environments. Human abilities no longer seem so exclusively the product of the behaver's genes as we once thought. It seems necessary now to consider a large number of psychological factors as well as physiological ones.1 This is not a denial of our physical being in behavior but a matter of seeing the contribution of our body structure in better perspective as one of a number of factors rather than the sole determinant of capacity. The contribution of physical factors to any behavior will vary widely from act to act, never reaching zero but never serving as the full and sufficient explanation for behavior, either. In such a behavior as climbing a rope, the physical strength and agility of the behaver will play a very large part. Indeed, the physical condition of the subject determines in very large measure his capacity to behave effectively. A behavior in which the physical organism plays a lesser role is, for example, walking about in a city. Here the behavior requires some degree of physical fitness but not so much as climbing a rope. In reading a book or making a speech, the physiological potentialities of the individual play only a relatively minor role. By far the greatest portion of the things we do lie well within this latter sphere of operation. How we behave, given the necessary vehicle, is a function of psychological or experiential factors like those we have been exploring in this book.

INTELLIGENCE AS A PROBLEM IN PERCEPTION We ordinarily use the term intelligence to refer to the effectiveness of a person's behavior. Intelligent behavior is activity that effectively and efficiently satisfies the need of a person and his society. Whether or not such

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behavior can occur, however, will depend on the differentiations the person is able to make in his perceptual field. That we have defined as "the universe of experience open to the individual at the moment of acting." In other words, the behavior of any person will be dependent on the perceptions existing for him at the moment of acting. The effectiveness of his behavior will necessarily be a function of the adequacy of those perceptions. From a perceptual point of view, intelligence is a function of the richness, extent, and availability of perceptions in the perceptual field.1 This perceptual understanding of intelligence has important implications for both psychologists and biologists. Many biologists, for example, have engaged in the search for physical explanations of personality and behavior with limited success. Similarly, psychologists have been known to ascribe psychological reasons to problems originating in or complicated by physical anomalies. That biologists and psychologists should interpret events in their own frame of reference is not surprising. In earlier chapters we saw that a person's perceptions are given meaning by the total field into which they are being incorporated. So it is that each of us tends to see events in terms of our own experience. For science, there is the danger that important matters may go unexplored. If psychologists begin with the assumption that a problem is physical and biologists assume it is psychological, the matter may never be properly explored. A much better foundation for exploration is for each science to approach its studies assuming that the problem lies within its purview until it becomes clear that it does not. Otherwise, important understandings may "fall between the cracks" and never be properly investigated.

A FIELD VIEW OF INTELLIGENCE The perceptions that could be made of any given situation, such as a stone wall, for example, are, theoretically, practically infinite in number and quality. As a matter of fact, however, we are strictly limited in our perceptions of a stone wall to those that we, as human beings, can make. Different people will perceive different aspects of the wall differently, even at the same instant. I can only perceive the wall and hence behave toward it in terms of the perceptions that I, as a person, can make regarding it. I may, for instance, perceive it as a sturdy fence enclosing my property, whereas a stonemason friend might perceive it as having been poorly designed or as having been built with too little cement in the mortar mixture. The perceptions open to my mason friend are the result of his unique experience. I, not having such experience, am incapable of those perceptions

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at this moment. Each person is limited in perceiving by the richness, extent, and availability of perceptions in his unique perceptual field.

THE EXTENT OF PERCEPTIONS IN THE PHENOMENAL FIELD At the instant of behaving, people can behave only in terms of those perceptions that exist for them. In the example above, it might be possible for me to acquire the same kind of perceptions about stone walls that my mason friend has. I could increase my own perceptions by a period of study or apprenticeship, for example. At the moment of behaving, however, I am limited to those perceptions that exist in my field. I cannot behave in terms of perceptions I do not have at that instant. At any moment behavior will also be limited by the quality of a person's perceptions. In the example above, the perceptions open to the writer and to the mason are by no means equal in quality. Even if these people had the same number of perceptions, the perceptions available to each would vary greatly in detail, richness, and meaning. The artist and the novice looking at the same picture might conceivably have the same number of perceptions, but the meaning or quality of those perceptions would be vastly different for the two observers.

THE AVAILABILITY OF PERCEPTIONS IN THE FIELD Finally, behavior at any instant will be determined by the availability of perceptions in the personal field at the moment of behaving. The existence of perceptions in the phenomenal field is no guarantee that they will be available at a high enough level to affect behavior significantly at the instant they are required. Some perceptions may exist in the field only as potential perceptions. By this we mean those perceptions that exist in a person's unique field of awareness that, given the right circumstances at any particular moment, could rise into figure. The fact that a perception is potentially possible to any individual does not mean that it will occur at the moment of action. Even those perceptions that I can make potentially may not be active for me at any given moment. Potentially, I might be able, for instance, to perceive the wall in our example as a barrier to be gotten over, as an eyesore to be beautified, as composed of 687 bricks

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costing $480.27, or as providing pleasant shade on a hot day. These are all potential perceptions I am capable of making. They will affect my behavior, however, only when they are active and functioning in my field of perceptions. When I am beating a hasty retreat pursued by a neighbor's angry dog, perceptions about the shade, beauty, or cost of the wall are not functional in affecting my behavior. I behave only in terms of my functioning perception of the wall as something to get over—and quickly.

THE MAXIMAL LIMITS OF BEHAVIOR What, then, are the maximal limits of human capacity? At the lowest level there are some unfortunates who have little more capacity for behaving than the bare minimum required to keep alive. Examples of this extreme degree of limitation are the so-called crib cases to be found in institutions for the mentally retarded. These are persons born with such drastic physical deficiencies as to be capable of only greatly limited perception. They live out their lives in little more than a vegetative condition. At the opposite extreme, what are the upper limits of human capacity? This is a difficult question for, as far as we know, no one has ever remotely approached the upper limits of perception. Indeed, the possibilities for human perception seem almost infinite. Given a healthy physical organism to provide the vehicle, enough time, a stimulating environment, challenging and fruitful problems, and a nonrestrictive self-concept, there seems to be no end to the perceptions possible to a person. Given eyes capable of seeing, who can say what are the limits of what may be perceived? Presumably, one could perceive whatever one looked at, and there are no end of things to look at! Unlike the limits imposed on the physical organism by our physical structure, the limits of what might be perceived by a particular individual seem practically nonexistent. People can go on differentiating new perceptions in their phenomenal fields from conception to death. Their perceptions seem limited only by the seven variables of perception we discussed in earlier chapters. One of these variables, of course, is the state of the physical organism. With advancing age, failures of the physical organism may contribute to a reduced ability to perceive. Students of the aging process now believe, however, that the intellectual behavioral capacity of the elderly need not deteriorate with age simply because the body is less capable of the kinds of reactions it could deliver in its younger days. Indeed, they have collected many re-

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markable case histories of persons like Oliver Wendell Holmes, who remain remarkably keen and productive to extremely advanced ages, sometimes even in spite of great physical deterioration. It would appear that some of the rigidities of aging are not so much questions of a slowing down of the physical organism as limitations on perception. Seeing themselves as unable, unacceptable, or useless, some elderly people behave as though they were, though they may be enjoying perfectly good health. Some are limited by their own feelings of threat at anything that resembles change in their accepted pattern of life, and they avoid exposing themselves to the necessity for change as much as feasible. Still others seem to have become the victims of their own goals and values, so new events and new ideas have no place in their perceptual fields. Although deterioration of capacity may come with advancing age because of failure of the physical organism, it now seems clear that this is not a necessary occurrence if other factors affecting perception can be kept operating in positive constructive ways.2

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIAL CAPACITIES In the course of differentiating perceptions throughout a lifetime, each of us develops a unique field of perceptions richer or more extensive in some areas than the fields of our friends and neighbors and poorer and narrower in others. The particular field we develop represents our own specialization, our peculiar know-how, skill, or understanding. For some people, this specialization of perception may proceed to such extraordinary lengths that they seem to have capacities far beyond that of ordinary mortals. A young man whom the writer once tested illustrates this point very well. He was a newsboy on the streets of a city in West Virginia. Although he had failed repeatedly in grammar school and was generally regarded as "not bright," he appeared on a national radio program as "the human adding machine." He was a wizard at figures. He could multiply correctly such figures as 6,235,941 x 397 almost as fast as the problem could be written down. Yet on the Binet Test of Intelligence he achieved an IQ of less than 60! People in his hometown, who bought his papers, amused themselves by giving him problems to figure. When not so occupied, he entertained himself by adding up the license numbers of cars that passed his corner.

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He was a specialist in numbers. Apparently as a result of some early success in this field, he had been led to practice numbers constantly, eventually to the exclusion of all else. This was one area in which a poor Black man could succeed, and he made the most of it. His number perceptions were certainly rich and varied, but other things were not. Although he was capable of arithmetic feats not achieved by one in millions, he was classified on the intelligence test as dull. Such specialization or unusual richness of perception in a particular area of behavior is not magical; it is produced by the operation of the same factors governing perception as exist for the rest of us. In fact, most of us could probably duplicate the young man's feat if we were willing to give up most of our other goals, as he did. What Do Intelligence Tests Measure? Intelligence tests are basically tests of achievement. No one has yet devised a means by which we can approach the measurement of capacity directly. Instead, we are forced to approach the question indirectly by means of inferences from what we can observe. Intelligence tests are based on the fundamental assumption that all people taking the test have had an equal opportunity to learn the things the test measures. Accordingly, it is assumed that people who have learned more must have had more basic ability or capacity for learning. The accuracy of the inferences made from such tests are, of course, dependent on the degree to which this fundamental assumption holds for the persons being tested. A great deal of research has gone into the development of intelligence tests over the years, and test makers have sought continuously to refine these instruments, primarily through an attempt to find more valid items that could be presumed to be part of the experience of all people taking the tests. This search for common items has been most successful for the age ranges during the school years. Earlier, during infancy, it is difficult to find common items of experience, but our public schools provide a considerable area of common experience (at least as seen by an outside observer) for children. Consequently, during those years intelligence tests have their greatest validity. After the school years, when persons are free to go their own ways as adults, this modicum of comparable experience rapidly disappears. As people grow up, marry, and embark into the infinitely diverse field of work, it is no longer easy to find common experience on which intelligence tests may be constructed.

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In our culture many people have come to accept intelligence test results almost as trustingly as a prescription from the family doctor. Important decisions are often made as a result of such tests. It is important, therefore, that we have a clear understanding of what tests measure and of the degree to which the results they provide us are accurate assessments of the capacities of people. For example, we must be very sure that the sample of the perceptual field is indeed an adequate sample of what is there. It is conceivable that a test might sample so narrow a portion of the perceptual field as to cause completely erroneous conclusions about the individual's perceptions. We have defined intelligence in this frame of reference as a function of the quality, extent, and availability of perceptions in the perceptual field. Intelligence tests sample these three aspects of the field. From that sample we may infer the nature of what the whole field may be like. It should be recalled, however, that such a sample is a fragment of the state of things in the current perceptual field. It gives us an indication of the individual's present perceptions. We have already seen, however, that the perceptual field is characterized by considerable capacity for change, and in that degree intelligence measures will also be open to change. A second possible source of error has to do with the determination of what is worth sampling. Our own perceptions always seem the "right" ones to each of us. By whose standards, then, shall we take our sample—yours, mine, society's, or the subject's own? For the most part, intelligence tests are based on the assumption that academic, upper-middle-class intellectual perceptions are important. But are they? Can we assume that the expert machinist, who can perceive things "out of this world" for most of the rest of us about a piece of stock on his lathe, is less intelligent than a diplomat who perceives many things about foreign affairs? Can we be so sure of our values as to call one bright and the other dull? Can we blame the machinist for his lack of perception about foreign affairs without asking the diplomat to be equally skilled in the machinist's field of perceptions? To a very large degree we adhere to an upper-middle-class definition of values in creating intelligence tests. Because middle-class professional people construct these tests, it is not surprising that the items they choose to test their subjects are derived from their own values. It is probably no accident that, almost without exception, psychologists make the highest scores of anybody on intelligence tests, compared with other professions. They should. They made the tests and included the items that are important to them.

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IS THE CAPACITY FOR INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR OPEN TO CHANGE? It will be noted that all of the seven factors that affect perception, which we have spoken about in this book, are capable of some degree of change or manipulation. Even the effect of the physical organism on perception is capable of variation within certain limits, although, to be sure, it cannot be drastically shifted. The remainder of the factors in our list, however, seem open to fairly wide degrees of change. If this is so, it would follow that the capacity for intelligent behavior can be created within the limits to which the perceptual field itself is open to change. It should not be assumed, however, that this is either easy or quick. The perceptual field has a degree of fluidity, and within the limits of that fluidity change is possible. We have also seen that a major characteristic of the perceptual field is its stability, its resistance to change. There are ways, for example, in which we can provide people with different kinds of opportunities to perceive. There are things we can do to help people discover new and more adequate goals and values or concepts of themselves. It is even possible to deliver many people from the unhappy and restricting effects of threat. However, perceptions of long standing do not change rapidly. The child who has come to define himself as a person who cannot do mathematics as a result of 10 years of failure does not change his ways of seeing himself in a moment. It took a lot of experience to build his self-concept and to organize the rest of the field to fit it, and it is quite likely to take a large amount of a different kind of experience to counteract it. The man who has believed for 40 years that his methods of farming or teaching are the "right" methods cannot be induced to change his goals and values quickly. A person's need tends to produce behavior that corroborates already existing concepts. Once perceptions have become firmly established in the field, they tend to perpetuate themselves, and this, of course, adds to the difficulties of inducing change in the field. From a perceptual point of view, intelligence is not something static and unchangeable, but neither is it so fluid as to be open to rapid manipulation. Capacity, in this frame of reference, is a developmental characteristic affected and controlled by at least the seven factors of perception we have been exploring in this book. It is a function of the richness, extent, and availability of perceptions in the perceptual field and is open to change in the degree to which the phenomenal field itself can be changed.

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SOME IMPLICATIONS OF THIS CONCEPT OF INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR If the conception of human potential we have been discussing is accurate, it opens some exciting new possibilities for the treatment or education of persons we have often assumed to be beyond help. Perhaps we have been too impressed with the limitations on growth and development that we observe in physical maturation. We should explore to the very fullest the possibility that, in those cases where we cannot demonstrate biologic impairment, the limitations on capacity may be perceptual. We cannot afford to limit the places where we look by the preconceptions we have about the matter. Our responsibility is too great. Education, to name but the most obvious of our social institutions, has in large measure predicated its goals and methods on a concept of students with static limitations. If these limitations are not static, educators need to know that. Who can say, for example, what results we might be able to achieve by a systematic effort to remove or decrease the effectiveness of the limitations on perception discussed in this chapter? It is fascinating to speculate on the possibilities one might try to provide opportunities for perception to occur. 1. First and most obviously, we should be able to discover and make available to far more people the means to achieve better physical condition. Who can say, for instance, what completely adequate medical care for all our people or a more adequate diet for many might mean a generation hence? 2. There also lies the possibility of providing experiences for people that will make more adequate perceptions possible. Can it be that decreases in school success with advance through the school years is more a function of lack of meaning for students than lack of intelligence? Is it enough to assume that experience provided to the student is truly provided simply by assuring confrontation? Has the schoolchild who is so worried about his relationship with his peers that he cannot perceive what his book is saying truly been provided opportunity to perceive? What kinds of environments could we construct that might more effectively result in improved perception? 3. Who can say what possible effects might occur from a systematic release of a person's perceptions by more adequate satisfaction of his most pressing needs or goals? It is possible that the child with frustrated

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desires for love, affection, status, prestige, or friendship might also be freed to perceive more widely and richly if we could but find ways of helping him satisfy his need. 4. Most educational methods are directed at the provision of information. Students are lectured, required, shown, exhorted, and coerced to perceive what someone thinks they should. With equal energy devoted to facilitating and creating new goals and values in students, rich and varied perceptions might be more efficiently produced. 5. What effects might we be able to produce by providing experiences that build adequate self-concepts in children and adults? What differences in the richness and variety of perception might result from a generation of people with "I can" rather than "I can't" conceptions of themselves? What would happen if we consciously and carefully set about the task of providing experiences that would lead people to perceive themselves as adequate, worthy, self-respecting people? 6. Finally, if threat to persons has as important effects as indicated in this field approach, helping persons to perceive themselves as adequate offers a most important factor to consider in helping persons to perceive more adequately.

THE LIMITING EFFECTS OF BELIEFS ABOUT CAPACITIES What people believe about the nature of human capacities has enormous repercussions for all human interactions whenever it is necessary to work with other persons. The beliefs we hold about human nature and potential inevitably affect both how we behave toward others and the effect we have on their perceptions of self. For example, what teachers, counselors, parents, social workers, bosses believe about those they work with governs what they permit their associates to try. If I do not believe a child, student, or worker is "able," I probably won't even suggest that he try. Such an attitude contributes to both our failures. As parent, teacher, or boss, I convey my lack of trust and confidence. By creating an expectation of failure, I contribute to its realization. For the recipient of my doubts, my lack of confidence contributes to his feelings of inadequacy and the vicious circle by which the self-concept corroborates itself.3 Recent studies of good and poor helpers in the various helping professions demonstrate that a major factor in the success of the professional

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helper is a belief that those he works with are able, whereas poor practitioners believe the people they work with are not. Positive feelings about those we must work with are not only good for our colleagues, they also contribute to our own chances of success. The beliefs we hold about human capacity are vital factors in determining human relationships.4

CHAPTER

10

Learning and Change

E

ffective, efficient behavior requires that individuals be able to learn new things, to retain this learning over long periods of time, and to solve new problems when confronted with them. Learning, remembering, and problem solving, however, are, like any other behaviors, the products of the individual's perceptual field. In particular, they are the direct outgrowth of the process of differentiation we have discussed in an earlier chapter. In chapter 4 we defined learning as a process of the perceptual field, namely, the discovery of meaning. We also stated the basic principle of learning as follows: Any information will affect a person's behavior only in the degree to which she has discovered its personal meaning. When we speak of learning, we mean the process of discovering meaning by which an individual is able to change her behavior, usually in some more constructive fashion. Because the processes of learning and change are so vital to human growth and fulfillment we must explore those matters in greater detail.

TWO FACETS OF LEARNING Learning always has two facets: (1) confronting some new experience and (2) discovering what it means to the self. Most people have had much experience with the first of these functions; one shows people or tells them 143

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so they will know. Lecturing, reading, and demonstrating are the traditional tools of schooling. In these times we even have machines that make it possible to give people information faster, in greater quantity, and more dramatically than ever. Television, radio, movies, videocassettes, computers, communication satellites, and many other devices have launched us into the Information Age. They have provided us with information so efficiently as to make teachers, as information providers, nearly obsolete. Most of us know how to provide people with information very well; helping them to discover its personal meaning is quite another matter. The inadequacy of simply providing persons with information is illustrated in the frustrating experience of providing students, clients, and patients with "good advice" and finding it generally ignored. There is a vast difference between knowing and behaving. It is familiar to any of us when we find ourselves saying, "Now, I knew better than to do a thing like that!" A great deal of what people learn in school is of this character. Cognition alone is not enough for learning. Although concepts have been clearly perceived, the further differentiation of the relationship of these concepts to the individual's own need has not been perceived. As a consequence the individual does not behave in terms of what she "knows." Any student is aware that when she "needs to" she can learn a set of facts with sufficient clarity to be able to report them back to her professor on an examination yet behave the following day as though she had never heard of the concept.

LEARNING AS DIFFERENTIATION IN THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD All learning of whatever variety has as its basic characteristic a progressive differentiation from a more general perceptual field. This is perhaps best illustrated by observing changes in the drawings of young children. Children draw what they know; that is to say, what they have learned. The earliest drawings of a man are likely to be composed of little more than a head with appendages attached. Later, as the child grows and differentiates more and more detail with respect to the adults who surround her, her drawings mirror this increased detail, and we may find her adding fingers to arms and a trunk between legs and head, as well as feet, hair, and ears. Still later, when the child has differentiated more details about adults, she may draw a person with a neck between head and trunk and various de-

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tails of clothing. The same development of differentiation and growth from a total field to a more and more precise kind of performance may be observed in handwriting, number concepts, reading, and vocabulary, to name but a few areas of a child's learning. Learning at all levels at which psychologists have studied the problem is characterized by this process of increasing differentiation from a more general field. This is true whether we are speaking of the highly controlled laboratory experiments on "conditioning," "trial-and-error learning," or less carefully controlled "insight learning," wherein persons are given a maximum of freedom for problem solving. Pavlov noted in his famous experiment on the salivation of dogs that his subjects' first responses were highly irregular and vague, but as the experiment continued his dogs responded with ever increasing regularity and precision as they were increasingly able to differentiate from the general field the most efficient response required. This differentiational character of learning in conditioning experiments has been illustrated repeatedly with many other animals, including persons.1 The differentiational character of learning can be observed wherever learning occurs. Behavior, which is quite general and vague at the beginning of the experiment, becomes increasingly precise as the animal or person is able to perceive with greater and greater accuracy the "proper" solution to the problem. This will be true whether we are speaking of ants, rats, or women. The process can be clearly observed in examining the day-by-day productions of a child who is learning to write. Little by little over a period of time, as she is able to differentiate more clearly what is required and how to operate her muscular system to achieve those ends, her writing becomes increasingly precise. Most of us have forgotten how difficult a process this was. We have lived so long with an accepted ability to write that we have forgotten how slowly and painfully the process of achieving these new differentiations was at the time we originally learned them. At first glance, some learning seems to occur all at once, as a kind of sudden insight—for example, when we suddenly become aware of the solution to a problem with which we have been struggling for some time. Most sudden and dramatic insights, however, are probably illusions. Actually, such sudden differentiations are the end product of a long series of previous differentiations. They are usually preceded by many small steps, ending in the "aha! moment" when all seems dramatically to fall into place. This sequence of events can often be clearly observed in the printed protocols of therapy sessions.

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THE LEARNING CONTINUUM As we observed in chapter 4, the discovery of meaning can be plotted across a continuum: from perceptions perceived as "not self (no meaning) at one end to perceptions of "self (intense meaning) at the other end. The steps across the learning continuum can be observed in the language we use to describe the state of our phenomenal fields to other persons. See Figure 10.1. As one confronts a new experience one may use such terms as "I wonder" followed by such expressions as "Could it be?" "Maybe," "Perhaps," "Oh, now I see," "I think," "I know," "I believe." Such comments and many others are indicators of perceptions with increasing personal meaning. Generally speaking, the more personal and significant the meaning being explored, the longer the movement of concepts across the learning continuum takes. If learning is the discovery of personal meaning and emotion is an indicator of the degree of that meaning (see chapter 5), it follows that learning must be understood as a deeply personal emotional experience as well as a cognitive one. Learning is not a mere matter of acquiring skill or a body of information. It is also a question of feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, and emotional experience. The greater the degree of emotion, the more likely it is that learning is important to the learner and so will affect behavior. In this sense, arguments over whether or not education ought to be "affective" are nonsense. If education is not affective, then very little of any consequence has occurred.

LEARNING AS A FUNCTION OF NEED Perhaps the most important contribution to the psychology of learning is the recognition that learning, like all other experiencing and behaving, is a perceptive process that results from the efforts of the person to satisfy

Figure 10.1

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need. Whether we like it or not, people are always striving for the satisfaction of need; they are always learning. Mere presentation of material by repetition or drill is not sufficient to assure effective learning. Habit and repetition are not, from the behaver's point of view, causes of behavior. As she sees it, she performs the act for the thousandth time for the same reason she performed it the second time, because it is the most effective way she knows of satisfying her immediate need. What any individual learns (differentiates) in a given situation is determined by the need of the moment. A child practicing the piano may be learning to play the piano better. She also may be learning how to give the appearance of practicing with the least possible effort. This relationship of learning to need raises difficult problems for educators. What teachers teach and children learn can often be maddeningly different because the immediate goals of teacher and child may be worlds apart.

PERSONAL NEED AND LEARNING As we saw in chapter 1, all behavior is motivated by the basic need of the organism for self-fulfillment. This includes the processes of learning. Of all the factors known to affect learning, need is among the most certain. Even in learning experiments with rats it is customary to make certain the rat is hungry so that it has need to search for food. The effect of need is present in all aspects of learning. People learn best when they have a need to know. People work very hard at learning when they have a need to know and when they believe they have a chance of success (challenge). Students of a foreign language in American schools laboriously plug away at the task. The same students, set down in a foreign country out of touch with English-speaking friends and acquaintances, quickly pick up the language because it is no longer just a subject to be learned but a necessity for effective living. At any moment we do what it seems we must do to achieve adequacy and fulfillment. People do what seems to them important. They ignore what seems unimportant or irrelevant. When forced to confront matters that do not seem important, people respond with reluctance, apathy, or violence, depending on the degree of pressure they experience.

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THE PROBABILITY OF LEARNING We have already seen that the degree and direction of differentiation are always determined by the need of the behaver and the opportunities for differentiation that are available. Because the selections made by the individual in her perceptual field are always a function of her fundamental need, whether or not there is any learning at all will be dependent on the operation of this need in the situations where learning is expected. To relate learning to need, persons desiring to create effective learning situations may either utilize the learner's existing need or create some new need to know. The first of these options is by far the easier and most productive. Much of current educational practice, however, chooses to operate from the second alternative and seeks the creation of needs to know by various motivational devices—grading, competition, or systems of reward and punishment—to induce learning in its charges. Learning is always a function of need. But the need we are talking about is need from the behaver's point of view, not that of an outsider.

THE SPEED AND ACCURACY OF LEARNING It is well known that the rate of learning may be accelerated by increasing the strength of the learner's need. It can also be accelerated by increasing the opportunities for the differentiation of essential cues and solutions. The effect of increased need on learning has to do with increasing the intensity of effort and exploration. We can check this principle by observing our own behavior. When need is greater, we search harder and longer, and hence we are more likely to find solutions. Of course, there are limits to the degree to which the strength of need wiil affect the accuracy and speed of learning. If the individual's need is too great, her awareness of the need may become so acute and detailed that all other parts of the perceptual field fall into ground, and further differentiation of those parts ceases. Examples of this may be observed in people under conditions of panic; they become the victims of "tunnel vision" (chapter 5). It is a common thing to find newspaper reports of persons being killed in panic because perceptions become too narrowed to make it possible for them to see the obvious solutions to their predicament. One evening, during a student gathering at my home, a throw rug in front of the fireplace caught fire. Alarmed, I hastily picked up the burning

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rug, ran with it through the assembled students to the front door and tossed it outdoors into the snow. Shaken, I returned to the room and apologized to my guests for endangering them as I carried the burning rug through the group. "Why didn't you just kick it into the fireplace?" one of the students asked. Why indeed? That solution never occurred to me. I was so intent on putting the fire out, which is what one does with fires, that I could not see the more obvious and less dangerous solution.

THE LEVELS OF LEARNING Aspects of the perceptual field may be differentiated in varying degrees from ground to clear figure. As a consequence, learning may occur at any level of awareness, from a level so vague that the individual may not be able to report her experience to a level so clear and precise that the individual can report her learning with great keenness and certainty. Many of the things we learn in life are never differentiated in sufficiently clear fashion that we could report them to other people. The principle of "unconscious learning" at low levels of differentiation has been commercially exploited in the development of a record player with an under-pillow speaker, which makes it possible for an individual to hear music, the lines of a play, or even factual information of various sorts while she sleeps. Later, when she seeks to learn these in a waking state, they seem easier to bring to clear figure, apparently because they have already been perceived at a lower level of awareness.

THE PERTINENCE OF LEARNING We have already seen in an earlier chapter that the degree to which any perception will affect behavior is a function of the relationship of that perception to the self. Events perceived as having little relationship to self have little effect on behavior, whereas events perceived as being closely related to self affect behavior in marked degree. The discovery of the relationship of ideas to self is crucial. Without relevance to self there is little personal meaning and little significant learning. There are other ways in which the self-concept affects learning. People behave in terms of their self-concepts. Students who feel they are able to learn are likely to try. Students who do not feel able can be counted on to

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find ways of avoiding learning to escape embarrassment, humiliation, or fear. People who believe they can read, write, figure, or have good ideas approach learning tasks with interest or excitement. Students with opposite concepts of themselves and their abilities are likely to avoid such confrontations by running away from them physically, intellectually, or emotionally. What teacher is not familiar with the student whose body is there in class but whose attention is long gone or lost in a more satisfying world of imagination? People tend to live up to their expectations, and the self-concept is a prime determiner of the attitudes with which people approach learning tasks and the amounts of effort they invest.

THE SELF-CONCEPT IN LEARNING Self-concepts are important in their own right. We know that negative self-concepts are destructive to human personality, effective citizenship, and successful living, whereas positive self-concepts are characteristic of intelligent, well-adjusted, successful human beings. So even if student self-concepts have no effect on learning whatever, schools and teachers would have to make the development of positive self-concepts an important goal of the curriculum and recognize that student self-concepts are being affected no matter what else the student may or may not be learning at any moment. Positive views of self are important not only for learning algebra, reading, chemistry, or philosophy. Positive views of self are important because they are factors in student growth and development, the very reason for a school's existence in the first place. Although differentiation can be made in the not-self portions of the field, it should not be supposed that learning can ever escape from the personality of the learner. Because the perceptual field is always organized with respect to self, differentiation and learning may occur with more or less reference to self; it can never occur unrelated to self. We can learn about events having little to do directly with self if we develop the desire to know about such matters. The objective observations and disciplined experimenting of the physical scientist are attempts of this sort to explore matters of interest with the least possible distortion from self-reference. Such differentiations made in the not-self portion of the field, however, may never be perceived by the learner to apply to "real" problems of life. I recall some years ago congratulating a well-known child psychologist on

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the birth of his first child, then jokingly adding: "Now, John, you can talk like an expert." I was quite unprepared for my friend's reaction. John drew himself up and replied with icy coolness, "I don't think that will make any difference!" Apparently, the learning of this eminent scholar was not perceived as having a practical bearing on his own life and family. Differentiation is a function of need, and if the need is only to know, the effect of differentiation on behaving may never progress beyond an esoteric level of abstraction.

