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Psychological Data and Human Values

Humanists for thousands of years have attempted to construct a naturalistic, psychological value system that could be derived from man's own nature, without the necessity of recourse to authority outside the human being himself. Many such theories have been offered throughout history. They have all failed for mass practical purposes exactly as all other theories have failed. We have about as many scoundrels in the world today as we have ever had, and many more neurotics, probably, than we have ever had.

These inadequate theories, most of them, rested on psy- chological assumptions of one sort or another. Today prac- tically all of these can be shown, in the light of recently acquired knowledge, to be false, inadequate, incomplete or in some other way, lacking. But it is my belief that certain developments in the science and art of psychology, in the last few decades, make it possible for us for the first time to feel confident that this age-old hope may be fulfilled if only we work hard enough. We know how to criticize the old theories; we know, even though dimly, the shape of the theories to come, and most of all, we know where to look and what to do in order to fill in the gaps in knowledge, that will permit us to answer the age- old questions, "What is the good life? What is the good man? How can people be taught to desire and prefer the good life? How ought children to be brought up to be sound adults? etc." That is, we think that a scientific ethic may be possible, and we think we know how to go about constructing it.

The following section will discuss briefly a few of the promising lines of evidence and of research, their relevance

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to past and future value theories, along with a discussion of the theoretical and factual advances we must make in the near future. It is safer to judge them all as more or less probable rather than as certain.

FREE CHOICE EXPERIMENTS: HOMEOSTASIS

Hundreds of experiments have been made that demon- strate a universal inborn ability in all sorts of animals to select a beneficial diet if enough alternatives are presented from among which they are permitted free choice. This wisdom of the body is often retained under less usual conditions, e.g., adrenalectomized animals can keep them- selves alive by readjusting their self-chosen diet. Pregnant animals will nicely adjust their diets to the needs of the growing embryo.

We now know this is by no means a perfect wisdom. These appetites are less efficient, for instance, in reflecting body need for vitamins. Lower animals protect themselves against poisons more efficiently than higher animals and humans. Previously formed habits of preference may quite overshadow present metabolic needs (185). And most of all, in the human being, and especially in the neurotic human being, all sorts of forces can contaminate this wisdom of the body, although it never seems to be lost altogether.

The general principle is true not only for selection of food but also for all sorts of other body needs as the famous homeostasis experiments have shown (27).

It seems quite clear that all organisms are more self- governing, self-regulating and autonomous than we thought 25 years ago. The organism deserves a good deal of trust, and we are learning steadily to rely on this in- ternal wisdom of our babies with reference to choice of diet, time of weaning, amount of sleep, time of toilet training, need for activity, and a lot else.

But more recently we have been learning, especially from physically and mentally sick people, that there are good choosers and bad choosers. We have learned, especi- ally from the psychoanalysts, much about the hidden causes of such behavior and have learned to respect these causes.

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In this connection we have available a startling experi- ment (38 b), which is pregnant with implications for value theory. Chickens allowed to choose their own diet vary widely in their ability to choose what is good for them. The good choosers become stronger, larger, more domi- nant than the poor choosers, which means that they get the best of everything. If then the diet chosen by the good choosers is forced upon the poor choosers, it is found that they now get stronger, bigger, healthier and more domi- nant, although never reaching the level of the good choos- ers. That is, good choosers can choose better than bad choosers what is better for the bad choosers themselves. If similar experimental findings are made in human be- ings, as I think they will be (supporting clinical data are available aplenty), we are in for a good deal of recon- struction of all sorts of theories. So far as human value theory is concerned, no theory will be adequate that rests simply on the statistical description of the choices of un- selected human beings. To average the choices of good and bad choosers, of healthy and sick people is useless. Only the choices and tastes and judgments of healthy human be- ings will tell us much about what is good for the human species in the long run. The choices of neurotic people can tell us mostly what is good for keeping a neurosis stabilized, just as the choices of a brain injured man are good for preventing a catastrophic breakdown, or as the choices of an adrenalectomized animal may keep him from dying but would kill a healthy animal.

I think that this is the main reef on which most hedon- istic value theories and ethical theories have foundered. Pathologically motivated pleasures cannot be averaged with healthily motivated pleasures.

