CHAPTER II

DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION, SELF-FULFILLING

PROPHECIES, THE HERO, AND THE "CHANGE

THE WORLD" CONVERSATION

From the review of science in the previous chapter, the following conclusions become apparent:

1. Where we focus, determines what we see.

2. What we have assumed a priori to exist and to be important determines our methods of study.

3. The domain assumptions which are inherent in our premises organize, and often become, our conclusions.

If we move to the social realm, we find Thomas' (1928, p. 572) famous dictum for definition of the situation immediately echoing in our ear: "If men define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences" We will immediately be corrected by the social scientist who reminds us that when Merton (1968, p. 195) termed Thomas' theorem the "self-fulfilling prophecy," he was referring to a definition which is "in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true." [Italics Original] The examples Merton cited include a bank being defined as insolvent and its customers demanding their money back which in turn forces its closure. ??? various cases of people being defined as racially inferior and . . . such prejudice normatively translated into actuality.

Even Thomas and Thomas' (1928, p. 572) original mention of the statement related to a false definition: a man who killed several people who had the habit of talking to themselves because he "imagined that they were calling him vile names."

The idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy probably stems from the work of Moll (1898). In writing Hypnotism, he noted that subjects often enacted the wishes and preconceptions of the hypnotist and referred to the phenomenon as "the prophecy which causes its own fulfillment" (p- 244).

Self-fulfilling prophecy has long been a favorite of those who would discount research findings on the basis of experimenter bias. Recently, even the famous Milgram experiments on conformity have been challenged on the basis that subjects were merely fulfilling the experimenters' expectations. And yet, we must not discount the "self-fulfilling prophecy" as merely concerning issues that are true or false. The Indian sociologist Krishna (1971) argued that by reducing the self-fulfilling prophecy to a false definition of the situation, we have relegated it into the realm of name-calling and missed something quite crucial.

Although Thomas' original formulation of the self-fulfilling prophecy concerns a false definition of the situation, he uses both definition of the situation and self-fulfilling prophecy in a much broader scope. It is a theme which runs throughout The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Thomas and Znanieci, 1918), The Unadjusted Girl (Thomas, 1967), and The Child in America (Thomas and Thomas, 1928).

To limit the self-fulfilling prophecy to truth or falsehood is to considerably narrow its scope and relevance. In the social world, many definitions are not subject to the determination or the arbitration of such "objectivity." Social "truth" is often much more precarious and situational than the "truth" of science. Expectations and their fulfillment are the very fabric of social structure itself (Berger and Luckman, 1966). Thomas (1967) wrote that Preliminary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a stage of examination and deliberation which we may call the definition of the situation. And actually not only concrete acts are dependent on the definition of the situation, but gradually a whole life-policy and the personality of the individual himself follow from a series of such definitions (p. 42). [Italics Original] The relationship between what is "real" and "not real" in a life policy is often somewhat fragile. Thomas is writing, here, of the ''regulation of wishes" -- the four wishes he sees as essential to humans are: security, response, recognition, and new experience. The definition of the situation is the crucial mitigation between the individual and the social. Our expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies that we then act upon. This is the normal course of social process. Allport (1950) went so far as to study how nations which expect to go to war, do go to war. Zimbardo, in a mock prison experiment, found subjects acting the "pretended" roles of prisoners and guards with such intensity that he was forced to call off the experiment. In the Asch and Sheriff studies, people expected the larger group to accurately report their cognitions to such extent that the subjects actually altered their own perceptions. This may indicate the persuasiveness of conformity and group pressure or it may point to something more subtle.

Experimental work with "shills" (experimental confederates) shows more than just experimenters lying to their subjects. People respond to feinted activity in much the same way they would respond to activity that is not feinted. It is only the outside observer and the "shill" who know that the activity is not authentic. Individuals operate by expectations and beliefs normally.

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) have illustrated the extent teacher expectations influence and actually shape student performance. The expectation -- the belief -- becomes actuality. It is almost as if our expectations had a life of their own; that by believing, we create a different reality.

Of course, our common sense argument is these examples were false renditions while our actual conception of reality is based upon our knowledge. But this is precisely the problem. Berger and Luckman (1966, p. 1) defined "reality" as "a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition" (we cannot 'wish them away'). They defined knowledge as "the certainty that phenomena are real and that they possess specific characteristics.'' Reality, then, is intimately related to knowledge. Berger and Luckman argued that reality is "socially constructed." Knowledge is a series of social agreements; i.e., definitions of the situation. Gould and Kolb (1964) in their Dictionary of the Social Sciences understood the phrase "definition of the situation" to mean:

. . . (a) the individual agent's or actor's perception and interpretation of any situation in which he may find himself (the actor's definition of the situation) or (b) culturally formulated, embodied, and shared perceptions . . . (cultural or social definitions of the situation) (p. 182).

Thomas was referring to was not the idle armchair variety, nor was it "in the mind" construct which we refer to as attitude. This type of belief might be closer to what others have characterized as "faith" (Fromm, 1956). It is a "belief" that one "believes'' so much that they place themselves on their feet in the world -- into action. It is a construct by which people operate and enact society.

The relation between belief, self-fulfilling prophecy, expectation and society is much more subtle than previously anticipated. Perhaps, society itself is mass hypnosis and we have glossed over the power of suggestion and belief by rendering it to a word -- hypnosis -- and then moved on without understanding the process.

Black (1977) wrote in a popular account that

Hypnosis is the unconscious agreement to share the assumptions about the world that underlie any society. It is also the ability to break through those assumptions. Hypnosis . . . forget that word. There is no hypnosis. Hypnosis is whatever concentration, imagination and suggestion can create. Hypnosis is reality (n.p.).