THE ECONOMY OF LEARNING The effective satisfaction of need is best achieved with the greatest possible accuracy of differentiation. Accordingly, learning proceeds to the point of ever more precise figure in the least amount of time. Need satisfaction does not stop here, however. Human need is insatiable and, once satisfied by events differentiated only a moment ago, continues the process of differentiation in ever new and more productive directions. Events learned to the point where they are differentiated in clear figure soon fade into the ground of the perceptual field, being replaced in figure by some new or more extensive differentiation. The economy of the organism requires that we be able to drop what has been differentiated in clear figure further and further into the ground of the field. If every event had to be new and clearly differentiated at every moment, need satisfaction and even the very existence of the organism would be impossible. We are all familiar in our own experience with this movement of what has been learned from clear figure into the total field of our experience. In learning to drive a car, for example, starting, shifting, accelerating, and steering are each at first done painstakingly and with great concentration of effort. Later, as we learn to do these things effectively and smoothly, they become more and more a part of the total situation with which we are concerned. At first our need in driving the car was to differentiate how to turn it on. Having mastered this, the next problem became how to make it go. Later, when we had learned to drive very well, the whole business of driving became mere ground for the more important figures of where we want to go and how we get there. What emerges into figure at one time may become ground for new figures the next.

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CHALLENGE AND THREAT IN LEARNING Effective learning requires getting involved. Whether and how people get involved is determined in large part by the person's experience of challenge or threat in the learning situation. We can observe from our own experience that people feel challenged when confronted with problems that interest them and that they believe they can handle successfully. People feel threatened, on the other hand, when they are confronted with problems they do not feel able to cope with successfully. For effective learning, students must feel challenged rather than threatened. Whether people feel challenged or threatened, however, is not a matter of what the teacher, parent, or boss believes is happening. It is how the student, son, or worker perceives self and situations that counts. With the best of intentions a teacher may believe he is challenging students while actually threatening the daylights out of them. Whether students feel challenged or threatened is a question of how things seem to them, not how they seem to an outsider. The importance of challenge or threat for learning is further underlined by two important effects of threat on human experience, discussed in chapter 5. Threat forces people to defend themselves or their existing positions. We resist threat by maintaining our existing positions or retreating to more defensible ones. Clearly, such resistance to change and defense of existing positions is directly contrary to everything we are trying to do in encouraging learning. Learning requires change and whatever causes students to avoid or defend against change must surely be antithetic to the goals of teaching. The second effect of threat (tunnel vision) occurs when the perceptual field becomes narrowed down to the object of threat, with peripheral events obscured. Under threat, perception becomes riveted on the threatening object, like looking through a tunnel, and accompanying events may not be perceived at all. These dynamics may occur even when we are only mildly threatened, as in the case of some anxiety that keeps popping back into our awareness over and over in the course of a day.3 This tunnel vision effect of threat is also directly opposed to what we are trying to do in teaching. We do not want student perceptions to be narrowed. The purpose of education is to broaden perception, to open awareness. Effective learning calls for challenging students without threatening them. To accomplish this requires awareness of how things are in the perceptual world of students. Teachers must be able to see through student

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eyes, be sensitive enough to student experience to judge whether students are being challenged or threatened. With that understanding teaching strategies can then be adjusted to maximize challenge and minimize threat and so effectively motivate students for further learning.

IDENTIFICATION OR BELONGING IN LEARNING Each of us in the process of growing up learns to identify or feel "one with" the significant people around us. As infants we come to feel one with our parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and children in the neighborhood. Later on we come to identify with "my school," "my state," "my nation, "my world," perhaps even the universe itself. Some of these feelings of oneness or identification with others may be so strong that we speak of them as love. They also have extremely important implications for learning. Humans are essentially social beings, and most of what we learn is in social settings of one sort or another. People learn best when they have a feeling that they are cared for and belong. Feelings of oneness and belonging are stimulating and encouraging. They give people the strength to try and create desires to learn what others around them are interested in. To gain a personal feeling of the effects of identification and belonging on the processes of learning, one needs only to review her own experience. Ask yourself how you feel when you are loved, when you feel you belong or are "one with" the important people in your life. Here are some of the words you probably use to describe your experience: excited, exhilarated, active, stimulated, interested, wanting to be involved. Now ask yourself, what kinds of feelings do you have when you experience alienation, rejection, being an outsider? If you are like most people, I suspect you describe your feelings in such terms as dull, despair, apathy, indifference, and depression, and you want to avoid humiliation, embarrassment, or pain. If the feeling of alienation is very great, you may even feel a desire to revolt or to punish those from whom you feel excluded. Clearly, the feelings accompanying belonging, identification, and caring are constructive and stimulating to learning. Those accompanying alienation are not only destructive to an individual's learning but are very likely to result in behavior that destroys or impedes the learning of others as well. After all, if one does not feel he or she is a member of the club, there is no reason one should pay her dues or look out for the other members.4

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FEEDBACK IN LEARNING If learning is understood as the personal discovery of meaning, it follows that learners must be continuously aware of where they are and where they have to go next. This calls for some kind of feedback or knowledge of results with respect to performance. To be most effective feedback, it seems clear, should be 1. Immediate. Learning is directly affected by the perceived relationship to self. The closer the event to self, the more powerful the motivating effect. Innumerable experiments on conditioning and behavior modification have demonstrated that the motivating power of consequence rapidly decreases with the elapse of time from the original incident. Most potent motivations are immediate ones. For maximal motivation, therefore, feedback or evaluation should occur as close to the event as possible. 2. Personal. For maximal effect, feedback or evaluation should be personal. The learner must know continuously where she is, what the outcome of actions just completed is, and what has to be done next. This is highly personal data quite unrelated to what others may be doing. Comparative data locates the learner with respect to others. It sheds no light on where she is with respect to self and contributes nothing at all to comprehension of what the learner just did or where to go next. Comparison with others puts labels on the learner that may encourage or discourage her efforts. Labels also have the effect of diverting attention away from achievement of the task to concern for standing as a competitor. 3. Challenging. For effective motivation, feedback must be challenging rather than threatening. As we have already seen, people feel challenged by problems that interest them and that seem to them to offer a chance of success. People feel threatened when they are not able to cope with events. These principles also apply to the nature of effective feedback. 4. Relevant to the task. For effective motivation, feedback should concentrate the learner's attention on the task itself. The locus of satisfaction for learning should be in the accomplishment. Learning for some extraneous or artificially contrived reward distracts the learner from the main task and is very likely to result only in temporary learning. Who has not studied hard to learn some unimportant or uninteresting topic in order to get a good grade, to avoid failure, or to fulfill a requirement only to find the material was quickly forgotten when the extraneous goal was achieved? For many years in the course of my teaching, I frequently employed such comments as "I like that," "That's good!" or "I'm proud of you." A wise

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teacher, however, pointed out to me that such "motivating" comments place the locus of student satisfaction in pleasing me rather than in achievement of the task. Accordingly, in more recent years I find myself more often using phrases such as "Wow! I'll bet that makes you feel good"; "What do you know! Last week you couldn't do that"; "It makes you feel good to do that, doesn't it?" or "Now that you know how to do that, perhaps you would like to help Fred." 5. Point the way to next steps. If possible, effective feedback should do more than simply report where the learner is. If it can help the learner perceive what needs to come next, the motivating effect can be immensely enhanced. This is another reason that feedback should be related to the task itself. Satisfactions inherent in the matter being learned are more likely to contain clues for next steps, suggest hypotheses to be explored, indicate mistakes to be corrected. Giving a student an A for work on a project says only, "Your instructor approves of what you did." A statement like "I guess you feel good about that," "You are very near the end," or "What do you think you need to do next?" is much more likely to be relevant and helpful to the student. In this chapter so far, we have, for the most part, been referring to teachers and classroom events as illustrations of the principles we have been exploring. It should be clear, however, that this discussion of learning and change is relevant to all situations in which persons are seeking to influence the behavior of others. The principles of learning apply universally to any setting in which personal change is sought, whether it be parenting, the workplace, sports, government, the armed forces, or international affairs.

DIFFERENTIATION AND HABIT The apparently automatic behavior that results from differentiations no longer in clear figure in the perceptual field is called, in external approaches to psychology, habit. Although such behaviors seem automatic, they are truly not at all identical. The fingernail biter does not bite her nails in exactly the same fashion every time. Careful observation will make it clear that she chooses which nail to bite, which part, how far, and when to do it depending who may be watching. Though her behavior seems automatic, it is really adaptive. Nor should it be assumed that a so-called habit ever occurs without meaning or without some degree of awareness. Behavior is always a function of the total field and never exists without meaning.

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Habits, from a perceptual field perspective, are behaviors resulting from low-level perceptions in the phenomenal field. The assumption that habits are automatic and without meaning is probably based on the fact that the person often does not seem to be keenly aware of her behavior at the moment it occurs. A confirmed smoker may suddenly find herself with a lit cigarette in her hand without having been consciously aware of (i.e., able to report) the sequence of behaviors that have brought her to this condition. What has happened is that smoking, originally a series of techniques for the satisfaction of need in clear figure, has now become part of the ground of her perceptual field as more immediate problems of need satisfaction arise into figure. The confirmed smoker's habit is a lowerlevel differentiation in the perceptual field. Its presence in the ground of the field, however, necessarily affects behavior even though it exists at a lower level of differentiation than the immediate events in figure for the individual at the moment.

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING Remembering and forgetting, like any other behavior, are functions of the differentiations the person is able to make in her perceptual field. We may define remembering and forgetting as functions of the ability of a person to recall into figure events she has previously differentiated. As products of perception, remembering and forgetting will be affected, just as learning is, by those factors that control the processes of perceiving. What can be remembered can only be what was once perceived. To ask a person to remember what she has not perceived is asking the impossible. Some of the frustrations adults suffer in attempting to deal with young children often arise from a failure to understand this fact. What adult has not experienced the frustration, for example, of asking a child, "What happened?" and getting for an answer, "I don't know!" In the adult's world it seems inconceivable that anybody should have forgotten so soon what happened to her. We are likely to forget that the perceptions of children are far different from those of adults. A child confronted with a highly threatening situation, for example, may have differentiated little more than the overwhelming enormity of the threatening object and her own inadequacy to deal with it. Little wonder, then, that she finds herself confused still further by adult demands that she describe with accuracy and precision the what, why, how, who, and when of the situation in which she

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has been involved. What is going on here is not so much a failure of a child's memory as of an adult's understanding. The perceptual field at any instant is, from the point of view of the behaver, her whole universe and consequently includes what she knows of the past at that moment and what she infers about the future at that moment. Like all other parts of the field, these memories of the past or expectations of the future will emerge into figure or lapse into ground in conformity with the needs of the individual and the activity she is pursuing. Like all other parts of the field, they also are subject to distortion and modification by the major variables of perception we have previously discussed. The Clarity of Awareness Generally speaking, we will be able to reproduce on demand most effectively and efficiently those events that have become, as a consequence of our experience, sharply in figure. Events in the ground are always more difficult to bring again into figure. This creates some serious problems for our courts and the legal profession. Two people standing on the street corner talking with each other, for example, may be aware of the traffic patterns surrounding them only as vague and indistinct movement. When suddenly two cars collide, their attention is immediately drawn to the collision and the surrounding events. Later, on the witness stand, they can give quite precise accounts of the position of the cars, their condition, and perhaps the behavior of the passengers immediately following the impact. Their perceptions of the events leading up to the accident, however, may be far less clear, even highly confusing, as this calls for differentiation of events never clearly perceived. Unhappily, it is the events leading up to the causes of the accident that are of most concern to the judge, jury, and attorneys involved in the case. The Effect of Need on Memory What is remembered is always a function of the individual's basic need. Whether or not a person can differentiate on a later occasion what has been previously differentiated will be affected by her need, both at the time of the first experience and at the time that recall is demanded. We have already seen that a person's need at the time of the occurrence of an event will determine what is differentiated in clear figure at that time. In the case of the auto accident cited above, the need of the persons on the

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street corner to talk with each other may have caused each person to be in such clear figure to the other that neither participant could perceive with any degree of clarity what was going on about her. With a shift of interest to the actual collision, differentiations having to do with that event could occur with much greater clarity and precision. An intense need of any kind has an ordering effect on the perceptual field and may make it difficult for differentiations to occur. Because only one event at a time can appear in figure in the perceptual field, the effect of need in focusing attention in one direction may make it impossible to perceive some other aspect of the field at that moment. This is what often happens in stage fright, when the person's concern about herself and her performance become so clearly in figure that she cannot perceive her lines and later claims that she forgot them. If she has been well trained, this proves only a temporary lapse, and she is soon able to turn her attention again to her speeches and get on with the play. Other Field Effects on Memory and Forgetting What the individual experiences when she is first exposed to an event is always a function of the total field at that instant. What she perceives is what best fits the existing field. This is also true of what is remembered. The perceptual field is always meaningful; and what is remembered is affected by the existing meanings in the field. It thus happens that a person reporting on a previous experience may often be observed to distort her report in terms of what she now knows to be meaningful. This raises some additional problems and new causes of error for the psychology of testimony we mentioned earlier. Because a person's field always has the feeling of reality, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between an event that really happened and an event that now seems reasonably to have happened. For many years, I recalled very clearly an event from my childhood. One day, as a grown-up, I was reporting the event, only to have my mother tell me, "Son, that never happened to you." She then explained what truly happened with such clarity and proof that I had to admit she was right; it never happened. Some things we remember not because they occurred but because it seems to us that they must have occurred. The perceptual field is always meaningful and related to the satisfaction of need. Need, however, cannot be efficiently and effectively satisfied if it is only possible to deal with events that are in clear figure. As a consequence, much of our forgetting actually contributes to the efficiency of our behavior. For example, I have to know the names of the students in

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my classes, and if the class is not too large, within a few sessions I can manage to differentiate the names of most of the people in the group. When the semester is over, however, I have often been embarrassed by meeting a student whose name I could have easily called last week but now find myself quite unable to do so. The reason for this seems to be that, with the end of the semester, I no longer need to know the student's name. As a consequence such differentiations are difficult to make again when my perceptual field has become organized in a new direction. I have even been fascinated to discover that although I had great difficulty in calling the names of individual students within a week or two after a class was completed, at a reunion with the same class several years later, sitting about the table as we did on earlier occasions, I was delighted to find that I knew their names as I had during the days when the class was actively in session. Apparently, the most important factor affecting memory is the need of the individual herself. Some politicians with very intense need to call people by name have been able to develop phenomenal abilities in this direction.

REASONING AND PROBLEM SOLVING Just as perception and learning differ only in the complexity of the differentiation required, so problem solving and reasoning also appear to be functions of differentiation. All behavior is, in a sense, problem solving. The important question is, what is the nature of a superior ability in this direction? How does one become more skillful or efficient? Problem solving has to do with the individual's ability to perceive new, different, or more efficient aspects of a complex situation. Even the lowest animals are able to differentiate in this fashion in some degree; but the ability to differentiate on a symbolic level, available to us as human beings, opens vast new horizons for effective, efficient differentiation, and hence need satisfaction. Operating on a symbolic level gives us a kind of shorthand in terms of which we have an immensely increased mobility of action. As a consequence of the experience of past generations of thinkers, techniques of inductive and deductive reasoning have come to be formalized as particularly fruitful approaches to problem solving. The experiences of more recent generations, living in the midst of the marvelous accomplishments of the physical sciences, have added the experimental method of hypothesis, analysis, experiment, and conclusion as the "right"

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approach to reasoning. These methods are useful devices by which it becomes possible to bring order and meaning to large bodies of data. However, the attempt to teach problem solving and reasoning by the use of such formal devices usually fails. What is logically reasonable is not always humanly practicable. Sometimes the attempt to utilize formal techniques of problem solving may interfere with the process of reasoning by turning attention away from the aspects of the perceptual field in which the solution must be found. The field in which a problem must be solved is a field organized with respect to the problem. Preoccupation with a method of solving problems brings into figure aspects of the field having nothing to do with the actual solution of the problem. After all, the solution to problems can be found only in the field pertinent to those solutions. Two things cannot be in figure in the perceptual field at once, and when methods are in figure, concepts cannot be. Improvement in reasoning and problem solving, it would appear, is not likely to be brought about effectively by formal methods. What improves capacity in problem solving are the same things that produce richness, variety, and availability of perceptions in the perceptual field. What improves reasoning and problem solving are the same factors that produce creativity, spontaneity, and the kind of free and open perceptual field that we have found to be characteristic of the adequate personality.

CHAPTER 11

Self-Actualization and Health

I

n the incessant search for being and becoming that all of us are engaged in throughout our lives, some of us are more successful in achieving the maintenance and enhancement of self than others. On one hand, some lucky persons find high levels of personal fulfillment and, in turn, make solid, even outstanding contributions to society. At the other extreme are persons, destined to live out their lives in frustration and despair, who find it difficult or impossible to achieve satisfying levels of personal fulfillment.

MASLOW'S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS Abraham Maslow suggested a helpful hierarchy of the relationship of human needs to self-actualization and fulfillment. He pointed out that human needs seem to exist in an ascending order from physical needs to self-actualizing ones as follows:1 Level 1. Physiologic needs. These include those very basic physiologic requirements for keeping a person alive and operating, like the need for air, food, and water. Level 2. Safety needs. At this level are the need for security, stability, freedom from fear, and the need for structure and limits.

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Level 3. Belonging and love needs. These include affectionate relationships with people and the feeling that one belongs in some social context. Level 4. Needs for self-esteem. Needs for reputation, recognition, importance, achievement, adequacy, or mastery. Level 5. Self-actualization needs. The need for self-fulfillment, to actualize one's potential. Maslow recognized that this description of human needs was more an approximation than a fundamental or predictable phenomenon. He called his scheme a hierarchy of needs. In perceptual theory, however, the term need is reserved for the organism's basic drive for maintenance and enhancement of self. If we think of this hierarchy as areas in which persons may seek for need satisfaction and substitute "goals" or "values" for Maslow's "needs," the concept of such a hierarchy fits this perceptual field theory quite comfortably. In Maslow's thinking, individuals typically move from step to step in this hierarchy as they seek need fulfillment. He also suggested that persons must generally find satisfaction for lower levels before they are able to concentrate energies on higher ones, and many people in our society never achieve the level of self-actualization at all. People cannot think nice thoughts about democracy on an empty belly or exert great effort toward self-actualization from a position of fear and insecurity. Mapping the progress of clients in the course of psychotherapy, clients do indeed seem to progress toward self-actualization in roughly such step-by-step fashion. Few clients come to counseling in such desperate straits as those in Maslow's Level 1. The remaining goals or values can, however, frequently be observed as clients move from feeling harassed, unloved, and inadequate at the beginning of therapy to feelings of self-acceptance, assurance, and adequacy when therapy is successful. What we believe about the nature of healthy personality is a matter of extreme importance. Whatever we decide is the nature of healthy personality must automatically define the primary goals of the helping professions. Helping people become more fulfilled, self-actualized, or healthy is what education, counseling, psychotherapy, and mental health are all about. How we define the nature of the healthy person must also define the goals of education, government, political action, public health, and social welfare. Helping people to fulfill their potential or facilitate the achievement of personal fulfillment is precisely what all those institutions are presumably about.

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For many years psychology was saddled with a definition of health or adjustment as a function of the "normal curve." This placed well-adjusted, healthy people in the middle and maladjusted or unhealthy ones at the extremes. Such a definition makes good health synonymous with being average, a view that has never been satisfactory to professional helpers. It also had the unhappy result of classifying many of our most brilliant and creative persons as maladjusted. More recently, investigators have been taking a different tack. They seek to discover what it means to be truly healthy. They are no longer asking, "What is normal?" Instead, they are asking, "What are the upper limits of human capacities? What does it mean to be supremely healthy in the highest sense of that term?" Workers studying health from this perspective have spoken of it in many ways: high-level wellness, self-actualization, the fully functioning person, self-fulfillment, the adequate personality, or, in the years before we became mindful of sexist language, the new man. By whatever title, the search has tried to establish the parameters of fully functioning, extremely healthy persons.

THE TRAIT APPROACH There are two ways in which self-actualization generally has been examined. One of these approaches the matter from an external frame of reference, the viewpoint of an outside observer. That approach is essentially descriptive, resulting in more or less comprehensive lists of behavioral traits or characteristics of self-actualizing persons. This is the frame of reference employed by Abraham Maslow, who listed many traits of the selfactualizing persons he studied. Among these were such characteristics as more efficient perceptions of reality; spontaneity; acceptance of self, others, and nature; problem centering; detachment; autonomy; creativity; independence of culture and environs; a philosophical and unhostile sense of humor; freshness of appreciation; mystic experience; oceanic feeling; deeper, more profound relationships; democratic character structure; resistance to enculturation; and clear discrimination between means and ends. Other authors observing from an external frame of reference have suggested such additional traits as "openness to experience, living in a more existential fashion, being and becoming a process, having an increasing trust in the organism."2

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Although such external observations are useful for descriptive purposes, they are essentially symptomatic. They describe the symptoms of self-actualization but tell us little about how people get that way. They leave counselors, teachers, parents, and mental health workers in the dark as to the dynamics by which such characteristics are acquired. Take, for example, Maslow's item "a philosophical, unhostile sense of humor." What produces such a sense of humor, and how does one go about helping a person achieve it? Imagine having to live with someone who is working on his sense of humor!

THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD APPROACH In this field theory, the preferred approach to self-actualization is understanding from a perceptual or experiential orientation; that is to say, from the point of view of the behaver himself. One asks, "How do selfactualizing persons perceive themselves and the world?" Looking at the matter in this way has many advantages. Most important, a perceptual frame of reference greatly reduces the number of dimensions to be confronted and provides immediate clues for action to help persons achieve better health.

PERCEPTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION The search for maintenance and enhancement of self is never ending. It should not be supposed that total fulfillment is ever reached. Selfactualization is a level of fulfillment persons can achieve only in some degree—some more, some less, but nobody ever achieves it completely. Some unfortunate citizens live out their lives in only minimal amounts of fulfillment. Others achieve high degrees of self-actualization. From a field perspective, the major perceptual characteristics of self-actualizing persons seem to fall into four general categories: Positive Views of Self The self-concept as we have described it is an organization of self-meanings or ways of seeing self, varying in importance or centrality in a given per-

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son. The basic need for each of us, moreover, is to maintain and enhance the self. Adequate personalities have achieved a high level of such need satisfaction. They see themselves more frequently in enhancing than in destructive ways. In our society this usually means that adequate people see themselves, among other things, as liked, wanted, acceptable, able, and worthy. They perceive themselves as persons of dignity and integrity who belong and contribute to the world in which they operate. Their phenomenal selves are, for the most part, defined in ways adequate to deal with those aspects of life important to the achievement of need satisfaction in their culture. In another culture, to be sure, adequate people might perceive themselves quite differently. Most of us would feel woefully inadequate in a society that valued skill in the war dance, horse stealing, or spear fishing, for example. Within the confines of the society important to him, however, the adequate personality perceives himself as capable and effective. The majority of the concepts of self that go to make up his peculiar phenomenal self are positive and appropriate for the culture in which he lives. This is not to say that adequate personalities are incapable of negative self-perceptions. On the contrary, they may very well have negative concepts of self within the total organization of the phenomenal self. An adequate person might conceivably have within his self-organization such concepts of self as "I am not a very attractive person; I am thoroughly disliked by my father-in-law; I am a terrible golfer, joke teller, or typist." Negative concepts of self are not absent in the total organization of the adequate personality. They do not, however, color and distort the entire organization. Such perceptions maintain their proper perspective as parts of the self-concept but do not overbalance it. A very large part of mental health assistance consists primarily of helping persons gain a new perspective of self so that negative self-perceptions do not exert an undue influence on the organization of the phenomenal self. Concepts of self, we have seen, vary not only in number but also in centrality or importance to the person. Adequacy is thus not simply a function of the number of positive perceptions; it is a function of the relative importance of the concepts of self in the total economy of a given personality. A positive self-concept provides a person with a great resource for dealing with the vicissitudes of life. Positive self-perceptions give the individual a feeling of adequacy and confidence so that he approaches the events of life with an essentially positive, assured bearing, which in itself is an important head start. Research on leadership suggests that leaders generally possess more favorable attitudes toward self and others.3 The

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very presumption of success is likely to make success more likely. Moreover positive self-perceptions are conducive to still further perceptions of the same order. This common observation finds its place in our folk sayings: "Nothing succeeds like success"; "Them as has, gets"; "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The positive self-perceptions characteristic of the adequate personality act also as a reservoir against which negative, damaging experiences are perceived in a more accurate and realistic perspective. Because the self is overwhelmingly defined in positive terms, most negative self-perceptions can be readily assimilated with a minimum of disturbance to the whole structure. They can be accepted and taken in stride. Feeling fundamentally self-confident, the adequate person is less ruffled by unhappy events. He finds it possible to take criticism calmly and to evaluate it clearly. Instead of being disorganized by self-damaging experiences, he evaluates negative percepts against the larger mass of basically positive experience, in which perspective they seem far less important or overwhelming. Because adequate personalities do not feel deprived, they have far less need to defend the self against external attack. Assaults on self do not seem crucial or overwhelming. Rather, they seem well within the capacities of the self to cope and may even be perceived by the adequate personality as exciting and challenging opportunities to test his mettle. Self-testing for adequate persons can itself be an exhilarating experience, to be met with interest and joy. The possession of an essentially positive experience of self provides the individual with a basic security, a firm foundation for meeting even the more difficult aspects of life with courage. Actually, each one of us is striving for the best he can be in everything he does. The goal of all behavior, we have seen, is the achievement of personal adequacy. The search for the maintenance and enhancement of self is never ending. It is a dynamic, active search, a continuous striving to become the ultimate of which one is capable. Other authors have called this active "seeking to become" by such names as growth tendency, self-consistency, self-realization, self-actualization, and self-fulfillment. Acceptance or Openness to Experience The very fact of the self-actualizing person's positive self-concept makes more likely the capacity for acceptance and openness to experience. Because self-actualizing persons have a large reservoir of positive experience, they are able to confront further experience and deal with it appropriately. Acceptance, in turn, makes possible even greater adequacy.

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Earlier we pointed out that a person confronted with a particular event may deal with it in any of three ways. The experience may be (a) symbolized, perceived, and organized into some relationship to the self; (b) ignored because there is no perceived relationship to the self structure; or (c) denied symbolization or given a distorted symbolization because the experience is inconsistent with the self-structure. The first of these is what we mean by acceptance. An adequate personality is one capable of admitting any and all experiences and integrating this experience into his existing self-structure. Such a person can acknowledge his experience, allow it entrance into consideration, and relate it in some fashion to the existing concepts he holds of himself and the world about him. This keeps the selfactualizing person keenly and continually in touch with reality. The capacity for acceptance should not be confused with resignation. Resignation implies giving up on or giving in to events. Adequate personalities are not defeated by experience. By acceptance is meant a person's willingness to confront or cope with events. Self-actualizing persons have an openness or readiness for new experience and are capable of reorganizing the phenomenal field to make most effective use of it. They are able to confront unpleasant events honestly and with a minimum of distress. This untrammeled relationship to reality makes possible more adequate and fulfilling behavior simply because people with more and better data are likely to come up with better answers. Acceptance, in the sense we have used it here, is a sine qua non for effective, efficient, satisfying behavior. The person able to accept is optimally open to all experience. He has fewer limits imposed on what he can explore and examine. He has less need to defend or distort his experiences and so is capable of examining even that which is too frightening or unpleasant for less adequate personalities to consider. This straightforward, uncomplicated kind of relationship to experience gives the adequate personality a tremendous advantage in dealing with life, for behavior based on more and better evidence will almost certainly be more effective, efficient, and satisfying in the long run. This open, "all the cards on the table" kind of relationship to events occurring about him is just as characteristic of the adequate personality's approach to perceptions about himself. The openness to experience characteristic of self-actualizing persons extends to experiences of self as well as to outside events. Self-actualizers can confront the fact that they are sometimes prone to human failings. They are quite capable of accepting unflattering perceptions of self without being crushed or disorganized by the experience. This does not mean that they are self-satisfied or that they

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like themselves unduly. Acceptance does not require liking or approval. It has to do with straightforward relationships to reality, acknowledgment of fact. Acceptance of self should not be confused with "liking." Acceptance is no more related to liking than it is to resignation. Acceptance has to do with the admission of fact, the acknowledgment of existence, and has nothing to do with liking. The adequate personality may accept the fact, for example, that he is sometimes unfair or impatient with his children, but this hardly means that he likes himself so. Liking and disliking have to do with judgments about self, whereas acceptance is nonjudgmental. The adequate personality neither overvalues nor undervalues self. He is maximally able to put his self "on the block" for examination and scrutiny like any other datum. Feelings of Oneness and Identification Human beings are essentially social organisms that live and die embedded in various cultures. The achievement of personal fulfillment is therefore determined in part by a person's success in developing mutually fulfilling relationships with other people. The process begins very early, as young children perceive themselves "one with" parents and members of their immediate families. Later, persons may feel a sense of identification with playmates, members of an extended family, and eventually with institutions such as school, church, nation, and in the case of extremely healthy persons, perhaps with all humanity. The feeling of oneness and identification in the human condition seems to be a prime characteristic of self-actualizing persons. Self-actualizing persons are likely to be deeply compassionate, altruistic people. Because the basic need of the organism is to maintain and enhance the self, whomever or whatever the self is identified with also must be maintained and enhanced. People behave toward those they feel "one with" as though such people were indeed identical with self. The stronger a person's identification with others, the more certain it is that he will seek the fulfillment of others as well. If persons feel deeply one with others, then what they do for self they do for others too. The more adequate the personality, the more likely the person is to feel a sense of oneness with things and people about him. Adequate personalities behave in ways beneficial to all of us, not because it is a good thing to do but because behaving so is a normal and natural expression of themselves. It is not the adequate people we have to fear in our society but the

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persons who do not feel they belong, who see no need to consider the welfare of others or to abide by the rules. It is the inadequate persons, the deprived, the rejected, the alone in our society who, seeing themselves apart from the rest of us, can behave in ways that are dangerous and destructive. A Rich and Available Perceptual Field Truly adequate persons are not stupid. Self-actualized persons are well informed. This does not mean necessarily that they have been to college or have advanced degrees. They do, however, have rich and available perceptual fields; extensive enough and rich enough to provide effective bases for successful interaction with the worlds they live in, on one hand, and free enough to be available when they are needed, on the other. This is not to say that self-actualization depends on any specific knowledge or information. There are no oughts or shoulds to define what information is essential to self-actualization. The knowledge required is a highly individual matter, related to the person's perceptions of self, goals, purposes, and whatever else is needed to live effectively and efficiently in the cultures and circumstances in which that person moves. Much human failure and unhappiness occurs as a consequence of ignorance: of the external world, of self, or of one's relationships to others. People need understanding for survival. To live successfully in the complex, interdependent modern world requires ever increasing understanding. But the possession of information is not enough for successful living. A rich and extensive perceptual field is of little moment if information is not available when needed. Few of us ever misbehave because we do not know better. Rather, at the moment of acting, something else was in figure, and our knowledge of what we ought to do was not available to affect behavior. Self-actualizing persons seem to have both rich perceptual fields and immediate access to information when it is needed. As a consequence, they are able to perform in ways more efficient and satisfying, both for themselves and for the societies they inhabit.

