Chapter Xii[65]

THE PERSONALITY SYSTEM AND ITS SUBSTITUTIVE REACTIONS

So far in this book human behavior has been interpreted in terms of various “tendencies” which such behavior is supposed to manifest. Suppose we call into question this type of psychological explanation. What, after all, is a “tendency”? It postulates a relationship between events, one of which is taken as the terminal situation, and others of which are treated as relative approximations to the type situation. Terms like “wishes,” “desires,” “instincts,” “impulses,” “drives,” and “motives” are all employed in this sense.

For purposes of analysis, tendency interpretations may be divided into five main classes, depending on the nature of the relationship which is postulated between the approximate and the terminal situation. First, personality events may be interpreted as approximations toward, or realizations of, goals (terminals) which are communicated by the subject. We may believe a man who tells us that he is running for a train when we see him dashing along the street toward the railway station.

Second, personality events may be interpreted as degrees of approximation to subsequent events which are actually observed. Mr. C’s solicitude for the health and welfare of the needy ones of the district may be construed in the light of his subsequent campaign for Congress.

Third, personality events may be treated as degrees of resumption of terminal situations of a type which have already been observed. Lying in bed after waking up in the morning, whenever there are difficulties to cope with, may be interpreted as a reactivation of an earlier psychological impulse to lie still and be waited on.

Fourth, personality events may be construed as approximations to “normal” terminal events which are observed for the biological or cultural category of the individual. Thus heterosexuality may be postulated as a tendency of a human being, although he consummates no heterosexual adjustments.

Fifth, personality events may be interpreted in terms of end situations which are “extreme” for the members of the species or the culture. Thus the acts of man may be viewed as degrees of approximation to murder, suicide, and incest.

Each sense in which the tendency conception is used is valid and useful for certain purposes, and is exposed to characteristic liabilities to error. Thus if we accept the man’s statement that he is running to catch a train, we may be wrong; he may be running to the woods beyond to escape the constable.

The reactive type of statement is an alternative (I should prefer to say a supplement) to tendency generalizations. When we make a reactive statement, we specify quite definitely the antecedent-consequent relation to which reference is made. The specific stimulus-response description of the events which elicit the knee jerk, or call out an avoidance reaction to yellow cloth, illustrates what is meant here. Of course the stimulus-response style of thinking is not nearly as exhaustive, and the tendency style of thinking is not nearly as ambiguous in actual application, as might appear at first glance. The stimulus-response statement of how to elicit the knee jerk which is usually given may be predictively valid in eight cases out of ten; but there are “exceptions” which show how wide is the context of factors which it would be necessary to include in the picture, were it nearly complete. And when the stimulus-response mode of thinking is extended from such relatively stable and touchable situations to those which involve complex central (subjective) events in the sequence, it becomes in reality a disguised form of tendency interpretation.

The chief possible virtue of tendency conceptions is in introducing some sort of order in complex phenomena. If the observer tries to enumerate all the body movements, all the electronic gyrations, all the nuances of social adjustment which are thinkable in a given constellation of personality events, he is likely to become lost in aimless classification, and to prove barren in the invention of procedures which are calculated to elicit particular aspects of the whole which may be of high predictive value. The human mind is able to operate with a very small number of categories with which to introduce order into events, particularly when these are, for the most part, still defined qualitatively. Clarity of thought demands economy in the orienting frames of thought.

How a tendency simplification may lead to fruitful research for predictively valuable particulars is shown in the case of Freud, in contrast to Janet. Janet made remarkably clear classifications of the psychopathological facts as he saw them, and although his terms and categories were abundant, his work was comparatively sterile of novel procedures for the modification of human personalities. Even his classificatory pursuits were hampered by his little-criticized assumptions. His notion that dreams were passing confusions which were traceable to diminished psychological tension in sleep deprived dream material of all significance as classifiable data, and he almost completely ignored it. Freud, who tended to operate with a few bold tendency simplifications, brought into the range of observation whole categories of data which have high predictive value.

When tendency simplifications are used until vast numbers of instances accumulate of their supposed operation, “subtendencies” (such as the variations of the manifestations of the Oedipus constellation) multiply apace until the problems of rendering one tendency consistent with the expressions of another one carry scientific speculations into the logical molds of legalism and dogmatic theology. If the subtendencies are not modified, and long lists of special tendencies are added, terminological difficulties likewise arise in applying the unwieldy list. The long inventories of supposed instincts are less at fault because they imply an unwarranted assurance about the innate propensities of man than because they are “too numerous to mention,” and introduce confusion rather than orienting principles in the field of study.

Although the prediction of one set of tangible reactions from another is the aim of scientific formulation, this by no means implies, then, that the reactive style of thinking is the one best calculated to guide the attention of the thinker to the selection of the most fruitful hypotheses (“if” predictions). Indeed, especially valuable results have been secured in the personality field by the pattern of thinking which views a cross-section of facts as an expression of a few tendencies.

