Conditions Of Happiness

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CONDITIONJLP.F HAPPINESS

CONDITIONS OF HAPPINESS*"

Why is it tjiat oiir civilisation, with all
its tremendous opportunities, is so out-
standingly an unhappy one? In other
words, what are the conditions of happiness
and how far does our society fulfil them ?
These are the questions Mr. Taylor sets out
to answer, pointing out that 'only those
who understand the nature of happiness
are in a position to appraise the success of
a society or the desirability of a regime.'

Mr. Taylor doe*, not rest content with an
analysis of current ill*, but attempts to
deduce principle* on which to base practical
measure*. And hen 1 he emphasises that
the problem of happinc** is in*eparable
from the problem of behaviour. If we are
I unhappy, it is chiefly because people behave
as they do. Making use of some of the most
recent researches in anthropology and psy-
chology, Mr. Taylor argues that 'human
nature' can be changed but to change it,
we must understand the complex inter-
relations of personality and society.

Those who read his widely successful
analysis of contemporary economics, Econ-
omics for the Exasperated, know already
that he has an unusual power of clarifying
the most complex and technical issues. All
should find in his brilliant and searching
argument points they will accept, others
they will want to discuss and, in a word,
a great deal to think about.

by the same author
ECONOMICS FOR THE EXASPERATED

CONDITIONS
OF HAPPINESS

GORDON RATTRAY TAYLOR

THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON

This book is copyright. No portion of it may be
reproduced by any process without written permission.
Inquiries shuuld be addressed to the publisher

Printed in Greet Britain by

HAZELL, WATBON AND VWBY, LTD., AYLBSBURT AND LONDON
for JOHN LANS TOT BODLIT HEAD LTD.

8 Bury PUce, London, W.C.I

For Bettes

The question that faces every man <born into this world is
not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to
achieve, but just what to do with life, a life which is given him
for a period of, on the average, fifty or sixty years. The answer
that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest
happiness in it is more a practical question similar to that of how
a man should spend his week-end, than a metaphysical proposi-
tion as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme
of the universe.

LIN YUTANG, The Importance of Living

Contents
PART ONE ANALYSIS

I Anatomy of Unhappiness 3

II Hierarchy of Needs 17

in Superphysical Needs . 37

iv Psychological Superstructure 61

v Personality Formation 74

vi Social Matrix 99

vii Functioning Society 130

PART TWO DIAGNOSIS

viii Contemporary Unhappiness 144

IX Vicious Circle 165

x Industrial Personality 174

xi Fascist Solution 193

xii Communist Solution 213

vii

Contents
PART THREE SYNTHESIS

Xlii Sociology of Happiness 230

xrv Politics of Happiness 254

Index 277

Vlll

Part One

ANALYSIS

ANATOMY OF UNHAPPINESS

I Nature Hits Back n The Science of Happiness in The Psycho-
social Nexus iv Human Needs v What Happiness is Not
vi Pseudo-Happiness vn Plan of Action

I Nature Hits Back

VxONSiDER these facts: every day 50 Americans and 15 Britons
commit suicide.

In the United States, every second hospital bed is occupied
by a mental patient. 1 One in every six men rejected from the
U.S. army for reasons of health was rejected on grounds of
mental disorder. 2 According to an estimate by American
psychiatrists, one person in every three met with in general
practice is to some extent neurotic. 8 There are about 600,000
persons in institutions for chronic alcoholics, to say nothing of
an estimated two million heavy drinkers outside. 4 The figures
for Britain are scarcely less serious.

Lastly, bear in mind that the incidence of most of these
figures is about three times as great as it was sixty years
ago.

Whatever allowances we may feel inclined to make in inter-
preting them, it is fairly obvious that modern civilisation
makes many people deeply unhappy, corrupting the personali-
ties of some and driving a shocking number to escape from their
problems in mental breakdown or self-destruction. In many

1 Testimony of Surgeon-General John Parran before U.S. Senate.

8 Ency. Brit. Book of the Year, 1946.

8 Lichtenstein and Small, A Handbook of Psychiatry, 1942. A similar
figure is quoted for Britain by I. Suttie, Origins of Love and Hate,
1935, and more recently by H. V. Dicks, Clinical Studies in Psycho-
pathology, 1947.

R. V. Seliger and V. Cranford, Contemporary Criminal Hygiene,
1946.

Conditions of Happiness

primitive societies, on the other hand, suicide and alcoholism
are unknown and psychosis very rare.

Simultaneously we note throughout the world a widespread
dissatisfaction with existing political? social and economic
conditions. There is an uncontrollable desire to experiment
with new systems/ Few indeed are the states which are not
toying with communism, socialism or fascism. The tremendous
upsurge of nationalist feeling has a similar basis.

The fact is, the present world crisis is a crisis of happiness.
It is because they hope and believe that the world can be
reordered so as to dispel their sense of futility and frustration
that so many people are prepared to fight and die for their
chosen 'ideology/ It is because they see no hope of any more
satisfying existence than they have got that so many other
people in the west turn their faces from life altogether.

But it is very noticeable that although so many people feel,
distinctly or diffusely, that something is wrong with modern
life, yet they are very far from agreeing what this something is;
still less can they agree what to do about it.

The detached observer is entitled to conclude that none of
the solutions so hotly advocated provides an exhaustive
answer to the problem of our present discontent for it is
hard to believe that a sound diagnosis of worldly ills could be
preached so loudly and so long without finally winning general
acknowledgment. The arguments of modern prophets are,
very literally, unconvincing. Thus it is most striking how slow
socialism has* been in gaining popularity, when it appears to
offer such striking benefits to the bulk of the population. For
nearly a hundred years it has been advocated by many brilliant
writers and speakers and supported with great devotion, and
yet the world as a whole has remained obstinately suspicious.
Even its victories have been due not so much to its own merits
as to the miserable demerits of its opponents. People instinc-
tively felt that socialism, though it might indeed ensure a
greater measure of certain obvious types of satisfaction, would
simultaneously destroy other less tangible but equally vital
modes of happiness. In concentrating on meeting physical

Anatomy of Unhappiness

needs food, clothing, housing it would neglect and smother
obscure emotional and spiritual demands.

This intuitive feeling is, I believe, sound. Certainly it
cannot be denied that $pme types of satisfaction are mutually
exclusive : the more we obtain of one the less we have of another.
So it is never a wise policy to pursue happiness by trying to
maximise whatever satisfactions lie to hand. That a thing yields
benefits is not a sufficient argument. We must always bear in
mind the whole field of potential satisfactions and compromise
between the various possibilities in accordance with our assess-
ment of their relative value. Otherwise, like a two-year-old
child which cannot pick up another brick without dropping the
one it is holding, we shall lose one source of happiness in gaining
another and the exchange may not be to our advantage.

In fact, during the last hundred years a great many of the
changes which reformers, both of the right and of the left, have
been demanding have come to pass: but people seem, on the
whole, to be even less happy than before. They are more anxious
and the fun seems to have gone out of life. At the same time
society itself has become much less stable. Yet it seldom occurs
to us that the two facts may be connected: that it may be just
because we have tried to raise the standard of living that we
have made ourselves insecure and unhappy. By this I do not
mean to say that a raised standard of living is necessarily
associated with unhappiness. It may be merely that the methods
we have chosen to raise it are wrong. Or that our conception of
what constitutes a high standard of living is wrong.

'The real paradox of our time is not poverty in plenty but
unhappiness in pleasure!*

But in practice political reformers always fail to take this
wider view. It is, to be frank, a gross impertinence for anyone
to put forward proposals for remaking the world without first
having made an exhaustive survey of the whole subject of human
happiness. None of the arguments put forward in favour of
currently-popular ideologies has the slightest validity, except
in so far as practical experience of it may have permitted some
empirical observation of the results. We are like a party of

Conditions of Happiness

shipwrecked sailors afloat in mid-ocean without map or com*
pass. One declares we should steer this way, another that. These
proposals are all futile, for even if one chances to be right we
have no way of knowing it.

Is it not truly remarkable that the political and economic
reformers who surround us should feel so little hesitation in
advocating reforms designed to achieve some immediate good
without ever having satisfied themselves whether the course
they propose will really achieve the ultimate objective ? Look !
they say, here is a cork with which to plug the leak in our boat !
And so saying they wrench out the bung.

II The Science of Happiness

'Very well,' you say, 'I agree that we need a science of
happiness but it is not so easy.'

Certainly the subject is a difficult one.

It cannot be settled by any smoking-room wiseacre or rustic
philosopher. But then smoking-room and tap-room discussion
cannot penetrate the atom nor clarify the theory of relativity.
The question is rather whether the mystery of happiness will
yield to intensive scientific research.

But while we devote large sums and many man-hours of
thought and labour to studying bodily health, we devote none
to the study of happiness. The subject is still where electricity
was in the time of Galvani or health in the time of ^Esculapius.
When the science of happiness develops it will, naturally, be
a composite science, just as medicine embraces a score of
related disciplines. In the last fifty years great progress has been
made in many of the sciences which bear on the subject of
happiness -psychology, psycho-analysis, sociology and anthro-
pology in particular. Before the ceixtury closes the science of
happiness will have been born.