SOME BEHAVIORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ADEQUATE PERSONALITIES At this point we may ask, how do the four characteristics of healthy personalities in this field approach jibe with the findings of researchers examining healthy persons from trait or behavioral views? Actually, they fit

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very well. Persons who possess the four perceptual characteristics of healthy personalities show many of the traits and behaviors observed in external researches. They also show additional traits and behaviors, which make them likely to be both personally successful and important contributors to the institutions and societies they inhabit. Let us examine some of these. More Efficient Behavior Adequate personalities behave more effectively and efficiently than their less adequate fellows. The great reservoir of positive perceptions and the capacity for acceptance of self and the world give the adequate person a tremendous advantage in dealing with life. Being under no great necessity for self-defense, he has less need to distort his perceptions or to select them in terms of his peculiar unfulfilled goals or desires. He is able to behave more effectively and efficiently because he behaves in the light of more and better data. Being more open to experience, he has a wider phenomenal field on which to base his behavior. He is able to behave more often from choice than from necessity. The person who is able to behave from a phenomenal field open to more data has a great advantage over the rest of us. He is able to play a better game because he holds more and better cards. With more data available, adequate personalities are able to penetrate more directly to the heart of problems. They often possess an uncanny ability to place their finger on the core of issues and are thus able to deal with matters more precisely and appropriately. Their perceptions are less complicated by extraneous events, personal goals and values, or the necessity for immediate self-gratification. Because adequate persons feel fundamentally secure, they are also able to evaluate themselves more accurately. As a consequence, their levels of aspiration are far more likely to be realistic and attainable. Feeling secure within himself, the adequate person has less need to hide from the unpleasant and can feel more comfortable with himself even when under attack. This fundamental security makes it possible to deal with events with fewer personal axes to grind. Adequate persons are able to be and to give of themselves with courage and conviction. Adequate personalities are capable of greater toleration of ambiguity, that is, they are able to live comfortably with unsolved problems. They do not have to have an answer at once. Consequently, they are less likely to accept partial solutions to problems as sufficient or final. With a backlog

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of security, they are not easily upset when confronted by events whose meanings are not immediately apparent. Because they do not have to have an answer, they are able to consider wider samples of evidence and to deal with events with far more patience than the rest of us can. The person who is capable of seeing in broader perspective and with less necessity for arriving at foregone conclusions obviously has a wider choice of action. He can deal with matters more objectively because less seems to be at stake. As a consequence, such people are likely to make fewer mistakes and run up fewer blind alleys. The value of this capacity for society can hardly be overestimated. Spontaneity And Creativity Closely associated with the greater efficiency of behavior of the adequate personality and growing out of the same basic characteristics of the phenomenal field is the capacity for spontaneous creative behavior. The reservoir of positive perceptions and the ability to accept new experience provide a firm basis from which the adequate person can launch into new areas of experience. Such persons have far less need to defend themselves and consequently are able to devote much more time and attention to wider fields of experience. Feeling fundamentally secure, they are capable of experimenting, branching out, and extending themselves to the limit. They are even capable, when necessary, of placing themselves in jeopardy for the sheer joy of testing their own limits. Such people are to be found among the most spontaneous and creative people of every generation. The originality of adequate persons is what one would logically expect as a consequence of the broader, richer phenomenal fields characteristic of such persons. Adequate people sometimes seem to fairly "pop" with ideas. Their more efficient perceptions make it possible for them to penetrate more effectively into premises while others are still muddling about with techniques. Persons dealing with the essence of ideas rather than their forms are far less likely to confuse means and ends. Because they operate from more inclusive frames of reference, they can often perceive more adequate, creative, and original solutions to life problems. They can concern themselves with problems and issues and avoid being so bogged down in detail as to miss the major aspects. The kind of openness to experience we have been discussing has another effect on the behavior of adequate people. It makes possible a capacity for wonder and a sensitivity to events that makes a thrilling experience of much

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that may appear humdrum and ordinary to others. Maslow speaks of this as a continued freshness of appreciation and describes it as follows: Self-actualized people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively the basic goods of life with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others. Thus, for such people, every sunset is as beautiful as the first one, any flower may be of breath-taking loveliness, even after he has seen a million flowers. The thousandth baby he sees is just as miraculous a product as the first one he saw. He remains as convinced of his luck in marriage thirty years after his marriage and is as surprised by his wife's beauty when she is sixty as he was forty years before. For such people, even the casual workday, moment-to-moment business of living can be thrilling, exciting, and ecstatic.4 Autonomy The four perceptual characteristics of self-actualization mentioned above provide adequate personalities with a much higher degree of independence of the social and physical forces that bind many of the rest of us. They seem less in the grip of external events and respond more to inner wellsprings of understanding and motivation. They have a profound respect for their own dignity and integrity as well as that of others and so utilize themselves and their experience as the basic frame of reference for much of their behavior. As a result, they are able to break loose from many of the petty tyrannies of their surroundings to deal with events straightforwardly and uncomplicatedly. This autonomy seems a direct outgrowth of the individual's openness to experience and trust in self. The adequate personality discovers in one fashion or another that his self is a highly trustworthy, effective instrument. As a result he comes increasingly to trust his perceptions of self and the world about him. He discovers that his feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and understandings are, more often than not, effective and efficient guides to behaving. He learns to appreciate himself as an ongoing, sensitive, trustworthy process. Instead of defending himself against his experience or dealing with life at arm's length, he finds he can immerse himself in events, confident of his ability to assimilate and grow with interaction. This straightforward, uncomplicated relationship to life and to self makes possible a greater awareness, a quicker perception, and a more accurate judgment of all aspects of experience, including self.

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Being closely in touch with events and able to trust his own experience, the adequate personality finds living far less complicated. Everyone engages in two kinds of behavior: coping and expressive. Coping behaviors are the things we do to deal with the situations we face. Expressive behaviors are those things we do simply as expressions, the ways we act straightforwardly without thinking or planning. Adequate personalities do far less coping with life and far more expressing. Just by expressing they cope. Compassion Having little need to be defensive, adequate persons find it possible to perceive and behave toward their fellows with a minimum of hostility. They accept people for what they are: human beings with interesting individual quirks and characteristics, to be comprehended without fear, hatred, or distortion. Identification, combined with a capacity for acceptance, gives adequate persons deep and extensive feelings of being "one with" their fellow citizens. The ability to place oneself in another person's shoes makes it possible for adequate persons to understand their fellows and to communicate with depth and intensity of feeling. It also facilitates the achievement of a broad feeling of oneness with mankind in general, sometimes referred to as "one in the human condition." With less pressing need to demonstrate their adequacy or to strive desperately in areas in which they feel deprived, adequate persons are free to accept, appreciate, and love other people. They do not find it necessary to use others for solely personal gratification and, as a consequence, can devote themselves more fully to other people. They have the capacity to give of themselves. The capacity for compassion that is characteristic of adequate persons extends to themselves as well. Adequate persons have less feeling of guilt and failure, in part because they are more successful, effective people but also because they are more realistic and accepting. They do not expect themselves or others to be what they are not. They accept their fundamental humanity and forgive themselves as well as others for the limitations of human frailty. Such compassion for self makes possible an open, accepting relationship with the world about them. With less pressing need for self-aggrandizement, adequate persons can be content with secondary roles. They are under less compulsion to prove themselves at the expense of others. Compassion, understanding, responsibility and humility are a natural outgrowth of the capacities for acceptance and identification typical of their

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processes of perception and the fundamentally positive phenomenal selves they possess.

THE ADEQUATE SELF AND SOCIETY An adequate self, in the terms in which we have described it, will produce an individual who not only satisfies his own need but will operate to the ultimate satisfaction of his society as well. Every individual lives in and is dependent on society. As long as his behavior is consistent with the expectancy of the members of society, he operates smoothly and effectively and with a minimum of threat to himself from that society or to the society from himself. A person with an adequate phenomenal self will react quickly and easily to his society. Because he is also dependent on society in large part for need satisfaction, he cannot operate in ways that would be destructive to it. When threats do occur from his society, he is capable of accepting them and modifying himself accordingly. It should not be supposed that because adequate persons have a close and sensitive relationship to their societies that they must necessarily be conformists. The spontaneity and creativity of self-actualizing people would not permit complete conformity. Adequate persons may be conventional or unconventional as demanded by the situations they encounter in their search for enhancement of themselves and the societies with which they are identified. Conformity as an end in itself may never enter their phenomenal fields at all. Their adjustment is often to a larger society rather than to a restricted subgroup. Thus, they might be out of harmony with a smaller group but in a closer relationship to broad human goals. Society has little to fear from adequate personalities. It is not the people who feel liked, wanted, acceptable, and able who cause difficulties for the rest of us. The individuals in our culture who represent an ever-present danger are those unfortunates who see themselves as unliked, unwanted, unacceptable, and unable, who are incapable of acceptance, and who have little or no feeling of identification with the rest of us. Adequate persons provide leadership and the dynamic force that makes possible both their own good as well as that of their fellows. They often become the focal point around which many of the rest of us can rally. In a very real sense adequate persons provide the backbone of democracy. They are the kind of people a democracy seeks to produce and are at the same time the kind of people on whom the success of a democracy depends.

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THE ADEQUATE PERSON IN CRISIS Throughout this chapter we have seen that the adequate personality has more effective, efficient, and dependable relationships with the world about him. Nevertheless, there are those who loudly proclaim the virtues of failure, rejection, and humiliation as devices to be liberally used in the training of the young, in the belief that intense experience of failure and indignity toughens the individual and makes him strong in later adversity. Nothing could be further from the truth. The idea seems to have arisen from the uncritical observer who, seeing crises as the common element in the development of great people, advocates overcoming crises as the necessary road to success. This is like the man who, having acquired hangovers from scotch and soda, bourbon and soda, rye and soda, and gin and soda, gave up soda. The best guarantee that persons will be able to deal with problems in the future is their success in doing so in the past. Personal adequacy is a consequence of success experience, not failure. Those who most staunchly defend the "school of hard knocks" mostly advocate it for other people's children and celebrate it only if it results in positive outcomes. Adequate personalities are not a luxury in our society, but an ever increasing necessity. People in societies band together to achieve greater personal adequacy. As a consequence, it is necessary for us to search always for new and better ways of providing people with the kind of positive experiences and relationships that contribute to their adequacy. The best guarantee we have that people will operate effectively to fulfill their own and other people's needs is that their own need for feelings of worth and value has been adequately filled in the past. This principle has vast implications for every phase of human relationships, whether we speak of child-rearing practices, educational methods, labor-management relations, or the relationships of nations with one another.

CHAPTER

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Troubled Selves

I

t would be deeply satisfying if we were able to construct in our time a society all of whose members were truly healthy personalities. Unfortunately, we have not yet progressed so far. There still exist in our society inadequate personalities who eke out an existence with little or no satisfaction either to themselves or to anyone else. Some of these attract our attention by careers of violence and revolt. Others live out their lives in silence and despair. The most inadequate we call mentally retarded, criminal, or mentally ill, and these fill our jails and our mental hospitals to overflowing. Such unhappy people represent a drag upon the rest of us and a pitiful waste of human potentialities. We have described truly healthy personalities as those who have achieved a high degree of need satisfaction or self-actualization. Ill health represents a falling short of personal fulfillment in greater or lesser degree. In chapter 11 we examined a continuum of need satisfaction from physical needs to self-actualization. Everyone lies somewhere on that continuum, more or less frustrated or successful in achieving the maintenance and enhancement of self. Health and ill health is thus a matter of degree. Frustrated personalities are those who feel unable to cope with life in one or more important respects. They come into being in the same fashion as healthy persons, as a result of the peculiar experiences they have had in the process of growing up. Whereas adequate persons see themselves as capable of coping with life, inadequate people have more or less serious doubts about their capac776

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ities to deal with events. Their experience has taught them that they are, more often than not, unliked, unwanted, unable, unacceptable, unworthy or the like. Seeing themselves so, troubled personalities find living a difficult and hazardous process in which they must constantly be prepared for emergencies. They feel threatened so much of the time that we might well use the term "threatened people" as synonymous with inadequate personalities. Seen from an external view persons at the lower end of the health continuum seem almost to be seeking their own destruction as they struggle one way or another to find some modicum of self-fulfillment. These struggles often result in behavior unacceptable or injurious to others, resulting in societal attempts to control or punish the offender. Such measures assuage the anger of and insult to society, but they do little to help or change the offender. As we have seen, people do not seek self-destruction; the basic need for all of us is the maintenance and enhancement of the self. In order truly to understand threatened personalities it is necessary to understand the nature of their perceptual fields.

PERCEPTUAL FIELD CHARACTERISTICS OF THREATENED PERSONS In the previous chapter we discussed the adequate personality in terms of four field conditions: (1) positive views of self, (2) acceptance or openness to experience, (3) feelings of oneness and identification, and (4) a rich and available perceptual field. The reverse of any one or combination of these field characteristics may hinder, sidetrack or destroy a person's capacity for identity and fulfillment, resulting in anguish for the person and inefficient or destructive behavior.

A Fundamentally Negative Phenomenal Self Frustrated persons see themselves in generally negative ways. They have come to define themselves as unworthy, unwanted, unloved, unacceptable, unable and the like. Of course, that is not true of all of the perceptions such people have of themselves. It is, however, likely to be true of those aspects of self that seem to the individual most important or central to her self-structure. A self defined in negative terms is a poor instrument for dealing with the vicissitudes of life. It leaves one helpless and fearful before the demands

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of existence. It provides a shaky and tenuous foundation for effective living. The smaller, more negative the self, moreover, the larger, more overwhelming and threatening are the problems with which such a person sees herself confronted. A self-concept made up of many negative self-definitions finds itself in perpetual jeopardy. The inadequate self may find it necessary to live a life of continuous, belligerent, aggressive seeking for self-enhancement in a desperate effort to demonstrate to herself and the world that what she feels to be true is not so. Such people find no rest or contentment. Life is a continual struggle in which daily they run the risk of destruction. If the self is defined in too negative a fashion, the individual may even give up in despair. She may accept herself as defeated and incapable of dealing with life and content herself with a lackadaisical existence, pushed about by whatever forces are exerted on her. Many psychotic and mentally retarded people show this kind of reaction. Human need for personal adequacy is insatiable, and threat to the self must be met with some kind of response. Much of what we describe as "maladjusted" behavior are the person's mechanisms of self-defense, the thrashing about of a poor swimmer in fear of drowning. What is more, the greater the threat, the greater will be the response, so threatened people almost always overreact and behave in exaggerated ways. They smile too broadly, try too hard, compliment too much, protest their innocence too forcefully, brag too blatantly, and give too little or too much because they are continually faced with the necessity of proving their adequacy. Maslow once described such extreme behavior as "the screams of the tortured at the crushing of their psychological bones."1 Because the primary drive for human beings is the maintenance and enhancement of self, failure to achieve that end places the person under threat and demands attention. The ways in which persons may define themselves as inadequate are practically limitless. People develop feelings that they are not enough, for example, as parents, students, men, or women or that they are not sufficiently able, attractive, or a thousand other categories. Such feelings, furthermore, may or may not be based in reality. People arrive at such definitions as a consequence of the expectations they perceive themselves to be confronting with parents, spouses, employers, teachers, or the culture itself. Often they are produced by persons who would be shocked to know that they had contributed to such feelings. Many a child develops feelings of inadequacy because parents want so much for their child to succeed. The father who beats his child because he wants him to be a good

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boy may have the best of intentions, but his son's perceptions of self may be seriously undermined. Lack of Acceptance Acceptance has to do with the willingness to confront reality, to be open to one's experience. To cope with life effectively it is necessary to begin from an acceptance of what is. However, the necessity for self-defense imposed by the experience of threat makes it difficult or impossible to accept new or conflicting perceptions into the perceptual field. Most of us have experienced this phenomenon when, perhaps in the heat of an argument, we found it difficult to understand or even hear what our antagonist was trying to express. The fundamental need to maintain and enhance the phenomenal self requires self-defense. As a consequence, threatened people reject unflattering or self-damaging perceptions and seek those that assuage wounded self-perceptions or help to bolster the self against the threat experienced. When that happens, many important differentiations may not be accepted into the phenomenal field or, if they already exist in the field, may not be accepted into clear figure. The inability to accept important aspects of experience has unhappy effects on a person's capacity for effective behavior. She is forced to behave on the basis of restricted or partial evidence. Behavior originating from only part of the data must necessarily be less precise and effective than that arising from a wider, more inclusive frame of reference. Like a house built with only part of the necessary lumber, the product is unsatisfactory to everyone concerned. As we have seen, the self tends to corroborate itself. Inability to accept the data of experience often produces a rigid, vicious-circle kind of behavior, which seems only to prove to inadequate persons their own inadequacies. The pattern goes something like this: 1. A person behaves in terms of her phenomenal self. 2. This behavior fails to achieve need satisfaction and may be met with resistance. 3. The person then feels threatened and defends herself in any of a thousand ways to reaffirm her existing phenomenal self. 4. Such behavior only intensifies the reactions of others, bringing more threat to herself, even greater need for self-defense, and progressively less ability to accept the facts of her situation.

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Just such patterns of perception and behavior cause many threatened personalities to behave in ways that produce the very reactions in others that corroborate their own already existing beliefs. The inability of threatened persons to accept threatening perceptions does not apply only to perceptions of the situations in which they find themselves. Lack of acceptance also distorts their perceptions of themselves. For effective behavior, people must change their concepts of self as demanded by new experience, new times and places. Threatened personalities find this extremely difficult. The necessity for self-defense may preclude the acceptance of new concepts inconsistent with existing selfdefinitions. Common examples of this effect may be observed in the woman who cannot accept her fading youth, in the child unwilling to accept the responsibilities involved in growing up, in the worker unable to change with changing methods and techniques, or in the student so unable to accept the evidence of her inadequacy that she must maintain that her failures are due to teachers who "had it in for her." This tends to keep the phenomenal self a static and rigid organization, a characteristic that only increases the likelihood of its being threatened by the changing world in which all of us live. A phenomenal self incapable of accepting change in itself is practically certain to become increasingly out of touch with the world and therefore increasingly inadequate and threatened. Failure to accept the self lies at the heart of much human unhappiness and inefficiency. To cope effectively with life it is necessary to begin from reality. Persons unable to confront reality about themselves live in a mixed-up world. Trying to cope with life from a false concept of self is bound to result in inadequate or inappropriate behavior, which practically guarantees a state of threat. Persons unable to accept themselves must spend much of their time acting rather than expressing who they are. But one can act a part only so long as she keeps her mind on it. The moment attention lags she behaves in terms of her true self. This makes it difficult for colleagues or acquaintances to understand the person and produces confusing and inconsistent behavior. Much of the progress in psychotherapy occurs as clients learn to see themselves more accurately and authentically.2 Inability to Identify It has often been observed that severely threatened people, like criminals and the psychotic, are fundamentally lonely people. Often they do not have so much as a single person in their lives who they feel really respects or accepts them. Threatened people are likely to be selfish or egocentric.

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The experience of threat focuses attention on the maintenance and enhancement of the self so urgently that there is little opportunity for broader, more person-oriented perceptions like those required for identification. What is more, the poorer, more meager the phenomenal self, the greater will be the necessity for its defense and the less likely is there to be much feeling of oneness with others. Just as each individual grows up with a self-concept that is in large part the product of how she was treated by those important to her in her growing years, she also develops perceptions of what other people are like. Depending on her experiences of them, she comes to feel that other people are essentially friendly or unfriendly, trustworthy or untrustworthy, interesting or frightening, pleasant or unpleasant. The same unhappy relationship with an adult from which a child learns that she is unacceptable or unable may teach her as well that most people are unfriendly, dangerous, or untrustworthy. Small wonder, then, that threatened people have little feeling of identification with others. A low opinion of self is likely to be associated with a fear and distrust of others. To feel unacceptable is to perceive others as unaccepting or unfriendly. People with little feeling of identification with their fellows are unlikely to be deeply concerned about them. This is perhaps observable in its most extreme form in the case-hardened criminal, who feels not the slightest compunction at harming another human being. She may even enjoy it. After all, when you don't belong to the club, you don't have to abide by the rules, pay your dues, or defend its members. And when the club has blackballed you, you owe them nothing at all. If the club we are talking about is society itself, the presence of persons with no feeling of identification can threaten the entire culture. Inadequate Field of Meaning Personal frustration also can occur as a consequence of lack of information or of misinformation. Every activity requires a field of information on which the person may draw to guide her behavior. A poor or restricted field of meaning can and does result in inadequate behavior. In the hightech society we currently live in we are surrounded, even engulfed, in information. So information is easy to come by, and few of us misbehave because we do not know any better. But knowing is not enough. The mere possession of information is no guarantee that it will be available when it is needed. As we have seen, the significance and relevance of information in the perceptual field is molded and given meaning by the person's self

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and experience. Most of us know that we ought not be prejudiced, but all of us are in some degree. We have seen in an earlier chapter that when people feel threatened, their perceptions are affected by two phenomena: tunnel vision and the necessity for self-defense. Unfortunately, each of these effects markedly reduces the individual's ability to perceive efficiently. Tunnel vision reduces the field from which behavior may be selected, and the necessity for self-defense makes change difficult or impossible. Healthy behavior requires not a narrow restricted phenomenal field but an open, rich, and maximally free field of perceptions. The experience of threat provides a poorer, more restricted field from which the person must select behavior. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that inadequate personalities are often characterized by rigid, inflexible patterns of behavior or that they are quite likely to be inaccurate in their assessment of themselves and the world about them. THE SOURCES OF THREAT Early Caregivers The earliest sources of threat occur when the phenomenal field is beginning to form during the child's early experiences in the family or with early caregivers. When the foundations of the perceptual field are being laid, early experiences of threat are so fundamental, so subtle, and resist change so tenaciously as often to last a person's lifetime. Most people are able to recall some early experiences of this sort in their lives, but many more may exist at such low levels of awareness as to be difficult or impossible to bring into clear figure. Early threat experiences may occur with or without intention on the part of early caregivers. Parents, for example, are often shocked when older children report threats they remember from their growing-up years. Even with the best of intentions, many families can and do unknowingly behave in ways that children may interpret as threatening or diminishing to the self. Everyone has been exposed to such experiences in the course of growing up. Fortunately, many of us have also had experiences of enhancement or fulfillment sufficient to counteract early threatening experiences and to produce phenomenal selves sufficiently adequate for the lives we have to lead. Others, however, are not so fortunate. They struggle with unhappy or distorted self-concepts throughout their lives. This can happen even when

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there is no longer reason for feeling inadequate. A friend of mine bought a tiny Weimaraner puppy. When she brought it home and let it loose in her kitchen, the puppy bounded up to the bed of a mother cat and her kittens. The cat was frightened and thoroughly scratched the puppy's face. The dog is now an adult, weighs sixty pounds or more, and could easily kill a cat with a single bite—but he is frightened by cats and beats a hasty retreat at the very sight of one. So it is with persons. Many develop self-concepts of inadequacy in childhood, for one reason or another, and never redefine themselves later. Instead, they remain crippled by concepts of themselves learned in childhood but no longer appropriate for the persons they have become. Much of the treatment offered by mental health practitioners is designed to help threatened persons to reorganize the self-concepts they learned in childhood in ways more appropriate to their grown-up status and circumstances. The World The culture we live in is always with us, and its effects are so ubiquitous that persons may live a lifetime without ever becoming keenly aware of its effects. The things we learn from our culture or subculture may remain unquestioned throughout our lives. Our American culture, for example, is highly things-oriented and imbued with a manipulation-of-forces approach to problem solution. These concepts are so ingrained in most of us that we rarely question them. We get caught up in the things orientation of our culture and spend much of our time, energy, and resources in the acquisition, maintenance, care, or financing of things. Owning, caring for, and paying for our automobiles is a good example. Likewise, we seek the solutions to human problems whether at home, school, work, club, institution, or the playing fields by trying to manipulate the people or things we encounter. Many frustrated persons are the unwitting victims of social expectancies. They spend much of their lives trying to live up to "oughts," "shoulds," and "musts" acquired from the expectancies of parents and the culture and also as the products of unfortunate concepts learned from personal experience at work, play, church, school, or social group. They suffer from unhappy concepts of what one ought to be, how men should behave, how a woman should look, what must be done to assure success, and so on. Perseveration of such values, concepts, and prescriptions for living or exaggerations of them cause great anguish for many threatened persons.

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Within the Field Not all experiences of threat occur from experiences outside the self. Many troubled persons are the victims of inaccurate, distorted, or misdirected perceptions occurring within the perceptual field. Because the field tends to maintain itself and meaning is derived from the relationships of new perceptions to the existing field, unfortunate perceptions may be generated in the course of field reorganization. So persons may differentiate unfortunate concepts about themselves, the world, other persons, goals, values, or beliefs that are distorted in one form or another within the field itself. These may then lead to inappropriate behavior, which in turn corroborates the distorted beliefs. So a child may conclude that she is "bad" or an adult may decide she is "not enough" for reasons conceived within the perceptual field with or without actual life experience. Once established, distorted perceptions may become further complicated by the need of the organism to maintain and enhance itself. As we have seen, the perceived self resists change and is likely to produce behavior that corroborates the existing self-concept, resulting in behavior that only serves to prove what the threatened person believed in the first place.

TECHNIQUES OF DEALING WITH THREAT The experience of threat is an event that cannot be ignored. Threat to the self requires some sort of action, some technique for dealing with the experience.3 Many such techniques are familiar to all of us and can be seen in daily behavior. They may be simple and transitory devices used only on rare occasions by mildly threatened individuals, or they may become fixed and permanent methods of dealing with life employed by deeply disturbed persons. Such techniques are often called defense mechanisms, a term that implies the attempt of the organism to deal with a threatening situation. Their variety seems almost limitless. Generally speaking, they fall into two major categories: 1. Perceptions may be denied acceptance into the organization of the phenomenal field. 2. Perceptions may be so selected, modified, or distorted as to be consistent with the existing organization.

