SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENT AS A DISCREPANCY BETWEEN SOCIAL NEEDS AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

76 Pages·3.894 MB·English

by  SKEATH, JAMES MILTON

DOCTORAL DISSERTATION SERIES
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The Pennsylvania State College
The Graduate School
Department of Psychology
SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENT
AS A DISCREPANCY BETWEEN
SOCIAL NEEDS AND SOCIAL ACTIVITIES
A Dissertation
by
James Miiton Skeath
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
August, 1952
Approved:
' Head, Department of Psychology
Assxstan Professor of Psychology
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
No piece of work is ever the product of just one
individual. The numbered references in any academic
endeavor attest to this. There are, however, a host of
unlisted references whose contributions are no less
significant and noteworthy. The writer is humbly think­
ing of his college in which and for which he labors, of
his colleagues whose assistance and encouragement have
been unstinting, of his students who have given both in­
spiration and cooperation, of his family whose patience
and understanding make this work a joint project, of his
graduate professors who gave intellectual stimulation and
whose ministrations were not limited to the intellectual
alone, of his adviser - Dr. George M. Guthrie - who led
him through the intricacies of research and gave him a
greater appreciation of scientific method. What follows
in this paper is not the writer's alone. It is the end
product of many aspects of human living.
TABLE OP CONTENTS
I - THE CONCEPT OP NEED IN PSYCHOLOGICAL
LITERATURE 1
A*- The Psychoanalytic View 2
B.- The Biosocial View 4
C.- The Psychological View 5
II - THE CONCEPTS OP ADJUSTMENT AND SOCIAL
ADJUSTMENT 9
A.- Adjustment 9
B.- Social Adjustment 9
C.- Good Adjustment and Poor Adjustment 12
III - STATEMENT OP THE PROBLEM 14
A.- Genesis of the Problem 14
1. Tendency to Identify Social Adjust­
ment with Social Participation 14
2. Intimations of Error in Identity of
Social Adjustment and Social Parti­
cipation 14
3. Studies of Factors Concomitant with
Adjustment 15
B*- The Hypothesis 16
IV - DESIGN OP THE PRESENT STUDY 18
A,- Selection of the Criterion 18
B.- Measures of Needs and Activities 20
V - COLLECTION OF DATA 23
A,- Preliminary Groups 23
B*- Pinal Groups 24
TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONT’D)
Page
CHAPTER VI - FINDINGS OF THE PRESENTS TUDY 26
A.- Preliminary Data 26
B•— Results in the Minnesota Inventories
of Social Attitudes 28
C*- Estimates of Behavior Made by
Subjects’ Friends 34
CHAPTER VII - SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 38
BIBLIOGRAPHY 40
APPENDICES
1.
CHAPTER I - THE CONCEPT OP NEED IN PSYCHOLOGICAL
LITERATURE
With, the emergence of the emphasis upon behavior
instead of consciousness as the subject matter of psychol­
ogy, there appeared a corollary concern In the explanation
of behavior -which may be expressed in terms such as Wood­
worth's (71, p. 34) M••• what leads people to feel and act
as they do.” Consequently there developed many varieties
of so-called dynamic psychologies interested in the psychol­
ogy of motivation,. For simplification these dynamic psy­
chologies will be considered under the headings of psycho­
analytic, biosocial, and psychological viewpoints. The
first of these is concerned principally with departures
from normal behavior. The others are interested primarily
in normal behavior and secondarily in abnormal behavior as
a special field of behavior in general. In all three views
there is an attempt to find the answer to the question of
what brings about the behavior of the individual in the
various situations in which he finds himself.
The concept of need in the present literature of psy­
chology covers the use of such terms as motives, drives,
dynamisms, instincts, tissue needs, etc. In the psychoana­
lytic viewpoint it is sometimes referred to as need, but more
commonly as instinct, desires, tensions. It is a concept
fundamental In the psychoanalytic structure, and all
2.
disorders of behavior stem from a misdirection or inade­
quate application of the energy involved in the expression
of this basic need or dynamic condition.
A.- The Psychoanalytic View: The early psychoanalysts
sought for the cause or origin of maladjustment in one, all
inclusive, innate drive. Thus, Freud gave emphasis to the
libido, the sexual or pleasurable instinct, as the source
of all outgoing energies. When the libido came into conflict
with the ego there was repression of the libido with a con­
sequent frustration. This frustration might eventually
lead to maladjustment. Later Freud gave emphasis to the
"death instinct" in which the reaction of the person was
that of aggression against either himself or others. In
substance, the reactions of human beings can be traced to
certain fundamental;biologically inherited, conditions which
act as driving forces toward the satisfaction of existing
needs or instincts.
Alfred Adler, at one time an associate of Freud and
later a dissenter, took issue with Freud in his emphasis on
