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«how psychology sanctions the cult of the self»by Michael Wallach and Lise Wallach 1. THEORIES IN ACADEMIC PSYCHOLOGY A. «INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS» THEORY 1. For different reasons, most current approaches in psychology give sanction to the idea that self seeking is not merely an inclination, but the essence of our nature.
2. Take, for example, the writers on «interpersonal relations.» Were you to plow through these voluminous writings, you would leam that the model for human behavior is the penurious* merchant of Adam Smith's England, whose singleminded aim was to get as much as he could and to give as little. 10 Harold H. Kelley and John W. Thibaut, leading authors in the field, tell us that we should always condition our commitment to the welfare of others , and to values such as justice, upon the likely returns to ourselves. «Being considerate of other persons' needs and helping them attain their goals», Kelley and Thibaut write, «will oftenbe found necessary in order to obtain the cooperation from them that the individual desires». There's no reason beyond that for being considerate because values have no value apart from what they produce in return. «The functionally optimal rules», they write, «are highly contingent.» * penurious — stingy 20 3. The governing idea, in short, is that we should do unto 20 others as they have done unto us. B. «SOCIAL LEARNING» THEORY The so-called «social learning» theorists like Albert Bandura write in a similar vein, arguing that all we care about in a given situation is what's in it for ourselves. You are concerned about a suffering friend? Trace all the wires back, he argues, and you will find that you really are concerned about what that friend's suffering might imply for yourself — that he might treat you less kindly, for example. To the extent we do act altruistically, it's for social approval: internal standards of conduct — such as not killing people — are simply ways to ward off trouble with the authorities. C. «LIBERAL» ACADEMIC THEORY Even the so-called «liberal» academics, who question both social learning theory and psychological dogma in general — along with the individualism that flows from it can't seem to break away from the premise that self interest must be the ground base of all human motivation. Eleanor Maccoby, for example,rejects the view that infants become attached to their caretaker merely because that person relieves their personal distresses such as hunger. So how does Maccoby explain this attachments? By positing the parent as the «agent» who helps the infant master its environment. The child can't feel affection, in other words, unless it receives something in return. Maccoby rejects one form ofself-centeredness only to exchange it for another. Similarly, in Maccoby's view, acquiring social skills means mastering bargaining plays. As children grow up they gain the skill «to tailor their actions for different audiences, depending on the nature of the social self that they wish to project». Generosity becomes a way to cut the best deal. We learn to act unselfishly by «weighing future gains against present ones.» Maccoby acknowledges that a good family life requires more. «When a sense of mutual sharing exists», she writes, «bargaining or dominance of one member's objectives over another's becomes less important». But she can offer nothing from the realm of psychology to help families move in that direction. Because she keeps self-interest as the basic psychological building block in social relations, she has nowhere to turn other than the contractual balancing of interest that she senses as missing the point. When students study psychology in college, views like these come across in their texts. Selfishness, students learn, is what makes the world turn. «Doing something for other people is gratifying needs in yourself, otherwise you wouldn't do it», said one of those interviewed who seems to have paid close attention to his texts. «There is a part of me that needs to believe that altruism is alive and well, especially in me», said another. «But there's also a cynicism — something like altruism can't exist».
THEORIES IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY A. FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS Growing alongside academic psychology has been clinical practice, most notably psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud began his work towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the empirical sciences, in their high noon of promise, were going to unlock all the mysteries. Previously, questions of human behavior had been the realm of religion and moral philosophy. Basing his theories totally upon biology, Freud became classic iconoclast. To Victorians who wouldn't even mention bodily functions — let alone sex — in polite society, Freud declared that their lives were governed by these very things, the most unmentionable in particular. «All the emotional relationships of sympathy, friendship, trust, and the like, which can be turned to good account in our lives.» he wrote, «are genetically linked with sexuality and have developed from pure sexual desires». According to Freud, everything we do serves ultimately one of two biological functions: to rid ourselves of unpleasant external stimulation, such as cold, or to make use what's outside us to satisfy an internal need, such as — he would say — hunger or sex. «All instincts which do not find a vent without turn inwards», wrote Nietzche, of whom Freud was an avid student. «The whole inner world burst apart when man's external outlet became obstructed». Freud saw that we sometimes need to «sublimate» such energies into, say, work or arts, or accept restraints upon them, for the good of society. But such restraints were fundamentally at odds with our nature — not with just part of our nature, but with all of it. An excess of restraints causes the energies to «turn inwards», producing neurosis. Two main streams of clirical theory have challenged Freud's theory in fundamental respects. But where each sight have countered the emerging culture of selfishness, they