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Denial of the Relevance of Threatening Perceptions One way of dealing with threatening perceptions is simply to deny their relevance to self, thus escaping the necessity for dealing with them at all. This may be brought about in three general ways familiar to all of us in their milder forms. The threatened person may deny the relevance of a threatening perception by any one of the following: 1. Denying its existence completely: "It isn't so!" Any of us might find ourselves on occasion refusing to admit the death of a loved one or the approach of our own demise. The technique is also common among children who find it necessary to object violently to the idea that there is no Santa Claus. Matters that do not exist do not have to be dealt with, and an inadequate phenomenal self may find it necessary to ignore the existence of threatening events. 2. Accepting the possibility of its existence but denying the relationship to self. "It doesn't refer to me!" A variation of the denial of relevance may be found in the relegation of threatening perceptions to the not-self. This is a common device seen in daily life in the bland assumption that new rules and regulations "of course" do not apply to us. It may be observed, too in the phenomenon pointed out by Freud, that the characteristics we note in others are generally those we deplore in ourselves. We also may find it possible to deal with threats in this fashion by the common excuse that it was not our fault; we are only the victims. Putting the blame on others is a comfortable cop out. When I can say, "Well, I would have, but so-and-so wouldn't let me," I am not only excused from trying; others are likely to respond with, "Poor you. What a shame that they wouldn't let you!" 3. Postponing the matter in space or time. "I don't have to deal with it now." The relevance of threat to the self may be reduced by postponing its effects in time, in space, or in clarity. We have seen in a previous chapter that the experienced magnitude of threat is a function of its psychological immediacy. Generally speaking, the more immediate the event to self, the greater the experience of threat. One means, then, of reducing the experience of threat is to postpone it in one fashion or another. Procrastination is a time-honored device by which the threats of decision making can be alleviated, and it has been used at one time or another by almost everyone. 4. One of the most distressing techniques is suppression. This involves dealing with threatening perceptions by holding them at a lower order of differentiation. Perceptions that would require too great a change

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in the self cannot come into clear figure. The need of the organism for selfmaintenance will not permit this, so the perception may be held in the field at a low level of differentiation. This does not eliminate the threat, however. A suppressed differentiation is still in the phenomenal field. Nor will the need of the organism permit a threat to exist without action on the part of the person. As a result, the threat, although not clearly differentiated, keeps the organism continuously in a state of tension or distress producing the state we have previously described as anxiety. Selection of Perceptions Consistent With the Self A second class of techniques for dealing with threatening perceptions is the selection of perceptions in such a way as to be consistent with the existing phenomenal self. Perceptions threatening to self may be so selected as to appear not threatening but even enhancing to the phenomenal self. This is the sort of thing that occurs when an insult is taken as a compliment. All of us use this technique day after day, so smoothly that we succeed in fooling ourselves. The reason a student leaves her work until the last minute is not that she doesn't want to study. Perish the thought! She leaves her work till the last minute because "there was just too much to get done," because "the sorority had a house meeting," or for any number of other more satisfying reasons. And this is true of professors as well. Students' papers may not get marked, not because the professor hates to grade papers but because of the pressure of "important" work to be done or the "need to take a day off now and then" or even because it doesn't really matter—"the students don't mind." Distortion Of Events It has sometimes been said that there are two ways in which a person may react to a new idea: she may discount it by saying, "Why, there's nothing new about that. We've known that for twenty years!" Or she may minimize it by saying, "It's just a silly new fad. It will soon pass away!" Either way, it is no longer necessary to deal with the concept, and the threat has been dealt with, at least for the present. Distortion makes events seem less threatening by bringing them in line with existing concepts of self and results in certain types of adjustive behavior that psychologists call rationalization or compensation. Rationalization is so common that most of us are not aware of the existence of such distorted perceptions. Even when they are brought to our at-

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tention, it may be difficult for us to accept them as rationalizations, for to do so may threaten our existing organization. The woman who buys a new car, for example, and gives as her reason for this behavior that the old one was beginning to use too much oil will probably object to our pointing out that the expense of 20 quarts of oil in a year's time hardly justifies an expenditure of thousands of dollars for a new car. Such an admission is likely to be a threat to her concept of herself and furthermore may force the admission that the real reason for getting the new car is that it increases her self-esteem. To increase one's self-esteem is not a socially acceptable reason for buying a car. Compensation may appear in either of two common forms: direct and indirect. In direct compensation the person attempts to achieve high selfesteem or mastery by refusing to accept the threatening differentiation. She denies that any handicap exists and acts accordingly. Her phenomenal self is defined as though the handicap were not a part of herself. In doing so she must deny proof to the contrary, which appears in the reaction of others toward her. Many people, like Glenn Cunningham (badly burned in an accident but the first person to run a 4-minute mile) or Theodore Roosevelt (sickly as a child but built himself to a robust adult), find it possible to make such improvement through the extreme efforts that such a technique demands that eventually the threatening handicap is, in fact, overcome. In indirect compensation a person feeling inadequate in some respect may be driven to seek self-esteem in other areas entirely. Thus, a child who feels incapable of participation in the usual playground sports may find satisfaction in being the brightest child in class—or the worst. Often such compensatory behavior may be far more potent than behavior not so driven, for much more is at stake. The more threatening the perception, the greater the amount of energy expended in attempting to deal with the problem. Society often profits greatly from the tremendous efforts put forth by such unhappy persons. Many compensators make great contributions in all walks of life as corporate CEOs, star athletes, entertainers, or politicians, for example. In spite of external evidences of success, however, the compensating individual may feel extremely unhappy and inadequate in the very midst of her successes. It is only with the acceptance or elimination of the original negative self-perception that real peace of mind can occur. Distortion of the Perception of Self Threatened personalities may sometimes be observed to deal with the threats they perceive by selecting perceptions of self that help them feel

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more adequate. This is, of course, characteristic of all people, but the greater the threat experienced, the greater the necessity for selection. In a previous chapter we saw how this may be accomplished through the use of drugs or alcohol, which give a spurious but satisfying feeling of adequacy at least temporarily. Under these circumstances, the self may be perceived as stronger or more adequate, and the world seems therefore less frightening and more nearly within the capacities of the person. One can also make herself feel more adequate to deal with certain kinds of threatening situations by arming herself with a knife, a gun, or a club. Another means of increasing one's feelings of adequacy is to identify one's self closely with some other stronger personality or group. In this way it is possible to add the adequacy of others to one's own perceptions of self. Exaggerated needs to conform, for example, have been shown to be closely related to feelings of inadequacy.

MORE SERIOUS PROBLEMS The seriousness of mental health problems is primarily a matter of the degree of inaccuracy or distortion of the perceptual field and the phenomenal self. The failure of adequate perception is the most obvious of the characteristics of inadequate personalities and at the same time the most vital factor in keeping them inadequate. The feelings of inadequacy or threat and the behaviors they induce, which we have been exploring above, are experienced by almost everyone from time to time, but persons suffering more serious problems of mental health may find themselves so deeply threatened as to suffer feelings of intense inadequacy much of the time, and their defenses may be exaggerated or bizarre. Distorted perceptions may result in severe personal distress and corroborate themselves through the production of behavior that proves what the unhappy person already believes about herself. In the severely threatened personality the processes of differentiation and acceptance break down. The ability to perceive and to reorganize the phenomenal field becomes seriously hampered. The more inadequate the person feels, the less accurate are her perceptions of self and environment. As long as the person's struggles for adequacy operate within the individual or result in behavior within the limits of tolerance established by her society, the inadequate person is often considered, "weird," "neurotic," or "strange." However, when the individual's search for adequacy leads her

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to behavior inappropriate or unacceptable, she may be considered mentally ill and in need of treatment. If the behavior becomes threatening or destructive to persons or property, she may be considered delinquent or criminal and subject to the penalties of an outraged society. Both the mentally ill and delinquent, however, are products of the same basic feelings of inadequacy. Though the behavior each manifests differs markedly, each suffers the same fundamental complaint, a frustrated, limited self. When such problems are regarded as dangerous or offensive, persons may be punished or locked up to isolate them from society. More enlightened understanding regards such disorders as requiring treatment rather than punishment.4 The existence of threat in the individual's phenomenal field cannot be ignored. It must be dealt with. The greater the experience of threat, the greater the attempts of the organism to find resolution. Mild threats may require only mild kinds of behavior, but extreme degrees of threat are likely to call forth increasingly bizarre and violent behavior on the part of the person attempting to seek adequacy in a too threatening world. Persons who feel more deeply inadequate and threatened are likely to use much more extreme ways to achieve a measure of adequacy. At times these methods may even become so upsetting or dangerous to themselves or to the rest of us that such people have to be isolated. It is not our intention to enter on an extended discussion of psychosis or abnormal psychology here. The varieties of techniques used by deeply inadequate personalities are almost limitless. They may extend all the way from simple techniques of rationalization to some of the most bizarre and imaginative devices of which the human mind is capable. The particular symptoms of a particular individual may range from a single repeatedly used technique to a wide variety of techniques used in rapid succession. To deal with these extensively would be beyond the scope and purpose of this volume.

THE TREATMENT OF THREATENED PERSONS The principles and practices involved in the treatment of threatened persons by the various professions engaged in that process are also far beyond the scope of this volume. We can, however, suggest how some of the principles we have explored in this field approach to psychology find expression in some of the mental health professions. If mental health problems, maladjustment, delinquency, and criminality are, as we have suggested,

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products of inadequate perceptions of self and the world, it would seem to follow that the treatment of such disturbances must be based on helping threatened personalities to new and more satisfying perceptions of themselves and their relationships to the world. That is exactly what modern methods of teaching, counseling, psychotherapy, and social work seek to accomplish in their various fields of operation. As we have seen, the basic need of human organisms is for the maintenance and enhancement of self, the basic drive toward health characteristic of all living things. Persons can, will, must move toward health if the way seems open for them to do so. Persons engaged in the helping professions are essentially ministers to that process. They seek to help their clients, patients, students, and parishioners to reorganize their perceptual fields in more accurate, appropriate, and fulfilling ways. They may try to do that by concentrating on the world to which their clients are exposed—for example, removing a child from an abusive home, placing an adult in the shelter of a mental hospital, finding more fulfilling, less threatening employment or involvement in more positive groups or relationships. Or mental health practitioners may try to help their clients reorganize their perceptual fields through techniques of teaching, counseling, and psychotherapy designed to help clients see themselves, their worlds, and their purposes in new and more fulfilling fashion. Or mental health professionals may choose to work in terms of both of these approaches simultaneously. Although the treatment methods of helpers vary widely from profession to profession and from person to person, the success of treatment will depend mostly on the degree to which students, patients, or clients are helped to modify their perceptual fields and phenomenal selves toward the four perceptual qualities of healthy persons we explored in chapter 11: a more positive view of self, greater acceptance of self and the world, more satisfying feelings of oneness or identification with others, and wider, more accurate and available information. As we have seen, it is inadequacies in these areas that result in ill health, unhappiness, and frustration. A field approach to psychology can assist us in understanding the nature of threatened persons and it can define the broad goals for treatment or, for that matter, of education, government, and social welfare as well. How such goals are achieved will, of course, vary as widely as the institutions and persons who seek to implement them.

CHAPTER 13

Some Implications for Human Relationships

THE FACTS OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS If it is true that people behave according to how things seem to them, then the things people believe are the facts of human relationships. In this sense, seeing is not only believing; seeing is behaving! A fact is not what is; a fact is what one believes. The data with which we must deal in understanding and changing human relationships, then, are perceptions: people's feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and values. Adolescents loudly complain that their parents "just don't understand." Workers make similar complaints about their bosses. So do bosses about their workers. Even nations may regard other nations as suspicious for not believing as they do about human rights, democracy, or the treatment of women. Each nation behaves as though its assessment of the other were an inescapable fact. We are shocked by the perceptions of the natives of some other countries about America and are deeply hurt that we are regarded with such suspicion. How people perceive, however, is not a matter to be ignored or to feel hurt about. Perceptions are not matters to deplore. If it is true that behavior is a product of perception, then perceptions become the basic data of human relations and the facts with which we must learn to deal.

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To regard the facts of human behavior in this way is likely to prove extremely distressing to some people. Although the idea that people behave according to how things seem to them is simplicity itself, there are strong factors, both in ourselves and our society, that make this quite difficult to accept. We have been so impressed, for example, with the magnificent achievements of the physical sciences in American society that many of us have come to regard the "objective" world of the physical sciences as equivalent to reality itself. This view of the world has served our society so well in dealing with the problems for which objectivity is appropriate that many people have come to believe that the objective approach is the only possible method of observation worthy of consideration. Science and the "scientific method" have become the sacred cows of our society. Still another factor makes the perceptual field approach to human relationships difficult. That is the widespread feeling in some quarters that the admission of human feelings, attitudes, and perceptions as behavioral data flirts with the mystical and runs the risk of being "unscientific." No real science, however, can afford to ignore the data relevant to its purposes simply because they are difficult to measure or do not lend themselves to treatment by orthodox means. If behavior is a function of perception, then a science of human relationships like field psychology must concern itself with the meaning of events for the behaver as well as for the observer. Human feelings, attitudes, fears, hopes, wants, likes, and aversions cannot be set aside while we deal with objective matters. Perceptions are the very fabric of which human relationships are made. If we do not currently possesses the means of studying perceptions effectively, then we must get about the business of finding out how without further delay. It is a natural thing to attempt to apply the methods with which we have been successful in the past to problems we meet in the present. There is also a comfortable definiteness about dealing with things. They stay where they are put and behave in comfortable, predictable ways. Because of this former satisfying experience it is a temptation to extend the methods we have found so useful in coping with things to the problems of human relationships. We fail to understand that different problems often require quite different strategies. It is difficult for us to approach human relationships from a field view for another reason. Our own perceptions always have so strong a feeling of reality that it is easy to jump to the conclusion that they must be real to others as well. If others do not see as we do, we may even regard them as stupid, stubborn, or perverse. It is hard to set one's own experience aside, yet it is difficult to see how effective human relationships can be built

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without a clear recognition of the personal character of perceptions. The first step toward the solution of our human problems seems to require a willingness to grant that "how it seems to me may be different, but I too could be wrong." Humility, it would seem, is more than a nice idea; it is essential for effective communication.

THE PERSON AS RESPONSIBLE AGENT A second broad implication of the perceptual field approach has to do with the way we regard persons and the relationship to the world in which they live. One of the earliest conceptions of the nature of human beings held that each person was a completely independent and responsible agent. Whatever he did arose entirely from within himself. If a man misbehaved, it was his fault that he did so. He was thoroughly and inescapably to blame for his acts. With such a conception of what people are trying to do, it is not surprising that most adults were convinced that people deserved what happened to them. Because persons were utterly responsible, punishments were harsh and severe. Little sympathy was wasted on the criminal, the sick, or the insane. Indeed, that such misfortunes befell a person only served to prove how bad he must have been. Parents were blamed for their failures to correct a child or to force obedience, not for their failures to provide a child with love and affection. When a child misbehaved, it was because the child was bad, and parents were sympathized with or pitied. If they were blamed at all, it was for failure to force obedience, teach manners, or "bend the twig" properly.

PERSONS AS VICTIMS Another concept commonly held even today is that persons are the victims of environment. A person is what he is because of what has happened to him. Unfortunately, this behavioristic point of view, while making possible great strides in some aspects of human living, has at the same time made it difficult for us to understand some of our most pressing problems. It has given rise to a mechanistic conception of human beings as physical objects whose behavior is the result of forces acting on them. This view arises from the things-oriented society American culture has become. It has also

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largely dehumanized psychology, making human beings little more than objects to be manipulated at will. In this view human beings are often compared to steam engines, automobiles, or other pieces of machinery. Teachers are sometimes spoken of as "delivery systems." Man is thought of as a passive automaton, buffeted about by the circumstances surrounding him. Such a view of behavior places responsibility quite outside the individual himself. The implications of this view are widespread throughout all phases of society. Perhaps no group is more affected, however, than our defenseless, unorganized parents. The responsibility for all our social ills is laid squarely at their door. Whatever institution is criticized for its failures to deal with people effectively sooner or later ends by blaming parents. The parents, having no one to whom to pass the buck, are stuck with it. The best a poor parent can do is to blame it all on his spouse's side of the family. But if behavior is truly only a function of environment, then parents, who are themselves products of their environments, can no more be held responsible than other agencies in society, and the people really responsible must be our forefathers clear back to Adam or the first living organism! The view of human beings we have adopted in this field approach to persons and behavior helps to resolve this dilemma. We saw in chapter 1 that man is continuous with the universe, a self-regulating organization seeking identity and fulfillment.1 He is never free from the dynamic, creative force of that fundamental need. This gives us a view of persons as neither so completely responsible for their behavior as the first view cited above nor, on the other hand, so willy-nilly the victim of environment as the second would lead us to believe. Persons are controlled by and in part controlling of their destiny. It provides us with an understanding of persons deeply and intimately affected by environment but capable also of molding and shaping their destiny in important ways. 2 Such a view fits more closely our own experience and is an understanding broadly significant in helping us find solutions to some of our great social problems.

THE MANIPULATION-OF-FORCES VIEW The differences between the environmental and a field view of behavior are nowhere so clearly marked as in the kinds of methods they lead to in dealing with human relationships. Our things-oriented culture would lead us to believe that almost anything can be accomplished in dealing with people if we

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are sufficiently skillful in the manipulation of the proper forces at the proper time. The adoption of that view results in an approach to human problems based on control of environment and its forces and has produced a way of dealing with people by a "management by objectives" schema. One establishes the goals, plans a strategy for achieving them, then manipulates events to assure that people get there. In spite of its frequent failure, however, this philosophy of human relationships is applied throughout our society: in advertising and selling, in labor-management discussions, in administration, in our legislatures, and even in our diplomacy of power politics, buffer states, and vetoes. It is common practice in our schools, our churches, and our homes. If we believe that, a human philosophy of force and coercion naturally follows as the appropriate means of dealing with our fellows. Such force may be expressed as naked power or it may be clothed in a velvet glove as "friendly" advice, reward for "proper" behavior, or various more or less subtle forms of reward or punishment. The manipulation-of-forces approach raises an additional serious problem, for it requires that someone must know what the "right" goal is in order to manipulate the required forces effectively. Someone must know where the people should go. This calls for a leader or "great man" to chart the proper path for the common people. Such an approach sometimes works fairly well when the right answers are clearly known and leaders are benevolent. Unfortunately, right answers to human problems are remarkably elusive, and great men are as often wrong as right. Despite the fact that this essentially manipulative method of dealing with people seems hardly compatible with our democratic ideal, it nevertheless may be found operating everywhere in our American culture, even in some of our most "democratic" institutions.

THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD VIEW If the view of human behavior we have been exploring in this book is accurate, it calls for a very different approach to human problems from the one above. How people perceive themselves and the world in which they live is an internal, personal matter. Furthermore, what people believe about themselves and their environment is not directly open to manipulation. We cannot make people perceive. Effective, satisfying human relationships can be developed only through helping ourselves and others to perceive more freely and accurately.3 Man is not a puppet bandied about

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at the mercy of the forces exerted on him. On the contrary, he is a creature of discretion who selects his perceptions from the world he lives in. He is not the victim of events but is capable of perceiving, interpreting, and even creating events. Such a conception of human beings requires a very different approach to working with people than the manipulation-offerees approach we have outlined above. It calls for the development of understanding rather than manipulation, for freeing communication in place of coercion; for stimulating mutual exploration and discovery of goals and means as opposed to servile dependence on an elite. The field view sees man as a growing, dynamic, creative being continuously in search of adequacy. Persons are purposeful agents engaged in a never-ending business of becoming. People in this sense are processes rather than objects, growing rather than static, and they call for the same kind of treatment we accord other growing things. To grow a good plant, for example, we acquire the best seed we can get, plant it in the best ground we can provide, surround it with the very best conditions for growth we can produce, then we get out of the way and let it grow. Our forefathers established the nation on the principle that when men are free they can find their own best ways of governing. In a similar manner, the perceptual view calls for understanding perception and seeks to affect behavior through processes of facilitation, helping, assisting, or aiding the normal growth of the organism itself.

THE FACILITATIVE APPROACH OF FIELD THINKING From a perceptual field frame of reference, therefore, the emphasis in dealing with people is on the creation of situations that facilitate or assist the process of perception change. Good teachers know, for example, that children cannot be made to learn. Children, however, can and will learn when teachers are successful in creating experiences that encourage and assist the learner in his search for adequacy. The field frame of reference calls for an approach to human relationships that seeks change in behavior through change in perceiving rather than through direct attack on behavior itself. It calls for techniques of communication, persuasion, learning, and discovery rather than the employment of force, coercion, or various forms of manipulation. Because perceptions are more directly causative of behavior than environmental manipulation, methods of dealing with people dependent on

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changing perception rather than controlling and directing behavior are likely to be more permanent and trustworthy on later occasions when pressure and coercion are no longer present. Although it is of course sometimes possible to make people behave as desired by the application of sufficient force at the right time, such behavior cannot be counted on when the force is no longer applied. What people believe they carry about with them, but external forces can be left behind.

A POSITIVE VIEW OF THE WORLD The optimistic view of our relationship to the world we inhabit, mentioned in chapter 1 is a matter of vital importance for human affairs. A view of man forever engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the forces of nature must have its inevitable effects in the way people govern their lives and deal with the worlds they inhabit. Living in the midst of threat produces tunnel vision and preoccupation with self-defense, whereas effective learning, relationships, and behavior call for widening and enriching perception and readiness to change behavior when required. Seeing one's self engaged in perpetual struggle against hostile forces produces a reactive approach to living marked by the erection of walls around self that keep danger out but also keep self in. It can lead to lack of trust, breakdowns in communication, hostility, prejudice, and lack of care about persons, groups, nations, or the environment. Gandhi is said to have remarked, "You can't shake hands with a closed fist." Neither, we might add, can we discover how best to be and become by beginning from inadequate assumptions.

THE IMMEDIATE VIEW The perceptual field frame of reference provides an immediate rather than a historical understanding of behavior. It suggests that, because perceptions exist only in the present, it should be possible to understand people and their behavior through an understanding of present perceptions even if we do not know anything about the individual's past. This idea has vast implications for our methods of dealing with people everywhere. On the surface, this statement seems quite contrary to the widespread belief that

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any attempt to deal with a human being must be preceded by a detailed analysis of his previous history Actually, both immediate and historical views of personality and behavior are quite accurate descriptions of human behavior and not at all antagonistic. Although the perceptual view of behavior is concerned primarily with present perceptions, this is not to suggest that the past is unimportant. On the contrary, one of Freud's great contributions to our understanding of behavior was his observation that behavior is a product of past experience. The principle is just as true today as it ever was. Behavior is, historically, a function of what has happened to us in the past but, immediately, a function of our present perceptions. A child brought up in a family where he was often rejected and treated as unimportant may grow to adulthood with deep feelings of unworthiness or inferiority. These feelings (ways of perceiving) may in turn motivate much of his present behavior. What has happened to him in the past has produced his present ways of perceiving. Knowledge of his past thus explains his present perceptions. It is possible for us, however, to interact effectively with him even if we have no knowledge whatever of his past, providing we understand how he is presently perceiving. There can be a little doubt of the essential accuracy of Freud's principle, but it has severe limits when applied to problems of treatment or learning. Understanding how an individual got the way he is today is not always helpful in guiding us in the determination of where to go from here. Gordon Allport once suggested, "People are busy living their lives forward, while psychologists busily trace them backward!" The perceptual field view makes it possible to break away from these unhappy preoccupations and opens vast new avenues for understanding human relationships. It releases the applied worker from the necessity of accumulating great quantities of information formerly thought essential. There is, after all, very little we can do about a person's past. There is a great deal we can do about people's present perceptions.

PERCEPTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE A second significant implication of the immediate view of causation is the freedom it gives us to deal with human problems without the necessity of environmental change. Environments are not always amenable to manipulation. There are serious limits to the degree to which they can be changed

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to suit the need of individuals. A way of dealing with human problems that is not dependent on environmental forces, therefore, opens vast new possibilities for solving some of our most knotty social problems. When we find ways of helping people change the ways they see themselves and the world in which they live, it may not be necessary to change their environments. Children aided to see themselves more adequately can live effective lives even though outsiders may be unable to make basic changes in distressing family situations. Following therapy in which children have been helped to perceive themselves and their parents more adequately, it is not uncommon to find changes occurring in the child's family despite the fact his parents have not been involved in treatment themselves. Apparently, as the child feels better, he behaves better, and this in turn affects the feelings toward him of those who surround him. If behavior is a function of present perceptions, then there is something that can be done to help any individual, even those from the worst backgrounds. It means that whatever we do in interaction with other people is always important. The behavior of people toward each other can be helpful or hindering, constructive or destructive, in greater or lesser degree. We need not throw up our hands in despair over inability to change the past or control all aspects of present environment. The interactions of people need not be trivial or unimportant no matter what the previous experience of an individual may have been. Because people cannot wnexperience what they have perceived, any good thing we do for another is forever. It may not be enough to produce the changes we might like, but it is never in vain.

THE IMMEDIACY PRINCIPLE IN PROFESSIONAL WORK The importance of this principle is nowhere so appreciated as in the professional work of teachers, social workers, and psychotherapists.4 To many teachers, for example, the perceptual view opens the doors to vast new possibilities for helping children. It means no child is hopeless. There are things that can be done to help even the unhappiest and most maladjusted child right in the classroom. To many discouraged teachers it brings new hope that their jobs are important, that they can be and often are effective in helping children grow. It means teachers can help children to move toward health in school even though they have no control over the child's outside environment.

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This is no small matter. For a generation teachers have been made to feel that they are powerless to help children who come to them already damaged or who are present victims of unfortunate home environments. The perceptual view of behavior emphasizes that present experience in the classroom can affect a child's perceptions in the same fashion as his experiences outside the schoolroom can. The child who sees himself as unliked, unwanted, unaccepted, or unable can be helped by the teacher's own behavior toward him even though neither he nor his teacher may have any idea whatever of how he came to feel as he does. You do not have to be an expert to know what to do with a child who feels unliked, unaccepted, or unable. The principle that behavior can be changed without full knowledge of the past seems equally promising for the field of social work. Much of the social worker's time and energy, to say nothing of shoe leather and expense, has often been spent in the painstaking collection of mountains of data about the histories of clients. Although much of this is helpful, much is not. Such collections of data are often regarded by the social worker's clients as unwarranted and malicious snooping, an attitude that immeasurably increases the difficulty of establishing a helping relationship. Seeing behavior as a function of present perceptions makes it possible to dispense with much of this. As a result the social worker can appear in the eyes of his client as far more understanding and sympathetic. Like teachers, social workers have often felt themselves powerless to help clients enmeshed in harmful environmental circumstances. Frequently, they have become depressed and discouraged because so little could be accomplished in changing the conditions they observed. From a field view, however, new possibilities are open to the social worker for helping clients to change their perceptions even though it may not be possible to change their present conditions. Indeed, it often happens that when clients change their perceptions they find more ingenious and effective ways of helping themselves than any outsider could contribute. The understanding that people behave according to how things seem to them does not discard other approaches. It simply opens another avenue by which we may contribute to human happiness and development.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEED FOR ADEQUACY In chapter 1 we described the basic human need as the search for adequacy. In later chapters we have examined in some detail how this need

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operates in the insatiable striving of the organism for maintenance and enhancement of the self. We have seen, too, how it may be fulfilled in the adequate personality or frustrated in the inadequate one. Such a view of human need has important implications for the ways in which we view our common human problems and the ways we choose for dealing with them. If it is true, for example, that all human beings are motivated in all times and places by a need to be adequate, to move toward health, then much of the blame we are accustomed to heap on other people for the stupidity, perverseness, or viciousness of their motivations is completely futile. Who, after all, can blame a person for seeking to be adequate? People are always motivated from their own points of view. What we mean when we complain of the goals sought by some of our fellows is really that they are not motivated to seek goals we happen to think are important. Even the neurotic, the criminal, and the insane are seeking, in their own desperate ways, to achieve the greatest possible degree of adequacy if the way seems open to them. The problems of human relations, then, are not so much a question of motivation as of helping people to perceive more clearly. When people are able to perceive more adequately, they will behave more adequately too. The basic character of human need is essentially positive rather than negative. Given a decent break, the need of the individual will drive him toward essentially positive goals and values. We have already seen that the truly adequate personality cannot behave in ways that are destructive either to himself or to his society in the long run. People can, will, must move toward health, if the way seems open to them to do so. As long as people live in society and are dependent on other people, the search for adequacy must include the adequacy of others as well. The kind of behavior it produces for the individual and those about him will depend on how he has learned to perceive himself and his fellows. A positive view of human motivation leaves little room for wasting time on futile blame and castigation and turns attention to the importance of human compassion and understanding. That the essential character of human motivation is positive by no means guarantees that it will result only in positive kinds of behavior. The ways a dope peddler uses to seek adequacy are certainly destructive. The problem is not with the nature of his need but the means he has perceived to achieve it. Negative acts may, of course, be produced by inadequate ways of perceiving. The problem of human relations becomes one of freeing people to perceive themselves and the world they live in, in more adequate terms.