Perhaps such a characterization is too severe. But it does suggest interesting possibilities. Our inclination to discount hypnosis as illusion and embrace reality as "real" may have been too expedient. It is only when we examine other cultures that behavior appears "as if" it were hypnotic. If we must also perceive our own culture as a self-fulfilling prophecy, then the relation between expectation and behavior must be cast in a new light. And in??? our own knowledge too is a self-fulfilling prophecy, we must carefully re-examine the basis we have used for categorizing the 'real" and the "non-real." If reality is "socially constructed," what implications does this hold? This is the problem which Berger and Luckman's work presents.

The Physical Sciences and the Social Disciplines

The "reality" of the physical sciences is quite different from the "reality" of the social disciplines; it is as if each has thrown d different ''net" over the world. Each net is designed to catch certain things. Things that are not relevant for its purposes simply disappear through the holes (Van en Berg, 1961). The nets of the physical sciences and the social disciplines are intrinsically different. Perhaps, they even reflect the mind-body distinction which gave rise to the birth of physical "science." At the very least, their processes of understanding are inherently different.

In the physical sciences, the world is much more solid and unsubject to change by our will. However even the philosophy of the physical sciences must conclude they are subject to such "social" considerations as framing, domain assumption, and the phenomenology of focus. The "knowledge" of the physical sciences also takes shape by the process of social agreement as discussed in the previous chapter. Both the physical sciences and the social disciplines frame a question with a given purpose in mind. They reflect our values (i.e., what is important) and our valuing processes. Each is constructed with a purpose in mind. Yet questions of the nature of matter are much different from questions of the nature of man (Warmoth, 1982). Physical science would prefer to deal with mind and belief as something "tacked on" or extra to the system. However, if we have even the crudest idea of psychology as ''the study of mind," then we should be aware that something quite different is going on between the physical sciences and the social disciplines.

Gregory Bateson (1979) noted that a system (any system) can never adequately understand itself. Thus, understanding of a system must always be something added to that system. Consciousness confronts us with an added dimension. The understanding of reality is a much different process for the social disciplines than for the physical sciences. For the social disciplines, reality is an inherently more creative process. The closer we approach social reality, the more we are forced to create and improvise (Warmoth, 1982. )

Berger and Luckman (1966) concluded their work on the Social -Construction of Reality with the following statement:

In sum, our conception of the sociology of knowledge implies a specific conception of sociology in general . . . that sociology . . . deal with man as man; that it is, in that specific sense, a humanistic discipline . . . . its proper object of inquiry is society as a part of d human world, made by men, inhabited by men, and in turn, making men, in an ongoing historical process. It is not the least the fruit of humanistic sociology that it reawakens our wonder at this astonishing phenomenon (p. 189).

It is precisely the nature of the physical sciences that they ignore questions of consciousness, belief, and (if you will) the social construction of reality. Mind and man are the added elements to their system. They ignore the human. The focus of the net of physical science is upon matter not upon mind or upon the human. It is small wonder that they do not neatly fit the study of man. Ortega y Gasset (1941) illuminated this discussion with an interesting conclusion:

Today we know that all the marvels of the natural sciences, inexhaustible though they be in principle, must always come to a full stop before the strange reality of human life. Why? If all things have given up a large part of their secret to physical science, why does this alone hold out so stoutly? The explanation must go deep, down to the roots. Perchance it is no less than this: that man is not a thing, that man has no nature (p. 185).

He continued

. . . human life, it would appear then, is not a thing, has not a nature, and in consequence we must make up our minds to think of it in terms of categories and concepts that will be radically different from such as shed light on the phenomenon of matter (Ortega y Gasset, 1941, p. 186). Italics Original]

Reality is not just "in our minds": that would be a projection and a discounting of the physical world. However, there is an overlapping between the physical and the social. Berger and Luckman argued that reality (that which we can not wish away) is social constructed. It is here that the challenge of the social disciplines begins. A self-fulfilling prophecy in the physical realm of matter operates with different limiting parameters than a self-fulfilling prophecy in the theater of the social. They are different orders of reality. There is a difference in kind between "making a chair fly" and "creating a friendly neighborhood." The world is not entirely in our minds and not everything bends to our expectation. Yet, for the most part, we do not -normally live in the "world" of the physical sciences. The world we experience is usually quite different from the physicist's description. We may never know the exact line between the reality of matter and the reality of the mind, but suffice to say there is a social reality which is more changeable than the "stable" world of physical matter. The hard "realist" may wish to write most of this off as only belief, or hypnosis, or mood. But the student of the social disciplines must dwell upon the profound interplay between belief and the '"world." As Van Den Berg (1961) wrote,

The shape in which things appear to us is remarkably variable. Not only do things have a tendency to meet us half way as far as our changing moods are concerned, but we can influence them, too; we are able, to a certain extent, to change things just by observing them differently . . . This ability to change the appearance of things is certainly not possible under all conditions. There is a mood which soaks everything in a somber gloom, when the flowers have less color, and the light from the sun is nothing more than the extrapolation of a light bulb. I cannot succeed in changing this state of affairs very much. This is a bad day . . . but there are also days when everything appears to be possessed of a new persisting light. The sun is brilliant, the colors of the flowers are unexpectedly deep, and even the smallest thing gives me its own bit of happiness . . . I cannot change this state of affairs, either . . . . as a rule, things wait for our intention; they are willing. We have the freedom to make them what we wish, even if we do not often use this freedom (pp. 191-192).

It is this power of perspective -- this uniquely human power -- which forms a crucial difference between the physical and the social realms and invites our participation. It is consciousness and our awareness of consciousness that implies the possibility of choice.

Defining the Situation: Human Nature

It is this possibility of choice that has prompted some of the more recent humanists to seek to define human nature and envision a world in that image. Simpson (1977, p. 75) in "Humanistic Psychology: An Attempt to Define Human Nature," quoted Nietzsche as saying that: "Value is creating . . . . Without valuation the nut of existence is hollow."

This valuing process creates our desire for something ''better" and enters us into the "change the world" conversation. It is the desire for a "Good" that transcends the "good" of the "good" or "evil" debate of classical philosophy (Nietzsche). Valuing and meaning are inherent in the nature of the human process. The task is seen as an attempt to create a direction of valuation that is not subject to the zero-sum game of projection in which every "good" must be immediately canceled out by the shadow-side equivalent of "evil" (Jung, 1964). This represents an attempt to create values that do not represent a flight from evil, but begin with a realism which is not immediately subject to the traps which Becker (1975) outlined as The Escape From Evil. The Escape From Evil" strategy and the strategy of projection repress what we do not like and wills the world to be in a certain way. However, what we would escape from ''creeps back" to us through our very strategies of negating them. By failing to take into consideration the "evil" as well as the '"good" potentialities of human nature, we perpetuate a dynamic between the two. Fromm (1968) argued that human nature may be more of a potentiality than an actuality; an issue of becoming rather than a matter of being. He quoted Goethe: "I can conceive of no act so horrible that I cannot imagine myself to be the author; . . . I am human and .. nothing that is human is foreign to me'' (p. 58). Fromm concurred with the poet Walt Whitman that " contain multitudes."

It is Fromm's (1947) work on The Fear of Freedom and Escape From Freedom (1941) that Becker (1975) used to develop his "escape from evil" critique. Fromm's crucial argument is that with consciousness and our recognition of the need or valuation and meaning in human affairs, we have generated a dialog with history in which the need for a potentiality of choice is clear. The awesomeness of such choice can send us running. Often we prefer to buy into the readily available cultural prescriptions rather than attempt to transcend cultural directives and enter the theater of choice.

According to Fromm, human nature is something we create. The essence of his perspective on the human potential focus on what we might become; it is more of a creative vision of humanity than it is a philosophy lesson: more of a challenge than a doctrine. We cannot get d fix on human nature and declare for all time that man is either basically good or basically evil. That we have is a social process which is ongoing. Identity and social life are created as well as found. Ortega y Gasset (1941) furthered the argument. He stated that the reason we have not been able to settle upon the nature of man is that there is no such thing as human nature:

Physico-mathematical reason . . . was in no state to confront human problems. By its very constitution it could do no other than search for man's nature. And naturally, it did not find it. human has no nature. Man is not his body, which is a thing, nor his soul, psyche, conscience, or spirit which are also things. Man is no thing, but a drama -- his life, a pure and universal happening which each one in his turn is nothing but happening (pp. 199-200).

We go astray if we search for human nature, for it cannot be found. "man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is . . . history" (Ortega y Gasset, 1941, p. l7) [Italics Original]

Humans have no human nature. Instead, what we have is a past.

Personal Power: Humanistic Psychology

The merit of humanistic psychology is that it moves away from the past and invites us into the present. While traditional psychology has sought to explain the present in terms of the past, humanistic psychology seeks to bring the person into the present: it is in the ''now" at transformation is possible. The past cannot be unwoven. But today is a different day. And it is from the present that we can /??? iSUdlie d new future.

Humanistic psychology has followed a strategy of trying to find new develop ways of highlighting and facilitating the "positive" aspects of humanity. Strategies of individual psychologies have ranged from the ''unconditional positive regard" of Rogers (1977) the "self actualization" of Maslow (19fi2). The emphasis has been upon the power of the individual to create and transform both environment and self. Fromm (1947) argued for the unfolding of man's specific capacities and productiveness. He stated that we should strive for structures and values which enhance our "aliveness" (Fromm, 19fi).

Fritz Pearls offers us a clue to the strategy of much of humanistic psychology. The "trick" of humanistic psychology is to hold expectations lightly. Since expectations are the first step in the formation of social structure (i.e., expectations, norms, values), this increases the importance of personal factors such as personal power and charisma to define and influence the situation. It is an attempt to prevent the crystallization of social processes such as institutionalization and reification. The dynamic of personal influence and the relevance of situations to the "feelings" of actors is thus kept open.

Institutionalization is the step between expectations and norms. It is the addition of sanctions and social control to expectations. Reification represents the step between norms and values, while the process of expectation itself represents what might be termed generalization and stereotyping. The sociologist will readily recognize that without generalization and expectation, we are left with "random, blundering acts'' characterized by Sumner and can never move to social arrangements with enough predictability o act. Nevertheless, the ''trick" of holding expectations lightly is a novel approach because it emphasizes the creative act and seeks a way out of the "binding" nature of social structure. Its naiveté lies in its failure to recognize that values represent expectations which are important (i.e., valuable).

The emphasis of humanistic psychology is exploring and enhancing the personal: the power of intuitive recognition of the situation ("feeling") and the personal power of individuals to construct the situation. Personal power is the "ability to define the situation." It is perhaps what Maslow referred to as "self-actualization" -- the creation/construction of self and influencing reality construction. It resembles that sociological term which we have so lightly glossed over: charisma.