But can we wait so long ? The plight of the world is desperate.
And in the hands of its suicidally-inclined peoples has been
placed the atom bomb. Like scientists in war-time, we cannot
afford to plan elaborate research, to check and recheck our

6

Anatomy of Unhappiness

theories. We must speculate audaciously, improvising from the
limited number of facts at our disposal a theory which will serve
to guide us in the operations which are being conducted even
as we study the subject >

Hence this book. It is a bold (even rash) attempt to bring
together from a wide field a motley collection of facts bearing
on the problem of happiness, and to combine them into a theory
from which practical policies can be derived. Sooner or later
I hope sooner investigators with more time and better
resources will go over the ground again. Much of the detail
will have to be scrapped, conclusions will have to be modified,
and a vast array of new facts fitted into place; but perhaps the
broad conception will endure. And if it does not, the attempt
will not have been in vain if it stimulates the design of a more
adequate structure.

Some readers, I expect, will find this book too broadly based,
too detached in viewpoint, too theoretical, to suit them. What
is the good, they will exclaim, of discussing the ideal organisa-
tion of society? What is the good of studying in detail the
structure of personality ? Faced as we are with a world full of
wretchedness of hunger, disease, war and other evident evils
we have work enough to do without bothering about psycho-
logical obscurities. Though natural enough, this is not a
justifiable attitude. When the Black Death hit England, it was
natural enough for doctors to try and help the dying. We know
now that their efforts were largely futile, and that they would
have done better to concentrate on isolating the plague and
eradicating the vermin which bore it. So today, in our much
larger problem, we devote our very limited resources to trying
to help individuals when we should do better in the end to
employ them in attacking the sources of the whole problem.
But before we can do that we must understand its nature. 1

1 There are some, indeed, who would dismiss this whole argument
with the comment that 'we are not put into the world to be happy.'
Asked to explain this assertion they generally claim that we are put into
this world to prepare ourselves for some superior future existence. The
logical error here lies in the assumption that unhappiness in this world

Conditions of Happiness

in The Psychosocial Nexus

Out of the unco-ordinated welter of recent work in the fields
of sociology and psychology one fact^has gradually emerged,
a fact so important and far-reaching in its implications that even
those who work in these sciences have, for the most part, failed
to grasp the full significance of what they are unearthing. It is
that the nature of society is dictated by the nature of the person-
alities of those who compose it. Put like that, it does not sound
very astonishing. We all recognise that the pattern of society,
which consists of people, must be created by the behaviour of
the people in it. But what the social sciences are doing is to
show, first, that the influence is far deeper and more drastic
than anyone had suspected ; that factors in behaviour which we
ignore because we imagine them common to all human nature
are in fact quite arbitrary, and that these factors create patterns
in society which are equally arbitrary, although we have long
regarded them as natural and inevitable. And, secondly, the
social sciences are revealing the exact nature of this influence
and the way in which it works.

This series of discoveries has tremendous practical impor-
tance. It means that attempts to raise the level of happiness by
changing society as a whole are doomed to failure. Whatever
new institutions are devised, whatever new values are established,
men will twist them to suit the needs of their personalities.
We can see this in the history of the Christian ethic, which

in some way fits .us better for our future life. This is nonsense. Though
suffering may in rare circumstances ennoble, in many others it certainly
degrades. The inmates of Belsen were certainly not purified by their
sufferings, and the creation of many an ignoble and malicious character
can be traced to youthful unhappiness too great to bear. Even if we
regard this world as preparation for another life, we cannot afford to
ignore the subject of happiness which, properly used, may be a major
force in spiritual development. It should be added that in many cases
this rejection of happiness is not really based on intellectual convic-
tions, so much as on an illogical, unconscious belief that all happiness
is wicked. The fact that such people generally feel that sexual gratifica-
tion is especially reprehensible gives us a clue to the neurotic origin
of their belief, and in a later chapter I shall indicate briefly how it arises.

8

Anatomy of Unhappiness

started as a doctrine of love towards others, of freedom from
guilt ('taking away the sins of the world') and of disdain of
wealth, and which contrived in time to produce the Spanish
Inquisition, the wars of'religion, the doctrine of original sin,
Calvinism, and an enormously wealthy property-owning
church. And we can see it also in the case of socialism, which
started as a doctrine of universal benevolence, and which in
Russia, despite the introduction of radically new social insti-
tutions, has already become an oppressive dictatorship, arousing
emotions not of love but of fear.

But the social sciences have also brought us a third and even
more significant discovery: that certain elements in society
play a decisive part in determining personality. As a result, it
is phenomenally difficult, or actually impossible, for us to
modify our own personality by direct effort. As Freud has shown
us, a great part of the mind is unconscious, and we cannot alter
the patterns in it by any conscious effort, short of the laborious
and uncertain process of psycho-analysis. In addition to this,
our standards of right behaviour are acquired, to a far greater
extent than most people realise, from the society into which we
are born. Very often these standards of right and wrong are
faulty. Our 'conscience' is not necessarily a reliable guide. So
we cannot confidently tell how best to modify our personalities,
even assuming it were in our power to do so.

Only if we come to understand the whole nexus and direct
our attack to the point where society and personality meet can
we hope to achieve any progress.

Failure to recognise this fact has invalidated all previous
approaches to the subject. Practically all the classical advice on
happiness has emphasised either personal reconstruction or
social reconstruction. Many moralists, from the early church
down to Bertrand Russell or C. S. Lewis, have advised us to
seek happiness by altering our behaviour. In contrast, others,
neglecting the roots of unhappiness in themselves, have hoped
to mend matters by the institution of a new form of society.
The secor^d method, being apparently less strenuous for the
individual, is especially popular today.
C.H.-~ 2

Conditions of Happiness

Both are futile. It is useless to advise people to behave better
when their actions are determined by social forces : it is no good
telling the avaricious man that wealth does not bring happiness
if avarice has been built into his character. Wealth may not
bring happiness, to be sure, but nothing else will, either. To
this extent the church is wrong and the communist partly right.
But equally it is no good trying to build a new society and hoping
that better-behaved citizens will emerge as an automatic result.
There the church is right and the communist wrong.

On this showing, almost all contemporary political and
ethical endeavour is, in the long run, wasted effort.

The vital lesson is : progress can only be achieved by attacking
at the points where society and personality interact.

That personality and society are but two aspects of a single
nexus is the main thesis of this book.

iv Human Needs

Brilliant as is the modern scientific treatment of the 'psycho-
social nexus' to give this crucial interrelationship a name
yet it does not go deep enough. It fails to explain personality
and society in terms of the same postulates, to show that both
grow in the same soil. This soil is the full schedule of irreducible
human needs. Society is a system of devices for helping men
to meet their needs, and can only be fully understood when we
are sure what those needs are. By the same token personality
is the name we give to the assembly of behaviour patterns which
an individual employs in his efforts to meet his needs. Person-
alities differ primarily because different individuals find
different methods rewarding.

To those who are familiar with only the clinical side of
psycho-analytical work this will seem a hard saying: surely, they
will mutter, people employ different methods because their
personalities differ, and not the other way about. But as so
often happens in studying the mind, the truth turns out to be
a paradox. The justification for this assertion will appear in
Chapter 5.

10

Anatomy of Unhappiness

In other words, it is only when we have a comprehensive
understanding of human needs that we can hope to come to an
understanding both of our present frustrations and of what we
could do about them.

You will appreciate that when we speak of human needs we
might equally well speak of conditions. It is no more than a
difference of verbal formulation whether we say that food is a
condition of life or whether we say that man needs food in order
to live. To discuss human needs is to discuss the conditions of
happiness in the broadest sense. You may object, however, that
to establish the conditions of happiness is not necessarily to
guarantee that happiness will manifest. One can wire up an
electric lamp, and thus establish the conditions for its operation,
but unless you turn the current on it will not glow. Similarly,
you may say, I can agree that if a man's vital needs are frus-
trated he may not be happy. We are hardly likely to be happy
when dying of thirst or lack of sleep but it doesn't follow that
we shall be happy when we are rested and fed. Perhaps if all
our needs are met we shall merely be not-unhappy.

The validity of this objection depends entirely on how wide
we make our definition of needs. If, in the case of our electric
circuit, we had included in the conditions that part of the wiring
should move through a magnetic field we should have ensured
that a current would flow through the circuit. And in some
senses this might be called the vital or operative condition.
Whether or not the schedule of needs outlined in the chapters
which follow is complete and includes the operative conditions,
or whether it merely clears the decks for happiness without
engaging the battle, can hardly be proved except by experiment.
Personally, I believe that it is a complete schedule.

Finally, there is the ticklish question of what we mean by
happiness. If we can define the conditions in which happiness
manifests we can arrive at a working definition of happiness,
just as the physicist obtains a working definition of electricity by
defining it as the phenomenon which occurs when a conductor
is moved transversely through a magnetic field. Of course we
remain ignorant of what happiness is, just as the physicist

ii

Conditions of Happiness

remains ignorant of what electricity is but this ignorance
need not prevent us from achieving it. We do not reject the
services of the man who mends or who designs, for that
matter our radio set because he cannot tell us what electricity
is. Equally we can hope to control the conditions in which
happiness manifests without knowing what it is.

Even within these limits we must take notice of a difficulty
which has nothing to do with happiness as such, but which
springs from the nature of language : in brief, a difficulty which
is not psychological but semantic.

The word happiness can never be defined to everyone's
satisfaction, even in functional terms, as long as people insist
on using the word to mean different things at different times.
For instance, we sometimes use it to refer to quite short
periods of intense satisfaction (properly called ecstasy) : some-
times we use it to describe a prolonged period free from major
worries or discomforts ; sometimes we apply it to the experience
properly known as joy, and so on. Some people would confine
it to only one or two of such experiences, while others would
extend it to cover the lot.