But a reactive style of thinking which operates with a few simplifications might prove useful in the study of human personality at the present time, since both the psychoanalytical and the “itemistic” psychologies have a plethora of particulars with which they are familiar, but suffer from certain crippling viewpoints inherent in their early starting-points. Psychoanalysis is well accustomed to the use of a few orienting terms, but since these are stated in “tendency” form, there is much lack of emphasis upon rendering the objective marks of their manifestation precise. The inventory psychologies though accustomed to precision are accustomed to overlooking the woods for the trees.

Can the personality be viewed as a system, and can we think of it in a few terms which can be gradually objectified, and which indicate the principal varieties of personality manifestation? If the personality is a true system, interferences which are introduced at various points ought often to produce substitutive reactions at many remote parts of the personality. Personalities may be compared from one cross-section to another, and from one personality to another, by exposing them to similar interferences, and by examining the substitutive reaction sequences which emerge.

For the purpose of summing up the personality at any given period, we may consider it to be a constellation of the following action patterns: object orientations, adjustive thinking, autistic reveries, somatic reactions.

The object orientations of the individual are describable as various degrees of assertiveness, provocativeness, or submissiveness toward sexual and non-specifically sexual objects in the environment. In extreme instances the individual may be abusive, insulting, domineering toward superiors, colleagues, clients, and subordinates in his profession, and toward his wife or mistress in intimate life; or he may be cowed in his work and timid in his sexuality; or he may show extreme variations between his professional and private levels of behavior. These are the differentiating reactions upon which it is hoped to throw some light by the examination of the personality system in its principal manifestations.

Adjustive thinking has to do with the relationship of the individual to reality. It issues in socially relevant acts, which on the creative level mean contributions to science, art, administration, and philosophy. Autistic thinking is highly egocentric, but adjustive thinking when it dwells upon the relationship of the self to its surroundings is able to treat the self as an object among objects.

Autistic reveries are non-adjustive to reality. They may be divided into several classes of which morbid-suicidal, pessimistic, megalomanic, denunciatory, and persecutory reveries are particularly common. In exaggerated form they become the most conspicuous feature of the personality, and various clinical names are used to distinguish them. Common, and representative, themes are suggested by these quotations: “I’m a hopeless sinner”; “The world’s going to the dogs”; “I’m the slickest guy in the world”; “The President is the Judas of mankind”; “The President is using death-rays on me.” Autistic thinking flourishes in greater or less abundance in every personality whose history is taken for any length of time.

The somatic reactions at any given cross-section of the personality are striped muscle movements and tensions; heart and circulatory reactions; gastro-intestinal responses; skin adjustments; organic sexual behavior; respiratory, pupillary, and urogenital adaptations; inner glandular action on the biochemical balance of the blood; heat production (fever and certain metabolic alterations not included before); electrical conductivity; and immunological responses. Under the same environing conditions individuals show wide variations in physical behavior, and when these manifestations show certain gross deviations from norms, though no organic lesion can be shown to be present, the presumption is that the energy of some mental process has been converted into somatic form. This notion of hysteria (and what may be called hysteroid reactions) was classically formulated by Freud. Every individual who is closely scrutinized shows, from time to time, tendencies to urinate excessively (though no adequate physical explanation is apparent), to refrain from passing feces, or to suffer pains in the back or neck.

The comparisons which may be made among personalities on the basis of the nature of the substitutive reactions which arise when they are subjected to similar conditions may be illustrated on the gross level by citing some “experiments” which society has tried. Mr. A is a member of the city council in one of our large cities. On two occasions, when he was defeated for re-election, he developed autistic reveries to such an extent that he was confined in a sanitarium under the care of a psychiatrist. Thus Mr. A met a deprivation in the sphere of his orientation to social objects (political activity) by developing exaggerated autistic reveries (depressive preoccupations). The case of A may be thrown up against that of Mr. B. When Mr. B lost out in his campaign for re-election to the legislature, he began to worry about his health, and although the physicians could find no adequate physical basis for his trouble, he developed a host of gastro-intestinal disturbances which incapacitated him from regular professional life. His substitutive reaction was somatic. Another man, a Mr. C, was defeated and spent most of his time writing a subsequently well-recognized book on political theory. His substitutive reaction was in the sphere of consecutive, theoretical, adjustive thinking. It will be remembered that one of our driving administrators, J, had his administrative duties curtailed and immediately took the wife of another for his mistress showing that his object orientation in the world of affairs was a substitute for his object orientation in the sexual field.

From this point of view, we are able to examine the relative function which political activities and preoccupations play in the personality integration of the individual. For one it is an alternative to mental disorder, for another it is an alternative to physical disease, for another an alternative to aggressive sexuality.

