HUMAN BEHAVIORS AND
HUMAN SPIRITS:
Quest for the Good and Truth
Part B: Time to Love and Time to Die
Two Sides of Life
Life has two sides. There is time to laugh, and there is time to cry. Everyday life can be happy enough to make you scream, or it can be as horrible as the Greek myth of Sisyphus-- a huge rock falls down, Sisyphus had to push it back uphill until he reaches the top, as soon as he reached the top the rock fell. In fact, some societies, Japan, for example, has promoted suicide to avoid the shame and difficulties. In Western society, the myth of Sisyphus still lives in everyone's mind. Death may be a good reason to leave a life that is not worth more than a lonely pendulum. Death is fearful, but nobody can avoid it. In fact, if there is life after death, there is nothing to fear for death. Dream and skyscraper, they co-exist and co-dependent so as love and death. As Dr. James always says: "They correspond."
Death Instinct and Controller
In contrast to the popular concept, Eros, the death instinct is hardly accepted even by psychoanalysts, but many psychoanalytical writers are unhappy without it. In defense of Freud, I claim that there is no rational altruism; nonetheless it exists because the world is not perfectly rational, but rather absurd. What is so beautiful about sacrificing oneself and screaming "Banzai" like a Kamikaze pilot? In fact, Freud's so called "hate theory" has a certain limitation to explain the world's phenomena. Is there any rational way to explain altruism? Swedenborg believed a man cannot do good deeds all by himself. Like the light in the eye there is presence of God. Even Skinner said: "There is no place in the scientific position for a self as a true originator or initiator of action (Cited in Harcum, Rosen, & Burijon, 1989, p. 258)" I don't know if all man-kinds are conditioned by God. Anyway, Skinner didn't mention anything about godly control, but environmental control. He totally denied self-control, but, in fact, human beings do have freedom and dignity. A recent research that has done by psychologists in the college of William and Mary tries to disprove that stubborn environmentalism of Skinner. They attempts to describe their views of the functional relationship between perceived human dignity and perceived voluntary control of both prosocial and antisocial behaviors. Using student subjects, they found out peoples' opinions about whether human behavior is caused by voluntary choices, by a person's environment, or by both of these possible factors together. They also found out if a person's behaviors influence his or her perception of his or her dignity. The result of studies clearly supports the notion that students believe in voluntary control of behavior. Skinner does not disagree with this fact, but merely with its objective truth (Harcum, Rosen & Burijon, 1989, p. 257-265). Of course, this may not comprehensible to Swedenborg because he believed every good deeds were directly from God. Skinner never mentioned about God's reinforcement, but society's. He couldn't combine science with religion. Religion is too subjective. According to Dr. James (Lecture 2/4/93), subjective world is objectively real and can be meditated on it. In the Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner said confidently: "It is the environment which is 'responsible' for the objectional behavior, and it is the environment, not some attribute of the individual, which must be changed (Skinner, 1971, p. 70)." I can tell the Skinner's view is not too scientific from this sentence. It is only a subjective social view of Skinner himself. Environment can be controlled by humans, humans make their decisions, and it is God who controls humans. Then, can I meditate on this Skinner's environmental philosophy? There should be a clear distinction between scientism and objectivism.
Scientism and Objectivism
Michael Mahoney in his journal article Scientific Psychology and Radical Behaviorism says: "Naive objectivism is a misguided and misguiding ideal in modern science, and scientism is a dogmatic form of myopia 'which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word (1989, p. 1376)." Science of behavior itself has a limitation. Psychology is the science of behavior, but psychology is like a double edged sword without the explanation of both mind and body. It is time for behaviorism to open the gate to mind. It is time to study mind over death, spiritual world. If today's psychologists can control behaviors, in future, they should be able to control spirits since they correspond to each other. Freud said in Civilization and Its Discontents "The evolution of civilization may therefore be simply described as the struggle for the life of the human species (Cited from Chessick, 1989, p. 547)." I simply disagreed with it because he ignored the universal good and truth existed. People have a better purpose of living than just surviving. Of course, surviving can be one of the lifestyles of mankind.
Human Aggression
Misunderstanding of Death Instinct
In The Death Instinct and the Future of Humans, Richard Chessick defends Freud's death instinct. Chessick thinks that the term death instinct is falsely used for passivity in the face of the current crisis in human affairs ( 1989, p. 546). It is true that the term death instinct is used by the opponents of Freud, whether they are psychoanalytic theorists or not, in negative purpose. One most hilarious example may be the movie "Basic Instinct." In the movie, an actress was depicted as a maniac who had lost her control over sexual desire and desire to kill. It is true that Freud's explanation of the death instinct will cause such a false understanding of his theory. Freud said: "The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction (Cited from Chessick, 1989, p. 547). For Skinner, this was totally nonsensical. Skinner declared the loss of inner man, and put his hope in controlling environment instead (Skinner, 1971, p. 206). Skinner always thought that human behaviors are controlled by time and environment, and the only method to control human behavior was using the negative reinforcement. His concept was simple. When a person take an aspirin, the aspirin takes away pain, and the person will use aspirin again. However, it is a big misunderstanding if one says it is possible to change the death instincts using negative reinforcement. Death is inevitable, and it is permissible by God. Skinner's idea of control, if I mention one, is like this: "The blackmailer threatens exposure unless the victim pays; by paying the victim escapes from the threat and reinforces the practice (Skinner, 1971, p. 26)." Human aggression is much more complex topic to discuss. It is not the cause and effect relationship with the death instinct, but rather is a byproduct of the death instinct only if there is one that called the death instinct.
Patricentric vs. Matricentric World
One of the controversial issue in psychology today is the sex differences. Generally, people attribute human aggressions to male nature. This may be true since the human society is disproportionately male-centered. But, probably, this kind of idea is not fair for woman at all. However, there were psychologists who believed individuals had two types of characters, the matricentric and patricentric orientations of character. According to Burston, it was J. J. Bachofen ( 1815-1881) who influenced C. G. Jung, O. Rank, E. Fromm, and I. Suttie with his matriarchal theory ( 1986, p. 666). The patricentric, or father-centered type, is one in which the relationship to the father is more strongly cathected than other emotional involvements. It is characterized, according to Fromm, by dependence on fatherly authority, involving a mixture of anxiety, love and hate, identification with the aggressor, and a superego whose principle is that duty takes precedence over happiness. In contrast to the patricentric type, the matricentric type is what the relationship to mother takes precedence, and one typically finds a mood of greater optimism about life, fewer guilt feelings, a weaker superego, and a less impaired capacity for intimacy and sensuous pleasure. There is no mention of intergenerational conflict (Burston, 1986, p. 677). Fromm's idea resembles Cartesian dualism. I can't tell this kind of categorization is unfair for woman or not. According to traditional view, it seems quite reasonable to put thing in that way. But, not according to Dr. James' view. According to Dr. James, and Dr. Hatfield, the time has changed. Man and woman are equal in the society cross-culturally. Of course, there are some exceptions, but the equalization of gender perspective is global phenomena.
Conclusion
Writing tons of papers with my small experience in research wasn't the easiest task. It was tough to find articles I disagree with since all the researches were done by experts who knew the subject. I'm just a naive psychology student, and don't want to make mistake by criticizing scientists who daily contacts the subject first-hand. Skinnerian ideas were interesting to me personally, but the contents were monotonous and not too exciting. I'm impressed when I read behaviorism is only philosophy of psychology, not scientific psychology in one of Skinner's literature. As Skinner said in the last chapter of Beyond Freedom and Dignity: "The evolution of culture is gigantic exercise in self-control (1971, p. 205)." Although Skinner accused self-control as a nonsensical motivation in the beginning of the book, Skinner's hope was future technology that could control human behavior. In fact, humans are able to control environment, and build their own culture although the root of good and truth is God. I recommend every student in psychology to go through this kind of research project. I have learned not just psychological knowledge, but also the skills that I can use to research on any topic whether it is social science, art, or literature. Now, I know how to use library, and it means that going beach isn't always better than going to library.