All these experiences, one immediately notices, are marked
by the presence of agreeable feelings and the absence of disa-
greeable ones. So what it really comes to is, we have got to study
the conditions in which agreeable feelings are generated and
disagreeable ones prevented. When we have got this clear, we
can settle the limits of the word happiness in any way which is
convenient. -

The point we have reached so far, then, is that we can legiti-
mately attack the problem of happiness by trying to draw up
a full schedule of human needs and seeing how far they receive
satisfaction; and that in so doing we must not confine our
attention to single individuals, but must constantly bear in mind
their interrelation with the society they live in. To draw up
such a schedule of human needs is a considerable task, for there
is little previous work upon which we can call. We shall have
to start at the beginning and spend several chapters, justifying
our conclusions as we go along. But before we start this

12

Anatomy of Unhappiness

undertaking, there are one or two misconceptions which it
will be worth our while to clear out of the way.

v What Happiness is Not

The assertion that we can approach the subject of happiness
by studying the conditions in which agreeable feelings are
generated and disagreeable ones minimised does not imply that
happiness is to be attained by satisfying as many needs as
possible. There is a hierarchy among men's demands; some are
absolute, others admit of alternatives, yet others can be wholly
dispensed with in certain circumstances. Happiness is not the
answer to a sum in simple addition.

Neither is it the answer to a multiplication sum. The task
is not to meet the demands to the fullest extent. As we know
from the old law of diminishing satisfactions, there comes a
point in meeting any demand when it is no longer a wise use of
energy to proceed any further; it is better to switch one's efforts
to a different field. The delicate interplay of our various needs
will become clear as we establish a picture of what they are.

A second source of error arises from the fact that when a man
cannot obtain what he really wants he will accept a substitute.
Substitutes, however, are never equal to the real thing in the
long run and much unhappiness can be traced to the unwitting
use of substitute satisfactions. In the absence of butter, margar-
ine provides a very real source of satisfaction : it does not follow
that we shall be wise to devote our best efforts to increasing
the supply of margarine. Since this may seem rather obvious,
it is perhaps worth pointing out that we constantly make this
mistake in our civilisation. In economic terms, we assume that
the existence of a 'demand' is good reason for supplying what
is demanded. We also assume the converse: that we need not
supply what is not demanded.

I need hardly add that the use of substitutes is not confined
to the economic sphere : on the contrary it is the use of substi-
tutes in the emotional and intellectual spheres which is of chief
interest in the present context. The childless woman who

13

Conditions of Happiness

lavishes affection on a pet, the routine worker who pits his wits
against the compiler of crossword puzzles, betray the flaws in
our society, considered as a milieu for happiness.

Superficially similar to the use of ^substitutes is the use of
anaesthetics. When we cannot meet a demand we may seek to
numb it. Consider the case of the man who, being desperately
unhappy because some fundamental need is being frustrated,
takes to drink to numb his misery. Looked at mechanically,
his action is well chosen to raise his 'happiness-index.' If we
had an instrument for measuring such a thing, we should
doubtless detect a distinct improvement after the third or
fourth glass ! Yet no one but a maniac would regard alcohol as
a valid cure for his misery. (This, I need hardly add, is not to
deny the great value of moderate quantities of alcohol in stimu-
lating social intercourse.) Yet this is precisely the mistake we
do make in that we consider a demand for whisky an adequate
reason for satisfying it and make no attempt to uncover the
frustrations which cause a certain part of it. Still more generally,
we accept the whole demand for goods, and adapt our civilisa-
tion to manufacture them, without asking to what extent the
demand is a synthetic one.

From challenging hasty assumptions about how to meet
demands we have gradually been led to challenge assumptions
about the validity of the demand itself and now we must
thrust much further in this direction.

vi Pseudo-Happiness

Something which obfuscates many attempts to handle the
subject of happiness in terms of needs is the existence of what
we may call pseudo-happinesses and unhappinesses; or, more
scientifically, neurotic needs.

The miser demands gold for his hoard, the Don Juan a steady
procession of women, the masochist perpetual ill-treatment or
humiliation. Can we say that these appetites are needs ? Even
if psycho-analysis had not exposed their artificial nature, we
should still suspect them since we notice that the miser's gold

Anatomy of Unhappiness

does not bring him happiness, and the Don Juan is not long
soothed by his conquests. Though the victim of a pseudo-need
is unhappy when it is frustrated he is scarcely less unhappy
when it is met. In such a case the road to happiness does not lie
in meeting the need but in getting rid of it just as the treat-
ment for the chronic thirst of diabetes insipidus is not a copious
supply of water but injections of pituitrin aided by a low-salt,
low-protein diet.

The moment we recognise the existence of such a thing as
an invalid demand it dawns on us that a great range of supposed
needs can be stripped off the human personality and thrown
away, leaving it may be quite a simple range of primary
needs on which to build our thesis. This at once recalls to us
the view so prevalent in eastern cultures that the road to
happiness is to be found not in satisfying needs but in reducing
them. Thus the opposing schools of hedonism (satisfaction of
demands) and stoicism (reduction of demands) are combined
in a new synthesis. In this way we can meet another, well-
founded objection to many previous attempts to handle the
subject of happiness in terms of satisfaction of needs.

vn Plan of Action

These considerations dictate the shape of the book. It falls
into three main divisions. In the first, I propose to try and
catalogue man's needs and discover the relative importance and
urgency of each. This leads naturally to a consideration of the
way in which personality and society limit our attempts to
satisfy our needs, and to the interactions between them. Having
thus worked out the mechanics of the problem we can, in the
second section, apply what we have learned to contemporary
society in an effort to see why it is unhappy. It will also be
interesting to apply it to the two great modern alternatives to
traditional patterns, fascism and communism, and see if they
stand up any better to our tests. I shall try to show that they
owe their temporary successes to the fact that they do, in the
short run, offer a higher standard of happiness than traditional

15

Conditions of Happiness

western society and also why, in the long run, they must
always fail. Finally, in the last section, I shall try to sketch
the nature of an ideal society and derive from this some
practical principles to guide us in out agonising contemporary
dilemma.

In covering so broad a field within the scope of a single
manageable volume, it will be necessary to deal briefly with
many points and sometimes to oversimplify. I have therefore
included a number of footnotes, not so much to indicate the
sources from which I have myself drawn (which would require
a much longer list) but rather to indicate to the reader who may,
perhaps, be a specialist in one field but ignorant of another, a few
outstanding books in which he can follow up points he finds
intriguing.

Let us start, then, on our attempt to analyse human needs.
As I have already warned you, it will take six chapters. The
reader who is only interested in the application of this analysis
to contemporary problems can safely skip to the last section of
Chapter 7, where he will find the results of the analysis
summarised.

II
HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

I Approach to Happiness II Pain in Physical Sensations
iv Esthetic Experience V Emotions vi Relative Importance
vn Nature of Happiness vni Instincts and Drives ix Modifying

Factors

i Approach to Happiness

ONE might reasonably expect that human needs had long
since been catalogued and reduced to order, but such is not the
case. In fact, there is still an extraordinary amount of confusion
on the subject. Since my main object in this chapter will be to
discuss the relative importance of different types of needs, we
shall have first to go to the trouble of arriving at some kind of
classification.

I am going to suggest that these fall into three major groups
which, for lack of better words, I shall call physical, aesthetic
and emotional. I must say at once that the word 'emotional' is
a particularly unsatisfactory label. I propose to deal under this
head not only with experiences such as love, but with security,
variety and success in one's enterprises.

At this point one of my more fractious readers may object
to any classification in terms like this. I agree, he may say, that
physical needs are really needs : it is difficult to be happy if one
is desperately thirsty or short of sleep. But is it true we have
aesthetic needs? Certainly, aesthetic experience is a possible
source of happiness, but is it an essential one ? Could we not be
happy, in our own way, without such experience?

My reply to this would be to point to emotional needs. At
one time many people thought that emotional fulfilment was
'optional/ But the work of psychiatrists has shown quite clearly
that the person who fails to develop an emotional life is never

17

Conditions of Happiness

really happy, however convincing a front he may put up to the
world or to himself. It seems to be the case that we literally
need to fulfil our potentialities. If we fail to do so, we are not
simply less happy than we might be, tut are actively unhappy
or distorted in some way. The man who does not fulfil his
potentialities is not completely a man.

If this be so, it follows that we must realise our potentialities
of aesthetic experience as fully as possible, and that if we do not,
our nature and our pattern of life is bound to be blighted in
some degree.

Since people try to satisfy their needs, any study of the
subject naturally throws light on how people behave or, in a
word, on the subject of motivation and it is chiefly in this
connection that psychologists have been interested in the
matter. Motivation is of interest to us, too, for we need to
understand why man behaves as he does before we can per-
suade him to behave in some different way in order to increase
his chances of happiness.

So obstinately do people try to satisfy their needs that one
can justifiably speak, as some writers have chosen to, of drives
rather than of needs. Thus we can describe hunger equally in
terms of a need for food or a drive to get food.

Of course, there are occasions when the drive is inhibited,
usually in favour of another still more powerful drive. And it
is also true that these drives do not necessarily succeed, or they
may succeed only in a very limited way. Our sense of beauty
may only find expression in a sentimental chromolithograph,
just as our emotional life may be centred on a Pekingese, or our
efforts to get food on drawing the dole.

All drives operate through our ability to feel pleasure or its
opposite. It is because food and being loved relieve unpleasant
feelings of hunger and loneliness that we seek to find food and
love. Having discovered them we find, in most instances, that
they are sources of positive pleasure as well and from then on
we seek them to gain pleasure as well as to avoid discomfort.

