Self Image Psychology

New Answers for Eternal Questions: Self Image Psychology

2. Chapter - Self Image Psychology

       Self-image psychology is the rage these days. California creates a commission on self esteem and feeling good about yourself underlies New Age cures. We attribute self-image psychology, which suggests that individual behavior depends on what we think of ourselves, to Harry Stack Sullivan. It sounds modern, but when Heraclitus said, "Character is destiny", he anticipated Sullivan by more than a millennium.

       Philosophy founders in our technological times. We want proof, not speculation, and demanding certainty, we ignore the ambiguities intrinsic in our situation. We consider psychology a science because white coated academicians experimenting with mice, monkeys, or people announce results from time to time, but psychology's assumptions cannot be verified, although they seem to describe the way things are.

       Our habit of using different words to describe the same reality exaggerates the problem. Much confusion is semantic and self-image psychology provides a case in point. Freud touched on self-image psychology with his concept of guilt, it being reasonable to assume 'guilty' people grapple with lowered self esteem. Freudian guilt metamorphosed into the inferiority complex, a condition directly related to the sense of self.

       In the early 1940's a sociologist named Merton coined the phrase 'self-fulfilling prophecy', by which he meant expectations that create reality. Robert Rosenthal proved the point when he altered records to make dull students appear bright. To everyone's surprise, unsuspecting teachers gave the masquerading dullards high marks. In the bright light of hindsight, Rosenthal's findings are self-evident. Expectations, especially expectations we have for ourselves, influence behavior. We resist a vision of behavior as a function of belief. It eradicates 'eternal' truths gleaned from experience. Instead of coherence, we are left with momentary reaction, vague and inconstant.

       We call the self-images of self-image psychology and the expectations behind self-fulfilling prophecies 'knowledge', things we think we 'know'. Knowledge varies from culture to culture, but whatever it is, it reaches us through senses. David Hume considered human sensory perception so unreliable, he thought it impossible to 'know' anything. Thirty years later, Immanuel Kant refuted Hume with collective perceptions. According to Kant repeated, unchanging, identical perceptions by disconnected observers prove things exist as they are generally perceived.

       It is unlikely the philosophical problems associated with human sensory perception will ever be resolved, but it seems fair to conclude both Hume and Kant are right, our senses more accurate in some situations then others. It is one thing to agree on the shape, color, and size of a tree, another to decide that the earth is flat, that black holes exist or that atoms are accurately described as nuclei circled by electrons. As distances increase, unknowns intrude, and our conclusions about what we experience are increasingly suspect.

       Wondering whether falling trees make noise if no one hears, seems a pointless contemplation, but I vote for noise, just as I believe the refrigerator light goes out when I shut its door. I accept the physical universe as it is collectively perceived, but knowledge of past collective errors detracts from present certainty. Not long ago respected human minds thought the earth flat, an embarrassing misconception in today's frame of reference. We also thought the sun circled the earth, another lapse we attribute to primitive misunderstanding. Incorrect perceptions of the physical universe create a subjective reality that exists only in our minds. It is easy to be wrong about our physical circumstance, and one marvels at our tendency to dismiss past error as an insignificant byway on the road to what we now know is 'truth'.

       The truth is we have no way of knowing which of today's perceptions will endure. We think we can consume unlimited amounts of petroleum without disturbing the stability of the earth's crust or the earth's mass in relation to other objects in the universe. We think we can inject an infinite volume of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere without damaging life, and we assume human ingenuity will overcome crises created by our presumption. Should the atmosphere become inhospitable, we will dome our cities, and should radioactive waste threaten, we will jump off that bridge when we come to it. Environmentalists challenge these assumptions, but they do not know the future either. Tomorrow's technology may handle today's depredations with ease, but if greater knowledge cures present dereliction, it also exposes present foolishness. We think science protects us from the egregious errors of past generations, but it should be clear to the most ardent technologist that such is not the case. It is more reasonable to believe our proudest accomplishments will be artifacts in a future Smithsonian, reminders to our descendants of their primitive past.

       Be all that as it may, mistaken realities created by misconceptions of the physical universe are easily corrected. As knowledge expands, theories that do not accommodate newer, more refined observations are discarded. Einstein suggested that matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light, an assumption already questioned. Should future earthlings accomplish instantaneous inter-galactic travel, we will know Einstein was wrong.

       Self image creates a different subjective reality. When we conclude we are good or bad, intelligent or stupid, passionate or stolid, we make judgments we cannot relate to standards other than those we create, and when we believe our judgments reflect innate ability, we inhibit the capacity we mean to measure. We suffer self-imposed limitations gladly because we prefer believing we can be no more than we think we are. With everything reduced to quirks of D.N.A., gumption and perseverance are dismissed as irrelevant and indolence is excused as a reasonable reaction to the discovery one is without talent.

       Science supports our hope free will is an illusion. We discover that an imbalance of blood catecholamine, a brain chemical accompanies depression; that aggressive men have more testosterone, the male hormone, than less aggressive men; and that stress reduces testosterone levels. The unavoidable conclusion is that emotion (mind) influences blood chemistry (body) which in turn influences behavior, but this is hardly startling. Anyone who has been frightened knows the quickened pulse we attribute to release of adrenaline, and for those unpersuaded by personal experience, there are the findings of Dr. Harvey Brenner who discovered that economic recessions are followed by increases in renal kidney disease, cirrhosis of the liver, and coronary heart disease, proof, of sorts, that stress, a mental process, takes a physical toll.

