Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

so doing. The "worse" is usually something that appeals to the {533} "old Adam" in us, something that strongly arouses a primitive instinctive response; while the "better" is a nobler, more dutiful, or more prudent course. The lower motive being the stronger, how can it ever be that the higher motive gets the decision? Well, the fight is not just a contest between these two. Other motives are drawn into the fray, the whole man is drawn in, and it is a question which side is the stronger. Fear of ridicule or criticism, sense of duty, self-respect, ambition, ideals of oneself, concern for the welfare of another person, loyalty to a social group, may be ranged on the side of the "weaker" motive and give it the advantage over the stronger.

What becomes of the rejected motives? If unimportant and s superficial, they simply lapse into an inactive state and are gradually forgotten, perhaps recurring to mind once in a while with a faint tinge of regret, since after all we should have liked to gratify them. "As a boy, I wanted to be a sailor; well, I would rather like to try it for once." When a motive is deeply rooted in our nature, it cannot be so easily eliminated. Sometimes it is simply deferred and remains dormant, content to bide its time; "there will be time enough for that later on". Sometimes it is disguised and then gratified, as when an apparently courteous deed contains an element of spite. Sometimes it is afforded a substitute gratification, as when the boastful boy, after having his "conceit taken out of him" by his mates, boasts of his school, profession, town or country. This is often called "sublimation". Sometimes, though denied, it remains insistent, and "defense mechanisms" have to be devised to keep it down; the "sour grapes" mechanism is an example, which may be used not only when the "grapes" are physically out of reach but also when for any reason we decide to leave them alone.

The psychoanalytic school lays great stress on {534} "suppressed" desires, holding that they become unconscious while still remaining active, and that they find gratification symbolically in dreams, and at times break into waking life in a disturbing way.

The most adequate way of handling rejected motives is to coördinate them with other, accepted motives--to harness them into teams and put them to work. This cannot always be done; for example, if a young woman has two attractive suitors, she might find difficulty in harnessing them together, and will have to say good-by to one, at least. But when the boastful boy becomes a loyal and enthusiastic member of a school, his self-assertive motive is harnessed up with social motives into a very effective team. Probably a tendency can only be "sublimated" by being thus combined and coördinated with other strong tendencies.

These various ways of handling a rejected motive could be nicely illustrated from the case of the sex instinct. It so happens, partly because modern economic and educational conditions enforce a delay in marriage--and in part simply because there are so many attractive people in the world--that the cravings of sex must often be denied. What becomes of them? Of course the sex instinct is too deep-seated to be eradicated or permanently to lapse into a dormant state. But the fascination for particular individuals may so lapse or be forgotten. Certain people we remember, once in a while, with half-humorous and certainly not very poignant regret. Deferring the whole matter till the time is ripe works well with many a youth or maiden. Combined with social interests, the sex motive finds sublimated satisfaction in a great variety of amusements, as well as in business associations between the sexes. Introduce a nice young lady into an officeful of men, and the atmosphere changes, often for the better,--which means, certainly, that the sex motive of these men, combined with ordinary business {535} motives, is finding a sublimated satisfaction. The sex motive thus enters into a great variety of human affairs. "Defense mechanisms" are common in combating unacceptable erotic impulses; the sour grapes mechanism sometimes takes the extreme form of a hatred of the other sex; but a very good and useful device of this general sort is to throw oneself into some quite different type of activity, as the young man may successfully work off his steam in athletics. This is not sublimation, in any proper use of that term, for athletic sport does not gratify the sex tendency in the least, but it gratifies other tendencies and so gratifies the individual. It is the individual that must be satisfied, rather than any specified one of his tendencies. As regards coördination, the fact was illustrated just above that this method would not always work; but sometimes it works immensely well. Here is a young person (either sex), in the twenties, with insistent sex impulses, tempted to yield to the fascination of some mediocre representative of the other sex. Such a low-level attachment, however, militates against self-respect, work, ambition, social sense. Where is the "coördination"? It has to be found; some worthy mate will harness all these tendencies, stimulating and gratifying sex attraction, self-respect, ambition, and others besides, and coördinating them all into the complex and decidedly high-grade sentiment of love.

Obstruction and Effort

The term "will" is used to designate the response to external obstruction as well as the response to internal conflict. In fact, nothing is so characteristically "will" as the overcoming of resistance that checks progress towards a desired result. As "decision" is the response to internal conflict of tendencies, so "effort" is the response to external {536} resistance encountered in executing a desire that has been adopted. The obstruction may be purely physical, as the underbrush that impedes your progress through the woods; or it may be another person's will running counter to yours; or it may be of the nature of distraction of attention from the end in view.