But what is pleasure ? Like happiness, it is a word we use far
from precisely. If we wish to avoid getting in a muddle we shall

18

Hierarchy of Needs

need to clarify what we mean by it and, in fact, the attempt to
do so will help us to arrive at a classification of needs.
'Most people use the word pleasure as if it were simply the
opposite of pain. But, as matter of fact, pain is a very curious
phenomenon and nothing to do with pleasure at all.

ii Pain

To make matters worse, we use the word with equal freedom
to indicate the crude physical sensation which results from
stimulus to sensory nerves and also to describe a physical state
at the aesthetic or emotional level. 1 But we are not entitled to
assume that all unpleasant sensations are of the same nature as
physical pain. All the evidence is that pain is a unique pheno-
menon quite distinct from pleasure and its true opposite. I shall
therefore follow the general psychological practice of calling the
opposite of pleasure unpleasure, and reserve the word pain for
the crude physical experience.

Physiological research supports this attitude. Pain, it has been
shown, is conveyed only by certain nerves specialised for the
purpose. Any stimulus to these nerves is experienced as pain,
and they cannot in any circumstances convey the sensation of
pleasure. (With the special case of masochism, in which pain is
welcomed despite its painfulness, I shall deal in Chapter 4.)
Quite distinct from the pain nerves are nerve fibres ending in
organs specialised to respond to heat, light, sound, taste, smell
and pressure. The sensation conveyed by these nerves may be
pleasant or unpleasant according to circumstances.

Why certain nerves should have this distinctive property of
conveying a sensation which is always disagreeable, no matter

1 We require a word to indicate operations taking place at the level
of the psyche : a word which will embrace mental, emotional, spiritual,
aesthetic and any other experiences which may come under this head.
Psychic has been pre-empted for the supernatural. Psychological, which
is often used for this purpose, despite the fact that it is really the
adjective of the science of psychology rather than of the psyche, has
come to refer to those specialised patterns which are the field of
psycho-analysis. I propose to use the word psychical.

19

Conditions of Happiness

what the circumstances, remains a mystery. The answer is not
to be found in the nature of the nervous impulse, which, as
Adrian has shown, is of the same type in both pain and sensory
nerves. 1 Head and Rivers have suggested that the pain nerves
constitute a separate system developed at an earlier stage in
evolutionary history and that this simple 'protopathic' system
was later supplemented by the more subtle and discriminating
'epicritic' nervous system.

Head severed two nerves in his arm and noted that awareness
of pain, and of very marked heat and cold, returned after
seven weeks. But this awareness was not proportional to the
stimulus, it was of an all-or-nothing character, and it was not
localised. Moreover, it produced an abnormally powerful
emotional effect, similar to the reactions of people with disease
of the hypothalamus. It was not for a year that normal awareness
of nervous stimuli returned. In addition there were points on
his arm, presumably fed by epicritic nerves which had not been
cut, which retained awareness of the location and nature of a
prick but without signalling pain. 2

It should be noted, however, that when Boring, in America,
and Trotter and Davies, in Britain, repeated this experiment
they could not fully confirm Head's results, nor did they agree
among one another. Volunteers for repetitions of this important
experiment are needed.

The next step is to consider the pleasant and unpleasant
sensations conveyed by the epicritic nerves. (Here again we
must avoid any tendency to assume that all such experiences
are of the same order. Let us therefore follow the general
psychological practice of speaking of the hedonic tone of an
experience : if it is agreeable we shall say that the hedonic tone
is positive and if disagreeable that it is negative. This- will leave

1 E. D. Adrian, The Basis of Sensation, 1928. But see later for a
further suggestion modifying this view. Pain is, nevertheless, a surpris-
ingly complex and ill-understood phenomenon. See, especially, Adrian,
The Physical Basis of Perception, 1947.

8 H. Head and W. H. R. Rivers, *A Human Experiment in Nerve
Division,' Brain, 1908 (Vol. XXXI, p. 323).

20

Hierarchy of Needs

us free to give an exact meaning to the word pleasure when we feel
able to do so.) Here again the picture is not as simple as it seems.

in Physical Sensations

There is no great difficulty in cataloguing the physical needs
of man: food, air, water, freedom of movement, etc. But what
is the common element in all these needs ?

If we consider a specific instance of sensation, such as warmth
and cold, we see that the hedonic tone of the experience is
entirely dependent on something in ourselves. If we are cold
a moderate degree of heat is pleasant, if we are not it is un-
pleasant. Even our classification of the experience as hot or cold
is made solely in relation to our own temperature. Water which
seems cool to us when we are hot may seem hot to us when we
are cold. Thus, unlike the case of pain nerves, the message
conveyed by the epicritic nerves is in itself neutral. 1

Developing this idea a little further we may say that the body
has a normal temperature. Heat is experienced as of positive
hedonic tone when it helps to bring the body nearer the norm
(as is the case when it is temporarily below it) and as of negative
hedonic tone when it carries it further away. The only qualifi-
cation we need add to this is that the rate of change must not
be too rapid. Note that the unpleasantness consists in our being
at an abnormal temperature, too hot or too cold, and the
hedonic quality we ascribe to the temperature of the environ-
ment should really be ascribed to the change in ourselves.

Note, also, that there is no positive hedonic tone in being at
normal temperature : it is only change towards normal tempera-
ture which is pleasant. It follows that such an experience
cannot remain pleasant indefinitely, for sooner or later normality
must be reached. Finally, it is worth observing that the experi-
ence tends to be very little localised. On a cold day we are
conscious of a general discomfort and lowering of physical tone,
and this is far more important to us than any sensation of cold-
ness at the surface of the skin or in the extremities, closely as

1 This concept is as old as Plato ; see The Philebus.
21

Conditions of Happiness

these may occupy our attention while our general bodily
temperature is still high.

This concept of a distinct type of hedonic experience arising
from the displacement of the body from a normal state can,
I suggest, be generalised to include a wide range of sensations.
The body consists of an elaborate nexus of chemical, physical
and electrical equilibria, precariously maintained by the supply
of new material and the removal of waste products as the body
uses up its resources in growth and action. Whenever the
supply falls short, whenever waste products are not removed
and whenever the energy is not utilised in action, a sense of ill-
being results for which I propose the name discomfort. Corre-
spondingly, whenever a movement towards normal equilibrium
takes place an experience of positive hedonic tone is recorded,
and this I shall call comfort.

The exact quality of the sensation depends on the particular
group of equilibria involved. One of the commonest is the
one we call hunger. Pleasure is experienced as the body
returns to repletion and if we are unwise enough to continue
eating past the proper point, the experience becomes disagree-
able. As before, normality is neutral in tone, it is only move-
ment towards and away from neutrality which is hedonically
toned. Similarly failure to remove waste products results in a
sense of ill-being, whereas normality is not actively agreeable
but merely neutral on the hedonic scale. This state of
normality is, however, marked by a powerful sense of physical
well-being. _

This brings us to a new concept of perfect health as the
maximum of physical well-being instead of merely the absence
of gross lesions or malfunctions as at present. Owing to our
unwillingness to recognise discomfort as an experience in its
own right, we tend to be extraordinarily apathetic about suffering
it. Few people in a modern population can claim that perfection
of function which we call perfect physical well-being, and since
perfect health is an important element in happiness they are by
so much removed from attaining it.

It must be emphasised that the normality of the body is a

22

Hierarchy of Needs

dynamic, not a static, concept. The body does not simply
require to be maintained at a certain temperature. It requires
to maintain itself. It is an engine consuming fuel and producing
energy. It maintains the* correct chemical equilibria only by
a continuous process of feeding material in at one end and drain-
ing off the products of metabolism at the other. Normality
consists in the normal performance of these functions. If they
could be arrested, as by a stop-motion photograph, the result
would not be normality, even though the relation of the parts
was absolutely normal. Normality, in fact, is a temporal as well
as a spatial concept.

This perhaps explains the satisfaction experienced from the
mere use of the body so noticeable in growing children, who,
having learned an action or discovered a potentiality, exercise
it repeatedly with great delight. And I think it explains the
satisfaction derived from what one may label titillations, such
as stroking. The pleasure of being stroked (like the pleasure
of scents and tastes) cannot be convincingly attributed to a
nfaiQcooit; or return towards normality. It may, however, be
partly explained as a mere exercise of function and partly,
I think, on aesthetic grounds, as we are about to see.

And all this is equally true of the superphysical functions of the
body-mind combination. Man requires to exercise his functions
of feeling, thinking and achieving if he is to attain normality.

Maybe we should go further, for it is now generally recognised
that a human being consists of an inseparable combination of
body and mind, each influencing the other and in turn being
influenced by it. We must admit, therefore, a concept of
psychological normality a normality of functioning and
recognise the existence of a general discomfort, both mental
and physical, accompanying both mental and physical dys-
functions.

But if the hedonic tone is not conveyed by the nerves, how is
it experienced ? There seems no alternative but to suppose that
it is felt as a direct experience of the body-mind combination. We
have to concede that it is conscious of disturbance of function
because it is a change in it itself. This, at the moment, is a

23

Conditions of Happiness

strictly unorthodox viewpoint, even though the evidence has
been pointing in this direction for some time. 1

So much for comfort and discomfort: now let us consider
an aesthetic experience.

iv ^Esthetic Experience

Let us take the case of a musical chord. A chord consists of
a number of pure notes ; if the frequencies of these component
notes are harmonically related, the sensation experienced by a
listener is pleasant, and if they are not it is unpleasant. Similar
considerations apply if we consider notes ranged consecutively
in time. If we play seven notes of the scale, the eighth is expected
and the substitution of some other note seems hedonically
negative. Note that the hedonic tone of the experience seems to
depend not on the stimuli themselves but on their harmonious
arrangement. If harmonious seems to be a question-begging
word we can define it in terms of mathematical relation-
ships.

