Customizing My Emotional Spin Cycle:
Annotated Bibliography

Psych 409b Fall 2001--G15
Dr. Leon James, Instructor

by Silverfox
Date: October 15, 2001

Class Home Page My Home Page Report 2 Book Review

Table of Contents

Instructions for this Report

This report is to present information from a psychological perspective on our emotional spin cycle. Your emotional spin cycle is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It identify how and what we learn; it allows us to set priorities; it determines the majority of our daily actions. Because our emotional spin cycle is so closely tied to the ways we relate to ourselves and others, research suggests it is responsible for as much as 80% of the “victory” in our lives. Studies have shown that the average person's personality is 35% set at birth. By age 8 the average person's personality is 85% set. Near age 21 what you are at that time is most likely what you will be at age 80. The exceptions are usually emotionally triggered events such as significant outside or personal experiences that drastically change a person's life pattern. Understanding the basic human behavior often explains why people do what they do. These insights can make the difference between right and wrong decisions, responses, and the best or worst behavior in any situation..

Why Do This?

The study of psychological development originally focused on describing behavior in order to derive at age norms. Today, experts in the field also wants to explain why behaviors occur by looking at factors that influence our affective, cognitive and sensorimotor domain of behavior. By looking at these factors we will be able to describe, predict, explain, and modify ways to stimulate and change in our behaviors. It also allows students like myself to be able to draw on the complexity of the human mind and how growth and change occur in different aspects of the self.

The purpose of this report is to give the students of Psych 409b the opportunity to learn more on how to control our daily emotional spin cycle by elaborating more on the definitions of emotions, feelings, threefold-self and hierarchy of motives by collecting data, information and graphs on how important and intertwine these concepts are.

Definitions

What is Emotions?

According to the Dictionary of Self Help, emotion is a moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body. However, my definition of emotion is a motivated behavior of instincts. It is part of our psychological and physiological structure. Many of the ways in which we express and react to emotions make very little sense. From the tears that mark both the best and worst moments in our lives to the rages sparked by the most trivial of traffic annoyances, emotions surprise us-they lead us to act in ways contrary to our better judgment, and they always seem to lie just beyond our control.

FEELINGS

Universally good or bad actions are objectively based on the biological nature of human beings and are definable in absolute terms. But other actions are amoral and cannot be judged in terms of good or bad because they are a matter of personal preference determined by individual differences. Such as feelings and emotions, which are interconnected into one another and are among a person’s most valuable assets.

My definition of feelings is the function of the power to perceive pleasure and happiness, as well as, negative sensations by touch or by emotional awareness. Feelings by far are a state of emotional consciousness and all feelings are what compose us to be human. Feelings bring texture, color, and sensitivity to life. Without feelings we would be like robots!

THREE-FOLD SELF

The three-fold self is a biological process that is part of our roots of thoughts, feelings and actions. They bracket together as one and function individually. Affective behavior is term the conscious aspect of an emotion (feelings) from any physical or behavioral reaction. Cognitive is your perception of your feelings at that very moment. Lastly, is your sensori-motor is how you will act on what you are feeling at that very moment.

HIERARCHY OF MOTIVES

The hierarchy of motives is a process of values and behavior that is goal-oriented (conscious and deliberate) and adaptive by which a person acquires characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, that are shaped by internal and external aspects by the relationship with the environment.

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Annotated Bibliography

IN PRODUCING EMOTIONS

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The Relationship Between Feelings and Behavior

by Sidney D. Craig, Ph.D.

Raising Your Child, not by Force but by Love,

Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1973, pp. 15-18, by permission of the publishers.

Feelings play a crucial role in determining human behavior. Our behavior toward other persons is determined by our feelings toward them. Obviously, we behave differently toward those we like than toward those we dislike.

Assuming that we have no reason to hide or disguise our feelings, if we like certain people, we are more likely to spend time with them, talk with them, confide in them, do nice things for them, and in general we strive to make them happy. On the other hand, if we dislike or are angry with certain other people, we are likely to avoid spending time with them, avoid talking with them, avoid doing nice things for them, and in general we do not strive to make them happy. If sufficiently angered, we may even do things to hurt the other person.

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UNEXPRESSED FEELINGS

Unexpressed feelings are like weeds in a garden. They can take root and choke out any good feelings you once had. Unexpressed feelings lead to anger, resentment and depression. Your body and mind suffer greatly when you don't express how you really think and feel.

Most people tend to deny their thoughts and feelings and hide them because they are afraid that their mate and loved ones won't love them anymore. They are afraid that no one would love or care for the "real person" that they are inside.

If you don't lighten your load by unpacking and releasing your baggage of emotions you will eventually self-destruct. You will waste away feeling unloved and misunderstood. This can be devastating to you and to the people around you. You will be like a volcano with hot lava inside that will eventually erupt and destroy anything in its path. This eruption of unexpressed feelings will happen at the most inconvenient time. It will happen when you least expect it and where it will do the most damage - to your love relationship.

Someone has said that the two great capabilities that distinguish man from the lower animals are his thinking and feeling, within a broader range. Yet many people run into difficulty as they try to manage these two great abilities. Some subordinate one to the other; others deny the feeling component except in rare bursts of emotionalism. Many hide and emerge timidly in the emotional range, feeling fearful and anxious lest they reveal the powerful forces pent-up behind some inner dike. There are some that give themselves over to emotionalism and live hedonistic lives, subordination thinking to the demands of their feelings.

Inevitably you will experience nearly the whole range of human emotion - love, anger, frustration, anxiety, fear, hate, jealousy, irritation, tenderness, and all the rest. How do you cope with these feelings productively?

There are three ways to cope with feelings:

Admit them
Accept them as real, and
Then develop ways of handling them.

It is not necessary, useful, or desirable to act out every emotional state.

Stormy, negative, or destructive feelings may need to be cushioned and thought out with the help of a minister or counselor. You can learn to wrestle with your own feelings and to decide, on the basis of a priority system of values, not to respond violently to the immediate emotion. You can share your feelings that is, talk about them, describe them to others, without acting them out. For example: You may feel like hitting or cursing a neighbor or loved one. But if you tell that person how you feel, the need for actually hitting or cursing can be diminished.

Whether you act out a feeling would depend on the degree to which the acting out would allow you to be consistent with your most important principles and values. For example: If a father held to the value of loving his wife and children and wanting to see their lives enriched and filled with growth opportunities, it would be a denial of those values if he abused or ridiculed them in a devastating way - even though he was momentarily angry with them.

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Showing Your Feelings of Love

It's not only the strong negative or destructive feelings that concern people, but also the warm, positive love feelings. Some of us learn to hide all negative emotions or keep them bottled up inside, and others learn to smother their feelings of love and affection. There is the old story of the Scotsman who at the funeral of his wife choked, "She was a wonderful woman, and I came close to telling her that once or twice."

Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof asks his wife, "Do you love me?" After some reflection, she admits she does, and he remarks, "After twenty-five years, it’s nice to know."

You might find it extremely difficult to express love and affection openly. There may have been a conscious or unconscious family tradition either for warm sharing or for restricted reaction. For the latter, it would be an embarrassing violation of family custom for a son to hug his father or kiss his sister, even though he might want to. It's not necessary for all families to be openly demonstrative, but families should examine carefully whether they are too restrictive.

You can become more open in your expressions of love - to the delight of others. It's not too much of a risk to begin to respond to your love feelings more spontaneously and to share them with those you truly cherish.

Let go of your old baggage. Release your anger, resentment and hurt feelings. Forgive yourself and then forgive others. You did the best you could with the knowledge you had at the time. Now set yourself free to have a wonderful flower garden with just a few weeds that can be pulled out and released to the wind.

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What is threefolds-self?

The files threefold-self is defined generally as the scientific study of the thinking, feeling, and acting of individuals (i.e., individuals' behavior and its underlying mechanisms), is partitioned into a number of subdivisions. Each is characterized by its unique set of variables employed to explain behavior. It attempts to identify the social, environmental, and cognitive relationship of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. As such, threefold-self is a scientific discipline rather than a self-help field; however, applications to one's life are many.

The major implication this has for practical purposes is that when considering any situation, one must keep in mind the many types of influence. One cannot conclude immediately that people behave the way they do because of their personalities, their motivational structures, the way they were raised, or their pattern of past experiences. It turns out that people sometimes behave the way they do largely because of the social situation in which they find themselves. Therefore, when one wishes to change some aspect of one's life, one had better look also to aspects of the situation rather than merely to the specific people who behave in the situation. In sum, situa-tional determinants of behavior may be stronger than, and may at times override, so-called "person" or dispositional factors. It is the way human beings look at themselves and others we socialize in accordance within cultural norms. To be able to socialize we acquire particular habits in three human functioning area:

Habits of Feeling (AFFECTIVE DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

Habits of Thinking (COGNITIVE DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

Habits of Acting (SENSORI-MOTOR DOMAIN OF BEHAVIOR)

According to Dr. Leon James, our instructor, every individual has a threefold-self in which the three parts function together, yet each can be distinguished and isolated for observation and self-modification. Take for an example last year I took a road rage class from Dr. Leon James on elderly road rage, in our class from the very beginning he made us think, feel and act in three separate arenas beyond our normal way of thinking, doing and feeling and put those thoughts of how an elderly person would feel when it came to our super highways today. As you will see there are three separate entities when it comes to the threefold-self. This is the report I filed:

Acknowledgement

On March 26^th, the first official day of spring break, at 9:00 a.m. I was on my way to Ala Moana Shopping Center for the Easter Sales. I decided to just take my time and drive down King Street and through China Town and cut off on Kapiolani Boulevard and turn into Ala Moana by American Savings Bank. However, before I could be on my merry way, my parking lot had two cars blocking the entrance and exit to the driveway. Both drivers of the cars were just sitting there talking stories. So, I decided to pull up and give them a few more minutes to talk and say their good-byes. After about five minutes later, I decided to blow my horn and see if they could move to the side so I could get out. The women from the passenger side of the car blocking the exit got of her car and ran to the other car to kiss someone in the car good-bye and that is when "I felt myself having another rage episode."

Witness

Sensorimotor Behavior

At this point I could feel myself adjusting my butt in the truck, adjusting my mirrors, and looking at all the handprints on the windows. After several seconds or minutes went by I could feel my hand tightening around the steering wheel. In addition to my feet getting tired of holding on to the break and clutch, and my heart beating a little faster. I could feel my neck muscles erect and strain and I found myself talking to myself. Final thing I did was bang down on the steering wheel and raise my hand up in the air like Italians do and say, “what gives.”

Cognitive

While sitting in my vehicle and waiting for them to move out of the way I kept thinking, "this truck needs a wash and wax job and why don't you move to the side and park then, you guys can talk all you want." I also was saying self-statements like move it, hurry up, what's taking so long. As a few seconds wore on I kept thinking, "Why would you want to block the driveway." I could feel my rage coming to the surface.

Affective Behavior

At that very moment my feelings were let the shoes be on the other feet, they would be blowing their horns and saying, "hurry up." I felt like just pushing their cars out of the way, so I could be on my way. I was thinking, when my kids learn to drive they better not do things like this. Or else. I felt annoyed at the fact that they were so inconsiderate of blocking the driveway and thinking as if no one existed. Also, if that was me I would invite them up for coffee or lunch so they would be in a relax atmosphere, where we could just chat for awhile. But as the minutes wore on, I felt enraged with the fact that I was being held up from doing what I had to do, so I blew my horn.

Here is another example of our three-fold self filed from another student, who has participated in Dr. Leon James class, this is the report he files on the three-fold self.

Exercise: To Do Or Not To Do That Is The Question

By Rogelio N. Banez

The 5 Masters and Their Psychological Thoughts

The three levels of behaviors, Affective, Cognitive, and Sensori-motor developed from Swedenborgs psychological thoughts by other psychologist. Freud developed affective behavior, one of the three mechanisms of social influences. Mead and Lewin developed cognitive behavior and Skinner established the sensorimotor behavior. These men are the 5 masters of social psychology who developed the three mechanisms of social influence.

Affective behavior is by definition behavior arising from feelings or emotions. Cognitive behavior arises from memory, perception and so on. Sensori-motor behaviors are motor responses based on sensory stimulation of which, all three are dependent upon each other to occur. The combination of these three mechanisms of social influence provides the make-up of the integrated self.

Affective behavior occurs when an individual decides whether his/her feelings or emotions are positive or negative/good or bad and acts accordingly. Positive/good feelings or emotions are usually acted upon because it illicits that type of feeling. Negative/bad feelings or emotions are reacted to in an opposite manner or not at all.

Cognitive behavior occurs when an individual uses their memory or perceptions to justify their actions. This involves reasoning based on external knowledge of the mind. Rationalizing becomes the important factor involved when choosing the appropriate behavior. The external knowledge is the factor being rationalized in order to determine what behavior will occur. Our decisions are thereby logical based on ethics and morality which provides the proper norms for action in the society.

Sensori-motor behavior involves two factors which must be present in order for this type of behavior to occur. The presence of some form of sensation is needed in order for some type of action to occur. These sensations are then based on some external stimulus which causes some kind of reaction in a person. This clearly shows why or why not an individual reacts in the way they do.

All these three behaviors interact in many ways to become the make-up of the integrated self. What we feel personally (affective) determines to some degree what we believe in the external world (cognitive) and how we should act to sensations (sensori-motor). Norms of society (cognitive) can determine how we should feel as well (affective) and it does set up some limitations on our actions (sensori-motor). Any limitations on our actions (sensori-motor) can limit the influences of our feelings (affective) as well as our reasoning or justification (cognitive). These are just a few relationships between the three mechanisms but as we all can see, they are related to each other as well as having an affect on each other.

Self-assessment holds a great value in behavior modification. It gives an individual a chance to grasp a closer look at himself. This gives the ability to realize the reasons for his actions based on their beliefs and knowledge. With this knowledge, they will be able to understand the factors that illicit their basic behaviors and will be able to change their behaviors which they may see least beneficial in their lives.

Since any change on any one of three mechanisms would undoubtedly have some effect on the other two, modification on any aspect of their behaviors would then be possible. Some possible changes would be better health, study habits, temperance, stress control, and better relations. Another important point to consider is the social psychological aspect of self-assessment. We have discussed the basic self-assessment previously, which involves personal thoughts, beliefs, and essentially internal factors of the person. The social aspect deals with external factors which illicit a behavior. Basically, they are inter-related in which person’s beliefs are manifested from social powers. Therefore, a change in incorporating social controls will have a definite affect upon individual personal thoughts.

Based on the previous explanation of the three social mechanisms, internal and external factors, I will elaborate on my health behavior relating the above-mentioned ideas. This will provide an actual relationship and should show an example of self-assessment.

Personal Health Behavior

The format of the report will include a bi-polar paragraph scale for the affective, cognitive, and sensori-motor mechanisms. They will be followed with an explanation based on why I am like that during each situation. This report will be made from systematic observations.

The bi-polar paragraph scale is a description of extremes. The paragraph will simply relate the reasons a certain behavior occurs or does not for each social mechanisms. The explanations following the scale will involve my past, present, and future. This should enable you to relate to my reasons for my health behavior based on exercise.

As a child and until my high school years. I was an active person at home and school. In high school, I played in the school tennis, volleyball, track, and football teams. As you can well see, I never even had to think about exercising because I always did have some kind of exercise or activity. As I started college, my physical activity went down to almost zero. Why? For one thing, I did not have the same assets like I did not have at home like a car, equipment and so on to continue the things I used to do. I also did not have to contend with the work in college when attending high school.

Consider my weight lifting behavior. I used to think that its main purpose was to build a large body strictly for competition. I believed it took up a lot of energy that should be saved for later and better uses. The idea of having a muscular body appealed to me a great deal but I always thought that I was in good physical shape and it was not necessary to do such a thing.

As I started college, I found myself getting tired and short of breath after a little strenuous activity. Even during the day, I found myself getting tired real quickly and not doing the best I can with most of the things I do daily. I finally decided to try weight training after realizing that I did not get enough exercise as I did in high school which I thought and believed caused the slowly decreasing strength during my college years.

I presently weight train three times a week during my three hour break between classes. I did this because I did not have anything else better to do and I believed that studying all the time was not psychologically healthy. Weight training began to look appealing because today it is a popular sport and many articles or magazines can be found to provide an individual with an appropriate program.

It is clear in this case, my affective behavior is the cause for my weight lifting behavior, the sensori-motor behavior. The cognitive is the reinforcement which helps me maintain this activity for a good part of my time and will do so in the future.

As for my running, I enjoyed it especially in my grade school days. I was considered by my playmates and even by the upper grades to be the fastest. I was called on by everyone to play with them and usually chosen by older students to be on their team. As I entered middle school, I became inactive which eventually affected my performance in high school sports. Upon entering highschool, I entered many sports and found that I had lost most of my speed but had still maintained my determination which kept me going. After high school before entering college, I could run two miles in thirteen minutes but that soon changed drastically after going to college.

In college, I was no longer running but under my situation. I had to maintain my two mile run under fifteen minutes. Since this was almost impossible after a year of inactivity, I had to start running again. I did start running but only at night since that was the only time I could run on Waikiki without inhaling too much carbon monoxide from the exhaust made by the automobiles. Because I ran so late, my studies soon lagged behind and I had to quit after a semester. I do not run at the present because studies need my greatest amount of attention at this time. The test still occurs once a semester but the consequences are greater if I fail a class than failing the two mile run. The maximum for the two mile run will soon be increased to fifteen minutes and at that time, I will need to take up running again. As you can see, running, the sensori-motor behavior, does not occur even with the proper justification, cognitive behavior. My strength of the affective behavior plays a great importance in the actions, sensori-motor behavior, I should take and the obvious link these mechanisms have on each other.

Now consider my exercise behavior based on sports. In high school, I entered my initial sport by persuasion from close friends. It was the IN thing to do at the time because the school spirit was in their sports. Once in my first scholastic sport, I met new people and made new friends. I also received awards and praise for doing an excellent performance. I soon joined three other school teams for the above mentioned reasons.

I soon believed that joining sports was the thing to do. It was popular in and out of school. Many things could be achieved in sports and it was recognized island wide. Support came from local newspapers and magazines for everything I and the team did.

In college, thought about entering college sports but many factors held me back. For one thing, the athletes came from everywhere which brought greater athletic ability which I felt that I could not even come close to their level. They were larger, faster and stronger. It was quite obvious that I did

not have their size, speed or strength to compete against such athletes which we have at the university. People are acknowledged in their abilities by papers, people of authority and the public.

I also did not have the time they had because of my other commitments. I am a full time student which needs intense studying to get along at the university. In order to maintain my academic status, I had to give up sports even though I thought and felt that it was an excellent form of exercise.

Therefore, even if my cognitive and affective behavior would justify being active in sports, the strength of its importance plays an important role on whether I should act accordingly. Academics is important above all things and because I believe this so strongly, I could not even consider slowing down my education by being involved with any type of sport at this time.

Conclusion

As I have stated previously, self assessment provides the avenue towards personal improvement. I realize now that in order to change my behavior, sensori-motor, my affective knowledge must be changed by gaining information from the external world. This will give my cognitive knowledge the strength to maintain a good exercise habit, sensori-motor behavior.

Another Look at the Threefold-Self

By reading through the generational student reports on traffic psychology I was able to get a pretty clear understanding of what a driving personality makeover was. I especially liked Professor James three step process. According to him, the first step is to recognize that you possess some undesirable driving behaviors. The second step is to be aware of, and able to analyze both the internal and external factors a driver may experience. For example, internal factors can include the mood you are in, the amount of stress you may have encountered that day, etc. External factors can include such things as the weather, the amount of traffic you have encountered and so on. The third step in this process, is to alter the negative driving behaviors into positive ones in order to help achieve self actualization; a concept that I got from another generational student, Joleen Lai's. I think that another important point was brought up by Jason Nakasato. The point being that in order to successfully alter your driving behaviors you must constantly maintain a self-awareness because driving is an automatic behavior you don't even have to think about doing. Simplified, a driving personality makeover is an individuals attempt at evaluating their own driving behaviors, deciding if any negative behaviors exist, and then formulatting an action plan to alter those negative behaviors into more positive ones.

HIERARCHY OF MOTIVES

WHAT IS THE HIERARCHY OF MOTIVES?

The answer is whatever concerns the problems of human life as seen and experienced from the viewpoint of a person who seeks to understand, to experience meaning and joy, to live harmoniously and to love. One might argue that these are more like the questions of philosophy or religion than of psychology... yet all these matters deeply affect personal development, the degree of emotional and mental sanity and self-fulfillment we can achieve.

Your hierarchy of motives is those principles or characteristics that you consider most important. They are like a rudder on a ship, providing a direction to your journey. The clearer you are about your hierarchy of motives, the easier it will be to make decisions in accord with what is most important to you and the more likely you will attain your goals. Because of its importance to your career and self-planning, we will examine the nature of reasons in some detail.

The word motivation comes from the Latin term meaning “to move.”  Abraham Maslow theory of “Self Actualization” is just one viewpoint of a variety of psychological and social theories, which stress the importance of intrapsychic and environmental influences on behavior.   Maslow believed human needs could be placed on a hierarchy, or ladder.  This hierarchy runs from the simplest biological motives up to the most complex on intrapsychic and social desires.  As you develop in life, you move up the ladder until you reach the top rung, which Maslow calls self-actualization.

P = Physiological
S = Safety
L = Belongingness and Love
E = Esteem
SA = Self-Actualization

= deficiency needs
= growth needs

Characteristics of Self Actualizing People

 Realistic


 
  Realistically oriented, a Self-Actualizing (SA) person has a more efficient perception of reality, and has comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life.


 
  A Self-Actualizing person is unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown. He has a superior ability

to reason, to see the truth, and is logical and efficient.

 Self Acceptance


 
  Accepts himself, others and the natural world the way they are. Sees human nature as is, has a lack of crippling guilt or shame, enjoys himself without regret or apology, and has no unnecessary inhibitions.

 Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness


 
  Spontaneous in his inner life.  Thoughts and impulses are unhampered by convention.  His ethics are autonomous, and Self-actualizing individuals are motivated to continual growth.

 Focus of Problem Centering


 
  A Self-actualizing person focuses on problems and people outside of himself.


 
  He has a mission in life requiring much energy, as it is his sole reason for existence. He is serene, characterized by a lack of worry, and is devoted to duty.

 Detachment: The Need for Privacy


 
  The Self-actualized person can be alone and not be lonely, is unflappable, and retains dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, all the while remaining objective.  He is a self starter, is responsible for himself, and owns his behavior.

 Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment


 
  The SA person has a fresh rather than stereotyped appreciation of people and the basic good in life.


 
   Moment to moment living for him is thrilling, transcending, and spiritual as he lives the present moment to the fullest.

 Peak experiences


 
  "Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow

 Interpersonal relations


 
  Identification, sympathy, affection for mankind, kinship with the good, bad, and ugly are all traits of the SA person. Truth is clear to him as he can see things others cannot.  He has profound, intimate relationships with few and is capable of greater love than others consider possible as he shares his benevolence, affection, and friendliness with everyone.

 Democratic values and attitudes


 
  The SA person is able to learn from anyone, is humble and friendly with anyone regardless of class, education, political belief, race or color.


 
  Discrimination: means and ends, Good and Evil


 
  The SA does not confuse between means and ends and does no wrong. He enjoys the here and now, getting to goal--not just the result. He makes the most tedious task an enjoyable game and has his own inner moral standards (appearing amoral to others).

 Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor


 
Jokes to the SA person are teaching metaphors, intrinsic to the situation and are spontaneous.  He can laugh at himself, but he never makes jokes that hurt others.

 Creativity

The SA person enjoys an inborn uniqueness that carries over into everything he does, is original, inventive, uninhibited, and he sees the real and true more easily.

 Resistance to enculturation: Transcendence of any particular culture


 
  SA people have an inner detachment from culture.  Although folkways may be observed, SA people are not controlled by them.   Working for long term culture improvement, indignation with injustice, inner autonomy, outer acceptance, and the ability to transcend the environment rather than just cope are intrinsic to SA people.

 Imperfections


 
  SA people are painfully aware of their own imperfections and joyfully aware of their own growth process.   They are impatient with themselves when stuck and feel real life pain as a result.

 Values


 
  The SA person is realistically human due to a philosophical acceptance of self, human nature, social life, physical reality, and nature.

 Resolution of dichotomies


 
  Polar opposites merge into a third, higher phenomenon as though the two have united; therefore, opposite forces are no longer felt as conflict.  To the SA person work becomes play and desires are in excellent accord with reason.  The SA person retains his childlike qualities yet is very wise

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Reason, Values and Conduct

We seek understanding of ethical problems in the first place because we are faced with urgent moral choices. Yet the desire to understand purely for the sake of understanding cannot so easily be denied. Right from the beginning of philosophical inquiry into morals, it was recognized that ethics presents the greatest challenge to our understanding of the very nature of reality. As Socrates' pupil Plato argued in his dialogue the Republic, ethics is the gateway to metaphysics. Amongst the things that make up reality we seem to recognize entities of a most peculiar kind we call 'values' - in Plato's terms, the Forms or Ideas of justice, courage and the other virtues - objects which can be 'perceived' only by the mind, such knowledge somehow being sufficient to bring about right action, to lead us into doing what we ought to do. How is that possible? How can knowledge necessitate action? - 'No-one,' Socrates had said, 'does wrong knowingly', all-too conscious of the paradox that he was propounding, a paradox that would trouble philosophers for the next two and a half thousand years.

On the face of it, it is hard to see knowledge of a mere fact or object can leave us with no option regarding the way we are to act. Surely, one might think, what we do ultimately depends on what we desire, what we want. Having appreciated the facts, it is up to us to decide what attitude we are to take towards them. Yet one should not forget that the mystery of the ethical, the metaphysical dimension of the question of right and wrong, is present just as much in everyday acts done out of a sense of duty, or kindness, or plain decency. - The following examples would hardly be judged exceptional. An old man falls down in the station, and a young woman stops to help him, missing a train that was to take her to a job interview. There were other passengers on the platform who might have helped, but she does not have time to wait to see whether they will or not. Or, to take a second example, while out shopping for a birthday present for his little boy, a unemployed man finds a bank note worth two hundred German Marks down a side-street next to a Currency Exchange, enough to pay for a memorable birthday. No-one sees him pick it up. Most likely, he thinks, the note was carelessly dropped by a rich tourist, who won't even think to claim it. Yet he cannot bring himself to commit an act of dishonesty, and hands the money in. - Perhaps one is wrong in calling examples such as these 'everyday'. The dutiful, kind or decent acts that we do without thinking usually cost little. It is not every day that one finds oneself faced with a genuine dilemma whether or not to do what is held to be 'the right thing', or indeed which of two alternatives would be the right thing to do.

The two examples we have cited have been deliberately left open-ended. How important was that job interview? Just how many people were standing on the platform? Suppose the money found in the street was sufficient to pay for a much needed operation? - It is no easy matter to reach agreement even on such simple cases as these. Even so, faced with points of view that conflict with our own moral judgments, we are not content to say, 'Well, it's a matter of opinion after all.' We feel strongly that our view is the correct one to take. Questions of right or wrong conduct are matters of conviction, upon which we feel justified - at least, in those cases which do seem clear cut in our eyes - in passing judgment upon others. What is the source of that sense of conviction? Perhaps if we knew, or so one is tempted to think, then we could tap into it when faced with a case where we do not feel convinced, but urgently wish to be. Why should I do what is right?' - The question is wrongly formed. If I have come to the conclusion that a certain course of action is the right one to take - that is to say, not simply that certain other persons think it is right but that I judge it to be so - then no further reasons need to be, or indeed can be given. There is no alternative but to act. Why does this seem so hard to accept? In our everyday lives we often think or act as if morality were an institution that we more or less agreed to, while every so often allowing ourselves to take a rest from the burden of moral obligation. So one might find oneself saying, 'I accept that it would be right to hand in the bank note, but in this case my son is more important to me.' However, if consideration of one's son's need really is the decisive actor, then what one is in effect saying is that keeping the note is, after all, the right thing to do in this case. Suppose, on the other hand, that one were to say, 'I accept that it would be right to hand in the bank note, but I need the money to keep up the payments on my three-piece suite.' What is implied here is a choice between moral considerations and non-moral considerations. But there can be no such choice. Moral considerations override all other considerations. To intend to do 'the right thing' only because it suits me to do so is not to intend to do the right thing, but only to intend to do what suits me. 'How is it then that, knowing what is the right thing to do, I can still fail to do it?' - If you really know then you cannot fail to act accordingly, Socrates believed. Failure to act is proof of a lack of knowledge.

But what about cases where one really does seem to see clearly what is to be done, yet it is one's will that fails? The paradox of weakness of the will presents a serious obstacle to an account of moral knowledge. On the one hand, if we allow the necessary connection between knowledge and action to be severed, then we are no longer able to account for the motivating force of moral considerations. An agent can know all the 'moral facts', but still be faced with the choice of what to do in the face of them (cf. 4). The only alternative, therefore, is to argue that the experience, however vivid, of seeming to see what is to be done is not equivalent to really seeing, fully appreciating the significance of the facts that are there to be seen. At least, that is what one has to say. But that is hardly to begin to address the problem. How is it that we are capable of being so thoroughly deceived into thinking that the failure is not one of our knowledge as such, but rather of our capacity to act on that knowledge?

The realization that moral considerations are overriding is the first, necessary step in our philosophical inquiry, indeed our first discovery. In seeking the source of our knowledge of right and wrong, we now have a clearer picture of what we are looking for, and what problems we are up against. Are there reasons for action of a special sort, capable of trumping all reasons based on our personal likes or dislikes, our own needs and desires - on 'what suits me'? We cannot assume that there are, simply on the basis of analyzing what it means for something to be a 'moral' reason. - Perhaps our sense of morality is, after all, founded on an illusion. There might still be a point in recognizing 'good' and 'evil' people, a person would still face the choice of behaving 'virtuously' or 'viciously'. Or, at least, so one would speak. If morality is an illusion then these terms ultimately have no other significance than simply to signal the things that we like or dislike.

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Pursue Mastery

"Making a difference is what makes a life matter."

The first key to extracting magic in life comes from Mastery. You must do something really well to give your life meaning. Big or small doesn't matter as much as that you do something --in your job, or a garden, a child's life, an interest or a skill--something you're proud of in order to feel your life matters. You have to do things that matter to feel your life matters.

Recall the times in your life when you felt most intensely alive when you heard a voice inside you saying, "This is the real me." We often find that such times involve a feeling that comes after mastering something, struggling to overcome and become really good at something in spite of not knowing how it will work out, but going ahead anyway and doing our best and trusting the rest.

Somewhere try a test of giving your best and trusting life for the rest.

Self-actualizers' lives reveal a principle

Emotions	Approximate Age of Emergence
Interest Distress (in response to pain) Disgust (in response to unpleasant taste or smell)	Present At Birth
Anger, surprise, joy, fear, sadness	First 6 months
Empathy, jealousy, shyness, embarrassment, surprise	18-24 months
Shame, guilt, pride	30-36 months

Psych 409b Fall 2001--G15 Dr. Leon James, Instructor