The Unadjusted Girl, With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior AnalysisThomas, William Isaac
Science
The Unadjusted Girl, With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis
Thomas, William Isaac
Female juvenile delinquents -- Case studies; Young women
And similarly, among women we have the thief, the prostitute, the
blackmailer, the vamp, and the “charity girl.”
2. THE DESIRE FOR SECURITY. The desire for security is opposed to the
desire for new experience. The desire for new experience is, as we have
seen, emotionally related to anger, which tends to invite death, and
expresses itself in courage, advance, attack, pursuit. The desire for
new experience implies, therefore, motion, change, danger, instability,
social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency
to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. He may be a
social failure on account of his instability, or a social success if he
converts his experiences into social values,—puts them into the form of
a poem, makes of them a contribution to science. The desire for
security, on the other hand, is based on fear, which tends to avoid
death and expresses itself in timidity, avoidance, and flight. The
individual dominated by it is cautious, conservative, and apprehensive,
tending also to regular habits, systematic work, and the accumulation of
property.
The social types known as “bohemian” and “philistine” are determined
respectively by the domination of the desire for new experience and the
desire for security. The miser represents a case where the means of
security has become an end in itself.
8. Mamie Reilly’s mother viewed with increasing regret the effect of
premature care and responsibility on her daughter. Mamie had been
working five years since, as a child of thirteen, she first insisted
on getting a job. “She’s a good girl, Mame is, but y’ never seen
anything like her. Every pay night reg’lar she’ll come in an’ sit
down at that table. ‘Now Ma,’ she’ll say like that, ‘what _are_ you
goin’ to do? How ever are y’ goin’ t’ make out in th’ rent?’ ‘Land
sakes,’ I’ll say, ‘one w’d think this whole house was right there on
your shoulders. I’ll get along somehow.’ But y’ can’t make her see
into that. ‘Now, what’ll we do, how’ll you manage, Ma?’ she’ll keep
askin’. She’s too worrisome—that’s what I tell her. An’ she don’t
care to go out. Mebbe she’ll take a walk, but like’s not she’ll say,
‘What’s th’ use?’ Night after night she jest comes home, eats ’er
supper, sits down, mebbe reads a bit, an’ then goes t’ bed.”[10]
Document 9 shows the desire for security in a person who is
temperamentally inclined to new experience, but whose hardships call out
the desire for security. The whole life, in fact, of this man shows a
wavering between the two wishes. The desire for a “secure existence”
which he expresses here finally prevails and he approaches the
philistine type:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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