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The field view of motivation has another important implication for human relationships. It means the faith in our fellows demanded by our democratic society is not an idle dream but finds its justification in the nature of the organism itself. Faith and trust in others is justified, even demanded, if the basic motivation of people is for adequacy. Our democratic credo holds that when people are free they can learn to rule themselves. We could not afford to grant people freedom in the kind of interdependent society we live in if the basic need was not for adequacy. It is because people fundamentally seek adequacy that we can afford to trust them with freedom. When the credo fails, it is not because human motivations are bad but because we have not been successful in finding ways to truly set them free. Like the concept of trust, other ethical values that we are accustomed to think of as good arise out of the need for adequacy. Living alone on a desert island, an individual might seek adequacy with no concern for such human values as love, respect, or the dignity and integrity of others. Living in a modern interdependent culture like ours requires strong feelings of identification with others, for adequacy cannot be achieved alone. As a consequence, human experience has led us to exalt values like love, respect for one another, charity, justice, and friendship, which facilitate human interaction, while condemning those that debase individuals or impede the achievement of adequacy. Ethical values are no accident but the products of long and painful experience. Our world would be in chaos if ethical values were held in low esteem by any large number of persons. In the kind of world we live in and with people motivated toward the maintenance and enhancement of self, love, respect, and the dignity and integrity of human beings become more than fine ideals to be sought after; they become absolute essentials to the very existence of life. WHAT IS A GOOD SOCIETY? From the field view of human beings explored in this volume what criteria seem essential for a good society? Four principles seem especially pertinent: Common Goals Individuals tend to seek adequacy through identification with people seeking need satisfaction in ways similar to their own. It is this discovery,

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that by banding together with other people one's own need satisfaction can be more adequately attained, that is responsible for the formation of groups. The principle is true in all societies but is particularly active in highly cooperative, interdependent societies like our own. In our world it is practically impossible for individuals to achieve much in the way of need satisfaction except through the medium of some kind of group membership. The importance of people and of groups is one of the earliest concepts we teach our children. The mere existence of common goals, however, is not a sufficient explanation for the formation and continuance of a group. Groups form and continue only so long as the association seems important to the individual in the satisfaction of need. People do not join just any group. They identify with those people and those groups that seem to them important and that most effectively contribute to the person's own achievement of greater feelings of adequacy. The gang member associates himself with those people most likely to provide him with feelings of self-enhancement and status, even though, from some outsider's point of view, such action may seem to be leading to an end directly the reverse. Group Organizations Persons banded together in groups for the mutual satisfaction of need find their group purposes most effectively advanced by the development of group organization. Persons coming together for need satisfaction soon discover that their ends are best achieved through the development of some kind of organization and structure. At first this organization may seem chaotic. As time passes however, different people within the group soon acquire roles and responsibilities as a result of the experience of group members with each other. Certain members characteristically behave in certain ways, and other members of the group, observing this, develop a kind of expectancy for such behavior. Eventually, this kind of differentiation of the membership may develop into a much more complex kind of organization in which various kinds of status positions and group structures are spelled out in great detail. Group Disintegration People tend to withdraw from groups whose approval they are unable to win or that no longer satisfy need. So long as membership in a group continues to provide the individual with need satisfaction in important ways, people tend to remain members of groups. When, however, membership

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in a group no longer satisfies need or when membership in a group becomes frustrating to goal satisfaction, groups disintegrate or evolve into some other kind of group that more effectively satisfies need. An example may be found in children who find themselves unable to live up to the expectations of parents and so violently reject the goals of social groups their parents value. It may also be observed in the loss of interest in the sorority or fraternity that is characteristic of many college students after graduation. People do not move in single groups. Each of us lives and operates in many groups, moving in and out of varying spheres of influence from one group to another throughout our daily lives. The mere fact of existence in these multiple groups creates problems for the person because one of the necessities for adequacy is a degree of consistency in our personal beliefs, attitudes, and convictions. Membership in a number of different groups make it almost a certainty that sooner or later the individual will run into some kind of conflict among the beliefs and values of his various groups. Sometimes antagonistic group values can be held successfully apart by a kind of compartmentalization, as when our prejudices and our religious beliefs are held safely apart by avoiding the consideration of problems of prejudice when we are in church and failing to apply the teachings of a church in dealing with persons of other races or religion when we act in public. Group Identification Identification of a person with a group leads him to adopt and defend the standards and behavior of that group. To think well of himself it is necessary for a person to think well of his group. This introduces a measure of distortion to the individual's perceptual field and becomes an important factor in breakdown of communication. An attack on the group is an attack on self, and the strength of reaction to the attack is a function of the degree of threat. Criticism of the group by a fellow member stirs much less violent response than attack of the same sort by an outsider who is presumed to be hostile to the whole group. A teacher, for instance, who has himself criticized features of the educational system may resent such criticism from outsiders because he feels he is part of the system. Criticism by foreigners is universally resented. Similarly, aggrandizement for the group is aggrandizement for self. My team's victory is mine too. The accomplishments, prestige, and glory of those with whom we are identified are fulfillment for us as well. When an individual becomes identified with a group, he tends to adopt its standards, customs, and traditions as the bases for his own judgments of events occurring thereafter. Other groups are likely to be judged good

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or bad depending on the degree of likeness those groups have to the values and standards of one's own group. Persons who are able to behave in conformity with the standards of the group are accepted, and uncouth individuals are rejected. One of the principle barriers to international cooperation among peoples, all of whom sincerely desire a better world and a better society, is the lack of agreement among the various groups as to what constitutes a good society. The representatives of each culture, considering their own version of society as fundamentally right and true, believe that the better society can arise only from a further development and modification of their own. This is true whether they be Muslim or Hindu, Russian or American, Berber or Eskimo. To the true representative of each, any other society is manifestly inferior to his own. Real cooperation for world betterment can arise only out of common goals, that is, there must be mutual agreement on the ends to be attained. All groups sincerely desire a better society. But there can be genuine cooperation only among individuals who are able to look beyond the particular devices and techniques used in their own societies and focus their attention on the ends themselves.

THE GOOD SOCIETY SATISFIES NEED The purpose of society and of social institutions, we have said, is the satisfaction of human need. The basic human need is the preservation and enhancement of the phenomenal self. If these two assumptions are correct, we have a culture-free criterion by which the comparative goodness of societies can be determined. A society is good to the degree that it enables members and neighbors to live with health, security, self-respect, and dignity. It is good in the degree to which it aids its members to the development of selves adequate to deal with the world that surrounds them. A society is bad to the extent that it fails to provide these things for its members or removes them from its neighbors. The inadequate self will feel threatened and will threaten others in turn. The society must be judged primarily by the degree to which it satisfies the need of its least important members, because the unsatisfied members of any society are, like cancer cells in the body, a source of danger to their fellow members and to the social organization itself. In a good society there can be no unimportant members. The criterion of a good society is the amount of self-actualization it succeeds in fostering in its members.

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THE GOOD SOCIETY MUST BE DYNAMIC. No static, unchanging Utopia can be the psychologically satisfying "good" society. The culture of a good society must be dynamic and flexible rather than static, because the individual's need for the maintenance and enhancement of his phenomenal self can never be completely satisfied. No matter how successfully he solves his problems and builds up his feeling of strength and security, no successes and no recognition can be enough to give him the permanent feeling of adequacy and self assurance that he seeks. Further achievement and growth are always necessary. As a result, no society that attempts to remain static can adequately satisfy the needs of its members for very long.

MANY GOOD SOCIETIES Because it is the function of societies to assist their members to need satisfaction, there can, of course, be many good societies, almost as many as there are ways of achieving self-maintenance and enhancement. Furthermore, because human need is insatiable, good societies must be continually changing. Each must find ever new, more effective, and satisfying ways for helping its members to achieve self-enhancement. The goal of a dynamic society is to create the optimum conditions for individual growth and achievement of adequacy. Such a society would avoid the dangers of a planned society, which sooner or later must find its plan no longer adequate in a changing world. A dynamic society, concerned fundamentally with setting men free, seems far more likely to evolve and change with the march of human events.

CHAPTER

14

Organizations as Living Things

W

e began this book with the recognition that the universe is a vast system (organization) of organizations acting and interacting in innumerable ways. We examined the nature of organizations and described human beings themselves as organizations within the universe. That investigation led to the conclusion that human beings are living, self-regulating organizations forever involved in being and becoming, a process of maintaining and enhancing identity. Only recently we have begun to understand that the organizational characteristics we have been exploring in this volume apply not only to individuals but also to the organizations people form for living, working, and playing, whether family, school, business, club, team, church, or government.

HUMAN ORGANIZATIONS AS LIVING THINGS We are constantly participating in hundreds of organizations throughout our lives. It should not surprise us, then, that human organizations behave like human beings. Understanding organizations as living, dynamic events, however, calls for widespread changes in our thinking about their nature and functions and about their leadership. People organizations cannot be understood merely as the sum of their parts. They must be treated as growing, creative events. If they are allowed to, organizations will seek fulfillment, to be and become, just like each of their members. They are self-regulating 207

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systems with the capacity to grow from within as a consequence of the interactions of their participants. Though they may begin in seeming chaos, they seek to discover their identity and reach for its enhancement. That is the nature of growth, and it proceeds automatically if it is free to do so. Our founding forefathers suspected that was true when they designed the nation on the principle that when people are free, they can find their own best ways. When free to do so, organizations develop an identity all their own. They are able to do what their members alone cannot. Even more important, they have the capacity to transcend expectations in creative ways one would not consider possible from the nature of their membership. The most familiar example of this phenomenon may be seen in our legislative assemblies. Legislatures are cross-sections of the general public. They are made up of average Americans with a few brilliant minds and a few stinkers among them, just like the rest of the population. Nevertheless, year after year, they manage to transcend their ordinariness and govern successfully to produce legislation in the public interest. Of course, one may have doubts about that observation in the heat of political campaigns or when legislatures take actions contrary to our cherished personal beliefs. In the long run, however, our legislatures do remarkably well. The genius of democracy lies in the fact that together people can transcend themselves. They can indeed find their own best ways. Perhaps the best evidence of this fact is that we so rarely find it necessary to retract the laws our legislatures pass.

TWO KINDS OF ORGANIZATIONS Although it is true that freely operating organizations behave like living things, most of the human organizations we are involved with or observe in operation do not seem like living things at all. Rather, they seem more like managed entities designed to produce some specific outcome. They are products of the highly technological society in which we live. They provide the goods and services we need to function successfully in our thingsoriented culture. They are primarily managed organizations, and most people are hardly aware that any other pattern exists. Little by little, however, people are becoming better acquainted with the nature and functions of freely operating, person-centered organizations. Some institutions are now experimenting with person-centered organizations. Educators on the cutting edge are applying person-centered princi-

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pies to classroom and school organizations. Workers in the helping professions of counseling, social work, and pastoral care are finding person-centered understandings especially useful when applied to such fields as group therapy, marital counseling, and the resolution of group conflict.

HOW LIVING ORGANIZATIONS ARISE AND GROW Human organizations, like the individuals of which they are composed, are essentially self-organizing systems. They seek to maintain and enhance their identity and the fulfillment of their existence. By processes of interaction they discover who they are, what goals they should seek, and how they must go about seeking their fulfillment. This is a process of discovery that can operate efficiently only in an atmosphere of freedom and lack of coercion. Research has demonstrated that it is comparatively easy to move from a democratic organization to a dictatorial one but much more difficult to move from dictatorship to democracy.1 Just so, managed organizations can be imposed, but person-centered ones are products of participant discovery and experience. As we have seen, persons can, will, must move toward health //"they are free to do so. The principle holds for living organizations as well. As we observed in chapter 13, people join groups to improve their opportunities for self-actualization, identify with such groups as long as they contribute to that end, and abandon them when they no longer provide fulfillment. This cycle of exploration, discovery of identity, and search for fulfillment can be observed in human organizations everywhere: friendships, marriage, business, teams, clubs, and institutions of every variety. Arnold Toynbee, student of civilizations, in 1939 found that a similar cycle was characteristic of entire civilizations, including our own.2 Living or person-centered organizations normally start out in chaos, seeking here and there to find identity as the members interact with one another. Anyone who has ever participated in a new group of people tackling some problem together is familiar with the pattern. They start, stop, back up, turn around, jump forward, raise questions, propose actions, ask and argue in ways that seem totally without order or direction. Little by little, however, if they are successful, groups coalesce into an identity. Members discover each other's capacities and contributions, and the organization settles on some goal or goals and takes on a structure and function focused toward fulfillment. One can often chart this process as it

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occurs by listening to the level of talk as a group develops its unique structure and function. In the beginning, conversation generally occurs at "fingertip length," like the interactions at a tea, reception, or cocktail party. People talk in descriptive terms—"I saw . .."; "Did you hear . . ."; "Did you read where . . ."; "My uncle once . . ."; or stick to safe topics like politics, football, or the latest movies—talk that requires little personal commitment. As people get to know each other better, talk becomes more personal but still with built-in escape hatches: "I read that. . ."; "Once I . . ."; "What do you think about. . ."; "I once knew somebody who . . ." As persons feel more comfortable with each other, conversation may begin to include the self, at first very tentatively: "I sometimes think that. . ."; "I'm not sure I agree with . . ."; "I wonder if. . ."; "I thought maybe . . ." As the group becomes closer and more personally involved, people can be more straightforward with statements like "I believe . . . and here's why." Closer to self still, one begins to hear feelings and emotions expressed: "I felt badly that..."; "I'm pretty doubtful about. .."; "I like, dislike, worry about, wish that. . ." When participants feel really safe and truly involved, they begin to talk about feelings with passion: "It makes me so angry when ..."; "I feel happy, sad, anxious, sympathy for ..." And when folks are really into it: "I love, hate, fear, detest, demand, want to . . . , am moved, overcome . . ." An organization is a living, dynamic entity, and just by listening to the level of dialogue it is often possible to assess the level of personal involvement and commitment. The process of developing an identity and fulfilling its function takes time. Human organizations discover who they are and what their possibilities may be in the same fashion that individual persons do, by a process of differentiation as members interact with one another. They develop a group sense of self or identity and begin the process of exploring what they can and cannot do. They also develop a sense of purpose or goal and explore techniques for getting there. As described in chapter 3, one can see this happen in the growth of a human being. It happens in organizations as well //"they are free to do so.

MANAGED ORGANIZATIONS Perhaps the most familiar example of the managed approach to group organization is found in the "management by objectives" philosophy popular in industry and widely used everywhere else in our society. It goes like this:

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Establish your objectives. Plan your strategy to achieve them. Mobilize the necessary resources. Put the plan to work. Evaluate the outcome. This plan seems so straightforward, so businesslike, so logical that it is accepted everywhere almost without question. Unfortunately, logic is often only a systematic way of arriving at the wrong answers. The plan works well when dealing with things. Applied to people it works only sometimes. The trouble is people think. They also have feelings, attitudes, and needs unrelated to the tasks they are asked to carry out. Their objectives may or may not coincide with those they are asked to accept. For purely personal reasons they may or may not agree with proposed strategies or wish to cooperate in putting a given plan into operation. Our things-oriented, manipulation-of-forces society treats most organizations in the ways it copes with things. It treats them as machines, structures designed to produce some prescribed designated product or outcome. It cannot wait for an organization to find its identity, discover its purposes, define its strengths and limitations or choose its own methods. Instead of working with the processes of growth, it seeks to make things happen. As a consequence, most organizations in our culture are managed rather than free or person-centered. Managers and "leaders" of many descriptions do not interfere with free organizational functioning because they are vicious and spiteful. The realities of their jobs and circumstances often require specified or immediate outcomes. The goals or activities of educational organizations, for example, may be mandated by parents, the community, school boards, legislatures, or college admission standards. Organizations also may be limited because of time constraints, budgeting considerations, and the like. Those are reality considerations and make it necessary to recognize that there are two kinds of organizational patterns in our culture: a management approach and a person-centered one. There is need for both types of organization in our society. Generally speaking, approaching problems with two tools is almost always better than being restricted to only one. The problem is to understand managed and person-centered approaches well enough to know when each is most likely to advance human processes most efficiently. This is not an easy thing to do at the present time. Understanding organizations as living things is a new way

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of thinking and flies in the face of long-established and powerful forces in our culture. Our things-oriented culture and our traditional approaches to organizations are so exclusively preoccupied with the managed approach to organizations that most citizens are unaware that any alternative exists.

THE OBSESSION WITH METHODS The linear thinking characteristic of the culture in which we currently live is obsessed with methods. Whatever the problem, almost everyone seeks to solve it by applying some sort of method: "What shall we do?" we ask. "How shall I cope with this matter?" We seek for how-to solutions before we understand the principles or assumptions involved in the matter being confronted. Our bookstores are filled with how-to books, and we believe any matter can be effectively dealt with by the application of the appropriate method. This preoccupation with methods keeps us forever seeking the "right" or "universal" method for every exigency, including our people problems. But there are no "right" methods for dealing with human affairs. In the first place, it must be understood that methods are not simple. In fact, they are highly complex. For example, the methods used by teachers must fit the conditions: the room temperature, lighting, furnishings, equipment, materials, and many more. They must also fit the curriculum: where students are, what has gone before, the goals teachers have in mind, and the philosophy and goals of the school. Methods must also fit the students in all their complexity: needs, intelligence, health, interests, personal experience, and emotional condition. Add to all those variables the complexity of the teacher's own needs, goals, knowledge, belief system, feelings, and aspirations, and it becomes clear why there can never by a right method of teaching or leading to be required of everyone. The crucial fact about methods is that they must fit—they must fit the significant factors involved at a particular time and place. Even then they may not be appropriate an instant later. In order to fit, methods must be unique. By definition, there can be no such thing as a common uniqueness. Even if we could discover some promising method, it still could not be relied on to apply in every case. As we have seen, persons behave according to their perceptual fields, especially how they see themselves, the situations they confront, and what they are trying to do. The effect of any method is not inherent in the method itself. The effect will be deter-

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mined by what the recipient of the method thought was happening. Who has not experienced having some act misinterpreted by the person we hoped to affect? The effect of any method is determined by the recipient's perception of the matter. The search for right methods is thus an exercise in futility. Our new understanding of the nature of organizations and of the selfregulating characteristics of living systems calls for clear recognition of an alternative to managed systems in human affairs. The living qualities of organizations cannot be ignored with impunity. It comes at a price. To cope more effectively with human problems in group settings calls for a person-centered field approach to organizations. In the pages to follow let us explore managed and person-centered approaches in greater detail.

TWO APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATIONS Although there are no right methods characteristic of one type of organization or another, managed and person-centered organizations offer clear differences with respect to general strategies. The older, more familiar strategy for human organizations we shall call the managed approach. It could equally as well be named the closed system, behavioral, leadercentered, or controlled approach. The newer, less common strategy we shall refer to as the person-centered approach. It could also be described as an open system, emergent, self-organizing, or field approach. The Position Defined The managed approach generally begins with some clearly defined objective, selects the appropriate machinery to reach it, then puts that machinery into operation to accomplish the prescribed goal. This is the approach one would use in establishing an itinerary, producing a product in industry, or teaching a basic skill. It is the strategy generally employed for dealing with problems almost everywhere in our highly technological society. Most people learn it very early in the process of growing up and use it automatically in their daily interactions with the world. Legislators, business people, administrators, teachers, parents, and the general public use it so naturally that they are usually unaware that any alternative exists. Applied to the helping process, closed-system thinking produces the familiar medical model in which petitioners seek

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aid from an expert who makes a diagnosis and prescribes or applies treatment. The person-centered approach, on the other hand, resembles the approach we use in growing a plant. One gets the best seed one can find, deposits it in the best available soil, then surrounds the seedling with optimum conditions to facilitate growth. The emphasis is on the provision of facilitating conditions rather than outcomes. Person-centered strategies frequently begin without clearly defined objectives. Instead, participants may confront general questions and begin to search for solutions whose precise nature cannot be clearly discerned as the process gets underway. This is the approach employed in a legislative debate, in seeking a cure for cancer, by an artist creating a painting, in modern "discovery" approaches to teaching or counseling. In our society open-system thinking is far less understood than closed systems and consequently much less frequently employed. To contrast these two approaches, let us imagine applying them to the problem of improving the lives of people in our inner cities. Operating from the managerial strategy, a social work administrator sitting in his office devised an exciting plan. Why not have the city's service clubs "adopt a block" in the inner city and provide the financial means to upgrade the neighborhood? Broaching the plan to several service clubs in the city, he was delighted to get their assent. With their commitments in hand he met with people living in the targeted area and enthusiastically set forth his proposal. He was totally unprepared for the reaction. The people in the neighborhoods felt demeaned and insulted by the proposition. Angrily they told the social worker, "Forget your plan! We don't need no help from whitey!" Some years later another social worker, operating from a person-centered approach had more success. She lived in the inner city and participated in the neighborhood groups. After some months a member of one of the groups suggested, "Why don't we get some of the rich folks downtown to help with our neighborhood projects?" People were intrigued with the idea, explored it at some length, and after much debate the plan was adopted. Instead of "Adopt a Block," however, they called their plan "Block Power!" and a majority of the community got into the act. A committee was formed to select appropriate projects, and another laid their proposals before the city's service clubs. The projects were approved by the clubs, and shortly afterward the projects were under way. Table 14.1 presents an oversimplified and exaggerated comparison of management and person-centered systems for the sake of clarification.

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TABLE 14.1 Management and Person-Centered Systems Compared Topic

Closed System

Open System

Origins

Behavior management, control or manipulation Based on behavioristic psychology

Process-oriented facilitating conditions Based on perceptual field psychology

Leader's role

Expert diagnostician Total responsibility Precise goals or skills Director, manipulator of forces and outcome

Guide, helper Responsibility shared Broader goals Consultant, aid, facilitator

Focus or purpose

Ought's and should's Right answers Solving problems Specific goals and evaluation

Process goals Creation of conditions Fulfillment Filling needs, creating new ones

Techniques

Industrial model Competition and evaluation valued Administration dominant Emphasis on goal achievement

Personal growth model Cooperative effort Problem-centered Many group decisions Emphasis on intelligent problem solving

Philosophy

Control and direction Great man concept Doubts about motivation

Growth philosophy Democratic Trust in human organism

Participants

Passive Leader seen as controller Dependent Lacking commitment Conformity valued Endurance of stress

Active, responsible Leader seen as helper Involved in decisions Creativity valued Concern for others

Values

Simple skills Ends clearly known Power clearly in leader's hands

Broad goals Ends not precisely predictable Human concerns prominent

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A managed system is essentially goal-oriented. It focuses attention on behavioral outcomes defined in the clearest possible terms and seeks the most efficient methods for achieving them. Its psychological base is derived from behavioral psychology, which concentrates on the management of stimuli or consequents in order to produce desirable behaviors. Person-centered thinking is a process-oriented frame of reference. Facilitators and participants enter a relationship to search for solutions that cannot be precisely defined in advance. Its theoretical base is drawn from perceptual field-experiential psychologies and concentrates on the facilitation of growth and problem solving. Leader's Role In management systems, major responsibility is lodged in the leader for seeing to it that ends are properly achieved. Leaders may be self-appointed or designated by persons outside the current organization. The process is similar to the medical model. Responsibility is almost exclusively in the hands of the leader, with participants in a passive or subservient role. To operate effectively in management systems, leaders must be expert diagnosticians who know at any moment what is going on and where events must be channeled next. The leader's role is that of manager or director primarily responsible for the manipulation of forces so that preconceived goals may be achieved. Person-centered systems have a quite different locus of responsibility and role for the leader. Leaders may be originators of the group or emerge from the group itself. Groups may even operate effectively without a designated leader. Because outcomes are not precisely defined in advance, responsibility is shared by all who confront the problem. The emphasis is on participation with sharing of power and decision making. The role of the leader is as helper or facilitator. The leader's expertise is in the advancement of processes, in creating conditions conducive to solving problems. The leader acts as minister to the process, as helper, aid, facilitator, or consultant rather than director or manager. Focus or Purpose The focus in managed approaches is generally on problem solution more or less specifically defined. Emphasis is on goal achievement and appro-

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priate procedures to that end, generally ending with some measure of accountability or evaluation. Person-centered systems may begin without specific goals. The focus is concentrated on processes, self-direction, creating facilitative conditions for participant interrelationships and problem solving. Focus emerges from group interaction and may be modified or changed by group determination. Techniques Managed system techniques concentrate on goal achievement, to be reached by skillful direction and control by the leader. Consequently, methods chosen are patterned after industrial or medical models with control in the hands of "experts"—bosses, supervisors, or directors intent on the achievement of manifest objectives. Competition and evaluation may be highly valued, with much stress on standards, discipline, and motivation by reward and punishment. Administrative hierarchies tend to be sharply drawn, with clear distinctions between leaders and participants. Person-centered methods follow a growth model. They concentrate on processes and the provision of optimum conditions for problem solution, with widely varying techniques employed to reach those ends. Cooperation between leaders and workers is valued, and group decisions are frequently manifest. The emphasis is less on utilization of specific methods and more on intelligent problem solving. Philosophy Managed systems emphasize control, direction, and selection of goals by the leader. In the extreme this may lead to a "great man" philosophy: depending on someone who knows what should be done so that others can assure that they get there. The position begins with doubts about human motivation and capacities and calls for people who "know" to lead and instruct those who do not. Person-centered systems begin from a basic trust in the capacity of the human organism to find its own best ways and concentrates on creating conditions to facilitate that process. Its approaches are essentially democratic, recognizing the fundamental dignity and integrity of the participants and the belief that "when people are free they can find their own best ways."

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Because most decisions are made by leaders or administrators in managed system thinking, participants tend to be passive. Often they become dependent on the leader for answers and decisions. Leaders also may be regarded as "the enemy" and may be overtly or covertly resisted. Stress or anxiety is frequently present. When people do not share in decisions that affect their lives, they tend to (1) conform to the system, (2) break out in rebellion, or (3) leave the field by sundry ways of seeming to cooperate while actually dragging their feet. Because major communication is between leader and worker, participants may have little interaction or communication with each other. In person-centered systems, leaders are more likely to be regarded as helpers and facilitators. As a consequence, workers are more actively involved in the change process. They participate in decision making and are more likely to be cooperative and responsible. With emphasis on shared problem solving, they are more inclined to be creative rather than conforming. Tension levels are generally lower, and participants show greater concern for and identification with their fellows. System Values and Applicability In the preceding paragraphs, managed and person-centered systems have been sharply contrasted for purposes of outlining the two alternatives. It should be recognized, of course, that such sharp distinctions ordinarily do not appear in daily practice, nor do leaders always operate from one or the other frame of reference. Effective leaders may shift from one to the other system as needed for the problems confronted and by their understanding of the unique values of each approach. The point is not to adopt one or the other system but to utilize each in terms of its usefulness. There is a place for managed strategies, and closed-system thinking provides the theoretical framework for using them effectively. Managed system thinking can be especially useful when (1) goals are simple, (2) goals can be clearly defined, and (3) power to achieve them is firmly in the grasp of the leader. Open-system thinking is especially useful for the attainment of broad goals or when ultimate outcomes cannot be clearly foreseen. It also has special value when problems to be confronted are essentially human ones, involving motivation, feelings, attitudes, and personal meanings.

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Some Special Values of Field or Person-Centered Strategies The perceptual field approach seems particularly effective when applied to problems of human relationships in group settings. It is increasingly being applied in all of the helping professions, such as counseling, psychotherapy, teaching, child development and pastoral care. It is also being successfully explored in industry, in group work, and in conflict resolution. Because the person-centered approach recognizes the unhappy effects of threat on perceiving and seeks to challenge people without threatening them, conflict among the members of a group and with outsiders as well is likely to exist at a much lower level. Conflict is heightened when people feel frustrated, inadequate, or coerced into moving in directions they do not wish to go. As a consequence, resistance is likely to be high and change occurs only slowly and painfully, if at all. A philosophy of group operation based upon helping, aiding, assisting, however, keeps frustration at a minimum so that conflict is not so likely to occur. Even when it does occur, the elimination of threat provides little to support it, and it soon falls of its own weight. A field- or person-centered approach to human interrelationships actually creates leadership in groups rather than dependence on leadership provided from without. Where human dignity and integrity is respected and valued, when people are treated as though they are able, confronted with challenging tasks and given assistance and help in their search for adequacy, creativity and spontaneity result. It should not surprise us that under such circumstances the solutions people find for problems are likely to be of superior quality. And why not? Groups operating on a growth philosophy are not restricted to the solutions that occur to a single leader; the groups themselves create leadership and release human potentialities. What is more, persons who have experienced these kinds of human relationships are far more likely to have faith and trust in their fellows and to be capable of identifying and empathizing with others. To some, a person-centered approach to dealing with human problems as a process of facilitation of perception seems highly disappointing and much too slow to be capable of solving important problems. The personcentered approach seems to smack of anarchy and laissez-faire. Critics see little assurance that people will arrive at the "right" answers to problems without someone to decide what these are and to arrange matters in such a fashion as to make sure that everyone gets there. As a matter of fact, the emphasis on processes and facilitation in the long run seems much more

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likely to supply us with better solutions, for it has the advantage of producing an open, rather than a closed, system of thought. When more persons are actively involved, the base of human experience from which understanding and solutions can be derived is greatly expanded. It is not surprising that more data should result in better solutions. The Facilitation of Living Organizations Person-centered organization goals are generally broad, even vague. Most operate to address problems or questions rather than the production of specific outcomes. They may be established with quite open-ended goals, for example, "Let's get together to talk about what it means to be a man (or woman) in the nineties" or "What is it we are really trying to do in this school, team, club, or workplace?" Or groups may get together to dance, listen to music, or just hang out and see what happens. As we have seen in our discussion of learning, this is the way individual persons learn and grow. It is also the way in which living systems operate through a process of search and discovery. Our things-oriented society, however, does not prepare people to work in this fashion. Accordingly, observing living organizations in operation may be distressing for makers and shakers who are anxious to get things done. It is often difficult to appreciate working in this fashion, and it may take some time to learn how. The imposition of finite expectancies, however, can distort or even destroy the function of self-organizing groups. The Fear of Chaos A normal phase of living organizations is to begin in apparent chaos. Chaos, however, is anathema to the need for order and predictability demanded by our culture. It also runs counter to accepted logic, the scientific method and traditional concepts of administration. Many managers or leaders seeking to "make things happen" become frightened at the first sign of chaos and jump in to impose order on a process that seems to be getting out of hand. Modern students of chaos, however, now recognize that chaos is not the complete breakdown of order we have formerly supposed. Rather, it is a messy phenomenon in which a newly forming organization or a disrupted one finds a new order, identity, or way of being. Chaos is thus a step in becoming something new, different, or more fulfilling. The seeming confusion of a living organization as it explores and defines itself must be seen as a normal process of growth. For example, per-

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sons in psychotherapy typically begin counseling by going round and round as they explore themselves and their problems in seemingly chaotic fashion. Examination of recorded protocols of counseling sessions, however, reveals that, little by little, new ways of seeing themselves, their situations, and problem solutions arise out of the seeming confusion. The process also can be noted by anyone who has watched the explorations of adolescents as they seek to define and redefine their identity. Parents and teachers also can attest to the feelings of frustration experienced by observers of the process. What seems like chaos in living systems must be seen as part of the process. To lose patience or interfere can result in delaying or killing off the organization's search and discovery of its identity, mission, and activity. This understanding has much to offer persons engaged in such helping relationships as parenting, counseling, teaching, social work, and child development. Some Perceptual Field Implications For Living Organizations Many of the principles we have been exploring in this field approach to psychology provide important clues to the facilitation of self-organizing, living organizations. Here are a few: Working with the Organism Because the primary drive of every human being is an insatiable reach for identity or the maintenance and enhancement of the self, whoever seeks to produce change in persons or organizations is far more likely to be successful working with the organism than against it. If the drive of the organism is truly toward health, we can count on organizations to move in such directions //"the way seems open to them to do so. This means that helpers and their clients are on the same side of the fence—both are seeking the health of the client. There is no need to make that happen. Rather, helpers and leaders must learn to minister to the process, to facilitate the organization's inherent force. The Atmosphere for Change Living organizations work best in an atmosphere that is challenging but not threatening. We saw in chapter 5 the negative effects of threat in the production of tunnel vision and self-defense, neither of which are conducive to discussion and participation. Persons working with person-centered organizations should therefore, give careful attention to creating an

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atmosphere with the fewest possible barriers to individual involvement. Among the factors to be considered in this regard may be such matters as the comfort and equipment of the workplace, an adjustable time frame, and of course, the skill of the leader. Ideally, living systems operate best in an atmosphere of friendly cooperation, where personal involvement is encouraged and facilitated. Facilitating Communication The manipulation-of-forces approach to dealing with problems is so embedded in our culture that few people have had opportunity to experience truly person-centered organizations. As a consequence, participants must generally learn new ways of working with one another. Effective personcentered organizations require of their participants skill in active listening, that is, the capacity to truly listen to what other people are trying to express. This is a rare quality in much of the normal interchanges with people in our culture. The success of living organizations is deeply dependent on communication. Fostering the processes of living organizations therefore requires active facilitation of communication among the participants. Freedom to Explore Effective organizations grow from within like all other living things. They fulfill their identity in facilitative conditions and are stunted or distorted by management and control. Living systems do not respond well to coercion. Whether they can grow and prosper or become nonfunctional, even destroyed, will depend on the freedom with which they are permitted to function. To facilitate the processes of living organizations, all persons involved will therefore have to engage in active examination and removal of possible barriers to the free functioning of such organizations. The Need for Feedback For effective operation, living organizations require feedback from outside the organization as well as communication within. Too often the only feedback that organizations receive comes in the form of critical evaluation and judgment. Truly helpful information should extend beyond mere evaluation. It also should be as extensive, immediate, and relevant as possible to the organization's task and functions.