both ended up giving even more legitimacy to this culture than Freud had. B. NEO-FREUDISM The neo-Freudians like Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Homey, and Erich Fromm thought that Freud had been much too pessimistic in his assessment of human nature. Homey, for example, disagreed strongly with Freud's view that «there is no liking or disliking of people, no sympathy, no generosity, no feeling of justice, no devotion to a cause, which is not in the last analysis determined by libidinal or destructive drives». Our actions can arise not just from bodily needs and urges, she maintained but from concern for others, a desire for justice, and the like. Since we can hold such concerns outside ourselves, the neo-Freudians. might have seen the potential of both external restrictions and internal standards of conduct in furthering those ends. Having abandoned Freud's biological basis, they had no remaining reason to regard such prescriptions as fundamentally hostile. But they did regard these prescriptions as hostile, even more than Freud had. Homey deplored the «tyranny ofshoulds» which «impair the spontaneity of feelings, wishes, thoughts and beliefs». The neo-Freudians rejected social prescriptions not because we were so bad, as Freud had thought, but because we were so good. If we were only freed of such restraints and left to get sufficiently in touch with ourselves, the result would be beneficial both for ourselves and others. Homey castigated the «whip of inner dictates» and declared that she wanted the individual «to dispense with [them] altogether». The neo-Freudians approached the individual psyche a little the way free market conservatives view the economy. Governmental and other restraints are the problems, and if we just let everybody do their own thing, it will all work out in the end. These neo-Freudians were therapists working with individual patients rather than social problems — patients who, for the most part, had strong internal values to begin with. In the background, moreover, was Stalin's Russia and the rise of Nazi Germany in which Goebbels was calling upon the German nation to «submit the I to thou» and the «individual to the whole». In this context there seemed compelling reason to focus on the self as the bulwark of human freedom». «Don't be 145 selfish becomes one of the most powerful ideological tools in suppressing spontaneity and the free development of personality», said Fromm, who was himself German. Neo-Freudians like Fromm did not urge selfishness; to the contrary, they said that truly loving yourself did not mean striving for pleasure, 150 material gains or success. But they did romanticize the self, seeing it as Rousseau's noble savage, and did not sufficiently appreciate that darkness comes not only from without — in the form of Hitler — but from within as well. C. HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY 1. If the neo-Freudians romanticized human nature, then the humanistic psychologists like Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow were positively dewy-eyed. Where the neo-Freudians had attacked external restraints and prescriptions, the humanists attacked all forms of influence or determination outside the self. Each man and woman is not a «piece of the continent», as Donne wrote, but «an island unto himself, in a very real sense» said Rogers, «and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself». Autonomy was the absolute; the crucial goal of therapy, as of life, was «to be that self which one truly is», as Kierkegaard had said — or, as Maslow and Rogers themselves put it, to «self actualize». Rogers cited with approval the decline of institutions — «government, the military, the church, the corporation, the school — because these were sources of external determination that prevented us from being ourselves. He regarded with favor the decline of conventional marriage as well. Those who choose to live together without it «simply believe that a partnership has significance only if it is a mutually enhancing,growing relationship». Of the healthy individual, Rogers said, «He is unlikely to make any commitment for all of his life because he knows he cannot predict himself that well». Actualizing the individual «may sound as though it were a selfish or unsocial criterion», Rogers wrote, «but it does not prove to be so, since a deep and helpful relationship as experienced is actualizing». Rogers, like the neo-Freudians, simply took for granted that the «self-actualized» individual would do naturally what was benevolent and good. 4. It is time to ask whether these teachings of the psychology profession are rooted in science — in empirical evidence — or whether they are based instead on ideology and predilection. Further, we need to ask whether these teachings serve to heal, both individually and collectively; or whether seeking personal happiness directly, as they tend to counsel, only makes that goal more elusive. III. EVIDENCE OF THE INADEQUACY OF CURRENT THEORIES Freud served an important role, stripping way the pretense and hypocrisy of the Victorian era and demonstrating that people need to come to grips with the best in themselves. But he led psychology astray in portraying all motivation as derived from bodily needs, with the implication that in the core of our being we are self-serving beyond redemption, and only gamesmanship and external restraints can hold us in check. 2. Where Freud saw all motivation arising from the organism, pressing outward like steam from a boiler, subsequent research showed that the process often works the other way around — that what we do is often a response to something outside us, without reference to bodily needs ... Ethologist Irenaus Eibl- Eibesfeldt presents a fair amount of evidence that even the way adults show affection for one another derived in evolution from the way they have cared for their young, rather than vice versa as Freud had maintained. There is a social basis to behavior; and if to sex, why not to other areas of life? 3. Then, too, there was research into what are called «cognitive» and «motor» processes. In humans and other species, the development of skills like perceiving, grasping, exploring, speaking, seem to some degree to have a life of their own, apart from bodily needs. More important, sociability generally — getting along with others — seems to stand as a motive on its own... There is also evidence of altruistic inclinations in very young children. Those barely over a year old will bring their mother to help a friend in distress and offer that friend their teddy bear and security blanket... 