Self and Society

Social Change and Individual Development

Nevitt Sanford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780202308890
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351491556
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How does his social environment change an individual, and why do these changes occur? Can social institutions be shaped and molded profoundly enough to afford each member of a society his maximum potential for happiness, effective functioning, and complete development? In this new work a distinguished psychologist evolves a theory of personality and society designed to help guide the work of institutions responsible for individual growth and development. Drawing on his vast experience--as an educator, a prison psychologist, a practicing psychoanalyst, and as the director of major studies in child development, personality assessment, the social psychology of higher education, and alcoholism and related problems--Professor Sanford has designed a developmental model intended to guide work in institutions which mold the individual: from family through schools, colleges, child guidance clinics, and mental hospitals. With exceptional lucidity, he examines the central issues in furthering desirable change through intervention in individual and group processes. He achieves notable advances in integrating personality theory and sociological theory: he joins psychoanalytic "ego psychologists" and other personality theorists in developing a dynamic-organismic theory broader than that of classical psychoanalysis and more in keeping with contemporary social theory. The author's clear style and firm grasp of his subject add further to the significance of Self and Society. It will be a stimulating textbook in social psychology, personality, and culture, and personality, and will make indispensable reading for behavioral scientists, psychiatrists, and educators, as well as for all professionals who work to promote mental health, education and social welfare.

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

The Study of Human Problems

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 called for the establishment of residential centers for poverty-stricken young women aged sixteen to twenty-one. Suppose a panel of psychologists and social scientists were asked to work out the guidelines for such centers, what would its members have to say? I suggest that discussion of this matter should revolve around three questions: What are these young women like now? What might one reasonably hope they would be like after one or two years in such a center? And what means should be adopted in order to realize these hopes?

Concerning the present status of these girls we may assume, as does the legislation itself, that although they are almost totally uneducated, they are not mentally retarded or delinquent; but we may also assume that, having been brought up in poverty, they bear some of the scars of it, and that, having been denied experiences that ordinarily develop individuals, their personalities are still in relatively undeveloped states. When offered a chance to learn a trade, they could hardly be expected to respond as would a lower-middle-class high school graduate who was temporarily out of a job. On the contrary, it seems highly likely that, in order to teach these girls the skills and social competencies that would make them employable, it would first be necessary to change attitudes, to develop different self-conceptions—indeed to undertake socialization on a broad scale.

This means that goals would have to be stated, not in terms of what was to be corrected or prevented, but in terms of what was to be built up. One might say that as a minimum it would be desirable to build up whatever was necessary in order for a girl to hold a job. A little further thought would suggest that such a girl would not be likely to hold a job unless she could see some point in it, and this would require that she develop in herself capacities for enjoying its benefits and taking satisfaction in it. More than this, in our changing world of work the sort of specific skills that could most readily be taught to an uneducated girl would probably not be salable for long. She would have to be given whatever it takes to acquire new skills rapidly, plus whatever is necessary to sustain morale when there was no job. In short, the general goal for such a center would be the fullest possible development of the personality in all of its aspects. In its general direction, this goal is not different from that which we would envision for any young person in our society.

The residential centers, then, would have to be conceived as institutions for personality development. Each of their constituent features, activities, or subprograms would have to be considered with attention to what it might contribute, and how, to the desired change in the person. The thinking about this should be guided by personality theory, particularly by conceptions of the structure of different parts of the personality and the processes by which they develop. Since development is progressive— that is, certain things have to happen before other events become possible —the whole enterprise would have to be planned with attention to what to do first and to the order of succeeding undertakings. It would have to be guided by a general theory of personality development and by knowledge of the stages that the young women had reached at various times during their residential experience.