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The Dignity and Integrity of Participants Because the operations of living systems are dependent on the free interaction of its members, the self-concepts of participants becomes an essential variable in the success of an organization. As we have observed in chapters on health and ill health, the possession of positive views of self contribute to the freedom of individuals to communicate and behave effectively. It follows that processes that contribute to the positive self-concepts of participants should be actively sought in person-centered organizations. Negative feelings, on the other hand, produce defensive, antagonistic, and hindering behavior. The Feeling of Oneness or Belonging Such feelings are characteristic of truly healthy personalities and result in responsible interaction, cooperative effort, active involvement, and concern for others. The possession of such feelings naturally facilitates the operations of any human activity.

LIMITATIONS OF THE BEHAVIORAL FRAME OF REFERENCE There is no doubt that the behavioristic, manipulation-of-forces approach to dealing with people often works and is useful in a things-oriented society. It has serious limitations, however, when applied to the problems of working with people. The problem with the manipulation-of-forces approach is not that it is wrong but that it is only partly right. Its partial successes only encourage continuance on the same path and discourage the search for better alternatives. The behavioristic approach sometimes gets results but is essentially a closed or managed system for approaching human affairs. Despite its inadequacies, the manipulative approach to dealing with people problems continues in widespread use everywhere in our society. It is deeply ingrained in anyone growing up in our culture. It is SOP (standard operating procedure) in the administration and management of industry, in doctor-patient relationships, in education, government, and business, and in coping with community problems of crime and delinquency. It may even be observed in family relationships, in churches, and hospitals, on the playing fields, and in shelters for the homeless. It often works when dealing

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with things. Applied to human problems, it leaves much to be desired. The concept of organizations as living, self-regulatory systems and the field view of human personality and behavior we have been presenting in this volume suggest a more promising alternative to understanding and working with people in groups, one to one or whole societies.

CHAPTER 15

Field Theory in Historical Perspective

I

n the mid-1800s many societies found themselves confronted with a growing body of human problems. To help understand the nature of human relationships in increasingly complex cultures, the social sciences of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science sprang into being. The first psychologists in the mid-1800s began their studies by attempting to explore the nature of human experience. Because human experience lies inside folks and is not open to direct examination, their early studies were primarily focused on aspects of experience that seemed accessible, namely, sensation—touch, vision, taste, hearing, smell, and color perception.1 These early attempts to explore personality and experience were soon replaced, however, as psychologists became intrigued with the exciting developments occurring in the physical sciences and sought to apply similar approaches to their profession.

THE BEHAVIORIST APPROACH The last half of the 19th and the early 20th century were marked by the growth and development of industry and invention that the discoveries in the physical sciences made possible. The extraordinary flood of goods and 225

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services these advances produced profoundly changed American life. They eased the burdens of daily life, enormously increased the possibilities of communication, transportation, power, and light, to name but a few of their contributions to society. It is no wonder that science and the scientific method became almost a sacred cow in American culture and continues so today. The budding field of psychology was deeply influenced by these events. Psychologists desperately longed to be a part of the scientific community. The very essence of science was the scientific method, careful, controlled observation and experimentation. Because the most important aspects of human experience lie inside people, they are not available to direct observation or manipulation. Early psychologists were therefore frustrated in abiding by the scientific model they so much admired. As we have seen, one can observe the physical organism and one can observe the organism's behavior, but the nature of persons and the causes of behavior are not directly observable. Accordingly, psychologists in the late 19th and the early 20th century concentrated on what could be observed and measured, namely, people's behavior.2 This concentration on things that could be observed and manipulated was a natural preoccupation. The history of humanity for a million years or more has been a struggle to control the environment, to wrest from it the food, clothing, shelter, and security people need to sustain themselves and those they care about. Manipulation of forces to control the environment is a basic requirement for survival even in today's cultures. Concentrating on behavior, which can be observed and often manipulated as well, was therefore a reasonable and understandable approach for psychologists at the turn of the last century. It also met the scientific criteria so much admired for the past hundred years. Psychologists' concentration on the study of behavior led to the invention of stimulus-response, behavior modification, and the behavioral approach to psychology. That psychology, also known as behaviorism, became the primary frame of reference for the majority of psychologists for 50 years or more. For several generations, behavioral psychology reigned as the dominant, almost exclusive approach to understanding personality and behavior. The behaviorists did their job well. They analyzed behavior thoroughly in terms of stimulus and response or consequents (behavior modification) and sought its control and direction in the manipulation of external forces. More recently, they have been unable to push this analysis further.

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THE GROWTH OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY The early years of behaviorism were primarily academic and theoretical. Beginning in the early 1900s, however, the findings of behaviorism were increasingly applied to the human problems of industry, education, social work, and clinical psychology. They found expression, for example, in time and motion studies for industry, in applications to learning, testing and grading for education, environmental statistics for social work, and intelligence and aptitude testing in the psychological clinic. Psychological testing had the dual value of dealing with behavior that could be clearly observed and the additional virtue of making things measurable as in the physical sciences model. Psychological testing became extremely popular and was often accepted with the same confidence people at the time had for medical diagnoses. For many years testing was the primary contribution of theoretical psychology to the practical problems of society. The testing movement was also given an enormous impetus when psychologists were employed in large numbers for the selection of men for military service during World War II and the reintroduction of several millions of veterans into the national workforce after the war in the late 1940s and early 1950s. After World War II the explosion of psychology into a myriad varieties of professional practice confronted the discipline with an increasingly difficult dilemma. Psychologists working in education, industry, clinics, and especially the budding field of counseling and psychotherapy became more and more unhappy with the strictures of behaviorism. Its tenet, that people behave according to the forces exerted on them, proved increasingly inadequate to provide effective guidelines for professional practice. Stimulus-response and behavior modification simply could not be counted on to provide sufficient understanding of persons and behavior required to meet the needs of applied practitioners. It became increasingly apparent that behaviorism was only a partly right idea. People do indeed seem to behave according to the forces exerted on them, but not always. As a result, behaviorism had to describe behavior statistically, asserting that persons would "probably" behave thus or so. It could not, however, provide the kind of certainty practitioners required to understand and assist individual clients with greater assurance. Accordingly, psychologists in ever larger numbers began turning to other explanations for human behavior and personality. Some turned for

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guidelines to the psychoanalysts of Europe (Freud, Jung, Adler) or to philosopher-existentialists like Sartre as well as to a number of phenomenologists.3 Others turned to the thinking of American psychologists and psychiatrists, such as Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Rollo May.4 Still others were attracted to the teachings of a whole series of gurus who rose to popularity for a time then faded into oblivion.

THE HUMANISTIC MOVEMENT The search for more adequate understanding of persons and behavior led many psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s to seek explanations in terms of people's feelings, attitudes, beliefs, hopes, fears, and aspirations—the things that make us human. These apparent "causes of behavior" offered more to the applied aspects of psychology—counseling, education, social work, and pastoral care—than the mechanistic tenets of behaviorism did. Other human-oriented disciplines, such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and political science, were similarly looking for more humane frames of reference in their areas of study, and their collective search came to be known in psychology as the humanistic movement. The things-oriented, manipulation-of-forces culture, rapidly developing as a consequence of the successes of science and industry, stimulated the growth of the humanistic movement in two primary ways: 1. The vast production of goods and services provided by science and industry freed ever larger numbers of citizens to turn from preoccupation with fulfilling their physical needs to concern for the people problems of personal and social interaction. As was observed in chapter 1, when a person's basic physical needs are satisfied, he seeks fulfillment of a higher order, including more personal and social goals, like self-esteem or selfactualization. 2. As the culture became increasingly consumer-driven and thingsoriented, its very successes began to generate pressing personal and social problems for many people and institutions—for example, the need for two wage earners to support a family, increased contacts with people but also created less intimacy, greater disparity between the rich and poor, and disruption of lives by changing jobs.

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Both phenomena led more and more people to seek for better understanding of human personality and behavior in order to cope more effectively with pressing personal and social problems In psychology, the search for more adequate understanding of human beings was deeply influenced by a myriad of psychologists who turned to the study of persons and behavior from various person-centered perspectives. Perhaps most notable among these was Carl Rogers, who invented a new approach to counseling and clinical practice. Rogers suggested a form of counseling based on careful listening to clients, in the firm belief that persons could find their own best answers to personal problems, without direct management or intervention, through responding to the person's feelings about self and the world.5 Abraham Maslow, another giant in the movement, formulated a hierarchy of needs (see chapter 1) explored the nature of self-actualization and called for recognition of a "Third Force" for psychology6 (see chapter 1). Prescott Lecky called attention to "self consistency" as the central core of personal organization.7 Victor Raimy wrote a seminal definition of the "self concept" and its important effects on personality and human interactions.8 Other workers who deeply influenced the movement include such names as Jean Piaget, Gardner Murphy, Victor Frankl, Eric Fromm, Donald Snygg, Sidney Jourard, and many more.91 consider my own work to be both an expression of and a contribution to the humanistic movement. The growth of the humanistic movement in psychology was by no means easy. Workers in the stimulus-response, behavior modification approaches of behaviorism did not take kindly to the person-centered thinking of the humanistic movement. Many regarded its ideas as "unscientific," even potentially destructive to the psychological profession. Among the public as well there was opposition from religious groups who dubbed the movement "secular humanism" and campaigned against it as an "ungodly" influence. There were even legislators so doubtful of the movement's influence that they sought to attach riders to legislative appropriations forbidding the use of funds for "humanistic" projects. Such opposition led many psychologists to give up the humanistic label altogether. Although they described themselves in less inflammatory terms, the search for more humane understanding of human personality and behavior continued unabated. Even today, it is a search that is alive and well and more vigorous than ever. Indeed, at this point psychologists operating from person-centered or humanistic thinking represent the major thrust of the profession.

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A HOUSE DIVIDED The failure of behaviorism as a comprehensive basis for understanding persons and human behavior placed applied psychologists in an awkward position. The concepts they found most useful in the course of their practice did not lend themselves to traditional scientific investigation. Neither could they be related to any commonly held frame of reference acceptable to the whole discipline. Applied psychologists could not rely on the findings of behaviorism for the guidelines they needed to practice successfully. At the same time, traditional psychologists often rejected the unscientific tendencies of applied practitioners. This produced a fundamental split between applied and theoretical psychologists that the profession has been trying to heal for many years with only partial success.

THE NEED FOR A COMMON FRAME OF REFERENCE Psychologists have tried to cope with the lack of a common frame of reference in many ways. Some behaviorists sought to respond to the needs of practitioners by stretching their behavioral concepts to substitute cognition for stimuli. Many applied psychologists, however, carried their rejection of behaviorism as far as to eschew adopting any systematic theoretical base of any sort. They turned their backs on behaviorism altogether, choosing to work from hunches, popular methods, or the influence of one or another school of thought advocated by some notable figure. Other psychologists began to look for the causes of behavior phenomenologically, in the experience of the behaver. Still others sought to develop limited theories applied to one aspect or another of their areas of interest and expertise. As a consequence, modern psychology finds itself without a generally accepted frame of reference from which to operate. The profession needs a theoretical framework wherein the diverse aspects of psychology can find tenable common ground. The absence of a set of widely accepted assumptions creates innumerable problems for the profession. Bereft of a systematic foundation, the profession is without a yardstick against which to measure the promising from the pretentious, the solid from the fallacious. Without a trustworthy and generally accepted theoretical base, communication within the profession is hampered and confused. It also fails to provide a stable foundation

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for the design and conduct of research on which the stability and progress of any science depends. The lack further undermines public confidence in a profession that seems to have no trustworthy guiding principles. Psychology desperately needs a comprehensive, accurate, internally consistent frame of reference on which the majority of the profession can agree and from which its various divisions can build their thinking, practice, and research. The field approach to psychology we have been exploring is my attempt to provide an initial step toward the development of such a unifying frame of reference.

SOME EARLY ATTEMPTS AT A FIELD PSYCHOLOGY The field concept is not new for psychology. Phenomenologists, Gestaltists, and perceptual or experiential thinkers have been moving toward a field theory for some time with or without the "field" label. They have sought to understand personality and behavior on the premise that people behave according to their perceptions, meanings, or experience. Phenomenologists have attempted to study people from such an assumption for years, but their efforts have not attracted large numbers of the profession. Kurt Lewin, in the 1930s, introduced the field concept to psychology, but most psychologists were too engrossed in behaviorism at that time to pay much attention.10 Gestalt psychologists also utilized the field concept although they did not speak of it as such when they postulated that behavior is always ordered by a gestalt, or configuration, and what is perceived is always a total experience, not an isolated event. Wertheimer spoke of field forces in 1939, as did Koffka in 1922 and 1935. Kohler dealt with the concept in 1947, and Kurt Lewin used it extensively in 1936, 1943, and 1951.11 These tentative efforts laid the groundwork for a comprehensive field approach to the study of personality and behavior, and the time now seems ripe to explore its wider applications.

A SOCIAL SCIENCE BREAKTHROUGH Almost everyone in today's society is familiar with the idea of scientific breakthroughs. We are intrigued and excited to hear of some new scientific insight that seems to open vast new possibilities for further understanding

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the environment we live in and promises scores of new ways for coping with the physical world. We savor such breakthroughs and look forward to their development into marvelous new goods and services for our thingsoriented culture. Breakthroughs are even more exciting to the scientists who happen upon them or follow their leads into new areas of exploration. Less well known is the fact that important breakthroughs occur in the social sciences as well. When they do, they are equally as exciting and as far-reaching as those in the physical sciences. Just such a psychological breakthrough occurred for Donald Snygg and Arthur Combs in 1947. The field approach to psychology we have been exploring in this volume was originally set forth by those authors in a book published in 1949.12 The story of its emergence was described by Combs in an article written nearly 25 years later that was included in a volume in which many authors were asked to describe "moments that made a difference" in their lives. Combs's report is reproduced here for its historical interest but also as an example of the high drama and excitement sometimes experienced by researchers in the social science of psychology.13

AN INTELLECTUAL CONVERSION At the time I completed my doctorate in 1945,1 was teaching psychology at Syracuse University. My study for that degree crammed me full of objective facts about every aspect of human behavior. All those details provided a wealth of content for lectures and a sense of academic security for a young professor. Unhappily, they also left me with a feeling of great frustration, for many of the facts I had were quite without meaning and some were diametrically opposed to each other. Often they made no sense as I tried to apply them to my clients in psychotherapy or my students in the classroom or as guides to my own behavior. I needed a theoretical framework that might bring order out of the diversity and provide effective guidelines for practice. During this period, Donald Snygg was coming to our campus once a week from Oswego to teach a class in our expanding program in clinical psychology. On one of these occasions he handed me a reprint of an article he had written in 1941 titled "The Need for a Phenomenological System of Psychology." Such an unpromising title produced in me no great hurry to read the article, and it lay on my desk for weeks. Meantime, I was hard at work on a paper concerned with the theoretical aspects of what we

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called in those days nondirective therapy. This paper was to be my first ever presentation at a national convention, and I remember that I polished it with a delicious mixture of fear and excitement. When I set off for New York, I tucked Don's reprint in my briefcase, intending to read it on the train. I shall never forget the next 48 hours. When I arrived in New York, I discovered to my horror that I was scheduled to speak on the basic aspects of nondirective therapy, with Carl Rogers, the father of this approach, on one side of me and Peter Bios, the most virulent critic of this form of therapy, on the other! Somehow, I managed the speech, and after it was over, Rogers was highly complimentary and encouraging. That evening, with the glow of my triumph still in me, I boarded the train for Syracuse and settled down for a long ride home. Searching my briefcase for something to read, I found and pulled out Don Snygg's reprint, and then it happened. As I read that innocuous-looking pamphlet, my whole world changed. Already excited by my experience in New York, I soared off in a completely new dimension. I blew my mind! As I read Don's pamphlet, everything fell into place. Things that I had worried about and wrestled with for years came looming into focus with a clarity and precision that I had never before experienced. A whole new psychology rolled out before me. I was ecstatic! There it was in unbelievable clarity and simplicity. In one stunning jolt a thousand things made sense. I remember thinking, "It can't be happening to me." But even as I thought that, I knew it had. I knew it was good, and I knew it was right. I began to check it out against everything else I knew. I thought, "What about learning?" And the answer came quick as a flash, "Well, of course!" "What about emotion? need? motives? adjustment? psychotherapy?" As I raised the questions, the answers continued to fall into place with lightning-like rapidity. Like a child who suddenly discovers how to put a puzzle together and then spends hours of sheer delight in putting it together and taking it apart simply for the wonder of being able to do so, I examined one aspect of behavior after another with a marvelous feeling of closure and satisfaction. When the train pulled into the station, I jumped off and ran to make a phone call to Don Snygg. What he must have thought! I remember I did not want to tell him the whole story over the phone, but the urgency with which I demanded that he see me next day must surely have left him thinking I was caught in a major calamity. The following day I set off for Oswego as soon as I could, and I marched into his office early in the afternoon. I remember exclaiming, "Don, this is the most marvelous thing I have ever read. We've got to do something with it!" I remember, too, his

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reply, "What the hell are you talking about?" Then, bit by bit, as I laid out the concepts his pamphlet had triggered in me, he began to grow more and more excited. As if we were piling smoldering embers, one on another, we traded ideas until suddenly they burst into flame for Don as they had for me. That afternoon, in a surge of creativity, we set down the outline for the first edition of Individual Behavior. Over the next three years we met weekly, putting flesh on the book's skeleton and extending its ramifications, but the basic design we set down that afternoon remained as it came into being that very first day. I doubt if any man can ever experience two such profound intellectual experiences in a lifetime. To experience one is enough; to have had the additional opportunity to explore ideas in depth with a man like Don Snygg is more than enough. It is a fulfillment.

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF SNYGG AND COMBS'S FIELD FRAME OF REFERENCE The original presentation of Snygg and Combs's perceptual field approach to psychology was titled Individual Behavior: A New Frame of Reference for Psychology. It was later revised by Combs in 1959 under the title Individual Behavior: A Perceptual Approach to Behavior. A second revision was offered in 1976 in collaboration with Anne and Fred Richards. That revision was called Perceptual Psychology: A Perceptual Approach to the Study of Persons.1* The original perceptual field approach began with the fundamental proposition that all behavior, without exception, is completely determined by and pertinent to the phenomenal field of the behaving organism. It further defined the phenomenal or perceptual field of meaning as the universe of naive experience in which each individual lives, the everyday situation of self and surroundings that each person takes to be reality. Beginning from those basic assumptions, Snygg and Combs showed how a comprehensive field theory could be constructed by studying personality and behavior from the premise that persons behave according to their perceptions, meanings, or experience. This frame of reference has been variously called, by Combs and other users; phenomenological psychology, perceptual psychology, experiential psychology, and person-centered psychology. Snygg and Combs's original proposal found acceptance primarily in applied fields like counseling, guidance, education, social work, and pas-

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toral care. Humanistically oriented practitioners generally found that perceptual field psychology fit well with their experience and provided stimulating and useful premises for work with their clients and students. The book was not so well received by psychologists in academic, research, and theoretical settings. They were, for the most part, totally committed to stimulus-response psychology. Indeed, the reactions of some members of the psychology profession were openly hostile to the perceptual field view terming it unscientific, unscholarly, and worse. Their rejection of perceptual field thinking was so intense in the early 1950s that I resigned from work in the Psychology Department at Syracuse University to work in the fields of counseling and education at the University of Florida.

FIELD THEORY TOO SIMPLE? A major complaint of psychologists in the early days of perceptual field thinking was that the approach was too simple and uncomplicated. Expressed in nontechnical terms, the basic tenet of perceptual field psychology is that people behave according to how things seem to them, especially how one sees one's self, the situations confronted, and one's purpose at the moment of acting. That seems so right, so in line with one's own experience that some may well exclaim, "Well, of course! Everyone knows that. What's the big deal?" It seems too simple a concept to provide an adequate basis for understanding such complex matters as human personality and behavior. We need to remind ourselves, however, that a major quest of science is to find the simplest possible explanations for the largest possible amounts of data. The formula for Einstein's theory in the field of physics, for example, is simplicity itself—E = me2—yet its implications for our understanding of the physical world are enormous. Each of us knows that our own behavior is a direct result of how things seem to us at the moment of acting. That seems self-evident but hardly an adequate basis for a whole science of human personality and behavior. When dealing with other persons, however, we nearly always revert to external explanations. We assume that other people are acting in response to the forces observable to us. We seek answers to social problems in the forces acting on people now or in the past. For example, the juvenile delinquent is described as a product of poverty, a broken home, bad companions, drugs, school failure, unemployment, or any of a hundred other factors in the adolescent's environment. Beginning from such assumptions, we

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then design treatment to control the observed behaviors by reward or punishment of some sort with but partial success. We live in a things-oriented society and generally tend to treat human beings in the same fashion that works for things—by manipulating the observable forces that seem to be involved. In fact, the things orientation is so ingrained in each of us that we employ the manipulation-of-forces approach in all our relationships automatically. We may even apply it to ourselves as we try to explain our own behavior. We say we behaved the way we did because of what others said or did, because the situation called for it, because it was the right thing to do, and so forth. What is more, such external causes of behavior were supported by the behavioristic psychology of the past 50 years, thus suggesting an endorsement by the scientific enterprise associated with such mechanistic views. Yet the field assumption, that all behavior is a function of the perceptual field, is not so simplistic as first glance would seem to imply. Quite the contrary, it provides a new perspective for understanding the complexities of personality and behavior with implications for all aspects of human experience. A field approach like the one we have been exploring in this volume has the potential for advancing our understanding of ourselves and others in new and more efficient ways. Still, one might raise the question: Is it enough to meet the current needs of the profession?

CRITERIA FORA COMPREHENSIVE PERCEPTUAL FIELD THEORY A truly useful theory in any science must be comprehensive, accurate, internally consistent, appropriate for the tasks confronting it, open to modification as new data or experience requires, and the simplest possible explanation for the widest possible data. This last is a major effort for science and is sometimes referred to as the rule of parsimony. I believe the field approach to psychology presented in these pages meets those criteria, at least for now. To meet the current needs of psychology, a basic frame of reference for the profession must also be able to satisfy three additional vital criteria: 1. It should be as systematic and congruent as possible—that is to say, it should begin from one or more basic assumptions and thereafter build toward an understanding of the nature of persons and behavior through a series of internally consistent concepts and principles.

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2. It should be comprehensive, capable of incorporating and giving meaning to the widest possible data obtained from observations and experimentation in all aspects of modern psychology, including the basic principles of behaviorism, the humanistic movement, and professional practice. 3. It should possess or permit development of adequate techniques for observation and research. Can perceptual field theory meet those criteria? I believe it can. Criterion 1. As we have seen in this volume, perceptual field psychology begins from two basic assumptions: (1) that human beings are living organizations continuously seeking the maintenance and enhancement of their identity, "being and becoming," and (2) that they achieve expression or fulfillment of that end through the dynamics of the perceptual field. How that happens has been the subject of this volume. The reader must judge for himself whether the field frame of reference we have explored is truly capable of beginning from basic assumptions and thereafter building "understanding of persons and behavior through a series of internally consistent concepts and principles." Criterion 2. We have shown how a perceptual field approach can incorporate and give meaning to a wide variety of topics related to human personality and behavior. Earlier we observed that humanistically oriented workers who deal with their students, clients, or patients in terms of their feelings, attitudes, hopes, fears, beliefs, values, and the like are actually utilizing a field approach whether they are aware of doing so or not. We have also shown that such a frame of reference can contribute to theoretical understanding as well as the needs of applied practitioners. Again, the reader must judge for himself how this evidence supports the criterion. We have not shown in detail how a field frame of reference can adequately include the findings of other viewpoints about personality and behavior. In this presentation we have been occupied with presentation of the perceptual field frame of reference. Whether that approach can adequately include the work of behavioral psychologists and the work of applied practitioners must be the subject of another volume. At this point, however, it seems likely that a perceptual field orientation is capable of including all of behavioral psychology's observations and experimentation by the simple recognition that it is not the stimulus that determines behavior but the subject's perceived meaning of such an event. Likewise, the findings of cognitive psychology are relevant in the perceptual field frame of reference. Cognition, after all, is but a form of awareness. As we saw in

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chapter 10, however, there is a vast difference between mere knowing and behaving. Persons behave in terms of what they know only when they have discovered its personal meaning, and that, in our view, is a function of the perceptual field. Whether the perceptual field frame of reference can adequately satisfy research criterion number 3, above, will be addressed in the next chapter.

RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER SCIENCES All of the major sciences are currently engaged in a far-reaching paradigm shift from the linear thinking of Newton and Descartes to the study of relationships, systems, organizations, and ecology.15 Until the early part of this century, scientists conceived of the world and the universe in mechanistic terms. They sought understanding of events in terms of things and forces. In physics, for example, they sought to understand the nature of matter. They chased it down through molecules, atoms, protons, and the like through ever tinier and tinier states until matter disappeared into particles and waves. Out of the turmoil caused by this unexpected debacle, science is turning to a new way of looking at events by concentrating on interrelationships, organizations, systems, fields, and ecology. This new way of looking at events has shaken up the worlds of physical, chemical, and biological science and opened exciting new areas of exploration and discovery. The paradigm shift in the physical and biological sciences is roughly analogous to a similar shift in psychological thought. Like the physicists' pursuit of matter, psychologists have studied behavior in excruciating detail for 60 years or more only to discover that it could not provide the understanding of personality and behavior they hoped for. As we have seen, many psychologists then sought better understanding in such human qualities as attitudes, beliefs, fears, hopes, needs, and the like. Such human dynamics, of course, are perceptual organizations. So psychologists have arrived at a conclusion similar to that of physical and biological scientists: understanding of the nature of persons and behavior must be sought in people's perceptions, field organizations, or systems. Snygg and Combs's proposal for a field approach for psychology in 1949 actually predates acceptance of the new paradigm by many physical and biological scientists. It is fascinating to observe how the earliest pioneers in the psychological profession began with an attempt to explore human experience and

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perception, then spent generations in a cul-de-sac concentrating on the exploration of behavior. Confronted with the futility of that effort in the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists, especially those in professional practice, began turning to attitudes, feelings, emotions, values, needs, and the like as dynamic factors in human personality and behavior. They did that because such concepts enabled them to work more effectively with others. More recently, we have come to understand that there is substantial support for their shift in thinking in the perceptual field frame of reference. The perceptual field view of persons and behavior was presented in book form in 1949 and revised in 1957 and again in 1975. It represents but a first step in the exploration of a new paradigm for psychology. It proposes a viable place from which to begin the exploration of personality and behavior in terms of relationships, organizations, and systems. Twice before I have suggested the need for a field approach to psychology in articles entitled "Why the Humanistic Movement Needs a Perceptual Psychology" (1974) and "Toward a Viable Psychology of Meaning" (1990), with only limited acceptance.16 With the paradigm shift currently underway in most of the sciences toward the study of ecology, systems, and self-regulating organizations, I am emboldened once again to offer this field approach to psychology. I am not so naive as to assume that the exploration of perceptual theory herein is by any means the last word or the complete picture. Science does not work that way. It is continuously in search of ever better, more inclusive and trustworthy frames of reference. This perceptual field interpretation, therefore, must be seen as a proposal for now with the certainty that it will be supplanted by something better down the road.