4. Freud was influenced by Darwin, but even in the great march of evolution, it is genes that survive, not individuals. Behavior like that just described, generous in the root sense of the word, is thus totally consistent with Darwin's theories. Is it not possible, even likely, that evolution has equipped us to act cooperatively — generously — as well as in a self-centred fashion? IV. THE SOCIAL THEORY OF BEHAVIOR: How the Evidence Has Been Explained Away Unfortunately, though observations of this sort have not gone unnoticed «in the world of psychological theory,... modem psychologists have responded by replacing biological needs with psychological ones in order to save their egocentric theory». Cognitive and motor skills were explained by needs for «novelty» or «mastery». Social involvement was accounted for by needs for «security», «approval», and the like. Whenever the physical or social environment seemed to pull the organism to do things, needs for the self were always posited as being served. All this to preserve the Freudian assumption of egoism even though the profession had abandoned the biological premise that made this assumption necessary. 3. Typical of this mindset is David C. McClelland's moving portrait of his mother-in-law, a strong, warm, impressive woman who was active in improving race relations, in the peace movement and in counselling, while giving emotional support to her large family... McClelland attributes this remarkable woman's character with no slight intended — to a «need for power»; it is nothing but «the most advanced stage of expressing the power drive»... 4.Once the psychologic mind locked onto the egoistic assumption, it couldn't seem to let go. These psychologists even take evidence that seems to point in the opposite direction and use it to confirm their case. Take, for example, the 1969 experiment in the New York City subway in which a man would stagger and collapse to the floor of a car. Fellow passengers came spontaneously to the victim's aid 80 percent of the time. In almost every case in which the passengers didn't offer assistance, the victim had been made to appear drunk, but passengers helped in many of those cases anyway. 5.Given the level of civility that normally prevails in New York City's subways, such a study could be encouraging evidence that an innate capacity for altruists does exist. How did the researchers interpret the responses of the subway-riders? «A selfish desire to rid oneself of an unpleasant emotional state»... Conditioned to find a cynical basis for people helping one another, such researchers become incapable of seeing anything else. 6. They generally don't even look for anything else. In the subway study, for example, the variable that the researchers tested was the «cost» to the bystander of providing help by making some of the victims appear drunk. What the researchers didn't do was put the shoe on the other foot and vary the cost to the victim of not receiving help; to show, in other words, the victim in varying degrees of distress, to see whether our generosity can increase, not in accordance with our own internal calculations of benefit, but in accordance with another's need. One team of researchers conducted just such a study, and discovered that drivers in a campus parking lot were more likely to give a stranger a ride to a town five miles away if the situation seemed to be an emergency (64 per cent helped) than if it did not (45 per cent helped). What mattered here, apparently, was the need of the recipient, and not the driver's calcu lation of cost to him or herself. Yet on the whole, the psychology profession has framed its studies to give such possibilities short shrift. V. A REVIEW OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF EGOTISM-ORIENTED PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES Freud, along with academic psychologists like these, erred on the side of cynicism. Tracing back all motivation to «needs», whether biological or otherwise, they acknowledged nothing but narrow self-interest from which behavior might arise. Th neo-Freudians and the humanistic psychologists, by contrast..., sensed the heights to which humanity might rise. «It is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology», Maslow said, «and we must now fill it out with the healthy half». But the humanistic psychologists did more than fill out the healthy half. They seemed to forget about the dark side completely. Freud at least had seen the value of social prescriptions and constraints in enabling people to get along with one another. Where he erred was in seeing these as essentially hostile to people, rather than as a form of training wheels by which their better instincts might be supported and flourish. Rather than developing this theme, the humanists came to oppose prescriptions, constraints and social institutions almost totally... 