Max Weber had characterized the formation of modern society as the flight from the frivolity and possible abuses of personal power. He saw the formation of bureaucracy in the "routinization of charisma" -- the attempt to normalize the transference of authority and power. Ironically, in modern society, it has been the creativeness of personal power and charisma that humanistic psychologists have returned in an attempt to compensate for the abuses of bureaucracy. The power of the individual is the "power to believe." But as with the "self-fulfilling prophecy," this is not the idle armchair-type of belief. It is a "belief" that is acted upon. At its best it is contagious -- the actor by his "charisma" carries people with him (i.e., defines the situation). Humanistic psychology is a romantic venture to actualize d definition of the situation. It challenges us away from our previous understandings of reality to a new adventure. As such, its methods and credo's have been suspect in more "realistic" circles. The challenge is to switch perspectives: to recognize our power of intention and the "willingness" of things to change with our "attitude" and use this power of consciousness to transform our vision and ultimately re-define the world. Its strategies and formularizations have resembled more an attempt to change the "mood" more than they resemble traditional academic scholarship. This accounts for the seeming triviality of humanistic formularizations. They invite us to switch perspectives, but they do not proceed in a step-by-step rational tradition. The serious realism of Freudian psychology may well be countered by a "catch phrase," or worse, an anecdote or song on even nonsense ploy, such as a Zen koan. For example, Becker (1975) in Escape From Evil wrote:

At its most elemental level the human organism, like crawling life, has a mouth, digestive tract, and anus, a skin to keep it intact, and appendages with which to acquire food. Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed -- a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking . . . . If at the end of each person's life he were presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well be horrified by the living energy he had ingested. The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening. To paraphrase Elisas Canetti, each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good (pp. 1-2)

It may indeed seem frivolous to counter this "argument" with Paul Williams' phrase: "Vote with your life. Vote yes". But, this is precisely what the humanistic psychologist does. We are invited to switch our attention. All the wages of war, poverty, crime, and depression may be countered by: "Yes, but isn't the sky pretty." The strategy is not to be "defeated" by life, and that it is only from another "mood" that we will be able to obtain an "answer." The humanistic approaches invite us to switch our mood immediately and then return with d new perspective on what troubled us. Then we can develop a strategy for dealing with it.

Again, as Van Den Berg (1961, pp. 191-192) noted: the "ability to change the appearance of things is certainly not possible under all conditions." Sometimes, we must conclude that "I cannot succeed in changing this state of affairs very much . . . . This is a bad day . . . ." But often ''things wait for our intention; they are willing. We have the freedom to make of them what we wish . . . ."

This ability to switch our attention must be balanced by a thorough understanding of the "shadow side" or we are merely spinning ourselves in circles tangled by the "tentacles of projection'' (Van Den Berg 1961, p. 191). We must not ignore the "evil" of the world, but neither must we cancel out or ignore the human ability to re-define the situation: to change the "mood." This ability to change the mood may sometimes be only projection or inept "wishing"; it may at times be the product of real delusion. But there is also an ability to change the mood and "carry" others with us: actualizing human capacities we have left unexplored.

This approach is by no means new to the human disciplines. In the realm of "pop" psychology, each generation has had its renditions: the Dale Carnegie program of "influence"; the "positive thinking" of Norman Vincent Peale; and lately, in approach of humanistic psychology popularly characterized as creative visualization (Gawair, 1978).

The notion of personal power is indeed circular: if a person succeeds in influencing a situation, it is because of "personal power"; a person's inability to influence a situation is treated as evidence of a lack of personal power. Christopher Lasch (1978) in The Culture of Narcissism, noted how much of the "human potential movement" camouflaged the traditional American ethic of "pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps." There is a tendency for it to take on an elitism of the "haves" toward the "have-nots." Yet, the "personal power" renditions of the humanistic movement underlie something more than just the trimmings of an affluent ethos. They speak to the power of the individual, but they also speak to the power of belief, of mind, and the power to create our own realities.

Roszak (1979) noted that something very drastic has occurred in the "pursuit of happiness" ethic. We have historically moved from a focus upon individual freedom to a focus upon the right to personal fulfillment. This new focus transforms the nature of traditional ethics and calls into question issues of consciousness, human fulfillment, and desire (even the right) to create a better life -- and by implication --a better world.

The new quest for personhood is not limited to only the affluent, but permeates the culture: the factory worker who is no longer satisfied with just a job, but says "take this job and shove it, I want to be treated as a person;" or the grandparents who are no longer satisfied with just being "grandma and grandpa" anymore but want to be treated as persons too, not just roles (Roszak, 1980).

Ferguson (1981) outlined how the quest for personal meaning and influence is leading to a personal and social transformation. We are beginning to recognize in almost all fields the great extent to which outcomes are influenced by those things which we group together as ''personal power" or "mind/emotions." This influence extends from the physicist's experiments to holistic medicine to the realm of intuitive right brain training for local businessmen. The frontiers of consciousness seem to be brought into play as part of an ethic emphasizing personal fulfillment.

What is central to all of this is the human ability to transform the nature of a situation despite the possibility of manipulation and false consciousness. There remains an underlying conviction that we are referring to a real ability: an ability to define the situation.

To say that personal power is the ability to believe might be too much a shorthand version of a deeper and more subtle process. Yet personal power does seem to be tied to this ability to believe and create on the basis of that belief.