the libido as Freud interpreted it. To Adler individual
differences in personality were of more importance, and these
differences were attributable to differences in early envir­
onment. These differences in early environment affected
what Adler posited as a fundamental will for power. The
very nature of the infant made him a victim of his environ­
ment. This leads to the origin of the feeling of inferior­
ity, and the inherent consequence of this feeling is the
3.
awakening or the drive toward mastery or superiority. This
self-assertive tendency, rather than Freud’s libido, is the
tendency most likely to run counter to the environment and,
consequently, it is the drive which dominates behavior.
Again, we see the relation between need and activity.
Carl Jung, the third in the trio of early psychoanalysts,
like Adler, differed from Freud and also from Adler himself.
Jung decried Freud’s emphasis on the libido, as being funda­
mentally sexual, and Adler’s emphasis on the will for power
as not being sufficiently comprehensive. He rejected Freud’s
insistence on the discovery of early predisposing frustrations
and concentrated on meeting the existing situation in a satis­
factory way. His concept of need made use of the libido as
embracing both Freud’s sexual Instinct and Adler’s will for
power. He considered the libido as including all the energy
of life which expresses itself in various forms of behavior,
and the form of expression tends to divide people into various
types or polarities. Here, also, the direction of one’s
behavior is a result of the overall energy or tension in the
person.
Among the more recent psychoanalysts there has been a
change in emphasis from the Instinctual nature of the motive
power to the influence of the environment, principally the
social environment, as the motivating power. As Karen Horney
(26, p. 78) puts It,
"The formulation I have sketched ... puts the envir­
onment and its perplexities Into the center. Among
the environmental factors, however, that which is
most relevant to character formation is the kind of
4.
human relationships in which the child grows up.
In regard to neuroses this means that the con­
flicting trends constituting them are determined
ultimately by disturbances in human relationships.”
In essence, these later analysts argue that maladjust­
ment results from conflict with social requirements and,
consequently, behavior is a product of the culture. Differ­
ences in cultures will therefore produce different maladjust­
ments (27). There Is implicit here the idea that the malad­
justment Is a result of the failure of the environment to
permit the satisfaction of some need as the neurotic perceives
that need.
B.- The Biosocial View: According to Sullivan (56)
the field of psychiatry is that "... of interpersonal
relations under any and all circumstances in which these
relations exist (p. 5).” He classifies these interpersonal
relations on the basis of satisfactions and security or the
maintenance of security. Satisfactions are ”... end states
... closely connected with the bodily organization of man
(p. 6).” Security refers to those behaviors which are cult­
urally determined. These conditioning factors are brought
to bear upon the satisfaction of bodily needs, and behavior
is affected accordingly.
Sullivan places emphasis on the early period of life as
the time when the child is an expanding personality. Develop­
ment along the line of security comes from a realization on
the part of the infant of his inability to attain certain
satisfactions with the tools at his disposal. Other people,
5.
parents, nurses, etc., behave in such a way as to offset this
feeling of insecurity, and, as a result, when this accultural
evolution "... succeeds, then one respects oneself (p. 9)."
The self dynamism is a consequence of this process. It "...
is built up out of this experience of approbation and disap­
proval, of reward and punishment. ... It has a tendency to
focus attention on performances with the other person which
gets approbation or disfavor (p. 10)."
To these thinkers, then, it is the self, conceived in
the light of satisfactions and securities, which is the de­
terminer of behavior. In a sense, this self is similar to
Horney*s personality structure as it is affected or molded
by the social environment. In Sullivan’s picture behavior
is motivated as the self is molded by acculturation. Here,
also, the self is a product of the relation between needs
and the ways in which these needs are met.
C.- The Psychological View: Among academic psycholo­
gists of the present time there is a greater effort made to
harmonize theory with facts available from controlled exper­
imentation. To regard behavior simply as dependent upon
stimulation from the environment, even when some mysterious
instinct was involved in the process, was not wholly accept­
able to many. As a result, there appeared the dynamic inter­
pretation of behavior as involving basic physiological condi­
tions and processes. These physiological conditions repre­
sented certain needs which led to behavior for the satisfac­
tion of these needs. The instinct of the older psychologists