This is the beginning of a “developmental model” for action affecting young people whose functioning we hope to improve. Its dominating objective is the maximum development of the individual’s potential. As later chapters of this book attempt to show, the same general model holds for work with people of all ages; it should guide action to promote “positive mental health” as well as to prevent mental disorder or to modify existing disorder. It has been clear for some time that the “medical model,” which is concerned with the causes and cures of disease, is not entirely adequate for programs of “community mental health”—that is to say, programs that involve all the resources of a community in efforts to improve the functioning of its people. An “educational model” might be more appropriate, for education in the broadest sense of the word means leading forth the potentialities of the person, but educational institutions in the United States, by and large, have insisted on restricting their activities to cognitive functions. Although schools and colleges would do well to give more attention than they do to other functions, they could not be asked to take over the whole task of developing the individuals in our society. What is needed is a theoretical model to guide the actions of various kinds of institutions and agencies that can promote individual development.

To have conceptions of what kinds of environmental stimuli will induce developmental change in different parts of the person is one thing; to know how to arrange an institutional setting so that appropriate stimuli will be brought effectively to bear, and inappropriate stimuli withheld, is something else. In planning a residential center of the sort under discussion, our natural inclination probably is to fall back on rules of thumb derived from experience in schools, camps, correctional institutions, and so forth, accenting what would appear to be practical. But the argument in this book is that a more practical guide to action would be sociological theory concerning the structure and functioning of organizations, and their interactions with the larger society.

What is needed is a conceptual model for an agency such as a residential center. In later chapters I undertake to develop a model for this or any other institution designed for the purpose of changing the people who pass through it. The scheme is sociological in that it seeks to formulate the structure and functioning of organizations; it is also psychological in that it formulates the processes of the individual personalities that occupy the organization’s roles.

PERSONALITY THEORY AND SOCIAL ACTION

While the major focus of this book is on individual development within a change-oriented organization, what it has to say about personality theory should be equally pertinent to legal, administrative, and social actions which do not involve a specific organizational structure. These actions can still influence the individual in various direct and indirect ways and should be planned with some understanding of personality structure and development.

An example of action on this larger front, and of the kinds of questions which it can raise, is the whole problem of controlling teen-age drinking by law. Currently, nearly all states prohibit the purchase of alcoholic beverages, or possession of them in public places, by persons under twenty-one years of age.¹ Yet it is well known that a substantial proportion of high school students drink away from home, at least occasionally, and that the age at which they begin to drink is going down— thirteen or fourteen being common in some communities today. Let us suppose now that a change in the law is proposed, making the minimum age eighteen instead of twenty-one. The idea would be not so much to get rid of a law which is not enforced—and which, like most such laws, probably does more harm than good—as to remove some of the unhealthy emotional implications of illicit early drinking experiences. (Some studies suggest that when an individual’s first experiences of drinking are in situations involving such emotions as rebelliousness and guilt, the chances of his later becoming a problem drinker are increased.) Changing the law might also make it possible for young people to become socialized in respect to drinking in ways that are more suitable than those prevailing at present.

But why set the age limit at eighteen? Could these things not be accomplished as well by doing away with all age limitations? At this point the legislator can no longer rely on common sense alone. If he hopes to find answers, he must seek them in scientific knowledge and theory about how adolescents develop. A personality theorist might offer him some such counsel as this: Drinking outside one’s own family setting is properly defined as an adult activity. This definition rests on the assumption that people need to reach a certain stage of development before they can be said to be ready to take part in activities involving the release of basic impulses. Premature experience of this kind cannot be integrated into the developing personality. This means there is danger of uncontrolled impulse expression. Furthermore, the individual is unable to derive meaning and maximum satisfaction from the activity, and his future development is likely to be impaired. It seems safe to say that fourteen-year-olds have not reached the necessary stage of development, nor have many high school students. However, eighteen-year-olds have, on the average, developed enough capacity for control that external restraints may safely be reduced. This is not to say that delay of drinking until after eighteen, twenty-one, or even indefinitely might not be advantageous for many individuals, for personality development continues between eighteen and twenty-one, and beyond. But to try to force this delay by law has been futile and perhaps damaging.

Of course, there is good evidence that in their drinking escapades young people are not always after the sort of pleasure that comes with the release of impulse; often they are seeking identity through demonstrating that they can safely engage in adult activities. On this basis, teen-age drinking may be better understood as an effort by young people to cope with deeper problems, such as alienation, lack of identity, and a sense of worthlessness. A law aimed primarily at some surface manifestation of these underlying conditions could not be expected to contribute a great deal to a solution to the basic problem, but it would be a help. More than that, the public discussion that would be aroused by efforts to change the law, or to deal with the implications and consequences of a change, might set in motion processes of inquiry and action that would really come to grips with the problems of youth.