Physics and the other sciences posited laws of a world which was not dependent upon human involvement. The observer was outside an otherwise closed system. And yet we do not live in such a world which is devoid of our participation. Belief and the other human "variables" make up a substantial part of our lives, perceptions and actions. The "personal power" and humanistic movements provide testimony to the reaches and frontiers of human experience. They seek to heal the mind-body split on which science predicated-its very base:

There can hardly be any social situation where belief does not play a significant role in constituting it to some extent or other. If it were not so, the situation, by definition, would collapse into the sort of situation studied in the natural sciences. This may be welcome to those who do not want to accept any basic distinction between the natural and the social sciences. But then they would also not accept the sort of phenomena described by Merton as 'self-fulfilling' prophecies . . . . On the other hand, if belief or consciousness were to play such a role as to completely constitute the situation, we could not in any significant sense study them either. Between these two poles, then, would lie the world studied by the social sciences either. Between these two poles, then, would lie the world studied by the social sciences (Krishna, 1971, pp. 1105-1106). The power of "faith to move mountains" certainly upsets the physicist's view of reality. And yet are not total findings of the research in sociology, anthropology, and psychology an overwhelming and compelling body of evidence concurring in the truth of that ancient adage? However, at the same time, there seems to be a limit to the "personal" power of faith -- of the ability to believe. But that limit is certainly far different than the science-constructed "reality" of human non-involvement. Historically, science supplanted religion and the world of belief/ faith. Psychology and sociology are now calling that world of belief back into existence and questioning where indeed do we draw the line. And that line changes daily.

Much of the earlier work on "positive thinking" and belief came from a religious framework that emphasized the "power of love." Hesitantly, a few sociologists and psychologists also had begun an moving into this area. The work of Erich Fromm has already been mentioned. However, it was Pitrium Sorokin who systematically began an exploration of the power of love. To many, Sorokin's later work on love was the mark of an old man preparing to die; it was "hopelessly" contaminated by religious "leanings," and represented an embarrassment to scientific sociology -- distracting from what was otherwise a brilliant career. But this entirely misses the point. Those who would negate this work fail to see that it is a logical outgrowth of Sorokin's previous sociology, as much as those who would delete Comte's later work on love in favor of positivism failed to understand that the earlier work was merely a meticulous foundation. Sorokin had been one of the leading rural sociologists. In an age when the organic bond-gemeinscaft community was rapidly being destroyed by the secular city, what was more natural than for him to approach a study of the very nature of this organic solidarity? It is natural that his work moves from the study of community to the study of love. He spent the last portion of his career founding the "Harvard Center for the Study of Creative Altruism." During this period, he wrote several major volumes and conducted intensive surveys on the subject. So exhaustive were his efforts that he predated and anticipated much of what would later be called ''humanistic psychology." |

In a lengthy essay entitled, "The Power of Creative Love,'' Sorokin and Hanson (1953) dealt extensively with the "power of love" to define the situation. Citing historical case after historical case, and anecdote after anecdote, they showed how previous definitions are supplanted and changed to "love." The following example is representative of their research:

In the 1905 Russian Revolution in Southern Russia, a small Mennonite community was threatened by the rebels, who were destroying everything in their path. One family met the situation by preparing a good rich supper the day of the expected raid. The husband asked his wife to set the table for the guests and sent the children to bed. When the band appeared and asked the father to surrender, he invited them in to the prepared dinner, saying that anything of his was theirs, but that they must want refreshment first. They hesitated, then sat down to eat. After the supper the father showed them beds he had prepared in the next room. After their sleep the leader appeared again, this time smiling and said: 'We have to go. We came to kill you, but we can't.' (Sorokin and Hanson, 1953, pp. 117-118)

The researchers summarized their findings by saying that ''love begets love; hate begets hate . . . unselfish love is at least as 'contagious' as hate, and influences human behavior as tangibly as hate does" (Sorokin and Hanson, 1953, p. 119). The religious literature abounds with examples of love, enthusiasm and faith re-defining situations into "love." It is only rarely that such stories get consistent play in academic circles, but when they do, their credibility is well documented. This power of love seems to be more than we had expected and pushes our conceptions to the very frontiers of knowledge. Maslow (1968) had studied how "self-actualized" persons have actually been able to re-define situations. This is akin to what Bergson (1935) had previously spoken of as the second source of society: that beside the conventional society founded on social pressure, there was also society founded upon aspiration -- that an idea, a way of being, a definition of the situation was so inviting people would convert to it readily. folklore of the various religions throughout the ages contain many examples of personal experiences of the power of faith, belief, and love. As we shall discuss extensively in the fourth section, much of our inability to deal with love except in a scientific, technique oriented fashion has been diffused. We need a new framework to discuss it. This is because belief and faith run counter to the scientific, technological paradigm through which we have been seeing the world.

The larger culture has a tendency to borrow the findings of investigations of belief, faith, and love to serve prevailing goals. Thus, the human potential and positive thinking movements have abounded with seminars and books on "how to use faith to be a better businessman" or "how to sell more life insurance through positive thinking.'' Such efforts were bound to be limited to further the goals of the prevailing competitive ideology.

More importantly, there has been the tendency to treat love, faith, and belief -- in fact all items dealing with emotions and sentiments -- as purely psychological items. All humanistic and value/belief components are treated as being merely in the actor's head. Thus the mind-body split of science was preserved: science could continue creating the world as before but without opposition.

If we admit that these components are essential to the creation of the world, then a vastly different paradigm is demanded. This is precisely the thesis of this work: these "humanistic items" are not merely products of individualist mechanisms, they are part of the ongoing creation of the world. If humanistic psychology is to be more than minimally effective, it needs a companion humanistic sociology. Much more is involved than the mere mind-set of the actor. We are discussing social process when we deal with love, faith/belief, and the so-called "personal" power. To relegate the humanistic components to the mere internal mood inside the head of the actor is to miss the entire point. Modern human beings are alone, separate, and alienated because we have relegated all humanistic sentiments to the internal "self", while proceeding to make the world in the scientific, mechanistic image.