So here again we have a case where the stimulus is neutral,
and the human being's reaction is pleasant or unpleasant
according to whether it contributes to his inner harmony
or not.

Similar considerations seem to apply to constructions or the
representations of constructions, which are aesthetically pleas-
ing when the proportions are harmonious, and to combinations
of colours. (I* seems necessary to add, however, that aesthetic
experiences must be related to the total horizon of experience.
Thus a discord may be permissible and valuable in the course
of a symphony, just as a bitter ingredient may be of value in
cooking. More than this, a piece of music, itself charming, may
be tasteless in a particular human situation, as a waltz at a
funeral. And, of course, monotonous repetition stales even the
most delightful experience.)

Or take the case of touch. A light touch (provided the general
emotional situation is not unfavourable) is hedonically neutral,
1 See Adrian, 1947, op. cit.

24

Hierarchy of Needs

but a rhythmic series of light touches stroking or patting is
generally regarded as pleasant. Here again we find pleasure in
the harmonious or rhythmic arrangement of hedonically
neutral stimuli.

But while these experiences are aesthetically determined, our
response to them depends on our capacity to appreciate com-
plex arrangements in space and time. The history of art,
especially perhaps of music, is one of artists putting forward
more and more subtle arrangements and the public failing at
first to find anything pleasing in them. (The orchestra which
was to give the first performance of Schubert's Ninth Sym-
phony, the great C Major, refused to continue rehearsals, to
take but one example.) So that as regards this category, our
capacity for pleasure and unpleasure is to some extent
within our power to develop.

How then are we to describe these experiences? Are they
simply physical pleasures ? obviously not. It seems that they
have, as it were, a foot in either camp. They are rooted in gross
physical stimuli but blossom in the airy medium of the mind.
I propose, therefore, to call them psycho-physical pleasures
(or pleasures, for short). Each of them, of course, has its
counterpart in an unpleasure: the chord is balanced by the
discord and the perfume by the stink. In short, it looks as if
aesthetic needs must be counted as a distinct category.

v Emotions

Acutest of all sources of pleasure are the emotions. There is
the bliss of being united with the person one loves and the
agony of separation; the joy of achievement and the misery
of frustration ; the bliss of security and the tortures of anxiety
and guilt. I propose, therefore, to call them miseries and blisses.

Because they are so important to us, I want to examine and
classify this group of experiences in some detail. But to do so
at this point would mean postponing my general conclusion
about motivation for so many pages that the reader might well
be excused for losing the thread of the argument. I propose

C.H. 3 25

Conditions of Happiness

therefore, to leave the detailed treatment of this group to the
next chapter and proceed without further ado to a consideration
of the relative importance of these categories.

vi Relative Importance

Bearing in mind that the various types of motive we have been
considering rarely exist in isolation, but are abstractions from situ-
ations which may contain elements of all of them, we can schem-
atise the factors which influence men's behaviour as follows:

1. Pain

2. Comfort/Discomfort (Physical)

3. Pleasure/Unpleasure (Psycho-physical)

4. Bliss/Misery (Psychical)

In practice man makes a deliberate estimate of all these
factors, weighing one against another, and regulates his behav-
iour accordingly. However, in so doing he does not regard them
as exactly equivalent. The discrimination he makes is a little
difficult to express precisely in non-mathematical terms. To
simplify the exposition let us speak in broad terms of physical
and emotional factors.

Broadly, then, physical factors make a more urgent claim on
man's attention, but emotional factors provide him with his
ultimate motives. The mistake people make is to suppose that
because physical needs are more urgent they are therefore more
final. They think that because a man will die if he goes without
food but will not die if he goes without love 1 therefore hunger
is a more fundamental motive than love. But consider the case
of a man who, while driving to a concert, finds his petrol tank
almost empty and stops to fill it, at the cost of missing the
first few minutes of the performance. We cannot conceivably

1 As a matter of fact this assertion may not be wholly true. Men may
contrive to do without normal love but only by employing substituted
or making neurotic adaptations or taking refuge in psychosis. When a
person has centred all his emotional life on a single love-object and
that object (person) is removed by fate, the partner especially if no
longer young may fail to make an adaptation and will die 'of a broken
heart.' There are some well-attested instances of this.

26

Hierarchy of Needs

assert that this shows that his desire for petrol is more funda-
mental than his desire to attend the concert. He only wants the
petrol as a means towards getting to the concert, and the latter
is unquestionably his primary motive. So also a lover, looking
for his beloved, will ignore the claims of hunger and exhaustion
for a time but will finally stop for food and rest. This does not
mean that he values food above his beloved, merely that he
realises he will be unable to succeed in his primary aim, an
emotional one, unless he first ministers to the physical vehicle
of his emotions.

Man's behaviour thus displays a continual dichotomy. He is
constantly being diverted from his main purpose emotional
satisfaction to deal with annoying but urgent needs. Pain is
most effective in distracting him, discomfort less so, and
unpleasure least. Conversely, the blisses are more rewarding
than the pleasures, and the pleasures more so than the comforts.
Thus, to take but a single instance, if it requires an unpleasure
of strength x to distract a man from a specified pleasure, it will
require a discomfort of something more than x, or a bliss of
something less, to achieve the same result.

Certain minor exceptions to this thesis are well explained by
Bostock's theory of the neural energy constant. 1 According to
this theory the amount of energy available to the centres in the
brain which handle sensation, feeling and cognition is constant,
so that when any one centre is being fully used the others are
temporarily in abeyance. It then takes a fairly powerful stimulus
to reconnect them to the circuit. Thus, when we are listening
to a concert we remain unaware for some time that we are
growing stiff or hungry. When this fact finally breaks in on our
attention it at once reduces the amount of attention we are able
to give to the conceit.

We now have in our hands the outline of a theory of motiva-
tion. We see man engaged in a delicate assessment of the seven
types of experience open to him, pursuing the more agreeable
and being distracted by the less agreeable. But unfortunately

1 See J. Bostock : The Neural Energy Constant: a study of the basis
of consciousness, 1 93 1 .

27

Conditions of Happiness

there is another complication : he does not respond to them in a
simple automatic way, like a needle to a magnet. His behaviour
is dependent on the process by which he learns from experience.
He can only seek to avoid the experiences he knows to be
unpleasant, and to attain the experiences he knows to be pleasant.
As a result he constantly neglects sources of positive feeling
which he has never tried and mis-spends his energies in pur-
suing less rewarding goals. He fails to realise his potentialities.
Thus a man who has never discovered the appeal of good music
may pass his whole life without benefit of this source of satis-
faction. Similarly those who have never experienced the ' oceanic
feeling' are unaware that they are missing anything, although
those who have done so earnestly strive to repeat the experience.

Hence one of the errors man frequently makes is to dally
too long with negative activities. For instance, he inevitably
devotes much of his time to obtaining food and shelter, a
course which is at first highly rewarding. He then makes the
mistake of continuing the same pattern of action, devoting his
energies to acquiring ever more elaborate food, clothing and
shelter when he would be better advised to switch the balance
of his energies into seeking pleasures and blisses. For it is these
which really matter, and it is the task of realising them which
will chiefly concern us.

In fine, man is not, in the full meaning of the term, a
pleasure-seeking animal. Though he certainly seeks out little bits
of pleasure with which he is acquainted, he does not move so
as effectively to maximise his pleasure as a whole. He seeks
pleasures but not Pleasure. (Here, of course, I am using the
word in the usual dictionary sense.) It follows that it is vain to
expect that maximum pleasure will be attained automatically.
Only by taking pains can we develop the full potentialities for
happiness which are within us.

vii Nature of Happiness

In the light of this analysis, pleasure (using the word in the
ordinary, vague sense) appears as an evanescent bonus received

28

Hierarchy of Needs

in the course of return to a normal neutral state, departure from
which was painful. We come, therefore, to the paradoxical
conclusion that if anyone pursues pleasure with complete
success he is bound to end up in a state in which pleasure is
unobtainable, except by the drastic course of deliberately
abandoning the state and working his way back to it.

Since, in the nature of things, we are all far removed from
such a beneficent state of neutrality, we can justifiably pursue
pleasure, providing that we attach greater value to the high level
satisfactions than to the lower, and do not let the pursuit of the
latter hinder us from maximising the former.

In the light of this analysis, the ancient Platonic controversy
whether men should, as Philebus claimed, pursue pleasure or
whether, as Socrates maintained, the Good Life consists of
neutrality diversified by harmless pleasures, is seen to have been
no controversy at all. A case could be made against the pursuit
of pleasure just so far as the speaker conceived pleasure in terms
of the lower-grade pleasures. On the other hand, in making a
case for neutrality, the opponent was unwittingly accepting a
wisely-ordered pursuit of pleasure, since neutrality can only be
attained by passing through pleasure. In the outcome, Plato's
solution coincides with the practical possibilities of the situation:
neutrality as far as possible, with periodic bonuses of pleasure,
when, in any particular respect, an advance is made towards
neutrality in spheres where neutrality has not been achieved.

And so at last we come to the definition of happiness. You
can, if you choose, define it as the maximisation of pleasure
as the most rapid progress towards that final neutral state of
which we have spoken : or you can define it as existence in that
state. The dictionary definition, *a state of contentment/ tends
to favour the latter.

