Psychology Part 53

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Things that increase your radius of action; b.a.l.l.s to throw or bat, bow and arrow, sling, mirror used to throw sunlight into a distant person's eyes; and we might include the bicycle here as well as in the preceding cla.s.s.

Things that resist the force of gravity, floating, soaring, balancing, ascending, instead of falling; or that can be made to behave in this way. Here we have a host of toys and sports: balloons, soap bubbles, kites, rockets, boats, b.a.l.l.s that bounce, tops that balance while they spin, hoops that balance while they roll, arrows shot high into the sky; climbing, walking on the fence, swimming, swinging, seesaw again.

Things that move in surprising ways or that are automatic: toy windmills, mechanical toys.

Things that can be opened and shut or readjusted in some similar way: a book to turn the leaves of, a door to swing or to hook and unhook, a bag or box to pack or unpack, water taps to turn on or off (specially on).

Plastic materials, damp sand, mud, snow; and other materials that can be worked in some way, as paper to tear or fold, stones or blocks to pile, load or build, water to splash or pour; and we might add here fire, which nearly every one, child or adult, likes to manage.

Finally, playmates should really be included in a list of playthings, since the presence of a playmate is often the strongest stimulus to arouse play.

_Such being the stimulus, what is the play response?_ It consists in manipulating or managing the plaything so as to produce some interesting result. The hoop is made to roll, the kite to fly, the arrow to hit something at a distance, the blocks are built into a tower or knocked down with a crash, the mud is made into a "pie", the horn is sounded. Many games are variations on pursuit and capture (or escape): tag, hide-and-seek, prisoner's base, blind {488} man's buff, football, and we might include chess and checkers here. Wrestling, boxing, s...o...b..lling are variations on attack and defense. A great many are variations on action at a distance, of which instances have already been cited from children's toys; in adult games we find here golf, croquet, bowling, quoits, billiards, shooting. Many games emphasize motor skill, as skipping ropes, knife, cat's cradle, usually however with compet.i.tion in skill between the different players. This element of manual skill enters of course into nearly all games. Mental acuteness appears in the guessing games, as well as in chess and many games of cards. Many games combine several of the elements mentioned, as in baseball we have action at a distance, pursuit and escape, motor skill and activity, and a chance for "head work".

The Play Motives

Now, what is the sense of games and toys, what satisfactions do they provide? What instincts or interests are thrown into activity? There is no one single "play instinct" that furnishes all the satisfaction, but conceivably every natural and acquired source of satisfaction is tapped in one play or another. In the games that imitate fighting, some of the joy of fighting is experienced, even though no real anger develops. In the games that imitate pursuit and escape, some of the joy of hunting and some of the joy of escape are awakened. In the "kissing games" that used to be common in young people's parties when dancing was frowned upon, and in dancing itself, some gratification of the s.e.x instinct is undoubtedly present; but dancing also gives a chance for muscular activity which is obviously one source of satisfaction in the more active games. In fact, joy in motor activity must be counted as one of the most general sources of play-satisfaction. Another {489} general element is the love of social activity, which we see in dancing as well as in nearly all games and sports. Another, akin to the mere joy in motor activity, is the love of manipulation, with which we began this whole discussion.

The "escape motive" deserves a little more notice. Though you would say at first thought that no one could seek fear, and that this instinct could not possibly be utilized in play, yet a great many amus.e.m.e.nts are based on fear. The "chutes", "scenic railways", "roller coasters", etc., of the amus.e.m.e.nt parks would have no attraction if they had no thrill; and the thrill means fear. You get some of the thrill of danger, though you know that the danger is not very real.

Probably the thrill itself would not be worth much, but being quickly followed by _escape_, it is highly satisfactory. The joy of escape more than pays for the momentary unpleasantness of fear. The fear instinct is utilized also in coasting on the snow, climbing, swimming, or any adventurous sport; in all of which there is danger, but the skilful player escapes by his own efforts. If he lost control he would get a tumble; and that is why the sport is exciting and worth while.

He has his fear in check, to be sure, but it is awakened enough to make the escape from danger interesting. Nothing could be much further from the truth than to consider fear as a purely negative thing, having no positive contribution to make to human satisfaction. Though we try to arrange the serious affairs of life so as to avoid danger as much as possible, in play we seek such dangers as we can escape by skilful work. The fascination of gambling and of taking various risks probably comes from the satisfaction of the fear and escape motive.