       From this empirical data we can conclude that 'mind' and 'body' are not distinct entities occupying opposite ends of a philosophical spectrum, but are more accurately described as an amorphous mass of chemistry and expectation. Our situation is such that no matter how many attitudes we relate to chemistry, the connection does not prove which came first, chemical or expectation. Attributing behavior to mind or body requires an act of faith, but what follows from each alternative underlines the importance of our choice. When mind is foremost, human possibility is bounded by limitations of imagination, subject always to future changes of mind. Body is a collection of givens nothing can change.

       In Illness as Metaphor Susan Sontag offers several reasons for rejecting the idea that acts of can alter a malevolent reality. "Psychologizing," she wrote, "seems to provide control over experiences and events...over which people have in fact little or no control...a large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular ostensibly scientific way of affirming the supremacy of 'spirit' over matter. That ineluctable material reality, disease, can be given a psychological explanation. Death itself can be considered, ultimately, a psychological phenomenon..." She is right. Self-image psychology resembles a magician's illusion that lifts us by psychological bootstraps, but for all the faith there is logic. By living according to our expectations we make self-image a self-fulfilling prophecy. To make our prophesy true, we become the person we think we are.

       The logic, such as it is, is not enough to overcome a long standing emotional and philosophical attachment to experience. Experience signifies knowledge, distinguishing seasoned practitioners from novices-men from boys. Kant used experience to prove the accuracy of the senses, and the scientific method, based on Kantian thought, uses replicated experiments to prove its hypotheses. What we call reason is, at bottom, an attempt to project experience onto the future, but history proves that experience is perishable, closely connected to the conditions from which it is drawn. Experiences associated with the physical universe are less perishable than psychological understandings. Avoiding hot objects has been wise for generations and the perception will probably endure. Self-image psychology deals in intangible assumptions, measurements of ability and past performances. If experience has us thinking less of ourselves, self image psychology tells us to ignore experience when we measure future possibility.

       Making experience irrelevant departs from customary thought. We believe in sin and retribution and live in a world where nothing is forgotten or forgiven. Failure is ubiquitous, and having failed we compare ourselves unfavorably with those who succeed. Inferiority, bane of self image psychology, concedes others are better. We see ourselves as less for doing what they avoid, or we find inadequacy in our failure to meet a variety of standards. Parents have expectations as do teachers and friends, but society imposes most. Collectively we decide who is intelligent and who is foolish, just as we collectively decide what it means to succeed or fail. Those who fail are, by definition, inferior to those who succeed. They live in inferior houses, work at inferior jobs, and obey a multitude of superiors.

       Inferiority is an inescapable product of hierarchical systems, social structures so ancient we see them as genetic demands. Again we choose between mind and body, and again it is more comfortable to put change beyond us. Self-image psychology, every self improvement cliche made one, assumes no unwanted behavior is innate. Happiness, utopia, whatever we want, is a future possibility if we try. It seems too good to be true, but the logic of self-image psychology, like the reality of hierarchy, is corroborated by experience. Class structure has been with us from the beginning, but so has class struggle, and so has social change. The genetic explanation of collective human behavior presumes a non-existent constancy. Psychological explanations, erratic as the mind itself, explain everything at the drop of a notion. In our present predicament, the psychological explanation is our only hope.

       We prefer seeing emotional disorder as an individual affliction. A perception of the species as deranged is too troubling, with problems too overwhelming and solutions too disruptive. Societies are too large to break with their pasts, and interconnections among citizens too complex to be undone. Living in a society means agreeing with your fellows about matters ranging from the existence of God to the advantages of capitalism over communism. Collectively we decide what is right and what is wrong, and having decided, the weight of collective certainty extinguishes doubt. Societies develop bodies of collective truths which play so large a role in every life in every time, it is reasonable to view history as the ebb and flow of what is generally believed. Not long ago divine mandate established the social hierarchy. God put political power where it belonged, and God's agent, the king, brought glory to impoverished subjects. Economic ability replaced royal birth as the measure of superiority. With capitalism came the collective perception that superior individuals own things. Genealogy retained its influence in that capitalism, like feudalism, transfers status to succeeding generations. The wealthy run things because wealth proves them best. We want our best to lead. Inferiority is a small price to pay for their guidance.

       When we think leaders wise, we assume collective tests distinguish wise from foolish. Again we choose between mind and body, this time to decide those society raises above us are better. Radicals dispute that collective conclusion, but most of us accept the way things are. We must believe something and think it best to believe what everyone believes. The older we get, the more vested our interest in the collective truths of our time. With our days spent, we are not inclined to concede we squandered our lives barking up the wrong ideological tree. We fear falling out of step, and the desire to belong perpetuates collective truths. Since collective perceptions have been 'true' for generations, we persuade ourselves we deal in absolutes, a conceit that inclines each succeeding generation to accept the insights of those who went before. Aristotle's observation that:

...every household is ruled by its senior member, as by a king and the off-shoot householders because of their blood are ruled in the same way. This patriarchal rule is mentioned in Homer. 'Each man has power of law over children and wives.