Many present-day attempts to define happiness unhesitat-
ingly choose the former: for instance, the definition which
calls it 'the devotion of all one's energies to attaining the best
possible goal.' But if we are going to define it in terms of
progress towards something we must cast the net much wider
than this. We cannot possibly afford to leave out the many forms

29

Conditions of Happiness

of happiness which have nothing to do with achieving goals
in the ordinary sense of the word : to lie in the sun on a warm
day, to hear a splendid symphony, or to return home hungry
and find a satisfying meal. Happiness, cannot be pinned down
by a single-pointed definition. It comes in many guises. Some
may be humble and temporary in their effects, to be sure. To
say that we should not confine our attention to them is not to
say that we should scorn them altogether.

But whether we choose a definition in terms of ends or one
in terms of means makes no difference to our purpose. Since
the one leads to the other, the conditions of happiness are
identical for either definition.

vin Instincts and Drives

As I have already suggested, the scheme of needs at which we
have arrived provides us with the basis for a theory of motiva-
tion. Since it is an unfamiliar one, it may be advisable to com-
pare it with standard theories and to mention some of the
complicating factors.

Most people, I find, still have at the backs of their minds the
view of motivation put forward nearly half a century ago by
William McDougall, although it is now regarded as obsolete.
People say: 'the instinct of self-preservation came to my
rescue,' or they say: 'it must be her maternal instincts.' The
idea that people were endowed with quite general urges or
drives of this kind was started by William McDougall, and he
most unfortunately called them instincts. He postulated four-
teen such drives or instincts, such as the instinct of self-
preservation or flight, the instinct of pugnacity, the instinct of
repugnance and the protective instinct, the instinct of self-
assertion and the instinct of self-abasement. Today few psycho-
logists still believe these drives exist but, even if they do, they
certainly aren't instincts. We can see why the moment we
consider a true instinct.

The characteristic of a true instinct is that it is untaught,
elaborate, and performed quite blindly. The non-intelligent,
automatic nature of instinctive behaviour has been shown by

30

Hierarchy of Needs

many experiments. For instance, one of the digger wasps
buries its egg in a hole, and buries with it a paralysed grass-
hopper as provender for the offspring when it emerges. After
dragging the grasshopper to the mouth of the hole, it leaves
it outside while it enters the hole to make a final inspection. If,
while it is in the hole, the grasshopper is withdrawn a short
distance, the wasp, on emerging, drags it up to the mouth of
the hole again and then repeats the inspection. It can be made
to repeat this behaviour a number of times. Again, another
variety of digger wasp always drags the paralysed grasshopper
by its antennae. If these are cut off it is baffled and makes no
attempt to drag it by its limbs.

Numerous cases like these make it clear that the wasp is not
animated by any generalised instinct to care for its offspring,
but by a quite specific instinct to perform a series of precisely-
ordained actions in a certain sequence. Similarly birds are not
animated merely to build some kind of a nest, but to build a
quite specific and often very complicated type of nest, varying
from species to species. And if reared in isolation they are able,
untaught, to repeat the pattern.

Having made the distinction between a completely general-
ised drive and a rigid, automatic sequence of instinctive actions,
I do not think we need to push the distinction too far. It is the
insects which display these patterns at their most elaborate;
when we look at mammals we find behaviour, like nest-building
or the mating habits of the eel, which, though limited in certain
respects, also displays a considerable amount of flexibility and
intelligence. The bird, for instance, can incorporate unusual
materials in its nest, and does not get stuck half-way through
if the action doesn't go according to plan.

Some people, dominated by the idea of the complexity of
the instincts of insects, have denied that man displays any
instincts at all. It may be that the adult, with his enormous
cerebral cortex, has taken over all or almost all the functions
which are left to instinct, but Claremont has argued convinc-
ingly that instincts exist in children, and if we admit it in the
child it would be rash to exclude it too dogmatically in the

3*

Conditions of Happiness

adult. 1 Without instinct it is very difficult to explain the insight
with which children turn their attention to precisely those
activities which are necessary for their development at the stage
they have reached. We have to explafti, for instance, why the
new-born infant turns towards milk, why it sucks, why it
rejects other foods. And we have to explain why the slightly
older child practises producing different kinds of sounds, until
it obtains the full control of its vocal chords needed for speech.
Later we see children trying to walk, then practising balancing,
and so on.

The odd thing about instincts the thing which makes it
necessary to place them in a section by themselves is that they
do not act continuously, but rear their heads unexpectedly,
distorting the normal pattern of behaviour.

When this happens, the demand of the instinct is so strong
that it may drive the animal, or person, concerned to fulfil
the demand even at the cost of severe suffering and frustration
of the more normal demands. Thus the lemming, driven on its
periodical migration, plunges into the sea and is drowned.

This description aptly covers the sexual behaviour of man,
which arises periodically with such force as to drive him to
actions which he deeply regrets when the urge has passed, and
which may damage his chances of happiness for the rest of his
life.

Since the mechanism by which instincts operate is a complete
mystery, no one can say whether they should be regarded as
a special instance of one of the basic types of situation which I
have described, or as an additional one in their own right.

One further point : many people use the word instinct when
they really mean intuition. They say 'I instinctively disliked
him,' or 'she felt instinctively that we would come.' Now
intuition, if it exists (though most scientists would scout the
idea), must certainly be reckoned as a modifier of the thoughts
and calculations we make about how we shall behave these
thoughts being in their turn modifiers of our fundamental
responses to pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

1 C. A. Claremont, The Innumerable Instincts of Man, 1940.

32

Hierarchy of Needs
ix Modifying Factors

Orthodox scientists, committed as they are to explaining man
as a piece of elaborate machinery, place undue weight on
physiological factors in behaviour, and periodically make the
claim that these are capable by themselves of accounting for his
actions. I suggest, however, that the influence of such factors
extends only to controlling the speed and accuracy of man's
responses, and does not affect their fundamental nature.

Such exaggerated claims are most often made for the endo-
crine glands. 1 There is, perhaps, one case in which the influence
of the endocrines does seem to come very near to controlling
the nature, and not merely the strength and speed of response :
that of the glands which regulate sexuality. But the subject is
not as simple as it looks. First there is the fact that a reversal
of bodily sexual characteristics does not always imply a reversal
of the psychological attitude. 2 Second, the fact that what we
regard as the attitudes appropriate to each sex are to a large
extent conventions of the society in which we live. Thus, we,
in the European culture area (of which North America,
Australia, etc., are daughters), feel that women should wear
skirts and that men should do the work. But in many parts of
the world men wear skirts (e.g. the Scottish Highlands,
Albania) and in others women do the bulk of the hard labour.
Margaret Mead has shown in some detail how very largely the
whole psychological attitude to sex-distinctions is subject to
social influence and customs. 3

My own impression is that there are elements of both active
and passive attitudes in the character of both sexes, and that
varying physical, psychological and social conditions tend to
bring out one more than another, at different times. In this way, a
change in the quantity of one attitude present may cause a change
in behaviour which appears at first sight as a change in its quality.

A very similar mechanism is at work in the striking apparent

1 See, for instance, L. Berman, The Glands Regulating Personality,
1928.

2 A. P. Cawadias, Hermaphrodites, 1943.

8 M. Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, 1935.

33

Conditions of Happiness

changes of personality which occur after damage to the cerebral
cortex after the operation of prefrontal lobotomy, in which
nerve-paths in the forebrain are cut, and to a lesser extent
when drugs such as alcohol or sodiumtpentothal are used. These
all depend on the fact that the outer cloak of the brain, the
cerebral cortex, 'the seat of reason/ exercises a restraining
influence on the central part, more particularly the hypothal-
amus, which is the seat of emotion and desire. 1 If the cortex
is damaged, or if its action is inhibited by drugs, striking
changes in the personality result.

Thus the Lancet of 1942 (Vol. II, p. 717) records the case of
a successful N.C.O. whose aggressive temperament was
effectively restrained by army discipline. He received a head
injury which caused basal atrophy of the frontal lobes and
became an undisciplined, aggressive character of little value
either to the army or to society. 2

Food has also been held to determine character, chiefly on
the grounds that it affects the endocrines, but also through its
effects on general metabolism. 8 Here again the effect seems on
examination to be quantitative rather than qualitative.

Similar remarks apply to the influence of climate and other
physiographic factors. 4

Perhaps the influence most widely thought to determine
behaviour is heredity. But we must remember that the Mende-
lian theory of inheritance the theory on which all modern
genetics is based does not claim to account for the inheritance,
or apparent inheritance, of psychological characteristics. Its
scope is confined to physical characteristics, such as body-size,
skin-colour, and the clotting power of the blood. The only way
in which it could possibly touch the inheritance of physical
characteristics would be where they could be shown to be

1 See, especially, H. R. Grinker's contribution to the Journal of
Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. I, No. i.

2 Quoted by V. H. Mottram, The Physical Basis of Personality, 1944.
8 E.g. L. Berman, Food and Character, 1933.

4 See, for instance, S. F. Markham, Climate and the Energy of
Nations] and for a more general treatment E. Huntington, Civilisation
and Climate, 1924; Mainsprings of Civilisation, 1945.

34

Hierarchy of Needs

secondary consequences of physical make-up. Thus the thyroid
type of personality (see below) would seem to be inherited if
the disposition to have a large thyroid gland were inherited;
similarly the inheritance Qf a Jewish cast of countenance would
tend to expose the owners to the same social influence as Jews,
and this might cause certain similarities in the behaviour of
successive generations.