The Social Creation of Reality

By overloading the "self" with all the emotional, values, and human sentiments that we cannot manage to unload anywhere else, we have a "self" which is literally ready to explode. It is small wonder that personalities "split" and fall apart, for there is no place in the modern world to map these humanistic "things" --the things that matter most. As Horney (1937) in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time was the first to argue it is society who has dropped out; it is not a matter of neurosis, but of sociosis and anomie. And to bridge our way out, we must bring the humanistic elements back to center play in society. The first step is realization that these so-called "internal" components belief, faith, emotions, mood -- are not internal at all. The so-called "personal" power is not an individualistic "will power" but something much different: the creation of reality. As Heidegger wrote in Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, ??? we are talking of creating the world and shaping it as an artist might.

This is not a new mechanistic technique, but a new way of being, seeing, perceiving, and creating. It is essential to observe that

...feeling is not something that runs its course in our inner lives. It is rather the basic mode . . . of which and in accordance to which we are always already lifted beyond ourselves . . . . mood is never a way of being determined in our inner being for ourselves. It is above all a way of being attuned, and letting ourselves be attuned, in this or that way in mood. Mood is precisely the basic way in which we are outside ourselves (Heidegger, 1961, p. 99). [Italics Original]

Mood is a way through which the rest of the world can come in. It is here that we might firmly grasp the way social nature of these supposed "internal" states.

"Self-actualization" is not so much an internal state as it is a way of interrelating with the world. It will be remembered that Maslow (1971) himself in tracing the origin of his concept of self-actualization gave away the fact that it began as a social concept. His model for a self-actualized person was Ruth Benedict. He then proceeded to find others who reminded him of Benedict and began the formation of his theories. But it must be recalled that Benedict herself was not interested in promoting her own self-actualization: she was much more interested in other things -- and it was this interest, this outside-herself quality that was contagious. One of the things that Ruth Benedict was most interested in was synergy.

Self-actualization, then, has the very roots of its origin in unison with the very social concept of synergy. "One plus one is more than two" suggests that the people involved are both involved in something bigger and outside of themselves.

If we examine the examples that Sorokin used for the power of love, we find that they are not examples of personal power at all. The Mennonite farmer did not manage to "con" the Russian soldiers through his superior acting ability and personal charisma. Instead he committed himself to a process in full faith. It was a belief and faith in the power of love that pulled him through.

This is not the mechanistic power of science or some mere inter state. It is a process which is constructed. The process is ??? y commitment and faith. It should be obvious that this belief had to strike a familiar chord with the soldiers in order to be successful. It is not personal charisma of the performance of the belief which is so crucial, but the inviting nature of an invitation in which he is sincere. This is Bergson's "society by aspiration" again. There is a fundamental difference between the mechanistic power of science and what is referred to by the humanists as "personal power." Carl Rogers (177) in his book, On Personal Power, said that it took him a long time to realize that he was talking about power. The reason for this is that he was not -- not in the traditional sense. What he was said just happened to have political implications. Rogers wrote about a way of being which is strong, which is influencing, and which participates in a process. The typical scientific view of power is cause and effect. It is literally manipulation -- meaning "in hand" -- forcing power. The humanistic version of power is closer to the word "influence" which means literally "to flow in." It is part of a process. Manipulative, scientific power assumes that one must first have the situation "in hand" and then control the variables. Humanistic "influence" is a commitment to a process that is above and beyond you. It is not a "personal" power at all, but a socially constructed dynamic. Charisma itself is more of an invitation than a mechanism.

As Whitman wrote: "To believe what is true in your innermost heart is true for all men, that is genius.'' It was the anthropologist Edmund Carpenter (1970. p, l) who added: "the artist talks to himself outloud. If what he has to say is significant, others hear and are affected." It is a matter of these "internal" themes striking a common chord. The artist through his/her art brings these into play so that they may be acted upon. It is not that these matters of belief and faith have been internal but that they had previously been only latent.

Mills' (1959) sociological imagination of turning private problems into public issues was none other than the artist's attempt to turn those private, "internal" problems into a dialog concerning cultural strains that will make sense to those around him. It was a networking strategy: what Carpenter would refer to as "finding an audience."

This process of creating the definition of the situation is then a social-mapping of individuals around core themes. It is not just the internal ability of the actor to "bring off his performance," but the fact that his faith invites participation. It is believable. The charismatic individual gives us permission for what we have been yearning to enact. That some individuals act as catalysts for our humanistic values/beliefs in no way makes them internal factors.

The psychologist Jung (1964) reduced the contents of consciousness to a series of archetypes or themes. They await enactment. Such a psychology provides for a tailor-made base for a social dramaturgy for man as the creator for enacting those themes. The themes themselves are not strictly internal. They are foundations -- of both consciousness and the drama of social life.

Faith (and belief) implies not just a concentration of energy and convincing role performance, but implies a belief in something -- a content. If we overload the self by claiming that beliefs are only internal mechanisms (e.g., personal opinions) then we have succeeded in reifying psychology at one pole only to leave science (and its "real world") intact at the other pole. We have obscured the social task and the real possibility of making the world.

As Horney (1937) taught us, neurosis tends to occur along lines of cultural strain. By overloading the "self" with all the "material" that science has not been able to deal with -- with belief, faith, values, human longings -- we have made psychology into a dumping ground which is neither satisfactory nor effective. We have relegated psychology to the role of "band-aid" on cultural wound.

If we treat love, magic, and the other humanistic concerns as only internal, we do them a real disservice. To treat belief and faith as mere mechanisms of the individual, we miss the scope and impact of the entire humanistic thesis. Those who have testified to and experienced humanistic experiences -- the "magic" of faith and belief -- testified to forces in their lives -- not opinions. Reality construction is participatory. Definition of the situation and faith testify to the possibility of visualizing and creating another world. Belief and faith are not internal aspects of self, but the very wind in the sails of humanism.