The change proposed here would have implications for a great many people besides teen-agers. Temperance organizations and the liquor industry, for example, could be expected to react to the merest suggestion that a change might be in the offing. Indeed, anyone interested in promoting a change would probably wish to consider first the power and intentions of these groups. Or, to take it the other way around, if one wanted to find out about these groups, a good way would be to begin promoting a change in the law. In any case, the change being discussed here would involve for the temperance organizations a change in ideology, and the liquor industry probably could anticipate further measures to regulate its operations.

The change would also have immediate consequences for various agencies and institutions that have responsibilities for young people, for it would create difficulties as well as new opportunities. For example, most colleges would have to change their rules governing drinking on their campuses. A consideration of this matter would bring us back to the conception of an agency designed to change personality. One would expect a college to plan its actions affecting drinking with strict attention to what would promote educational objectives. Some colleges, no doubt, would redouble their efforts to prohibit or restrict this activity; others, more enlightened, might see here an opportunity to create campus drinking places of a sort that could help develop meaningful folkways for those who drink and also serve as a means for cultivating educationally valuable student-faculty relations.

I have gone to some length with these examples in order to make the fundamental point that the theorist and the field worker have much of importance to say to each other. Human problems are in the last analysis the central concern of both.

THE KIND OF APPROACH THAT IS NEEDED

Psychology and social science have, of course, always been oriented to action, in the sense that they have proceeded on the assumption that their theories and empirical knowledge would eventually be applied. Psychology, when it has thought seriously about itself, has included among its aims “to promote human welfare.” Sociology traditionally has been concerned with the solution of social problems and with “building a better society.” The National Institute of Mental Health, which has supported so much research in biology, psychology, and newer social sciences, has been guided by the principle that such research should be “mental health relevant,” but in practice any fundamental work in these fields has been considered to have this characteristic.

Yet there is no denying that at the present time there exists a wide gap between research and practice. Psychology and sociology, like biology, participate fully in the trend toward specialization and disciplinary professionalism that dominates in the universities today. These disciplines are much concerned to establish themselves as sciences, or to gain an increasingly respectable place in that hierarchy of sciences in which physics stands at the top. It must seem to many members of these disciplines that the way to achieve this sort of success is to display the visible attributes of the more prestigeful sciences: quantification, precision of measurement, elegance of experimental design, general laws. For the psychologists, clearly, the best way to achieve these things is to avoid the study of people, to stick to the study of simple part-processes, and to stay as close to biology as possible. For many sociologists, it seems, the best course is to be like the experimental psychologist.

There is, of course, a rationale for all this. It is not without some reason that the National Institute of Mental Health regards the so-called pure science of these disciplines as relevant to mental health. Science has always made progress through specialization. It can be argued that findings concerning simple and isolated processes will eventually add up to systematic knowledge that can then be applied to human problems.

There are two things to be said about this. One is that the “adding up” function is currently rather neglected, and the other is that many of these findings just do not add up. Concerning the first, the accent today is on the production of knowledge, in “knowledge factories” designed for that purpose, rather than on the organization of knowledge. There are few attempts at systematization of the sort that would put particular facts in perspective and show their significance. More than that, there seem to be few attempts to organize knowledge in such a way that its relevance to practice or to policy becomes apparent. A college president might examine a large number of issues of educational, psychological, or sociological journals without coming across anything that struck him as relevant to his purposes or helpful in the solution of his problems. It is not that all this material is irrelevant, but rather that the task of organizing and interpreting it is so largely neglected. Scientists write for each other. When they are looking for a problem to investigate, they turn to their professional journals instead of asking such questions as what might be troubling college presidents.