CHAPTER

16

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I

n the course of its 100-plus years of existence, psychology and psychologists have accumulated a considerable store of useful research techniques. Because perceptual field thinking is but an extension of psychology's attempt to understand human beings, the time-tested research techniques invented by traditional psychologists to explore the nature of human behavior are as useful today as they ever were. New frames of reference or new assumptions for studying human beings, however, may call for new research techniques in order to explore the new concepts more effectively. So it is that a field approach to psychology calls for appropriate new techniques to research the new questions it seeks to answer.

THE INADEQUACY OF INTROSPECTION Logically, it would seem that if we would like to know how a person sees herself or the world about her, the thing to do would be to ask her. That technique, known as introspection, psychologists have rejected, however, as too unreliable. This is perhaps best illustrated by the difficulties we incur when we try to understand the phenomenal self of another by asking someone how she sees herself. Her reply is not a description of her phenomenal self; it represents a self-report. But as we saw earlier (chapter 4), 240

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the self-report, like any other behavior, is a product of a person's total phenomenal field. Like any other behavior it is thus a product of the person's perceptions of both self and not-self. How accurate a description of the phenomenal self the self-report is likely to be is dependent on at least the following factors: the clarity of the person's awareness, the adequacy of symbols for expression, social expectancy, cooperation of the subject, freedom from threat and the feeling of personal adequacy. Most important as a factor contributing to error, is the change in field organization brought about by the request for a selfreport. The organization of the phenomenal field when the individual is behaving with attention focused on coping with the situation being confronted is not the same as that when the self is clearly and sharply in focus. All these possible sources of error make the self-report problematic for perceptual field research.

OLD AND NEW TECHNIQUES FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH As we observed in chapter 15, the perceptual field frame of reference is not a denial of previous psychologies. Rather, it is an extension beyond traditional explorations of personality and behavior to cope with questions prior frames of reference could not adequately address. Accordingly, all of the research strategies used successfully by traditional psychology still remain available to workers adopting the field frame of reference. As happens in any field of endeavor, however, major changes in thinking often require the development of new techniques to properly explore the implications of the new orientation. This is true for research in the field frame of reference. What the approach to psychology proposed in this book adds to traditional thinking is the necessity to explore the perceptual field. That calls for the development and acceptance of new approaches or techniques. Because the perceptual field is not open to direct observation or measurement, perceptual psychology must depart from traditional timetested techniques to invent procedures capable of exploring its subject matter. The search for new ways to explore and understand the inner life and organization of persons has led to a whole new branch of psychological research, variously known as qualitative, subjective, person-centered, experiential, or perceptual field research. It includes a wide variety of

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devices, all aimed at gaining insight into the perceptual field. It includes such strategies as hypnosis, projective instruments of a hundred varieties, case studies, role-playing, psychodrama, and more or less structured dialogue. Even self-reports, which cannot be accepted at face value, can nevertheless provide samples of behavior from which important inferences can be made. Psychotherapists have sometimes noted that the experience of counseling or psychotherapy provides the profession with a breakthrough much like the invention of the x-ray in medicine. It permits the observer to gain insight into the inner workings of personality organization just as the x-ray does with respect to one's physical organization. The accuracy or dependability of the newly developed techniques for psychological research on the perceptual field—personal beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and the like—vary greatly and are often criticized as being too crude and unscientific for a true science of persons. The criticism is partly deserved, but it must also be remembered that the perceptual field is an enormously complex organization, difficult to approach and continuously in process of change. In the beginning stages of a new frame of reference it should not surprise us that our techniques are less precise than we might wish. We need not apologize for that. They will get better in time as more workers are attracted to joining the perceptual frame of reference.

THE PLACE OF INFERENCE IN PERCEPTION STUDY Understanding other people's perceptions is not new to us. Everyone has been doing that more or less successfully since childhood. "Reading behavior backward" we called it in chapter 2. We make such inferences so automatically that we are seldom keenly aware of how we are doing it. These inferences provide the basis, the frame of reference, on which our own behavior can be founded when it is necessary for us to deal with other people. They also provide the raw data for effective human relationships. In general, understanding other people's meanings is accomplished by a process of observation, inference making, and testing of inferences. This is what the teacher does as she attempts to deal with the problem of Jimmy's difficulties in reading. She observes Jimmy read and infers it may be the child does not see well. Having made this observation, she checks her inference by having the child's eyes examined. If this proves inaccurate, she observes some more and makes other inferences. Perhaps Jimmy is not seeing the differences between the letters / and t or n and m. Or maybe the

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child sees the whole process of reading as a threatening failure experience. Through a process of inferring and checking, the teacher is able to arrive at a workable understanding of how reading is being experienced by Jimmy. This is the same kind of procedure used by mothers inferring why the baby is crying or by psychologists attempting to understand the problems a client is experiencing. Through a continuous process of observing, inferring, testing, observing, inferring, testing, we may, over a period of time, come closer and closer to an accurate appraisal of the peculiar meanings existing for other people. Furthermore, we may do this informally, as we do in daily life, or we may carry on the process more exactly, exerting careful control and using highly refined techniques of observation and testing as the research scientist does in carrying out an experiment. The Observer Advantage Of course, no observer can reconstruct a person's field with the richness, warmth, and detail it actually has. Her most precise approximation of another's field is only a plan or schema of its general characteristics. However, in drawing inferences about the future field and future behavior of a person, an observer has two advantages that the subject does not have. Using the perceptual approach, one can often do much better than the subject herself. For one thing, the observer's field includes not only her approximation of the subject's field but a great deal of other knowledge as well. The subject's predictions of her future behavior are based on her present field exclusively. The observer, however, with a broader field, can predict, as the subject cannot, impingements of new experience and their effect on the field. Johnson, secretly planning to punch Smith in the nose, has knowledge of Smith's future field and behavior that is not, at the moment, accessible to Smith. So does Jones, who has just written Smith a letter asking for money, and Ms. Anderson, who has just put an F on young Smith's report card. Of course, none of these people can accurately predict Smith's response to their actions from this knowledge alone. But they do have information pertinent to her future field that is denied to her, and if they know her well, they can often predict what she will do when the predicted events occur. The observer has one other advantage. The subject is a prisoner within her own present field and is sharply aware only of the present figure. Material in the ground is at such a low level of awareness that it is available only in the form of vague feelings and hunches, if at all. On the other hand

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the observer, if she has had an opportunity to study the person's phenomenal field, is aware of a great deal of additional material. Furthermore, because the observer can view the person's field unemotionally, without personal involvement, she can discern the subject's characteristic distortions and use this knowledge in predicting the kind and degree of distortion of new material. The subject, again, cannot do this for herself because to her the distorted field is reality. What distinguishes the research worker from the applied worker or the ordinary citizen is not that she seeks for something different in understanding but only that she brings to the task a higher degree of care and precision. Most of us make inferences about other people's perceptions in the vague and undisciplined ways we have learned in the process of growing up, and this is ordinarily quite satisfactory for our daily purposes. The teacher, however, needs more precise understandings for her purposes and so must exert greater discipline and care in her observations. Such observations, in turn, will probably not be sufficiently precise for the research worker, who needs to make her observations with the greatest possible accuracy. It should not be supposed that, because each of these three kinds of observers approaches the problem of understanding perception with differing degrees of order and precision, that one is better than another. On the contrary, each approach is useful and efficient for its own purposes. The methods appropriate to each of these levels are hardly suitable for the others. Thus, the researcher finds the layman's ways too uncontrolled for research demands, and the layman finds the researcher's methods too detailed and cumbersome for the immediate action required in day-to-day and moment-to-moment living. The professional worker, on the other hand, uses methods lying somewhere between these extremes. Her methods are at once more precise than the layman's and broader in scope than the researcher's. A Place for Inference in Field Psychology At first glance the inferential approach to the study of meaning may seem to some to be mystical and unscientific. There is a widespread illusion that things can only be true or scientific if they can be physically measured. For 100 years or more our conceptions of science have been deeply influenced by the successes of physical science and its approach to explorations of matter and things. During this period, science has been formulated primarily in the linear thinking of Newton and Descartes. We are accustomed to

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thinking of science in terms of analysis, precision, measurement, certainty, and cause and effect. More recently, science has been undergoing a great paradigm shift to seek understanding of events in terms of relationships, processes, organizations, and systems. Such matters do not lend themselves to analysis and dissection; they must be studied as complex entities that transcend the sum of their parts. To cope with such complex matters, modern science has found it increasingly necessary to approach events through inferential techniques. Actually, it is often true that only when science is able to make inferences about matters is it able to progress beyond the immediate and palpable to deal with the abstract and remote. A science limited only to that which is directly observable would never be able to deal with such matters as electricity, atomic physics, the mysteries of human disease, or the dynamics of human personality and behavior. The making of inferences, in itself, is neither scientific nor unscientific. It is a technique of exploration. What makes a science is the care and discipline with which data, whatever they may be, are collected, checked, and reported. The data used by the psychologist studying the phenomenal self are exactly the same as those used by psychologists studying any other human characteristic, namely, the observed behavior of the subject. For some purposes it is enough to deal only with behavior on this level, as, for example, when we are trying to determine how many people taking the college entrance examination will probably graduate. When, however, we seek to understand what a particular individual will do, it is necessary for us to explore her motivations, desires, wants, goals, and perceptions of self and the world about her. The perceptual psychologist, interested in the study of meaning, accomplishes this by making inferences from the behavior she observes. The Observer as an Instrument for Research Human beings seem so much more variable than machines that a science that utilizes inferences for its data may at first glance appear hopelessly open to error. It is true that the exploration of people's perceptions through a process of inference places a great deal more responsibility on the observer than is true in the traditional physical sciences. The making of inferences requires of the investigator that she be much more than a mechanist, concerned with the manipulation of external or physical factors alone. She must be able to see the world as others see it and be able to put herself in her client's place. This requires that she utilize her imagination and creative abilities to the utmost while at the same time practicing on

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herself the most rigid personal discipline with respect to her own prejudices and meanings. When such inferences are made, the observer herself is acting as an instrument of research. The direct observation of data, by itself, provides little help in the solution of problems in any science. Data become truly significant only when subjected to the mediation or interpretation of human meaning. The human observer, like any other instrument used in scientific observations, must, of course, be calibrated to assure maximum accuracy. Making inferences introduces a further variable to the process of observation, it is true. However, the use of human creativity in science does not produce an invalidation, only an additional variable to be recognized and used with discipline. Properly used with full realization of its assets and liabilities, the human instrument deserves to be treated like any other fine instrument, with care and respect.

EXPLORING THE PERCEPTUAL FIELD Although the behavior of a person is always a result of the total organization of the perceptual field, certain differentiations become so important in the growth of persons and the production of behavior as to serve as effective guides to what the person will or will not do in a given circumstance. These differentiations are the phenomenal self, the individual's perceptions of the world about her, and the goals, values, and techniques she has differentiated in the course of her experience. These loom so large in human personality and behavior that it is possible to understand why and how people behave as they do with great accuracy once an understanding of the perceptual field has been achieved. It is these four major types of differentiation within the field with which perceptual diagnosis and research must be concerned: (1) the individual's self-concept, (2) the meanings of events for her, (3) the goals and values she has differentiated to satisfy need, and (4) the characteristic techniques by which she attempts to reach her goals. As we observed in chapters 2 and 15, many psychologists, especially those in professional practice, are already operating in a field approach as they work with their clients in terms of feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Trying to understand personality and behavior in terms of client purposes, values, beliefs, fears, loves, hates, and hopes involves making inferences about another's perceptual field. Using such information to guide the practitioner's own behavior and decisions or to modify the behavior of

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clients is to recognize and employ the perceptual field as a causative agent. The careful observations made by thousands of practitioners thus provide a substantial bank of observations from which to develop hypotheses in perceptual terms. In addition, there already exist in the literature hundreds of studies on the effects of attitudes, values, and beliefs, as these relate to human behavior, which are clearly pertinent to understanding the perceptual field and its bearing on behavior. A substantial body of field research is already available. The admission of inference to the catalog of research procedures and its disciplined use in practice immensely increases the possibilities for significant research from a field perspective.

THE EXPLORATION OF THE SELF IN FIELD RESEARCH Because the phenomenal self constitutes the very core of a person's perceptual field, those interested in understanding the nature of any individual's field must, of necessity, be concerned with the peculiar organization of her self-concept. As we discovered in chapter 3, the phenomenal self is composed of many definitions of self, and these definitions vary in at least two respects: (1) the degree of importance or centrality of the concept— that is, aspects of self will vary in the degree to which they seem to their possessor to be true, important, or basic aspects of her own identity; and (2) the specificity or generality of concepts—that is, one may wish to explore some broad aspect of self, like a feeling of adequacy, or a more specific concept of self, like the kind of driver a person conceives herself to be. What aspects of self are explored, of course, will be determined by the purposes of the observer. It is only in recent years that psychologists have begun to explore personality and behavior in perceptual field terms. To provide the reader with an illustration of perceptual research in action, I have outlined below the thinking and procedures used in a series of studies on good and poor professional helpers.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD HELPER? Since behavior is always a function of the total phenomenal field, the same behavior can be utilized by different observers working from quite different frames of reference to infer different aspects of self. Thus, it is

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possible that the teacher, psychologist, parent, foreman, or casual acquaintance might each observe the same behavior and infer from it quite different concepts of self. Nor would one of these inferences necessarily be more right than another. They might all be quite accurate although each represents only a limited aspect of a particular self. Numerous attempts have been made to identify and access what constitutes effective behavior of professional helpers like teachers, counselors, and social workers. Most studies have looked for the determinants of effective practice in the practitioner's knowledge or methods, but the results are nearly always disappointing or obscure. Despite hundreds of studies seeking to distinguish between good helpers and poor ones, we are still unable to discriminate clearly between good and poor practitioners on the basis of either knowledge of the field or the helping methods employed. If it is not knowledge or methods that makes the difference, what does? Confronted with such frustrating findings, in the mid-1960s my colleague, Daniel Soper, and I turned to a more person-centered approach to explore the nature of good and poor helpers in counseling. We began with a study of counselors-in-training from a perceptual field rather than objective point of view.1 We set out to examine the perceptual organization of counselors by asking, "How do good and poor counselors typically perceive themselves, their clients and the counseling task?" OBJECTIVE DATA IN PERCEPTUAL EXPLORATION The Hypotheses And Scoring The exploration of meaning must begin at the same point as all other explorations of behavior, with some kind of disciplined observation. It was necessary, therefore, to begin our exploration with external observations from which it would be possible for us to (1) make inferences as to the nature of the individual's perceptual field, on one hand, and (2) obtain assessments of counselor competence or success. This is how the study proceeded: Four times during the semester students in a large graduate class on personality dynamics were required to write in some detail about a human relations incident in which they had been involved. More specifically, they were asked to describe what happened, how they felt about the event at the time, how it ended, and how they felt about it now. The class included 29 advanced graduate students enrolled in a Counselor Training Institute. These became the participants in our experiment.

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The papers written by these counselors-in-training were separated from the total group and subjected to a perceptual analysis by trained observers with respect to the following 12 hypotheses: The writer perceives 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

from an internal, rather than an external frame of reference, in terms of people rather than things, people as able rather than unable, people as dependable rather than undependable, people as friendly rather than unfriendly, people as worthy rather than unworthy, self as identified with rather than apart from others, self as enough rather than wanting, self as revealing rather than concealing, his or her purposes as freeing rather than controlling, his or her purposes as altruistic rather than narcissistic, his or her purposes as concerned for larger rather than smaller meanings.

Four observers were carefully trained in making perceptual inferences from written protocols. When they had achieved sufficient skill, they began making such inferences from the "human relations incident" papers of the 29 counselors-in-training. Each protocol was read by each observer and scored for each hypothesis on a 7-point scale. Scorers asked themselves, "How would the writer have to be perceiving, in order to report this incident in this way?" Reliability checks of each observer's inferences were determined externally, by comparison with all other observers (range, 82.3% to 88.8%), and internally, with a sample of each observer's inferences after a passage of some weeks' time (range, 88.7% to 91.0%). Establishing Competence To establish the competence of the 29 counselors-in-training, 14 members of the counseling program faculty were asked to arrange the 29 students in the order in which they would hire them for a counseling staff position. This provided a rank order of counselors from "best" to "worst." Results When the inferences made by the observers with respect to each hypothesis were correlated with the rank-order standings, 11 of the 12 categories

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proved to be highly discriminatory, as shown in Table 16.1. Note that all but one of the study hypotheses discriminated between the good and poor counselors at significant levels. In light of the almost universal failure to find objective behavioral criteria that clearly differentiate good from poor professional workers, correlations of the magnitude found in this study assume great significance.2 They suggest new directions for conceptualization and research on the characteristics of good and poor practitioners in the helping professions. As a matter of fact, these results were so significant that 13 additional research studies have employed the same approach to the study of helping relationships of counselors, teachers, elected officials, dormitory advisers, outstanding educators, and Episcopal clergy. Although they differ as to hypotheses investigated and helping profession explored, all employed the inferential technique employed in the Combs and Soper (1963) study summarized below. Each of the 13 additional studies have clearly demonstrated that good practitioners can be clearly discriminated from poor ones on the basis of their perceptual orientation.3

TABLE 16.1 Rank-order Correlations between Staff Judgments of Counselor Effectiveness and Perceptual Inferences about Student Counselors Perceptual Inference Internal-external frame of reference People-things orientation Sees people as able-unable Sees people as dependable-undependable Sees people as friendly-unfriendly sees people as worth-unworthy Sees self as identified-unidentified Sees self as enough-not enough Sees self as self revealing-not revealing Sees purpose as freeing-controlling Has altruistic-narcissistic purpose Larger-smaller purpose All categories

Correlation .496 .514 .589 .489 .555 .607 .556 .394 .447 .638 .641 .475 .580

Significance .01 .01 .01 .01 .01 .01 .01 .05 .02 .01 .01 .01 .01

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SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR HELPER THOUGHT AND PRACTICE The Helper's Belief System These studies suggest that what makes a good helper is a direct outcome of the helper's perceptual organization or belief system. It is what the helper believes that makes the difference in the adequacy of her professional performance. The near-unanimous findings of these studies lend support to the perceptual-experiential psychologist's assumption that behavior is only a symptom and that the determinants of behavior lie in the perceptual field of the behaver. They also suggest that, to understand the dynamics of helper behavior we must direct our attention to the nature of the practitioner's personal meanings or belief systems.

Some Crucial Areas of Belief The categories explored in these studies suggest at least five areas of belief that seem to discriminate clearly between good and poor helpers: 1. Beliefs about the significant data. Good helpers are people oriented. They tune in to how things seem from the point of view of those with whom they work. In behavioral terms, they are sensitive or empathic. 2. Beliefs about people. Effective helpers seem to hold more positive beliefs about the people they work with than do less effective helpers. They see people as trustworthy, able, dependable, worthy, and the like. 3. Beliefs about self. Perceptual field psychology helps us understand the crucial importance of self-concept in all human activities. These studies, especially, suggest the importance of a positive view of self, confidence in one's abilities, and a feeling of oneness with others as crucial factors for successful practice. 4. Beliefs about purposes or priorities. Helpers, like everyone else, behave in terms of what seems important. The beliefs helpers hold about the purposes of society, helping, relationships, practices, and so on determine their moment-to-moment goals, decisions, and methods. 5. Authenticity. Effective helpers seem to be self-revealing rather than self-concealing persons. They feel sufficiently secure in themselves as to be able to be highly authentic.

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If it is helper beliefs that determine good and poor performance, as these studies suggest, then the production of effective helpers must be seen not as a problem of teaching students "how to" but rather a problem in facilitating personal becoming. This has enormous implications for the education of helpers. If it is helper beliefs that make the difference, helper training programs are on the wrong track, for most concentrate on the acquisition of knowledge and methods. Our studies suggest that what is required is emphasis on helper beliefs. The goal of professional education from such an orientation would be helping students achieve a broad, accurate, personally relevant, internally consistent, and appropriate system of beliefs about self, others, purposes, priorities, and desirable ways of relating to the world, both in and out of professional practice. Such a program would, of course, help students explore knowledge pertinent to the field and available methods or techniques for practice but in a broader perspective. The process for reaching such goals would emphasize the provision of rich opportunities for experience with clients, students, patients, and parishioners, on the one hand, and continuous immersion in a process of exploration of ideas and discovery of personal meanings, on the other.

SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Many objectively oriented psychologists have grave doubts about the perceptual approach to psychology and the use of inference for psychological research. Some even hold that such techniques are unscientific and invalid. Those attitudes have seriously hindered the optimal development of person-centered, perceptual, experiential research and have discouraged workers in the helping professions from attempting the kinds of studies required to establish a research base for person-centered concepts and practices. The studies cited above clearly demonstrate that making inferences about the nature of people's perceptual experience can be accomplished with highly respectable degrees of reliability. The studies also demonstrate that reliable inferences can be made from a variety of behavioral data in remarkably small samples. When we began these studies, we assumed that we would need extensive samples of behavior from which to make reliable inferences. Instead, a number of these investigations obtained reliable inferences from surprisingly short observation sessions—from a single page of narrative, for example, even from statements made by subjects on an application blank.

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A second surprise for our expectations was the discovery that a wide variety of persons can be quickly trained to make highly reliable inferences about perceptual organization. We had assumed that making inferences was a very special skill acquired only after an intensive period of training. In fact, making inferences about people's feelings, attitudes, and perceptions is something everyone does every day with the important persons in their lives. Doing it for research requires only learning to do, explicitly and with discipline, what everyone knows how to do anyhow. Most of the researchers quickly discovered that persons could be readily taught to make inferential analyses at target levels of reliability in a comparatively short time. One study even used research assistants with 2 years of experience at scoring subject behavior from purely objective observations. After a very short training period these raters were able to shift gears and make both objective and inferential observations in the same time frame. Even more surprising, their inferential ratings proved more reliable than their accustomed objective ones! With respect to the helper's self-concept categories, we assumed in the earliest studies that many self-descriptions would be necessary to describe the helper's self properly. In fact, categories about self correlate so closely with one another as to suggest that just one, "sees self as enough," may be so fundamental that more specific categories exist only as variations on the same theme. The anxiety created by a perceptual field approach to personality and behavior and its acceptance of inference as a legitimate research technique is understandable, as psychologists seek alternatives to the seemingly straightforward, clearly observable stimulus-response thinking of behaviorism. In order to study the perceptual field, however, the use of inference is vital. Exploring the complex and internal relationships of a person's field of meaning can be accomplished at this stage of our development only by some form of inference. Perhaps one day, somewhere in the future, someone will devise a better way to study human meaning, but for now we must deal with the tools we possess. The Conestoga wagon was a crude transportation device, but it made possible the opening of a continent. I have been deeply influenced by this series of studies. Pursuing their implications has led me to exciting and fruitful new ways of thinking about the helping process. They have also provided the basis for several innovative and highly successful programs for developing effective professional helpers and so demonstrated the practical as well as theoretical value of perceptual field approaches.

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Epilogue: Criteria for a Perceptual Psychology In the previous chapters of this book we have set forth the framework of a field theory for psychology and explored many of its implications for human personality and behavior. But what are the criteria for judging the adequacy of such a field approach to the study of persons and behavior? Useful theory in any science should be (1) comprehensive, (2) accurate, (3) internally consistent, and (4) adaptable. I believe the field theory proposed in this volume meets those universal criteria. It is only in recent years that psychologists have begun to explore personality and behavior in perceptual field terms. A theory for psychology in particular, it seems to me, must meet the additional criteria we discussed in chapter 15: 1. An adequate frame of reference must be capable of tapping the internal life of persons. 2. A field psychology must be systematic. 3. It must be congruent with existing systems of psychology. 4. It must possess a workable research strategy 5. It must be capable of including within its structure as many as possible of the concepts proposed by competent observers. The above criteria have to do with purely theoretical questions. An academic theory of personality and behavior, however, is not enough. The growth of applied psychology is to a very large extent a consequence of the failure of traditional approaches to provide sufficient answers for problems in professional practice. Most applied workers are deeply involved in some kind of helping practice (teaching, therapy, social action, etc.). Even those who do not make a living in these ways are deeply concerned about the implications of humanistic concepts for human welfare and personal living. An adequate field theory must provide appropriate guidelines for thinking about these kinds of problems. Three additional 255

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criteria are therefore required if a field theory is to provide a satisfactory framework for constructive action. 1. It must provide effective guides to action for the understanding and treatment of individual behavior. Its principles should have maximum applicability to the solution of practical problems of human growth and welfare. 2. It must be capable of general use outside the laboratory. It must contribute effectively to solutions to the great human problems of our time, especially in education, social interaction, and mental health. 3. It must be dynamic and immediate in application rather than descriptive and historic. The primary problem of the practitioner is the facilitation of change. To do this effectively requires a theory of behavior emphasizing immediate rather than historical causation. (See chapter 13) The above criteria for a theory of persons and behavior have provided the guidelines for this perceptual field approach to psychology. In time, it will be replaced by something better, for that is the way with science. Sooner or later every theory must give way to something better and more inclusive. I offer it here as a contribution to the deeper understanding of persons and their behavior. Whether this statement of being and becoming truly meets the above criteria, I leave to the reader to judge.

References Chapter 1: Being and Becoming 1. Becker, E. (1997). The denial of death. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2. Wheatley, M. J., & Kellner-Rogers, M. (1996). A simpler way. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. 3. Goerner, S. (1994). Chaos and the evolving ecological universe. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers. 4. Prigogine, I., & Stengers. I., (1984). Order out of chaos: Man's new dialogue with nature. New York: Bantam Books. 5. Jantsch, E. (1980). The self-organizing universe: Scientific and human implications of the emerging paradigm of evolution. London: Pergamon. 6. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel. 7. Capra, F. (1996). The web of life. New York: Doubleday. 8. Howard, P. K. (1994). The death of common sense. New York: Random House. Elgin, D. (1993). Voluntary simplicity: Toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich (rev. ed.) New York: William Morrow.

Chapter 2: Awareness 1. Wheatley, M. J., & Kellner-Rogers, M. (1996). A simpler way. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Capra, F. (1996). The web of life. New York: Doubleday 2. Snygg, D. (1941). The need for a phenomenological system of psychology. Psychology Review, 48, 404^424. 3. Snygg, D., & Combs, A. W. (1949). Individual behavior. New York: Harper & Brothers. Combs, A. W., & Snygg, D. (1959). Individual behavior (rev. ed.) New York: Harper & Brothers. Combs, A. W., Richards, A. C., & Richards, F. (1976). Perceptual psychology: A humanistic approach to the study of persons. New York: Harper & Row.

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4. Anderson, W. T. (1990). Reality isn't what it used to be. San Francisco: Harper and Brothers. Bohm, D. (1987). Unfolding meaning. New York: Routledge. 5. Freud, S. (1949). An outline of psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Snygg, D., & Combs, A. W. (1950). The phenomenological approach and the problem of unconscious behavior. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 45, 523-528. 6. Burtt, H. E. (1941). An experimental study of early childhood memory: Final report. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 58, 435-439.

Chapter 3: Discovering the Self 1. Raimy, V. C. (1943). The self-concept as a factor in counseling and personality organization. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus. 2. Combs, A. W., & Soper, D. W. (1957). The self, its derivate terms and research. Journal of Individual Psychology, 13, 134-145. Combs, A. W. (1962). The self in chaos [Review of the book The self-concept, by R. C. Wylie] Contemporary Psychology, 26, 288. Combs, A. W., Soper, D. W., & Courson, C. C. (1963). The measurement of self-concept and self-report. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 23, 493-500. 3. Lecky, P. (1945). Self-consistency: A theory of personality. New York: Island Press. 4. Gergen. K. J. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: HarperCollins. Smith, M. B. (1994). Selfhood at risk: Postmodern perils and the perils of postmodernism. American Psychologist, 49, 405-411.

Chapter 4: Meaning and the Self 1. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2. Bohm, D. (1987). Unfolding meaning. New York: Routledge. 3. Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Putnam's. 4. Melvin, M. S. (Ed.). (1995). Positive regard: Carl Rogers and other notables he influenced. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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Rogers, C. R. (1956). Client-centered therapy: A current view. In F. FrommReichmann and J. L. Moreno (Eds.), Progress in psychotherapy. New York: Grune and Stratton. Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21, 98.