Furthermore any ethical code will have to deal with the fact of constitutional differences not only m chickens and rats but also in men, as Sheldon (153) and Morris (110) have shown. Some values are common to all (healthy) mankind, but also some other values will not be common to all mankind, but only to some types of people, or to specific individuals. What I have called the basic needs are probably common to all mankind and are, therefore, shared values. But idiosyncratic needs generate idiosyncratic values.

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Constitutional differences in individuals generate pref- erences among ways of relating to self, and to culture and to the world, i.e., generate values. These researches sup- port and are supported by the universal experience of clinicians with individual differences. This is also true of the ethnological data that make sense of cultural diversity by postulating that each culture selects for exploitation, suppression, approval or disapproval, a small segment of the range of human constitutional possibilities. This is all in line with the biological data and theories and self- actualization theories which show that an organ system presses to express itself, in a word, to function. The mus- cular person likes to use his muscles, indeed, has to use them in order to self-actualize, and to achieve the subjec- tive feeling of harmonious, uninhibited, satisfying func- tioning which is so important an aspect of psychological health. People with intelligence must use their intelli- gence, people with eyes must use their eyes, people with the capacity to love have the impulse to love and the need to love in order to feel healthy. Capacities clamor to be used, and cease their clamor only when they are used suf- ficiently. That is to say, capacities are needs, and there- fore are intrinsic values as well. To the extent that ca- pacities differ, so will values also differ.

BASIC NEEDS AND THEIR HIERARCHICAL

ARRANGEMENT

It has by now been sufficiently demonstrated that the human being has, as part of his intrinsic construction, not only physiological needs, but also truly psychological ones. They may be considered as deficiencies which must be optimally fulfilled by the environment in order to avoid sickness and subjective ill-being. They can be called basic, or biological, and likened to the need for salt, or calcium or vitamin D because—

a) The deprived person yearns for their gratification per- sistently.

b) Their deprivation makes the person sicken and wither. c) Gratifying them is therapeutic, curing the deficiency-ill-

ness. d) Steady supplies forestall these illnesses.

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e) Healthy (gratified) people do not demonstrate these deficiencies.

But these needs or values are related to each other in a hierarchical and developmental way, in an order of strength and of priority. Safety is a more prepotent, or stronger, more pressing, more vital need than love, for instance, and the need for food is usually stronger than either. Furthermore, all these basic needs may be con- sidered to be simply steps along the path to general self- actualization, under which all basic needs can be sub- sumed.

By taking these data into account, we can solve many value problems that philosophers have struggled with in- effectually for centuries. For one thing, it looks as if there were a single ultimate value for mankind, a far goal toward which all men strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integra- tion, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that the person can become.

But it is also true that the person himself does not know this. We, the psychologists observing and studying, have constructed this concept in order to integrate and explain lots of diverse data. So far as the person himself is con- cerned, all he knows is that he is desperate for love, and thinks he will be forever happy and content if he gets it. He does not know in advance that he will strive on after this gratification has come, and that gratification of one basic need opens consciousness to domination by another, "higher" need. So far as he is concerned, the absolute, ultimate value, synonymous with life itself, is whichever need in the hierarchy he is dominated by during a partic- ular period. These basic needs or basic values therefore may be treated both as ends and as steps toward a single end-goal. It is true that there is a single, ultimate value or end of life and also it is just as true that we have a hierarchical and developmental system of values, com- plexly interrelated.

This also helps to solve the apparent paradox of con- trast between Being and Becoming. It is true that human

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beings strive perpetually toward ultimate humanness, which itself may be anyway a different kind of Becoming and growing. It's as if we were doomed forever to try to arrive at a state to which we could never attain. Fortu- nately we now know this not to be true, or at least it is not the only truth. There is another truth which inte- grates with it. We are again and again rewarded for good Becoming by transient states of absolute Being, by peak- experiences. Achieving basic-need gratifications gives us many peak-experiences, each of which are absolute de- lights, perfect in themselves, and needing no more than themselves to validate life. This is like rejecting the no- tion that a Heaven lies someplace beyond the end of the path of life. Heaven, so to speak, lies waiting for us through life, ready to step into for a time and to enjoy before we have to come back to our ordinary life of striv- ing. And once we have been in it, we can remember it forever, and feed ourselves on this memory and be sus- tained in time of stress.

Not only this, but the process of moment-to-moment growth is itself intrinsically rewarding and delightful in an absolute sense. If they are not mountain peak-experi- ences, at least they are foothill-experiences, little glimpses of absolute, self-validative delight, little moments of Be- ing. Being and Becoming are not contradictory or mutu- ally exclusive. Approaching and arriving are both in them- selves rewarding.