When I say that the study of simple, isolated processes does not add up to an understanding of more complex ones, I am assuming that human and social processes are organized on different levels, and that processes on higher (more complex) levels have a character of their own, are just as “real” as processes on lower levels, and must be studied directly. It is just as “scientific” to study, say, self-esteem in its relations to other factors of equal complexity, as it is to study the manifold conditioned responses into which self-esteem might be analyzed; it is just as scientific to study conditioned responses as it is to study by physiological methods the nerve processes that underlie them. The student of conditioning who is somewhat contemptuous of the vague globalism of the students of such personality needs as self-esteem could himself be regarded with contempt by students of the action of the nervous system.

I assume, further, that there is interaction between processes on different levels. Just as complex phenomena are to be explained in part in terms of the activities of constituent processes, so simple processes have to be understood as partly determined by the larger structures in which they have place. Truths may be discovered by abstracting parts from the whole and studying them intensively, but the whole truth can never be discovered in this way. It is the whole truth, and particularly the truth about wholes, that is needed for practice.

Thus one has to be concerned about a trend in science which puts all the accent on the study of abstracted part-functions. The main reason for this trend is the difficulty of studying complex processes by existing approved methods. In psychology theory-making itself is often guided more by consideration of what can be attacked by such methods than by an intellectual involvement with the problems of life. The kind of theory that is needed for the understanding of human problems is different from that which guides most laboratory research or is generated from it. Thus, instead of specialized personality theory and specialized social theory we need more general personality-social theory. We need theory that is not formal or mechanistic but dynamic, not elementaristic but holistic, not narrow and specialized but comprehensive, not concrete and tangible but on a level of abstraction that is appropriate to the problem at hand. Each of these ideas will be taken up in turn.

PERSONALITY-SOCIAL THEORY

It seems clear enough that for an effective approach to human problems we must have an integration of personality theory and social theory. This is not as easy as might first appear. Most sociologists seem to get along quite well without giving much attention to the individual personality, and probably the great majority of clinical practitioners rely on an “individual psychodynamic” approach that gives little attention to social and cultural factors. There is even a certain amount of interdisciplinary rivalry here; in discussions of such problems as prejudice or delinquency there is a tendency to oppose personality factors and social factors, and to argue about which is more important. But progress toward integration is being made. Certainly personality theory is far more “social” today than it was twenty-five years ago, and there is evidence, I think, that when sociologists note signs that their psychological colleagues are seeing the light, they are willing to go halfway toward rapprochement. What is needed is more knowledge of the articulation of personality systems and social systems. This requires more rather than less attention to the relatively autonomous personality structures and more searching analysis of social structures in terms that are psychologically relevant. The student of personality must, of course, focus on the internal structuring of personality, but he must grant that the hypothetical personality subsystems are not fully understood unless the conditions under which they change are specified.

I assume that there are social organizations that can bring out the authoritarianism in almost anybody, but I would also assume that when it came to changing a particular organization, the difficulty—and the strategy—would depend on how much authoritarianism in personality was found in people who occupied the key positions. To put this idea in more general terms: in order to induce change in personality it may sometimes be necessary first to change the role-structure in the organization in which the individual lives or works. By the same token, since we deal with a dynamic interaction between personality and social system, it may be necessary to change certain personalities in order to change the social system. Individuals use their social roles for the expression of their personality needs; hence a change in organizational role structure will be resisted by individuals in the same way that they resist change in internal adaptive devices that have been found to be more or less satisfying. The practicing social scientist needs to be familiar with personality dynamics.

DYNAMIC APPROACH

A personality, or an organized social group, seems best conceived as a system of interacting forces, a going concern in which energy is distributed among constituent parts and between the system (or its subsystems) and its environment. Dynamic organization refers to the way in which these forces or units of energy interact. Personalities and social systems also exhibit formal organization. They may be examined with attention to such over-all features as the number of different parts or the connectedness of parts, or to such formal relationships among parts as similarity, proximity, or inclusion. In general, the analysis of systems into states, conditions, or arrangements prepares the way for explanation in terms of dynamic theory.

Dynamic theory is essential when it comes to consideration of how a system might be changed. The question here, typically, is how to bring force to bear upon a particular subsystem that one wishes to modify. One might think first of bringing ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• PART THREE
• PART FOUR
• PART FIVE
• PART SIX
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index