Human Traits and their Social SignificanceEdman, Irwin
Philosophy
Human Traits and their Social Significance
Edman, Irwin
Social psychology
[Footnote 1: While the evidence in this field has been taken
largely from extremely pathological cases, the distortions and
perversions of mental behavior, noticeable in such cases, are
simply extreme forms of the type of distortion that takes place
in the case of normal individuals whose desires are seriously
frustrated. See the very clear statement on the subject of
"repressions" and "conflicts" in R. B. Hart's _Psychology of
Insanity_.]
The facts enumerated above should make it clear why it is
difficult to modify, much less completely to overcome, these
strong original drives to action. They serve to emphasize
the fact that by control of instinctive responses is not meant
their suppression. For just as instinctive tendencies are our
basic instruments of action, so instinctive desires are our
basic ingredients of happiness. Just as all we can do is
limited by the mechanisms with which we are endowed, so what
we want is ultimately determined by the native desires with
which we are born. The control of action and of desire is
justified in so far as such control will the more surely promote
a harmonious satisfaction of all our desires. A society whose
arrangements are such that instincts are, on the whole, being
repressed rather than stimulated and satisfied, is frustrating
happiness rather than promoting it. At the very least, a life
whose natural impulses are not being fulfilled is a life of
boredom. The ennui which is so often and so conspicuously associated
with the routine and desolate "gayeties" of society,
the listlessness of those bored with their work or their play, or
both, are symptoms of social conditions where the native
endowments of man are handicaps rather than assets, dead
weights rather than motive forces. It means that society is
working against rather than with the grain. Discontent,
ranging from mere pique and irritability to overt violence, is
the penalty that is likely to be paid by a society the majority
of whose members are chronically prevented from satisfying
their normal human desires. No one who has seen whole
lives immeasurably brightened by the satisfaction of a suitable
employment, or melancholy and irritability removed by
companionship and stimulating surroundings, can fail to
realize how important it is to happiness that human instincts
be given generous opportunity for fulfillment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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