Now it is of interest and importance to observe that the study of the life-histories of these men showed that their mode of meeting the world had become organized rather early. The man who developed somatic symptoms had shown a physical upset after losing a contest for the presidency of his class in college, and also in adolescent and preadolescent deprivation situations. Alexander traced the basis for the personality splitting in J to very early childhood.

I want now to indicate how the prolonged interview throws much light on personality development, and lends itself to consideration from the point of view outlined here. If the analyst is “insulted” by the subject in the course of a day’s interview, the subject may the next day report somatic trouble, or morbid reveries, or unusual kindliness toward an annoying person, or a burst of creative work. The interviewer, taking such facts in juxtaposition to others, may be able to predict the kind of substitutive reactions which this person is likely to show in a whole range of social situations, and to predict retrospectively the form of reaction which was manifested at different levels of development. The trained psychoanalyst watches the subject like a hawk for clues of this kind; the possibility of removing his “hunches” from the realm of art into the area of dependable knowledge depends upon the objectification of his observations, and upon the development of specifically experimental methods.

A method by which some certainty is to be introduced in personality records is by testing the coincidence of observations taken through time by observers who occupy specified positions in relation to the subject. Very important applications of this procedure have been made to child study by several child psychologists, more particularly by Florence Goodenough and Dorothy Thomas. A set of categories were set up to describe various acts, such as “smiling,” “physical contact with other child,” and “physical contact with object.” The definiteness of each term was then tested by having two independent observers make the same number of observations at fixed intervals during a prescribed period. The results showed which categories were ambiguous, and which categories were sufficiently clear to justify their inclusion in behavior studies. It was discovered, for example, that “smiling” behavior showed much less definiteness than “physical contact with another child.” This procedure makes it possible to measure the error of a measuring procedure and is strictly comparable to the calibrating process common to the physical sciences in determining the relative reliability of measurements made by a particular instrument. The social scientist is compelled to rely on the use of his eyes, and the problem is to standardize the use so that objective results can be secured.

Such methods of devising and testing categories for the observation of behavior need urgently to be developed for the study of courtroom, legislative, committee, mass meeting, and other types of behavior in situations of immediate political interest. It is possible to record the differential reactions of participants, and to distinguish that which is inherent in the rôle performed (chairman), and that which is the individualized penumbra of the act (individual gesture).

These objective categories and recording practices can be extended to the study of behavior wherever dominating and submissive behavior is found. The gap between the studies of children and the study of personalities in complicated adult political situations can be filled in with the idea of finding reliable criteria of the stability of political reactions. Some early studies have been made which suggest that types of dominating behavior are isolable at very early ages. Charlotte Bühler detected children who dominated through pressure of activity, despotic behavior, and “leadership” behavior. Her monograph reproduces photographic illustrations of what she means by the terms employed. An outgrowth of her work is the experimental study by Marjorie Walker at the Minneapolis Institute of Child Welfare (under direction of Anderson and Goodenough). An observational study by Mildred Parten at the same place showed that in uncontrolled play activities the dominating or submissive rôles might be strikingly monopolized by individual children. By methods which are less objective but much better than simple impressionism, there have been a number of “political types” observed in later development. Karl Reininger kept a careful record of the behavior of his pre-puberty schoolboys, and brought out very clearly the functional distinction between the “leader” and the “specialist.” The specialist might temporarily guide the group in some activity for which he was particularly competent, but the leader kept him within limits and reassumed the direction as soon as the special activity was over. Reininger has many shrewd observations to offer about the bearing of what he saw on the whole range of social psychological theory, and his monograph is a beautiful example of how a circumscribed empirical study can be given meaning and distinction against a broad theoretical background. Hildegard Hetzer watched the spontaneous groupings of children in play groups, and shrewdly distinguished organizers, specialists, and social leaders from one another.

At a still later level is the study which Viktor Winkler-Hermaden made of the psychology of youth-movement leaders. These leaders are recruited from youths who are not much ahead of their groups in age, and in a well-balanced and penetrating chapter he contrasted the “ruler,” “teacher,” and “apostle.”

Special studies of dominating and submissive types in various situations ought to be made with some reference to the reaction-type classifications for the age period which are made by competent students. Since puberty-adolescence is of so much importance, the categories which are proposed in the literature ought to be examined by the special investigator. H. Hoffman gives a modified list of the puberty types described by Spranger and Croner in one section of his general book on character formation. Suggestions on various distortions of development which lie behind certain forms of dominating and submissive behavior are to be found in August Aichhorn’s lectures on Verwahrloste Jugend. This is the most valuable book to a student of youth which has yet been explicitly devoted to the subject by an analyst. Aichhorn reports in his eighth lecture the results of an extremely important experiment which he made with the most aggressive and uncontrollable boys under his supervision (he has served for many years as the head of a home for homeless boys). The whole group was put together, and the staff members were instructed never to interfere with them, short of stopping permanent injury. These “hard-boiled” youths broke up the furniture, mauled one another, and wore out several attendants before they gradually tamed down. After having learned that they could not taunt the environment into punishing them, and into justifying their own suspicions of it, they went through a process of character re-education. The behavior of the group is reported in graphical form, and representative instances of what occurred are recited in the text of the lecture. Several specific genetic hypotheses are set up to explain particular kinds of behavior on the part of the boys with whom Aichhorn has had intimate touch.

