Values and Value-Orientations 434

 

4  The Theory of Action and Its Application

 

4.3  Toward a Classification of Interactions - HENRY A. MURRAY

 

                In the domain of psychology few experiences have been more sobering, if not dismal, than the failures of the imagination, the confusions and dissensions, which have marked our collective efforts to explain the directionality of human behaviors.  These defeats are most embarrassing, since no adequate theoretical system can be reared until a foundation of acceptable definitions and propositions relative to functional tendencies has been laid. 

 

                That muscle and/or words become temporally coordinated in such a way as to produce effects, momentary or enduring, is an observable and predictable fact of nature.  Equally given and undeniable is the further fact that these achieved effects are commonly conducive to a man's physical and psycho-

logical well-being, his development and his survival.  The problem, of course, is how to analyze and reconstruct, to interpret and predict, these directional proceedings. 

 

                In the field of biology, of animal action and learning, some radical differences of opinion are still unresolved, but the issues are straight-edged, and largely for this reason, progress is discernible.  In the field of human action, on the other hand, the issues are fuzzy-edged and most of us are floundering

in vagueness.  We are still babblers, for the most part, in a Tower of Babel.  In fact, one sibling in the social science family, the important subscience of interpersonal verbal behaviors, is only just beginning to focus its eyes, move its lips, and utter a few sounds which its parents fondly believe are publicly intelligible. 

 

                Where so many competent investigators are still fumbling, it is the part of prudence to proceed warfly.  Also, there are certain other considerations - say those of time and space - which likewise dictate caution in setting the scope of the endeavor.  Therefore, my aim here will be merely that of help-

ing to prepare for a theoretical foundation by disposing of a few interfering boulders of cognition and by submitting some boards for a frame into which propositional cement may someday be poured with confidence. 

 

435

 

                In this paper I shall attempt to elucidate the widely preached but narrowly practiced assumption that the social scientist's "real entity" (as Whitehead might say) is a temporal unit of interacting processes, the simplest being a short interpersonal proceeding, say the movements and words of the actor (the subject, S) and the reaction of the alter (the object, 0). I submit that, in representing an interaction unit of this type, the object must be given the same conceptual status as the subject, that is, our model of the proceeding should include as much formulation of the object's thought and speech as of the subject's thought and speech.  Also, I submit that on both sides of the equation the most crucial and indispensable of all the variables is that of directionality; that is, the need-aimed action of the subject and the need-aimed action of the object. 

In other words, we have to deal with the most troublesome of concepts, that denoted by such terms as conation, tendency, drive, propensity, motive, purpose, wish, desire, intention, impulse.  This will constitute my chief conceptual focus, but it should be understood that whatever conclusions may be reached relative to this entity will apply to the object (chief constituent of the subject's situation) as well as to the subject (chief constituent of the object's situation). 

 

                The status of the entity, from the point of view of a logical positivist, is that of a nonobservable construct or intervening variable, which belongs, in Carnap's language, to the category of disposition concepts.  It is a state, in short, that is characterized by the tendency to actions of a certain kind. (After

a sufficient period of learning, these actions can be defined most significantly in terms of the kind of satisfying effect which they are likely to produce.)  For the present, this is all we shall assume about the nature of this variable, which I shall call "need" or, more generally, "tendency." 

 

                One of the granite boulders of cognition, from my eccentric and unfashionable viewpoint, is the model of the culture-clear, conscience-free, maze-imprisoned, hunger-driven, cheese-seeking rat, which is forever engraved on the entablatures of our cortices.  Greatly impressed, as we should be, by the strictly designed experiments and clear-cut findings of the animal psychologists, we have been disposed to accept one or another of their several formulations as the best paradigm of human conduct and thereby to accept, without so much as a scientific shrink, the audacious assumption of species equivalence.  This decision of ours has resulted in a rigid circumscription and distortion of our view of behavioral phenomena, because knowledge of how a rat copes with its tasks is applicable to no more than a small portion of the event-manifold which constitutes the life history of a personality.   It does not, for example, help us very much in understanding how a scientist copes with the task of constructing a theory of social action and of communicating it to his colleagues in such a way that it appeals to them as much as cheese appeals

to a healthy rat. For several reasons, to be spelled out later, I believe that Maslow is right in characterizing the hunger drive as "atypical rather than typical." 

 

436 The Theory and Its Application

 

                The fact that the investigations of animal psychologists have been technically most satisfying should not produce "negative hallucinations  in respect to the many important kinds of human behavior which are susceptible to neither precise measurements, precise interpretations, nor precise predictions. 

 

                Since psychology is among the youngest and least sophisticated of the sciences, gnawing feelings of inferiority are almost universal (even normal) in our profession.  As a result, many of us are harrassed by relentless and importunate cravings for scientific maturity, which incline us to leap over all the tedious stages of observation, description, and classification through which chemistry and all the biological and medical sciences have passed, and find short cuts to eminence via logical positivism and mathematical models.  This zeal for uncriticizable statements and precisely verifiable measurements should certainly be encouraged, but not without the warning that in pursuing Certainty, the Absolute, one is likely to leave Man, the thinking reed, forsaken in the rear. 

Here, quite obviously, I am giving voice to a "prejudice" – that is, an unpopular opinion - which places me, however, in the company of Pratt, a clear thinker, who has suggested that psychology has not yet advanced to the state at which exact formalization of its theories is rewarding.  As my friend Hanns Sachs used to say: "You can't make a leaf grow by stretching it."  I am also prompted to quote Aristotle, not popular these days: "it is the part of an educated man to seek exactness in each class of subjects only so far as the nature of the subject admits." 

 

                Before settling on an animal paradigm as foundation for psychology, would it not be well to observe and collect records of a great variety of behaviors - especially interpersonal verbal behaviors - and attempt to classify them roughly?  Despite shouts of "No!" this is my chief proposal for the present.  But, before discussing it in greater detail, it seems advisable to set down some of the less commonly stated assumptions that are basic to the notions presented in this paper.

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 437

 

A FEW ASSUMPTIONS

 

                1.  Proceedings of personality.  Personality is the governing organ of the body, an institution, which, from birth to death, is ceaselessly engaged in transformative functional operations.  Its historic course may be viewed as a long succession of proceedings punctuated by periods of sleep, during which

unconscious anabolic processes regenerate the stores of energies that have been expended in the catabolic processes of its waking life. 

 

                It is sometimes convenient to distinguish between internal and external proceedings. 

An internal proceeding is a temporal segment during which the personality, abstracted from its environment (as in sleep), is preoccupied with its inner life - daydreaming perhaps, or attempting to interpret and evaluate a past event, or to predict the future, or to settle some conflict, or to solve some intellectual problem, or to assess its own abilities, or (let us say finally) to select a goal and lay out a plan of strategies. Internal proceedings predominate during periods of solitude.  They are usually more frequent and prolonged in scientists, artists, philosophers, religionists, and introverts generally. 

An external proceeding, on the other hand, is a stretch of time during which the processes of personality are engaged in dealing immediately and overtly with one or more things or persons of its environment – in observing or manipulating, in giving or taking, cooperating or competing, exchanging information or expressing values, persuading or yielding to persuasion, serving or being served, fighting or arriving at a peaceful settlement, and so forth. 

 

                The social scientist's unit of concrete reality is not an instantaneous thing, field, or structure, but an event, which I am calling a "proceeding."  If necessary, the length of a proceeding can be precisely defined (say, the duration of a single interaction between two people), but, as a rule, it is more feasible to define it loosely.  Any one of the small-group meetings which Bales and others have been observing so systematically might be taken as an example of a proceeding, the social psychologist's real entity. 

Ideally, the duration of a proceeding is determined by

(1)     the initiation and by

(2)     the completion of a dynamically significant pattern of behavior, exhibited, for example, by a rat running a maze and feeding to the point of satiation or by a pianist playing a sonata from start to finish. 

 

                In short, the temporal dimension is an integral part of all behaviors, and so, in order to discern the nature of any single sample of action, the psychologist must observe its course through a sufficient period of time.  Instantaneous records (e.g., a photograph during the expression of an emotion) or observations regulated by the clock are incongruent with reality. 

 

                As I see it, then, proceedings are the things which we observe and try to represent with models and to explain, the things which we attempt to predict, the standards against which we test the adequacy of our formulations.  Here the sociologist's task is much more complicated than the psychologist's, since he must conceptualize, very often, a complex system of concurrent (as well as consecutive) proceedings, a large event-manifold. 

 

                The widely recognized fact that reality is process has been reiterated here as a counterpoise to our inveterate cognitive disposition to "spatialize" everything (as Bergson put it), to conceive of instantaneous fields and structures, and to assume, in building our theories, that sameness (permanence, stability, consistency, survival) is more fundamental than change (growth and decay, creation and destruction, integration and disintegration). 

 

438 The Theory and Its Application

 

                2.  Fields.  Overt behavior can be understood only in relation to the sequence of instantaneous fields (a convenient abstraction) which constitute a proceeding. The field at an instant includes both the external situation and the internal state (e.g., energy level, emotion, abdominal pain, etc.).  For Lewin,

both the situation and the state are within the head of the subject, because for the subject there is no reality except the situation as he apperceives it.  This, the subject's apperception of his environment, we may call the beta situation. 

The external situation as it actually exists (insofar as this can be determined by impartial inquiry) may be called the alpha situation.  The distinction is important: it corresponds to that which can be made between a normal verifiable perception and an illusion or hallucination, and to the distinction between a normal verifiable apperception and a delusion. 

Since most of the psychologically crucial external proceedings are social interactions, the external situation for the subject (actor) - that is, his beta situation - commonly iincludes his apperceptions or beliefs in respect to the relevant beliefs and established sentiments of the object (alter) and his apperceptions in respect to the object's current feelings, thoughts, and purposes. 

The alpha situation - that is, the object's actual beliefs, sentiments, feelings, thoughts, and purposes - is often very different.  The subject may be speaking on the basis of a gross misconception (delusion) of what is actually occurring in the object's mind.  The discovery of these and other such factors involved in every

interpersonal relationship is complicated and time-consuming, but in most cases it is no more difficult to arrive at some notion of the alpha situation, or what the object is feeling and thinking, than it is to arrive at some notion of the beta situation or what the subject believes the object is feeling and thinking. 

 

                3.  Interpersonal proceedings.  In analyzing and formulating an external proceeding it is as necessary to define the nature of the alpha situation – the attitudes and actions of the object - as it is to define the attitudes and actions of the subject.  One person's experience of another person has a special

quality, quite different from his perception of a piece of cheese, a machine, a mosquito, or even of a dog. 

It is marked by a recognition of mutuality, of more or less equality, accompanied by some appreciation of the feelings of the other person and some willingness to adjust to them.  All this (and a lot more) makes interpersonal proceedings quite different from those in which a person is using some thing solely for his own gratification. This is another reason why the animal-in-maze model will not serve us. 

 

                According to the view that is being advanced here, an interpersonal proceeding is the psychologist's most significant type of real entity.  The unit is not the subject's behavior, but the subject-object interaction.  In the past I have called the subject's tendency "need" and the object's tendency "press"

and the interaction of the two (N->P, or P-> N) with its outcome (from the subject's standpoint) a "simple thema."  Today, I am more doubtful of the aptness of this terminology.  But, in any event, I believe that it is necessary to give subject and object equal status and to include them both in every real entity, or unit of interaction. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 439

 

                This principle should also be observed in formulating the various consist eat components, or integrates, of the personality.  Although the established dispositions reside in the brain, they cannot be described or explained without reference to the objects and situations which evoke them.  In short, the

environment is included in every adequate conceptualization of a personality. 

 

                4.  Serials. Some actions can be sufficiently understood and appraised by witnessing one proceeding.  Other kinds call for periodic observations.  Most important here are the behaviors which are directed toward a distal goal (a goal which cannot be reached without months or years of effort) - receiving

a Ph.D., building a large industry, being chosen Prime Minister, composing a symphony, educating a son.  To arrive at a goal of this sort a man must plan and direct his energies through a long series of proceedings, each progressively related to the last and yet separated from it by an interval of time for recuperation and the satisfaction of other needs.  Such a directionally organized intermittent succession of proceedings may be called a serial. 

Thus, a serial (such as a friendship, a marriage, a career in business) is a relatively long functional unit which can be formulated only roughly.  One must obtain records of critical proceedings along its course and note such indices of development as changes of disposition, increase of knowledge, and of ability, quality of work accomplished, and so forth.  No one proceeding in the serial can be understood without reference to those which have led up to it and without reference to the actor's aims and expectations, his time-schedule for the future. 

 

                Most people are in the midst of several on-going serials which occupy their minds whenever they are not forced by circumstance to attend to more pressing matters.  Men who are intensely interested in constructing something - a house, a relationship, a political group, a scientific book – return eagerly every day to the next step or stage of their endeavor.  Their behavior is so different from what is denoted by the old S-R formula (no stimulas, no response), that it calls for a differentiating word.  I will suggest, then, that

the term proaction, in contrast to reaction, be used to designate an action that is not initiated by the confronting external situation but spontaneously from within.  An action of this sort is likely to be part of a serial program, one that is guided by some directional force (aim) which is subsidiary to a more distally oriented aim.  As a rule, a proaction is not merely homeostatic, in the sense that it serves to restore the organism to a previously enjoyed equilibrium or state of well-being. If successful, it results in the addition or production of something - another bit of physical construction, let us say, or more money in the hank, or greater social cohesion, or another chapter of a novel, or the statement of a new theory. The integrates of serials, of plans, strategies, and intended proactions directed toward distal goals constitute a large

portion of the ego system, the establishment of personality which inhibits impulses and renounces courses of action that interfere with progress along the elected paths of life. 

 

440 The Theory and Its Application

 

                5.  Subjective and objective facts for the lormulation of a personality.  Since so many proceedings are incidents in some serial, they can seldom be understood without reference to certain crucial or typical earlier proceedings.  If, for example, two people meet and converse with uncommon reserve and mutual suspicion, one has to obtain accounts of previous meetings in order to reveal the determinants of these attitudes. 

 

                In fact, it is difficult to interpret any interpersonal proceeding without knowledge of the history of both personalities and a knowledge of their current thoughts and feelings.  Since we cannot observe the on-going (regnant) processes in the brain, these must be distinguished (whenever necessary) by introspection and reported to the psychologist (or communicated as they pass in the stream of consciousness).  But since it has been proved that not all regnant processes have the attribute of consciousness, those that are not conscious must be inferred from what the subject says and does.  The data, then, consist of subjective facts reported by the individual and of objective facts observed by the psychologist or by others. 

 

                The obtainable subjective facts are many and various.  Besides the above-mentioned communications of current mental processes, the subject is capable of reporting with more or less accuracy: countless memories of past proceedings (internal and external); his failures and successes; estimates of

his past and present valuations and attachments (attitudes and sentiments) his past and present memberships and commitments; his past and present fantasies, plans, hopes, and expectations; estimates of his major needs (motivations) ; traits, and abilities of significant figures (persons who have affected

the course of his development) ; and a multiplicity of other impressions and self-assessments. 

 

                Instead of crippling himself by renouncing this source of invaluable information, limiting his data (as some scientists advise) to the behaviors which he himself can observe and faithfully record, the psychologist should discover and correct for all the determinants of error in the communication of memories, plans, valuations, self-estimates, and so forth. 

 

                The obtainable objective facts consist largely of observations of daily, uncontrolled proceedings, of lifelike (though somewhat artificial) situational tests, of laboratory reactions to standard stimuli, of so-called "projective" tests, and of tests of aptitude and ability.  The observation and interpretation of these behaviors are liable to all the subjective distortions that can occur in the brain of a psychologist.  So also are the objective facts reported by other observers (parents and acquaintances) of the subject's behavior. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 441

 

                Furnished with a sufficient supply of the above-listed kinds of data, the psychologist's mind attempts to distinguish the significant variables (establishments and processes) of the personality and to arrive at a conception of their interrelations.  Thus, a man's "personality" is not a chronological sequence of behavioral facts, but, in actual practice, a hypothetical formulation, the object of which is to explain certain past proceedings and to predict the general character of certain kinds of future procedings. 

 

OPINIONS UNFAVORABLE TO THE CLASSIFICATION OF TENDENCIES (NEEDS)

 

                Before advancing to a survey of different types of actions, it seems advisable to examine some of the opinions or beliefs which in recent years have dissuaded psychologists from attempting to construct a comprehensive classification of behavioral tendencies. The following are noteworthy: 

 

                1. The opinion that the classification of tendencies is not desirable because every single tendency is, in truth, unique, and by classifying it one obliterates its particularity and so does violence to the facts. 

 

                The objection is a natural one, but if psychologists were to accept it as decisive, the science of human nature would come to a dead stop, since the observation of similarities and differences and the definition of classes are procedures essential to its life.  The psychologist, as maker of science, generally disregards the uniqueness which, as a person, he most relishes, in order to further the long-range purposes of his profession. 

 

                Allport has been close to the facts in insisting on the uniqueness of every personality, but, in my opinion, he would be still closer to the facts if he insisted on the uniqueness of every proceeding in the career of a personality.  One cannot represent a person as a combination of abstract traits

without disregarding numerous critical events, traumas as well as signal achievements, moments of deterioration as well as seasons of creative development. 

 

                2. The related opinion that the classification of tendencies is impractical, if not impossible, because of the countless varieties of behaviors and the manifold combinations of tendencies which may be operating even in a single unit of interaction. 

 

                Many psychologists, I suspect, would concur with this judgment.  If the definition of every variety of human action were easy, the task would have been accomplished long since, and our science would be firmly founded, as firmly, let us dream, as chemistry is founded on the periodic table of elements.  The classification of needs is, in my experience, exacting, tedious, spirit-subduing toil, and only the most sanguine are capable of envisaging its completion in the near future.  Yet, long as it may prove to be, the undertaking  to which so many psychologists are wittingly or unwittingly contributing – will eventually succeed. 