The faith which has been called the power of love is a real entity that is capable of transforming consciousness and situations. This belief flies in the face of the scientific reality. But love has shown its ability to transform experience and the outcomes of events.

The Romantic Quest: The Hero

The effort to effect a new definition of the situation against the ongoing "reality" is by its very nature romantic. It is the quest of the hero. The core of the social disciplines is tied to this romantic tradition. They were born in the "change the world" conversation -- the quest for better. Becker (1971) summarized: " . . . let me address a comment to the hardheaded realist, who may smirk at the Quixotic lance splitting and utopianism. I don't see how it can be denied that the science of man is, historically and by its very nature, a utopian science (p. x)."

The human disciplines seek to implement a new vision; to make an ideal into reality. Returning to Marx's statement quoted earlier: "philosophers have described the world; it is now up to us to transform it" . . . . To somehow dream a dream of the good society and then to create that society. This represents initially an attempt to "save the world" pure and simple: for Marx, from the abuses of capitalism that produced alienated man; for Comte, from the excesses of the French Revolution and such violent change. Each of the early sociologists offered up their dream in hope that it would be taken as the basis for a new society -- for a new definition of the situation. The reality of "what is" was replaced with the mission of creating a new world -- a romantic adventure in its very essence.

Sociology and social change strategies have thus always been associated with the theater of the heroic. Even the strict scientist toiling with his data and variables has been doing this for a greater cause: the progress of mankind -- the betterment of the world. We have not been sufficiently aware of the extent that the very enterprise itself is heroic. The effort is to create the Good: to fly in the face of what is -- "reality" -- and create a new definition of the situation and a new world. Sociology and psychology might be seen as attempts to create a new self-fulfilling prophecy. The hero toils to change the world.

Most of us, however, have become sophisticated with our efforts. The sociologist does not want to "save" the world but provide some understanding which will effect change and make it somewhat better. The psychologist does not feel confident any longer that people can be changed, but s/he strives to help. Yet despite our mature sensitivity to the problems of change, we must not lose sight of the heroic intent inherent in sociology or a psychology. This heroic effort provides the very structure and the grammar of the disciplines themselves.

If we seek to create a better self-fulfilling prophecy, then we gain a different understanding of "truth" and "reality." "Truth" becomes what e cannot readily change -- the limits of our efforts to visualize a new world. Yet these "truths'' themselves are subject to change almost daily. Thus the social disciplines are framed, in principle, by the idea that the potential for new visualization is inexhaustible. It is an effort in full opposition to any limits on our ability to change things: a heroic quest of the highest order.

It was Ernest Becker who sought to analyze the nature of this heroic quest and the implications of the hero on social change strategies. In The Birth and Death of Meaning (1962), Escape From Evil (1975), and The Denial of Death (1973) he examined cultures as hero systems: symbolic attempts to deny death and create the mood. It was an effort which in trying to deny death and escape from evil also implied a more complex denial of mystery and the miraculous (Becker, 1971). Denial is a strategy which purchases security at a terrible price and furthermore does not prove to be effective.

The extent to which we can change the basic "realities" and stretch the parameters of existence is always a difficult question. How much can the self-fulfilling prophecy create a new world?

??? 105

. . here is where religion enters in as mankind's age-old question for the ideal heroism . . . . as the noted sociologist Peter Berger reminded us, religion and social science meet in their judgment of the social fictions. The scientific analysis of the social structure and the psychology of society would tell us why it is strangling itself with the best of intentions (Becker, 1971, p. 181). The quest to make the Good must contain elements which have significantly contributed to its own unsuccessfulness. Indeed, Becker went so far as to contribute much of the social evil in the world to immature efforts to create the Good. Becker (1975) quoted the psychologist Otto Rank:

All our human problems, with their intolerable sufferings, arise from man's ceaseless attempts to make this material world into a man-made reality . . . Aiming to achieve on each a "perfection" which is only to be found in the beyond . . . thereby confusing the values of both spheres (p. 91).

The ideal world becomes a sanctuary against the terror of life. Human psychology seeks to deny mortality and impermanence, while society seeks to reify this into an ongoing system transcending death. Each culture offers prescribed ways of overcoming death and evil. This "ensures the future" and keeps us from confronting the things that we fear most.

--Roheim said that culture, the marvelous pageantry of the human drama, was the fabrication of a child afraid to be alone in the dark. The ideal question for religion has always been a derivative of this. 'What kind of fabrication would be proper to an adult who realized that he was afraid' (Becker, 1971, p. 195)? [Italics Original]

We have sought to deny the animal nature of human beings and the transitoriness of life. How can we recast our view in such a way as to celebrate life?

The heroic task is caught up in the art of how to make sense out of life. We may see that meaning has been socially constructed, but although we may lift the masks from the cultural drama, we cannot do with human need for meaning construction. Becker argued that the hero system -- which is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy against the impermanence of life -- is the very foundation of meaning. It is through identification with heroes that children are first socialized into the ongoing culture; the child learns societally prescribed strategies of transcendence and creating meaning. It is precisely through the hero system that a child learns the culture.

Becker (1971) saw the heroic process intrinsically related to the birth of meaning. Even for one who has seen through the learned cultural fiction, it is still necessary to retain and create some system meaning. It is necessary to create a new construction or re-enact he old, for this is tightly interwoven with our sense of security and continuity. It is how we construct our interactions. When we become aware of the socially created nature of our hero stems, we are immediately confronted with a nagging doubt. The ability of the hero to implement a new self-fulfilling prophecy by shear will power becomes transparently fragile.