Chapter 5: Challenge and Threat 1. Cowen, E. L. (1954). The influence of varying degrees of psychological stress on problem-solving rigidity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47, 512-519. Smock, C. D. (1955). The influence of psychological stress on the intolerance of ambiguity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 50, 177-182. Rokeach, M. (1950). The effect of perception time upon rigidity and concreteness of thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40, 206-216. 2. Combs, A. W., & Taylor, C. (1952). The effect of perception of mild degrees of threat on performance. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 47, 420-424. 3. Caine, R. N., & Caine, G. (1994). Making connections: Teaching and the human brain. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley. Hart, L. (1975). How the brain works: A new understanding of human learning, emotion, and thinking. New York: Basic Books. Hart, L. (1983). Human brain, human learning. New York: Longman. 4. Lecky, P. (1945). Self-consistency: A theory of personality. New York: Island Press.

Chapter 6: The Body: Vehicle of the Field 1. Banham, K. M. (1951). Senescence and the emotions: A genetic study. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 78, 175-183. Boas, F. (1941). The relation between physical and mental development. Science, 93, 339-342. Terman, L. M. (1925). Genetic studies of genius. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2. Davis, C. (1931). Self selection of diets: An experiment with infants. Trained Nurse and Hospital Review, 86, 629-634. Levine, R., Chein, L, & Murphy, G. (1942). The relation of the intensity of the need to the amount of perceptual distortion: A preliminary report. Journal of Psychology, 13, 283-293. McClelland, D. C., & Atkinson. J. W., (1948). The projective expression of needs: The effect of different intensities of the hunger drive on perception. Journal of Psychology, 25, 205-222.

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Sanford, R. N. (1937). The effects of abstinence from food upon imaginal processes: A further experiment. Journal of Psychology, 3, 145-159.

Chapter 7: Time and Opportunity 1. Mead, M. (ed.). (1953). Cultural patterns and technical change. Paris: UNESCO. 2. Toynbee, A. J. (1939). A study of history. London: Oxford University Press. 3. Elgin, D. (1993). Voluntary simplicity: Toward a way of life that is outwardly simple, inwardly rich, rev. ed. New York: William Morrow. Abraham, M. J. (1997). First we quit our jobs: How one work-driven couple got on the road to a new life. New York: Dell.

Chapter 8: Goals, Techniques and Values 1. Carter, L. F., & Schooler, K. (1949). Value, need, and other factors in perception. Psychological Review, 56, 200-207. Klein, G. S., Schlesinger, H. J., & Meister, D. E. (1951). The effect of personal values on perception: An experimental critique. Psychological Review, 58, 96-112. Leuba, C., & Lucas, C. (1945). The effects of attitudes on descriptions of pictures. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 517-524. 2. Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand. New York: William Morrow. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3. Beier, E. G. (1953). The effects of Rorschach interpretation on intellectual functioning of adjusted, questionably adjusted and maladjusted subjects. Journal of Protective Techniques, 17, 66-69. Proshansky, H. (1943). A projective method for the study of attitudes. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 38, 393-395. Mayo, E. (1946). The human problems of an industrial civilization. Boston: Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. Taylor, C., & Combs, A. W. (1952). Self-acceptance and adjustment. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16, 89-91. 4. Maier, N. R. F. (1930). Reasoning in humans, pt. 1. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 10, 115-143. Maier, N. R. F. (1931). Reasoning in humans: 2. The solution of a problem and its appearance in consciousness. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 12, 181-194.

Chapter 9: Human Capacities 1. Combs, A. W. (1952). Intelligence from a perceptual point of view. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47, 662-673. 2. Chopra, D. (1993). Ageless body, timeless mind. New York: Harmony Books.

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3. McCarthy, D. (1949). Personality and learning. American Counseling Education Studies, 73(35), 93-96. Bowlby, J. (1953). Child care and the growth of love. London: Penguin Books. Krall, V. (1953). Personality characteristics of accident repeating children. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 48, 99-107. 4. Combs, A. W. (1986). What makes a good helper? A person-centered approach. Person-Centered Review, 7(1), 51-61.

Chapter 10: Learning and Change 1. Combs, A. W., & Gonzalez, D. M. (1997). Helping relationships: Basic concepts for the helping professions. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Presidential Task Force on Psychology in Education. (1993). Learner-centered principles: Guidelines for school redesign and reform. Denver: Mid-Continent Educational Research Laboratory. 2. Pavlov, I. P. (1941). Lectures on conditioned reflexes. Vol. II. Conditioned reflexes and psychiatry. (Trans. & Ed. By W. H. Gantt.) New York: International Publishers. 3. Combs, A. W., & Taylor, C. The effect of perception of mild degrees of threat on performance. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 47, 420-424. Taylor, C., & Combs, A. W. (1952). Self-acceptance and adjustment. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16, 89-91. 4. Aspy, D. N., & Roebuck, F. (1976). A lever long enough. Washington, DC: Consortium for Humanizing Education.

Chapter 11: Self-Actualization and Health 1. Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper. 2. Rogers, C. R. (1962). Toward becoming a fully functioning person. In A. W. Combs (Ed.), Perceiving, behaving, becoming: A new focus for education. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 3. Combs, A. W. (1986). What makes a good helper? A person-centered approach. Person-Centered Review, 1(1), 51-61. 4. Maslow, A. H. (1962). Some basic propositions of a growth and self-actualization psychology. In A. W. Combs (Ed.), Perceiving, behaving, becoming. Washington, DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Chapter 12: Troubled Selves 1. Maslow, A. H. (1950). Paper presented at Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. 2. Combs, A. W. (1989). A theory of therapy: Guidelines for counseling practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

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Raimy, V. C. (1975). Misunderstandings of the self. San Francisco: JosseyBass. Rogers, C. R. (1962). Toward becoming a fully functioning person. In A. W. Combs (Ed.), Perceiving, behaving, becoming: A new focus for education. Alexandria, VA: Association For Supervision and Curriculum Development. 3. American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 4th ed.. Washington, DC: Author. 4. Maslow, A. H., and Mittelman, B. (1941). Principles of abnormal psychology. New York: Harper and Row. Maxmen, J. S., & Ward, N. G. (1994). Essential psychopathology and its treatment, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton.

Chapter 13: Some Implications for Human Relationships 1. Capra, F. (1996) The web of life. New York: Doubleday. 2. Goerner, S. (1994). Chaos and the evolving ecological universe. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach. Wheatley, M. J., & Kellner-Rogers, M. (1996). A simpler way. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler. 3. Wheatley, M. (1992). Leadership and the new science: Learning about organization from an evolving universe. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler. 4. Combs, A. W. (1989). A theory of therapy: Guidelines for counseling practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Chapter 14: Organizations as Living Things 1. Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1952). An experimental study of leadership and group life. In G. E. Swanson, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Harlet (Eds.), Readings in social psychology, rev. ed. New York: Henry Holt. 2. Toynbee, A. J. (1935-1939). A study of history. London: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 15: Field Theory in Historical Perspective 1. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Titchener, E. B. (1901). Experimental psychology: A manual of laboratory practices. New York: Macmillan. Wundt, W. (1894). Principles of physiological psychology. Translated by E. B. Titchener. New York: Macmillan. 2. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Free Press.

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Watson, J. B. (1929). Psychology: From the standpoint of a behaviorist, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 3. Adler, A. (1927). Understanding human nature. New York: Chilton. Freud, S. (1938). An outline of psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Jung, C. G. (1916). Psychology of the unconscious. Translated by B. M. Hinkle. New York: Dodd, Mead. Sarte, J. P. (1960). Critique of dialectical reason. New York: Norton. 4. Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton. May, R. (1950). The meaning of anxiety. New York: Ronald. Sullivan, H. S. (1947). Conceptions of modern psychiatry. Washington, DC: William Alanson Wright Psychiatric Foundations. 5. Rogers, C. R. (1942). Counseling and psychotherapy. Boston: HoughtonMifflin 6. Goble, F. (1970). The third force: The psychology of Abraham Maslow. New York: Grossman. 7. Lecky, P. (1945). Self-consistency: A theory of personality. New York: Island Press. 8. Raimy, V. C. (1971). The self-concept as a factor in counseling and personality organization. Columbus: Office of Educational Services, The Ohio State University Libraries. 9. Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man's search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Washington Square Press. Jourard, S. M. (1971). The transparent self. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York: Harper and Row, Murphy, G. (1947). Personality: A biosocial approach to origin and structure. New York: Harper and Row. Piaget, J. (1959). Judgement and reasoning in the child. Translated by M. Warden. Patterson, N.J: Littlefield Adams. Snygg, D. (1953). The psychological basis of human values. In D. Ward (Ed.), The goals of economic life. New York: Hopkins. 10. Lewin, K. A. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGrawHill. 11. Koehler, W. (1947). Gestalt psychology. New York: Liveright Koffka, K. (1935). Principles of gestalt psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. Edited by D. Cartwright. New York: Harper and Row. Lewin, K. (1953). Defining the field at a given time. Psychological Review, 50, 292-310. 12. Snygg, D., & Combs, A .W. (1949). Individual behavior: A new frame of reference for psychology. New York: Harper and Row.

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13. Combs, A. W. (1970). An intellectual conversion. Theory into Practice, 8, 298-299. 14. Combs, A. W. & Snygg, D. (1959). Individual behavior: A perceptual approach to behavior. New York: Harper and Row. Combs, A. W., Richards, A. C, & Richards, F. (1975). Perceptual psychology: A humanistic approach to the study of persons. New York: Harper and Row. 15. Capra, F. (1996). The web of life. New York: Doubleday. Jantsch, E. (1980). The self-organizing universe. London: Pergamon. Wheatley, M. J., & Kellner-Roger, M. (1996). A simpler way. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. 16. Combs, A. W. (1974). Why the humanistic movement needs a perceptual psychology. Journal of the Association for the Study of Perception, 9, 1-3. Combs, A. W. (1990). Toward a viable psychology of meaning. PersonCentered Review, 5, 449-463.

Chapter 16: The Exploration of Meaning in Research 1. Combs, A. W., & Soper, D. W. (1963). The perceptual organization of effective counselors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 10, 222-227'. 2. Combs, A. W., & Soper, D. It is extraordinary in psychological research to find 14 out of 15 studies in a single study achieving significance. Combs and Soper's research was given the American Personnel and Guidance Association's Outstanding Research Award. 3. Benton, J. A. (1964). Perceptual characteristics of Episcopal pastors. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Brown, R. G. (1970). A study of the perceptual organization of elementary and secondary "Outstanding Young Educators." Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida. Combs, A. W. (1969). Florida studies in the helping professions (Social Science Monographs, No. 37). Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Combs, A. W., & Soper, D. W. (1963). The perceptual organization of effective counselors. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 10, 222-227. Dedrick, C. V. L. (1972). The relationship between perceptual characteristics and effective teaching at the junior college level. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Doyle, E. J. (1969). The relationship between college teacher effectiveness and inferred characteristics of the adequate personality. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Dunning, D. (1982). A study of the perceptual characteristics of Episcopal priests identified and not identified as most effective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Fielding Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.

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Gooding, C. T. (1964). An observational analysis of the perceptual organization of effective teachers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Jennings, G. D. (1973). The relationship between perceptual characteristics and effective advising of university housing para-professional residence assistants. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Koffman, R. G. (1975). A comparison of the perceptual organizations of outstanding and randomly selected teachers in open and traditional classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. O'Roark, A. (1974). A comparison of perceptual characteristics of elected legislators and public school counselors identified as most and least effective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Usher, R. H. (1966). The relationship of perceptions of self, others and the helping task to certain measures of college faculty effectiveness. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville. Vonk, H. G. (1970). The relationship of teacher effectiveness to perceptions of self and teacher purposes. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville.

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Index (T indicates an illustration; 't' indicates a table) Acceptance, 166-168 Appearance, 97 lack of, inadequate personality Applied psychology, 227-230 trait, 179 Aspirations, goal and values, Accomplishment, personal 121-122 adequacy and, 122 Authenticity, 180, 251 Adaptability, need for, 71 Authoritarianism, rigidity and, 74,86 Adequacy feelings and, 63 Automobile, impact of, 110 Autonomy, adequate personality helping profession and, 253 trait, 172 increasing perception of, 141 need for, 200-201 Autopoiesis, 5 Awareness threat to, 76-77, 79, 122 Adequate personalities, traits of, clarity of, 157 differentiation and, 28-29 170-174 evolution of, 5-6 Adequate self, society and, 174, field theory of, 17 176-177 importance of, 15 Advertising industry, 67, 195 irreversible process of, 26-27 Aggression, mastery over people, levels of, 23-24 124-125 Aging, perception and, 135-136 Behavior Alcohol, 96 communication through, 65-66 body changes, 127 coping, 173, 179, 180 defense mechanism, 188 expressive, 173 Alienation, learning and, 153 feelings and, 63-64 Allport, Gordon, 198 field theory, 24-25, 191 Altruism, development of, 10 historical view of, 198 "Anchors to reality," 113 immediate view of, 197-199 Anxiety limited by field, 134-135 concept of, 76 "maladjusted," 178, 189 perceptual restriction, 96 267

268

Index

Behavior (continued) nature of human, 19-20, 191, 234 relationships, 196-197 rigidity and, 74, 86 study of human, 16 values and beliefs, 117 Behavior change, threat and, 86 Behaviorism, 18, 193-194 development of, 225-226 failure of, vii-viii, 230 normative method of, 223-224 Behavior modification, behaviorism, 18, 226, 227, 229 Beliefs constancies, 112 frame of reference, 116 Belief systems, helping profession, 251, 253 Belonging change and, 223 learning and, 153 Binet Test of Intelligence, 136 Biological sciences, paradigm shift in, 238 Body. See also Physical organism perceptual field and, 88-91 Body-self relationship, 99 Boys, family differentiation practices, 106-107 Brain impairment of, 93 nature of, 88 perceptual self, 54 threat reaction, 78 Capacity, concept of, 139 Case studies, perceptual research technique, 242

Challenge learning and, 152-153, 221 perception of, 77, 122, 130 Change conditions for, 46 resistance to, 49-50, 73-74 Chaos concept of, 220-221 fear of, 220 Children approval of others, 127 body perception, 98 perceptions of, 156 Clarity awareness, 157 feelings, 62 phenomenal self, 42-43 self-perception, 35-36 threat perception, 76 values, 117-118 Clinical psychology, 227 Coercion, use of, 2, 195, 196 Cognition, limitation of, 144, 237-238 Color blindness, 92 Combs, Arthur, 232-235, 238 Common goals, good society, 202-203, 205 Communication body perception, 90-91 facilitating, 222 feelings and, 62, 65 intercultural, 109 perceptual fields and, 29-30 process of, 30 relationships, 196 Compassion, adequate personality trait, 173-174 Compensation, defense mechanism, 184, 187

Index

Competition, learning and, 148 Concrete experience opportunity, 103 sources of, 104 "Conditioning," 145 Conflict concept of, 82-83 inadequacy and, 219 Conformity, 174 Constancies, 112, 113, 116-117 Constructive behavior, mastery, 126 Consumer society, impact of, 110 Control, desire for, 14 Coping behaviors, 173, 179, 180 Counseling, role of, 8 Creativity, adequate personality trait, 171 Criminals, 176, 181, 189,201 Crisis reaction, adjustment and, 78-79 Cultural variation, 107-108 Culture good society, 205 perceptual opportunities, 106-111 threat source, 183 Death, fear of, 3, 9 Defense mechanisms, categories of, 184 Democracy, 86-87, 195, 208, 217 transition to, 209 Denial, defense mechanism, 184-185 Dependency, rigidity and, 74 Deprivation, role of, 95 Determinism, behavioral, 19, 21, 24, 32, 234

269 Differentiation concept of, 23, 24, 25-26 infant, 41-42 learning and, 150-151 situational awareness and, 80 threat from low level, 85-86 Discovery, relationships, 196 Diversity, nature's, 4, 5 Drugs, 96 body changes, 127 defense mechanism, 188 Education applied psychology in, 227 field theory in, 199-200 intelligent behavior, 140 Efficiency, adequate personality trait, 170 Emotion, 58-59 definition of, 59 physiological changes of, 59-60 "Emotional" behavior, 64 Empathy, concept of, 31, 66 Enhancement, feelings, 63 Environmental factors, cultural variation, 108 Ethical values, field theory, 202 Ethnocentrism, rigidity and, 74 Evolution, 106 Expectations, learning and, 149-150 Experience acceptance and openness to, 166-168 enriched, 140 Experiential research, field theory, 241 Expressing behaviors, 173

270 Family differentiation opportunities, 106-107 organization, changes in, 7 self-definition and, 43 threat source, 182-183 Fear concept of, 76 perceptual restriction, 96 Feedback, effective, 154-155, 222 Feelings clarity of, 62 intensity factors of, 62 perception of, 60-62 Field, concept of, 17 Field indicators, feelings as, 61, 65 Field of meaning deterministic, 21 restricted, 181-182 Field psychology, world view of, 14 Field theory body-self relationship, 100 early attempts at, 231 human relationships and, 192-193, 195-196 initial reaction to, 234-236 motivation, 201-202 perceptual factors, 130, 139 person-centered organizations, 219-221 principles of, 221-223 professional practice of, 65-67 research techniques in, 241-242 science and, viii, 192 Figure-ground relationship, 22i, 22-23

Index

Fluidity, organizational characteristic, 18 Focus/Purpose managed organization, 215t, 216-217 person-centered organization, 215t, 217 Force, organizational characteristic, 18 Forces, study of, 17 Forgetting, differentiation, 26, 27, 156-157 Frankl, Victor, 229 Freedom, 202, 222 Freud, Sigmund experience, 198 human nature, 3, 9 unconscious, 25 Fromm, Eric, 229 Frustrated personality, 176, 177, 181, 183,201 Gandhi, Mahatma, 125, 197 Gangs, 203 Gender body perception, 98 selective perception in, 68-69, 97 self-definition, 35 social expectations, 183 use of pronouns, ix values differences, 119-120 Germ theory, 106 Gestalt psychology, 231 Girls, family differentiation practices, 106-107 Glandular dysfunction, 93 Goals constancies, 112, 130 differentiation of, 114-115

Index

Maslow's needs as, 162 orientation to, 216 persistence of, 118-119 Good society description of, 205-206 principles of, 202-205 Grading, learning and, 148 Group conflict resolution, personcentered, 209 Group identification, good society, 204-205, 209 Group therapy, person-centered, 209 Groups, disintegration of, 203-204 Growth model, 214, 217, 219 Habit, 155-156 Health concept of, 7 perception and, 93-95 striving for, 210 Helping profession "adequacy," and, 253 belief systems of, 251, 253 empathy and, 31 field theory use, 219 role of, 190 success in, 141-142, 162, 247-248, 250, 250t Hierarchy of needs, Maslow's, 161-162,176,229 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 136 Horney, Karen, 228 Human beings description of, 16-17 self-regulating organizations, 207 Human capacity beliefs about, 141-142

271 field theory, 131 maximal limits of, 135-136 traditional view of, 131-132 Human development, cycles of, 209-210 Human nature field theory, 5, 6, 7i, 9-10 traditional concepts of, 1-3 Human need definition of, 9 unity of, 11-12 Human perceptions, expanse of, 89 Humanist movement, 228-229 Identification concept of, 10 in inadequate personality, 180-181 learning and, 153 self-actualization and, 168-169 Identity maintenance of, 4, 5, 7 organizational characteristic, 18 Immediacy, perception of threat's, 75-76 Inconsistency, self-change and, 45, 79, 80 Industry, applied psychology in, 227 Infancy approval of others, 126-127 phenomenal self, 41-42 Inference, technique of, 242-243, 244, 247, 252-253 Inferring, use of, 66 Information, field of, 181 "Insight learning," 145

Index

272

Intelligence concept of, 94, 132, 138 field theory, 133-134 Intelligence tests achievement measurement, 137 errors in, 138 Intelligent behavior, 132 capacity for change, 139 Interest, reduction of, 94-95 Interests, goal and values, 121-122 Introspection, 240 Jourard, Sidney, 229 Knowledge, relation to behavior, 54, 191 Koffka, Kurt, 231 Kohler, Wolfgang, 231 Language, self-differentiation, 42 Leadership, creation of, 219 Leader's role managed organization, 215t, 216,218 person-centered organization, 215t, 216, 218 Learning challenge or threat, 152-153 definition of, 57, 143 differentiation, 26, 143, 144-145

goals and values, 120-121 rate of, 148-149 relationships, 196 role of meaning in, 57, 143, 146

self-concept's role in, 150 two facets of, 143-144

Learning continuum, 146, 146i Lecky, Prescott, 229 Lewin, Kurt, 231 Managed organizations, 208, 210-212, 213-214, 215t, 216-218 "Management by objectives," 195,210-211 Marital counseling, personcentered, 209 Maslow, Abraham, 161-162, 163, 164, 178,229 Mastery, self-enhancement technique, 124-126 May, Rollo, 228 Meaning creation of stable, 112-114 opportunity and, 105 phenomenal self and, 55i, 55-57 Medical model, 213-214 Memory impact of need, 157-158 meaningfulness and, 158 Men perception of body, 98 social expectations, 183 values, 119-120 Mentally ill, 176, 178, 181, 188-189,201 Mentally retarded, 176, 178 Methods, obsession with, 212-213 Mobility, reduction of, 94 Motivation concept of, 12-13 field theory of, 201-202 Multiple enhancing perceptions, threat of, 82-83

Index

Multiple threatening perceptions, 83 Murphy, Gardner, 229 Need body perception, 90 concept of, 12, 130 learning and, 147-148 memory and, 157-158, 159 Needs field theory, 162 good society and, 205 Need satisfaction attention and, 71,78, 83 culture and, 106 differentiation and, 151 goals, 114, 116 learning and, 146-147 techniques, 115, 116 Negative goals, 118 Negative techniques, use of, 123 Newton, Isaac, viii, 238, 244 "Normal curve," 163 Objective evaluation, self and, 45 Objectivity, cultural perspective, 47 Observer advantages of, 243-244 role of, 245-246, 247 Oneness, 168-169, 223 Openness, 167 adequate personality trait, 170, 171-172 Open-system thinking, 218 Opportunities, values and beliefs, 119 Opportunity, perceptual factor, 101, 103, 130

273 Organization body perception, 90 continuity of, 11 democratic, 217 Organizations characteristics of, 18 complexity of, 4 human interactions with, 6-8 maintenance and enhancements of, 14 nature of, 207-211 types of, 208-209 Origins managed organization, 215t, 216 person-centered organization, 215t,216 Parents role of, 15 victimization of, 194 Participants managed organization, 215t, 218 person-centered organization, 2151,218,223 Pavlov, Ivan, 145 Perception behavior and, 197-199 decreasing limitations on, 140-141 definition of, 29 factors of, 130 impaired sensory equipment, 91 limits of, 89 opportunity and, 105 specialization of, 136-137 values and beliefs, 119-123 Perceptions impact of previous, 28

274

Index

Perceptions (continued) organization of, 78-79 vagueness of bodily, 89-91 Perceptual field, 18, 19, 246-247 body and, 88 changing organization of, 26-27 concept of, 21-22, 36-37 definition of, 20-21 feelings and, 61 narrowing of, 72 reorganization of, 190 research, 241,252-253 restrictions on, 71-74 self-actualization and, 169 stability of, 139 Perceptual orientation study, 248-250, 250t Perceptual psychology, criteria for, 255-256 Perceptual self. See Phenomenal self Personal adequacy drive for, 9, 13, 112, 122 self-consistency and, 39 Personal experience, frame of reference, 113 Personal fulfillment, 161, 163, 168 Personality, 52 adequate, characteristics of, 164-169, 177 frustrated, 176, 177, 181, 183, 201 historical view of, 198 immediate view of, 197-198 inadequate, 177-182, 201 values and beliefs, 117, 119 view of healthy, 162, 176 Person-centered approach, fears of, 219-220

Person-centered organizations, 208-209, 213-214, 215t, 216-218, 222 field theory, 219-221 Person-centered research, field theory, 241 Persuasion, relationships, 196 Phenomenal field, of, 20-21 Phenomenal self, 11, 12, 33, 130 characteristics of, 39-41 development of, 41-44 self-concept and, 36-39 self-limitation of, 70 Phenomenology, 21 field theory and, 231 Philosophy managed organization, 215t, 217 person-centered organization, 215t, 217 Physical handicap, 98 Physical organism, role in behavior, 131-132 Physical science development of, 89, 100, 225-226 paradigm of, 192 paradigm shift in, 238 Piaget, Jean, 229 Positive techniques, use of, 123 Problem solving, differentiation, 26, 143, 159-160 Process, orientation to, 216 Psychoanalytic theory, 3 Psychodrama, perceptual research technique, 242 Psychological framework, criteria for, 236-238, 255-256 Psychological immediacy, feelings, 62

Index

Psychological research, techniques for, 241-242 Psychological testing, development of, 227 Psychology development of field of, 225-226 need for theoretical base, 230-231 paradigm shift in, 239 Psychosomatic illness, 99 Qualitative research, field theory, 241 Raimy, Victor, 37, 229 Rationalization, defense mechanism, 184, 186-187 "Reading behavior backwards," 66,117,242 Reality belief and, 104-105 family differentiation, 107 perceptual field as, 21 Reasoning differentiation and, 159-160 goals and values, 120-121 Relationships consistency in, 113 field theory and, 192-193, 195-196 human development and, 43 management of, 194-195 perception and, 191, 192 study of, 17 Relevance, learning and, 149 Remembering, differentiation, 26, 143, 156-159 Repetition, learning and, 147 Resignation, 167, 168

275 Responsibility, 193, 194 Reward and punishment, learning and, 148 Rigidity, 72-73, 86 Rogers, Carl, 66, 229 Role-playing, perceptual research technique, 242 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 2, 9-10 Safety needs, Maslow, 161-162 Sartre, Jean Paul, 228 Schooling, methods of, 144 Scientific method, 192, 226 "Secular humanism," 229 Selective effect, 68 Selective perception, defense mechanism, 184, 186 Self central concepts of, 33-35 enhancement of, 9, 10, 13-14, 112 maintenance of, 8-9, 10, 13-14, 112 perceived threats to, 75, 79-86 techniques and, 128 threat from inconsistent, 82 Self-actualization field theory, 164, 166 four characteristics of, 164-169, 177 Maslow, 161,229 traits of, 163 Self-concept, 38, 229 change and, 44-46 definition of, 37 external influences on, 46-48 importance of, 150 insight and, 48, 51 role of negative, 165, 177-179 role of positive, 164-166

276

Index

Self-consistency, 229 phenomenal self, 39, 166, 229 Self-defense, 73-74, 86, 179, 181, 182 tunnel vision, 73-74, 86, 182, 197,221 Self-enhancement phenomenal field, 71 self-consistency and, 39 techniques of, 124-128 tunnel vision and, 72-73 Self-esteem, 38 Self-fulfillment, 166 Self-limitation, perception and, 70 Self-maintenance phenomenal field, 71 self-consistency and, 39 Self-organizing systems, humans as, 209-210 Self-perception, clarity of, 35-36 Self-report, accuracy of, 38-39, 240-241 Sensory equipment, perception and, 91 Situational threats, 79-80 Snygg, Donald, vii-ix, 229, 232, 233-234, 238 Social action, field theory and, 67-68 Social approval, selfenhancement technique, 126-127 Social expectations, threat source, 183 Social problems, current, 111 Social sciences, development of, 225 Social stress, 78

Social work applied psychology in, 227 field theory in, 200 Social workers, role of, 15 Speech defects, 98 Spinal cord, impairment of, 93 Spirituality, field theory and, 11, 52-53 Spontaneity, adequate personality trait, 171 Stability organizational characteristic, 18 phenomenal self, 40-41, 139 Stage fright, 158 Stimulus-response, behaviorism, 18,226,227,229,235 Subcultures, role of, 47 Subgoals, 155 Suicide, human need and, 11 Sullivan, Harry Stack, 228 Suppression, defense mechanism, 185-186 Symbolic aggression, 125 Symbolic exposure, 104 Teachers, role of, 15 Techniques classification of, 124-128 concept of, 115 constancies, 112, 123-124, 130 differentiation of, 116 managed organization, 215t, 217 person-centered organization, 215t, 217 positive and negative, 123 Term end neurosis, 84 Theory, criteria of, 255

Index

Threat factors impacting, 75-77 feelings of, 63, 130 learning and, 152-153 perception of inadequacy, 77-78 sources of, 79-86, 182-184 tunnel vision and, 72, 73 vicious cycle, 74-75 Threatened persons, characteristics of, 177-182 Threats, techniques of dealing with, 184-188 Thrills, body changes, 128 Time, perceptual factor, 101-103, 130 Tolerance, adequate personality trait, 170 Tonybee, Arnold, 109, 209 Traits adequate personalities, 170-174 personality, 128-129, 163 Traumatic events, childhood, 43-44 Traumatic shock, change and, 51 Treatment, threatened persons, 189-190 "Trial and error learning," 145 Trust, concept of, 202 Trustworthy, adequate personality trait, 172 Tunnel vision, 72-74, 86, 148, 152, 182, 197, 221

277

Unconscious, concept of, 25 Universe, nature of, 5 Unknown, threat of, 80-82 Values, 34 clarity of, 117-118 constancies, 112, 130 culture and, 107 differentiation of, 118-119 frame of reference, 116 managed organization, 215t, 218 Maslow's needs as, 162 persistence of, 118-119 person-centered organization, 215t,218 Vicious cycle, 74, 179 Victim, individual as, 193-194 Wechsler-Bellevue intelligence test, 120 Well-being, sense of, 96 Well-informed, self-actualization, 169 Wertheimer, Max, 231 Wintu Indians, cultural variation, 107-108 "Wisdom of the body, the," 8 Women perception of body, 98 values, 119-120 Zuni tribe, cultural variation, 109