 

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                To the casual eye the spectacle of social interactions is endlessly varied, but one has only to undertake a detailed motivational analysis of the behavior of some confiding friend or patient to discover that from multifarious starting places one arrives, time and time again, at one or another of a number of motives which do not necessitate further analysis. These motives are relatively few in number. They are ends which are desired for their own sake, ends in themselves. If, as Aristotle pointed out, men chose everything for

the sake of something else, "the process would go on to infinity" and "desire would be empty and vain." 

 

                3.  The opinion that there are only a very few - one, two, three, or more - fundamental tendencies which require definition.  Besides an overzealous or inappropriate adherence to the principle of parsimony, the following possible determinants of this opinion deserve mention: 

 

                a. A basic cognitive disposition to apperceive the events of nature as various manifestations of one force (monism), or of two opposing forces (dualism), or of a trinity or quaternary.  It seems that some (if not all) minds are marked by a strong preference for one or more ideal configurations (such as a perfect circle, triangle, square) and that the tendency to project the preferred configuration into nature is scarcely resistible.  Unhappily, events very seldom oblige us by flowing nicely into the molds that we have made for them. 

 

                b. The assumption that the only tendencies which require definition are those which are shared with lower organisms.  Since mice do not babble spontaneously as children babble, and rats do not build religions and cathedrals, and dogs do not publish romantic novels, and pigeons do not conduct endless scientific discussions, we suspect that this assumption will be high-lighted by future intellectuals as a conspicuous and typical superstitution of the first half of the twentieth century, counterpoint to the medieval notion that the status of man's soul is next highest to the seraphim and cherubim. 

 

                c. The assumpion that only the viscerogenic tendencies (physiological needs) are innate and hence only these require definition; that all other tendencies are learned in childhood or later, having been instrumental in satisfying the physiological needs.  The viscerogenic tendencies (thirst, hunger, sex, excretion, etc.) are certainly basic in the sense that survival depends on their fulfillment and all other tendencies require survival for their operation.  But there are innate (not learned) tendencies, such as crying, and innate (not learned) dispositions, such as fear and anger, which, though instrumental to survival, are not, strictly speaking, viscerogenic.  Also there are innate tendencies, such as the parental tendency, which are instrumental to the survival of the species but are not wholly viscerogenic.  Furthermore, there are several kinds of activities - some of them spontaneously initiated, like the babbling and play of children, some of them situationally reactive, such as choosing a path of almost certain death in war ("dying for one's country"), or committing suicide out of desperation - which prove that the viscerogenic needs are not the alpha and omega of motivation.  The principle of functional autonomy may be used to account for the relative independence of some of the "higher" needs, but even these seem to depend on the presence of innate potentialities. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 443

 

                According to Keith's very plausible "group theory" of evolution, various "social" dispositions should be included among the inherited constituents of man's perosnality.  Their presence is explained by the fact that social dispositions are effective in maintaining a high degree of group solidarity, in peace and in war, and a high degree of solidarity has been one of the most potent determinants of group survival. In the struggle for existence groups which were less disposed to cooperate were more likely to be eliminated. 

 

                d. The assumption that the only tendencies which require definition are innate, and therefore basic, tendencies (prepotent reflexes) which can be distinguished at birth or shortly afterwards.  One cannot hold to this belief without overlooking the fact that several innate tendencies (like the parental drive of animals) do not manifest themselves until a certain period of maturation has elapsed. 

 

                e. The common habit of disregarding tendencies which fall outside one's special sphere of interest, or which (like respiration and sleep) seldom require serious attention, since they are seldom frustrated, seldom influential in causing personal misery or social conflict.  This very natural disposition leads the animal psychologist to confine his speculations to the few drives which are susceptible to experimental controls.  Similarly, it leads the psychoanalyst to think mostly of sex, aggression, and anxiety, or the craving for superiority, since these are the commonest known determinants of neurotic illness. 

 

                I. The burning ambition to be considered "scientific" or, rather, the dread of being judged "unscientific," may underlie several of the above mentioned assumptions.  This dread may confine a psychologist's field of vision to those phenomena which are wholly objective, relatively simple, and

mechanically measurable, and thus black-out most of the activities, particularly the verbal activities, of human beings.

 

                Whether or not one of the above-listed dispositions or some other disposition is influential, I believe that it is a mistake to limit ourselves to the definition of a very few tendencies.  In the first place, if only a few tendencies are named and described, most actions must be left dynamically undifferentiated or wholly unconceptualized.  For example, if all actions are attributed to one need - say, self-actualization (Goldstein) or libido (eaAy Freud) - no action or no person is motivationally distinguishable from any other: drinking a glass of water, spitting blood, defecating, playing tennis, making love, educating a child, leading a regiment into battle, writing a scientific treatise are all one and the same.  Adding a few more tendencies is not

sufficient to dispel the amorphous generality of one's formulations and predictions. 

 

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                If, as present evidence suggests, sex and aggression are the chief trouble-makers in neurotic illness, therapists may, without serious embarrassment, forget the other cardinal sins - pride, envy, avarice, gluttony, and sloth - but psychoanalytic theorists have been assuming, implicitly or explicitly, that their system was adequate for the understanding of normal as well as abnormal behavior.  This proposition should be tested.  First, possibly by determining whether all the behavior that occurs at a psychoanalytic seminar, meeting, or congress can be explained by reference to sex and aggression. 

 

                As indicative of the fact that we require more than a few well-defined motives to account for human behavior, one has only to read a series of case histories and observe that their authors, in attempting to make dynamical sense out of the material, refer to a number of motives (such as the desire for upward mobility, wealth, prestige, self-esteem, authority, security, and so on) which, though acceptable to common sense, are not included in the author's scheme of concepts. 

 

                In the second place, if only a few tendencies are defined, generalizations about motivation will be based solely on the manifestations of these few, and consequently, they will be insufficiently general and not applicable to all tendencies.  Furthermore, having arrived at a too specific concept of tendency, the psychologist will be encouraged to disregard or rule out the other kinds of tendencies he encounters, because they do not fit his formulation.  Freud, for example, did not include among drives the tendency to get rid of pain or to avoid it (fear, anxiety, etc.) apparently because this negative withdrawing and inhibiting tendency is, in certain respects, different from the sex tendency, Freud's basic model. 

 

                The task of classifying all the directional forces manifested in the behavior of almost all men in almost all cultures is that of ascending one of the Himalayan peaks of psychology, a peak which up to date has defied all climbers.  So formidable has this mountain proved to be, that few modern psychologists have been inclined to try it.  The decision of the majority seems to be that it does not have to be climbed, or not at present, and that more progress can be made by going round it.  If I were the rational master of myself I might agree with this nearly unanimous judgment, but unhappily I am the servant of a relentless compulsion to ascend this particular mountain, not audaciously to its very summit - that is out of sight - but to the next station, perhaps a thousand feet above our present elevation. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 445

 

                A comprehensive, coherent, and applicable classification of needs (need-aims, satisfying effects) will be valuable on two counts.  First, it will provide the psychologist with the criteria, the signs and symptoms, which are required for the diagnosis of every directional force that is operating in any observed

proceeding (social event).  Second, it will supply him with as many models and concrete illustrations as he needs to arrive at an adequate definition of his key variable, the motivation construct.  Our current definitions seem to have been constructed with a large fraction of the evidence excluded from the mind's field. 

 

                The succeeding section will be devoted to descriptions of different varieties of activity, different types and states of need-dispositions, which should be included in any preparatory survey of behavioral phenomena.

 

VARIETIES OF ACTIVITIES, ACTIONS, NEEDFUL STATES

 

                1. Activity needs.  Careful consideration of a wide variety of behavioral facts has persuaded me that it is necessary to distinguish between activity needs and effect needs.  An activity need is a disposition to engage in a certain kind of activity for its own sake; activity, say, which is aesthetically appreciative or creative, or intellectually interpretative or creative, or socially cohesive or creative, or politically administrative or constructive, or physically manipulative or constructive.  The satisfaction is contemporary with the activity itself (provided the processes are unobstructed) and it can be distinguished

from the contentment that follows some achieved effect.  For convenience, here, I am dividing activity needs into (a) process needs and (b) mode needs, despite a huge doubt as to whether the word "need" can properly be applied to spontaneous (unmotivated) mental processes. 

 

                a.  Process needs (sheer function pleasure).   Personality is not an organ that remains inert until stimulated from without.  It is marked from first to last by a continuous flow of on-going activities. 

These unabatable processes are fundamental "givens," the most elementary characteristics of the life of the mind (brain).  No external instigations are required for their production.  They are spontaneous, involuntary, effortless, and random - random perceptions, random evaluations, random successions and combinations

of images and symbols, random vocalizations and verbalizations, random gestures and movements. These undirected and hence uncoordinated pulsions, so prevalent in childhood, can be regarded as manifestations of surplus energies, or, as Murphy calls them, "tissue tensions."  From infancy onward, these palsions exhibit with increasing frequency some degree of directionality, though often without awareness of goal. 

As soon as an aimed need is aroused, these self-same processes become instruments of its fulfillment, coordinated and directed with a certain degree of force, persistence, and focality (definiteness of goal).  As time goes on, stretches of voluntary, consciously planned, goal-directed, and practically effective actions occur with increasing frequency.  But even in maturity speech is not invariably goal directed.  Much of it consists of spontaneous expressions of ideas and sentiments, outpourings of emotion, not unlike the verbalizations of children described by Piaget, that run on without definite purpose and without much consideration of the feelings of others.  This kind of thing is hard to distinguish from exhibitionism. 

As Lord Chesterfield has said: "All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other." 

 

446         The Theory and Its Application

 

                b.  Mode needs.  Needs which are satisfied by excellence of form (musical patterns, logical clarity and coherence, gracious social manners, executive efficiency as an art, verbal eloquence, beauty of physique and movement) are different from process needs insofar as they require perfected expressions,

most of which can be achieved only by diligent application and discipline.  The goal is to have them appear effortless, but to attain this ideal, constant practice, correction, and rehearsal are required.  Mode needs are different from effect needs, because the experienced satisfaction is not linked with the effect of some consummatory act, but is present (to a varying degree) from the beginning to the end of the activity (e.g., listening to the performance of a symphony).  The neglect of mode needs by American psychologists may be correlated with our ideology, our addiction to ceaseless hectic strivings for tangible results.  As a man once said to me: "It was a dirty job but I got good clean money for it." 

 

                The fact that I am confining myself almost wholly in this paper to effect needs should not be construed as blindness to the significance of activity needs.  On the contrary, I believe not only that activity needs are extremely common the world over, but that the satisfactions which psychologists usually associate with attained effects (tensionless states, satiations) are, in fact, more closely correlated with the activities which precede the attainment of these effects. 

 

                2. Mental needs.  According to the nineteenth-century conception, the human mind is like an inanimate and impartial motion-picture film which accurately records the succession of physical events. 

It is a percept.registering or fact-registering organ, with the attributes of a scientific instrument. 

The introduction of the concept of tendency (animal drive) however, required that this notion of the mind be modified so as to embrace the function of selection.  Out of the passing medley of physical patterns the brain picks out those which are pertinent to the reduction of hunger pangs and of sexual tensions.  According to this view, the human mind is waiter and pimp to the body.  That these are among its functions can hardly be denied, but if we attend to them exclusively, studying only those proceedings in which the

governing organ yields to, or is pushed around by, this or that viscerogenic tension, we shall fail to observe that the mind has ways and interests of its own.  

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 447

 

                In its beginnings - in primitive men and in today's children – the human mind does not, like the animal mind, apply the bulk of its powers to the business of efficient physical manipulations and technical adjustments, but to the creation and expression of dramas: fantasies, stories, legends, and mythologies; comic and heroic plays, spectacles, and rituals.  Fantasy invents another, better world and deems it present.  Think of the millions who, in this "advanced," realistic, scientific era, spend such enjoyable hours day-

dreaming at the movies?  According to this view, it is not perception that is fundamental, but imagination. 

As Langer, among others, has shown so convincingly, the human mind is a transforming organ, its function being to make symbols (images and words) for things, and to combine and recombine these incessantly, and to express them in a variety of languages, discursive (referential) and expressive (emotive).  The needs of the mind, though less prepotent than the viscerogenic needs, are much more important in the lives

of intellectuals - scientists, artists, poets, philosophers, religionists - all of whom, positivists included, are more attached to their models, abstractions, and visions than they are to any facts. 

 

                3. Creative needs. Creativity is marked by spontaneous and involuntary eruptions of novel symbols and novel combinations of symbols (process need), and by great attention to form (mode need), and by hours of purposive thinking, with ceaseless reconstructions of emerging elements, rejections,

and revisions (effect need).  Thus, a creative need calls for all types of dynamic functioning, and if it is not too severely checked and frustrated by failures to solve its many problems, its activities are accompanied by the three chief types of satisfaction (process pleasure, mode pleasure, and effect pleasure, the latter accompanying the completion of each portion of the production). 

 

                Needs of this class are peculiar in having no clearly envisaged target or goal, the goal being something that has never existed (new machine or gadget, new social group, new political constitution, new dramatic epic, new scientific hypothesis or theory, new philosophy).  Thus, the goal is something that must be constructed step by step.  Besides this, it seems that some degree of creativity is required to adjust successfully to any novel situation.  Fixation on certain ideas, rigidities of perspective, trite and banal proposals, are not apt to solve new problems or initiate courtships.  They are manifestations of "trained incapacity," a state which, by preventing the attainment of new values, interferes with the development of personality. 

 

                4. Negative needs.  Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that among our collection of needs we should include the "negative" dispositions to reject, to exclude, to expel, to withdraw or flee from, to avoid or hide from, or to defend oneself against, some noxious, contemptible, critical, censorious, injurious, or deadly object or situation, out of disgust, scorn, boredom, embarrassment, guilt, anxiety, or dread.  Negative needs are likely to operate in an anticipatory fashion in order to avoid disagreeable or frightening situations, or, if possible, to prevent their occurrence (see next heading: proreactive need). 

 

448 The Theory and Its Application

 

5  Proactive, reactive, proreactive, reproactive needs.  A proactive need has already been defined as one that becomes spontaneously kinetic (as the result, presumably, of some inner change of state), in contradistinction to a reactive need which is evoked by a certain kind of externally confronting

situation.  Proactive needs, such as those for physical activity, for food, for affectional relations, for knowledge, or for artistic composition arise (say, on waking) when no relevant instigations are perceptible.  They inaugurate planning -- images of activities to be enjoyed annd goals to be reached and images of ways and means (strategies and tactics) - and, at once or later, direct the person's behavior toward the region where the plan may be turned into experience.  Proactions, as a rule, are things which a person positively

wants to do.  Reactions, on the other hand, are more apt to be responses to situations which are unsought, unexpected, and dissatisfying. 

 

                A proreactive need is one which is ordinarily reactive and negative, but which, on the given occasion, has been evoked from within by anxiety-breeding images of an external situation (humiliation, danger) which might occur if some preventive measures are not taken. 

 

                A reproactive need is one which is ordinarily proactive but which, on the given occasion, has been evoked, not from within, but by an unexpected situation (sight of food, sudden appearance of an old friend). 

 

                "Proactive" might be used very loosely to describe people who act in the absence of outside instigations, zestful self-starters who initiate enterprises and lead off in conversations.  Reactors are more apt to be followers than leaders, observers than performers. People who worry a great deal, whose peak of satisfaction is a clear conscience, are most likely to engage in proreactions. 

 

                6.  Generality and specificity: diffuse and focal needs.  A need is a general disposition which comonly becomes associated through "focalization," or "canalization," as Murphy would say, with a number of specific entities (a certain doll, or dog, or person, or group, or town, or theory, or work of art, or religion), and (through "generalization") with a number of kinds of semispecific entities (French wines, or horses, or women, or music, or

novels, or philosophies) - 

 

                These focalizations (specificities and semispecificities) rarely exhaust the possibilities of need activity.  Unless the structure of the disposition has become rigid and fixated, it is always capable of becoming attached to a new object  new kind of food, new place, new acquaintance, new organization,

new kind of art, new ideology.  Indeed, the development of a personality can be partially represented by listing, in chronological order, the attachments it has acquired and perhaps outgrown in the course of its career; for example, a series of material objects, such as a rattle, toy truck, mechano set, bicycle,

motorcycle, automobile, airplane; or a series of aesthetic forms, such as comics, dime novels, adventure stories, Dickens, Tolstoy, Shakespeare.  Attachments (sentiments, attitudes), then, may be more or less enduring. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 449

 

                A permanent attachment to a nurturant person (e.g., mother fixation) dating from infancy is regarded by psychoanalysts as a sign of emotional immaturity.  Equally indicative of retardation is its apparent opposite: lack of enduring attachments, that is, the inability to remain loyally committed to

anybody or anything.  Here we might speak of a diffuse need which is sensitive to a large number or variety of objects (e.g., free-floating sociability, free-floating anxiety, free-floating irritability) in contrast to a focal need which is enduringly centered on one object (e.g., satisfying marriage, specific phobia, canalized revenge) - 

 

                An entity (material object, person, group, political policy, philosophy) to which one or more needs have become attached is said to have cathexis (power to excite).  A liked entity which attracts the subject is said to have positive cathexis; whereas a disliked entity is said to have negative cathexis.  An entity with negative cathexis (negatively cathected object) may evoke avoidant reactions, defensive reactions, or destructive reactions. Thus a goal object may be either a positively cathected (loved) person or a negatively

cathected (hated) person whom the subject wants to subdue, injure, insult, or murder.  Entities (places, animals, persons, topics of conversation) which the subject wishes to avoid (withdraw or flee from) may he called noaLobjects. 

The distribution in any personality of these different kinds of cathections (evaluations, sentiments, attitudes) is correlated with the relative potency of the three vectorial dispositions so well described by Horney:

moving toward people (positive goal objects),

moving against people (negative goal objects), and

moving away from people (negative noal objects). 

A positive noal object might be a beloved person or a desired drug such as morphine or alcohol that the subject, for one reason or another, believes he should avoid or permanently renounce. 

 

                In a developing individual, positively cathected goals and goal objects are of two classes :

(1)     satisfying goals which have been experienced more or less regularly week after week and

(2)     goals which have not yet been attained, but which sway the imagination and orient the planning processes of the mind. In sanguine temperaments, visions of future goals (grass on the other side of the fence) are likely to be given higher values than goals which are attainable every day. This applies especially to the creative needs, the goals of which are always novel, never-yet-constructed entities. 

 

                We can affirm that goals of the above-defined first class are learned, but can we say this about the more greatly esteemed goals of the second class?  Perhaps we can say that these are learned by "trial and error," in the imagination.  Many of them, we know, become established through identification with some exemplar, in conformity with cultural expectations, and are therefore to be subsumed under the heading of social imitation.  In any event, they are not innately given. 

 

450 The Theory Its Application

 

                The fact that the word "learning" (when used by an American psychologist) refers almost always to the process of acquiring effective instrumental action patterns, might, I suppose, he cited as another illustration of how a prevailing ideology (e.g., the high valuation of technical skills; "How to Make Friends and Influence People") can influence the course of our supposedly chaste science. 

 

                More important than means-end learning, of course, is goal and goal-object learning; that is, the process whereby an individual comes to some conclusions as to the relative values of different possible goals and goal objects, or, looking at it from a developmental or educational standpoint, the process whereby he learns to enjoy (and so discovers for himself) the kinds of goals and goal objects which are worth striving for.  Our knowledge of this latter process, however, is very meagre, since science has taught Western intellectuals to keep out of the domain of values, to cease thinking at the boundary between facts and sentiments, and consequently, to leave the determination of social goals to chance and the operation of blind forces.  As R. W. Livingstone has said, ours is a "civilization of means without ends; rich in means beyond any other epoch, and almost beyond human needs; squandering and misusing them, because it has no overruling ideal."  The truth, as I see it, is not that we moderns have no ends; we are pushing ourselves or being pushed toward a multiplicity of material, economic, political, and scientific ends, trying every conceivable short-cut and clawing and smearing each other without mercy in our efforts to get there first.  The point is we have no common humanistic end.  We have lost the vision of the good life, shared

happiness. 

 

                7. Role behaviors.  As Parsons and others have shown us, the concept of role is strategic to the integration of the two levels of theoretical analysis, psychological and sociological.  To make this clear we might stretch this concept, for the moment, beyond its intended limits and say that every self-and-body, in order to develop, maintain, express, and reproduce itself, must perform a number of individual roles (functions) such as respiration, ingestion of food, construction of new tissue, excretion, defense against assault and disease, expression of emotions and sentiments, copulation, and so forth. 

Likewise, it can be said, that every group (social system), in order to develop, maintain, express, and reproduce itself, must perform a number of social roles, such as recruitment and training of new members, hierarchical organization of functions, elimination of incorrigible members, defense against attack by rival groups, expansion by reproduction (formation of similar groups in other parts of the world), and so forth.  Also, both persons and social systems are devoted to the accomplishment of one or more further purposes, such as the manufacture and exchange of utilities, the acquisition and communication of knowledge, the creation and performance of plays, the correction of delinquents, the subjugation of enemies, and so forth. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 451

 

Finally, both persons and social systems (each taken as a consensus of intentions) are desirous of improvement, of living up to their ideals, of deserving recognition and prestige.  In the personality it is the governing ego system which assumes responsibility for the integration of individual roles and the actualization of plans.  In the group it is the leader or government that assumes responsibility for the structuring of social roles and the carrying out of policies.  The id of the personality is somewhat comparable to the disaffected low-status members of a social system, the "unwashed masses," including the "creative minority" (Toynbee), the radical reformers and fanatics, as well as the criminals and psychotics. Every structured ego "holds a lunatic in leash" (Santaynna) - 

 

                Thus, by extending the concept of role (social role) to include personal roles, a personality action system and a social action system can be represented as roughly homologous, at least in certain respects. 

 

                Furthermore - but I have not the time to demonstrate this -all social roles require the execution of one or more kinds of actions; that is, the habitual production of one or more kinds of effects, and these effects (goals) can be classified in the same manner as need-aims are classified.  Indeed, the need-aim and the role-aim may exactly correspond.  For example, a gifted actor with a need for artistic expression may he asked by a theater manager to play Hamlet (the very part which has long excited his ambition).  Thus a

man may want to do exactly what he is expected to do.  But, so happy a congruence of "want" and "must" is, in the lives of most people, more of an ideal than an actual daily occurrence. 

 

                The chief reason for the frequent discrepancy between desire and obligation is the differentiation of society into subsystems, and the differentiation of subsystems into specialized and temporally integrated role functions, and, finally, the necessity of committing men to the scheduled performance of these

functions.  It is not so much that a man is obliged (expected) to do certain things, but that he is obliged (in order to integrate his actions with others) to do them at a fixed time.  Consequently, it may happen that a man eats when he is not hungry, converses when he feels unsociable, administers justice when he has a hangover, makes a speech when his head is bereft of enlivening ideas, goes to the theater when he wants to sleep.  Thus, in many, many cases, a need is not the initiator of action, but the hands of the clock. 

Spontaneity is lost, and will power (an unpermitted concept) must be constantly exerted to get through the days. 

 

                The point is that here every action is an instrumental one, not satisfying in itself.  Instrumental to what?  This varies from individual to individual: the need for sheer survival and hence the need for money, the need for upward mobility, or for fellowship, or for authority, or for prestige; but, more generally and more closely, the need for roleship (as I am calling it), that is, the need to become and to remain an accepted and respected, differentiated and integrated part of a congenial, functioning group, the collective purposes of which are congruent with the individual's ideals.  So long as the individual feels this way about the group that he has joined, he will try to abide, as best he can, by its schedule of role functions. 

 

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                8.  Miscellaneous distinctions.  It is hardly necessary to say that, although some needs are allowed free expression, others are habitually restrained or completely inhibited.  The former are components of the overt, manifest personality (social self), whereas the latter are components of the covert, latent, personality (shadow self).  Covert needs express themselves in dreams and fantasies, in various forms of projection, and in neurotic symptoms.  The subject is usually conscious of the true goal of most of his overt needs, but he may be partly, or wholly, unconscious of the nature of several of his covert needs.  The needs which are apt to be suppressed or repressed are those which are contrary to cultural standards: lust after some forbidden object and needs associated with avarice and miserliness, envy and jealousy, hate and anger, pride and vanity. 

 

                Needs may turn inward as well as outward, the subject's own body or self being the object of them. A man may encourage, adorn, inflate, console, belittle, curse, castrate, or kill himself. 

 

                9.  Gratuities.  It is important to note that needs are often satisfied without the subject's behaving.  They are satisfied (as they are in infancy) by the actions of another person or by the course of events (as when a detested person dies of a coronary). Such providential effects may be called gratuities. 

 

                10.  Prepotency of needs.  Prepotent needs are those which become regnant with the greatest urgency if they are not satisfied.  The need for oxygen can remain unsatisfied for no more than a few minutes.  The need to get rid of pain or to jump away from danger is often most compelling.  In a desert the

need for water may take complete possession of cognition.  Maslow has well described the focalizations and reevaluations that occur in the mind of a hungry man, and how, after the viscerogenic need-aims are realized, other kinds of needs become prepotent, needs for interpersonal affiliations, needs for achievement (self-respect) and recognition (prestige, superiority), and earlier or later as the case may be, needs for creation and self-expression, for roleship and orientation toward the "higher" purposes of humanity.

Individuals differ in respect to how much bodily or egocentric contentment they require before committing themselves to sociocentric aims.  Those who are dedicated to the life of the imagination - especially religionists – are disposed to recommend, if not insist upon, restraints or renunciations of such physical enjoyments as those of lust, gluttony, and passivity (sloth) -

 

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DEBATED ISSUES AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

 

                1.  Attitudes, interests, values.  Social psychologists looking in at themselves and looking out at others concluded some time back that a great deal of human thought and behavior is value-oriented. 

It seemed, for example, that the psychologist's own intellectual preoccupations, conversations, and activities could be largely explained by stating that he was interested in theories of personality and social behavior, interested in research, interested in educational procedures, interested in political policies, and so forth.  These regions of thought and action were highly valued.  He had a positive attitude toward them. 

More specifically, his attitude was positive toward certain concepts (e.g., traits), certain kinds of research (e.g., opinion polling), certain kinds of educational procedures (e.g., small research seminars), certain kinds

of political policies (e.g., labor legislation), and so forth.  "Attitude," as defined by Aliport and others, became the social psychologist's key concept.  A man's personality was conceived as a more or less integrated system of attitudes, each of which is a relatively permanent disposition to evalute some entity negatively or positively, and as a rule to support this evaluation with reasons, or arguments.  The general or specific entity (object of the attitude) was a value, positive or negative, or had value (power to attract or repel) .* 

 

                In the judgment of most social psychologists there is a big difference, or gap, between attitudes (vaguely defined as dynamical forces) and needs (or drives), probably because the latter are fixedly associated in their minds with hunger and sex.  They are willing to concede that there are such "pushes

from the rear" as hunger and sex, but these are said to be "segmental" and "lower." Attitudes, on the contrary, are consciously and rationally selected "pulls from the front."  The principle of functional autonomy is usually invoked to sever whatever associations might have existed in the subject's past between needs and attitudes. 

 

                Assuming that this greatly telescoped account of the concept of attitude conforms roughly to the conventional notion, I submit that two modifications are required before it can be assigned an important place in a theoretical system. 

First, its scope must be extended to include all affect-invoking entities from feces to the Fallen Angel.  There is no reason to limit the term to dispositions toward "higher" entities.  We must be able to speak of attitudes toward the mother's breast, the mother herself, siblings, spinach, mechanical toys, play group, comics, fairly tales, and so forth. 

Second, the concept must be logically connected with directional activity, that is to say, with the concept of need.  Knowledge that a certain person has, let us say, a positive attitude toward music does not tell us what he does about it, if anything. 

Perhaps he values music very highly (as checked on a questionaire), but is too busy to listen to it. 

Or, to take the opposite extreme, he may be a composer of music. 

If we are not told, the man does not become alive. 

We cannot guess how he spends his day or predict what he would do at a certain choice-point.  

Does he keep music alive in his head by humming it? 

Does he discuss music with other appreciators and defend the excellence of his favorite concertos? 

Does he play some instrument, privately for his own satisfaction, or publicly for the satisfaction of others?

Is playing in an orchestra his professional role, his path to money and eminence? 

He may be a music critic, a writer of books on music, or a singing teacher. 

Or, is he merely an enjoyer of music as it comes over the radio? 

If a high evaluation of music is linked with one or more vectorial dispositions (such as reception, creation, expression), we can represent what a given appreciator does with music; we can picture many proceedings in his life.  Otherwise, one has only a dangling abstraction. 

 

                * Here it might he noted that "attitude" and "sentiment" are synonyms, both of them referring to a more or less lasting disposition in the personality; also that "value," in one sense, is synonymous with "cathexis" and "valence" and, in the other sense, with "eathected entity" and "ohject with valence." 

There is always a representation (image) of the valued, or cathected, entity in the personality.

 

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                Now, having pointed to the mote in the eye of the attitude construct, it is time for me to acknowledge the beam in the conception of need: not all needs have been defined as dispositions operating in the service of a certain kind of value.  Language is always failing us, but perhaps the following words may indicate to an indulgent reader the kinds of values I have in mind: body (physical health), property (wealth), authority (power), affiliation (inter-personal affection), knowledge (science, history), beauty (art), ideology (philosophy, religion), and so forth.  These are the six well-known Spranger

values, with the addition of "physical health."  Others will be added later.  Here it is sufficient to suggest that the major tendencies be defined in relation to each class of values; for instance, aggression to defend body, to defend property, to defend position as leader, to defend the integrity of a relationship, to defend certain theories (truth), to defend the preeminence of certain works of art (beauty), to defend one's faith (religion), and so forth. 

 

                I hope that the concept of proactive, mental needs, outlined above, will disabuse social psychologists of the idea that needs operate solely in the service of the body.  The human mind has imaginative interests peculiar to itself. 

 

                I suspect that at least one point of difference has not been resolved by these formulations. 

In contrast to the social psychologists, dynamic psychologists are disposed to believe that the seeds of attitudes (which are basically affective, rather than cognitive) are implanted in childhood and that their

ramifying roots are in the inaccessible, unconscious earth of the personality.  Furthermore, dynamic psychologists are apt to believe with Jonathan Edwards that a man may be able to do what he chooses, but he cannot choose what he chooses. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 455

 

                2.  Innateness of needs.  In the heyday of primitive behaviorism, the prime target for the revolutionists' machine guns and cap pistols was the despotic concept, instinct.  In the ids of the Americans, this concept was somehow linked with the stereotype of the aloof and lofty Britisher, and with armchair speculation, as well as with the noxious notion of constitutional determinism and its repellent offspring, racial superiority.  McDougall's unpardoned error was to assume that in conjunction with certain dispositions, man inherits, as the lower animals inherit, certain modes of behavior: a pattern of flight in conjunction with fear, a pattern of combat in conjunction with anger, a pattern of nurturant behavior in conjunction with pity, and so forth. 

 

                Having shown that most instrumental acts are learned and that most goal objects (specific values) are learned, social scientists wasted no time in committing McDougall to limbo.  His instinct theory was, to all appearances, killed and buried.  But, in no time, it rose again, reshaped and disguised by a new name, "drive," and later, "need."  This reincarnation of the irrepressible notion of directional force was welcomed by some as the herald of a new scientific era in psychology. 

 

                Today, all psychologists agree that some needs are inherited (say, the viscerogenic needs), but most of us are doubtful in respect to other kinds of needs. In my opinion, we do not have to solve this problem now, or in the near future. The task of classifying needs can proceed as if the question did not exist. The only required criterion is that of universality. The basic list of tendencies should be restricted to dispositions which are exhibited by almost all persons in almost all cultures, whether or not they have been

proved innate.  Here, the reader might be reminded again that "need" refers to an internal component (a necessary construct) and not to any specific action pattern or to any specifically valued entity. 

 

                Why not conceive of the inheritance of a number of potential dispositions, the activation and establishment of which depends on a variety of external (social, cultural) determinants?  The near universality of the basic tendencies suggests that almost all societies and cultures provide, at least in

some degree, the conditions which are necessary for their inauguration and perpetuation. 

 

                3.  Diagnosis of needs.  Some critics have objected to the need theory on the grounds that one cannot immediately tell them which need is being exhibited by a given person at a given time.  But if anything should be clear it is that needs are not discernible facts.  A need is an intervening variable,

hidden in the head, the operation of which can only be inferred on the basis of certain symptoms.  Hence, the task of identifying an active need is not that of labeling the kind of behavior that is observed, but of making a diagnosis.  Sometimes the diagnosis is easy: the need is almost as obvious as the movements and the words.  But, often, it is impossible to decide, even after hours of investigation, whether or not this or that disposition was operating during the observed event. 

 

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                4. Dissatisfaction, satisfaction.  One of the strangest, least interpretable symptoms of our time is the neglect by psychologists of the problem of happiness, that inner state which Plato, Aristotle, and almost all succeeding thinkers of the first rank assumed to be "the highest of all goods achievable by action." Although the crucial role of dissatisfaction and of satisfaction is implicit in much that is said about motivation, activity, and reinforcement, psychologists are generally disposed to shun these terms as well as all their

synonyms (displeasure-pleasure, discontent-content, sorrow-joy, and so forth) as if they were a horde of spirochetes capable of reducing us to a state of general paresis. 

 

                In many psychologists the phobia may be attributed to the fact that "satisfaction" is associated with a subjective state and animals cannot tell us in so many words whether they are satisfied or not.  In other people the phobia seems to have been engendered through the association of satisfaction with hedonism (which suggests wine, women, and song to Puritans) McDougall's repudiation of the pain-pleasure principle was vibrant with moral indignation. 

Perhaps there are other, more subtle determinants. 

Perhaps we are wisely suppressing the very idea of happiness and do not wish to discuss it, because the state seems unattainable under present world conditions. Is this the case?  

Or is it that all of us are victims of a moral epidemic, that we have yielded to the success compulsion which, though depriving us of daily happiness, is a possession we are incapable of exorcising? 

The answer is too elusive for my clumsy grasp. 

 

                Be that as it may, satisfaction is an affective state which is likely to manifest itself objectively as well as subjectively.  It is no more difficult to diagnose than anxiety or whether need processes are being obstructed, advancing without friction, or attaining their aim, or after cessation of action, whether the effect produced did in fact appease the need. 

 

                It might be helpful to conceive of a physical variable (H) in the brain (possibly the thalamus) the concentration of which varies along a continuum, or scale, just as the hydrogen concentration of the blood varies along the acid-alkaline continuum.  At the lowest end of the continuum H manifests itself subjectively as a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction (dejection, depression) and objectively by certain readily distinguishable postures, grimaces, gestures, and expressive sounds.  At the highest end of the continuum we get extreme satisfaction (elation, joy) combined with its objective symptoms.  At the middle of the continuum would be the zone of indifference.  If we call H "hedone," and its continuum the "hedonic scale," we can say that every occurrence which moves H down the scale is hedonically negative and anger, and, in my opinion, should be thoroughly investigated, since it is the most refined sign that we have of every occurrence which moves H up the scale is hedonically positive.  With this terminological framework we can go on to study the kinds of events that are hedonically negative and the kinds that are hedonically positive. 

 

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There is not room here to discuss the pain-pleasure principle.   All I can do is to reiterate the antique proposition (which research over the years has verified more often for me than any other psychological hypothesis or dictum) that the aim of all needs is hedonically positive (in the imagination).  That is to say, the imaged goal of all activity is believed to be associated with more hedone (less dissatisfaction or more satisfaction) than the field in which the individual finds himself at the moment.  This belief is no more than a prediction.  The man may be mistaken.  After attaining his goal the expected satisfaction may not occur, which only means that the discrimination of goals (values) is something that must be learned through experience. 

 

                This is not psychological hedonism in the sense that behavior can be understood as riddance of pain and pursuit of pleasure, because we are never dealing with pain in general or pleasure in general.  The most that we can say is that behaviors tend to reduce or are calculated to reduce a certain kind

of dissatisfaction (thirst, hunger pangs, sexual tensions, destitution, loneliness, inferiority feelings, disgust, and so forth), and that they tend to attain and to prolong a certain kind of satisfaction.  In other words, a certain kind of dissatisfaction (e.g., fullness of the bladder) cannot be relieved by any kind of satisfaction (e.g., congenial discourse) - 

 

                Need, then, is the fundamental variable and degree of satisfaction (hedone) the best indicator of its state or progress.

 

CRITERIA FOR THE CLASSIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION OF NEEDS

 

                The basic requirement for an acceptable classification of needs, or of anything else for that matter, is a set of reliable criteria by which each class may be distinguished from all other classes.  In my judgment, reasonably reliable criteria have already been proposed by various authors, which, when defined more rigorously, should meet the demands of the majority of personologists. 

 

                Since psychologists have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the study of effect needs (as I have called them), I shall do likewise in this section, and confine myself to the criteria in terms of which dispositions of this type may be classified, or in terms of which they may be discriminated after they have been classified. I shall be dealing with overt needs; that is, needs which are not inhibited or repressed but are manifested objectively motor and verbal actions. 

 

                1.  Kinds of initiating or reacting (inner) state.  This may be a pattern of sensations (e.g., thirst, hunger, lust), or a mild and scarcely definable tension or feeling (e.g., greed, envy, loneliness), or an intense emotion (e.g., fear, anger, love, pity).  Since such internal states are not open to direct observation, they must be inferred from objective signs (e.g., characteristic expressions of apprehension, irritation, friendliness, mirth), or from subjective reports (e.g., "I feel very cold," "I dislike that arrangement of colors," 

"I feel humiliated"). This criterion, however, is not very reliable, because

(1) there are many states of tension which have no clearly distinguishable objective manifestations,

(2) some states are intrinsically vague, hard to discriminate introspectively, and hard to represent in words, and (3) the state may be unconscious, and the subject unable, therefore, to give a true account of it. 

 

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                2.  Kind of initiating (external) situation.  The situational constituent that fixes the attention of the subject and excites activity can usually be discriminated objectively and diagnosed in terms of its meaning to most people of the same age, sex, status, and culture as the subject.  I have called this the alpha situation.  What the situation means to the subject, that is, how he interprets it, is the beta situation. 

The nature of the beta situation may be discovered sometimes by interrogation. 

 

                In most cases it is impossible to describe, formulate, and classify the situational processes in terms of their physical properties.  These are almost infinite in variety and quantity.  The physique of the alter, the clothes he is wearing, his facial expression, his gestures, the tempo of his speech, the structure of his sentences, the exact words he used, the ever-varying intonations of his voice - these can be recorded on a motion-picture film with sound track, but they cannot be represented symbolically as a changing pattern of shapes, lines, colors, textures, sounds, and odors. 

And, even if it were possible to construct models of the succession of such sense data, there would be little correlation, we can be certain, between these representations and the reactions of subjects.  In the first place, a human being selects, consciously and unconsciously, out of the fast flow of perceptions those which seem relevant to his immediate well-being, to his intellectual or aesthetic concerns, to his serial goals. In the second place, almost simultaneously in most cases, the subject apperceives (interprets) and evaluates these selected impressions (decisively or tentatively) as a more or less meaningful unit.  For example, he accepts them as signs of safety or of danger, of friendliness or of antagonism, of tolerance or of intolerance, of respect or of disrespect, and so forth. 

Furthermore, in arriving at his diagnosis of the object's proaction (the social situation) the subject invariably estimates it in relation to the moral, aesthetic, and intellectual standards to which a person of that age, sex, and status (relative to himself) is culturally expected to conform.  A certain remark, for example, might be considered "bright" coming from a child but "stupid" in the mouth of an adult.  Some gestures are considered "unbecoming" (effeminate) in a man, but "attractive" in a woman.  Certain words are "offensive" if shouted by a subordinate, but "humorous" if uttered by a congenial peer. 

None of these subtleties can be discriminated and represented in terms of the physical properties of the alter's actions.  They must be discerned and appraised, more or less intuitively, by a psychologist who is intimately acquainted with the society of which subject and object are members.  This unavoidable task, or function, places the psychologist, sociologist, and cultural anthropologist outside the domain of positivistic science, since the latter is confined by definition to sense data, operationally defined. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 459

 

                Lewin tried to avoid this difficulty by affirming

(1) that the nature of the beta situation can be inferred from the subject's behavior and

(2) that the nature of the alpha situation (the situation as interpreted by representative and knowledgeable members of the given society) can be neglected. 

In my opinion, neither assumption is tenable, because

(1) there is not, as far as we know, an invariable correlation between beta situation and behavior, and

(2) if the nature of the alpha situation is not apperceived and its intensity appraised by the psychologist, it will be impossible for him to judge whether or not the subject is suffering from a delusion, whether or not his behavior falls within cultural expectations. 

 

                Granting that the psychologist's unit is a man-situation or subject-object interaction, it becomes necessary to classify object processes as well as subject processes.  In the absence of such a classification, gross similarities and differences among proceedings cannot be defined, and without definitions of this sort science of human events is scarcely attainable.  What we want to know is how people in general, or how people of a given type or category, respond to situations such as these: frustration, postponement of gratification, social rejection, injustice, despotic coercion, moral comdemnation, erotic advances, flattery, appeals for help, and so forth. 

 

                As I have suggested elsewhere, situations are susceptible of classification in terms of the different kinds of effects which they exert (or may exert) on the subject; that is, in terms of their significance to his well-being.  In formulating an interpersonal proceeding, for example, the task would be that of defining the need-aim of the object (just as one would define the need-aim of the subject).  The question is,

what is the object doing to the subject, or intending to do, or capable of doing under certain circumstances? 

Is the subject being rejected or accepted, attacked or assisted? 

Are his tastes being criticized or praised? 

Is his behavior being blamed or commended? 

Is the object disagreeing or agreeing with his views, competing or cooperating with him? 

Such press (plural: press), as I have called them, may be roughly divided into benefits (satisfying press) and harms (dissatisfying press). 

Besides active harms, two additional classes of dissatisfying press deserve mention:

lacks (absences of benefits, depriving situations, barren environments) and

barriers (physical obstructions or social prohibitions - laws – which prevent the enjoyment of potential benefits, available, perhaps, to other people). 

 

                Many situations are not definable as press (which have already been exerted), but rather as signs of potential press - promises of benefits or threats of harm.  In such cases, the subject will predict to himself or expect that the alter will respond with an agreeable or beneficial press if he is properly treated, or that he will exert a disagreealable or harmful press if the subject comes within reach of him or acts in a provocative manner. 

 

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                To discriminate the press of the alter is  not enough.  We must know his relative age, sex, status, and so forth. 

 

                Distinguishing the kind of situation that confronts the subject is not only necessary to a definition of the thema of the proceeding, but is useful in limiting the number of probable need-aims in the subject, since there are only a few emotionally logical or culturally  expected reactions to any given press (kind of situation).  The unreliability of this criterion, however, is obvious.  Personalities differ widely in respect to their sensitivities to, or tolerance of, similar situations.  Some people  are much more responsive than

others to signs of physical danger, or of contempt, or of a friend's distress. 

 

                3.  Kind of initiating imaged situation which is accepted as a future possibility.  Many proactions and proreactions are instigated by images of possible future benefits to be enjoyed or of possible future harms to be forestalled or circumvented.  The efficacy of such images is basic to the Christian drama of salvation: visions of eternal bliss in heaven as reward for virtuous conduct; visions of everlasting tortures as punishment of sin.  The same holds, on the one hand, for soaring hopes of worldly success and fame ("last infirmity of noble mind"), and on the other hand, for a host of anxieties respecting ill health, economic insecurity, theft, social censure, hostility, loss of office, disgrace, defeat, and so forth.  At times, indeed, it seems as if the majority of actions in complex societies were aimed at preventing or reducing pricks of conscience or apprehensions in regard to some potential future ill: going to the dentist, getting vaccine injections, taking out insurance, locking up valuables in a strong box, arranging one's things, performing an incessant round of duties and role obligations, working like  mad to hold a job, to forestall criticism, or to prevent defeat at the hands of a rival.  All self-corrective compulsions are behaviors of this type.

 

                These proreactions are hedonically posititive in so far as they serve to lower the level of dissatisfaction, but they  are not apt to engender much elation. 

 

                The character of each of these initiating  imaged situations can be ascertained by interogating the subject if he has  insight and is honest.  They are classifiable according to the same scheme that is used to discriminate perceived (external) situations. 

 

                By anticipatory behavior of the kind described here, man exhibits the "time-binding" (Korzybski) power and, in many cases, the constructive planning power which distinguish him from other animals. 

The temporal distance of the imaged situations may be used  as a rough index of a subject's "time-perspective" (Lewin).  Some people live in the present, endeavoring to extract maximum satisfaction from each experience; whereas others live a provisional existence, their inner eye fixed on some distal goal. 

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 461

 

                4.  Directionality of actones (movements and words).  Certain postural attitudes (e.g., clenching the fists), certain motor patterns (e.g., turning away), certain words or sentences (e.g., "Help!") are, in any given society, so commonly associated with the expression of a certain kind of disposition that the psychologist is probably more often right than wrong in inferring on these grounds the nature of the operating need, even though no final effect has been attained. In other words, it is sometimes possible to discern the trend of the movements or of the talk before any goal has been attained. 

 

                This criterion is reliable only when S uses common, effective, and direct modes of achieving his end.  When his actions are unique, wholly inept, or indirect (e.g., a boy's attempting to catch pneumonia in order to punish his parents for treating him unjustly), their final aim is not clear.  Equally equivocal, as a rule, are all preliminary instrumental acts (locomotions and manipulations), although it is not hard to guess what a person is going to do if we see him handling certain conventional agency objects (frying pan, broom, gun) or see him heading toward certain conventional goal places (restaurant, theater, library). 

 

                5.  Kind of aim (imaged goal, imaged effect).  The word "need" is often used, here and elsewhere, to denote an established general disposition to effect a certain kind of transformation of a certain kind of field (inner state and/or external situation).  But more strictly speaking, "need" refers to a

disposition which manifests itself in a particular place at a particular time by concrete and specific actions which, if competent, produce, sooner or later, a concrete and specific effect (goal).  That is to say, a need, no matter how general, can be satisfied only by aiming at a particular target, or at a series of targets, one at a time.  The particular target as the subject imagines it, the specific point in his "cognitive map" (Tolman) toward which all his mental processes and actions are oriented at a particular time will be called the aim of the need.  "Aim" is synonymous with "imaged goal," "imaged effect."   Since the effect has not yet been produced, the aim has no existence outside the mind.  It is realistically or unrealistically imaginery.  The aim might he to eat fish chowder at a certain restaurant, or to persuade a friend to join the Society for Living, or to write a play about the tribulations of an honest Congressman, or to carry out a series of experiments with turtles to prove that the human mind is aimless. 

 

                When a need is in a state of tension but lacks aim, images of possible goals, goal objects, goal places, and pathways will run through the mind until some cathected goal object is selected and its probable location (goal place) predicted.  Thenceforth, the need (which might, perhaps, have been satisfied by anyone of a number of other goal objects) has a concrete aim.  If this is lacking, it is impossible to orient and coordinate movements and words in such a way that the imagined effect is made actual.  The subject is

directed to his goal by a plan; that is, by a consecutive series of instrumentally related images. 

The pathway is clearly or vaguely seen ahead of time in the mind's eye.  Unless such images are posited, means-end learning, I submit, cannot be explained, even in the rat.  The difficulty of the task a human being sets for himself is called level of aspiration. 

 

462 The Theory and Its Application

 

                Information as to the subject's aim can usually be obtained by asking him: where are you going and for what purpose? or, why are you doing that?  This is the best criterion that we have of the subject's need, if he is honest, and if but one need is operating.  Very frequently, this is not the case: the aim is shared by several needs, some of which, being culturally shameful, are unconscious or, if conscious, likely to be denied.  As Proust has put it, our imagination "substitutes for our actual primary motives, other secondary motives, less stark and therefore more decent."  

 

                6.  Kind of effect produced.  This criterion is crucial, because an effect need is defined in terms of the kind of situational transformation its processes produce. 

Unfortunately, it is not a very dependable criterion, for a number of reasons.

(1) The subject may not have the capacity, the knowledge, the training, or the persistence to actualize his aim.  Many conversations are unacknowledged competitive situations in which each participant is frustrated by all, and all by each; no actions reach their mark.

(2) The observed effect may not be the one intended. It may be an accident.

(3) In social proceedings, the intended effect is apt to be some change in the mind of the alter.  The subject wants to communicate a complicated idea to the alter, or he wants to impress him, or to show him the error of his ways, or to influence him in some subtle fashion.  Who can tell for certain, in most cases, whether

the goal has been achieved?  The alter may be an accomplished disguiser of his feelings.

(4) In proceedings which are parts of long serials, nothing final is accomplished, no closure reached, the enterprise is merely pushed along a step or two.

(5) The subject's aim may not be a clear-cut effect, but rather a form of activity which lasts several hours (e.g., a drinking bout, or dance, or sexual courtship).

(6) Finally, the psychologist has to deal here, as before, with both the alpha end-situation and the beta end-situation.  According to cultural standards, the subject may have accomplished very little, or annoyed his associates, or said something shameful, and yet be unaware of it.  The end-situation as he apperceived it (the beta end-situation) was fulfilling: he spoke well and pleased everyone. 

 

                7.  Kind of activity, effect, or situation with which hedone is associated.  This is the most sensitive index that we have of the class of need that is operatmg or was operating, and by using both objective signs and subjective reports we can often approximate the correct diagnosis.  It is not wholly reliable, of course, since satisfaction, like any other feeling or emotion, may be unconscious and barely show itself in facial expression or gesture. 

 

                Since this is a very long subject on which I have already touched, I shall conclude by recalling certain long-accepted facts of experience: hedone is relative.  It is not associated with a fixed state, but rather with a transition between states.  Also, positive hedone is closely associated with energy and

zest, with the uninterrupted course of spontaneous thought and speech (process needs), with certain aesthetic patterns, with expectations of rewards, with reductions of tension, as well as with final achievements.  The last type, as James pointed out, is correlated with the ratio of achievements over

expectations. 

 

                The diagnosis of needs can be reasonably accurate if all the above-listed criteria are observed and weighed in the balance.

 

Toward a Classification of Interactions 463

 

FINAL SUGGESTION

 

                As indicated in the section on attitudes, I have come to believe (after identifying myself with Dr. Allport) that action tendencies must be linked with values, which means that both values and tendencies should be classified.  Following Lewin and Erickson, I am calling the action tendencies vectors, each vector being defined as a direction of transformation.  Every vector may be combined with every value, giving us a large but manageable number of value-vectors, each of which is a certain kind of need. 

 

                This scheme has worked so much better than any we have used so far that I am emboldened to give our present list of vectors and values, despite the fact that the words used do not convey the intended meaning.  The best solution of the horrific terminological problem, I would guess, is to use letters, nonsense syllables, or special symbols (as in musical notation), but, as yet, nothing very practical has come to mind. 

 

                The vectors are these: (1) renunciation, (2) rejection, (3) acquisition, (4) construction, (5) maintenance, (6) expression, (7) bestowal, (8) retention, (9) elimination, (10) aggression, (11) defendance, (12) avoidance. 

 

                The values are these: (1) body [health], (2) property [usable objects, money], (3) knowledge [facts, theories], (4) beauty [sensory and dramatic patterns], (5) ideology [system of values], (6) affiliation [interpersonal relationship], (7) sex [with reproduction], (8) succorant object [child to be reared], (9) authority [power over others], (10) prestige [reputation], (11) leader [law-giver], (12) nurturant object [supporter], (13) roleship [functional place in group], (14) group [social system taken as a unit]. 

 

                It would take a book to define these terms, illustrate each, explain their numerous relationships, and demonstrate the utility of the scheme. One illustration of how vectors and values are combined will bring this exposition to an abrupt halt.  Take a value with which we are all concerned, knowledge (science), and link it with the action tendencies.  A person may

(1)     renounce the intellectual life, the pursuit of scientific knowledge; or he may

(2)     reject certain inaccurate or irrelevant observations (e.g., rumors) ; or he may

(3)     acquire knowledge by exploration, observation, or reading; or he may

(4)     construct new theories and hypotheses; or he may

(5)     maintain and conserve by repetition what he has already acquired or constructed; or he may

(6)     express his ideas; or he may

(7)     bestow his knowledge on others, that is, teach; or he may

(8)     retain outworn ideas in a rigid fashion; or he may

(9)     eliminate facts and beliefs that have been shown to be erroneous; or he may (

(10)  attack opposing views; or he may

(11)  defend his own theories against the attacks of others; or he may

(12)  avoid contacts which might lead to the weakening of his beliefs.

 

This is merely a thumbnail sketch of much work in progress.

 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

1.             Allport, G. W. Personality. New York, 1937.

2.             Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by W. D. Ross. Modern Library Edition. New York, 1947.

3.             Bales, H. F. Interaction Process Analysis. Cambridge, Mass., 1950.

4.             Carnap, H. "Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science," Int. Enc. Unified Sci., Vol.1, no.1, pp.42-62.

5.             Erikson, E. H. Childhood and Society. New York, 1950.

6.             Goldstein, Kurt. Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology. Cambridge, Mass., 1940.

7.             Homey, Karen. Our Inner Conflicts. New York, 1945.

8.             Keith, Sir Arthur. A New Theory of Human Evolution. London, 1948.

9.             Langer, S. K. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Mass., 1942.

10.          Lewin, Kurt. A Dynamic Theory of Personality, trans. by K. B. Zener and D. K. Adams. New York, 1935.

11.          Livingstone, R. W. The Future of Education. Cambridge, England, 1941.

12.          Maslow, A. H. "A Theory of Human Motivation," PsychoL Rev. L (1943), 370-396.

13.          Murphy, Gardner. Personality. New York, 1947.

14.          Piaget, Jean. The Language and Thought of the Child. New York, 1926.

15.          Pratt, C. C. The Logic of Modern Psychology. New York, 1939.