Self-Consistency, A Theory of Personality - Lecky, Prescott, 1892-1941 Taylor, John F - A - 1945 - New York, N - Y - , Island Press - Anna's Archive Copy 2

The Library
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
WEST FOOTHILL AT COLLEGE AVENUE

CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
SELF-CONSISTENCY
SELF-CONSISTENCY ‘>
648
a LHEORY OF -PERSONAERITY
BY PRESCOTT LECKY
TSLAND “PRESS. * NEW YORK, N. Y:.

Theology Library
HOOL OF THEO LOGY

ST CLAREMONT California
Copyright, 1945, by Kathryn Lecky

Produced in compliance with Government regulations on
conservation of essential materials.
Cover Design, Frederick Jahnel
Printed in the United States of America by H. Wolff, N. Y.

CONTENTS
Foreword, by Gardner Murphy

CHAPTER I
Self-Consistency vs. the Doctrine of

Specificity
CHAPTER II 26
The Personality as a Scientific Concept
\ CHAPTER III 40
w The Structure of the Personality

_. CHAPTER IV "8
2s The Personality
i]
\. CHAPTER V 97
xX Self-Consistency as a Technique
_) EPILOGUE 114
Toward a Non-Mechanistic Psychology
APPENDIX I 118
Fite
2Wer
Vaa
Preventing Failure by Removing Resistance
APPENDIX II 129
Boo Personal Counseling
APPENDIX III 150
The Theory of Self-Consistency
as
noggin
meal
aa tele 2 ee
oh.
f & ai Lt omar
‘ieZ
bd
4 \
5 ‘
« \ ae i a 3 a a
Re . 5 : r Fad* 5 Re ae
wae
pe 4 i "
cretetpotia.! atu aaa

eee Seg ahee
nae
FOREWORD
This little volume represents the distillation of some

twenty years of work by Prescott Lecky in the fields of
psychology, psycho-pathology, and education. His de-
velopment was continuous, and his thinking both
subtle and systematic. The posthumous appearance of
these chapters gives the unified view of a creative
thinker, whose main aim as a psychologist was to
achieve that flexibility with unity about which he has
so cogently written.
It was my privilege to know Prescott Lecky well and
to learn much from him. We shared a dislike for closed
and rigid systems. His development took the direction
of constant and vital application to educational and
to adjustment problems among his students. I had not
known how mature his thinking was until some of
these chapters came recently to my attention.
The fundamental idea of organic unity and of the
capacity of the psychological system to maintain itself
against outside pressure is one which has become in-
creasingly familiar through the work of the Gestalt
psychologists, the work of Paul Schilder, and above
all, the brilliant systematic statements by Kurt Gold-
stein. The fact remains that Lecky had in his own way
developed further than any of these the conception
that the individual must define for himself the nature
of that totality which he is. He must throughout life
assimilate new experiences in such fashion as both to
be and to appear a living unit. The practical conse-
quence is that new habits are made, and old ones lost,
1
2 FOREWORD
not in terms of sheer conditioning or habit forma-
tion, not in terms of isolated neural bonds, but in terms
of assimilation, as the individual conceives the for-
ward step to be a continuation and fulfillment of
himself.
This subtle and penetrating conception was for years
applied in teaching, in clinical work, and in business
situations; was tested, redrafted, and rewritten until in
these present chapters, the psychology of self-consist-
ency achieves mature expression.
The chapters as presented here have been edited by
Dr. John F. A. Taylor and represent the best integra-
tion of Lecky’s work which can now be achieved. The
book which Lecky had for years planned was far from
finished. But these chapters are offered to the reader in
the hope that the emphasis upon the unity of the per-
sonality may supplement and vitalize many similar
studies which come from our clinics and laboratories
today.
GARDNER Murpny,
Dept. of Psychology
College of City of New York
January 1944
CHAPTER I
SELF-CONSISTENCY vs. THE DOCTRINE OF SPECIFICITY
Conforming to the rigid determinism of the nine- .

teenth century, the older forms of scientific psychology
were committed toa causal program in which behavior
was determined solely by two sets of factors, environ-
mental and hereditary. Thus we were given to consider
opposing theories of environmentally determined
habits and natively determined instincts similar to the
doctrines of epigenesis and preformation in early biol-
ogy. In recent modifications of psychological and bio-
logical theory, however, the organism itself is begin-
ning to appear as to some extent its own determiner.
There is a coherence in the behavior of any single
organism which argues against an explanation in terms
of chance combinations of determiners and points to
an organized dynamic system which tends toward self-
determination. The inventory method brings out this
coherence in a very striking manner.
The scores indicate that confidence in social situ-
ations, codperation, optimism, a friendly attitude to-
ward other members of the family, companionship
with the opposite sex, efficient work dispositions, free-
dom from nervous symptoms, and a feeling of physical
well-being are closely interrelated and tend to increase
or decrease together. The data support this conclusion
with such convincing uniformity that the presence of
a dynamic organization of some kind can scarcely be
open to serious question. In order that this finding
may be consolidated in a systematic way, however, it
will be necessary to consider why other investigators
4 SELF-CONSISTENCY
have not been led to this result, and why their data
have seemed to point to opposed interpretations.
The extreme positions in the controversy regarding
the problem of consistency as a characteristic of be-
havior are represented on the one hand by psychiatry,
which finds a high degree of consistency, and on the
other by stimulus-response psychology, which finds al-
most no consistency at all. Psychiatry bases its explana-
tions on the operation of forces located within the
organism, stimulus-response psychology on forces
operative in the environment.
It is quite possible to present evidence in support of
either point of view. Using the inventory method, if
we gather as many symptoms as possible and combine
them all into one scale, as in the Thurstone schedule,
we gain the impression that the consistency of be-
havior is well-nigh perfect. But if we go to the opposite
extreme and combine only pairs of items, inconsistency
is emphasized, for the chance of predicting from the
presence of one symptom that some other symptom
will also be found is obviously negligible. When we
correlate subordinate lists of symptoms with other sub-
ordinate lists, however, and find that the coefficients
are positive, but that they also vary widely from. one
another, it is apparent that the viewpoint of both
opponents is much too narrowly limited, for this is
merely a statistical way of bringing out the obvious
fact that behavior cannot be explained in terms of
either the organism or the environment alone.
The task of adaptation must be conceived in relation
to the organism and its environment jointly. The state-
ment that the environment controls the organism is
the product of a single point of view, exactly as true
and as false as the view that the organism controls the
SELF-CONSISTENCY VS. SPECIFICITY 5
environment. Both sides endeavor to alleviate the

rigidity of their original positions by making conces-
sions to common sense, but the concessions in no way
change the basic framework of the two conceptions as
organized structures of thought. These remain inflex-
ible. In one respect, however, the two theories are quite
similar, for both are attempts to explain human nature
by means of concepts drawn from mechanics.
The psychoanalytic theory, as Lashley has pointed
out, is really a theory of psycho-hydraulics. Stimulus-
response psychology is a theory of psychotelephonics.
Both theories represent efforts to fit the phenomena of
behavior into one or the other of these familiar and
simple thought-models, rather than attempts to origi-
nate a truly psychological conception. In the one case,
repressed motives or instincts are thought of as liquids
under pressure, exerting an outward stress which is
exactly equal at all points. In the other instance,
stimuli are thought of as separate and haphazard in-
coming messages entering an automatic telephone
system.
We shall have occasion to criticize the psychiatric
viewpoint on the ground that it employs the theory of
instincts. But when we turn our attention to the stimu-
lus-response hypothesis, the direction of attack must
be reversed. Instead of arguing against control by in-
ternal forces, we must argue against control by external
forces.
From an experimental standpoint, it should be
noted that self-consistency does not appear unless the
conditions of the experiment permit it to appear. The
organization does not reveal itself in the attitude to-
ward any single situation, but only in the consistency
of the attitude toward a variety of situations. We
6 SELF-CONSISTENCY
should not expect to find general characteristics of be-

havior revealed so clearly in a small number of situ-
ations. But if we place our faith in the stimulus to be-
gin with, set up the experiment from that point of
view, and formulate our theories on the basis of
studies in which the effect of each situation is investi-
gated separately, the response will then be attributed
entirely to the situation. The interpretation of the be-
havior as a tiny episode in the larger drama of individ-
ual self-maintenance will be excluded from considera-
tion.?
The telephone system analogy was borrowed from
physiology, in which the experimental methods em-
ployed obscure the evidences of organization. At the
same time, the variability of responses is also obscured,
and a mechanical interpretation seems to be quite ade-
quate. In psychological experiments, however, the
variability cannot be concealed; if it were really pos-
sible to predict the response from the stimulus there
would be no problem. It is easy for the psychologist to
account for this variability on the ground that the total
stimulation is never the same, but this argument leaves
the problem of organization or habit more inexplic-
able than ever. If the stimulus is never twice the same,
then the same response can never be aroused twice;
and it is true that in a descriptive sense both of these
statements are correct. It therefore follows that all be-
havior must be characterized by a variability corre-
sponding to the variability of the stimulus.
1. From our standpoint the term “general factor” is objectionable
not because it is opposed to the doctrine of specificity (which we are
presently to discuss), but because it presupposes a plurality of psycho-
logical units similar to mental faculties. But a single general factor,
the personality, seems to be fully justified.
SELF-CONSISTENCY vs. SPECIFICITY 7
Yet habit, in the sense of stability, is the major

phenomenon of behavior as we know it. In spite of the
variability of the stimulus, most persons continue to
behave in much the same manner day after day and
year after year. In the effort to account for this stabil-
ity, therefore, an attempt is made by the mechanist to
divert our attention away from the essential points at
issue. Stability, he says, is due to learning, and learn-
ing is a matter of forming reaction patterns, where-
upon he invites us to attempt to trace these patterns
and lose ourselves in the complexity of possible central
connections. If we follow him, of course, we are lost
indeed. But a machine is no less mechanical because
it is complicated. There must be a stimulus to set off
the reaction pattern, and we stubbornly insist that it is
impossible for a theory which explains the variability
of behavior in terms of the stimulus to explain stability
also in the same terms.
The fact is that, descriptively and mechanically,
there is no stability in behavior, and habits do not exist.
There is stability in respect to goals or results, but none
in respect to movement. Nothing even approximating
an action pattern can be observed except in those ex-
periments which limit the subject’s freedom and ob-
scure the variations, as when a rat negotiates the nar-
row passages of a maze. To obtain an adequate body of
evidence which deals unequivocally with the problem
of stability, we must find it in the field of tests, a branch
of psychology which is almost bare of theoretical
adornment. Here we may hope for the first time to gain
some genuine insight as to what stability really means
and how it may be achieved.
There are two methods of measuring the reliability
of a test, the re-test method and the split-half method.
8 SELF-CONSISTENCY
The re-test method consists in simply giving the same

test twice, with a suitable interval between, and cor-
relating the test results. This gives a direct measure of
the similarity between the two performances, and a
high correlation is taken as satisfactory evidence that
the test is well constructed. The results are not greatly
affected by immediate circumstances and hence are de-
pendable. But there has always been some doubt re-
garding the theoretical justification of the split-half
method. It is used because empirical studies show that
the actual results of the two methods are usually about
the same.
The split-half method consists in dividing the test
into two equal parts, scoring each part separately, and
correlating them with one another. Why the coefficient
obtained should be so similar to that which is found
when the whole test is given at separate times is an
interesting question.
Let us remember that in every case a test merely
samples the subject’s information. It does not attempt
to discover everything he knows. But how shall we de-
cide whether the sample we have chosen is really a fair
test of what he has learned? Using the re-test method,
we answer, because the performance is stable. When a
large number of subjects behave in approximately the
same manner, on the same test at different times, there
is good reason to believe that the questions are testing
something important and significant. The odd feature
of the split-half method is that it can predict the sta-
bility of the test in advance, a priori, on only one trial.
It tells us something at once about a test which other-
wise we should have to wait for several weeks or months
to discover.
This astonishing fact has nevertheless excited very
little attention. The oversight is not due to lack of in-

terest in habit and stability, of course, but to the in-
terfering faith that habit is somehow a matter of move-
ment and mechanics. The more carefully we examine
the split-half procedure, however, the clearer it be-
comes that what we are really measuring is the degree
to which the subjects have organized the material, and
that this is what enables us to predict the stability of
the test.
Does not the very fact that we are able to test at all
by sampling presuppose that the student’s knowledge
of the subject matter constitutes an organized whole?
But in that case it is mistaken to believe that a test
measures specific responses to specific stimuli. It is
really testing something general; if it were not, in fact,
it would be worthless, for whether the subject can or
cannot answer a specific question would have no in-
terest for anyone. Moreover, we pay no attention to the
separate questions, but only to the total score. Actually,
a wholly different test might be constructed which in
terms of the score would give the same result. Many
tests come in several forms, and this is true not only of
subject matter tests but also of tests of intelligence.
Spearman’s two-factor theory has brought the problem
of specificity versus non-specificity into sharp focus.
In our view, however, specificity is not due to a special
factor, but to the fact that the material has not been
completely organized, as Spearman himself seems to
suggest by his emphasis upon the importance of seeing
relationships.
That educational psychology, whose iwtiole interest
should lie in the development of meaningful relations,
nevertheless continues loyal to the doctrine of mechan-
ism, is another of those incredible facts which serve
10 SELF-CONSISTENCY
as grist for our mill. What possibly could be the ex-

planation for such stupendous blindness except the
scientifically disloyal attempt to remain loyal to a
mechanical scheme?
But our major interest here lies in the total organiza-
tion, as implied in the use of such terms as character,
style of life, or personality. It is our view that behavior
is usually ‘“‘in character’ not because the separate acts
are related to one another, but because all the acts of
an individual have the goal of maintaining the same
structure of values.
Since a response is the act of an individual, the
question of individual differences in motivation and
attitude cannot possibly be avoided. Just as the same
situation will be evaluated differently when a person
is hungry, thirsty, or tired, its significance will also
change according to whether the subject is discouraged
or optimistic about the problem which the situation
presents. This evaluation is not determined by the ex-
ternal stimulation as such, but by the interpretation
which the subject gives to the situation in consequence
of learning and experience, hence, as we shall see, in
terms of its ease of assimilation. The recognition of
the organism itself as a determiner is merely a tardy
acknowledgment of the very obvious fact that each in-
dividual evaluates the world in his own terms. Sub-
jectively, a situation presents and defines a dynamic
problem, and both the nature of the problem and the
means of dealing with it depend upon the subject him-
self as the most important factor. The fallacy of ob-
jective valuation in psychology is an over-simplifying
tendency similar in many respects to statutory law. In
both cases the attempt is made to eliminate the ques-
SELF-CONSISTENCY vs. SPECIFICITY 1]
tion of motive by declaring it to be of no consequence.

The chief opponents of organization in the field of
personality are Hartshorne and May, whose ingenious
studies of dishonesty and deceit have shown that cheat-
ing is not general but specific. If a child cheats in one
type of situation, this does not indicate that he will
cheat in a situation of different type, nor is failure
to cheat in the first situation any guide to what he will
do in the second. ‘They conclude that a general factor
of honesty does not exist, and advance a generaliza-
tion which they call “the doctrine of specificity.”
“According to this view,” say the authors, “a trait
such as honesty or dishonesty is an achievement like
ability in arithmetic, depending of course on native
capacities of various kinds, but consisting in the
achieved skills and attitudes of more or less successful
and uniform performance. . . . An individual’s hon-
esty or dishonesty consists of a series of acts and atti-
tudes to which these descriptive terms apply. The
consistency with which he is honest or dishonest is a
function of the situations in which he is placed... .
We interpret these facts to mean that the consistency
of the individual is a function of the situation.” 4
The practical conclusion drawn is that educators
should endeavor to eliminate the occasion for dishon-
esty, and provide more opportunities “for the success-
ful use by both teachers and pupils of such forms of
conduct as make for the common good.” ? General
training in character seems a hopeless task, for the so-
called virtues are not unified traits but a logical classi-
1. Hugh Hartshorne and M, A. May, Studies in the Nature of Char-
acter, vol. I, “Studies in Deceit,” Book One, pp. 379-84. By permission
of The Macmillan Company, publishers.
2. See compiler’s explanatory note.
12 SELF-CONSISTENCY
fication of separate acts which are psychologically

unrelated and independent of one another.
The outlook is doubly pessimistic because there is
no assurance that transfer can be expected, even if the
pupils are exercised in honest forms of conduct. On
the contrary, the evidence seems to show that transfer
definitely cannot be expected, for even minor changes
in the situation, leaving an abundance of common ele-
ments apparently still in operation, nevertheless give
rise to significant differences. ‘The report says, “We in-
terpret these differences to mean that even such slight
changes in the situation as [that] between crossing
out A’s and putting dots in squares are sufficient to
alter the amount of deception both in individuals and
in groups.’ 1 This seems to mean that a major change
in the situation, such as that from school to office,
would make the amount of carry-over too insignificant
to be worth the effort.
* The main objective of the Hartshorne and May in-
vestigation was an attack upon personality traits as
psychological entities or faculties, an idea which the
authors have shown experimentally to be untenable.
Yet it seems to us that on the positive side they have
swung to the other extreme. The doctrine of specificity
appears to be as false and as unpsychological as the
notion of faculties. If every act is the function of a
specific situation, then, since transfer is virtually neg-
ligible, and since the same situation admittedly occurs
but once, it follows that behavior is not predictable at
all. For if the situation is unique, then the behavior
which is dependent upon it is also unique, and at-
tempts at training would merely multiply the number
1. See compiler’s explanatory note.
of unique acts performed. If this were true, the hope

of a science of psychology would have to be abandoned,
for a science which can make no predictions is worth-
less. A general tendency toward either honest or dis-
honest behavior, therefore, sufficiently independent of
the variability of the situation to furnish some basis
for prediction, is essential to justify the existence of
psychology, at any rate as a science of the behavior of
individuals. We agree that psychological traits are not
mental entities, but it does not follow by any means
that specificity is the only alternative. Confidence, co-
Operation, optimism, and so on are not entities either,
and yet there are relationships present which show
that the doctrine of specificity is equally indefensible.
The interpretation of a dishonest act as merely a
specific and isolated habit assumes, of course, that
habit itself is a valid principle of explanation. This
theory leaves out of account, however, the only factor
that could possibly afford an explanation, since it is the
only one that is constant in all of the experiments:
that is, the personality itself. Yet it can scarcely be
denied that dishonest acts are motivated, and are com-
mitted not because they are dishonest but because, as
the child interprets the situation, they are the best
means available for gaining ends that seem to him
important. It would seem to be self-evident that our
interest should be directed not toward the acts them-
selves, but toward the children who perform them.
But if it be admitted that situations exist for which
no response has been prepared in advance, then the
assumption that the child is honest in a given situation
’ merely because he has been trained to be honest is not
complete unless we also assume that he is dishonest
when such training is lacking, i.e., that dishonesty is
14 SELF-CONSISTENCY
fundamental and appears spontaneously unless pro-

vision is made against it. But this would mean that al-
though honesty is specific, dishonesty is non-specific.
Yet one or the other must be non-specific in any case,
or it would be necessary to assume that new or un-
trained behavior does not occur at all. Thus the mech-
anistic position either defeats itself logically or is
forced to take refuge in an absurdity.
A logically coherent explanation is obtained, how-
ever, if we assume that honesty is non-specific and
fundamental, and that the child is likely to be dis-
honest from his own point of view only when he faces
a specific emergency. Cheating, as a rule, is a substitute
means to an end employed on those occasions when
other and more honest means are likely to fail; the
child knows what is honest, but believes that the con-
sequences of honesty would prove to be too disturbing.
The fact that the tests of honesty were achievement
tests, made under competitive conditions, is from this
standpoint the crucial factor in the whole experiment.
If the element of competition were removed, there
would be no emergency and we daresay there would be
no cheating. It is necessary to recognize that a good
mark in a competitive performance gains its signifi-
cance from the social setting, and is bound up with the
child’s organization of values in such a way that its
subjective importance may be enhanced enormously.
In that case, if his preparation does not enable him to
gain the desired result by independent accomplish-
ment, he may turn momentarily to any means that will
solve his difficulty.
From this point of view it seems much more fruitful
to inquire as to specific causes of dishonesty, and leave
the explanation of honesty to the need for consistent
self-organization. As a matter of fact, the study in

question was concerned exclusively with deceit or dis-
honesty, although conclusions were drawn in regard
to honesty as well. In accepting the validity of the doc-
trine of specificity as applied to dishonesty, therefore,
we accept everything that has really been proved with-
out in any way injuring our claim that the principle is
invalid as applied to honesty. It is possible to train a
child to act dishonestly in specific situations, but not to
make him dishonest in general. Even professional
criminals tend to be specialists in only one type of
crime.
The explanation of dishonesty as emergency be-
havior finds support also in the physiological evidence.
The physiological changes which accompany decep-
tion, as reported by Larson, Marston, Chappell, and
others, are identical with those which Cannon finds
associated with emotional states of fear and rage. In
other words, deception occurs characteristically in sit-
uations which evoke the emergency type of emotional
response, and the emergency theory as stated by Can-
non is applicable to both phenomena.
The specificity of dishonesty is like that of illness;
illness can be explained in analytic terms, but health
cannot. In the same way, abnormal behavior must be
approached analytically, but an explanation of normal
behavior in specific terms is impossible. Descriptively,
however, the individual’s efforts to avoid disorganiza-
tion stand out more forcibly and vividly, and force
themselves upon our attention, while the evidences of
an undisturbed organization are so common and ob-
1. See W. B. Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and
Rage (Appleton, N. Y., 1929).
16 SELF-CONSISTENCY
vious that they remain unnoticed. This makes it clear

why descriptive psychology is so unproductive of prin-
ciples that can be used as tools of thought. In asserting
that the stimulus alone controls behavior, it must en-
deavor to explain customary and emergency phe-
nomena, sickness and health, normality and abnormal-
ity, honesty and dishonesty, all in the same terms. A
one-sided explanation based on exceptions instead of
on the rule is therefore its constant danger.
Like other investigations based on the stimulus-
response viewpoint, the deception experiment is not a
study of children, but of records of children’s test per-
formances. It is conceivable that the experimenters
never became acquainted with any of the children con-
cerned. Certainly they were not familiar with their
customary behavior, their individual histories, or their
present problems. ‘The interpretation of what these
records mean, therefore, has nothing to do with the
child as he really is, for that has not been studied, but
only with the mechanistic assumptions that are made
about him. The chief of these is the belief that, given
this set of stimuli, the child was obliged to respond as
he actually did respond. ‘The organism is conceived as
a machine which is free to move at any moment in one
direction only. The direction is determined not by the
child, but by the incoming stimuli acting as causes.1
1. It must be understood that our intention in opposing this belief
is to emphasize not the idea of freedom, but the idea of self-activity.
The conception of free will, even as a possibility, betrays a preoccupa-
tion with anything save real individuals. Every real individual must
exist in an equally real environment, and it is readily seen that the
problem of self-maintenance cannot be self-determined, but is set for
the individual by the environment. Our departure from the mechan-
istic position consists in the attempt to understand the details of
behavior not as forced movements, but as motivated acts.
If this assumption is correct, of course, there is no need

to study the child, for we know enough about him al-
ready; but there is.also no need to perform experi-
ments. If the child is controlled by stimuli, then the
conclusion that his behavior is ‘‘a function of the sit-
uation” is no discovery. No other conclusion is pos-
sible, whatever the results; nor can it be changed by
multiplying experiments. ‘The outcome is guaranteed
by the assumption which we make. The only condi-
tions which would bring about a refutation of the
assumption would be the discovery that the circum-
stances had nothing to do with cheating; either the
child would cheat at every opportunity, or never cheat
under any conditions. Honesty would be an all or none
affair, and every child either a saint or a criminal.
The subjective evidence reported by Hartshorne
and May seems to support the emergency theory which
we have proposed, while the objective evidence leads to
the doctrine of specificity. The children were asked to
explain why they cheated, and ‘“‘almost half of those
who answered the questions at all said that they
cheated because the test was too hard. The next most
frequent reason given is ‘to stand high,’ which is
similar to the first. Putting these two together, we have
two thirds of these cases admitting that they cheated in
order to do well on the test.”
From numerous similar references, it seems to us
that the doctrine of specificity is by no means the only
interpretation of the Hartshorne and May results, but
is simply the automatic consequence of the mechanistic
viewpoint. The doctrine of specificity does not explain
why dull, retarded, and emotionally unstable children,
and those who suffer from social and economic handi-
18 SELF-CONSISTENCY
caps, were found to cheat more frequently than others.

But these facts fit the emergency theory perfectly. The
doctrine of specificity does not explain why deception
runs in families, by gangs, and by classrooms, and why
it is less in situations which are characterized by co-
6peration and good will. It does not explain why even
the authors themselves employ such expressions as
“total character” and “‘self-organization.”’ We believe,
in a word, that the doctrine of specificity is not sup-
ported by the full range of the data, but only by the
parts which have been obtained by the objective
method under competitive conditions.
We quote here a somewhat similar criticism by G.
W. Allport. He says, “Some investigators have argued
against ‘general factors’ in personality on the grounds
of experimental work with such problems as deceit
(Hartshorne and May), speed (Dowd), confidence
(Trow), accuracy (Hartmann). The fallacy in this ar-
gument rests in confusing social with psychological
concepts. It is society and not the nervous system which
is responsible for such general concepts as ‘deceit.’ Of
course, no boy deceives in every possible situation. But
because he deceives, for example, in his arithmetic
lessons and not at spelling, there is no argument for
saying that general dispositions in personality do not
exist. His arithmetic may have been a source of failure
with a consequent feeling of inferiority and fear of
punishment. Seen in this light, a thoroughly meaning-
ful relationship obtains between this conative system
and the habit of cheating at arithmetic. Every per-
sonality shows such congruence on a high level, but
statistical techniques which omit the motives and the
meaning of behavior cannot reveal such congruence.
Statistical methods need to give a more generous place
to the interpretative study of the values by which the
personality orients itself.” 1
The main scientific issue at stake in the controversy
is the predictability of behavior. Our position is that
predictability is a function of stability and therefore of
the basic need for consistent self-organization. Among
those students of human nature who depend upon the
method of general observation for their understanding
and insight, the relationship between honesty and a
self-consistent mode of behavior is a persistent affirma-
tion. Shakespeare writes:
“To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
This view of the matter seems so natural that we find
it imbedded in language itself, for the words employed
to describe desirable “traits” of character are precisely
those in which the idea of stability is expressed. Ex-
amples of such words include “upright,” “strong,” |
“sound,” “‘square,” “true,” “reliable,” etc. In the same
manner, undesirable traits are expressed by words
which reflect instability, such as “false,” “crooked,”
“treacherous,” etc. Indeed our whole civilization rests
upon the successful prediction of how individuals will
usually behave. Mutual confidence in such predictions
is the indispensable foundation of economic stability.
The extension of credit would be a foolhardy gamble
1. Gordon W. Allport, “The Study of Personality by the Intuitive
Method,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. XXIV
(1929-30), p. 16n. By permission of the American Psychological As-
sociation, Princeton, N. J.
20 SELF-CONSISTENCY
if the chances of honest and dishonest behavior were

even remotely comparable; and if contracts were as
likely to be broken as respected, there would be no in-
telligent reason for making them.
The doctrine of specificity is, we repeat, itself a pre-
diction that behavior relationships are unpredictable.
We can submit the question to experimental test.
When applied to the items on the inventory, specificity
would mean that a given answer bore no relation to
other answers, and furnished no hint of what perform-
ance might be expected on the rest of the inventory.
We have therefore taken a number of questions, se-
lected from all of the categories, and in each case com-
pared the averages of those students who gave a nega-
tively scored answer with the averages of those who
did not. It is evident that a difference in answering
even one question enables us to predict with confidence
that the two groups will differ in the same direction on
every category. The comparisons follow.
SocIAL CONFIDENCE:
(i) Do you mix with other students easily?

Av.
No. Score Conf. Codp. Opt. Fam. Sex Work Nerv. Phys.
VES PE3QUs OPUS VS. Sy Og ey eg. a Aceh 8 3iy $4 2.0
NOs 100\* 51-8" 1160.05) 74.6! 5.7 a.19 8 6.28 OO Giver «Sees
(it) Do you feel pretty confident that your classmates

accept you as an equal?
Av.
Yes 459) 933-5: 9.5. 18.9, 23.00) 9.250 04.e uo 3-7 2.1
No 4) 58.29 27-3 §.6. (9.0... 43 965 Gg Goad,
(iii) Can you stand kidding?

Av.
No. Score Conf. Coép. Opt. Fam. Sex Work Nerv. Phys.
Wesen405 34:3 9.8 30° (3.4 site an* aa Eye ees
No Shebi§ tbs Bo 650 1Asze OG” be Bs) Si
COG6PERATION:
(iv) Do you feel slightly antagonistic toward the
majority of people you meet?
Av.
Om 410 89-95) 9.75 2.6, .3.4 > 3.0. 14.6. 4.0 3 Oost
eS me QO ALON 12-3. F 4. Ay = iA Wh ot oheE 52 633
(v) Are there many people that you dislike intensely?
Av.
WVOmemADQI) B49) 70:0) 2.99 347) 3: 146 ae Bui
Yes Sime s te TsO. | 667 56) ih.0) (O:nNy 6.0 56 4.0
OPTIMISM:
(vi) Are you troubled with feelings of inferiority?
Av.
No. Score Conf. Coédp. Opt. Fam. Sex Work Nerv. Phys.
NOME SoS 20h 8.90) 2/7 6 2.8, 2:8) 94.90 3314. $2 91.9
Ves Re Ae TG. Ad 7.3 4.7 6.4 (6.8 Gs s.0
(vil) Do you get discouraged easily?

Av.
NOS 4ST 31.6 02 2:8 $1 $9.12 4.4 3:5 8.5 2.0
Vesmmesbo) 650-7, 910:0) a5.0 8 8.94.5. 96:3) 8-0 6.2) 453
(viii) Do you often feel just miserable?

Av.
INGE MAIY 312) “O° "2:57 20 (30 44 3:7 Saha 2.0
Yes <89 553 144 5:8 82 46 58 6.5 6.5 4.1
22 SELF-CONSISTENCY
FAMILY:
(ix) Were your parents partial to any of your

brothers or sisters?
Av.
No 426 34.1 100 29 347 28 46 4.0 $7 23
Ves '74 743.6) 31.0 524.4 4:8), 05 :Ond 0 Ge 4.4 2.6
(x) Did you havea happy childhood?

Av.
Yes 460 339 99 29 36 29 46 4.1 op EE
No Ae 54d) 12.8005 5) ede ey doe eo 6.1 4.5
(xi) Is your home environment happy?

Av.
Yes 437 336 99 29 36 26 4.7 4.1 CG Eee
No 63,9548,02211.65— "5.09 15.Oar 7-OMy4.0 mn nS GEO) LAE
SEX:
(xii) Looking toward the future, do you expect to

have children?
Av.
Ves Se4G5y 0SA-l a O07". 220" eoSio ag 2) ace Aad 3.0. 2.2
No 35 550 153 52 5:7 8:7 97 57 55 41
(xiii) Do you expect to get married?
Av.
Yes 5471 84:9. 9.0 63.0" 8.7") F9is cata dey Bonn 2.2
No 29 54.80 14.5. 14.9 6.1 642 — gon Ge 5.1 86, 8
(xiv) Do you think you are less attractive than other

boys (or girls)?
Av.
NOS eSO3 a SIs7 Ob 2.8" 13402 3-0 44.0) 3.8 35 2.0
Ves 109 51:5) 16.1 46 ing” (4s 6.2" “6.0 Pie EEO
Work:
(xv) Are you considered lazy?

Av.
NOMRARE 334-0." 9:8), $0. -$:7 43.1 4G 3.8 3-7 2.2
RES An eh ked t 8S.39) 4.8 0) 5.4) 7a Be 6.8) BO .0)
(xvi) Does criticism disturb you badly?

Av.
NOUECAd? S28 a BOS eee. 8 S14) 68.0 AA iy 3.0 72.1
Wes 585 50:0 617-0. 5.2 7-4 4.0" 6.677858 63 3.9
(xvii) Are you in general self-confident about your

abilities?
Av.
VeSmU ATA S22") 9:10 9 93.0) 9.350 3.1 94.5 35 36 2.2
No SGahLOr Tre es.8) 6.82 48 — FO 77 53 0g
(xviii) Do you have trouble deciding what to do

next?
Av.
No 431 922 92 29 $34 32 44 35 3-4 2.0
Vesa 20Gh 57-800, 157s, 4:0. ° 71) (40, Gar, 87,5 6.6) (4:3
24 SELF-CONSISTENCY
NERVOUS SYMPTOMS:
(xix) Are you frequently worried about religion?
Av.
NO 74333 3:Giae Oo |3.0) S75 eet 34 2.2
Yes 67 46.5 122 37 52 48 57 50 69 34
(xx) Does it make you uneasy to have to cross a wide
street or open square?
Av.
No 450 33-5 O65 (3.0. 3 Gls 3.2)0-4-5 3-0 3.5 2.1
Yes %0 £08 50> 338 62 42° 60 656 94 4.5
(xxi) Does it make you uneasy to sit in a small room

with the door shut?
Av.
NOW AGS) 34-5. 9-0-9. > 331 Sty) aS 24 Ore Carpe IES
Yesm25 54:0 13-59 4.0) 7-4 eG ON On 0-6 Sy) a2
PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS:
(xxii) Are you frequently bothered by indigestion?
Av.
_
INO es 48506 84:0.) 10.0-) 19:0) | 13.7" Sano ed Cup FES
Fess.) 15) 164.0), 14.9) 6.97) (8:1 9 7 kr ee 8.5 6.0
(xxiil) Do you usually feel fatigued when you wake
up in the morning?
Av.
NO) cabnue 33.6. 9.8.9 12'9 5 VSG) 1S oe A6 ao $6. 1.9
Yess SARS 55.39) 19:8 ose 1» 64 4.8) G.Omoe 66 6.1
(xxiv) Are you physically inferior to your associates?

Av.
NO "441 (38.0 ©.9.65 (2.0) 3:85" S80 eae Gg 36 1.9
Yes ‘59 540 142° 49 GEL 45) 5966 60 5.5
Thus we are able, on the basis of a difference in

answering a given question, to predict that the two
groups will differ consistently in the same direction in
each of the remaining categories.
The problem raised by these consequences is vastly
broader than the adequate interpretation of a single
group of experiments. ‘The main question is, what al-
terations are called for in the first principles which
underlie our scientific philosophy. When we realize
that the Hartshorne and May character inquiry is often
cited as a model of psychological technique, the disap-
pointing results obtained may be taken as illustrative
of what is to be expected in all cases from a purely
descriptive psychology. We now propose to enter upon
this larger question.
1. The need for a reéxamination of the conceptions now generally
accepted may be evidenced by the fact that Hartshorne and May
themselves appear to be dissatisfied with the theoretical position
which their results have forced upon them. In the later volumes of
the report, the discussion turns more and more to problems of mo-
tivation and integration, and the doctrine of specificity to which the
authors have committed themselves begins to appear rather as a
handicap than a help. It cannot be abandoned, however, because in
a descriptive sense it is unquestionably true, and they are caught in a
trap that, it seems to us, inevitably awaits the scientist who hopes to
be consistent and positivistic at the same time. The ineffectual
struggle to escape may be illustrated by the following passage in
Volume III, “Studies in the Organization of Character” (Macmillan,
N. Y., 1930), p. 2: “In dealing specifically with human situations and
responses, we have by no means implied that character consists in
an algebraic sum of specific positive and negative tendencies. We
have held open such considerations, recognizing the propriety of the
theory that there may be an empirical organization of various tenden-
cies among themselves and in relation to some general: purpose or
attitude which does not consist of the mere sum of its parts.”
CHAPTER II
Tur PERSONALITY AS A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT
“The synthetic method by which we build up

from its own symbolic elements a world which
will imitate the actual behavior of the world of
familiar experience is adopted almost univer-
sally in scientific theories.”
—Eddington
While the study of character would of course be

worthless unless it were based on carefully established
facts, it is also apparent that the facts alone do not
furnish their own illumination. The central scientific
problem, therefore, is manifestly interpretation. The
progress of science depends not so much on new facts
as on new ideas, but psychology still defends the
position that facts are sufficient in themselves. “The
aim of all science,” says May, “is the adequate descrip-
tion of the subject matter with which it deals. The
criterion of adequacy may be anything you like, but it
is usually prediction and control.” The identification
of science with description is a phenomenon not only
curious but important, for it is probably the most
costly error into which psychology has fallen. It rests
on the assumption that the stimulus is the determinant
of the organism’s behavior, and hence, that a mechani-
cal connection holds of which description can inform
us directly. ;
This mechanistic theory, of course, is itself an in-
terpretation, though it was not developed in reference
26
PERSONALITY AS A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT 27
to psychological data, but was taken over from classical

physics in the effort to keep psychology consistent with
the scientific viewpoint as a whole. In physics, however,
the most authoritative of all the sciences in general
theory, the possibility of a direct step from description
to prediction is now in fact denied. The only excep-
tion is in the statistical prediction of averages, a method
_based on the expected repetition of past performances
and dealing with masses of units, but useless for pre-
dicting the behavior of individual units. Representing
the contemporary developments in physics, Jeans says
it is now believed that “there is no determinism in
events in which atoms and electrons are involved
singly, and that the apparent determinism in large-
scale events is only of a statistical nature. When we are
dealing with atoms and electrons in crowds, the mathe-
matical law of averages imposes the determinism which
physical laws have failed to provide. . . . We are com-
pelled to start afresh. Our difficulties have all arisen
from our initial assumption that everything in nature,
and waves of light in particular, admitted of mechan-
ical explanation: we tried in brief to treat the universe
as a huge machine. As this has led us into a wrong path,
we must look for some other guiding principle.” ?
Are we not therefore deceiving ourselves in trying
to keep our psychology consistent with a mechanistic
physics the limits of whose application have proved it
irrelevant to our proper task?
The current definition of psychology as “‘the study
of behavior’ is as meaningless as a science of physics de-
1. Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, edition of 1930 (Cam-
bridge Univ. Press, England). By permission of The Macmillan Com-
pany, publishers, U. 53
28 SELF-CONSISTENCY
scribed as “the study of motion.’ What is meant, of

course, is the behavior of organisms, but if the organ-
ism is the unit, and we study it descriptively, we
thereby suppress the integral character of the behavior
itself.
By way of illustration, let us consider the behavior-
istic concepts of “avoidance” and “approach.” ‘These
are acceptable objective terms. It will be necessary to
point out at once, however, that in addition to the fact
that avoidance and approach have nothing to do with
introspection, it is equally certain that they do not
accord with the descriptive principles of behavioristic
or stimulus-response psychology.
Neither approach nor avoidance can be described
in terms of bodily movement, but only in terms of di-
rection. The actual behavior of the subject may be
either reaching, walking, running, jumping, climbing,
swimming, using tools, opening doors, talking, or any
other act within his behavior repertory. ‘The only con-
stant factor in the performance is the maintenance of
reference toward the goal the subject is striving to
reach. All notions of action patterns and specific neural
pathways become meaningless in view of the fact that
the movements themselves reveal no pattern. ‘The so-
called patterns observed in the solution of problem
boxes and mazes are mere illusions and artifacts
brought about by the exclusion of other alternatives.
A prearranged direction is imposed on the animal by
the conditions of the experiment, and then when he
discovers and follows that direction, his behavior is
described. as an action pattern. The same restriction
that is placed upon the animal has so restricted our
own understanding that we have taken this made-to-
order phenomenon, which would instantly vanish

under natural conditions, and made it the very corner-
stone of our psychological theory.
A motor pattern is meaningless except in terms of
a line of direction toward a goal. But if the separate
acts are themselves treated as units, we lose sight not
only of the organism as a whole, but what is even more
important, of the unity of the behavior itself.
Many writers use the terms positive and negative be-
havior interchangeably for approach and avoidance.!
In the use of such terms there is clearly implied an
assumption that movement may follow either of two
different lines, one toward and one away from a given
point of reference. The point of reference, of course,
is the external stimulus or situation. Some situations
induce approach, others induce avoidance. It is ob-
viously of the highest importance, from the standpoint
of integration, to determine whether such a classifica-
tion of behavior is logically justifiable.
Avoidance and approach express nothing more than
a change of spatial relations. It is not true that avoid-
ance is the name for one mode of behavior and ap-
proach the name for another. Far from being mutually’
exclusive, either term applies to any line of move-
ment. One observer may think of the subject as run-
ning away from danger, but another may see the same
behavior as running toward security. There is no
choice between the descriptions, for both are equally
true. A horse frightened by fire runs into the fire, away
from the noise and confusion where he stands, but
toward the familiar stall which in his experience spells
security. The pangs of hunger drive us to seek food,
1. See above, pp. 59-60. ~
30 SELF-CONSISTENCY
and the dread of loneliness impels us to search for a

familiar face. The purpose of the subject is not to ap-
proach or avoid, but merely to preserve his own in-
tegrity; the direction of the behavior, toward or away
from the stimulus which we choose as point of refer-
ence, is in either case to be understood as the spatial
aspect of a movement from a disequilibrated condition
toward one of equilibrium. The organism itself has
one purpose only.
The notion that some behavior should be classified
as avoidance and some as approach is therefore due
entirely to the failure to see the act as a whole. Neither
classification is strictly accurate, for if disequilibrium
spells avoidance and equilibrium spells approach, then
obviously both are present jointly. The same activity
is given two names because attention is directed to each
aspect separately.
The very fact that approach and avoidance are still
terms in common use, however, demonstrates that the
act as a whole in many cases is extremely hard to dis-
cern. Though its evidences are constantly visible as
movements, the dynamic process or tendency itself
is evident only when viewed in its entirety as a
unit.
The point is that behavior is a story with a plot, and
the main duty of the psychologist is to discover that
plot and objectify it and fit it into the scientific scheme.
Otherwise, if we insist upon dealing with isolated inci-
dents only, our role becomes that of mere photog-
raphers and mechanics. Since the latter course concerns
itself only with superficial details, naturally it is not
attended by the difficulties and uncertainties which
go with the larger task of explanation. But as a matter
of fact we have no choice but to perform this larger

task.1
The conception of behavior as unified by reference
‘to a single purpose, namely, as the organism’s attempt
to maintain its own organization, is not a description
of the behavior which we are able to observe. On the
contrary, the purpose which unifies the behavior is not
observable, but is a creative condensation of the ob-
served behavior, an instrumentality which we employ
in order to make the behavior intelligible to ourselves.
Every science actually has employed such creative con-
densations at every stage of its development. Bacon’s
assumption that the facts will generate their own ex-
planation if we gather enough of them has failed to
justify itself; the forward step has always waited until
the appearance of a unifying hypothesis. But the bio-
logical sciences, suffering from incoherence and end-
lessly deploring their lack of integrating conceptions,
at the same time discourage creative thinking and
naively wait for the answers to their problems to be
revealed by further observations. i:
Everyone would agree that the scientific notions of
the ancients, such as the cosmologies of Pythagoras and
Ptolemy, were the outcome of human creativeness. No
one would think of arguing otherwise today, for these
conceptions have now been superseded and have lost
their useful function. Indeed, the inadequacy of these
early efforts when judged by present standards would
probably be accepted by many as the strongest proof
of their human origin. But more perfect systems also
1. We shall occasionally use the terms positive and negative in
discussing conflict, as convenient designations for opposed lines of
action which may be attempted simultaneously, but the terms in that
sense are relative rather than absolute.
32 SELF-CONSISTENCY
must be recognized as creations. Newton’s cosmology

has been found inadequate and replaced by that of
Einstein, and Einstein’s in turn will probably be super-
seded also. Thus the view that scientific progress is
merely a matter of continuous factual discoveries has
the effect of discouraging precisely the sort of thinking
that is most necessary in scientific work. Empirical
facts can in the end serve only as the raw material of
science; in themselves, until they have been worked
over interpretatively, they are useless.
Until quite recently, it is true, creative productions
in the scientific field seem to have been regarded as ob-
jective discoveries even by their creators. If, as seems
probable, the illusion of objective reality was actually
demanded of scientific creations, we may then have
the historical key to explain the small role which psy-
chology has played in the scientific advance. For the
concept of mind or personality is incapable of being
disguised as an objective discovery, and hence could be
attacked by its critics as a fiction of the imagination,
as indeed, in a sense, it was. In order to avoid conflict
with the other sciences, therefore, psychology was re-
quired to abjure the creative approach, and its de-
velopment was retarded as a consequence.
For the goal of psychology as a pure science is the
progressive development of a conceptual picture of the
personality itself. Actually, the concept of the person-
ality has made considerable progress in psychology
already, forcing itself forward on its merits in spite of
the handicap of inconsistency with the descriptive
point of view. It has so entrenched itself, indeed, that
we cannot do without it. Even textbooks written from
the objective standpoint usually have a chapter on per-
sonality regardless of earlier chapters on sense organs,
neurones, muscles and glands. Yet no one attempts to

describe the personality in such terms, or to analyze it
into cells, tissues and organs, even though it is iden-
tified with ‘the organism as a whole.” We even listen
respectfully to discussions of personality traits—intro-
version and extroversion, ascendance and submission,
intelligence, pugnacity, codperation, native abilities,
inferiority complexes and what not. Dynamic psy-
chology, so-called, would be almost inarticulate with-
out such a concept. In experimental psychology,
however, or in technical discussions which relate to
scientific method, such recognition is denied for. the
reason that the concept does not refer to an observable
entity.
But although the notion of a science dealing with a
subject matter not directly observable must have
seemed incomprehensible in the nineteenth century,
when the present traditions of psychology were estab-
lished, it does not follow that those traditions are ap-
propriate for the twentieth century. The more
progressive sciences, notably astronomy and physics,
are passing into a new developmental stage which has
gained momentum precisely in proportion as the old
traditions were scrapped. They have parted company
with the literalism of classical physics and achieved a
spirit of creativeness, of self-reliance and freedom of
thought which is fortunately contagious. In the new
scientific era now beginning we venture to say that
psychology will modify rather than reject its earlier
definition as the study of the psyche, and will study
openly and without apology the problem of dynamic
organization which always has been its chief concern.
A scientific system is always the result of creative
activity rather than of factual discovery. The only dis-
34 SELF-CONSISTENCY
covery involved is that of how well or how poorly the

system organizes the factual observations into a co-
herent and self-consistent whole. The problem is to
put meaning into experience, to organize our notions
in relation to experience. If this is true, then the hope
of erecting a science of psychology on the basis of de-
scription alone is a misconception of the task which
will actually prevent such a science from developing.
The function of description is limited to the presenta-
tion of a continuous series of new facts to be organized,
of new complications to be provided for. In this sense
it is a fundamental condition for any genuine scien-
tific achievement. Description states the problem and
limits the solution, but we cannot have a solution un-
less we have a problem to begin with. The solution is
made in reference to the descriptive data which limit
the solution. It is this feature of scientific method
which distinguishes science from metaphysics. Yet psy-
chology seems to persist in the assumption that de-
_Scription alone can make a science. A number of
instances may be cited in which it can be shown that
additional descriptive facts or predicates have even
been turned into general principles and treated as if
they had explanatory value.
Let us select some illustrations at random. One of
the most familiar examples is the so-called law of exer-
cise. Because the subject must usually attack a problem
several times before he can be regarded as having
solved or learned it, the repetition itself is offered as
an explanation. ‘Thorndike, Watson, Woodworth,
Hunter, most of the other textbook writers and the
majority of educational psychologists seem to regard
the law of exercise as the primary principle in learning,
even though they recognize that it is not the only prin-
ciple. The synapse theory on which it rests has been

demolished experimentally by Lashley, and its theo-
retical critics are numerous, but there it stands never-
theless. Dunlap’s insistence that the evidence shows
no relationship between repetition and learning seems
to be regarded as an interesting argument that psy-
chologists should know about, but no one seems to feel
that such an attack is a challenge.
We can imagine the descriptive psychologist answer-
ing that after all repetition is an observable fact, and
that nothing can be done about facts except to accept
them. But this misses the point; we must accept facts as
facts, but there is certainly no compulsion to accept
facts as explanations unless they really explain some-
thing.
Another example is found in the use of tests. Let us
say that a child is deficient in arithmetic and we wish
to discover the reason. Tests disclose that he fails on a
variety of specific problems, such as carrying in addi-
tion, dividing when zeros occur in the divisor, and so
on. Instead of explaining the child’s deficiency, how-
ever, the result of the testing merely tells us wherein
he is deficient. Manifestly, he cannot be deficient be-
cause he makes certain mistakes, for making mistakes
and being deficient are the same thing.
Let questions be given which supposedly are tests
of intelligence, and the same reasoning is found. Fail-
ures cannot be explained as due to low intelligence,
for low intelligence and failure on the tests are equiva-
lent by definition. Thus in the end we have the dis-
covery that children are deficient because they are
specifically deficient, and unintelligent because they
are specifically unintelligent. Intelligence tests are
validated by correlation with school grades or with
36 SELF-CONSISTENCY
other tests similarly validated, although the higher the

correlation which supports the validity the clearer it
becomes that the information is essentially identical,
and that the test is merely a standardized method of
statement substituted for a method that is not stand-
ardized.
This is as far as description can go. The real rea-
son why children are deficient or unintelligent we
do not offer to explain, except to appeal to heredity. »
Occasionally a deficient child, after special attention
or changing from one school to another, will show
marked improvement, but since the majority of chil-
dren fail to respond to such treatment the exceptions
are overlooked. The information obtained by tests is
valuable perhaps for practical purposes, but the ideal
of a scientific system has been forgotten. We have a
psychometrics, but we look in vain for a systematic
psychology.
Just as there is no theory of intelligence or of learn-
ing, likewise there is no adequate theory of forgetting
in spite of innumerable memory experiments, no real
theory of thinking, no theory of consciousness; in short,
no explanatory principles at all to bring coherence into
our psychological labors. And the reason seems to be
that we are naively waiting for the answer to be re-
vealed by more facts. But is it not self-evident that more
facts will simply furnish more problems to be solved,
that all of these phenomena are interrelated, and that
the unifying conception needed to bring the facts into
meaningful relation with one another must be a cre-
ative contribution independent of this or that specific
observation?
No one has ever seen an atom, and physicists assure
us that no one ever will. It is an invention, a creation,
or, as Vaihinger would say, a fiction. But it makes no

difference that the atom is not an observable fact, for
the atomic conception has enabled man to arrange the
observed phenomena of physics into an organized re-
lationship. While we agree entirely with Watson that
psychology must travel the same path as the older
sciences, it by no means follows that the mind or per-
sonality is an unscientific concept merely because we
cannot see it in a test tube. The use of conceptual units
defined according to the function they perform, far
from being contrary to science, is the scientific con-
ditio sine quanon.
The concept of the personality is an attempt to deal
in an organized way with all of the activities produced
by a single organism. We do not mean that an organ-
izing mind within the subject is a necessary inference
from organized behavior, as is sometimes argued. (‘That
step would involve us in the problem of reification.)
In our view we do not know, and fundamentally do
not care, why the subject behaves as he does. But we
most decidedly care about our inability to predict
what he is likely to do next, and the concept of mind
is created by us in the effort to resolve our own difficul-
ties. It is an essential tool to think with, a means de-
vised by the reasoner to assist his reasoning, and for
our purposes that fact is sufficient; it is more necessary
to think than to know, especially since it is obvious that
we shall never know without thinking. It may be that
philosophy aims at knowledge, but science is satisfied
with prediction and control.
The behavioristic movement has performed a useful
service in attacking the introspective method, but in
attacking mind as a concept it has placed itself in a
dilemma, for it must either abandon its opposition to
38 SELF-CONSISTENCY
intangible conceptions or else admit that it is out of

touch with the scientific program in general. Intro-
spectionism is not unscientific because it is non-
mechanistic, for the philosophic basis of behaviorism
and introspectionism, as Kéhler has pointed out, is the
same. Its real defect is that it has thrown no light on
the organization of behavior, and hence does not assist
us in making psychological predictions.
The negation of the concept of mind, however, has
the effect of forcing the positive assumption that psy-
chological problems are not as complex as they seem to
be. The consequence is that the theories which are
actually used in the attempt to explain the behavior of
organisms possess a degree of simplicity to be found in
no other science. How easy the task of the physicist if
he could develop a formula for atomic behavior as un-
complicated as the formula of stimulus-response which
the biological sciences apply to organismic behavior!
If we wonder then why psychology is at once the most
controversial and the least productive of the natural
sciences, the answer seems to be that it has virtually
abandoned its real task and turned its back on its own
subject matter. And yet, on the other hand, if a men-
talistic psychology had been proposed even a few
decades ago, it would probably have been so bitterly
attacked by mechanistic physiology and biology that
it could not have survived.
Woodworth remarks that humanity has been en-
gaged upon the problem of conceptualization since the
beginning, “though not always with a thoroughly ob-
jective slant.”
That is just the point. The essential objectivity of
science does not lie in its methods, but in its pur-
pose of prediction and control. It is objective because
it is useful, because it aims at results, not because it is

descriptive and literal. For that reason the test of ob-
jectivity is found in consistency and inclusiveness; the
truly objective concept must aim to organize all of the
phenomena, experimental, clinical, and observational.
The method, any method, is scientific in this sense if
prediction is the consequence, and unscientific if it
is not.
In our opinion, we have to build a wholly new psy-
chology, as different from the old as modern physics is
different from Newtonian mechanism. Just as the new
physics has given form to the ancient concept of the
atom, so the new psychology must give form to the still
older concept of mind or personality. If form belongs
to art, then let us endeavor to be artists. Nor should we
be surprised if all scientific creations resemble one an-
other in the style of their workmanship, since they are
not only symbolic representations of so-called external
events, but arrangements to serve our human need for
self-consistency.
CHAPTER III
THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERSONALITY
Great as the need may be, actually to attempt to put

forward a conceptualization of the personality is a
hazardous undertaking. There are two reasons for this.
In the first place, at this stage of its development the
conception can be little more than a sketch, an attempt
to draw an outline. Evaluated in isolation from the
problem at which it is aimed, it will seem to many to
be so speculative as to be useless. But the task at present
is not to defend, but simply to present the conception
as we see it.
The second reason is that a new conception is seldom
considered strictly on its merits in relation to the ob-
jective problem, but is likely to be regarded as rather
a disturbance of the status quo. The fact that the
mechanist must give up the conception around which
his ideas are organized at present before he can accept
a new conception, and the certainty that he will resist
the task of reorganization until convinced of its abso-
lute necessity, together constitute a difficulty which it
would be folly to minimize.
Nevertheless we still have before us the fundamental
problem of first principles. We have tried to solve it by
means of concepts borrowed from classical physics,
and the effort has led to incoherence and increasing
conflict. What shall we do? Could there possibly be any
answer except to stop borrowing and think for our-
_ selves, create our own conceptions, develop our own
science? And if we accept this task we must do our best
to go through with it. We are obliged to be teleologists
40
THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERSONALITY 41
because there is no other way of classifying the behavior

of a single individual except teleologically, and we are
bound to classify before we can organize, and hence
before we can think. We are not concerned with the
nature of the universe, but with the problem of pre-
diction and control in the field of psychology itself.
Let us begin our presentation by noticing the rela-
tionships involved in the assimilation of food. To the
infant especially, food isa problem; it must begin with
those foods which are easy to assimilate, and progress
to a more varied diet by easy stages. In a word, the
organism must learn to solve increasingly difficult
problems of assimilation, and develops because it does
solve them. Assimilation is not a matter of passive ac-
ceptance, but a task. When accomplished, the disturb-
ance of hunger is removed and the organism returns
to its normal state. In the effort to maintain this state
all parts of the organism coéperate.
Learning therefore is problem-solving, and the num-
ber of solutions achieved constitutes the organism’s
preparation. The more adequate the preparation, the
wider the variety of foods that can be used to maintain
the normal state, and the greater the organism’s free-
dom of choice and action, since it is no longer de-
pendent upon any particular food. It must likewise
learn to defend itself against germs and bacteria, to
adjust to changes in temperature, and to accustom itself
in many other ways to live in the world in which it finds
itself. Stability is a function of preparation.
Independence and freedom, insofar as they exist, are
thus the organism’s own achievement. Assistance can
be given by protecting the child against problems too
difficult for him, and by presenting new problems at
the proper time, but the learning itself must be accom-
42 SELF-CONSISTENCY
plished by the child. He must develop his own reper-

tory of solutions. Since his preparation at any given
time is limited, however, and his history marked by
failures as well as by successes, the scope of his freedom
is likely to be rather sharply defined. That is, he tends
to select and avoid situations according to his estimate
of his own abilities. On the basis of past experience,
he predicts in advance whether new situations will be
soluble or insoluble, and consequently whether his or-
ganization will be strengthened or disturbed if he
faces the problem.
It is this limitation of his abilities which constitutes
the individual’s standard of values, the line between
acceptance and avoidance. Thus we see that choice and
selection have their real basis in the individual him-
self, and the objective situation merely provides the
occasion for making a choice. To understand the indi-
vidual and the nature of his preparation, therefore, we
must study his choices.
It will be noticed that although our discussion of
assimilation began with the assimilation of food, it has
expanded into the psychological field quite naturally.
The relationships are precisely the same. We merely
shift the location of the problem from the internal
environment to the external, from the interoceptors
to the exteroceptors. Psychological as well as physical
development depends upon problem-solving, and inde-
pendence and freedom are attained in proportion as
the individual is prepared to maintain his normal or-
ganization in a greater variety of situations.
We are using the word “‘normality” here in a sense
proper to the individual organism, to indicate a non-
emergency state of organization. Learning begins with
a problem which produces or threatens to produce an
emergency state, and proceeds in the direction of a

state of stability. Emergency or emotional behavior is
simply reénforced behavior.t This change is usually
described in stimulus-response psychology as the elimi-
nation of useless random movements. A performance
that is just being learned involves the activity of the
whole organism, but after learning the activity is con-
fined to local processes. If the original excessive ac-
tivity continued, indeed, it would mean a failure to
learn. Logically, therefore, the evidence would indi-
cate that the process is not mechanical but economic, a
question of organic efficiency, codperation, and divi-
sion of labor. Problems must be solved to prevent the
too-frequent appearance of emergency behavior, which
would interfere with organic efficiency.
Since emergency behavior is usually identified with
negative behavior, however, let us point out that this
is only one alternative. The organism may regain its
efficiency by learning to avoid a disturbing situation,
but it may also accomplish this end by making more
persistent efforts to master the difficulty. In other
words, emergency behavior may be either positive or
negative; the criterion is not the direction but the lack
of preparation.? Moreover, after the activity has been
perfected either type of behavior may become unemo-
tional. Normal behavior is distinguished simply by its
ease and efficiency. Neither type of behavior, either
positive or negative, would serve the needs of the or-
ganism as an exclusive plan of action.
We come now to psychological assimilation, and face
a difficulty immediately in that the observer is unable
to perceive either what is to be assimilated, or what is
1. See below, p. 262 sq.
2. Cf. Stratton’s view that there is only one emotion, excitement.
44 3 SELF-CONSISTENCY
to do the assimilating. Everyone accepts the statement

that physical development is due to the assimilation
of food by the body because both food and body are
sensory or perceptual objects. But what scientific right
do we have to attribute psychological development to
the assimilation of meanings and values by the per-
sonality? Our answer is that if we are really deter-
mined to study psychological development, there seems
to be no other consistent course to follow. We must
conceptualize the organism not as a physical system
whose behavior obeys the laws of mechanics, which is
the physiological viewpoint, but as an organization
with psychological attributes, which can think, choose,
learn and remember. We cannot change the subject
matter of psychology, and unless we are willing to ad-
mit that thinking, choosing, learning and so on are
nothing more than illusions, why should we try to
work with a conception which denies our subject mat-
ter in advance? The personality is a concept of the
organism, created by us as a means of assisting our
understanding of psychological phenomena. Without
the concept of personality, we cannot study psycho-
logical topics, for physical systems by definition have
no psychology. We have not changed the organism, of
course, but we have changed our conception of it and
think about it differently.
Since the personality is an individual unit, it evades
the application of mechanistic principles which are
concerned only with averages. Hence a new set of
principles is necessary. The obvious alternative, of
course, is teleology. The old teleology, however, was
as sweeping in its claims as modern mechanism; both
teleology and mechanism have claimed universal ap-
plication and have recognized no limitations whatever.
‘THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERSONALITY 45
But it now appears that the two viewpoints are no

longer to be regarded as conflicting philosophic doc-
trines, one of which must be accepted and the other
rejected, but rather as different methods of scientific
approach, each of them appropriate and valuable in its
place. We need a new teleology, therefore, which
recognizes this distinction, and limits itself to the study
of individuals only.
Moreover, the new teleology must of necessity be
conceptual. By this we mean that the observer must be
able to find, as a means of unifying his interpretation,
a common purpose in all of the phenomena of an indi-
vidual organism’s behavior. This purpose is not to be
confused with sensory or perceptual goals, of course,
and cannot even be demonstrated on the perceptual
level. It is a purpose which is usually unconscious so far
as the acting organism is concerned, nor can it be made
conscious unless the data are treated conceptually. In
the sections to follow we shall endeavor to show that
the goal for which the individual strives is the main-
tenance of a unified organization.
1. Learning
Let us begin by attempting to conceptualize a spe-

cific instance of learning. Most of us have vivid recol-
lections of the persuasions
and cajoleries we demanded
of our parents before a castor oil bottle. There are
many persons who still profess an inability to drink
orange juice because it once served as a transparent
subterfuge for the castor bean. They still retain the
effects of their.early experience, and orange juice
evokes in them the same “response”’ as the castor oil
once did. Let us take this as an example of learning.
46 SELF-CONSISTENCY
In mechanistic psychology, our example would

doubtless be treated as a familiar illustration of the
conditioning of a reflex or substitution of stimulus. As
Pavlov would say, it is ‘the result of diverting the
nervous impulse from one physiological path to an-
other.” The orange juice stimulus innervates the same
motor fibers and arouses the same avoiding response as
the castor oil. The reason why the substitution did not
work the other way (as the maker of the mixture evi-
dently hoped) is simply that the avoiding response in
this case happens to be dominant. We are supposed to
accept as an explanation the statement that the organ-
ism is made that way. Our only duty as scientists is to
perform as many experiments as possible and to de-
scribe what happens; we are not trying to understand
the organism’s behavior, but to formulate the laws
which it obeys. We shall not delay to criticize the con-
ditioned reflex theory, however, except to point out
that it is nothing more than a theory, that it fails to
agree with the evidence of many extirpation experi-
ments, and that it assumes specific connections instead
of demonstrating them. But before offering an alterna-
tive explanation, let us consider another experiment.
In an investigation of form discrimination in dogs,
made in Pavlov’s laboratory, the results are also ex-
plained as phenomena of conditioning. Just before
each dog was fed, a circle of light was thrown on a
screen before him; but when an oval was shown no
food was given. After a few repetitions the animal was
so conditioned that saliva would flow at every appear-
ance of the circle, but never when the oval appeared.
1.1. P. Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes, tr. and ed. G. V. Anrep
(Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, 1928), p. 133 and pp.
290-2.
The two responses are classified by Pavlov as excitatory

and inhibitory. Following this preliminary training,
the shape of the original 2:1 oval was gradually made
more circular, until the ratio between the semi-axes
was 8:9, almost a perfect circle. Up to this point the
differentiation had been complete and constant, but
now it began to fail and after several repetitions dis-
' appeared altogether.
Meanwhile, says the account, the animal suddenly
changed its entire behaviour. Previously it had been
perfectly quiet. Now it began to jerk violently about,
and literally squealed with excitement. Its teeth were
evident as never before. It tore off the apparatus which
mechanically stimulated the skin, and even bit through
the tubes which connected the observer with the room
enclosing the dog. The animal’s excitement continued
after it was taken into the experimental room. There
it barked violently, which it had never done before.
Apparently it was in a condition of acute neurosis, a
condition which usually lasted for several months.1
As in all conditioned reflex experiments, here also
the explanation offered rests upon hypothetical proc-
esses in the brain. But now let us suggest an explana-
tion in terms of the organism as a whole. It will be
noticed that the effect of the circle is evidently to
organize the animal for one type of behavior, while
the sight of the oval induces a different organization.
As Pavlov’s own work on the physiology of digestion
shows, this process involves the whole organism; when
saliva is secreted into the mouth there is also a flow of
gastric juice into the stomach, and appropriate ad-
justments occur simultaneously in other parts of the
1. Loc, cit., p. 291. See previous note.
48 SELF-CONSISTENCY
body. These so-called reflexes never appear singly, and

it is apparent that we are dealing with a wave of change
involving the coéperation of all parts of the organism
in preparation for a certain type of activity. The idea
that each of the organic changes is a separate reflex
unit is merely an artifact produced by confining the
observation to a single organ. If we observe the whole
phenomenon as it occurs in nature, it is manifestly not
confined to the brain or salivary glands, but represents
a general adjustment of the entire organism. In fact,
the adjustment toward food may be present even in
the absence of physiological indications, as when the
animal is striving to obtain food.
The circle then, we may say, induces one dynamic
tendency while the oval induces another; given either
the circle or the oval alone, the organism is able to take
a unified attitude toward it. But the ambiguous figure
has the effect of inducing both tendencies; as Pavlov
says, there is a clash of excitation and inhibition. The
animal attempts to organize for two kinds of behavior
simultaneously, to do two things at once, and the re-
sult is disorganization and dynamic chaos. Further-
more, it is found that the unified attitude cannot be
maintained thereafter even in situations which were
not involved in the experiment.
Returning now to our original example, it is clear
that the orange juice-castor oil mixture is also such an
ambiguous stimulus. The orange juice induces a tend-
ency to accept, the castor oil a tendency to reject. But
instead of disorganization and neurosis, in this case we
observe the so-called phenomenon of dominance, and
the unity is preserved. As a protection against dis-
organization, in other words, the organism must learn
to take a unified attitude toward the combination as a
whole, and either behave toward orange juice as if it

were castor oil, or toward castor oil as if it were orange
juice. Learning thus appears to be fundamentally a
unifying process whose goal is an attitude free from
conflict.
It will be noticed, however, that neither neurosis
nor learning results except when tendencies interfere
with one another, which depends upon their proxim-
ity in time. For example, if the orange juice and castor
oil had been given separately, with sufficient time in-
tervening, there would have been no conflict. It is
therefore apparent that the temporal relationships be-
tween tendencies are just as significant for psychology
as the tendencies themselves, and perhaps even more
so.
This point comes out very clearly in the study of
traumatic neuroses, which are actual neuroses (not
psychoneuroses) brought about by sudden fright or
shock and attended by symptoms of profound dis-
organization, persistent anxiety for no apparent cause,
and recurrent dreams of the traumatic episode. It is
a curious fact that the severity of the symptoms in such
cases seems to be determined by the lack of expectation
rather than by the shock itself. If the event is foreseen
so that the adjustment can be made gradually, the
nervous consequences are usually slight. ‘Thus the con-
flict is due not to fear but surprise; in fact, the state of
fear or apprehension of danger seems to act as a pro-
tection. Freud says “In apprehension there is some-
thing which protects against fright and therefore
against the fright-neurosis.”’ }
1. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, tr. C. J. M.
Hubback (International Psychoanalytical Press, London and Vienna,
1922), p. 9.
50 SELF-CONSISTENCY
This means that the ability to foresee and predict

environmental happenings, to understand the world
one lives in and thus to be able to anticipate events
and prevent the necessity for sudden readjustments, is
an absolute prerequisite for the maintenance of unity.
The subject must feel that he lives in a stable and in-
telligible environment in which he knows what to do
and how to do it, and his attitude of confidence and
certainty is supported by this conviction. It is therefore
not the physical injury which causes the anxiety, but
the breakdown of the scheme of understanding and
prediction. In a world which is incomprehensible, no
one can feel secure. Indeed, it is found that a physical
injury prevents the onset of nervous symptoms, prob-
ably for no other reason than that it is comprehensible,
and by its very concreteness serves to confirm the pre-
dictability of the world and terminate the episode. In
the absence of injury the experience is rehearsed again
and again in the effort to understand and assimilate it.
- The interpretations which serve as the basis of pre-
diction, however, rest upon no other ground than in-
dividual experience. Immersed in an environment
which he does not and cannot understand, the individ-
ual is forced to create a substitute world which he can
understand and in which he puts his faith. He acts in
consistency with that conception, derives his standards
of value from it, and undertakes to alter it only when
convinced by further experience that it fails to serve
the goal of unity. Since this self-made scheme of life is
his only guarantee of security, its preservation soon
becomes a goal in itself. He seeks the type of experi-
ence which confirms and supports the unified attitude,
and rejects experiences which seem to promise a dis-
turbance of this attitude.
The apparent stability of the habit system is there-

_fore not to be interpreted as due to the fixation of path-
ways in the nervous system, but rather as the reflection
of a stable system of values. It follows that to change
the habits we must work on the values, not on the
habits themselves. Or, as the psychiatrist would put it,
we must treat not the symptom but the patient. New
values, substituted for the old, must be organized or
assimilated into the system as a whole.
A realistic psychology, in other words, must recog-
nize that prediction and control is the problem of the
subject as well as of the experimenter. Both are seek-
ing to formulate concepts which are pragmatically
valid and consistent with experience.
Our next example is M. C. Jones’ well-known ex-
periment on unconditioning.’ A three year old boy,
Peter, was afraid of white rats, rabbits, fur coats,
feathers, cotton wool, frogs, fish, and mechanical toys.
The origin of the fears was not known, but the rabbit
seemed to cause the greatest disturbance, and removal
of the fear of this animal was taken as the problem.
The successful technique was as follows: the child was
seated at a small table at the end of a room some 40
feet long, where he was served his mid-afternoon lunch
‘of crackers and milk. Just as he began to eat, the rabbit
was displayed at a distance in a cage, and then brought
slowly forward until “just far enough away not to dis-
turb his eating.” This point was marked, and the next
day the rabbit was brought still closer until signs of
disturbance again appeared. In this way the distance
was gradually decreased until the rabbit could be
1. M. C. Jones, “The Elimination of Children’s Fears,” Journal of
Experimental Psychology, vol. VII (1924), pp. 382-90.
52 SELF-CONSISTENCY
placed on the table beside the food, and finally in the

child’s lap. At the end of the experiment the child
would play with the rabbit with one hand and eat with
the other. The fear responses to cotton, the fur coat,
and feathers were found to have disappeared com-
pletely, and the child could tolerate rats and frogs at
least to the extent of carrying about the boxes in which
they were confined.
Again we have the conditions necessary to produce
conflict. The child is faced with an ambiguous dynamic
situation in which opposing tendencies are made to
interfere with one another, though in this case it is
clear that the experimenter has predicted the direction
of the dominance in advance, and in fact provided for
it. The ambiguity is slight, and the direction of unifica-
tion clearly indicated. ‘The explanation of the learn-
ing, however, must lie in the subjective revaluation of
the situation by the child in the effort to remove the
conflict. The situation containing the rabbit at a dis-
tance is assimilated, and the child remains undisturbed
while the cage is moved closer. Then a new conflict is
precipitated, and the process of assimilating the new
situation begins.
Most textbooks treat this experiment as an illustra-
tion of the process of conditioning, but as a matter of
fact it actually violates Pavlov’s definition of condi-
tioning. The rabbit is not a signal for food, nor does
the child make the same response to the rabbit that it
makes to the food. It merely fails to show the avoiding
response and nothing more.
Indeed, the same experiment can be performed
quite as well without food. All that is necessary is to
provide a situation which supports the normal organi-
zation of the child, and to make sure that the disturb-

ing stimulus is kept within the child’s tolerance. We
have used this method successfully in the instance of a
little girl just past two years of age, who had been
knocked down on the street by a police dog and
severely startled. Though she had formerly been un-
afraid of animals, she was now terrified at the sight of
any dog or cat. For some weeks thereafter, while play-
ing alone or after being put to bed, she was often over-
heard talking to herself, saying, “Doggie won’t bite
me, Doggie won't bite me,”’ which resembles the efforts
to assimilate the situation noted in cases of traumatic
neurosis. Held in her father’s arms, she was taken near
small dogs and urged to speak to them. This was con-
tinued at irregular intervals for about a month, after
which she was taken to visit children who owned and
played with a friendly dog. Her parents then induced
her to pat the dog’s head, shake its paw, and so on, and
within a few days every sign of fear had completely
disappeared.
1. Lecky’s favorite illustration in this connection may be quoted
from his lectures: “I had just begun to develop this theory of unified
action when, one afternoon in the country, my eldest daughter,
aged 314, was awakened by a heavy thunder and lightning storm. I
have seldom seen a storm more violent. She was sleeping when the
lightning struck a tree about 50 yards from the house. There fol-
lowed a terrific clap of thunder. The whole house shook, and every-
body retreated into his skin. Upstairs I heard the children shrieking
and yelling. I ran up and she was standing up in bed trembling like
a leaf. Obviously the storm could not be stopped. So I pulled up the
shade, drew a chair to the window, took her on my lap, and said:
‘Now every time the lightning flashes the sky goes “Boom!” We'll
play a game and see if we can say “Boom” before the sky does!’ We
didn’t have to wait long before the next flash. ‘BOOM!’ I yelled
before the thunder came, and I pretended to be quite pleased. We
sat there shouting ‘Boom’ and soon she joined in, and inside of
fifteen minutes her disturbance was entirely past. Today she has no
fear of lightning whatever.”—Editor’s note.
54 SELF-CONSISTENCY
It may be objected that mechanism in psychology

does not stand or fall with the conditioned reflex
hypothesis, for there were mechanistic formulations
such as the drainage theory before the work of Pavlov
and Watson, and others may be expected to follow.
The real issue is not, however, the accuracy of any par-
ticular mechanistic theory, but the larger question of
whether or not behavior is automatic or voluntary,
whether the organism is passive or active.
Let us note that when a second stimulus is intro-
duced which is dynamically inconsistent with the one
to which the organism is then responding, the result is
usually described not as a conflict, but a distraction.
We may restate the question, therefore, to ask whether
the organism really is passive in this situation or
whether it makes an active attempt to overcome the
distraction. This question received a conclusive an-
swer some years ago in Morgan’s demonstration that
extra effort is put forth when distractions appear.t In
many cases, indeed, the subject exceeds the speed of
work attained before the distraction was introduced.
A still simpler answer to the question of passivity vs.
activity is found in the fact that attempts are often
made to avoid situations which involve conflict. This
detail is not allowed to appear in Pavlov’s experiments,
for the animals are taken to the laboratory and
strapped in a harness so that avoidance is impossible.
When Krasnogorski, employing the same technique
minus the use of force, presented ambiguous stimuli
to children, however, they refused to return for
further experiments, although during the training
series when single stimuli were used they seemed to
1. John J. B. Morgan, ““The Overcoming of Distraction and Other
Resistances,” Archives of Psychology, No. 35 (1916), pp. 1-84.
enjoy the experience.! Outside of the laboratory, the

devices and subterfuges employed to avoid conflict are
often elaborated with great ingenuity.
If it be true that learning is essentially a means of
resolving conflicts, it follows that a conflict must always
be present before the learning can occur. This conclu-
sion, indeed, seems inevitable from a theoretical stand-
point, even though the nature of the ambiguity in any
particular instance of learning may be difficult to
demonstrate. Conflict then is a necessary accompani-
ment of personality development, and the progressive
assimilation of disturbing stimuli the only practical
means by which a stable organization can be attained.
But in that case a well-adjusted personality is not a
matter of emotional habits so much as an emotional
achievement, though after the learning has been ac-
complished, of course, there is no apparent difference.
If the habit theory were applied in a literal manner,
however, and the child shielded from conflicts in order
to exercise him more thoroughly in so-called habits of
confidence and cheerfulness, we could confidently pre-
dict a profound maladjustment later as the outcome of
his lack of preparation. It seems to us that behaviorism
must give up the habit theory and frankly recognize
the organism as a problem-solver before it can con-
sistently explain its own experiments.
It is also necessary to revise our conception of the
stimulus, for instead of setting off a single reaction arc,
it is now seen to have the function of supporting or
reénforcing the orientation of the organism as a whole.
In the experiment previously cited, the presence of
1. Cf. N. I. Krasnogorski, “The Conditioned Reflexes and Children’s
Neuroses,” American Journal of Diseases of Children, vol. XXX
(1925), pp. 760-4.
56 SELF-CONSISTENCY
food when the child is hungry tends to support a state

or organization which is favorable to the reception of
food, while the sight of the rabbit tends to support a
state which is favorable to flight, and unfavorable to
the reception of food. When the learning process acts
to eliminate the conflict, however, the dominant atti-
tude takes over the supports of the vanquished. The
same is true in the case of distraction; once a person
grows accustomed to working under noisy conditions,
for example, he may often find that he cannot work so
well without the noise.
If we accept Pavlov’s distinction between excitatory
and inhibitory processes at face value, however, or the
-behavioristic distinction between positive and nega-
tive behavior, we might very easily make the mistake,
as psychiatry has already done, of assuming that normal
development consists in simply extending the environ-
mental field in which the positive attitude can be main-
tained successfully. But the flaw in this conception is
that the division of behavior into two groups does not
have an organic basis but is simply a classification em-
ployed by the observer. It is a valuable device for im-
pressing the idea of conflict upon us, but it assumes
that the organism is divided against itself. In point of
fact, a conflict does not mean a struggle between posi-
tive and negative forces in the nervous system any
more than it means the suppression of the unconscious
mind by the conscious. Physiologically speaking, all
behavior is excitatory or positive in an absolute sense,
and inhibitory only in the relative sense that it may
displace the behavior which we happen to be observ-
ing. Nevertheless, the necessity for preserving the
unity of organization remains, and also the fact that
the organism must solve its problems one at a time. It
therefore follows that a conflict may represent a clash

between any two modes of organization which are at-
tempted simultaneously. We recognize both the
variety and the unity of organic orientations when we
say that attention is selective.1
We must also say a word at this point in regard to
_ the refusal to attempt assimilation. When a situation
is avoided, of course, the conflict in respect to it is not
removed, and that situation remains an unsolved prob-
lem. There is nothing unusual about this, for when
an organism is free to choose, it frequently refuses to
undertake the risks involved in facing certain conflicts,
as in the case of the children who served as subjects in
Krasnogorski’s experiment. Each must judge his own
strength. But is it not strange logic to say that the
“escape mechanisms”’ resorted to as the means of such
avoidance are themselves to be regarded as neurotic
symptoms, as is contended by psychiatry? If a person
becomes actually neurotic because he tries and fails to
solve a conflict, we are surely mistaken in believing a
person neurotic when he refuses to face the situation,
especially if he avoids it successfully and thus perhaps
escapes an actual neurosis. The point in question is
not the appropriate moral attitude to take toward the
1. The attempt to classify attitudes as positive and negative en-
counters an obstacle in that the characteristics of attitudes which
are said to belong in the positive group cannot be defined descrip-
tively except in negative terms, i.e., by the absence of symptoms of
conflict. It would be absurd to suppose that the positive attitude
must always be accompanied by a flow of saliva, for example. Thus it
usually happens, as we saw earlier, that the terms come to mean almost
the same as desirable and undesirable attitudes, and for purposes of
presentation we have fallen in with this usage when it seemed advis-
able. Later, however, we shall endeavor to show that a more justifi-
able contrast is that between a unified and disorganized attitude,
regardless of the specific activity involved.
58 SELF-CONSISTENCY
patient’s evasive behavior, but whether we have any

scientific right to explain this behavior as a symptom
- of mental illness or unconscious conflict when there is
no indication of disorganization.
It must be remembered that although the situations
encountered by the organism occur in series and merge
into one another continuously, a corresponding series
of sudden shifts from one attitude of the organism to
another would promptly result in disorganization.
The same attitude must be maintained in spite of en-
vironmental changes, a fact which is recognized in
mechanistic psychology as evidence of “perseveration.”
Therefore, if the organism is unwilling to undertake a
given task of assimilation, it must avoid or prevent the
appearance of the disturbing situation; or, if this is
not possible, it must at least endeavor to detect the ap-
proach of the situation in order to have sufficient time
to make the adjustment gradually. If a situation has
been assimilated, of course, the attitude does not have
to be changed.
Thus, even if a subject refuses to face the situation
in which we happen to be interested, he is still obliged
to face preliminary situations which would tend to
lead in that direction, so that learning does not cease,
but is displaced to an earlier point in the series. He
now learns to avoid “‘signals,” and the observer who
attempts to understand the behavior as an adjustment
to the situation in which it occurs may well find it in-
comprehensible. The point to be emphasized, how-
ever, is that this learning is not essentially different
from any other, and has precisely the same goal. To
call such behavior psychoneurotic, on the assumption
1. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, pp. 9-10.
that it cannot be accounted for as due to learning, but

must be the manifestation of a disorder called a neu-
rosis, betrays a limited conception of learning, to say
the least. Is it really so hard to understand why the
patient manifests “resistance” when the analyst en-
deavors to reproduce the conflict situation?
One of Pavlov’s pupils, Krestevnikov, worked for a
year attempting to establish a conditioned reflex by
presenting the substitute stimulus after the original,
and failed. The experiment consisted in sounding a
metronome immediately after the dog began to eat,
instead of before the food appeared. If the conditioned
reflex theory were correct, however, the substitution
should have been obtained, since the auditory center
and the food center were active simultaneously. Under
these conditions, according to the theory, a connection
between the two should have been established. But
the facts agree exactly with the teleological interpreta-
tion, for when the bell comes after the food it has no
preparatory function, but is merely a slight and in-
effective distraction. The significance of this explana-
tion is made much clearer, however, if we imagine this
experiment performed with two stimuli which reén-
force opposed tendencies, such as food and an electric
shock. In that case, if the shock were not too strong, it
would make no difference so far as the attitude was con-
cerned whether it came before or after the food was
presented; it would cease to act as a disturbance re-
gardless of the order of appearance, provided that the
food were not removed. If the shock occurred before
the food, it would be a signal; if it occurred while eat-
ing was in progress it would be a distraction. But in
either case, with sufficient repetition, it would be as-
similated and the unity maintained.
60 SELF-CONSISTENCY
2. Pleasure
If our theory of learning is sound, it must also ac-

count for the subjective phenomenon of pleasure,
which itself has often been urged to be the goal of
learning. Again, let us begin with a homely example.
The taste of olives is to some a pleasure, to others it is
insupportable. How can we account for this difference
of taste?
We select this example because it is obviously im-
possible to explain the liking for olives by the usual
device of postulating a native or instinctive basis. It
is recognized that the enjoyment of olives must be
acquired, and that practically everyone finds the taste
at first to be unpleasant. In other words, an originally
unpleasant experience must be transformed into a
pleasant one.
Now, at least to all appearances, Pavlov has trained
dogs to enjoy electric shocks by giving the hungry
animals a weak shock just before food was presented.
After the weak shock had been assimilated a stronger
one was given, and so on until each animal could with-
stand currents of surprising intensity with perfect
equanimity. We are told that every sign of defense had
completely disappeared; the animal would merely
prick up its ears while its mouth watered with “true
alimentary saliva.” But the account of this learning
from the standpoint of dynamic unification is not, of
course, identical with that given by Pavlov.
The fact to which we wish to call particular atten-
tion is that the animal had been fed many times in the
laboratory before the experiment began. This was
necessary to train the dogs to tolerate the harness.
There can be no reasonable doubt, therefore, that the

hungry animal was already organized for the reception
of food and his ‘‘food-seeking reflex” in operation
before the shock was applied as well as after. The shock
might therefore be termed a distraction, a slight con-
flict which is assimilated and mastered. A strong shock,
on the other hand, would have organized the animal
for escape. The point is, therefore, that the animal was
able to learn to keep going on a straight line, dynami- °
cally speaking, in the face of a difficulty, and this is the
explanation of the assumed pleasurable effect. When
the learning has been completed, of course, the shock
loses its disturbing effect and becomes a support.
The account of what happens dynamically when a
person eats an olive for the first time is not essentially
different from this. The customary preliminaries to
the meal have established the “‘food-seeking reflex” in
advance, but when the olive is tasted there is a tend-
ency to revulsion, especially if the subject has not been
warned and is taken by surprise. Usually, however, it
is understood that the liking for olives is an achieve-
ment, and most people probably approach the task as
something of a challenge to their self-control. ‘They
determine to consume the olive in spite of its briny
taste, and after some practice discover themselves
among’ the gastronomically sophisticated group who
enjoy the experience. The motive is not the attainment
of pleasure but the attainment of unity.
Tobacco, coffee, beer, whiskey, and some soft drinks
are originally unpleasant in taste or odor, and the lik-
ing for them is achieved somewhat in the spirit of
sport. The pride of accomplishment on the part of
those who take their coffee without sugar or their whis-
key straight is often quite obvious. It will be noticed
62 SELF-CONSISTENCY
that these substances remain on the frontier of con-

trol, however, and are continuously pleasurable simply
for that reason. If we could learn to tolerate still more
bitter, acrid, burning sensations, other pleasures would
replace our liking for coffee, tobacco, and alcohol.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of the relationship
between difficulty and the pleasure of self-unification,
however, is found in the field of esthetics, and espe-
cially in the psychology of music. The following de-
scription is taken from Moore’s admirable monograph,
The Genetic Aspect of Consonance and Dissonance.
“It matters not with what period of musical history
we concern ourselves,’ says Moore, “there is always
evidence that the great composers were being continu-
ally taken to task on the ground of impossible har-
mony. Even Mozart was attacked by Hans George
Nageli for certain progressions in his “Jupiter” sym-
phony; Beethoven became notorious for outraging the
tender feelings of theorists of his day; fifty years later
Wagner was struggling to persuade the world to en-
dure harmonies which were to become shortly after-
wards a chief resource for popular nights at the sym-
phony.” ?
The only tonal combination which was pleasurable
to the Greeks was the octave. Aristotle asks, ““Why is
the octave the most beautiful consonance?” and ‘“‘why
is antiphonal singing (i. e., in octaves) more beautiful
than singing in unison?” ? Among experienced musi-
cians parallel fourths and fifths were occasionally
played on some instruments, though the experts were
1. Henry Thomas Moore, Psychological Monographs, vol. XVII
(1914), No. 2, p. 1. By permission of the American Psychological Asso-
ciation, Princeton, N. J.
2. Quoted by Moore, loc. cit., pp. 23-4.
evidently experiencing pleasure in effects which others

did not appreciate. By the fifth century A. D., however,
the doubling of the melody in fourths and fifths had
become quite common; at this time the third was
ranked as a paraphony. But gradually the smaller and
more dissonant intervals also became capable of arous-
ing esthetic pleasure. In the fourteenth century the
conservative Pope John XXII forbade singing in
thirds, on the ground that this interval served only to
intoxicate and not to soothe the ear. Fifty-five years
later the prohibition was set aside. The advance of the
third and sixth was accompanied by a decline in the
popularity of the fourth and fifth, but by the sixteenth
century the minor seventh began to compete with the
third.
“We may say,” writes Moore, ‘‘that the history of
each of our present consonances has apparently been a
gradual development as dissonance, followed by a rela-
tively short transition period, and later a gradual de-
velopment as consonance. The typical case, in which
we may observe all the gradations, is that of the third.
As a dissonance it was at first too harsh for any use at
all, but afterwards was considered a useful interval if
properly restricted. Then follows a transition during
which some seem to have felt it as a consonance while
others still considered it dissonant. Later comes its
general admission as a parallel interval, and still later
its use in the final chord of a cadence. Each stage, we
have seen, had its characteristic pleasure value. As a
decided dissonance it was essentially unpleasant; as a
mild dissonance it was pleasant according to the con-
text; as a bare consonance it was essentially pleasant,
as for example to Monteverde, who confessed his in-
64 SELF-CONSISTENCY
ordinate fondness for thirds; when it becomes a more

perfect consonance it begins to take on a more empty
character, as is instanced by our present growing dis-
satisfaction with such music as that of Donizetti. . . .
The fifth today . . . has an unpleasant barrenness for
most ears, so that it is not used consecutively except
for particular effects. The seventh, altogether too harsh
for the twelfth century ear, comes later to give much
pleasure in the mildly dissonant chord of the dominant
seventh, and the boldness of contemporary radicals
augurs for it an eventual transition to the recent status
of the third, that of the most pleasant of conson-
ances.” }
Laboratory experiments also showed that as a difh-
cult interval is heard more frequently, the degree of
consonance reported increases. ““The bare conson-
ance,” says Moore, “‘possesses the highest pleasantness
of all intervals, but increasing consonance means for
it a marked affective decline. . . .”?
Moore concludes that “tonal synthesis may be con-
ceived as an undertaking, attended by success or fail-
ure on the part of the hearing organism. Success is ex-
perienced as the characteristic quality of consonance,
failure as that of dissonance. The inherent feeling
value of a particular interval is a function of two fac-
tors—success and degree of difficulty. It is the barely
successful synthesis, in which the individual accom-
plishes with difficulty the unification of a manifold,
that he finds the keenest pleasure. If the synthesis is
effected without effort he has little awareness of his
accomplishment, and therefore little pleasure. If, on
the other hand, in spite of his synthesizing activity, he
1. Loc. cit., pp. 38-39.
2. Loc. cit., p. 62.
is baffled by the complexity of the manifold to be uni-

fied, he experiences acute displeasure.” 1
Several times we have called attention to the fact,
omitted by Pavlov, that the same set or motive must
both precede and follow the disturbance as a condition
of its unification. This point comes out very neatly in
Moore’s study also. “The twelfth century musician,”
he writes, “expressed satisfaction with the third—for
him a dissonance—provided it was preceded and fol-
lowed by a consonance, and we ourselves do as much
for the dominant seventh which we still class as a dis-
sonance.” 2
The relationship between the pleasure derived from
an accomplishment and the difficulty involved in it
may likewise be observed in the play of children. With
infants, according to Watson, loud noises and loss of
support are the original fear stimuli from which other
fears develop by substitution. Yet if we observe chil-
dren a few years older we find them taking great de-
light in setting off firecrackers and learning how to
jump down from a height. Since the games regarded as
pleasurable lie on the border-line of mastery, a list of
the individual’s preferences in games may serve as a
partial index of the degree of preparation. As the diffi-
culty of a game diminishes, satiation begins. Work
may also take the form of a game, the business man
often gaining pleasure from overcoming the difficulties
of manufacture or sales competition; the craftsman
from demonstrating his skill in the control of plastic
materials; the scientist from solving experimental
problems or unifying his view of conflicting theories.
The same principle applies when sexual pleasure is
1. Loc. cit., p. 19.
2. Loc. cit., p. 33.
66 SELF-CONSISTENCY
treated conceptually. Sex practices develop on a scale

of graduated difficulty, and satiation appears as each
stage is passed, as in games. Behavior which represents
an apparently permanent halt or “fixation” at an in-
termediate stage, due to unusually severe conflicts, is
commonly classified as abnormal. Even with normal
persons, however, moral, social and economic diffi-
culties are so abundant that conflict may be regarded
as almost a constant factor in sex behavior, at any rate
before marriage, with the result that introspectively
the pleasure derived from this source may seem not
only superior to but different from other pleasures.
But the idea of attaching distinctive forms of pleas-
ure to each motive separately seems to be quite unten-
able. Conceptually, all pleasure appears to trace back
to the primary motive of unification, instinct theories
to the contrary notwithstanding. Even the pleasure
connected with eating is not an exception, for the food
which can be assimilated at different ages is graduated
in difficulty and digestive problems are especially com-
mon among infants and invalids. The recognition that
pleasures have a common source makes it very easy,
however, to assume that the common factor is a single
instinct. Psychoanalysis, in tracing the origin of all
pleasurable sensations to a sexual basis, appears to
have made precisely this error, for even the pleasure
derived from literature, music, and art is attributed to
repressed sexuality working itself out in disguised form
through the mechanism of sublimation.
As a result of this identification between pleasure
and sexual expression, Freud is enabled to interpret all
unifying tendencies as sexual in nature, and he has
done exactly this in his conception of the life instinct,
or Eros. In the search for an opposing instinct to ac-
"THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERSONALITY 67
count for disjunctive tendencies, however, he postu-

lates a common psychological basis for mental conflict
and social hostility, which if true had escaped notice,
even by Freud, until the exigencies of theory-making
brought it forward.
Instincts are classifications of behavior based on the
assumption that all acts which seem similar to the ob-
server are expressions of a single force. The number
of instincts in any system is therefore a direct measure
of the condensation achieved; as new relationships ap-
pear, some classifications absorb others and expand,
with the result that the list grows progressively shorter.
It is well known that the number of theoretically
postulated instincts is diminishing. But although a
plurality of instincts may be reduced to a duality,
further progress is impossible in an instinct psychology
because of the need of explaining conflict. The attain-
ment of a monistic scheme demands that the theory of
instinctive forces be abandoned in its entirety, just as
the concept of physical forces has been abandoned in
the new physics.
Thus a pleasure cannot be understood except in
terms of its history; it came into existence because a
difficulty was overcome, but as the difficulty diminishes
it is destined to pale, so that eventually the affective
value of most behavior approaches neutrality. Hence,
since the pleasure to be gained by repeating the same
performance is likely to be limited, we arrive at the
unorthodox conclusion that continuous pleasure de-
mands the continuous solution of new problems,
rather than a condition of relief and passivity. The
problems need not be of any practical importance,
however, and may even be quite artificial, as in games
and similar amusements. It is also true that conflicts
68 SELF-CONSISTENCY
may be overcome artificially by the use of drugs, and

pleasure gained in that manner. But the generalization
that pleasure consists in the removal of conflict by some
means or other appears to hold true in all cases.
Opposed to this conception is the Freudian doctrine
that the pleasure principle has an instinctive basis,
and must be replaced by the reality principle in the
interests of self-preservation. The renunciation of the
pleasure principle is unavoidable, even though its re-
pression by the reality principle results in pain. Happi-
ness, in Freud’s opinion, is unattainable, for although
“it is the pleasure principle which draws up the pro-
gram of life’s purpose,”’ on the other hand, “‘its pro-
gram is in conflict with the whole world.” The pleasure
of the individual and the welfare of society cannot be
reconciled, for every individual in his search for pleas-
ure is opposed to every other. Each is intent upon the
gratification of his own instinctive demands, which are
insatiable. Education, custom, and civilization itself
are therefore to be understood as necessary devices of
restraint to prevent the outbreak of open competition
and save the race from self-destruction. The individual
is not aware of his hostility toward society because it
has been repressed into the unconscious.
These observations bring out the inadequacy of the
habit theory also. For it is obvious, as Dunlap has also
shown, that repetition may have the effect not of
strengthening, but of eliminating a response; hence
the concept of learning as the fixation of reaction pat-
terns by exercise must be regarded as simply a mech-
anistic fiction. Habits exhibit no more constancy
than pleasures. The facts demand that learning be
conceived not as more practiced and skillful subservi-
ence to environmental changes, but rather as the
achievement of self-control and the ability to maintain

a line of action in spite of environmental distractions.
3. Emotion
When we compare the behavior on the first and last

trials of a learning series, it is apparent that a marked
reduction has taken place in the amount of energy ex-
pended on the task. Experimentally, however, the sav-
ing is measured only by the decrease in the time
consumed and the distance traversed, and since these
results are brought about by more efficient use of the
striped musculature, we find that theories ‘of learning
also deal primarily with changes which involve only
the striped muscles. It rarely or never happens that the
skeletal and visceral behavior is studied together as a
activity would readily be admitted. Indeed, since the
unit, although the presence of appropriate visceral
visceral behavior cannot be conveniently studied while
the animal is in motion, and since the technique de-
manded even when the animal is immobilized is un-
familiar to most psychologists, the visceral phenomena
are often considered as belonging to physiology. ‘Thus,
because of the division of labor in the experimental
approach, the unity of the whole phenomenon has
been neglected, so that we study changes in the spatial
pattern under the head of learning, and changes in
visceral behavior under a different name—‘‘emotion.”
Watson touches on the point we have in mind when
he speaks of training the viscera, but he then empha-
sizes the breach again by contrasting visceral with
verbal learning.
Instead of ascribing the increased efficiency to one
group of functions only, the facts would be stated more
70 ’ SELF-CONSISTENCY
accurately by saying that learning increases the efh-

ciency of performance of the organism as a whole. The
excess of energy expended on the early trials is no
longer necessary. In fact, if the original excessive activ-
ity continued it would mean a failure to learn. ‘The
evidence suggests that the energy expended depends
not on the task itself, but on the estimate of the energy
needed, that is, on the judgment of difficulty. Weight-
lifting experiments show that the muscle contraction
varies in strength with the apparent size of the weight.
It has already been noted that the energy output is
often increased when a distraction is introduced, and
we now suggest that such reénforcement is all that is
meant by the term emotion. When a given action tend-
ency meets with interference, and the reserve resources
of the organism are brought to its assistance, the
organic condition corresponds to what is called an
emotional state. If escape is difficult, the reénforce-
ment of that tendency constitutes fear. If rejection is
interfered with, anger appears. If the sex motive is re-
énforced, the emotion is that of lust. When the scien-
tific worker meets with a difficulty in his thinking, here
also the increased energy with which he seeks a solu-
tion may be regarded as an emotional phenomenon,
though we have names only for those emotions which
are more widely experienced. The distinctive char-
acter of the emotion depends upon the tendency, and
the amount of emotion upon the degree of reénforce-
ment.
In the long view, then, emotion is not an independ-
ent element to be studied as an entity in itself, but the
characteristic of a habit in its immature stages. Emo-
tional behavior does not signalize the emergence of a
new force to be controlled by suppression, but the ap-
pearance of a new situation which the organism is not

prepared to meet. In fact, although emotion is asso-
ciated descriptively with inefficiency and lack of con-
trol, it would seem to be in itself a means of assisting
the acquisition of control. As Stratton says, ‘‘Excite-
ment and emotion generally are not primarily and
usually causes of inadequacy, or reactions which re-
duce one’s adequacy. They rather usually are reac-
tions which increase our adequacy; they supplement
our routine modes of response which at the moment
appear inadequate.” 1 The real problem is not to con-
trol emotion, but to control the choice of which tend-
ency shall receive emotional reénforcement.
In other words, emotion seems to be a controversial
problem chiefly because it has been isolated from its
natural context. The James-Lange theory, for example,
is interested in the visceral changes merely as a source
of organic sensations, and neglects the relation of these
phenomena to the activity as a whole. Instead of say-
ing that the action comes first and the emotion after-
ward, we should say that the tendency comes first and
the reénforcement afterward. And even so the re-
énforcement is not a constant accompaniment of the
tendency, but tends to disappear. Although Watson
criticizes James, he also makes the mistake of placing
“emotional responses” in a separate category, and re-
marks that ““our emotional life grows and develops like
our other sets of habits.” 2 Yet it is obvious that emo-
tional behavior is really the opposite of habitual be:
1. George M. Stratton, ‘““The Function of Emotion as Shown Par-
ticularly in Excitement,” Psychological Review, vol. XXXV_ (1928),
PP- 351-66. By permission of the American Psychological Association,
Princeton, N. J.
2. John B. Watson, Behaviorism (The People’s Institute Publishing
Co., N. Y., 1925), p- 131.
+
72 SELF-CONSISTENCY
havior. McDougall, who treats the tendencies as
instincts, goes to the opposite extreme, for he not only
combines emotion and instinct but keeps them com-
bined; in his view the emotion is the core of the in-
stinct, and remains practically unchanged in spite of
learning and experience.
Moreover, the effect of learning on a given perform-
ance is to eliminate the need of attention as well as the
need of emotion. Consciousness is withdrawn from a
problem after it is solved, and directed toward a new
problem. Even the memory of the situation in which
the learning took place is usually forgotten, for as soon
as the response has been unified and the conflicts elimi-
nated the attention must be turned elsewhere. Given
the fact that problems must be attended to one at a
time, and that new problems are arising constantly, it
is obvious that solved problems must pass out of con-
sciousness as a prime condition of learning, just as emo-
tion must disappear likewise. Typically, the learning
of a single habit may be described as a change from
inefficient, emotional, and attentive behavior to efhi-
cient, unemotional, and unconscious behavior. Other-
wise the unity of the organization could not be
preserved.
As long ago as 1885, we find Dewey speaking of “‘the
familiar fact that emotion as excitement disappears
with definiteness of habit,” yet we have seen that emo-
tion continues to be treated independently of learning,
while the orthodox explanation of forgetting is atrophy
by disuse, a view based on artificial experiments in the
memorizing of nonsense syllables. These are the fruits
of mechanism applied to psychology. Psychoanalysis,
on the other hand, disregarding experiments and bas-
ing its theory on clinical evidence, holds that memory

and emotion are often forced out of consciousness into
a region called ‘the unconscious,’ where they remain
active simultaneously with conscious processes. It thus
telescopes the time factor completely, assumes that all
tendencies are operative at all times, and hence in-
evitably comes to the conclusion that a person cannot
be internally adjusted until all conflicts between tend-
encies are removed, which it admits to be impossible.
In the Freudian scheme every conflict that has ever
arisen should be reproduced, faced, and solved; the
apparent advantage of responding to signals and thus
avoiding conflicts is illusory, for the conflict persists
nevertheless. But does not this show that Freud’s own
goal is the unity of the organization, and that his pes-
simism arises from a misconception of the function and
purpose of forgetting?
It may be interesting in passing to note how some of
the critics of teleology themselves deal with the prob-
lem of purpose. Speaking for behaviorism, Kuo says
that “the purpose is preconceived or created by the
experimenter—the animal itself has no aim or goal.’ }
That is, the purpose is in the experimenter, and if the
experimenter and subject change places it appears that
the locus of the purpose must also be reversed; pur-
posive organisms therefore cannot be observed, and
hence have no place in the scientific scheme. Psycho-
analysis, which attacks the teleology of Adler and
claims to be based upon psychic determinism, actually
devotes its whole attention to frustrated aims; but the
aims belong to the libido, not to the organism.
These subtleties in the past have played a role which
1. Zing Yang Kuo, loc. cit., p. 424. For a more extended discussion
see, below, Chapter X.
74 SELF-CONSISTENCY
in a practical sense was indispensable, in that scientists

loyal to mechanism were thereby enabled to study be-
havior without being crippled by conflicts. From a
theoretical standpoint, however, it seems obvious that
they are temporary expedients which sooner or later
must be discarded. Freud himself had grown dissatis-
fied with his earlier formulation and was in the midst
of making alterations at the time of his death.
Among those who favor teleology, McDougall also
locates the purpose in the instincts instead of the indi-
vidual, and we note that he is favorable to psycho-
analysis, although his conception is by no means
identical. Adler and the Gestalt psychologists, how-
ever, both emphasize the individual as a unit and take
a position opposed to analysis. Adler’s demonstration
that a common plan and purpose runs through a wide
variety of apparently unrelated symptoms has a real-
istic quality that is singularly convincing. Neverthe-
less, it is impossible to systematize the Adlerian
psychology as it stands, for the assumption that all
symptoms can be explained as purposeful and organ-
ized efforts to achieve superiority constitutes a logical
denial of conflict and disorganization, which in turn
seems to be the only explanation of the feeling of in-
feriority. But if the goal of unifying the organization
be substituted for the goal of superiority, it is evident
that conflict can never be eliminated completely, and
the contradiction disappears.
In Gestalt psychology, which confines itself mainly
to the perceptual aspect of learning, the implied pur-
pose at least seems to be the closing of gaps in percep-
tion and the restoration of dynamic equilibrium. It
seems not impossible that closure might also be in-
terpreted as the achievement of an adequate solution
of a conflict, and dynamic equilibrium as dynamic

unity.
The broad perspective requires that learning be con-
ceived of not as a series of separate adjustments, but
as a single continuous process of development. The
achievement of unity in particular situations would
then be regarded as the manifestation of a general
tendency which aims at a unified attitude toward the
life situation as a whole. Development would have as
its goal not only the achievement of a unified system
of behavior, but a stable attitude of preparedness and
confidence.
It is true that the solutions of problems must be
worked out one at a time, yet the evidence would indi-
cate that after a situation has been mastered, the sepa-
rate responses lose their identity, and merge into the
general behavior repertory. Or it might be still more
accurate to say that learning from the first is an altera-
tion of the whole behavior system, rather than the
addition of a new unit of behavior. For example, when
a conflict appears and a new situation must be assimi-
lated, the system seems to be disturbed as a whole,
with the result that during emotional episodes even the
most stereotyped acts may lose their precision and regu-
larity. This explains why emotion is regarded as the
cause instead of the result of inadequacy. Moreover,
the disorganization which follows, in case the conflict
proves insoluble, is also not specific but general. In the
absence of conflict, on the other hand, the affective
attitude is much the same in all habitual behavior,
regardless of what the subject is doing.
The problem of maintaining unity and of preserving
the integrity of the habit system is therefore the same,
for until an organized system of behavior has begun to
76 SELF-CONSISTENCY
develop there is nothing, psychologically, to be dis-
organized. And yet the organism cannot continue to
develop, or succeed in maintaining its unity, except by
repeatedly facing new conflicts and risking the security
it wishes to attain. Learning is not mechanical but ad-
venturous. If a certain type of situation has been as-
similated, its presence tends to support the attitude of
confidence, but if it has not been assimilated the
normal attitude is threatened, and the process of as-
similation itself brings about a temporary disturbance.
Thus the problem of development is that of maintain-
ing and strengthening the normal attitude by gradually
assimilating the situations which formerly had a dis-
turbing effect. ‘To use a spatial metaphor, the field of
normal behavior grows at the expense of the abnormal.
The spatial conception of personality, and the idea
of personality development as the growth of a spatial
field, far from being novel is familiar to every one.
Such expressions as broad-minded, well-rounded, etc.,
as contrasted with narrow-minded and eccentric, are
in common use. Adler speaks of the neurotic as having
a small action circle. Perhaps the clearest illustration
of a spatial conception of development, however, is
found in Lewin’s discussion of the role of environ-
mental forces in child psychology.
“The ‘life-space’ of the infant,” he says, “is extremely
small and undifferentiated. This is just as true of its
perceptual as of its effective space. With the gradual
extension and differentiation of the child’s life-space, a
larger environment and essentially different facts ac-
quire psychological existence, and this is true also with
respect to dynamic factors. ‘The child learns in increas-
ing degree to ‘control’ the environment. At the same
time—and no less important—it becomes psycholog-
ically dependent upon a growing circle of environ-

mental events.
“The later extension of the child’s space-time be-
yond the room and the family circle also means not
only an intellectual survey of wider relationships but,
above all, an extension of the environmental objects
and events upon which the child is psychologically im-
mediately dependent. The mere knowledge of a thing
(for example, of the geography of a foreign country, or
the economic and political situation, or even of im-
mediate family affairs) does not necessarily change the
child’s life-space more than superficially or even at all.
On the other hand, psychologically critical facts of the
environment, such as the friendliness or unfriendli-
ness of a certain adult, may have fundamental signifi-
cance for the child’s life-space without the child’s
having a clear intellectual appreciation of the fact.” +
In the chapter to follow we shall present a concep-
tion of how the values which constitute the personality
are organized. An attempt will be made to interpret
behavior as the effort to maintain this organization, as
opposed to the current concept of mechanical reaction.
1. Kurt Lewin, “A Dynamic Theory of Personality,” tr. by Donald
Adams and Karl Zener, p. 74. By permission of the McGraw-Hill Book
Company, publishers.
CHAPTER IV
THE PERSONALITY 1
“The world hath many centers, one for each

created being, and about each one it lieth in
its own circle. Thou standest but half an ell
from me, yet about thee lieth a universe whose
center I am not but thou art.”
—Thomas Mann, Joseph in Egypt
In this endeavor to give form and content to the con-

cept of the personality, it is important that the motive
for the undertaking should not be misinterpreted. Let
us therefore say at once that this conception of the
personality is not intended as a contribution to knowl-
edge of the sort which is verifiable by any merely de-
scriptive account of an organism’s behavior. Its value
for scientific purposes is no less on that account. It is
simply, as we have said before, a means to an end, but
a necessary means if we are interested in the organiza-
1. The present chapter is apparently the one upon which Lecky
was laboring when his work was cut short by his death. Its frag- .
mentary character—the manuscript represents only a tentative first
draft—is the more regrettable since it is clear that this was to have
been one of the most exacting, as it was the culminating, task of his
life’s work. The problem of composing his beliefs, of formulating
the doctrine in a way which might be adequate to express his intimate
intention, is therefore only partially solved. Unfortunately here least
of all can any work of divination on the part of an editor suffice to
elaborate upon that intention which emerges, though only incom-
pletely, in the following pages. Paragraphs have been added from one
of Lecky’s occasional papers, entitled “The Theory of Self-Con-
sistency.”—Editor’s note.
78
THE PERSONALITY 79
tion of behavior, and if we hope to achieve a scientific

understanding of another individual.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the physio-
logical theory of stimulus-response, based on the anal-
ogy between the nervous system and a telegraph system,
dominated all psychological thinking. But the theory,
which substituted the analogy of a hydraulic system
and endeavored to conceive of mental processes in
terms of the behavior of liquids under pressure, proved
inadequate for clinical purposes and was challenged
by psychoanalysis. It was this analogy which gave rise
to such concepts as repression, emotional outlets, sub-
limation, drainage, equilibrium, etc. Both theories at-
tempt by the use of these analogies to maintain the
appearance of consistency with the traditions of mech-
anistic science.
The hydraulic analogy seemed to offer an alterna-
tive to the telegraphic concept chiefly because of its
greater flexibility for dealing with problems of mo-
tivation. Instead of relying on environmental forces
acting as stimuli, it postulated a group of internal
forces seeking external expression. But it has never
been possible to explain all behavior as the expression
of the same type of energy, which would be quite neces-
sary, of course, if the hydraulic figure were followed
literally. Freud attempted to confine his theory to the
single instinct of love or sex, but he was forced to
recognize the so-called ego motives, and later added the
death instinct, which makes for aggression and hatred.
Similarly, Adler began with the aggressive striving for
power or superiority, but later was obliged to admit
the existence of social feeling and codperative tenden-
cies. Other schools recognize much longer lists of in-
stincts. But in all cases it has been observed that
80 SELF-CONSISTENCY
motives conflict and interfere with one another, which

has led to the belief that each different motive must
be treated independently. The result is that the hy-
draulic analogy leads to a number of dynamic units,
just as the telegraphic concept, with its great variety of
habits and reaction patterns, leads to a number of
structural units. Both theories have thus succeeded in
obscuring the integral character of the organism’s ac-
tivity: the organization has either been divided against
itself or been reduced to a loose aggregate of elements.
These mechanistic figures of speech have been useful
devices for preliminary organization of the data, but
they have not produced a conception of man which dis-
interested students of the evidence are able to accept.
After fifty years of research under mechanistic aus-
pices, psychology is more disorganized in respect of its
theoretical outlook than ever before in its history.
Instead of assuming beforehand, therefore, that man
is a machine which is moved by forces, a lump whose
future behavior is predictable from records of its past
behavior, let us assume that as long as he remains alive
he must be thought of as a unit in himself, a system
which operates as a whole. His behavior must then be
interpreted in terms of action rather than reaction,
that is, in terms of purpose.
Mechanistic theories, since they assume that activity
is only an effect of some antecedent cause, must attempt
to explain activity itself, and must therefore seek to
define or isolate the cause of activity. The usual enun-
ciation is that the organism acts because it is stimu-
lated. We assume, on the contrary, that every organism,
as long as it remains alive, is continuously active, and
hence continuously purposive. Life and activity are
coexistent and inseparable. We do not have to explain
THE PERSONALITY 81
why the organism acts, but only why it acts in one way
rather than another. A stimulus does not initiate ac-
tivity, but merely tends to modify in one or another
way the activity already in progress.
Such a suggestion is by no means radical from a
humanistic standpoint. Any theory which is erected on
the basis of this principle of unified action, however,
and any technique derived from the theory for clinical
use, is automatically prohibited from assuming a plu-
rality of purposes. One source of motivation only, the
necessity to maintain the unity of the system, must
serve as the universal dynamic principle. Not conflict
but unity must be the fundamental postulate.
Practically all schools of psychotherapy aim at the
elimination of conflict, in spite of the fact that conflict
is postulated as fundamental. Hence it is clear that they
too aim at unification as a goal, though the possibility
of attaining the goal is inconsistent with their premises.
It is obvious, then, that conflict must be assumed to be
a temporary disturbance only, a kind of illness in con-
trast to health, rather than a permanent and necessary
condition. Though conflict is usually present, it is not
due to the structure of the personality itself. It is
rather due to environmental changes which present a
continuous series of new problems to be solved.
Although we assume a constant striving for unity,
we do not assume that the outcome of the striving is
necessarily successful. The environment sets the condi-
tions of the problem which must be met, and in some
instances an adequate solution may not be forthcom-
ing. If the outcome could be guaranteed, as it is in
classical physics, the mechanistic view would be rein-
stated and the postulate of purposive striving would be
unnecessary.
82 ; SELF-CONSISTENCY
We propose to apprehend all psychological phe-
nomena as illustrations of the single principle of unity
or self-consistency. We conceive of the personality as an
organization of values which are felt to be consistent
with one another. Behavior expresses the effort to main-
tain the integrity and unity of the organization.
The point is that all of an individual’s values are
organized into a single system the preservation of
whose integrity is essential. The nucleus of the system,
around which the rest of the system revolves, is the in-
dividual’s valuation of himself. The individual sees the
world from his own viewpoint, with himself as the
center. Any value entering the system which is incon-
sistent with the individual’s valuation of himself can-
not be assimilated; it meets with resistance and is
likely, unless a general reorganization occurs, to be re-
jected. This resistance is a natural phenomenon; it is
essential for the maintenance of individuality.
By interpreting all behavior as motivated by the
need for unity, we understand particular motives or
tendencies simply as expressions of the main motive,
pursuing different immediate goals as necessary means
to that end. Since the general motive always appears
in the form of a particular motive, however, it is never
directly accessible to introspection and cannot possibly
become conscious except as a principle or logical ab-
straction.’ The changing situation presents continuous
problems of adjustment, but the organization can make
1. The present theory, even though it deals with values, does not
make use of introspective methods. A person’s values are as much a
problem to himself as another's values are, and require to be under-
stood by the same means of inquiry. This, we believe, is the essential
contribution of Woodworth’s inventory method which enables us to
study the data of personality by objective means. To this extent it is
necessary that we all of us declare ourselves “behaviorists.”
THE PERSONALITY 83
a unified movement only in one direction at a time,

which explains why only a single tendency can be domi-
nant at one time. In this way we avoid the assumption
of a primitive reservoir of motives, represented in the
Freudian scheme by the Id, or the need for a number
of distinct and independent dynamic units or instincts
such as McDougall postulates.
Freud clearly recognizes the unifying principle in
his concept of the life instinct or love, though he re-
gards it not as primary but as derived from the sexual
instinct. The life instinct is contrasted, however, with
the death instinct, hate, which divides the personality
again and really sets up conflict as the fundamental
principle. This contradiction is avoided when, in ac-
cordance with our view, the direction of derivation is
reversed. The sex motive must be thought of as ulti-
mately aimed at the achievement of unity in the same
way as other motives. The striving for unity is con-
stant, the striving for sex satisfaction variable, instead
of the other way around.
The individual’s organization of values makes itself
evident in the regularity of his behavior. ‘The organiza-
tion not only defines his role in life, but furnishes him
with standards which he feels obliged to maintain.
These standards become visible if we disregard the de-
tails of his physical movements, and apprehend his be-
havior as his standards translated into action.
The reliability of a child’s behavior, as indicated
either by tests or by general observation, is thus ex-
plained by the theory of self-consistency as the outward.
expression of relatively fixed internal standards. It is
often argued that the reliability of a test proves that
the test is measuring the child’s ability. All that any
test can measure, however, is the level of performance
84 SELF-CONSISTENCY
which is characteristic of the child at the time when

the test is given. It is not the test which is reliable, but
the child. We cannot interpret the score simply as a
measure of ability unless we disregard the problem of
resistance entirely, and assume not only the presence
of specific abilities, but also the motive to use them to
the limit.
It is important not to confuse these internal psycho-
logical standards with any sort of external standards of
how people in general ought to behave. There is
nothing to prevent a person from accepting these ex-
ternal standards as his own and making them a part of
his system. All members of a family, for instance, define
themselves as members of the family and will act in
consistency with that definition. We think of ourselves
also as belonging to larger groups, for instance as all
being workers in a science, as all being Americans,
members of the human race, and so on. If we accept
definitions of ourselves as members of groups, it is just
as necessary to maintain these definitions as to main-
tain definitions of ourselves as isolated individuals.*
Yet if a person does not accept them, he will not main-
tain them. The criminal is an obvious example.
Let us think of the individual, therefore, as a unified
system with two sets of problems—one the problem of
maintaining inner harmony within himself, and the
other the problem of maintaining harmony with the
environment, especially the social environment, in
the midst of which he lives. In order to understand the
environment, he must keep his interpretations con-
sistent with his experience, but in order to maintain his
individuality, he must organize his interpretations to
1. This is the basis for reconciling the apparent contradiction be-
tween individual behavior and group behavior.
THE PERSONALITY 85
form a system which is internally consistent. This con-
sistency is not objective, of course, but subjective and
wholly individual.
The personality develops as a result of actual con-
tacts with the world, and incorporates into itself the
meanings derived from external contacts. Essentially,
it is the organization of experience into an integrated
whole.
Only those situations which enter into individual ex-
perience, therefore, enter into the personality and need
to be provided for. Ideally, then, we should begin by
determining the nature of the individual’s experience,
especially during the first years of life, and observing
the manner in which this experience is organized. But
from a practical standpoint this is impossible; instead,
we have to infer the organization from the way in
which present situations are dealt with. That is why
mechanistic explanations are useless. We must have
some means of obtaining sufficient and relevant data
to work with, but the real task is to create from the
data a conception of the subject which will give us in-
sight into his behavior and reveal its coherence and
purpose.* .
1. The only precedent which we have to guide us in this endeavor
is Freud’s attempt to conceptualize the personality from the stand-
point of psychoanalysis. His scheme is a topographical arrangement
of the mind into three main departments, the Id, the Ego, and the
Super-ego, superimposed upon another three-way classification show-
ing the parts which belong to the unconscious, preconscious, and
conscious systems of ideas. The complexity of Freud’s scheme to a
large extent defeats his purpose. His effort to organize the inter-
pretation of clinical observations has nevertheless been, we feel, an
indispensable aid. The lack of simplicity in the scheme can be traced
directly to a corresponding lack of simplicity in the theory itself,
particularly with respect to the idea of a divided personality which
is part conscious and part unconscious.
86 SELF-CONSISTENCY
The most constant factor in the individual’s expe-

rience, as we have said, is himself and the interpreta-
tion of his own meaning; the kind of person he is, the
place which he occupies in the world, appear to repre-
sent the center or nucleus of the personality. The next
most constant factor, as a rule, in the circle of the
child’s experience, and hence the next most important
element in the structure of the organization, is the
mother. If we think of the infant personality as made
up of these two elements only, it is clear that the first
major problem which the organization must face is
that of assimilating the father.
This task is usually a difficult one. The father
scarcely enters the child’s experience until the second
year, and his incorporation into the system requires
that the values already established in regard to the self
and the mother be altered. Consequently the entrance
of the father not only means that the personality is to
that extent enlarged, but also that it must undergo a
process of reorganization. Nor, as a rule, can the task
be avoided. The child is in somewhat the same position
as Pavlov’s dog in a harness; since he cannot escape
from the home situation, he must learn to evaluate it
more realistically (Freud’s reality principle) and unify
his attitude toward a larger field of experience.
1. We therefore fully agree with Freud that the course of future
development depends upon the way in which the Oedipus situation is
handled, but it seems to us that the unity theory explains the facts
more convincingly than the theory of a sexual attachment to the
mother. Furthermore, although it cannot be denied that the conflict
is one between love and hate, it is evident that both motives are
evoked in the interest of unity, and it is also clear from the experi-
ments in the previous chapter that when the conflict is solved the
hate is not suppressed, as psychoanalysis maintains, but the love mo-
tive unified. Otherwise, by definition, the conflict would not be
solved.
THE PERSONALITY 87
It is hardly necessary to point out that assimilating

. the father really means assimilating situations in which
the father plays a part. And since some father-situations
would naturally be more difficult than others to assimi-
late, it is obvious that the attitudes of acceptance and
rejection would be likely to fluctuate somewhat. In
this way we obtain what seems to be a reasonable ex-
planation of the so-called ‘“‘ambivalence” of the atti-
tude toward the father. Ambivalence then must be
attributed not to the failure of repression; but to the
variability of the father’s behavior; he is accepted
when he behaves in one way, rejected when he behaves
in another.
Indeed, we often notice a similar ambivalence in the
attitude toward the brothers and sisters. A new baby
particularly, as Adler has shown, deprives the older
children of the mother’s attention and often meets
with a hostile reception from them for that reason.
When assimilation begins, however, the attitude
changes back and forth until acceptance predominates.
The Oedipus situation is thus not different in kind
from other problem situations, and in fact cannot be
treated as an isolated problem in itself; though the
nature of the adjustment which is made to this first
problem will naturally have important consequences.
By the time the child is five years old, according to
psychoanalysis, the hatred of the father has been sup-
pressed and the conscious attitude is one of love. At
this point the latency period begins, and the libido sub-
sides to reawaken at the onset of puberty. Anna Freud
writes, “Instead of keeping pace with the further de-
velopment of the child, the sexual impulses now grad-
ually lose their energy, their libido, as psychoanalysis
88 SELF-CONSISTENCY
calls it. The struggle for pleasure recedes more and

more to the background.” Yet it seems more reason-
able to suppose that after five years the child has suc-
ceeded in assimilating the most frequent and typical
father situations, and hence has achieved his freedom
from conflict and emotion by virtue of continuous
learning. The change in behavior can be explained
without resort to the theory of a mysterious but tem-
porary loss of sexual energy. From our standpoint, such
a change is a matter of necessity, for if the attitude of
rejection originally taken toward the father were uni-
fied, it would involve everything associated with the
father, including the mother also.
But if the age of four or five marks the end of the
task of assimilating customary home situations, it also
sees the beginning of a new task. The child now begins
to make the acquaintance of children of its own age
outside of the home. Its circle of experience widens to
include situations in the school and on the playground,
especially social situations, which present additional
difficulties.1 Friendships are formed, new persons in-
corporated into the organization, and corresponding
adjustments called for in the values given to the self
and the parents. This period seems to have the func-
tion of preparing the child for social codperation. ‘The
personality is consolidated and strengthened, and new
supports developed outside of the family. Thus it is
the beginning of independence of the family.
1. With regard to the task of “adaptation” the least mistaken hy-
pothesis, it seems to me, is Adler’s view that the needs of society
count as heavily as those of the individual, and that social interest
and co6peration are as necessary to normal development as a favor-
able environment. In any case, there can be little doubt that the
problems set by the environment are primarily social.
‘THE PERSONALITY 89
With adolescence, however, a change of such crucial

difficulty and importance occurs in the structure of the
organization that emotional crises similar to those of
early childhood frequently reappear. This change,
which usually requires several years to accomplish,
and sometimes, indeed, is not accomplished, is the
displacement of the parents from their former posi-
tion by a member of the opposite sex. Occasion-
ally there is open rebellion against the authority of
the parents, who in turn are called upon to make
adjustments on their own account. During this period
of instability and reorganization, when the adoles-
cent is revising his earlier values and changing his
whole outlook on life, the need of unity is most acute.
This may be seen in the growth of religious inter-
ests, idealism, and the desire for membership in social
groups.
For the present this brief sketch must suffice. We
shall now attempt graphically to represent the de-
veloping organization of values as a definite conceptual
structure. Let its form be represented as a sphere, with
the concept of the self or ego in the center, the concept
of the parents near the center, and close friends, rela-
tives and acquaintances arranged in order toward the
periphery. This is the typical arrangement during
childhood. After puberty there is typically an altera-
tion of the original relationships, with the parents
being gradually displaced from their central position
by a newcomer into the organization, a member of the
opposite sex, who is usually regarded first as acquaint-
ance and friend, but finally is accepted as mate. ‘Thus
a new constellation of values is established with the
husband or wife and children as the primary supports
90 SELF-CONSISTENCY
of the organization. The conception may be indicated

graphically as follows:
eyPeaTE lp
potter
The Infant The Childhood The Adult

Personality. Personality. Personality.
Pets, toys, possessions, etc., and familiar stimuli in gen-

eral also enter into the child’s organization, though
they are not represented in the diagram. The compli-
cation of relationships in the adult personality can be
specified only with difficulty by such diagrammatic
devices.
We shall define the personality, then, as a unified
scheme of experience, an organization of values that
are consistent with one another. And we shall conceive
the study of human beings as the study of personalities.
The organization must be thought of, moreover, not
merely as a figure of speech, but as in some sense a
reality. Whether the interpretations of behavior which
are based on this conception should be regarded as true
or not will depend to some extent on how one chooses
to define truth. The mechanist also believes that his
explanations are true. But so far as we are concerned,
our search is simply for an explanation that will prove
to be illuminating and fruitful.
We believe that all behavior must be explained in
terms of this system. It is too early to attempt an ex-
‘THE PERSONALITY 91°
haustive treatment, but some of the more familiar phe-

nomena of psychology are interpreted as follows.
Identification represents the effort of the child to
bring his ideas of himself and his parents into more
unified relationship. He not only imitates his parents,
but adopts their views and opinions as his own. His
parent’s religion becomes his religion, their standards
become his standards. In this way differences are elimi-
nated, and the bonds of relationship strengthened by
increasing the “consciousness of kind.” Assimilation
and identification go hand in hand; the child’s weak
ego, having originally no values of its own, is readily
adaptable and takes on those values which aid in unify-
ing the system as a whole.
An excellent illustration of the alteration of values
which accompanies identification is found in the book
of Ruth, I, 16-17, “For whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall
be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest
will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to
me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and
me.”
Most parents identify themselves with the child to
some extent, and try as it were to make themselves
more assimilable by taking over some of the child’s
standards. Such identification also occurs between
lovers. When the process is carried to sentimental ex-
tremes, however, as when the parents talk baby talk, it
is obvious that the child will base its own values on
_unsound premises. ‘There may be differences of opinion
as to the desirability of some values, but it can hardly
be of assistance to the child to derive its standards from
the observation of childish behavior, whether on the
part of its parents or other children.
on Ps ; SELF-CONSISTENCY
This point, it seems to us, is overlooked by those
modern theorists who would abolish the home alto-
gether and segregate the children into child commu-
nities under scientific management where attachments
to adults will not be formed. For it cannot be assumed
that adult values are innate or instinctive in the child;
and if they are not to be obtained by identification
with adults, it is difficult to see from what other source
they could be expected to arise. It is easy enough to
construct Utopias where behavior is conceived as the
automatic performance of mechanical habits, but the
problem of establishing in the child a conception of
life which will work to his benefit cannot be ap-
proached so optimistically.
Resistance is the opposite of assimilation and learn-
ing, and represents the refusal to reorganize the values,
especially the ego values. With age, of course, the values
become more firmly established, and adaptability de-
creases. To the psychiatrist, the striving of the patient
to maintain his organization appears as a symptom of
perversity. To the educator it appears as an obstacle to
learning. But if we would really understand these re-
sistances, we must see them not as neurotic or abnormal
manifestations, but as wholly natural devices for avoid-
ing reorganization. If a person were able to adapt him-
self as readily as is sometimes expected, he would have
no personality.
Whether resistance be thought of as desirable or
undesirable, therefore, is wholly a matter of the point
of view. The loyalty to individual values may interfere
with efforts to change them, but this loyalty is also the
source of honesty and integrity.
The following instance will illustrate that resistance
to learning also has its favorable side. For years the
THE PERSONALITY 93
deficiency of boys in reading, as compared with girls
who receive the same instruction, has been widely
recognized, particularly in elementary courses. We
have discovered that this difference is due not to a lack
of ability on the part of the boys, but to a lack of read-
ing material which is suitable for boys. The boy from
six to eight years old, just beginning to learn to read, is
mainly concerned with maintaining the conception of
himself as manly. He likes to play cowboy, G-man and
Indian. He tries not to cry when he gets a bump. Yet
this boy, when the reading lesson begins, must stand up
before his companions and read that “‘the little red hen
says ‘Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!’ ”—or something equally in-
consistent with his standards of how he should behave.
To be obliged to read such material aloud, especially
in the presence of others, is not consistent with his view
of masculine values. If a boy is trying to maintain a
standard of manliness on the playground, he does not
abandon that standard merely because he walks from
the playground into the classroom. When books on
railroads and airplanes are provided, they serve to sup-
port these values and are assimilated eagerly. The
point is, of course, that the assumed defect in reading
never was a defect except from the standpoint of an
unenlightened school system, but on the contrary was
a manifestation of a wholesome, normal, and desirable
resistance.
In the Freudian scheme, resistance is interpreted as
the patient’s desire to retain his neurosis, whereas we
interpret it as the desire to maintain his personality.
This enables us to point out that what the psychoan-
alyst calls a neurosis and what we call the personality
are virtually identical. ‘The patient is seeking to de-
fend, not a mental disease which the analyst is trying to
94 SELF-CONSISTENCY
remove, but a scheme of life which the analyst is trying

to change. Many analysts admit this freely. While we
may think of a person’s scheme of life as unconscious
in the sense that it has not been consciously formulated
as a whole, however, we could scarcely attribute the
unconsciousness to the mechanism of repression.
The various so-called emotional states cannot be
treated independently, but must be regarded as differ-
ent aspects of a single motive, the striving for unity.
For example, love is the emotion subjectively ex-
perienced in reference to a person or object already as-
similated and serving as a strong support to the idea
of self. Grief is experienced when the personality must
be reorganized due to the loss of one of its supports.
Hatred and rage are impulses of rejection and destruc-
tion felt towards unassimilable objects. ‘The emotion
of horror appears when a situation arises suddenly
which we are not prepared to assimilate, such as the
sight of a ghastly accident.
Experiences which increase the sense of psycholog-
ical unity and strength give rise to the emotion of joy
and feelings of pleasure. Occasionally a person’s own
behavior may violate his conception of himself, pro-
ducing feelings of remorse and guilt. In that case, the
insult to himself, as it were, may be eliminated either
by reinterpretation, or by seeking punishment suffi-
cient to equalize the insult. Fear is felt when no ade-
quate solution of a problem can be found; it is due to
dynamic disorganization.
From our standpoint emotion is a concept which is
necessary only when the problem of behavior is stated
descriptively. A psychological theory which conceives
of motivation as a phenomenon of organization has no
need for the conception of emotion.
‘THE PERSONALITY 95
Thinking likewise has the aim of unifying the or-

ganization of ideas. Logic and emotion, so-called, there-
fore, are not in conflict, but work towards the same end.
If most of our thinking appears to have the purpose
of merely rationalizing our behavior to make it seem
consistent, of defending conclusions already reached
or justifying positions already taken, this is, indeed,
what would be expected under the circumstances.
The Freudian theory of repression, which is re-
garded as the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory,
has undergone so many revisions that the exact present
meaning of the concept is somewhat in doubt. The
general idea seems to be, however, that emotions which
are denied expression are suppressed into the uncon-
scious, from which thereafter they continually seek
some means of escape. There is no doubt that in certain
cases this explanation seems quite plausible, but in-
asmuch as it presupposes the existence of emotion as
a separate entity we are forced to reject the theory of
repression and seek to reinterpret the phenomena from
the standpoint of organization.
Let us take, for example, the psychological problem
raised when a person feels insulted. This means that
there has been thrust into his experience a value of
himself or of someone with whom he is identified which
he cannot assimilate. ‘This inconsistency is a source of
disturbance, and unless the person responsible ‘‘takes
back” the insult the disturbance continues. If he re-
fuses to ‘‘take it back,” there is an impulse to retalia-
tion. That is, the low value seems to be eliminated by
hurling it back upon its author.
But suppose that, for reasons of expediency, it can-
not be hurled back; what then? Shall we say with Freud
that the energy (death instinct) has undergone repres-
96 SELF-CONSISTENCY
sion into the reservoir of the Id, to seek expression later
when the life instinct is less active, or shall we rather
say that the organization continues to strive to remove
the inconsistency and unify itself?
To answer this question, let us turn to the evidence
of primitive behavior to which Freud himself so often
appeals. How would the repression theory account for
the exact balance between injury and reprisal provided
for in primitive codes of vengeance, or the conception
that justice has not been done unless the punishment
inflicted is consistent with the crime? Obviously, the
motive is to correct the situation and make it more
assimilable. We quote an illustration from the ancient
Hebrew law as given in Leviticus, XXIV, 18-20; “And
he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for
beast. And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbor; as
he hath done, so shall it be done to him; breach for
breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has caused
a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.
And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it; and he
that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.”
The impulse to retaliation aroused when a person
has been insulted or treated unjustly is therefore not
an accumulation of energy waiting to be discharged,
but a purposive effort of the organization to rid itself
of inconsistency.
CHAPTER V
SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A TECHNIQUE
The crucial problem for all personality theories is

the theoretical basis of therapy, for the true signifi-
cance of a system emerges only when it meets a prob-
lem.
1. Psychoanalysis and the Theory of Self-Consistency
The behavioristic method of treatment, as developed

by M. C. Jones, has already been described in connec-
tion with the theory of learning. The method consists
in reducing conflict by manipulating the external sit-
uation. We have attempted to show that the elimina-
tion of the fear responses does not depend upon be-
havioristic principles, and is not in fact explained by
them. The demonstration may be described in dynamic
terms as follows. A child who is afraid of rabbits is
seated at one end of a long room before a small table.
An ambivalent situation is then produced experi-
mentally by bringing in the rabbit at the far end of
the room, while food is placed on the table directly
before the child. Both are visible at the same time, as
in KGohler’s Gestalt experiments, and therefore act as
parts of the situation as a whole. A conflict ensues, and
since the positive component has the advantage by pre-
arrangement, the entire situation becomes positive.
Whatever the process by which this occurs, it is evi-
dently a biological necessity, for without it the organ-
ism would be polarized toward two opposed goals (food
98 SELF-CONSISTENCY
and safety) simultaneously, and dynamic integration

would become impossible.
The psychoanalytic technique also works on the
external situation in essentially similar fashion. ‘The
requirements again are an ambivalent situation arti-
ficially devised for the purpose. The predominant posi-
tive component in the situation is found in the person
of the analyst, while the negative component is repre-
sented by the reproduced pathogenic memories. In
order to insure a sufficient supply of negative material,
‘special techniques have been devised to obtain it even
against the patient’s resistance. Freud at first credited
the cure to the negative component, and described the
treatment as a mental catharsis achieved by “acting off”
the pathogenic repressions. It was soon discovered,
however, that the mere reproduction of ideas of guilt
and shame was not sufficient to produce a cure. On the
contrary, if the repressed material was brought out too
fast or in the wrong way, it had a positively detrimental
effect. ‘The curative effect of the method was thus not
in the mere catharsis or abreaction; the cure lay in the
human relationship with the analyst, and unless the
patient had such confidence in the analyst as to find
support and strength in him, the abreaction was in-
effectual.
The theoretical question is to understand why such
positive “transference” to the analyst mediates the
cure. For, according to the theory which we propose,
the analyst is not responsible for curing the patient,
but only for producing a situation in which the patient
is enabled to cure himself. In the human relationship
with the analyst the patient finds strength and support
which enabled him to assimilate experiences which he
could not assimilate before. It does not follow that all
SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A TECHNIQUE Ho
problems are due to unassimilable values. Most prob-
lems, I dare say, are due to values that have been assimi-
lated. They arise from defects in the major philosophy
of the individual, not from special unhappy experi-
ences but from the whole structure of his system of
values. Our chief problem in psychology is not merely
to change the attitude of the patient to some special
detail of experience, but to revise his old philosophy
and develop a new general outlook. If a value is assimi-
lated into the organization or expelled from it, the
process is not one of addition or subtraction, but
rather of general revision and reorganization.!
According to the theory of self-consistency, we seek
those experiences which support our values, and avoid,
resist, or if necessary forcibly reject those which are in-
consistent with them. Neither acceptance nor rejection
can be practiced exclusively without endangering the
organization. Neither is abnormal as such, and neither
necessarily normal.
Shall we therefore conclude that the attempt to keep
the personality self-consistent is a neurotic phenome-
non? Yet it seems to us that this is precisely the con-
clusion toward which the main current of psychiatric
1. This is the respect in which the therapeutic method of self-
consistency differs from that of psychoanalysis. Freud objected strenu-
ously to the notion that psychoanalytic treatment depended on sug-
gestion. So, similarly, Lecky considered hypnosis inadequate as a
method because it treated only the symptom, suggesting it away
without altering the system as a whole which had produced it. It
will be remembered that Freud compared hypnotism to a cosmetic
concealment of defects, psychoanalysis to a surgical removal of them.
Lecky says in his lectures: “I think it is obvious that a really well
developed psychotherapy should make use of both. We are under
the double necessity of taking away ideas that are injurious to the
system and of strengthening or introducing ideas that will increase
the internal strength of the system.’”’—Editor’s note.
100 SELF-CONSISTENCY
thought has long been moving. By assuming that

avoidance, rejection, or resistance is an abnormal phe-
nomenon, it condemns as neurotic the effort to main-
tain a system of values, and would sacrifice these values
in favor of a goal of mere social conformity. Instead
of attempting to strengthen the personality, it aims to
weaken it. Instead of respect for the individual, its at-
titude toward every expression of individuality tends
to be derogatory. It is well known that the psychiatric
approach in biography is destructive and iconoclastic,
and clinical analysis apparently is not considered com-
plete until the source of the symptoms is traced to sup-
pressed sexuality and hatred, which involves for the
patient a process of disillusionment in regard to him-
self and his own motives.
Conformity to the standards of society doubtless has
its claims, and the alteration of values which prevent
a necessary reorganization and interfere with accept-
ance of the social environment is often essential if the
integrity of the personality is to be preserved. But the
analytic method seems to have confused the means
with the end, and lacks a theoretical guide as to where
to stop or what to aim for. The removal of resistance
or rejection appears to be regarded as the goal, so far
as theory is concerned, rather than the welfare of the
organization as a whole. The normal person, presum-
ably, if there were a normal person, would find fault
with nothing and accept everything.
Inasmuch as the tendency to maintain a self-con-
sistent organization appears to be a fundamental char-
acteristic of human nature, however, the psychiatric
program as stated suffers from the practical objection
that it could not be carried out. It was designed to fit
an egocentric caricature of man, instead of man as he is.
SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A TECHNIQUE 101
It overlooks the fact that resistance is prerequisite to

integrity. The well-known phenomenon of resistance
to the analyst is therefore attributed to the patient’s
desire to shield and protect his neurosis. The patient
is said to interfere with the analyst by standing in the
way of his attack upon the neurosis, as if he were wil-
fully harboring a definite entity of some kind which the
analyst is attempting to destroy. In contrast to this
view, however, it is apparent that resistance is in reality
self-defense, the effort to maintain the integrity of the
personality itself.1 What seems to be perversity from
the standpoint of the analyst is merely self-preservation
from the standpoint of the patient. What seems to be
a neurosis is simply the patient’s individual and unique
organization.
When standards of value are studied in isolation
from their context, it is bound to be conceded, of
course, that they have no value in themselves. Mechan-
istic science has seized upon this fact as a warrant to
wage a war upon values. Nothing so relative and unde-
pendable can be tolerated in connection with the so-
called scientific approach. But the scientific approach
1. Cf. the following remarks by Freud, in A General Introduction
to Psychoanalysis, p. 248: ‘“When we undertake to cure a patient, to
free him from the symptoms of his malady, he confronts us with a
vigorous, tenacious resistance that lasts during the whole time of the
treatment. That is so peculiar a fact that we cannot expect much
credence for it. . . . Just consider, this patient suffers from his symp-
toms and causes those about him to suffer with him. ... And yet
he struggles, in the very interests of his malady, against one who
would help him. How improbable this assertion must sound! And
yet it is so, and if we are reproached with its improbability, we need
only answer that this fact is not without its analogies. Whoever goes
to a dentist with an unbearable toothache may very well find him-
self thrusting away the dentist’s arm when the man makes for his sick
tooth with a pair of pincers.” Used by permission of the Liveright
Publishing Corporation, publishers.
in the mechanistic sense confines itself entirely to the
use of analytic and descriptive techniques which can
never do more than itemize a phenomenon into its
parts. As a result, the phenomenon in its original
wholeness becomes invisible and is then forgotten.
By way of doing justice to newer viewpoints in psy-
chiatry, it may be said that a gradual shift in psycho-
therapy from the effort to make the patient consistent
with society to the effort to make him consistent with
himself has been in progress since the beginning of the
nineteenth century. In the last few years this trend has
grown so rapidly that the more recent psychiatric con-
cepts can be reinterpreted in terms of self-consistency
quite readily. The term assimilation especially is now
in common use, despite the lack of theoretical defini-
tion. Since 1920 even psychoanalysis shows agreement
with this tendency, and we find Freud using such ex-
pressions as ‘‘the comprehensive unity of the ego.” Nor
is it, we believe, merely a coincidence that these
changes are timed to agree with the current wane of
egocentricity in the physical sciences. Science moves
forward on a broad front, and the compulsion toward
consistency among the separate branches of science is
irresistible.
2. Education
The greatest handicap to constructive action in edu-

cation is the well-entrenched dogma that learning is
the direct result of teaching, a mechanical reaction to
the school environment instead of a purposive achieve-
ment. Learning cannot be understood as a process of
forming separate habits, but only in terms of the de-
velopment of the entire personality. When one value
has been accepted, it opposes the acceptance of other

values which are not consistent with it. Hence resist-
ance must be accepted as a normal and necessary aspect
of learning. Indeed, a unified organization could not
be maintained without it. Early impressions are im-
portant not only in themselves, but because they set
the conditions for rejection of other values, whatever
their nature, which would tend to precipitate a conflict.
Nevertheless, since the, experience of everyone is
more or less haphazard from an educational standpoint,
there are always present in the system a certain number
of values accepted on insufficient evidence. These
values, whose retention depends entirely upon the
success with which they can be rationalized and made
to seem consistent, or at any rate not inconsistent, give
rise to resistances which are likely to be detrimental to
the individual.
The clinical technique which follows from the theo-
retical conception of the problem must therefore aim
to bring about in the subject a reéxamination of those
values which block his development. Academic diffi-
culties and social maladjustments are both conceived
of as due to resistances arising from the subject’s con-
ception of himself. If a student shows resistance toward
a certain type of material, this means that from his
point of view it would be inconsistent for him to learn
it. If we are able to change the self-conception which
underlies this viewpoint, however, his attitude toward
the material will change accordingly.
Let us take the case of an intelligent student who
is deficient, say, in spelling. In almost every instance
poor spellers have been tutored and practiced in spell-
ing over long periods without improvement. For some
reason such a student has a special handicap in learning
how to spell, though not in learning the other subjects
which are usually considered more difficult. This de-
ficiency is not due to a lack of ability, but rather to an
active resistance which prevents him from learning
how to spell in spite of the extra instruction. The re-
sistance arises from the fact that at some time in the
past the suggestion that he is a poor speller was accepted
and incorporated into his definition of himself, and is
now an integral part of his total personality. A stand-
ard is a conception that a person maintains because he
has accepted it as a part of his personality. Standards
need not be admirable, even from the standpoint of the
person who maintains them, so long as he believes them
to be valid. As in the present instance, he may accept
as his standard the conception of his own inferiority in
some particular respect. His difficulty is thus explained
as a special instance of the general principle that a per-
son can only be true to himself. If he defines himself as
a poor speller, the misspelling of a certain proportion
of the words which he uses becomes for him a moral
issue. He misspells words for the same reason that he
refuses to be a thief. That is, he must endeavor to be-
have in a manner consistent with his conception of
himself.
A study of the spelling behavior of these students
shows that each individual seems to have a definite
standard of poor spelling which he unconsciously en-
deavors to maintain. If his spelling test is cut in two, it
will be found that each half contains approximately
the same number of misspelled words. If we study his
letters or written theses, there is likewise a striking con-
sistency in the number of misspelled words per page.
Strange to say, the spelling of foreign languages seems
to be impaired very little if at all, showing clearly that
the difficulty cannot be attributed to eye movements,

left-handedness, or other mechanical interferences.
Evidently the conception of one’s self as a poor speller
usually has reference to one’s native language only.
The clinical technique consists in first finding sev-
eral strong values apparently unrelated to the value in
question which can be used as levers, so to speak, and
then demonstrating the inconsistency between these
values and the one responsible for the deficiency. Al-
most every student considers himself independent and
self-reliant, for example. On the other hand, it can
readily be shown that the poor speller expects his de-
fect to be condoned and treated sympathetically; that,
in effect, he has his hand out, begging for indulgence.
If the contradiction can be demonstrated from his own
viewpoint, a reorganization becomes compulsory. His
definition of himself as a poor speller is vigorously re-
jected and a determined effort made to establish the
- Opposite definition.
It is significant that not only poor spellers, but stam-
merers and others with similar defects, freely admit as
a rule that they accept themselves as they are and make
no effort to change. This is an excellent defense, of
course, for they feel no inconsistency, once the defini-
tion has been accepted. And they often attempt to
avoid the effort of maintaining a more useful definition
by referring the defect to heredity or neuro-muscular
maladjustment.
Those who claim that they “do not have a mathe-
matical mind” are likewise victims of their own resist-
ance. Such a student may have defined himself in
childhood as the exact opposite of some unassimilable
companion who had been held up asa shining example —
of mathematical proficiency. In other cases, remarks by
parents or teachers that the child was lacking in apti-

tude for mathematics seem to be the explanation. The
suggestion was accepted and is now a part of the stu-
dent’s conception of himself. In one instance, a stu-
dent who despised mathematics in high school and
during his freshman year acquired a sudden attach-
ment for the subject and became a professional statis-
tician. This boy’s older brother was proficient in mathe-
matics, and the two had been in conflict for years.
So-called laziness, lack of concentration, etc., are due
to the acceptance of definitions at cross purposes with
one another. Such individuals cannot act in consistency
with one definition without being inconsistent with
another. For example, a student may define himself as
intelligent, but poor in mathematics. ‘To maintain the
first definition, he should make high grades in mathe-
matics, but to maintain the second he should fail. How-
ever, since he must act, as long as he is playing both
roles at once he is forced to compromise. His grades in
mathematics will split the difference somewhere near
the passing mark, and the teacher will characterize him
as lazy. For his own part, he will claim that he cannot
concentrate, and the claim will be perfectly true. This
seems to be the explanation of the characteristic level
of performance already noted in regard to spelling. As
long as the definitions remain unchanged, the charac-
teristic rate or grade of activity tends to remain con-
stant.
The remedy is not to be found by means of tests
which reveal the specific weaknesses, therefore, or in
persistent drilling on the fundamentals, but only in
changing the definition. Energetic concentration sim-
ply means that a person is free from conflicts and able
to bring his united efforts to focus on the task in hand.
What a person is able or unable to learn, in other

words, depends, to a large extent at least, upon. what
he has already learned, and especially upon how he has
learned to define himself. Differences in native ability
cannot be summarily dismissed, but at present this ex-
planation is frequently dragged in simply to serve as
an alibi, both for the school and for the individual.
It should be repeated in this connection that a per-
son may accept any definition whatsoever if nothing
has been learned to the contrary to interfere with its
acceptance; while a contrary definition provides a sort
of immunity. We have an instance of a very slow boy
who characterized himself as ‘‘the slow one” and his
brother as “the quick one.” He felt so guilty when
working too rapidly that he had developed a large
repertory of devices to use up the necessary amount of
time in order to be true to his role. Attempts to teach
him rapid methods of work naturally met with com-
plete failure as long as the original definition was re-
tained. Very often a troublesome child has unwittingly
been cast in that part by the criticism of parents or
teachers. A boy who has previously defined himself as
“good” would vigorously resist, of course, the sugges-
tion that he is “bad.” If his definition in this respect
has not yet been strongly established, however, he may
accept the role and consider the question closed. ‘There-
after he endeavors to perfect himself in the part to
which he has beenassigned, and grows more and more
unmanageable the more his behavior is condemned.
Youths who are placed in reformatories usually emerge
not reformed, but confirmed in their self-definition as
social outcasts and potential criminals.
Shyness, seclusiveness, feeling of insecurity and in-
adequacy, lack of friends and the like are symptomatic
of self-valuations which are not supported in the situa-

tion in which the subject finds himself. They are not
traits, for they would disappear if a more favorable sit-
uation could be found. In order to be favorable from
the subject’s standpoint, however, this would mean an
approximation of the childhood situation in which
these values were developed and to which they then
seemed to be appropriate.
Unprepared for the struggle of expanding his field
of action, and overestimating its difficulties, the subject
naturally clings to the few goals he has with greater
tenacity. But infantile behavior on the part of adults
is the signal for social attack. This precipitates a des-
perate dilemma, for he can neither give up his cher-
ished goals nor safely pursue them. In the emergency,
he is driven to attempt an intellectual feat that might
rank in other fields as a’creative masterpiece. By dis-
tortion of the action lines, he endeavors to construct
two behavior patterns, one in reference to each prob-
lem, which will nevertheless overlap throughout. If
successful, all of the activity will be overdetermined,
every act will show “polarity,” and a single pattern will
serve the needs of “approach” and ‘‘avoidance” jointly.
The numerous antithetical relationships which Freud
regards as the essential mark of the neurotic character
arise from the fact that every symptom is part of a
double structure.t What we call the symptom of a dis-
ease is nevertheless, for the subject, the solution of his
problem.
1. This is the explanation of the various distortion and defense
mechanisms, resistance, repression, and the concept of an unconscious
mind. As soon as it is recognized that symptoms and dreams are a part
of a plan to avoid discovery and criticism, as well as a means to fulfill
a positive wish, the whole picture holds together and the notion of a
personality divided against itself becomes an unnecessary assumption.
The subject himself thus arrives quite naturally at

exactly the opposite diagnosis. From his own stand-
point, his values seem so consistent with one another
that he regards them as virtually axiomatic. He there-
fore turns for support to fantasy, and puts the blame for
his difficulties on the external situation. Thus, in de-
fending the validity of his present scheme of thought
and action, he renders his problem more insoluble than
ever.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that
everyone has accepted numerous other values in addi-
tion to those which cause his unhappiness. If this were
not so, he would be content to withdraw even further
from the outside world and retreat still deeper into
fantasy. It is this inability to unify on any course of
action, in fact, which keeps him perpetually in search
of a solution and gives us the opportunity to help him
toward a clearer view of his problem.
Attention must therefore be fixed on the values
which offer some hope of unified action. Nor are such
values difficult to find. We have already mentioned that
most persons conceive of themselves as intelligent and
self-reliant. Even more strongly founded, however, is
the conception of oneself as a person who is useful to
others, willing to hold up one’s own end, and capable
of making a contribution to the group to which he be-
longs. At any rate, we have never seen anyone who did
not conceive of himself in this way, though the values
in question may be so blocked that the external be-
havior fails to reveal their influence. The test for the
presence of any value, of course, is whethera person is
pleased when the value is attached to him, or disturbed
when charged with its opposite.
The technique consists in making the subject aware
of his own inconsistency. The inhibiting definitions

must be seen as useless burdens from which he must
try to free himself, rather than as assets to be justified
and retained. But no matter how undesirable a given
definition may be from a social standpoint, it will not
be rejected unless it seems inconsistent from the sub-
ject’s standpoint. We do not aim at consistency with
the demands of society, but only at self-consistency.
Social ends must be approached indirectly. In other
words, if the personal problem is solved and unity of
action achieved, the social problem disappears.
_ Everyone’s behavior is logical from his own point of
view. If another person’s behavior seems illogical to
us, the reason is that we do not understand it, not that
he is irrational.
The behavior of others seems irrational and incom-
prehensible only when the definitions they are striving
to maintain bear too little resemblance to our own.
The behavior of those whose definitions are similar to
ours, on the other hand, seems quite rational and
natural; it is understandable for the simple reason that
we would behave that way ourselves.
A comparison with other theories will clarify both
the similarities and differences. We accept Adler’s
principle of the unity of the personality, though not
his theory of maladjustment as due to fear or dis-
couragement. We agree with Freud that the subject is
usually unaware of the cause of his difficulties, though
we do not agree with the theory of repression. Instead
of trying to remove complexes, we try to change defi-
nitions. The value of the analytic approach, in our
opinion, is to demonstrate how certain definitions
originated, and thus to bring about reconsideration of
those which were arrived at prematurely. We extend
the Gestalt principle to include concepts as well as per-

cepts, but reject the equilibrium theory as a form of
mechanism.
Both Freud and Adler, it seems to us, implicitly em-
ploy the same method which we advocate explicitly.
Freud attempts to render certain values inassimilable,
and in this way to bring about their vigorous rejection,
by associating them with sexual connotations which
are not acceptable. Adler attempts to bring about a re-
organization by interpreting the resistance as due to
fear or cowardice. Almost no one, it is safe to say, can
assimilate the idea of himself as either an Oedipus or
a coward.
3. Conclusion
Self-consistency cannot be accepted openly by psy-

chiatry until the way has been prepared by sacrificing
the doctrine of a mind divided against itself, conscious
versus unconscious, love versus hate, good versus evil.
Plainly derived from demonology, the variety of forms
which this conception of human nature assumes, in
theology as well as psychology, shows how persistent it
is, and how readily it reappears when a new disguise is
offered. Thus the psychoanalytic pursuit of uncon-
scious complexes, with no stated goal except to destroy
them, suggests the superstitious fervor of the witch-
burner, and psychiatry in general may be thought of
as engaged in a moral crusade against the demon Neu-
rosis. The motive, of course, is to establish consistency
by attacking the supposed cause of inconsistency, but
the diagnosis of inconsistency in dualistic terms as due
to repressed anti-social instincts is entirely too primi-
tive and indiscriminate for scientific purposes.
Not only the doctrine of the unconscious must go,

but with it the intolerant dominance of the analytic
and mechanistic tradition prevailing in psychology
generally. It would be foolish to plead with this tra-
dition; but fortunately we do not have to plead. No
one can escape the necessity of accepting the concept of
personality unless he refuses to face the facts. ‘The real-
istic scientist who is willing to consider the evidence of
organization, and who follows established mathemati-
cal procedure, has no other choice than acceptance. He
is obliged to perceive that the concept of personality
is necessary to enable him to think about organization,
to unify the interpretation of the data, and thus to
serve his own need for unification and consistency. He
is obliged to reject the concept of neurotic tendency
and the fiction of a norm at the end of a distribution
curve because such ideas lead to inconsistency. And
for the same reason he must find a way to do without
reflexes and reaction patterns. He must do this for his
own sake, to preserve his own organization. The prob-
lems of science are not abstractions, but the human
problems of scientists. If we did not strive for con-
sistency in ourselves, what possibly could be the mo-
tive for seeking and demanding consistency in abstract
scientific formulations?
As a person grows older, and as situations change,
it is expected that new values will be assimilated into
the organization and old values eliminated; mean-
while the organization must be kept consistent as well
as may be in the process. For this reason the normal life
is never free from problems. Many, overwhelmed by
their difficulties, seek advice from any who will give it,
and they are fortunate indeed if they find a wise coun-
sellor. But where shall they turn for that objective
SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A ‘TECHNIQUE 113
advice, based on a survey of the relevant facts, which

deserves to be called scientific advice? Psychology at
present cannot answer that question, for the facts have
not been determined. Yet it seems to us that a scientific
basis for the art of giving psychological advice is by no
means inconceivable, and will begin to develop rapidly
as soon as we have a psychology which regards human
nature and its problems in a realistic perspective and
abandons the study of imaginary beings invented to fit
our superstitions and dogmas. The inventory method
seems to us both a valid method of gathering the neces-
sary facts, and perhaps the only method which can
force the recognition of self-consistency and person-
ality.
EPILOGUE
Towarp A Non-MECHANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
The persistent failure to evolve a unified psychology

has had consequences which are twofold. On the one
hand, there is a growing interest in the so-called organ-
ismic conception, a tendency away not only from con-
cern with the minutiae of behavior, but even from the
study of behavior itself except as a means to an end.
The new goal, as we interpret it, is the conceptualiza-
tion of a unit altogether new to the scientist, in spite of
its age in philosophy—the self, or in more recent and
acceptable language, the personality. In this view be-
havior is not to be regarded as important in its own
right, descriptively, but only as a sign, an indication, a
puzzle to be interpreted. Our primary task is not the
execution of more and more experiments, or the con-
tinuous accumulation of more and more facts, but the
development of a conceptual scheme which will en-
able us to see in the facts a significant and orderly re-
lationship.
On the other hand, the failure of the old psychology
has encouraged a spirit of pessimism. The task seems
hopeless. It must not be forgotten that the old psychol-
ogy was cut out according to the orthodox scientific
pattern, and thus derives an authority which does not
seem open to question, despite the fact of its fruitless-
ness. Most psychologists undoubtedly like to think of
themselves as loyal supporters of the scientific tradi-
tion, and are reénforced in this attitude by the nature
of their training. Nor is there any doubt in their minds
that the new psychological tendencies, particularly
114 .
Towarp A Non-MECHANISTIC PsycCHOLOGY 115
those which deal with the concept of a self or per-

sonality, are quite irreconcilable with the mechanistic
scheme of things to which science in general has be-
come so firmly committed. Between a system of
thought which has stood for three centuries, and which
seems to many the most distinctive achievement of the
modern world—between this and a vague, half-formed
conception, tainted with vitalistic and religious asso-
Clations, what is there to choose?
This conflict is present not only in psychology at
large, but also in the minds of most psychologists in-
dividually. In each case, how the conflict goes may be
seen in their sympathies; those who favor mechanism
turn toward physiology, those interested in organiza-
tion turn toward sociology. Yet even the latter seem to
regard the mechanistic scheme as a model, a goal to-
ward which to strive, even though it may be unattain-
able.
But granted that compromise is impossible, what
then? If the mechanistic pattern of thinking is dis-
carded in its entirety, where are we to turn? To sucha
question, if we face it frankly, there is only one an-
swer: we must lay a new foundation and undertake the
building of a new psychology. We may also hope to
join our efforts to those of sub-atomic physics, which is
also non-mechanistic, in the development of a more
realistic philosophy of science.
From the other branches of science, however, we
must be prepared to expect not help but opposition,
for in some degree at least what is called scientific
method represents a reaction against interpretation.
But that is because interpretation in the past has often
been used not for the purpose of prediction and con-
trol, but merely, as a rule, to extend some contem-

poraneous dogma; it has savored too strongly of ra-
tionalization. Psychology, of course, has been the
favorite province of this sort of interpretation. But
until very recently in the history of psychology, not
even an effort could be made to achieve a unified view
of the facts themselves, for the reason that the very
facts which constitute the problem were not then avail-
able.
Thus psychology is at the cross-roads. It must choose
between a mechanistic system which is applauded but
will not work, and a non-mechanistic system which has
not yet taken definite form.
The difficulties are impressive. No considerable
scientific support for such a movement can be expected
until after it has proved successful, or in other words,
until the need of support has passed. We cannot seek
converts because we have as yet nothing definite, ex-
cept a program, to offer. Only those who, like the
writer, feel that mechanism is a simplification to the
point of absurdity will be disposed to commit them-
selves on faith and burn their bridges behind them.
When we insist that the understanding of behavior
must begin. with the personality as a central concept,
and that activity must be interpreted as the struggle
of an organized system to maintain itself in an unstable
environment, it would be folly to proceed half-
heartedly or to temporize with contradictions. The
first necessity for a scientific psychology is the convic-
tion that behavior is meaningful and that each life
story has its separate and characteristic plot. To dis-
cover that plot is to understand the organism’s be-
havior, and to see in its adjustment to the environing
world the dramatic unfolding of its own purposive
Towarp A Non-MECHANISTIC PsyCHOLOGY 117
achievement. An organism cannot be understood as a

machine, nor behavior as a mechanical response to a
situation. We do not give up mechanism reluctantly,
therefore, but throw it away as cheerfully as a con-
valescent his crutch.
APPENDIX I
PREVENTING FAILURE BY REMOVING RESISTANCE

(Address given in 1938 by Prescott Lecky before the Mental Hygiene
Section of the New York Society for the Experimental Study of
Education)
Ever so often, a child who has formerly been de-

ficient in a certain subject suddenly seems to find him-
self, and rises toward the top of the class. Such cases
present an interesting problem. Are we confronted by
a miracle, or do these spontaneous changes only seem
miraculous because their study has been neglected?
More important still, assuming a clearer understand-
ing of what takes place in these rare cases, is it
possible to bring about similar results among large
numbers of children? These are by no means idle ques-
tions. With approximately half of the pupils in our
schools already below grade in either reading or mathe-
matics, to say nothing of other subjects, the problem
of what to do is an urgent one. Either we must devise
some effective method of raising the level of accom-
plishment, or lower our educational standards.
Previous interpretations of spontaneous improve-
ment have usually been stated in terms of increased
interest or readiness. Since there seems to be nothing
to do about readiness except to wait for it to develop,
however, and since no practical method of increasing
interest beyond the present level seems to be available,
these diagnoses turn out to be little more than truisms
which lead to no constructive action. This point is
borne out by the fact that in the actual treatment of
deficient pupils there seems to be no alternative except
118
PREVENTING FAILURE 119
to send the child to remedial classes or recommend out-

side tutoring. These remedies are apparently based on
the belief that children need additional instruction for
some reason in order to help them to form the habits
which they failed to form in the class room. But even
if our present remedial methods were successful in
every case, the expense of tutoring so many pupils
would make this approach impracticable.
THE THEORY OF SELF-CONSISTENCY
The method described in this report is based on a

different conception of the problem; namely, that the
cause of most failures in school is not insufficient or in-
adequate instruction, but active resistance on the part
of the child. To make this point clear, we must give a
brief description of the theory of self-consistency, from
which the method is derived.
The part of the theory which interests us here is the
concept of the mind. According to self-consistency,
the mind is a unit, an organized system of ideas. All of
the ideas which belong to the system must seem to be
consistent with one another. The center or nucleus of
the mind is the individual’s idea or conception of him-
self. If a new idea seems to be consistent with the ideas
already present in the system, and particularly with the
individual’s conception of himself, it is accepted and
assimilated easily. If it seems to be inconsistent, how-
ever, it meets with resistance and is likely to be re-
jected. This resistance is a natural phenomenon; it is
essential for the maintenance of individuality.
Thus the acceptability of an idea to any particular
pupil is determined by his needs as an individual. In
order to understand the environment, he must keep

his interpretations consistent with his experience, but
in order to maintain his individuality, he must organ-
ize his interpretations to form a system of ideas which
is internally consistent. This consistency is not objec-
tive, of course, but subjective, private, and wholly in-
dividual. It is difficult to understand resistance unless
this point is borne in mind.
From this standpoint, learning cannot be under-
stood as a process of forming separate habits, but only
in terms of the development of the entire personality.
It follows that no type of subject matter is interesting
merely for its own sake. It is interesting only when an
individual happens to be interested in it, because of
the way he interprets it in relation to his problem. In-
deed, though learning and resistance seem to point in
opposite directions, they really serve the same purpose.
In the one case we are supporting the system by the
assimilation of consistent ideas, while in the other we
are protecting the system from inconsistency and con-
flict. Both are necessary in order that the unity of the
system may be preserved.
If the pupil shows resistance toward a certain type
of material, this means that from his point of view it
would be inconsistent for him to learn it. If we are
able to change the self-conception which underlies this
viewpoint, however, his attitude toward the material
will change accordingly. With the resistance elimi-
nated, he learns so rapidly that tutoring is often un-
necessary.
Such a change in the pupil’s attitude often results in
improvement which is quite astonishing. A high school
student who misspelled 55 words out of a hundred, and
who failed so many subjects that he lost credit for a
PREVENTING FAILURE 12]
full year, became one of the best spellers in the school

during the next year, and made a general average of
g1. A student who was dropped from another college
and was later admitted to Columbia was graduated
with more than 70 points of “A” credits. A boy failing
in English, who had been diagnosed by a testing
bureau as lacking aptitude for this subject, won honor-
able mention a year later for the literary prize at a
large preparatory school. A girl who had failed four
times in Latin, with marks between 20 and 50, after
three talks with the school counselor made a mark of
g2 on the next test and finished with a grade of 84. She
is now taking advanced Latin with grades above 80.
Two of the poorest spellers in the High School of
Clifton, N. J., were used to demonstrate this method
before a university class in psychology. Given twenty
words to spell, one missed all twenty and the other
nineteen. The school counselor, continuing the use
of the method, reports that both are now excellent
spellers and have taken up spelling as a sort of hobby.
The results reported are taken from the work of three
different counselors, showing that the method lends
itself to general use in the school system.
These examples are selected to show how little we
are justified in judging the future potentialities of the
pupil by the record he has made in the past. In the ma-
jority of cases, of course, the improvement, if any, is
much less spectacular. But the fact that such extra-
ordinary results can be obtained at all, and by means
of a method which is still in the experimental stage,
show that an optimistic attitude in regard to the pos-
sibilities of the school population in general is not
unreasonable. The greatest handicap to constructive
action is the well-entrenched, though perhaps uncon-
GOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SCHOOL

OF THEOLOGY LIBRARY
scious, dogma that learning is the direct result of teach-

ing, a mechanical reaction to the school environment
instead of a purposive achievement.
PREDICTIONS BASED ON THE HABIT THEORY

ARE UNRELIABLE
The methods that we use, in other words, reflect the

theory that we accept. In psychology and education,
theories are often accepted merely because they seem
plausible. In the physical sciences, however, the value
of a theory is judged by its ability to make predictions
that are later verified by experience. Let us apply this
test to the theory that learning is a process of habit
formation.
Most of us have been taught that habits are fixed by
exercise and the satisfaction obtained by practicing
them, and that predictions based on this theory can be
relied upon. Actually, however, such predictions often
turn out to be highly unreliable. A good example is
thumb-sucking. Certainly the child who sucks his
thumb gives the act plenty of exercise and gets enough
satisfaction from it to fix the act indelibly. Therefore
if the habit theory is true, we should be able to predict
absolutely that the child will continue to suck his
thumb for the rest of his life. But what really happens?
Every year millions of children who have industriously
sucked their thumbs since birth, and who have suc-
cessfully resisted every effort to force them to change
their behavior, quit the practice spontaneously when
they are five or six years old. The reason is that they
are beginning at this age to think of themselves as big
boys or girls, and they recognize that thumb-sucking
is inconsistent with the effort to maintain this new
idea. ‘The changed conception of who they are, and the

necessity of making good in the new role they have ac-
cepted, furnishes them with a new standard to which
their behavior must now conform. If a child continues
to think of himself as a baby, due perhaps to prolonged
illness or over-protection by the parents, the necessary
standard is lacking and the thumb-sucking will con-
tinue. Parents often invoke the “big boy” standard de-
liberately in the effort to change the child’s behavior
in many other situations.
WHY BOYS ARE SLOWER THAN GIRLS IN LEARNING TO READ
The behavior of the child in the classroom must also

be understood in terms of the standards he is trying to
maintain. Let us take, for example, the well known
fact that boys on the average are slower than girls in
learning to read. Educational textbooks usually ex-
plain this by saying that girls have more native ability
in respect to reading than boys. In terms of self-con-
sistency, however, the explanation is that to most boys
the reading material in elementary readers seems in-
fantile and effeminate. The boy from six to eight years
old, just beginning to learn to read, is mainly con-
cerned with maintaining the conception of himself as
manly. He likes to play cowboy, G-man and Indian.
He tries not to cry when he gets a bump. The greatest
possible insult would be to call him a sissy. Yet this
boy, when the reading lesson begins, must stand up be-
fore his companions and read that “The little red hen
says ‘Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!’ ”’—or something equally
inconsistent with his standards of how he should be-
have. If a boy is trying to maintain a standard of manli-
ness on the playground, he does not abandon that
standard merely because he walks from the playground

into the classroom. When boys are given books about
railroads and airplanes, the resistance disappears, and
they learn just as rapidly and have as much “‘native
ability” as girls.
Thus the pupil’s resistance to learning certain sub-
jects is really resistance to behaving in a manner which
is inconsistent with his personal standards. Eagerness
to learn, on the other hand, is due to the pupil’s effort
to maintain and support his standards. But he is not
conscious of these standards, and explains his failures
and successes either in terms of ability, or as due to
likes and dislikes over which he has no control.
STANDARDS RESPONSIBLE FOR FAILURE
Now suppose that a pupil thinks of himself as a poor

speller or reader, or as one of those unfortunates who
“just haven’t got a mathematical mind.” Is he merely
lacking a standard to maintain? Not at all. This con-
ception, so long as he believes it to be true, is just as
definite as any other, and the standard is just as posi-
tive. Though he seems to be saying “I can’t,” he is
really asserting “I won’t try.” Many people find it hard
to believe that a person will defend and strive to main-
tain an idea which is not to his advantage. But the evi-
dence allows of no other conclusion.
For example, if we examine the letters or themes
written by a poor speller, we find that he seems to have
a standard of how many words he should misspell per
page. Often a word will be spelled both correctly and
incorrectly in the same theme, but the average number
of mistakes per page remains approximately constant.
If we give him two spelling tests of the same length and
equal difficulty, we find approximately the same num-

ber of errors on each of the tests. If we tutor him in
spelling, the effect often wears off within a few weeks,
and he returns to his characteristic level. As one stu-
dent said, ‘‘I can remember how a word is spelled all
right, but I can’t remember whether it is the right way
or the wrong way.” The presence of a standard is also
shown by the fact that many poor spellers in English
have no more difficulty than others in spelling foreign
languages.
In a study of remedial instruction in reading made
in the New York schools last year, ten percent of the
pupils who were tutored actually retrogressed in read-
ing ability, though their average I. Q. was slightly
higher than that of the group which made normal
progress. How could this be explained except in terms
of the pupil’s resistance to changing his standards?
Perhaps the most striking illustration of resistance is
the complete inability to read which is known as con-
genital word-blindness. Word-blind pupils are suffer-
ing not from a visual handicap, but a mental one. They
can see other things, including letters, but they cannot
“see” words. In many cases they have I. Q.’s above
normal, and often are proficient in non-reading sub-
jects such as arithmetic. But they think of themselves
as unable to read, and maintain this standard by re-
jecting the ideas necessary for reading, for these ideas
are inconsistent with their self-conception and conse-
quently cannot be assimilated. ‘‘None are so blind as
those that will not see.” .
The reliability of a child’s behavior, as indicated
either by tests or by general observation, is thus ex-
plained by self-consistency as the outward expression
of relatively fixed internal standards. It is often argued
that the reliability of a test proves that the test is

measuring the child’s ability. All that any test can
measure, however, is the level of performance which
is characteristic of the child at the time when the test
is given. It is not the test which is reliable, but the
child. We cannot interpret the score simply as a meas-
ure of ability unless we disregard the problem of re-
sistance entirely, and assume not only the presence of
specific abilities, but also the motive to use them to the
limit.
CHANGING STANDARDS BY AROUSING CONFLICTS
The problem of how to remove the deficiency, then,

is really the problem of how to remove the standard
responsible for it. We cannot remove it ourselves, of
course, but if we can show the pupil that the standard
in question is inconsistent with his other standards,
and endangers the unity of the system as a whole, he
will have to alter it himself. It can safely be taken for
granted, in the majority of cases, that the “big boy” or
“big girl” idea of childhood has developed and reached
a more mature level, and hence that the pupil now
thinks of himself as self-reliant and independent.
Obviously, the childish standard which is causing the
resistance does not belong in the same system with
these mature standards. The pupil has not recognized
the inconsistency, however, because he has always man-
aged to keep the conflicting ideas apart. Reorganiza-
tion is temporarily painful, and in order to avoid it he
has resorted to private logic and rationalized the con-
flict away.
Our method must therefore aim to break down the
structure of rationalization and bring the contradic-
tory ideas into intimate relationship. There is nothing

novel in this plan. All of us use it frequently. But it
has to be used with skill and understanding if we hope
to circumvent the pupil’s effort to preserve the status
quo in spite of us.
A pupil whose unconscious standards are preventing
his development in certain directions is really caught -
in a trap. He set up the standard originally as a means
of avoiding conflict. By defining himself as unable or
unwilling to master a subject which seemed to be diffi-
cult, he protected himself from the pain of contradic-
tion by making it seem consistent to fail. Asa result, he
finds himself increasingly handicapped in the effort to
maintain other standards whose preservation is im-
perative; for example, the ideas that he is normally’in-
telligent and respected by others as an equal. But the
longer he maintains the standard, and the greater the
handicap becomes, the greater the difficulty he has in
escaping from his own defenses.
To free himself, it would be necessary to set up a
new and higher standard supported by consistency
alone. This is by no means impossible, in spite of the
influence of past experience. But he cannot make up
his mind to this step because he is not clearly aware of
the nature of the problem. The picture of himself as
caught in a trap is hidden from his view. Hence he not
only clings to the inhibiting idea, but defends it by
rationalizing to the effect that since every one has his
weaknesses, it is foolish to worry about them. The ra-
tionalization masks the problem so cleverly that the
pupil sees no inconsistency to be corrected, and hence
has no motive for changing his attitude. As long as they
are protected by their parents and enjoy their cus-
tomary social status, such pupils as a rule take an opti-
mistic view of the future, anticipate a lenient and

sympathetic attitude on the part of others, and expect
to be successful in spite of their deficiency. Indeed,
this attitude is necessary for defense.
In applying the method, we first explain to the pupil
that his deficiency is not due to lack of ability, but toa
standard which he created himself. We must make it
clear that the standard is unconscious, since this ex-
plains why he has continued to maintain it. It is most
important that the interpretation of his difficulty be
offered in a friendly and uncritical manner. The atti-
tude should be that this is not our problem, but his.
The next step is to demonstrate that the pupil also
has other standards which likewise must be main-
tained; for example, the conception of himself as self-
reliant, independent, socially acceptable, and able to
solve his problems by his own effort.
Finally, we call attention without criticism to the in-
consistency between mature and immature standards.
We make the conflict as clear as possible. In this way
we take advantage of the need for consistency and make
it work in the pupil’s favor instead of against him.
Many counselors make the mistake of trying to influ-
ence the pupil by appealing to practical or material
motives, such as the need of arithmetic and spelling in
business. Our experience has shown that these appeals
have little or no effect. We can influence the pupil to
change his behavior in order to preserve his mental in-
tegrity, but not in order to prepare himself to make a
material success.
APPENDIX II
PERSONAL COUNSELING
The Theory of Self-Consistency in Personnel Problems
(An address given by Prescott Lecky at the Annual Meeting of the
American College Personnel Association, 1935)
Science at present adheres to the dogma that man is

a machine, not essentially different from other ma-
chines except in complexity. His behavior consists of
reactions which are mechanical and purposeless. Every
movement is, in theory, completely determined by in-
flexible laws. Science insists on this conception, and
scientific method in psychology presupposes it. If new
methods are to be developed, therefore, the old dogma
must be overthrown. But this is impossible so long as
the aim of science itself is restricted to the discovery of
natural laws. Under the circumstances, the persistence
of the mechanistic viewpoint is not difficult to under-
stand.
The scientific view of man was not, however, arrived
at inductively by study of the evidence relating to man.
Instead, it was deduced from the doctrines of classical
physics and medieval theology. The conclusion was ac-
cepted before the evidence was examined, and we are
still seeking facts which will confirm the theory, rather
than a theory which will organize the facts. Since sci-
ence insists that every phenomenon of nature must be
explained in terms of law, the effort to account for the
behavior of man in terms of individual purpose would
involve a contradiction of the scientific scheme as a
whole. Consequently, though the accepted picture be-
longs to a period of thought far removed from the
129
twentieth century, it is protected by the rest of the

system of which it is a part. We are caught in a vicious
circle from which escape is impossible until the circle
is somehow broken.
The handicap imposed on the human sciences by the
mechanistic caricature of man cannot be exaggerated.
But mere criticism of the mechanistic hypothesis ac-
complishes nothing. A false idea is not destroyed until
it is replaced. Either we must take a positive step and
attempt to develop a new way of thinking, or give up
the problem altogether.
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the physio-
logical theory of stimulus-response, based on the anal-
ogy between the nervous system and a telegraph sys-
tem, dominated all psychological thinking. But this
theory proved inadequate for clinical purposes, and
was challenged by psychoanalysis, which substituted
the analogy of a hydraulic system and endeavored to
conceive of mental processes in terms of the behavior
of liquids under pressure. It was this analogy which
gave rise to such concepts as repression, emotional out-
lets, sublimation, drainage, equilibrium, etc. Both
theories attempt by the use of these analogies to main-
tain the appearance of consistency with the traditions
of mechanistic science.
But this phase in the history of psychology is now
drawing to a close. Mechanistic figures of speech have
been useful devices for preliminary organization of
the data, but they have not produced a conception of
man which disinterested students of the evidence are
able to accept. After fifty years of research under me-
chanistic auspices, psychology is more disorganized in
respect to its theoretical outlook than ever before in
its history.
PERSONAL COUNSELING 131
The hydraulic analogy seems to be displacing the

telegraphic concept chiefly because of its greater flexi-
bility for dealing with problems of motivation. Instead
of relying on environmental forces acting as stimuli,
it postulates a group of internal forces or instincts
seeking expression by devious outlets. But it has never
been possible to explain all behavior as the expres-
sion of the same type of energy, which would be quite
necessary, of course, if the hydraulic figure were fol-
lowed literally. Freud attempted to confine his theory
to the single instinct of love or sex, but he was forced
to recognize the so-called ego motives, and recently has
also added the death instinct as a means of explaining
aggression and hatred. Similarly, Adler began with the
aggressive striving for power or superiority, but later
was obliged to admit the existence of social feeling and
codperative tendencies. Other schools recognize much
longer lists of instincts. But in all cases it has been ob-
served that motives conflict and interfere with one an-
other, which has led to the belief that each different
motive must be treated independently. The result is
that the hydraulic analogy leads to a number of
dynamic units, just as the telegraphic concept, with its
great variety of habits and reaction patterns, leads toa
number of structural units. The personality thus
comes to be conceived as a plurality, not as a unity in
itself.
Mechanistic psychology, as already noted, is founded
on classical physics, which insists upon unqualified de-
terminism. In the new physics, on the other hand, it
has been found that determinism is valid only in refer-
ence to averages; that is, for groups of atoms, but not
for single atoms studied individually. The behavior of
individual atoms, it seems, is not exactly predictable.
Hence the concept of law, which is the basis of mech-

anism, is recognized as applicable only to statistical
results involving the behavior of a mass of units. This
means that the study of individual systems leads us
into new scientific territory where the old ways of
thinking no longer apply, Here, since mathematical
certainty is not attainable, science must abandon its
former goal and seek insight and understanding in-
stead.
Modern physics likewise frankly admits that the con-
cept of forces, employed by classical science to explain
the movement of physical objects, is not only undefin-
able and hypothetical but unnecessary and confusing
from the standpoint of interpretation. For instance, no
one would claim today that invisible forces are com-
peting for control of the physical world; and, if such a
suggestion were offered, it would promptly be rejected
as a return to demonology. In psychology, however,
demonology persists. We still think of the individual
as controlled by instinctive and emotional forces which
conceptually play the same réle as devils and demons
competing with one another for the mastery. And we
are bound to continue thinking in this way until
mechanism is abandoned and a new conception sub-
stituted in its place.
Instead of assuming beforehand, then, that man is a
machine which is moved by forces, a mass whose future
behavior is predictable from records of its past be-
havior, let us assume that as long as he remains alive
he must be thought of not as a complex mass of cells
or molecules or atoms but as a unit in himself, a sys-
tem which operates as a whole. His behavior must then
be interpreted in terms of action rather than reaction;
that is, in terms of purpose.
%
Such a suggestion is by no means radical from a

humanistic standpoint. Any theory which may be
erected on the basis of this assumption, however, and
any technique derived from the theory for clinical use,
is automatically prohibited from assuming a plurality
of purposes. One source of motivation only, the neces-
sity to maintain the unity of the system, must serve as
the universal dynamic principle. Not conflict but unity
must be the fundamental postulate. But although we
assume a constant striving for unity, we do not assume
that the outcome of the striving is necessarily success-
ful, The environment sets the conditions of the prob-
lem which must be met, and in some instances an ade-
quate solution may not be forthcoming. If the outcome
could be guaranteed, in fact, as it is in classical physics,
determinism would be reinstated and the postulate of
purposive striving would be unnecessary.
Practically all schools of psychotherapy aim at the
elimination of conflict, in spite of the fact that conflict
is postulated as fundamental. Hence it is clear that they
too aim at unification as a goal, though the possibility
of attaining the goal is inconsistent with their premises.
It is obvious, then, that conflict must be assumed to be
a temporary disturbance only, a kind of illness in con-
trast to health, rather than a permanent and necessary
condition. Though conflict is usually present, it is not
due to the structure of the personality itself. It is rather
due to environmental changes which present a con-
tinuous series of new problems to be solved.
This brings us to the question of why the mechanis-
tic psychologies have been able to survive so long. ‘The
answer is that, in spite of their failure to meet the re-
quirements of logic, the evidence on which they rest is
usually accepted without question. The mechanistic
system of thought is erected on the axiom that the real

world is the apparent world, a claim which is by no
means easily set aside. The data of perception are ac-
cepted at face value and the method adopted is the
literal description and exact measurement of so-called
physical objects in relation to other physical objects.
A science which thus overemphasizes the importance of
perception, however, cannot thereafter accommodate
itself to the use of conceptual thinking in the solution
of its problems. Hence, though imaginative and sym-
bolic thought has always been indispensable in the de-
velopment of scientific theory, it is still true that such
thinking is tolerated only when sufficiently disguised
to conceal its true character. We must now abandon
this pretense and assert the right to create concepts
without the necessity of passing them off as part of the
perceptual world.
The new developments in physics for example, be-
gan with the emergence of the modern concept of the
atom. Formerly conceived of as merely tiny particles of
matter, all alike and not essentially different from
larger particles, atoms in the new physics belong in a
different category altogether. They are hypothetical
structures or systems created for purposes of interpre-
tation. The question of the existence or reality of the
atom as now conceived does not arise. As Eddington ©
says, it has no definition in the world of familiar ex-
perience. It is sufficient that the concept is a scientific
necessity without which the problems of physics could
not be solved.
Psychology evidently needs to create a similar con-
ceptual object, likewise for the purpose of making its
data intelligible. Descriptively, a human being is sim-
ply a mass of cells; nothing corresponding to the mind
can be discovered. But it is possible to create a concept

of the mind and then describe the concept, and this is
the method which must be followed. It will be remem-
bered that the concept of the mind or personality is, in
fact, even older than the concept of the atom, but its
disadvantage from the standpoint of descriptive sci-
ence is much greater. It is so obviously not a physical
object that psychology has felt impelled to avoid it as a
mystical speculation. Yet it is no more mystical than
the atom, and certainly no less necessary.
If one tries to imagine physics deprived of the atom,
he can understand something of the state of affairs to
be found at present in psychology. An abundance of
evidence has been accumulated, both experimental
and clinical, but a unifying concept is lacking. Freud’s
“topographical” conception of the personality as
divided into three systems, the Id, Ego, and Super-ego,
is a definite step in this direction, but he cannot con-
dense the three to form a unified system because he has
not rejected the belief in a plurality of instincts. The
conception which is offered here attempts to avoid
these difficulties by rejecting the mechanistic view-
point from the start. Such a step was virtually impos-
sible, of course, for Freud, for the change in physics has
taken place only in the last few years. The young sci-
ence of psychology could never have hoped to attack
the mechanistic viewpoint unassisted.
We conceive of the mind or personality as an organi-
zation of ideas which are felt to be consistent with one
another. Behavior expresses the effort to maintain the
integrity and unity of the organization. The point is
that all of an individual’s ideas are organized into a
single system, whose preservation is essential. In order
to be immediately assimilated, the idea formed as the
result of a new experience must be felt to be consistent

with the ideas already present in the system. On the
other hand, ideas whose inconsistency is recognized as
the personality develops must be expelled from the
system. There is thus a constant assimilation of new
ideas and expulsion of old ideas throughout life.
The nucleus of the system, around which the rest of
the system revolves, is the individual’s idea or concep-
tion of himself. Any idea entering the system which is
inconsistent with the individual’s conception of him-
self cannot be assimilated but instead gives rise to an
inconsistency which must be removed as promptly as
possible.
By way of illustration, let us consider the interpreta-
tion of why a person feels insulted or has his feelings
hurt. An insult is a valuation of the individual by
others which does not agree with his valuation of him-
self. Such a contradictory valuation cannot be assimi-
lated; and, when thrust into a person’s experience,
evokes an impulse of rejection.
The conflict provoked by the inconsistency may lead
to several different kinds of behavior. One method of
handling the problem is to strike back and try to in-
flict an equal injury upon the person responsible for
the insult. It seems to be necessary that the injury given
be equal to the injury received if the conflict is to be
dissolved completely. Ancient codes of justice empha-
size this equality—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Vigorous rejection and retaliation is especially appar-
ent in children because of their inability to unify on
any other basis. The inconsistency may also be re-
moved by an apology, again provided that the apology
be interpreted as equal to the insult. ,
Still another method is to reinterpret the disturbing
PERSONAL COUNSELING 135i
incident in such a manner that it can be assimilated.
For example, a child was deeply wounded when he
failed to be invited to a schoolmate’s birthday party.
The incident was painful because the values implied
were inconsistent with his conception of himself.
When he discovered that the party was a small one,
however, and that several of his close friends were
among the uninvited he was able to reinterpret the
situation in such a way that the threat to his values
disappeared.
Finally, it is sometimes necessary to alter the opin-
ion one holds of oneself. This is difficult, for the in-
dividual’s conception of himself is the central axiom of
his whole life theory. Nevertheless, a gradual change
in the concept of self is imperative to normal develop-
ment and happiness.
This compulsion to unify and harmonize the system
of ideas by which we live provides the basis for the
dynamic aspect of the theory. It is only when a person
is unable to rid himself of inconsistencies that psycho-
logical problems arise. ‘The function of the psycholo-
gist is confined to diagnosis and demonstration. Once
the subject, himself, is made to feel the inconsistency
in his scheme of life, he can be depended upon to make
the problem his own. He is obliged to endeavor to alter
the system in the direction of greater consistency. In
constructing his personal theory of life, in other words,
the individual follows the same method precisely as
the scientist in constructing and perfecting his theory
of the world. Yet in both cases, despite the need for
adaptation to new situations, the resistance to disturb-
ance of the existing organization is readily observable.
As we have already pointed out, the various so-called
emotional states cannot be treated independently, but
must be regarded as different aspects of a single motive,

the striving for unity. For example, love is the emotion
subjectively experienced in reference to a person or
object already assimilated and serving as a strong sup-
port to the idea of self. Grief is experienced when the
personality must be reorganized due to the loss of one
of its supports. Hatred and rage are impulses of rejec-
tion and destruction felt towards unassimilable ob-
jects. The emotion of horror appears when a situation
arises suddenly which we are not prepared to assimilate,
such as the sight of a ghastly accident.
Experiences which increase the sense of psychologi-
cal unity and strength give rise to the emotion of joy
and feelings of pleasure. Occasionally a person’s own
behavior may violate his conception of himself, pro-
ducing feelings of remorse and guilt. In that case, the
insult to himself, as it were, may be eliminated either
by reinterpretation or by seeking punishment suffi-
cient to equalize the insult. Fear is felt when no ade-
quate solution of a problem can be found; it is due to
dynamic disorganization.
From our standpoint, emotion is a concept which is
necessary only when the problem of behavior is stated
in terms of the apparent world. The resemblance to
the concept of forces in classical physics, and to the con-
cept of spirits or devils in primitive theories of the
world, has been noted previously. A psychological
theory which conceives of motivation as a phenomenon
of organization has no need for the concept of emotion.
Thinking likewise has the aim of unifying the or-
ganization of ideas. Logic and emotion, therefore, are
not in conflict, but work toward the same end. If most
of our thinking appears to have the purpose of merely
rationalizing our behavior to make it seem consistent,
of defending conclusions already reached, or justifying

positions already taken, this is, indeed, what would be
expected under the circumstances. Once a person is
able to envisage the relationships of his problem, how-
ever, to appreciate the wisdom of sacrificing the ideas
which interfere with unified action, he devotes himself
to the task of reconstruction with an eagerness and
sincerity which often is truly amazing. And why not,
indeed, when his own efficiency and happiness are at
stake?
Of special importance from the standpoint of edu-
cation is the phenomenon of resistance. When one idea
has been accepted, it opposes the acceptance of other
ideas which are not consistent with it. The problem of
resistance has received scant attention in educational
psychology, which conceives of learning as a process of
habit formation through exercise. Psychiatry, on the
other hand, though it recognizes resistance, regards it
as a device to protect the neurosis, and treats it as a
phenomenon of abnormal psychology. Yet the obvious
fact that new ideas must be harmonized with the old
necessarily involves resistance to conceptions whose
assimilation would be difficult. Hence resistance must
be accepted as a normal and necessary aspect of learn-
ing. Indeed, a unified organization could not be main-
tained without it. Early impressions are important, not
only in themselves, but because they set the conditions
for rejection of other values, whatever their nature,
which would tend to precipitate a conflict.
Since the experience of everyone is more or less hap-
hazard, however, there are always present in the system
a certain number of ideas accepted on insufficient evi-
dence. These ideas, whose retention depends entirely
upon the success with which they can be rationalized
and made to seem consistent, give rise to resistances

which are likely to be detrimental to the individual in
the long run.
The clinical technique which follows from the theo-
retical conception of the problem must therefore aim
to bring about in the subject a re-examination of those
ideas which block his development. Academic diffi-
culties and social maladjustments are both conceived
of as due to resistances arising from the subject’s idea
of himself. Obviously, the method must rely upon in-
ducing the subject to observe the system of contradic-
tions in which he has become involved.
Let us take the case of an intelligent student who is
deficient, let us say, in spelling. In almost every in-
stance poor spellers have been tutored and practiced
in spelling over long periods without improvement.
For some reason such a student has a special handicap
in learning how to spell, though not in learning. the
other subjects which are usually considered more diffi-
cult. This deficiency is not due to a lack of ability, but
rather to an active resistance which prevents him from
learning how to spell in spite of the extra instruction.
The resistance arises from the fact that at some time in
the past the suggestion that he is a poor speller was
accepted and incorporated into his definition of him-
self, and is now an integral part of his total personality.
His difficulty is thus explained as a special instance of
the general principle that a person can only be true to
himself. If he defined himself as a poor speller, the mis-
spelling of a certain proportion of the words which he
uses becomes for him a moral issue. He misspells words
for the same reason that he refuses to be a thief. That
is, he must endeavor to behave in a manner consistent
with his idea of himself.
PERSONAL COUNSELING 14]
In these cases, we find that this self-definition as a

poor speller, and consequently the resistance to learn-
ing how to spell correctly, can usually be removed in
from one to five interviews. The majority become
average or better than average spellers within the
space of two or three months.
A study of the spelling behavior of these students
shows that each individual seems to have a definite
standard of poor spelling which he unconsciously en-
deavors to maintain. If his spelling test is cut in two,
it will be found that each half contains approximately
the same number of misspelled words. If we study his
letters or written theses, there is likewise a striking con-
sistency in the number of misspelled words per page.
Strange to say, the spelling of foreign languages seems
to be impaired very little if at all, showing clearly that
the difficulty cannot be attributed to eye movements,
left-handedness, or other mechanical interferences.
Evidently the conception of one’s self as a poor speller
usually has reference to one’s native language only.
The clinical technique consists in first finding sev-
eral strong values apparently unrelated to the value in
question which can be used as levers, so to speak, and
then demonstrating the inconsistency between these
values and the one responsible for the deficiency. Al-
most every student considers himself independent and
self-reliant, for example. On the other hand, it can
readily be shown that the poor speller expects his de-
fect to be condoned and treated sympathetically; that,
in effect, he has his hand out, begging for indulgence.
If the contradiction can be demonstrated from his own
viewpoint, a reorganization becomes compulsory. His
definition of himself as a poor speller is vigorously re-
jected and a determined effort made to establish the
opposite definition. The result obtained is out of all

proportion to the effort exerted to bring it about. Spell-
ing assumes such interest that it is studied at every
opportunity, even from the advertisements on street
cars and subway trains. An elaborate analysis to con-
vince the subject that his difficulty really is due to a
fixed idea of himself, does not seem to be necessary in
the remedial treatment of spelling. He should, how-
ever, be asked to recall when he first accepted the réle
of a poor speller, ceased to worry about it, and dis-
missed the question as closed.
It is significant that not only poor spellers, but stam-
merers and others with similar defects, freely admit as
a rule that they accept themselves as they are and make
no effort to change. This is an excellent defense, of
course, for they feel no inconsistency once the defini-
tion has been accepted. And they often attempt to
avoid the effort of maintaining a more useful defini-
tion by referring the defect to heredity or neuro-
muscular maladjustment.
Our experience also shows that unless a person has
an unusually optimistic view of the future he would
not be likely to anticipate a lenient attitude on the
part of others in regard to errors in spelling. This op-
timism also appears in the fact that poor spellers seem
almost universally to count on the services of stenog-
raphers who are good spellers, and many are able to
quote the names of several people who became famous
in spite of a deficiency in spelling.
Those who claim that they ‘‘do not have a mathe-
matical mind” are likewise victims of their own re-
sistance. Such a student may have defined himself in
childhood as the exact opposite of some unassimilable
companion who had been held up as a shining example
of mathematical proficiency. In other cases, remarks

by parents or teachers that the child was lacking in
aptitude for mathematics seem to be the explanation.
The suggestion was accepted and is now a part of the
student’s conception of himself. In one instance, a
student who despised mathematics in high school, dur-
ing his freshman year, acquired a sudden attachment
for the subject and is now a professional statistician.
This boy’s older brother was proficient in mathematics,
and the two had been in conflict for years.
The method has also been applied to the treatment
of occupational maladjustments and marriage prob-
lems. In these cases the nature of the definition re-
sponsible for the difficulty is not so obvious. It must be
deduced from the individual’s history and his present
attitude and behavior, considered in the light of the
theory. The diagnosis made must be acceptable and
convincing to the individual concerned, of course, and
must be built up as a logical solution of the problem
under consideration. The subject should be urged to
cooperate in stating the self-definition as accurately as
possible before its consistency is called in question.
So-called laziness, lack of concentration, etc., are due
to the acceptance of definitions at cross purposes with
one another. Such individuals cannot act in consistency
with one definition without being inconsistent with
another. For example, a student may define himself as
intelligent, but poor in mathematics. To maintain the
first definition, he should make high grades in mathe-
matics; but, to maintain the second, he should fail.
However, if he must act, as long as he is playing both
rdles at once, he is forced to compromise. His grades in
mathematics will split the difference somewhere near
the passing mark, and the teacher will characterize him
as lazy. For his own part, he will claim that he cannot

concentrate, and the claim will be perfectly true. This
seems to be the explanation of the characteristic level
of performance already noted in regard to spelling. As
long as the definitions remain unchanged, the char-
acteristic rate or grade of activity tends to remain con-
stant.
The remedy is not to be found by means of tests
which reveal the specific weaknesses, or in persistent
drilling on the fundamentals, but only in changing the
definition. Energetic concentration simply means that
a person is free from conflicts and able to bring his
united efforts to focus on the task in hand.
What a person is able or unable to learn, in other
words, depends, to a large extent at least, upon what he
has already learned, and especially upon how he has
learned to define himself. Differences in native ability
cannot be summarily dismissed, but at present this ex-
planation is frequently dragged in simply to serve as
an alibi, both for the school and for the individual.
Character traits, so-called, are likewise attributed to
heredity.
It should be remembered in this connection that a
person may accept any idea whatsoever if nothing has
been learned to the contrary to interfere with its ac-
ceptance; while a contrary idea provides a sort of im-
munity.
We have an instance of a very slow boy, for
example, who characterized himself as ‘“‘the slow one”
and his brother as “the quick one.” He felt so guilty
when working too rapidly that he had developed a
large repertory of devices to use up the necessary
amount of time in order to be true to his réle. Attempts
to teach him rapid methods of work naturally met with
complete failure as long as the original definition was

retained. Very often a troublesome child has unwit-
tingly been cast in that part by the criticism of parents
or teachers. A boy who had previously defined himself
as “good” would vigorously resist, of course, the sug-
gestion that he is ‘‘bad.” If his definition in this respect
has not yet been strongly established, however, he may
accept the rdle and consider the question closed.
Thereafter, he endeavors to perfect himself in the part
to which he has been assigned, and grows more and
more unmanageable the more his behavior is con-
demned. Youths who are placed in reformatories usu-
ally emerge not reformed, but confirmed in their self-
definition as social outcasts and potential criminals. To
make sure that this definition is shared by all of its
members, many gangs require a term in reform school
as a prerequisite for membership.
Shyness, seclusiveness, feelings of insecurity, and in-
adequacy, lack of friends, and the like are sympto-
matic of self-valuations which are not supported in the
situation in which the subject finds himself. They are
not traits, for they would disappear if a more favorable
situation could be found. To be favorable from the
subject’s standpoint, however, would mean a situation
approximating the childhood situation in which these
values were developed and to which they then seemed
to be appropriate.
The subject himself, however, arrives quite natur-
ally at exactly the opposite diagnosis. From his own
standpoint, his values seem so consistent with one an-
other that no important changes are possible. He there-
fore turns for support to fantasy and puts the blame
for his difficulties on the external] situation. Thus, in
defending the validity of his present scheme of thought

and action, he renders his problem more insoluble
than ever.
On the other hand, it must be remembered that
numerous other values have been accepted in addition
to those which cause his unhappiness. If this were not
so, he would be content to withdraw even further from
the outside world and retreat still deeper into fantasy.
It is this inability to unify on any course of action, in
fact, which keeps him perpetually in search of a solu-
tion and gives us the opportunity to help him toward
a clearer view of his problem.
Attention must therefore be fixed on the values
which offer some hope of unified action. Nor are such
values difficult to find. We have already mentioned
that most persons conceive of themselves as intelligent
and self-reliant. Even more strongly founded, how-
ever, is the idea of oneself as a person who is useful to
others, willing to hold up one’s own end, and capable
of making a contribution to the group to which he be-
longs: At any rate, we have never seen anyone who did
not conceive of himself in this way, though the values
in question may be so blocked that the external be-
havior fails to reveal their influence. The test for the
presence of any value, of course, is whether a person is
pleased when the value is attached to him, or disturbed
when charged with its opposite.
As always, the technique consists in making the sub-
ject aware of his own inconsistency. The inhibiting
definitions must be seen as useless burdens from which
he must try to free himself, rather than as assets to be
justified and retained. But no matter how undesirable
a given definition may be from a social standpoint, it
will not be rejected unless it seems inconsistent from
the subject’s standpoint. We do not aim at consistency

with the demands of society, but only at self-consist-
ency. Social ends. must be approached indirectly. If
the personal problem is successfully solved and unity
of action achieved, however, the:social problem seems
to disappear.
Since each personality is an organized system in
which every idea is related to every other, it is obvious
that any attempt to force the issue and remove the re-
sistance by attacking it simply misses the point com-
pletely. For this reason the consultant will probably be.
more successful if he does not try too hard. In dealing
with children, it will be noticed that parents and
teachers, whose own peace of mind is affected by the
child’s success or failure, usually cannot set aside their
personal interest in the matter and are likely to become
impatient. We may with advantage remind ourselves
that only the individual himself can solve his problem,
and he must necessarily solve it in his own way.
Preaching to the subject, telling him what he ought
and ought not to do, trying to get him to accept our
ideas and standards is ineffective for the reason that he
has already accepted other ideas. His resistance to our
suggestions is not due to obstinacy but to inability to
accept them until the contrary ideas have been re-
considered and rejected.
A comparison with other theories will clarify both
the similarities and differences. We accept Adler’s prin-
ciple of the unity of the personality, though not his
theory of maladjustment as due to fear or discourage-
ment. We agree with Freud that the subject is usually
unaware of the cause of his difficulties, though we do
not agree with the theory of repression. Instead of try-
ing to remove complexes, we try to change definitions.

The value of the analytic approach, in our opinion, is
to demonstrate how certain definitions originated, and
thus to bring about reconsideration of those which
were arrived at prematurely. We extend the Gestalt
principle to include concepts as well as percepts, but
reject the equilibrium theory as a form of mechanism.
Both Freud and Adler, it seems to us, implicitly em-
ploy the same method which we advocate explicitly.
Freud attempts to render certain values unassimilable,
and in this way to bring about their vigorous rejection,
by associating them with sexual connotations which are .
not acceptable. Adler attempts to bring about a re-
organization by interpreting the resistance as due to
fear or cowardice. Almost no one, it is safe to say, can
assimilate the idea of himself as either an Oedipus or
a coward.
When the concept of the personality is developed in
greater detail, it will bear, we believe, an even closer
resemblance to the concept of the atom. Ideas seem to
jump from one orbit to another within the personality
just as electrons change their relative positions within
the atom. There are other similarities also. In some of
its aspects the electron must be conceptualized as a
wave, in other aspects as a particle. The same is true of
an idea. When we speak of an idea entering the sys-
tem, the closest analogy from the material world is that
of a particle or bullet passing through a surface of sepa-
ration. But when we speak of a person behaving in con-
sistency with an idea, we think in terms of a wave of
activity following a definite direction. Moreover, struc-
tural and functional concepts have been present in
psychology since the time of Wundt and Brentano,
when the atom was still regarded as a sub-microscopic

billiard ball. In view of the obvious differences be-
tween the descriptive data of psychology and physics,
the similarity of the conceptual structures developed
for interpretative purposes is truly remarkable.
APPENDIX III
THe THEORY OF SELF-CONSISTENCY

(Extracts from an occasional paper by Prescott Lecky)
We conceive of the mind or personality as an organi-

zation of ideas which are felt to be consistent with one
another. Behavior expresses the effort to maintain the
integrity and unity of the organization. The point is
that all of an individual’s ideas are organized into a
single system, whose preservation is essential. In order
to be immediately assimilated, the idea formed as the
result of a new experience must be felt to be consistent
with the ideas already present in the system. On the
other hand, ideas whose inconsistency is recognized as
the personality develops must be expelled from the
system. There is thus a constant assimilation of new
ideas and the expulsion of old ideas throughout life.
The nucleus of the system, around which the rest of
the system revolves, is the individual’s idea or con-
ception of himself. Any idea entering the system which
is inconsistent with the individual’s conception of him-
self cannot be assimilated but instead gives rise to an
inconsistency which must be removed as promptly as
possible.
By way of illustration, let us consider the interpre-
tation of why a person feels insulted or has his feelings
hurt. An insult is a valuation of the individual by
others which does not agree with the individual’s valu-
ation of himself. Such a contradictory valuation can-
not be assimilated, and when thrust into a person’s ex-
perience acts as a foreign body whose elimination is
essential.
150
THE THEORY OF SELF-CONSISTENCY 151
The conflict provoked by the inconsistency may lead

to several different kinds of behavior. The usual
method of handling the problem is to strike back and
try to inflict an equal injury upon the person respon-
sible for the insult. It is necessary that the injury given
be equal to the injury received if the conflict is to be
dissolved completely. Ancient codes of justice empha-
size this necessity—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The demand for vengeance is especially apparent in
children because of their inability to unify on any
other basis. The inconsistency may also be removed by
an apology, again provided that the apology be equal
to the insult.
Still another method is to reinterpret the disturbing
incident in such a manner that it can be assimilated.
For example, a child was deeply wounded when he
failed to be invited to a schoolmate’s birthday party.
He was asked how many children he expected to in-
vite the next time he gave a party. Looking at the situ-
ation in this new perspective, it was apparent that since
the number of guests was limited by necessity, there
was no occasion to regard the omission as a personal
slight. His mental suffering was thereupon relieved.
Finally, it is sometimes necessary to alter the opin-
ion one holds of oneself. This is difficult, for the in-
dividual’s conception of himself is the central axiom
of his whole life theory. Nevertheless, a gradual change
in the concept of self is imperative to normal develop-
ment and happiness.
There is thus a constant compulsion to unify and
harmonize the system of ideas by which we live. It is
only when a person is unable to rid himself of incon-
sistencies that psychological problems arise. The difhi-
culty is to make him realize the nature of the incon-

sistency. For when an inconsistency is clearly recog-
nized, the individual can be depended upon to make
the problem his own and endeavor to alter the system
in such a way that consistency is restored. In construct-
ing his personal theory of life, in other words, the in-
dividual follows the same method precisely as the sci-
entist constructing his theory of the world. In both
cases the resistance to disturbance of the existing organ-
ization is readily observable.
As we have already pointed out, the various so-called
emotional states cannot be treated independently, but
must be regarded as different aspects of a single motive,
the striving for unity. For example, love is the emotion
subjectively experienced in reference to a person or
object already assimilated and serving as a strong sup-
port to the idea of the self. Grief is experienced when
the personality must be reorganized due to the loss of
one of its supports. Hatred is an impulse of rejection
felt towards unassimilable objects. Love may turn to
hate if the accepted idea of a person turns out to be
false in the light of later experience, and instead of
serving as a support, becomes a threat to the integrity
of the organization as a whole.
The emotion of horror appears when a situation
arises suddenly which we are not prepared to assimi-
late, such as the sight of a ghastly accident. Experiences
which increase the sense of psychological unity and
strength give rise to the emotion of joy. Occasionally
a person’s own behavior may violate his conception of
himself, producing feelings of remorse and guilt. In
that case, the insult to himself, as it were, may be elimi-
nated by seeking punishment sufficient to equalize the
insult. Fear is felt when no adequate solution of a
THE THEORY OF SELF-CONSISTENCY 153
problem can be found, and disorganization impends.

Of special importance from the standpoint of the
school is the phenomenon of resistance. The problem
of resistance has heretofore received very little atten-
tion in educational psychology, which conceives learn-
ing in terms of habit formation. In psychiatry, on the
other hand, resistance is regarded as a device to pro-
tect the neurosis, and hence as belonging to abnormal
psychology. Yet the very fact that we strive to be true to
ourselves involves resistance to the acceptance of that
which is inconsistent. ‘Thus resistance must be recog-
nized as normal and necessary. Indeed, a unified organ-
ization could not be maintained without it. Neverthe-
less, there are always present in the system a certain
number of ideas accepted on insufficient evidence,
whose inconsistency has not yet been demonstrated.
These ideas give rise to resistances which are likely to
be detrimental to the individual in the long run, and
which would not be retained if carefully re-examined.
A therapeutic technique which aims to bring about
the re-examination and dissolution of this type of re-
sistance has been successfully applied in the treatment
of students who encounter difficulty both in academic
work and in social situations.
Sensitiveness, inability to make friends, etc. are due
to definitions which are difficult to support in the exist-
ing situation. The individual’s definitions often
formed as the result of excessive attention in child-
hood, are no longer supported by the persons with
whom he comes in contact. The behavior of his asso-
ciates does not confirm the conception of himself which
he is committed to maintain. Unconsciously demand-
ing more recognition than he commonly receives, he
feels that he is being neglected or pushed aside.
Furthermore, he defines himself in passive terms, as
some one whose place it is to be assisted, invited, or

admired, rather than in active terms, as someone who
assists, invites and admires others. To take a socially
active role, even to the extent of speaking first to an-
other person, for him is out of character.
The maintenance of such a passive definition is not,
of course, an easy task in the competitive adult world.
Social support is a matter of exchange, in which one re-
ceives in proportion as he gives. The therapy must
therefore aim to make the subject aware of the self-
valuation which prevents assimilation of the existing
situation. The task is not really as difficult as it seems,
for the reason that he cannot escape from his environ-
ment and is constantly having more unassimilable situ-
ations thrust upon him, and is therefore already occu-
pied with the problem before we offer our help. His
passive definition, which is the real source of his diffi-
culties, now appears as a useless burden to be thrown
off rather than an asset to be justified and retained. In
order to induce the student to accept the problem as
his own, of course, criticism must be carefully avoided.
Since each personality is an organized system in
which every idea is related to every other, it is obvious
that any attempt to force the issue and remove the re-
sistance by attacking it misses the point completely.
For this reason the consultant will probably be more
successful if he does not try too hard. Parents and
teachers, whose own peace of mind is affected by the
child’s success or failure, usually cannot set aside their
personal interest in the matter and are likely to be-
come impatient. We may with advantage remind our-
selves that only the individual himself can solve his
problem, and he must necessarily solve it in his own
way.
IEOLOGY LIBRARY
AREMONT, CALIF.
} oT
496
| AS lo
BF Lecky, Prescott, 1892-1941.

| 696 Self-consistency, a theory of personality, by P
L377. Lecky. New York, N. Y., Island press f1945,
3p. 1,154 p. 20cm.
“Hdited by Dr. John F, A. Taylor.”—Foreword.
1. Personality. 1. Taylor, John Francis Adams, ed. m1.
BF698.L377 . 137 4
CCSC/sk
Library of Congress yad4wl,
aRUT
ge
etieersssass pes ssteeaete
+e. 5
ee sors3 3 eS a3
ret ai
tseghy
its eter ne Sisese
teSeite
tae banda
caren

Self-Consistency, A Theory of Personality - Lecky, Prescott, 1892-1941 Taylor, John F - A - 1945 - New York, N - Y - , Island Press - Anna's Archive Copy 2

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Self-Consistency, A Theory of Personality - Lecky, Prescott, 1892-1941 Taylor, John F - A - 1945 - New York, N - Y - , Island Press - Anna's Archive Copy 2

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Self-Consistency, A Theory of Personality - Lecky, Prescott, 1892-1941 Taylor, John F - A - 1945 - New York, N - Y - , Island Press - Anna's Archive Copy 2

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Library

WEST FOOTHILL AT COLLEGE AVENUE

TSLAND “PRESS. * NEW YORK, N. Y:.

HOOL OF THEO LOGY

Copyright, 1945, by Kathryn Lecky

Cover Design, Frederick Jahnel

Printed in the United States of America by H. Wolff, N. Y.

Foreword, by Gardner Murphy

Self-Consistency vs. the Doctrine of

w The Structure of the Personality

cretetpotia.! atu aaa

This little volume represents the distillation of some

SELF-CONSISTENCY vs. THE DOCTRINE OF SPECIFICITY

Conforming to the rigid determinism of the nine- .

environment. Both sides endeavor to alleviate the

should not expect to find general characteristics of be-

Yet habit, in the sense of stability, is the major

The re-test method consists in simply giving the same

little attention. The oversight is not due to lack of in-

as grist for our mill. What possibly could be the ex-

tion of motive by declaring it to be of no consequence.

fication of separate acts which are psychologically

of unique acts performed. If this were true, the hope

fundamental and appears spontaneously unless pro-

self-organization. As a matter of fact, the study in

vious that they remain unnoticed. This makes it clear

If this assumption is correct, of course, there is no need

caps, were found to cheat more frequently than others.

if the chances of honest and dishonest behavior were

(i) Do you mix with other students easily?

(it) Do you feel pretty confident that your classmates

(iii) Can you stand kidding?

(vil) Do you get discouraged easily?

(viii) Do you often feel just miserable?

(ix) Were your parents partial to any of your

(x) Did you havea happy childhood?

(xi) Is your home environment happy?

(xii) Looking toward the future, do you expect to

(xiv) Do you think you are less attractive than other

(xv) Are you considered lazy?

(xvi) Does criticism disturb you badly?

(xvii) Are you in general self-confident about your

(xviii) Do you have trouble deciding what to do

(xxi) Does it make you uneasy to sit in a small room

(xxiv) Are you physically inferior to your associates?

Thus we are able, on the basis of a difference in

Tur PERSONALITY AS A SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT

“The synthetic method by which we build up

While the study of character would of course be

to psychological data, but was taken over from classical

scribed as “the study of motion.’ What is meant, of

order phenomenon, which would instantly vanish

and the dread of loneliness impels us to search for a

of fact we have no choice but to perform this larger

must be recognized as creations. Newton’s cosmology

neurones, muscles and glands. Yet no one attempts to

covery involved is that of how well or how poorly the

ciple. The synapse theory on which it rests has been