I should make it clear here that I want to differentiate the Heaven ahead (of growth and transcendence) from the "Heaven" behind (of regression). The "high Nirvana" is quite different from the "low Nirvana" even though most clinicians confuse them (see also 170).

SELF-ACTUALIZATION: GROWTH

I have published in another place a survey of all the evidence that forces us in the direction of a concept of healthy growth or of self-actualizing tendencies (97). This is partly deductive evidence in the sense of pointing out that unless we postulate such a concept, much of human behavior makes no sense. This is on the same scientific principle that led to the discovery of a hitherto unseen

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planet that had to be there in order to make sense of a lot of other observed data.

There is also some direct evidence, or rather the begin- nings of direct evidence, which needs much more research to get to the point of certainty. The only direct study of self-actualizing people I know is the one I made, and it is a very shaky business to rest on just one study made by just one person when we take into account the known pitfalls of sampling error, of projection, etc. However, the conclusions of this study have been so strongly paralleled in the clinical and philosophical conclusions of Rogers, Fromm, Goldstein, Angyal, Murray, Moustakas, C. Buhler, Horney, Jung, Nuttin and many others that I shall proceed under the assumption that more careful research will not contradict my findings radically. W e can certainly now assert that at least a reasonable, theoretical, and empirical case has been made for the presence within the human being of a tendency toward, or need for grow- ing in a direction that can be summarized in general as self-actualization, or psychological health, and specifically as growth toward each and all of the sub-aspects of self- actualization, i.e., he has within him a pressure toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous expressiveness, toward full individuality and identity, toward seeing the truth rather than being blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot else. That is, the human; being is so constructed that he presses toward fuller and I fuller being and this means pressing toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity, kindness, courage, honesty, love, unselfishness, and goodness.

Few in number though they be, we can learn a great deal about values from the direct study of these highly evolved, most mature, psychologically healthiest individ- uals, and from the study of the peak moments of average individuals, moments in which they become transiently self-actualized. This is because they are in very real em- pirical and theoretical ways, most fully human. For in- stance, they are people who have retained and developed their human capacities, especially those capacities which define the human being and differentiate him from, let us say, the monkey. (This accords with Hartman's (59) axiological approach to the same problem of defining the

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good human being as the one who has more of the charac- teristics which define the concept "human being.") From a developmental point of view, they are more fully evolved because not fixated at immature or incomplete levels of growth. This is no more mysterious, or a priori, or question begging than the selection of a type specimen of butterfly by a taxonomist or the most physically healthy young man by the physician. They both look for the "per- fect or mature or magnificent specimen" for the exemplar, and so have I. One procedure is as repeatable in principle as the other.

Full humanness can be defined not only in terms of the degree to which the definition of the concept "human" is fulfilled, i.e., the species norm. It also has a descriptive, cataloguing, measurable, psychological definition. We now have from a few research beginnings and from count- less clinical experiences some notion of the characteristics both of the fully evolved human being and of the well- growing human being. These characteristics are not only neutrally describable; they are also subjectively rewarding, pleasurable and reinforcing.

Among the objectively describable and measurable characteristics of the healthy human specimen are—

1. Clearer, more efficient perception of reality. 2. More openness to experience. 3. Increased integration, wholeness, and unity of the person. 4. Increased spontaneity, expressiveness; full functioning;

aliveness. 5. A real self; a firm identity; autonomy, uniqueness. 6. Increased objectivity, detachment, transcendence of self. 7. Recovery of creativeness. 8. Ability to fuse concreteness and abstractness. 9. Democratic character structure.

10. Ability to love, etc.

These all need research confirmation and exploration but it is clear that such researches are feasible.

In addition, there are subjective confirmations or rein- forcements of self-actualization or of good growth toward it. These are the feelings of zest in living, of happiness or euphoria, of serenity, of joy, of calmness, of responsibility, of confidence in one's ability to handle stresses, anxieties,

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and problems. The subjective signs of self-betrayal, of fix- ation, of regression, and of living by fear rather than by growth are such feelings as anxiety, despair, boredom, in- ability to enjoy, intrinsic guilt, intrinsic shame, aimless- ness, feelings of emptiness, of lack of identity, etc.

These subjective reactions are also susceptible of re- search exploration. We have clinical techniques available for studying them.