Will we be able to predict from objective studies made of preadolescent boys who dominate their play groups that one set of them will stand a high chance of dominating play and work groups in adolescence? Can we thus isolate rather stable developmental sequences for various trait constellations which are of direct importance to the student of politics? Can we achieve a composite picture for a given culture by studying overlapping age groups for a two-year period? Certainly the way is becoming clearer to an effective relationship between political science and the disciplines associated with the study of the growing individual.

One of the difficulties which lie in the path of successful collaboration with psychiatrists and child psychologists is that the political scientists have not themselves made it entirely clear just what the adult differentials are whose genetic history they would like to understand. What are the questions about the specifically political life of the individual which the political scientist would like to have included in any master-inventory of possible facts about the intensively studied individual?

The following classification of political attitudes is intended to have suggestive value rather than formal completeness. The first section of this classification refers to the political preferences and expectations or forebodings of the individual investigated. Some individuals cherish a fraternal and some a paternal ideal. The anarchist, socialist, and democrat talk the language of equality among a family of brothers; the monarchists preserve a father. A series of other ideological distinctions are perhaps sufficiently clear from the terms used.

CLASSIFICATION OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES

SECTION A. POLITICAL VIEWS

I. Preferences

Paternal ideal Fraternal ideal

Strong central authority Weak central authority

Revolutionary ideal Counter-revolutionary or reactionary ideal

Cataclysmic change Evolutionary change

Indulgent toward coercion, secrecy, ruthlessness Insistent upon persuasion, openness, scrupulousness

Emancipatory, defensive, expansive ideal for group World-unity ideal

II. Expectations and forebodings

Small political change can have great results Small political change can have some results of value Little of value can be accomplished by politics Revolutionary changes imminent, eventual, contingent

It is probably in relation to political practices, as distinguished from political views, that the intensive study of the individual has the most to offer. I have included a list of questions in Appendix B which are intended to suggest the sort of thing which is directly pertinent to the interest of the political scientist in this regard. How has the individual acted as a subordinate when confronted by superiors of various kinds (in the army, in school, in fraternity organizations, in business, in party clubs, in propaganda organizations, in administrative hierarchies, and the like)? How has the individual acted as a superior when confronted by subordinates of various kinds? Besides considering the behavior of the person as subordinate or superior, we may inquire into his attitude toward individuals who have not been members of his various organizations, but who have been possible helpers or obstacles. Thus he may have approached strangers for money, or sought to win diplomatic support from another organization against a common menace. His tactics may be classified according to the means employed and the measure of success attained. Special attention may likewise be devoted to the behavior of the individual, not toward particular persons, but toward publics, which are necessarily anonymous. Summarizing:

SECTION B. POLITICAL PRACTICES

I. As subordinate

Confronted by superiors who are A. Strong, brutal B. Masterful but rather objective C. Weak

Reaction (conscious)

1. Does not assume a friendly mask (exterior) even though he sees it would be an advantage (seeks to escape, becomes stubborn, surly, assaultive, joins anti-authoritation acts engaged in by associates, continues to contemplate revenge long after)

2. Does not see or press up own individual advantage because of attachment or intimidation (deference without conscious hostility, pronounced affection, intimidated sacrifice of associates to curry favor, overgratitude)

3. Combines friendly mask with conscious acts of hostility (plays up qualities admired by chief, whether imitative of chief or expressive of the chief’s repressions)

4. Irrational elements in adaptation at a minimum

II. As authority

Confronted by subordinates who are A. Strong, hostile, dangerous rivals B. Strong and objective C. Weak

Reaction

1. Does not refrain from taking up a hostile front even when it is recognized to be inappropriate

2. Takes apparently friendly line while pursuing hostile purposes

3. Does not take strong-enough measures to secure efficiency or respect (too indulgent of mirrors of self or of those who work out frustrations)

4. Objective (inflicts narcissistic wound when advantageous, reassures when useful, develops abilities of subordinates, thwarts when dangerous)

III. In dealing with possible helper or obstructor who is outside organization (most effective tactics chosen and range of tactics)

Appeals to logical standards Appeals to sentiment Non-violent and violent coercion Inducement (tangible advantage)

IV. In dealing with public

Types of tactics chosen, success

Forms of expression, thought, and interest may be singled out for special consideration. What is intended here is sufficiently apparent from the captions: