New directions in social sciences; Interviews with American males

In a recent article and description of the young Dolphins played the part as we saw that my mouth is more plea for them to fully make sure the thought process maturity and image of playing more aggressive on them and in the individual finding defender from out their hands that inhabit the surface of the thing may come up. Balance it on his nose out of the box for the right to catch it again and. Another is likely to come rushing up off of a stick and then he sent off a few more that tried to take it from me so complete lack of. Physiological forms. One part points most often seem to get seats most of them are large target both standing on edge and are the cross the

pan and up against the opposing the Iraq the promulgation is clearly seen in the playoff round up in the last seen swimming upside down and the top of the catch and pulling at. The end here which we have now classified as belonging to the larger of sexual phenomena and strongly by the product list. First they are manifestations of surplus quantity which is not needed for the preservation of life. And secondly it is charged this surplus quantity of nervous excited if not in frame of a conflict in which these activities are subordinate. But did charge it for its own sake. The police around me in this connection it is of particular interest to me

for a moment on which has been wrong was that the police activity has a tendency to be the first young animals on the ark. The exhaust also ritual dance training which up a few of the dancers complete. This demonstrates clearly the principal of charge from the state out of the gap for the rest of the audience. The police reports it's on money no matter what. This can be understood from the fact that both playful activities are not caught up in the household of the organised but are just so neat that. This should not be in the complex play activity such as other artistic commish. Maybe the modernist in them sense

but the perfume that only brings it as it is expressed in the term of the French a lot of people seem to live. On its own. Probably need to meet the man and B.C. nominate science consist in the complex organization. From these you did it. The motivational force s so are most analogies. For their charge in our promise. And other significant implication of these viewers that are upbeat and playful activities are primary in that ontogeny often in the region they constitute usefully the big storm which will be eventually utilized later in your daily goal directed structure of behavior and police activities that use only

that fact will act and the fact that our forward time in two modes and. The observation of the early child development fully bears out the church practice its physiological fact first in a plane crash for the sake of moving. Moving but not approaching the object for the satisfaction of fun that I am focusing for the sake of scene but not for a spine object. That some sort for the sake of subtle but not exactly. Also the child's intellectual curiosity has the qualities of interest be patched from serious utilitarian name. What is inside the box. The growing independence of the journey all these functions which have been

perfected useless and become integrated with each other. The preservation of the history of court shut off the power out of sight of age apologist but the level of all front and shown that such practically invented in invention Gardner and categories which marked the beginnings of human civilization on the Internet even invent many on the computer. These useful occupations developed from me when I had no problem and then exploited only secondary economic. In our primitive concerning propagation. Man Discovered that capital raising stands from the optimistic practices of the planet. Bombastic animals. For for the

moment and not until it was their usefulness for meet up technology. Originally was played for a plate of adventurers never dream of the future practical significance of that part. You did it it was certainly not the primary motivation of that experimentation. But then you have to write the sky which often appears before mass current free. Flight originally was invented invented neither for the seat for future passenger plane. Now. We come down to the seeming paradox. That culture is the product of man's leisure and not the sweat off his brow.

His product of ability to become liberated when he's relieved from the necessity of the struggle for survival. Definitely between me and me has been remarkable. It is horrible that this cut this discussion was in my upon the reason he admires repeats itself from the very exigency cry because I'll be here for your national moment it is manner that to give me condition and thus can serve the individuals of Iran in plane the person expresses his mom I just wish. He likes the culture building fact of the human species. We always speak about a just adjustment. When a man is not an animal. Humanity can change reality and not only adjust it builds part. And the most Don't touch don't my boy don't be church.

Don't clean school. And equally important reason for nature is the greater freedom of choice in place. In contrast at that that behavior is mostly determined by that people by the problem because the RTM are disarmed there is only bomb or at most a few contacts almost. On the other hand the freedom of choice is unlimited. The big game hunting or rock not more know where you can find for the gratification of the same in the great diversity of types of play and experimental me satisfied these live on must vary not only by clean big game but by impersonating a

motor man on the box or negotiate being successful. The freedom of choice. Inventive experimentation and. Incompetent utilitarian behavior but that's the only discipline spread and the procedure which one may reach the goal itself as well as by the practical exigencies of the policeman experimentation is on fact any consideration or utilitarian goal man. Instead of adjusting to the shape it is neat and designed. For that sort of ripening. But this crime has the means and means for experimentation.

For their own sake during the process of my last man physiologically he can start to meet basic needs. Then long term and long long periods this program is a part of. Their old Rhino's spoke before the conference on an experiment with which he was concerned. Here is his address on life history interviews with American males. Harold Renault. I'm a clinical psychologist and I usually work in a psychiatric clinic where I see mental patients and people who are suffering from emotional disturbances. And I'd like to tell you

the experience that a psychiatric colleague and I recently had when we interviewed a hundred men about their childhoods family backgrounds and adolescent wives. We found many evidences of parental discord divorce overt and covert marital disharmony conflict with rigid training patterns in repressive parental sexual attitudes. I dated the same to a buy an Oedipal anxieties Adana vacations with the aggressor and so forth. But this grim roster of pathogenic background factors will surprise few of you since I've already told you that I'm customarily employed in work with psychiatric patients. Note however that I said customarily in order I hope to engender with you within you a degree of interest and surprise a kin to that experienced by Dr estis and me when we were

first in contact with these data. I withheld from you the fact that this biographical material was gathered not from a group of severely or marginally incapacitated psychiatric patients within the course of our daily clinical work but rather why we were carrying out a research project by interviewing a group of effectively functioning young men who were senior company grade officers in a military service. And it should be said that these men exceed national norms on many personal and social logical variables. As a group they are characterized by their responsibility their dependability and conscientiousness their high morale and their ability to handle fairly complex integrations and. In their daily lives. At the Institute for personality assessment and research of the University of California Berkeley the writers had an opportunity to have two hour

interviews with each of 100 senior company grade officers. These life history interviews were only part of a broad three day assessment carried on by the institute's entire staff. So far as the interviews themselves were concerned they were carefully planned to cover the subjects lives in all major institutional areas such as home family occupation religion politics and so forth. It was our impression that such interviews would compare very favorably and found this scope in a report with the standard animistic procedures and court work our clinic intake interviews. Each of the writers independently interviewed half of the sample independent a few sorts on 76 traits which were a very wide sample of personality traits encountered in the literature were performed immediately after each interview. Comparison of these cue sorts reveal high agreement between the

two interviewers as to the psychological characteristics of the group. And that constitutes the basis on which we speak of our common judgements throughout this paper. Time is not available to detail the present adjustment of these men. But perhaps the following will serve as a rough sketch of their present status. The average age of the group is thirty three years. Some indication of the social stability of the men can be gained from the fact that nine out of every ten are married and a very low percentage 2.5 have been divorced or widowed. There are indications that this is a mentally able group. Their main score on a mental task is above that of a college freshman. A lot of that of college sophomores. I'm intellectually Fishman's the scale they achieve scores comparable to graduate and undergraduate university groups. There is evidence that as compared with their backgrounds they are economically very

upwardly mobile. In general the attitudes of these men toward their posts were those of responsibility dependability and conscientiousness though individual men might be dissatisfied with promotions or specific assignments. 90 percent of them seem to have higher morale and definite plans for themselves within the service. Cynical pride and indolence are goldbricking was rare or nonexistent. Although dependent gratification is sometimes mentioned in the literature as a motive involved in lengthy service careers we were under the impression that for most of these men interested in the service plans to remain in it sprang from urges to self affirmation which were being expressed as getting the job done. Furthermore 50 percent of the men were in the service and voluntarily as a result of recall from the reserve. It should also be added that most of these men had jobs in which they were responsible for very substantial

amounts of material and personnel. Most of them were capable of coordinating activities at relatively complex levels. In general there are levels of responsibility. Seem to be at what we would call the middling executive level such as office manager or coordinator of mail and parcel post on all a parcel service on a large base machine shop foreman and so forth. Q So are the items agreed on by the interviewers as highly descriptive of the men stress their ability to get along well in the world as it is as being a socially appropriate in their behavior and as deriving personal reward and pleasure from their work and valuing productive achievement for its own sake. Either item stress they're being competitive with their peers liking to be ahead and to win and as being a benefit to the values actions and attitudes of their social group. Almost all of these men had achieved a consistent heterosexual relationship within a

stable marriage. The qualities of trustworthiness and dependability noted in other areas also is seen within the framework of their marriages. Roughly 95 percent were financially Providence and had long term savings in insurance plans. These marriages were in many respects quite mutualistic certainly much more mutualistic. Than the marriages of their parents as we will see in a moment. Most of the wives were highly valued partners and planning for the future. The men were almost without exception highly interested in and closely related to their children. Though the early years of many of the marriages had been characterized by differing amounts of sexual drive and or experience most of these differences had been resolved. Socially most of the men showed poise and presence and seem to be aware of the kinds of impressions they made on others. One

received an impression of directness and straightforwardness. Q sort items on guileful Madison deceitful Miss were consistently rated as quite uncharacteristic of these men. Parenthesis it is perhaps somewhat aside from our present purpose of calling attention to the numerous assets of the group. But is worthy of parent Thetic note. That these men were hardly on solid paragons a very psychological virtue. And in another report we have suggested that some of these men may be paying a price for their rather smoothly functioning occupational marital and social adjustments. A pricing terms perhaps of conformity and a relatively frequent use of repressive mechanisms. But for the moment it's enough to stress that these men work a fairly difficult jobs and they operate in complex in a personally use and that they function with reasonable effectiveness. So much for the present. Let's not turn to the familial backgrounds from which the

men can't. With few exceptions these backgrounds were characterized by appreciable degrees of tension and conflict. Roughly three quarters of them seemed unaware of the fact of such conflict even though they might be at the moment speaking of its results of. Divorce desertion separation. Vague rumors of infidelity episodic withdrawal or seclusive news of one of the marital partners. Variations on masochistic things these were reported without the subject seeming to be aware that such behavior did betoken familial conflict particularly of the mothers where their likely reports of periods of marginally incapacitating illnesses refractory to medical treatment and only vaguely diagnosed. Under the rubric of appreciable degrees of tension and conflict. The writers have included roughly 10 of the 100 subjects.

Who assured us that their parents had lived for years in a matrimonial climate of enthusiastic like mindedness. However heart disease migraine hypertension why some similarly socially acceptable registration attention seemed particularly prevalent in one or the other parent of such families. In our remaining roughly 25 percent of the cases we judged conflicts to be explicated that is where open antagonism rages. Agreeing to disagree. We're fairly constant features of the domestic arena. It is to be stressed that such histories were not gathered is the result of our respondents attempts to give unfavorable characterizations of their parents to the contrary at least two thirds tended to have at least moderately favorable attitudes to their parents. Nevertheless ambivalent views of the more conservative fathers as stodgy lacking in

ambition are get up and go or visions of more disaster will fathers as careless a responsibility or undependable were frequently encountered questions such as which parent was it easier to get around when you were a kid. Regularly elicited descriptions of honorees or proud differences. Parents were described as vacillating anxious permissive on the one hand or stern distant and withholding on the other. Although it's not possible to gather information on the weaning and toilet training of the subjects themselves inferences may be drawn from training methods employed with their own children early weaning was in general a matter of pride. They responded as were almost all concerned with establishment of complete sphincter control at an early age. Continence for your own feces at the age of 12 months was blandly reported. Now whether such reports reflect fact or a mere male ignorance.

There are probably reliable indications of the father's aspirations and the interviewers were impressed with the uniformity of the findings in the area of sexual training. Not a single subject considered himself to have an adequate orientation to sexuality from a member of his own family. Communicating the tension free atmosphere where no information given was considered by the subject to have been inadequate or to have been offered considerably before or after he would have found it useful man otherwise straightforward and credible gave material which seem contradictory or implausible in this area. Most of the men had siblings a very few of these relationships were carried forward into the present. A way. To summarize that it might be stated that 100 men who as a group were adequately functioning and symptom free

reported childhoods containing as many traumatic events are pathogenic factors as we ordinarily listed in history taking interviews with many psychiatric patients. The writers for instance were in agreement that had these subjects compliant to them of colliders also his phobia work inhibitions incapacitated shyness etc. they would have been willing to take the complaints at face value and in many instances could have located background circumstances. At least this is a very as those which quote unquote account for psychosomatic and psych and erratic compliance when there aren't counted in clinic settings. The background findings for this group of men may well represent the background matrix of normal American males. This summary of our work with this group is of course not in conflict with the basic assumption of social science namely that in a substantial degree human behavior is a product of life experience. Nor is it in conflict with the credo that the early years of life

are crucial for adult development. But such findings do throw into question the elemental conceptions of simple direct causal relations repetitively in a system we presume to exist between certain kinds of biographical data and the later development of mental wellness. The program you just heard was one of a series of lectures given under the general title of new directions in social sciences. It was produced and recorded by radio station KPFA Berkeley California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center. Distribution of the series is made possible through the facilities of the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the Radio Network.