It is the free choices of such self-actualizing people (in those situations where real choice is possible from among a variety of possibilities) that I claim can be descriptively studied as a naturalistic value system with which the hopes of the observer absolutely have nothing to do, i.e., it is "scientific." I do not say, "He ought to choose this or that," but only, "Healthy people, permitted to choose freely, are observed to choose this or that." This is like asking, "What are the values of the best human beings," rather than, "What should be their values?" or, "What ought they be?" (Compare this with Aristotle's belief that "it is the things which are valuable and pleasant to a good man that are really valuable and pleasant.")

Furthermore, I think these findings can be generalized to most of the human species because it looks to me (and to others) as if most people (perhaps all) tend toward self- actualization (this is seen most clearly in the experiences in psychotherapy, especially of the uncovering sort), and as if, in principle at least, most people are capable of self- actualization.

If the various extant religions may be taken as expres- sions of human aspiration, i.e., what people would like to become if only they could, then we can see here too a validation of the affirmation that all people yearn toward self-actualization or tend toward it. This is so because our description of the actual characteristics of self-actualizing people parallels at many points the ideals urged by the religions, e.g., the transcendence of self, the fusion of the true, the good and the beautiful, contribution to others, wisdom, honesty and naturalness, the transcendence of selfish and personal motivations, the giving up of "lower" desires in favor of "higher" ones, the easy differentiation between ends (tranquility, serenity, peace) and means

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(money, power, status), the decrease of hostility, cruelty and destructiveness and the increase of friendliness, kind- ness, etc.

1. One conclusion from all these free- choice experi- ments, from developments in dynamic motivation theory and from examination of psychotherapy, is a very revolu- tionary one that no other large culture had even arrived at, namely, that our deepest needs are not, in themselves, dangerous or evil or bad. This opens up the prospect of resolving the splits within the person between Apollonian and Dionysian, classical and romantic, scientific and po- etic, between reason and impulse, work and play, verbal and preverbal, maturity and childlikeness, masculine and feminine, growth and regression.

2. The main social parallel to this change in our phi- losophy of human nature is the Tapidly growing tendency to perceive the culture as an instrument of need-gratifica- tion as well as of frustration and control. We can now reject, as a localism, the almost universal mistake that the interests of the individual and of society are of necessity mutually exclusive and antagonistic, or that civilization is primarily a mechanism for controlling and policing human instinctoid impulses (93). All these age-old axioms are swept away by the new possibility of defining the main function of a healthy culture as the fostering of universal self-actualization.

3. In healthy people only is there a good correlation between subjective delight in the experience, impulse to the experience, or wish for it, and "basic need" for the experience (it's good for him in the long run). Only such people uniformly yearn for what is good for them and for others, and then are able wholeheartedly to enjoy it, and approve of it. For such people virtue is its own reward in the sense of being enjoyed in itself. They spontaneously tend to do right because that is what they want to do, what they need to do, what thev enjoy, what they approve of doing, and what they will continue to enjoy.

It is this unity, this network of positive intercorrelation, that falls apart into separateness and conflict as the person gets psychologically sick. Then what he wants to do may be bad for him; even if he does it he may not enjoy it; even if he enjoys it, he may simultaneously disapprove of

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it, so that the enjoyment is itself poisoned or may disap- pear quickly. What he enjoys at first he may not enjoy later. His impulses, desires, and enjoyments then become a poor guide to living. He must accordingly mistrust and fear the impulses and the enjoyments which lead him astray, and so he is caught in conflict, dissociation, inde- cision; in a word, he is caught in civil war.

So far as philosophical theory is concerned, many his- torical dilemmas and contradictions are resolved by this finding. Hedonistic theory does work for healthy people; it does not work for sick people. The true, the good and the beautiful do correlate some, but only in healthy people do they correlate strongly.

4. Self-actualization is a relatively achieved "state of affairs" in a few people. In most people, however, it is rather a hope, a yearning, a drive, a "something" wished for but not yet achieved, showing itself clinically as drive toward health, integration, growth, etc. The projective tests are also able to detect these trends as potentialities rather than as overt behavior, just as an X-ray can detect incipient pathology before it has appeared on the surface.

This means for us that that which the person is and that which the person could be exist simultaneously for the psychologist, thereby resolving the dichotomy between Being and Becoming. Potentialities not only will be or could be; they also are. Self-actualization values as goals exist and are real even though not yet actualized. The human being is simultaneously that which he is and that which he yearns to be.