When we look at the lives of the greatest, the most daring innovators, one fact shines out: that no matter how compelling is the edifice he creates, man simply cannot feel that he has the authority to offer up his own meanings (Becker, 1968, p. 192). [Italics Original]

The problem of the hero suspended in thin air by only his will and vision becomes paramount. It is easy to fall, and the higher the vision, the steeper the fall. When the shadow of doubt creeps in, it too, like the dragons of evil and the tentacles of fear, must be slayed.

The hero strives to transcend death: to deny its impact and create a quest that will be meaningful in the face of the fire: a haven and a vision against the dust. It is an attempt to quell the darkness and escape from evil. Yet, any light we cast leaves behind a shadow from which we would like to escape responsibility. We seek to deny death and evil, and also to escape from the latent consequences, to abate the darkness.

The heroic effort, Becker (1975) noted in the Escape From Evil, has often itself been responsible for the creation of social evil. By denying what we fear and rushing to eliminate it in others rather than ourselves, we have often polluted the situation more than helped. The strategy of heroically making the good has often been to stamp out evil without owning up to the part that our own denial has played in the process.

Becker (1975, p. 94) quoted the psychologist Erich Neumann: "The shadow is the other side. It is the expression of our own imperfection and earthliness, the negative which is incompatible with the absolute values."

Becker commented that it is "the horror of passing life and the knowledge of death" from which we wish to escape. It is also, as Jung noted, our feelings of inferiority that we wish to feel. To "jump over our own shadow." We try to do this by "looking for everything dark, inferior, and culpable in others" (Jung, 1970, p. 203).

The shadow, which is in conflict with the acknowledged values cannot be accepted as a negative part of one's own psyche and is therefore projected -- that is, it is transferred to the outside world and experienced as an outside object. It is combated, punished, and exterminated as 'the alien out there' instead of being dealt with as one's own . . . problem (Neumann, 1969, p. 50).

Sociologists have made a meager attempt to analyze this dynamic through the concepts of "manifest" and "latent" functions (Merton, 1949). While manifest functions are intended, latent functions "are consequences which are neither intended nor recognized" (Martindale, 1960, p. 472). Latent functions may be as neutral as colleges functioning as marriage markets, or they may subvert and destroy the entire system as anthropological accounts of the "crimes" of missionaries testify. Yet, for the most part, sociologists have not undertaken a thorough study of how acts in social-psychological settings create and maintain those very structures in the macro-society which we deplore the most.

This may well have been the intent of Mills' (1959) Sociological Imagination: to ask us to see how individual problems relate to social issues, not just as a way of networking from personal problems to a larger context, but as a means of integrating and emphasizing the extent to which social problems are generated by personal strategies.

It is distancing ourselves from our fears that Becker saw as the fundamental dynamic for the creation of social evil. By projecting evil onto other people, we scapegoat our problems and then fight wars against this "foreign other" without realizing the extent our own participation plays in the creation of evil. Crusade strategies for creating the Good remain essentially ineffective. Such heroic strategies generate the very evil that the were designed to eliminate.

This is all the more crucial because attempts to make the good often carry with them the conviction of religious zeal. The "do-gooder" enters into a strategy with full force and indignation. Having identified the ''culprit," we seek to erase "him" while denying our own part.

Hero systems carry with then an innate weakness and vulnerability -- a fatal flaw, if you will. In dreaming the good dream, we wish to escape from the doubts of disbelief deny the frailty of our myth construction, and reach for sure-fire salvation. We seek to deny fragileness of our self-fulfilling prophecies. For when the hero falls from the wings of vision, we are left alienated in the world.

Both Becker and Jung saw that in order to overcome the shadow of evil, we must come to grips with the very shadow that we would deny. We cannot escape from evil, nor can we avoid our shadow side. This was Becker's reason for focusing upon the denial of death, the structure of evil, and our escape-from-evil mechanisms. We must acknowledge and even embrace its existence.

Jungian psychology also focuses upon the impossibility of suppressing the shadow. If we consciously deny its existence, it re-surfaces in the unconscious -- both in dreams and as a source of our actions. The individuals must learn to ''own their shadow" in order to achieve psychological health. "The hero must realize that the shadow side exists and that he can draw strength from it. He must come to terms with its destructive powers . . . must master and assimilate the shadow" (Jung, 1964, p. 121). Not only must the shadow be assimilated for psychological health, but incorporation of it is often a source of creativity. By dealing with this other side, new strategies and strengths can be achieved. For, as Becker (1968, p. 258) noted, ''For man, strength means understanding."

Strength can be gained from dealing with those very things which we would like most to deny. Instead of abandoning heroism, Becker (1971) pressed the ideal heroism farther in an attempt to make it effective:

When the new emergent symbolic man sense despair and the burden of the miraculous, he wove tight the denial of the Oedipus and reached for sure religious power. For a long time, evolution seems to have allowed the creature to relax somewhat, to take possession of itself and its world. But whether or not these musings are so, it seems clear that the comfortable illusion is now a danger to human survival; and closedness to the miraculous is an evasion of human sensibility; man now seems to have to move ahead with his own strength to the frontiers of anxiety. And who knows what would come of that?(Becker, 1971, pp. 198-199).

What kind of world could we then make and live in? And what would life be like? The heroic quest has come a long way since the first creature huddled by the fire in the cave, sensed death, and launched a romantic adventure to achieve meaning. The romantic quest proceeded through the early religious mystics, to the knights and their ladies, to the social reformer, and to the modern effort to build a science of humanity. Bergson (1935) noted the similarity between romantic love and mysticism:

. . . romantic love has a definite date: it sprang up during the Middle Ages on the day that som