3. For healthy individuals, said Rogers, «doing what «feels right» proves to be a competent and trustworthy guide to behavior which is truly satisfying». Which is fine in theory. But what happens when what is «truly satisfying», for you is in conflict with what is satisfying for — or needed by — someone else? Take a mother who is an artist. She finds child care fulfilling, but painting even more so. Maslow and Rogers imply that she should attend to her own maximum development and pursue artistic work regardless of whether equally attentive arrangements can be made for her children. They would say that the woman probably would be a bad mother if her personal development were jeopardized... That may well be true in some cases. But should we not at least be open to the possibility that providing for our children's «actualization» at a crucial time in their lives might take priority over our own — might, in fact, be what we ourselves most deeply want? 4. Or take marriage, where the Maslow-Rogers prescriptions similarly is that self-actualization is the primary concern. Rogers believes that «a relationship between a man and a woman is significant, and worth trying to preserve, only when it is an enhancing, growing experience for each person». A couple «cannot hold to (the vows of commitment) unless the marriage is satisfying», Rogers writes. «The value of such outward commitment appears to be just about nil». But isn't unconditional commitment — a determination to go the last mile — a part of making the marriage satisfying in the first place? And suppose a partner becomes ill and needs our help so that the union demands more of us than it appears to give back? Time to pack the bags and check out? Are people who act that way the ones we most admire? 5. Or take the broader realm of social commitment and concern: An individual finds it self-actualizing to be a lobbyist for commodity speculators or polluters. It's challenging and broadening, and involves lots of free travel and opportunities for professional «contracts». End of question? Don't we need to think about such things as the wise use and fair distribution of the earth's resources, and the availability of socially constructive roles rather than ones that are useless or frivolous? And what about institutions — like governments and marriage — about which Maslow and Rogers have little to say except to lament the way they interfere with our self-actualization. Might not they serve a social function even if sometimes inconvenient? 6. Certainly there are times when we cannot be genuinely useful to others until we attend to our own 345 needs— for instance, the mother who grinds her emptional axes on self-sacrifice and suffocates her children with, attention in the process. But it is hardly always the case that we serve others best by serving ourselves first.... 350 7. Maslow and Rogers were primarily concerned, of course, with the welfare of the individual, not society at large, and for this they felt that freedom and autonomy in development were essential. But they seem to have confused freedom and autonomy with a preoccupation with oneself. In fact, we can autonomously aim at goals outside ourselves....
VI. ALTRUISM AS THE BASIS OF AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING 1. It is part of folk wisdom, and of the healing traditions of many cultures, that one path out of our own problems lies in dwelling upon them less... . Respectable opinion today tends to denigrate such views. Yet it's just possible that they are rooted in a psychological truth that today's healers — the clinical psychologists and psychiatrists — tend to overlook. A number of practitioners are convinced that encouraging ever more attention to the self, as psychiatrists and psychologists are doing, has become a part of the problem. 2. Viktor E. Franki, a psychotherapist, is an example. Interred by the Nazis at Auschwitz and Dachau, Franki found that what kept himself and other inmates going was a sense of purpose outside themselves. Franki helped deter fellow prisoners from suicide by stressing such commitments. In one case, it was scientific work to be completed; in another, it was the prisoner's child waiting safely elsewhere. What proved helpful was not getting «in touch» with their true feelings, but regaining a sense of connection with something larger than themselves. 3. While most in the profession invite patients to dwell upon their problems, Franki believes that patients probably do too much introspecting about their symptoms and feeling states already. His aim is to move patients out of their self-involvement... . This therapeutic insight is a central part of Alcoholics Anonymous. Members of A.A. undertake a personal commitment to help fellow alcoholics through participation in weekly meetings, «Twelve Step Calls», and working with new members for whom they take responsibility. Helping others stay off the bottle assists them in doing so themselves... . 4. Moreover, it is not naive to suggest that we can do more to encourage altruism rather than accept selfishness as the inescapable core of our nature. It is well demonstrated, for example, how young people can be influenced by the prevailing values in their families. Studies of the most committed civil rights activists during the sixties found that they were more likely than their cohorts to have parents who had shown just such social commitment during their children's formative years. We-thinking can be nurtured just like me-thinking can — and if in families, why not in the culture at large? 5. Wherever altruism is an essential element of early education, helping simply becomes part of the way people act. On occasion, a culture such as this can rise to the heights of heroism, as when the people of the French Protestant village of Le Chambon risked annihilation by the Nazis during the Second World War in order to shelter Jews. As Protestants in a Catholic country, their ancestors had endured centuries of persecution, and almost instinctively the Chambonnais came to the aid of others who suffered this fate. «Things had to be done, that's all, and we happened to be there to do them», was one typically matter-of-fact explanation. That selflessness can come to seem ordinary and mundane is itself a telling point against those who persist in giving sanction to greater indulgence of the self. 6.An old tailor in his eighties once recalled what had given him the most satisfaction in his work: enabling the poor people in his neighborhood to buy well-constructed clothing that would keep them warm. «A coat is not a piece of cloth only», he explained. «The tailor is connected to the one who wears it and he should not forget it». Our colleagues in the psychology profession should not forget it either. They should encourage more thinking about the people who will wear the coat — those affected by our daily thoughts and actions — and less about how we feel while making it, or about the personal rewards.
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