GROWTH AND ENVIRONMENT

Man demonstrates in his own nature a pressure toward fuller and fuller Being, more and more perfect actualiza- tion of his humanness in exactly the same naturalistic, scientific sense that an acorn may be said to be "pressing toward" being an oak tree, or that a tiger can be observed to "push toward" being tigerish, or a horse toward being equine. Man is ultimately not molded or shaped into humanness, or taught to be human. The role of the en- vironment is ultimately to permit him or help him to actualize his own potentialities, not its potentialities. The

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environment does not give him potentialities and capaci- ties; he has them in inchoate or embryonic form, just ex- actly as he has embryonic arms and legs. And creativeness, spontaneity, selfhood, authenticity, caring for others, be- ing able to love, yearning for truth are embryonic poten- tialities belonging to his species-membership just as much as are his arms and legs and brain and eyes.

This is not in contradiction to the data already amassed which show clearly that living in a family and in a culture are absolutely necessary to actualize these psychological potentials that define humanness. Let us avoid this con- fusion. A teacher or a culture doesn't create a human being. It doesn't implant within him the ability to love, or to be curious, or to philosophize, or to symbolize, or to be creative. Rather it permits, or fosters, or encourages or helps what exists in embryo to become real and actual. The same mother or the same culture, treating a kitten or a puppy in exactly the same way, cannot make it into a human being. The culture is sun and food and water: it is not the seed.

"INSTINCT" THEORY

The group of thinkers who have been working with self-actualization, with self, with authentic humanness, etc., have pretty firmly established their case that man has a tendency to realize himself. By implication he is ex- horted to be true to his own nature, to trust himself, to be authentic, spontaneous, honestly expressive, to look for the sources of his action in his own deep inner nature.

But, of course, this is an ideal counsel. They do not sufficiently warn that most adults don't know how to be authentic and that, if they "express" themselves, they may bring catastrophe not only upon themselves but upon others as well. What answer must be given to the rapist or the sadist who asks "Why should I too not trust and express myself?"

These thinkers as a group have been remiss in several respects. They have implied without making explicit that if you can behave authentically, you will behave well, that if you emit action from within, it will be good and right behavior. What is very clearly implied is that this inner

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core, this real self, is good, trustworthy, ethical. This is an affirmation that is clearly separable from the affirmation that man actualizes himself, and needs to be separately proven (as I think it will be). Furthermore, these writers have as a group very definitely ducked the crucial state- ment about this inner core, i.e., that it must in some de- gree be inherited or else everything else they say is so much hash.

In other words, we must grapple with "instinct" theory or, as I prefer to call it, basic need theory, that is to say, with the study of the original, intrinsic, in part heredity- determined needs, urges, wishes and, I may say, values of mankind. We can't play both the biology game and the sociology game simultaneously. We can't affirm both that culture does everything and anything, and that man has an inherent nature. The one is incompatible with the other.

And of all the problems in this area of instinct, the one of which we know least and should know most is that of aggression, hostility, hatred, and destructiveness. The Freudians claim this to be instinctive; most other dynamic psychologists claim it to be not directly instinctive, but rather an ever-present reaction to frustration of instinctoid or basic needs. The truth is that we don't really know. Clinical experience hasn't settled the problem because equally good clinicians come to these divergent conclu- sions. What we need is hard, firm research.

THE PROBLEMS OF CONTROL AND LIMITS

Another problem confronting the morals-from-within theorists is to account for the easy self-discipline which is customarily found in self-actualizing, authentic, genuine people and which is not found in average people. j

In these healthy people we find duty and pleasure to be the same thing, as is also work and play, self-interest and altruism, individualism and selflessness. We know they are that way, but not how they get that way. I have the strong intuition that such authentic, fully human persons are the actualization of what many human beings could be. And yet we are confronted with the sad fact that so few people achieve this goal, perhaps only one in a hun-

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dred, or two hundred. W e can be hopeful for mankind because in principle anybody could become a good and healthy man. But we must also feel sad because so few actually do become good men. If we wish to find out why some do and some don't, then the research problem pre- sents itself of studying the life history of self-actualizing men to find out how they get that way.