The resistance may also be internal, and consist in your own lack of skill in executing your intentions, or in the disturbing effect of some desire which, though rejected, has not gone to sleep but still pulls you another way than the way you have decided to go.

In all these cases, the individual is moving towards a certain goal, but encounters obstruction; and his response is effort, or increased energy put into his movement towards the goal. So long as the tendency towards a goal finds smooth going, there is not the same determination that appears as soon as an obstruction is encountered. The "will", in common usage, will not brook resistance--the "indomitable will".

Now effort and determination, in our chapter on the native impulses, were put under the head of the assertive or masterful tendency; and it does seem that "will", in this sense, is almost the same thing as the instinct of self-assertion. Certainly, in the case of adults, an obstruction puts the individual "on his mettle", and superimposes the mastery motive upon whatever motive it may have been that originally prompted the action.

The mastery motive came clearly to light in an experiment designed to investigate "will action". The subject of the experiment was first given a long course of training in responding to certain stimulus words by other certain words that were constantly paired with them; and when his habits of response were thus well fixed, his task was changed so that now he must respond to any word or syllable by any {537} other that rhymed with it. A series of stimuli now began with words for which no specific response habit had been formed, and to these the subject reacted with no great difficulty. But then, unexpectedly, he got a stimulus word to which he had a fixed habit of response, and before he could catch himself he had made the habitual response, and so failed to give a rhyme as he had intended. This check sometimes made him really angry, and at least it brought him up to attention with a feeling which he expressed in the words, "I can and will do this thing". He was thus put on his guard, gave closer attention to what he was doing, and was usually able to overcome the counter tendency of habit and do what he meant to do. Some subjects, who adapted themselves readily and fully to the rhyming task, i.e., who got up a good "mental set" for this sort of reaction, made few errors and did not experience this feeling of effort and determination; for them the effort was unnecessary; but the average person needed the extra energy in order to overcome the resistances and accomplish his intentions.

Other good instances of effort are found in the overcoming of distraction, described under the head of attention, [Footnote: See p. 259.] and in the work of the beginner at any job. When the beginner has passed the first cautious, exploratory stage of learning, he begins to "put on steam". He pounds the typewriter, if that is what he is learning, spells the words aloud, and in other ways betrays the great effort he is making.

Ask a child just learning to write why he grasps the pencil so tightly, why he bends so closely over the desk, why he purses his lips, knits his brow, and twists his foot around the leg of his chair, and he might answer, very truly, that it is because he cannot do this job easily and has to try hard. All these unnecessary muscular movements and tensions {538} show the access of energy that has been liberated in his brain by the obstruction encountered.

Any learner, once he has mastered the difficulties of the task, reaches an easy-running stage in which effort is no longer required, unless for making a record or in some way surpassing himself. With reference to effort, then, we may speak of three stages of practice: the initial, exploratory stage, the awkward and effortful stage, and the skilled and free-running stage. These are identical with the three stages in the development of attention to a subject, which were described [Footnote: See p.258] as the stage of spontaneous attention or curiosity; the stage of forced attention, or effortful attention, controlled by such motives as fear or self-assertion; and the final stage of objective interest and absorption in the subject, which is evidently the same as the free-running condition.

Effort is not a good in itself; it is an unpleasant condition; but it is a natural response to difficulty and is often necessary in order to get the individual into the free-running condition which is both efficient and pleasant. It is often required to get the individual out of the easy-going condition into the free-running condition, which is something entirely different. In free-running action there may be even more energy expended than in effortful action, but it is better directed and produces no strains and jolts.

Intelligence, in the sense of adaptability and "seeing the point", may often take the place of effort. Consider the way two different people react to a sticking door: the one puts in more strength and forces it, the other by a deft thrust to the side opens it without much extra force. You can't say absolutely which mode of attack is better, for your stubborn one may waste his strength on an obstruction that really cannot be forced, while your clever one may waste his {539} time on a door that needs only a bit of a push. Persistence plus adaptability is what efficient activity demands.

Thought and Action

"Men of thought" and "men of action" are sometimes contrasted--which is hardly fair to either, since the great man of action must have the imagination to conceive a plan, and must know exactly what he is aiming to accomplish, while the great thinker must be persistent in thinking and must get into action by way of writing or somehow making his