But of all the "instincts", it is the self-a.s.sertive or masterful tendency that comes in oftenest in play. Compet.i.tion, one form of self-a.s.sertion, is utilized in a tremendous number of games and sports. Either the players compete {490} as individuals, or they "choose sides" and compete as teams. No one can deny that the joy of winning is the high light in the satisfaction of play. Yet it is not the whole thing, for the game may have been worth while, even if you lose. Provided you can say, "Though I did not win, I played a good game", you have the satisfaction of having done well, which is the mastery satisfaction in its non-compet.i.tive form.

When the baby gets a horn, he is not contented to have somebody else blow it for him, but wants to blow it himself; and very pleased he is with himself when he can make it speak. "See what _I_ can do!" is the child's way of expressing his feelings after each fresh advance in the mastery of his playthings. Great is the joy of the boy when he, himself, can make his top spin or his kite fly; and great is the girl's joy when she gets the knack of skipping a rope. Great is any one's joy when, after his first floundering, he comes to ride a bicycle, and the sense of power is enhanced in this case by covering distance easily, and so being master of a larger environment. As boys, I remember, we used to take great delight in the "apple thrower", which was simply a flexible stick, sharpened at one end to hold a green apple. With one's arm thus lengthened, the apple could be thrown to extraordinary distances, and to see our apple go sailing over a tall tree or striking the ground in the distance, gave a very satisfying sense of power. All of those toys that enable you to act at a distance, or to move rapidly, minister to the mastery impulse.

Imitative play does the same, in that it enables the child to perform, in make-believe, the important deeds of adults. Children like to play at being grown-up, whether by wearing long dresses or by smoking, and it makes them feel important to do what the grown-ups do; you can observe how important they feel by the way they strut and swagger.

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All in all, there are several different ways of gratifying the self-a.s.sertive or mastery impulse in play: always there is the toy or game-situation to master and manage; often self-importance is gratified by doing something big, either really or in make-believe; and usually there is a compet.i.tor to beat.

Empathy

There is still another possible way in which play may gratify the mastery impulse. Why do we like to see a kite flying? Of course, if it is _our_ kite and we are flying it, the mastery impulse is directly aroused and gratified; but we also like to watch a kite flown by some one else, and similarly we like to watch a hawk, a balloon or aeroplane, a rocket. We like also to watch things that balance or float or in other ways seem to be superior to the force of gravity.

Why should such things fascinate us? Perhaps because of _empathy_, the "feeling oneself into" the object contemplated. As "sympathy" means "feeling with", "empathy" means "feeling into", and the idea is that the observer projects himself into the object observed, and gets some of the satisfaction from watching an object that he would get from _being_ that object. Would it not be grand to be a kite, would it not be masterful? Here we stand, slaves of the force of gravity, sometimes toying with it for a moment when we take a dive or a coast, at other times having to struggle against it for our very lives, and all the time bound and limited by it--while the kite soars aloft in apparent defiance of all such laws and limitations. Of course it fascinates us, since watching it gives us, by empathy, some of the sense of power and freedom that seems appropriate to the behavior of a kite. Perhaps the fascination of fire is empathy of a similar sort; for fire is power.

Having thus found the mastery impulse here, there, and {492} almost everywhere in the realm of play, we are tempted to a.s.sume a masterful att.i.tude ourselves and say, "Look you! We have discovered the one and only play motive, which is none other than the instinct of self-a.s.sertion". Thus we should be forgetting the importance in play of danger and the escape motive, the importance of manipulation for its own sake, and the importance of the mere joy in muscular and mental activity. Also, we should be overlooking the occasional presence of laughter, the occasional presence of s.e.x attraction, and the almost universal presence of the gregarious and other social motives. Play gratifies many instincts, not merely a single one.

Further, it is very doubtful whether the whole satisfaction of play activity can be traced to the instincts, anyway, for play may bring in the native "likes and dislikes", which we saw [Footnote: See p. 180.]

to be irreducible to instinctive tendencies; and it may bring in acquired likes and interests developed out of these native likes. Play gives rise to situations that are interesting and attractive to the players, though the attraction cannot be traced to any of the instincts. The rhythm of dancing, marching, and of children's sing-song games can scarcely be traced to any of the instincts.

The sociability of games goes beyond mere gregariousness, since it calls for acting together and not simply for being together; and at the same time it goes beyond compet.i.tion and self-a.s.sertion, as is seen in the satisfaction the players derive from good team work. It is true that the individual player does not lay aside his self-a.s.sertion in becoming a loyal member of a team; rather, he identifies himself with the team, and finds in compet.i.tion with the opposing team an outlet for his mastery impulse. But at the same time it is obvious that self-a.s.sertion would be still more fully gratified by man-to-man contests; and therefore the {493} usual preference of a group of people for "choosing sides" shows the workings of some other motive than self-a.s.sertion. The fact seems to be that coordinated group activity is an independent source of satisfaction.

If the self-a.s.sertive impulse of an individual player is too strongly aroused, he spoils the game, just as an angry player spoils a friendly wrestling match or s...o...b..ll fight, and just as a thoroughly frightened pa.s.senger spoils a trip down the rapids, which was meant to be simply thrilling. The instincts are active in play, but they must not be too active, for human play is an activity carried on well above the instinctive level, and dependent on motives that cannot wholly be a.n.a.lyzed in terms of the instincts.

Day Dreams

Daydreaming is a sort of play, more distinctly imaginative than most other play. Simply letting the mind run, as in the instances cited under free a.s.sociation, where A makes you think of B and B of C, and so on--this is not exactly daydreaming, since there is no "dream", no castle in the air nor other construction, but simply a pa.s.sing from one recalled fact to another. In imaginative daydreaming, facts are not simply recalled but are rearranged or built together into a story or "castle" or scheme. A daydream typically looks toward the future, as a plan for possible doing; only, it is not a serious plan for the future--which would be controlled imagination--nor necessarily a plan which could work in real life, but merely play of imagination. If we ask the same questions here as we did regarding child's play, we find again that it is easier to define the end-result and the source of satisfaction in daydreaming than it is to define the stimulus or the exact nature of the imaginative process.

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Daydreams have some motive force behind them, as can be judged from the absorption of the dreamer in his dream, and also from an examination of the end-results of this kind of imagination. Daydreams usually have a _hero_ and that hero is usually the dreamer's self.

Sometimes one is the conquering hero, and sometimes the suffering hero, but in both cases the recognized or unrecognized merit of oneself is the big fact in the story, so that the mastery motive is evidently finding satisfaction here as well as in other forms of play.

Probably the conquering hero dream is the commoner and healthier variety. A cla.s.sical example is that of the milkmaid who was carrying on her head a pail of milk she had been given. "I'll sell this milk for so much, and with the money buy a hen. The hen will lay so many eggs, worth so much, for which I will buy me a dress and cap. Then the young men will wish to dance with me, but I shall spurn them all with a toss of the head." Her dream at this point became so absorbing as to get hold of the motor system and call out the actual toss of the head--but we are not after the moral just now; we care simply for the dream as a very true sample of many, many daydreams. Such dreams are a means of getting for the moment the satisfaction of some desire, without the trouble of real execution; and the desire gratified is very often some variety of self-a.s.sertion. Sometimes the hero is not the dreamer's self, but some one closely identified with himself. The mother is p.r.o.ne to make her son the hero of daydreams and so to gratify her pride in him.

The "suffering hero" daydream seems at first thought inexplicable, for why should any one picture himself as having a bad time, as misunderstood by his best friends, ill-treated by his family, jilted by his best girl, unsuccessful in his pet schemes? Why should any one make believe to be worse off than he is; what satisfaction can that {495} be to him? Certainly, one would say, the mastery motive could not be active here. And yet--do we not hear children _boasting_ of their misfortunes? "Pooh! That's only a little scratch; I've got a real deep cut." My cut being more important than your scratch makes me, for the moment, more important than you, and gives me a chance to boast over you. Older people are known sometimes to magnify their own ailments, with the apparent aim of enhancing their own importance.

Perhaps the same sort of motive underlies the suffering hero daydream.

I am smarting, let us suppose, from a slight administered by my friend; my wounded self-a.s.sertion demands satisfaction. It was a very little slight, and I should make myself ridiculous if I showed my resentment. But in imagination I magnify the injury done me, and go on to picture a dreadful state of affairs, in which my friend has treated me very badly indeed, and perhaps deserted me. Then I should not be ridiculous, but so deeply wronged as to be an important person, one to be talked about; and thus my demand for importance and recognition is gratified by my daydream.

Usually the suffering hero pictures himself as in the right, and animated by the n.o.blest intentions, though misunderstood, and thus further enhances his self-esteem; but sometimes he takes the other tack and pictures himself as wicked--but as very, very wicked, a veritable desperado. It may be his self-esteem has been wounded by blame for some little meanness or disobedience, and he restores it by imagining himself a great, big, important sinner instead of a small and ridiculous one. In adolescence, the individual's growing demand for independence is often balked by the continued domination of his elders, and he rebelliously plans quite a career of crime for himself.

He'll show them! They won't be so pig-headedly complacent when they know they have driven him to the bad. You can tell by the looks of {496} a person whose feelings are hurt that he is imagining something; usually he is imagining himself either a martyr or a desperado, or some other kind of suffering hero, often working up into a conquering hero in the end, when, his self-esteem restored, he is ready to be friends again. The suffering hero daydream is a "subst.i.tute reaction", taking the place of a fight or some other active self-a.s.sertion. The conquering hero daydream is often motivated in the same way; for example, our friend the milkmaid would not have been so ready to scorn the young men with a toss of the head if she had not been feeling her own actual inferiority and lack of fine clothes. The daydream makes good, in one way or another, for actual inability to get what we desire. The desire which is gratified in the play of imagination belongs very often indeed under the general head of self-a.s.sertion; but when one is in love it is apt to belong under that head. Love dreams of the agreeable sort need no further motivation; but the unpleasant, jealous type of love dream is at the same time a suffering hero dream, and certainly involves wounded self-a.s.sertion along with the s.e.xual impulse. Probably the self-a.s.serting daydream is the commonest variety, take mankind as a whole, with the love dream next in order of frequency. But there are many other sorts. There is the humor daydream, ill.u.s.trated by the young person who suddenly breaks into a laugh and when you ask why replies that she was thinking how funny it would be if, etc., etc. She is very fond of a good laugh, and not having anything laughable actually at hand proceeds to imagine something. So, a music lover may mentally rehea.r.s.e a piece when he has no actual music to enjoy; and if he has some power of musical invention, he may amuse himself, in idle moments, by making up music in his head; just as one who has some ability in decorative design may fill his idle moments by concocting new designs on paper. {497} When vacation time approaches, it is hard for any one, student or professor, to keep the thoughts from dwelling on the good times ahead, and getting some advance satisfaction. Thus all kinds of desires are gratified in imagination.

Worry

Do we have fear daydreams, as we have amus.e.m.e.nts utilizing the fear and escape motive? Yes, sometimes we imagine ourselves in danger and plan out an escape. One individual often amuses himself by imagining he is arrested and accused of some crime, and figuring out how he could establish an alibi or otherwise prove his innocence. But fear daydreams also include _worry_, which seems at first to be an altogether unpleasant state of mind, forced upon us and not indulged in as most daydreams are. Yet, as the worry is often entirely needless, it cannot be said to be forced upon a person, but must have some motive. There must be some satisfaction in it, in spite of all appearance.

Some abnormal cases of worry suggest the theory that the fear is but a cloak for unacknowledged desire. Take this extreme case. A young man, "tied to the ap.r.o.n-strings" of a too affectionate and too domineering mother, has a strong desire to break loose and be an independent unit in the world; but at the same time, being much attached to his mother, he is horrified by this desire. She goes on a railroad journey without him--just an ordinary journey with no special danger--but all the time she is away he is in an agony of suspense lest the train may be wrecked. Such an abnormal degree of worry calls for explanation.

Well--did not the worry perhaps conceal a wish, a wish that the train _might_ be wrecked? So he would be set free without any painful effort on his part; and he {498} was a young man who shrank from all effort.

The psychopathologist who studied the case concluded that this was really the explanation of the worry.

If, however, we take such extreme cases as typical and cynically apply this conception to all worries, we shall make many mistakes. A student worries unnecessarily about an examination; therefore, he desires to fail. A mother worries because her child is late in getting home; therefore, she wants to be rid of that child. Thus, by being too psychopathological, we reach many absurd conclusions in everyday life; for it is the child that is loved that is worried over, and it is the examination that the student specially wishes to pa.s.s that he fears he has flunked.