We know already that the main prerequisite of healthy growth is gratification of the basic needs. (Neurosis is very often a deficiency disease, like avitaminosis.) But we have also learned that unbridled indulgence and gratification has its own dangerous consequences, e.g., psychopathic personality, "orality," irresponsibility, inability to bear stress, spoiling, immaturity, certain character disorders. Research findings are rare but there is now available a large store of clinical and educational experience which allows us to make a reasonable guess that the young child needs not only gratification; he needs also to learn the limitations that the physical world puts upon his gratifica- tions, and he has to learn that other human beings seek for gratifications, too, even his mother and father, i.e., they are not only means to his ends. This means control, delay, limits, renunciation, frustration-tolerance and disci- pline. Only to the self-disciplined and responsible person can we say, "Do as you will, and it will probably be all right."

REGRESSIVE FORCES: PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

We must also face squarely the problem of what stands in the way of growth; that is to say, the problems of cessa- tion of growth and evasion of growth, of fixation, regres- sion, and defensiveness, in a word the attractiveness of psychopathology, or as other people would prefer to say, the problem of evil.

Why do so many people have no real identity, so little power to make their own decisions and choices?

1. These impulses and directional tendencies towards self-fulfillment, though instinctive, are very weak, so that, in contrast with all other animals who have strong in- stincts, these impulses are very easily drowned out by habit, by wrong cultural attitudes toward them, by trau-

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matic episodes, by erroneous education. Therefore, the problem of choice and of responsibility is far, far more acute in humans than in any other species.

2. There has been a special tendency in Western cul- ture, historically determined, to assume that these in- stinctoid needs of the human being, his so-called animal nature, are bad or evil. As a consequence, many cultural institutions are set up for the express purpose of controll- ing, inhibiting, suppressing and repressing this original nature of man.

3. There are two sets of forces pulling at the individual, not just one. In addition to the pressures forward toward health, there are also fearful-regressive pressures backward, toward sickness and weakness. We can either move for- ward toward a "high Nirvana" or backward to a "low Nirvana."

I think the main factual defect in the value theories and ethical theories of the past and the present has been in- sufficient knowledge of psychopathology and psychother- apy. Throughout history, learned men have set out be- fore mankind the rewards of virtue, the beauties of good- ness, the intrinsic desirability of psychological health and self-fulfillment, and yet most people perversely refuse to step into the happiness and self-respect that is offered them. Nothing is left to the teachers but irritation, im- patience, disillusionment, alternations between scolding, exhortation and hopelessness. A good many have thrown up their hands altogether and talked about original sin or intrinsic evil and concluded that man could be saved only by extra-human forces.

Meanwhile there lies available the huge, rich, and illum- inating literature of dynamic psychology and psychopath- ology, a great store of information on man's weaknesses, and fears. We know much about why men do wrong things, why they bring about their own unhappiness and their self-destruction, why they are perverted and sick. And out of this has come the insight that human evil is largely (though not altogether) human weakness or ig- norance, forgiveable, understandable and also curable.

I find it sometimes amusing, sometimes saddening that so many scholars and scientists, so many philosophers and theologians, who talk about human values, of good and

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evil, proceed in complete disregard of the plain fact that professional psychotherapists every day, as a matter of course, change and improve human nature, help people to become more strong, virtuous, creative, kind, loving, al- truistic, serene. These are only some of the consequences of improved self-knowledge and self-acceptance. There are many others as well that can come in greater or lesser degree (97, 144).

The subject is far too complex even to touch here. All I can do is draw a few conclusions for value theory.

1. Self-knowledge seems to be the major path of self- improvement, though not the only one.

2. Self-knowledge and self-improvement is very diffi- cult for most people. It usually needs great courage and long struggle.

3. Though the help of a skilled professional therapist makes this process much easier, it is by no means the only way. Much that has been learned from therapy can be applied to education, to family life, and to the guidance of one's own life.

4. Only by such study of psychopathology and therapy can one learn a proper respect for and appreciation of the forces of fear, of regression, of defense, of safety. Respect- ing and understanding these forces makes it much more possible to help oneself and others to grow toward health. False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.

5. To sum up, we can never really understand human weakness without also understanding its healthy trends. Otherwise we make the mistake of pathologizing every- thing. But also we can never fully understand or help human strength without also understanding its weak- nesses. Otherwise we fall into the errors of overoptimistic reliance on rationality alone.

If we wish to help humans to become more fully human, we must realize not only that they try to realize themselves but that they are also reluctant or afraid or unable to do so. Only by fully appreciating this dialectic between sickness and health can we help to tip the bal- ance in favor of health.