Yet the fact that special dispositions often do seem to run in
families, in a rather erratic way the musical genius of the Bach
family is the classic instance suggests that there may possibly
be principles of psychical inheritance about which we know
nothing at present. Moreover, we have well-investigated cases of
twins separated at birth who have grown up not only physically
but psychically identical displaying the same taste in clothes,
entering the same trade, marrying the same kind of girl at the
same time. 1 Some light may be thrown on this mystery by the
remarkable fact reported by Frances Wickes that children have
been known to dream dreams reflecting the contents not of their
own but of their mother's unconscious mind. 2 From this fact,
which is vouched for by C. G. Jung, it would seem that some
kind of psychic identity may exist between children and parents,
which argues that some kind of psychic inheritance may take
place.

Factors such as these may influence the speed and accuracy
and even the superficial character of individual responses to
situations causing pleasure or the reverse, but there is no need
to suppose that they fundamentally alter its nature.

There are, however, two other modifying influences which
are of far greater importance because they do condition the
nature of our response, and which are still insufficiently under-
stood. The first of these is the unconscious forces in the human
mind. Though they have come to exert enormous influence on

1 H. H. Newman, Twins and Super -Twins, 1942.

2 F. Wickes, The Inner World of Childhood y 1927. Though this report
is vouched for by Prof. Jung in his preface to Wickes' book, there has
never been, so far as I know, any planned attempt to confirm or refute
this remarkable claim.

35

Conditions of Happiness

certain specialist workers, they are still a closed book, or a much
misunderstood one, to many of those who think they are capable
of directing our affairs. The second is the influence on our
behaviour of the customs and conventions of the society into
which we are born. Because we are so used to them, we take
them for granted even when they are quite extraordinary and
find it very difficult to see them in perspective. It takes a course
in comparative anthropology to jerk us into seeing them in their
true light. I shall, later, devote a chapter to each of these
immensely important factors in human behaviour and try to
show how far they help, and how far obstruct, our search for
happiness.

Ill

SUPERPHYSICAL NEEDS

i Love and Affection n Love and Identification in The 'Oceanic

Feeling' iv Nature of Emotion v Mastery and Frustration

vi Creativity vn Consistency and Variety vm Self-Determination

ix Freud's View x Conclusion

I Love and Affection

JUST as man needs material things and the right material
environment to maintain his physical body so also he needs the
right emotional environment to maintain his physical life. He
is a social animal. Provided he has not received such severe
emotional shocks that he prefers to withdraw from all contact
with others for fear of more, he welcomes social contact: more
than this, he hungers after affection and feels the need to bestow
it also. Failing success in this, he falls ill. Analytical psycholo-
gists agree that it is problems concerning the receipt and
bestowal of affection which underlie most, if not all, neurosis. 1

I am thinking here of all the many forms of favourable
feeling, ranging from tolerance through approval and affection
to the deepest love. We have no satisfactory generic term for
these, except possibly the rather clumsy 'other-regard,' so
I propose to employ the word love in this general sense.

We shall be quite safe, therefore, in naming love as one of
man's fundamental needs.

Modifying factors frequently disguise the human being's
innate thirst for affection very often people who have failed

1 Though they disagree about what affection is. The Freudians, who
regard it as aim-inhibited sex, naturally express their views in the form :
neurosis is caused by frustrating the sexual impulse. It is equally
logical, however, to regard love as the primary phenomenon and sexual
activity as a channel for its expression. This view, originated by Ian
Suttie, is followed here. See I. Suttie, Origins of Love and Hate, 1935.

37

Conditions of Happiness

to obtain it react into an attitude of despising it, on the 'sour
grapes' principle but the case-book of the psycho-analyst
affords copious evidence of the universality of this demand at
the deeper levels of the personality.

By a fortunate chance, people not only feel the need to be
loved, they also need to bestow love. But for this, our chances
of obtaining the affection and approval we need would be slim
indeed. We all know how childless women tend to lavish affec-
tion on pet animals; how people who have failed to make a
satisfactory relationship with the other sex find it necessary to
bestow affection on their own sex, or on themselves; and that
prisoners in solitary confinement will make friends of birds,
rats or even toads.

People adopt devious devices to assuage this need when the
normal outlets are blocked. They may divert their emotions on
to a public body or organisation a club, regiment, town or
country and are more likely to do so if the organisation returns
their devotion with privileges or marks of honour. Others
direct their affection onto their deity and, rightly or wrongly,
believe themselves to be loved in return. Another ingenious
solution is that known to analysts as narcissism that is, love
of oneself. Though this would seem to satisfy simultaneously
the desire to love and the desire to be loved, it does not appear
in practice to offer a truly satisfactory solution, though it does
represent a successful adaptation of the kind we call neurotic. 1

Psycho-analysis has brought out, more especially in its
application to children, the way in which the ideas of security
and love are fused. As we shall stress again in the next chapter,
the infant knows but two states : to be warm, fed and loved on
the one hand, to be cold, hungry and unloved on the other.
Hence, when we speak of a desire to be loved we might speak with
equal justification of a desire for security. Conversely, the desire
to love is equally a desire to sustain and protect the loved object.

Love, in this generalised sense of 'other-regard,' appears in
many guises: paternal, filial, sexual, platonic as well as love of
God, of country, or of self. I do not think we need suppose that

1 The nature of neurosis is discussed fully in the next chapter.

38

Superphysical Needs

there is any qualitative difference in the love exhibited. It is
sufficient if we suppose it coinciding to a greater or lesser degree
with sexual motives, and limited by socially-defined responsi-
bilities. Thus the pareat obviously finds more scope for
exhibiting the protective aspect of love than does the child
toward the parent. The child must exhibit its protective feelings
towards dolls or pets. But there is one form of 'other-regard'
which deserves special mention as I propose to discuss it again
at a later stage : this is the approval of a group. It is clear that
men feel a strong desire to win and preserve the approval of the
people among whom they live, more especially those whom
they see daily and with whom they have established a social
relationship. It is true that a very intense personal love may
swamp the desire for social approval, so that lovers count the
world well lost for love, but this is exceptional.

How far this desire for approval is motivated by a deep-lying
doubt about one's own value is a point to which I shall recur.
But it seems to be the case that even among peoples singularly
unmarked by a lack of self-confidence, the desire for public
approval remains strong.

"Love is quenched wrath/' said an old mystic, but hate is
the emotion which we more usually regard as the antonym of
love. Is hate an emotion in its own right, so that men have a
'need to hate' just as they have a need to love ? It does not seem
so. Hate is rather a converted form of love, which appears when
love is blocked. The sour-grapes principle, by which men reject
what they cannot obtain, operates consistently in the psycholo-
gical sphere. Though we do not know why this should be so,
the conversion of love to hatred is clearly an example of it.

II Love and Identification

It is characteristic of the emotion we call love that we wish
to place ourselves in the closest possible relationship with the
loved object The small child often tries to incorporate the
things he loves in himself by the crude but effective process of
swallowing. In this he only repeats the pattern of his infancy

39

Conditions of Happiness

when he incorporates part of his mother (her milk) in himself
while flooded with a warm emotion towards her.

But this attempt to identify the loved object with ourselves
is not only a physical one. We also make his or her interests and
well-being our own in fact, since physical incorporation is
impossible and even proximity can only be spasmodic, the
psychological part of the operation is the more important.

Freud has written of a process which is curiously similar
to this, which he called identification. He observed that small
children, for instance, modelled themselves on their parents,
and that people who are in love feel a hurt to the loved one
almost as painfully as if it were themselves who were hurt.
Since Freud did not admit the existence of love as a primary
reality (regarding it as aim-inhibited sex) he confined himself
to naming the process identification, and leaving it at that. But
what is the difference? Identification is only a word to label
the behaviour of people who love. In the next chapter we shall
be concerned with some of the uses to which Freud put the
concept, so I want to stress that I regard it simply as a descrip-
tion and an enlightening one of the nature of the love process.

Since loving involves this process of identification we feel
pain when those who are dear to us are hurt and pleasure when
they feel pleasure. This naturally drastically modifies our
behaviour, causing us sometimes to seek the good of others
rather than ourselves, in contradiction to our normal pattern of
action. Obvious as this must be to the ordinary reader, to the
behaviourist it is far from obvious. Since he cannot admit the
existence of love (except as a by-product of action) he is baffled
by unselfish behaviour, which seems to him contrary to the
thesis that man pursues his own pleasure. To the ordinary man
his difficulties will seem strangely artificial.

It is worth noting, however, that identification is not such a
perfectly simple process as might appear. As R. G. Coulson has
pointed out, it can take place in three ways. 1 With emphasis
on the other person, with emphasis on oneself, or with a

1 B. J. Reynolds and R. G. Coulson, Human Needs in Modem
Society, 1938.

40

Superphysical Needs

reasonable balance between the two. The person, often a woman,
who has completely sunk herself in someone else and lost all
individuality of her own is a type most people have encountered.
The opposite extreme, in which other people appear as mere
appendages of oneself, is common in very young children and
certain forms of insanity. It seems reasonable to maintain that
either extreme is equally unproductive of true happiness.
Orthodox religion, however, has tended to approve complete
self-abnegation, especially where the loved object is the deity,
and it may be that this is an exceptional case.

Coulson maintains that the establishment of a reasonable
identification on another person is positively essential to full
happiness. This, I think, we can accept with the qualification
that people appear to be able to identify themselves with the
interests of a group a club, a regiment, a society, a church,
or their country and to feel pride in its successes or anger if
it is harmed or insulted just as they would with living persons.
It is noteworthy that when an identification of this sort takes
place, it does not lead ipso facto to any strong identification
with individual members, though this may occur, of course,
in the ordinary way should they come in contact with the
person concerned. If a club member is insulted, the ardent
supporter of the club may resent the implied insult to the club
even when he dislikes the individual and is rather glad to see
him humiliated.