Worry is a sort of subst.i.tute reaction, taking the place of real action when no real action is possible. The student has done all he can do; he has prepared for the examination, and he has taken the examination; now there is nothing to do except wait; so that the rational course would be to dismiss the matter from his mind; if he cannot accomplish that, but must do something, then the only thing he can do is to speculate and worry. So also the mother, in her uncertainty regarding her child, is impelled to action, and if she knew of any real thing to do she would do it and not worry; but there is nothing to do, except in imagination. Worry is fundamentally due to the necessity of doing something with any matter that occupies our mind; it is an imaginative subst.i.tute for real action.

But worry may be something of an indoor sport as well. Consider this--if the mother really believed her child had fallen into the pond, she would rush to pull him out; but while she is worrying for fear he may have fallen in, she remains at home. Really she expects to see him come home any minute, but by conjuring up imaginary dangers she is getting ready to make his home-coming a great relief instead {499} of a mere humdrum matter. She is "shooting the chutes", getting the thrill of danger with escape fully expected.

The normal time for a daydream is the time when there is no real act to be performed. A strong man uses it as the amus.e.m.e.nt of an idle moment and promptly forgets it. But one who is lacking in force, especially the personal force needed in dealing with other people, may take refuge in daydreams as a subst.i.tute for real doing. Instead of hustling for the money he needs he may, like Micawber, charm himself with imagining the good opportunities that may turn up. Instead of going and making love to the lady of his choice, he shyly keeps away from her and merely dreams of winning her. He subst.i.tutes imaginary situations for the real facts of his life, and gratifies his mastery motive by imaginary exploits. He invents imaginary ailments to excuse his lack of real deeds. He conjures up imaginary dangers to worry over. All this is abuse of imagination.

Dreams

Let us turn now from daydreams to dreams of the night. These also are play of imagination, even freer from control and criticism than the daydream. In sleep the cortical brain functions sink to a low level, and perhaps cease altogether in the deepest sleep. Most of the dreams that are coherent enough to be recalled probably occur just after we have gone to sleep or just before we wake up, or at other times when sleep is light. At such times the simpler and more practised functions, such as recall of images, can go on, though criticism, good judgment, reasoning, and all that sort of delicate and complex activity, do not occur. Daytime standards of probability, decorum, beauty, wit, and excellence of any sort are in abeyance; consistency is thrown to the winds, the scenes being shifted in the middle of a {500} speech, and a character who starts in as one person merging presently into somebody else. Dreams follow the definition of imagination or invention, in that materials recalled from different contexts are put together into combinations and rearrangements never before experienced. The combinations are often bizarre and incongruous.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of dreams is their seeming reality while they last. They seem real in spite of their incongruity, because of the absence of critical ability during sleep. In waking life, when the sight of one object reminds me of another and calls up an image of that other, I know that the image is an image, and I know I have thought of two different things. In sleep the same recall by a.s.sociation occurs, but the image is forthwith accepted as real; and thus things from different sources get together in the same dream scene, and a character who reminds us of another person forthwith becomes that other person. We are not mentally active enough in sleep to hold our images apart. a.s.sociative recall, with blending of the recalled material, and with entire absence of criticism, describes the process of dreaming.

What is the _stimulus_, to which the dream responds? Sometimes there is an actual sensory stimulus, like the alarm clock or a stomach ache; and in this case the dream comes under the definition of an illusion; it is a false perception, more grotesquely false than most illusions of the day. A boy wakes up one June morning from a dream of the Day of Judgement, with the last trump pealing forth and blinding radiance all about--only to find, when fully awake, that the sun is shining in his face and the brickyard whistle blowing the hour of four-thirty a.m.

This was a false perception. More often, a dream resembles a daydream in being a _train of thoughts and images_ without much relation to present sensory stimuli; and then the dream {501} would come under the definition of hallucination instead of illusion.

Sometimes a sensory stimulus breaks in upon a dream that is in progress, and is interpreted in the light of this dream. In one experiment, the dreamer, who was an auth.o.r.ess, was in the midst of a dream in which she was discussing vacation plans with a party of friends, when the experimenter disturbed her by declaiming a poem; in her dream this took the form of a messenger from her publisher, reciting something about a contract which seemed a little disturbing but which she hoped (in the dream) would not interfere with her vacation. Maury, an early student of this topic, was awakened from a feverish dream of the French Revolution by something falling on his neck; this, under the circ.u.mstances, he took to be the guillotine.

Now, _why_ is a dream? What satisfaction does it bring to the dreamer?