This identification with individuals or groups leads to per-
orming service and it is an interesting question whether people
have a positive need to serve others, as is sometimes asserted.
In answering the question we must distinguish between service
which yields rewards to the server, and which is therefore, not
strictly speaking, unselfish and complete self-abnegation.
Obviously, many people serve groups because their service
gives them status, security, power and purpose. And if this
were all that service offered, we would have to class it as no
more than a useful device for achieving personal ends. But the
true rewards of service arise from the identification: the
pleasures and successes of the object are felt as pleasures and

C.H. 4 41

Conditions of Happiness

successes by the subject. Thus, to speak of a need to serve is
no more than to speak of a need to love.

Where the rewards of identification and service play their
greatest role is in the case of people jvho can no longer achieve
direct satisfaction. The man whose health or education limits
him to a mediocre job may find immense satisfaction in the
success of his son, the weakly or invalid man in the prowess
of his athletic friend. Especially for women, who are often
prevented by the cares of housewifery or by social taboos from
achieving personal fulfilment, self-realisation through others is
a heaven-sent alternative. While for those who are leading a
satisfying personal life, the power of identification with others
opens up still further opportunities for satisfaction.

The conclusion which I think we can draw from all this is
that society must do all it can to help people to achieve personal
identifications, since these are potentially very rewarding, but
that it must supplement this by providing plenty of oppor-
tunities for identification with the interests of groups for the
benefit of those whom circumstances debar from the personal
form of service. And it need hardly be added that the purpose
for which those groups are organised must be a good one it
must contribute as much as possible to the happiness of as many
people as possible.

Those of us who are more luckily situated may regard being
'wedded to one's work' as we aptly say as a poor substitute
for more personal relationships, or we may detect a masochistic
element ii\ so much self-sacrifice. Be that as it may, service
plays a major part in the attainment of happiness and the
happiest societies are those which keep this fact in view.

But Coulson goes further than asserting a need to iden-
tify. He asserts that the area of identification must be extended
and extended so as to include more and more people if the
maximum psychic satisfaction is to be obtained. In his view,
the process starts, as a rule, with marriage. Just about the time
that each spouse has exhausted the resources of the other's
personality children appear on the scene and create new
opportunities for identification.

42

Superphysical Needs

In a well-designed society, McDougall argued, there will be
a series of well-graded steps leading up from the family, through
in-group and clan to the largest unit conceivable by its members.
As the individual becomes older he will find satisfaction in
identifying his interests with larger and larger groups until the
whole tribe or nation is the subject of his emotional life.

In this, however, he took up a view opposed to that of
Bergson, who felt that there was a sharp distinction between
the Closed' morality (as he called it) of loyalty to a limited
social group and the 'open' morality of universal love. He held
that the transition from one to the other could not be achieved
by a gradual widening of the circle but involved a radically
different mode of feeling. 1

I am inclined to agree with Bergson. You have only to look
around you to see that people can scarcely resist establishing
emotional links with people they see constantly and share
experiences with, but that they have enormous difficulty in
feeling any emotion about people whom they have never met.
Considerable numbers of people in England today do not
worry in any real sense about the starving populations of Europe
(about which they hear a good deal) and still fewer worry about
the state of the Mexican peon or the Malay. And that this is not
due to a form of patriotic allegiance, or a sense that charity
begins at home, is shown by the fact that whenever such people
come in personal contact with cases of suffering their emotions
are aroused provided they are not among those whose power
to feel any emotion at all has been aborted by some mishap.

It is true that by a considerable intellectual effort or by a feat
of imagination, certain people make themselves aware of the
plight of others, and feel obliged to act in a broadly humanitarian
way. This is admirable as far as it goes, but it is not properly
a case of universal love. The evidence seems to be that universal
love, when it comes, bursts on one in a sudden revelation a
blinding awareness of one's identity with all living creatures.

But I am beginning to anticipate the next section.

1 H. Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Eng.
trans., 1935.

43

Conditions of Happiness

in The 'Oceanic Feeling'

There is still one more primary source of satisfaction which
I think we must recognise, even though it is not always included
in the psychological textbooks. This is the unique experience
which Freud recognised under the name of the 'oceanic feeling/ l
Tennyson's description of it is well known:

*I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but
a kind of waking trance this for lack of a better word I
have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have
been alone. This has come upon me through repeating my
own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once,
as it were out of the intensity of consciousness of individ-
uality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away
into boundless being, and this is not a confused state, but the
clearest of the clearest, and the surest of the surest, the
weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death
was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality
(if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.
I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the
state is utterly beyond words ?'

The existence of this experience is widely attested. Dr. P. M.
Bucke has collected a number of instances, including his own
experience, in the book Cosmic Consciousness, 1901 ; Wordsworth
refers to it in the 'Lines composed above Tintern Abbey' ; and
there are numerous references in the literature of Christian
mysticism^ especially that of St. Augustine and St. John of the
Cross, to say nothing of material from the Orient. 2 Anthropology
also bears witness that such states are not uncommon in certain
cultures which place high value on them and it is also estab-
lished that certain drugs, also starvation, are of assistance in
inducing them. 3 So we may imagine that they would be much
commoner in our culture if it were not our practice to regard
them with suspicion and repugnance.

1 S. Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents, 1930.

2 See Dom Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, 1922, for a review;
also W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902.

8 Notably nitrous oxide and mescal. See H. Kluver, Mescal, 1928.

44

Superphysical Needs

The difficulty in dealing with this phenomenon here is that
it is generally interpreted in religious terms, as a reunion of the
individual with the divine spirit, and this raises issues outside
the field of scientific enquiry. But this is no excuse for ignoring
it altogether. The phenomenon exists and we must reckon with
it in our calculations. Ignoring the religious aspect, then, what
do we know about it as an observed experience ? We must, I am
sure, avoid the old-fashioned error of dubbing it 'subjective 1
and disposing of it, classing it along with dreams and appari-
tions as an illusion. Of course it is subjective: so is our awareness
of light vibrations as colour or air vibrations as sound. Our whole
experience is subjective. Imagination is subjective, but we do not
deny the importance of cultivating it. Equally the oceanic
feeling is an experience which perhaps we should cultivate, like
imagination, or avoid, like nightmares, but certainly not dismiss.
Though in the nature of things we can have no dispassionate or
objective evidence of such a state yet all observers seem to agree
on at least two things: that the feeling is one in which the
bounds of personality dissolve and there is a sense of unity with
all life and that the feeling is extremely pleasant in fact blissful.

This experience has also been described as the maximum of
feeling combined with the maximum of awareness. This
description must interest the psychologist, who knows that
feeling and awareness (cognition and orexis) are the two modes
of functioning of the mind. It suggests that it is a state when the
mind's potentialities are being realised to the fullest extent.

The subject is highly speculative, but it seems possible to fit
the oceanic experience into the same general framework as the
other effects we have been considering if we view it as a dissolu-
tion of the boundaries of the personality, so that the individuality
of the person concerned vanishes, and his being is merged in the
universal spirit or universal ground. In contrast, simple identi-
fication, such as is considered in the previous section, must
consist of a merging of two or more individual personalities,
so that they become included within a single boundary.
Formulated like this, the oceanic feeling is seen as a, special type
of identification an extension of identification to the utmost

45

Conditions of Happiness

limit through identification with the ground from which all
personalities are derived. As such, it would be an extreme
manifestation of love, which is how it appears to the Christian
mystics who write of it. This view vtould then lend support to
the Bergsonian view of universal love as being due to a develop-
ment of a somewhat different character from the love of a
limited group. Yet the distinction may not be so very sharp after
all. For if we can stretch the boundaries of our ego to include
more and more of other people, perhaps, like the skin of a
child's balloon, they will grow thinner and thinner and finally
burst. In this case Coulson's view is an adequate description
of one possible way of releasing the imprisoned ego the other
and quicker being to prick the balloon at an early stage. Thus,
these opposed theses can be made to meet in a new synthesis.

Needless to say, such an interpretation involves the assump-
tion of the real, objective existence of the personal spirit, or
soul, and of the divine spirit, and cannot be acceptable to those
scientists who view the personality merely as the sum-total of
a number of physiological forces and mechanisms.

I suggest that this phenomenon serves to explain certain
types of happiness which cannot be explained by reference to
achievement and to emotional relations with other persons.
Many writers have described a sense of release and tranquillity
which comes from the solitary contemplation of nature, and this
I believe to be simply a milder instance of what Tennyson and
the professional mystics experienced in acuter form. In addition,
a rather similar transcendence of personality seems to be
induced by listening to music and perhaps by other forms of
artistic experience.

But our culture, concentrated as it is on the material world,
condemns such experiences as 'unhealthy 1 and distrusts even
the milder manifestations just referred to. Few would be
prepared to accept the suggestion that such states should be
deliberately cultivated as a source of happiness. If, on the other
hand, it could be shown that this experience is not 'unhealthy/
it would be well worth reorienting the whole of life so as to
facilitate it, o great are its hedonic rewards. And this, no less,

Superphysical Needs

is the proposal made by the religion of yoga the word yoga
means 'joining' and refers to the joining of the individual with
the universal spirit. Western mysticism, though using images
drawn from Catholic theology, draws extraordinarily close to
oriental mysticism at this point. 1

If it can be established that the experience does actually
represent a reunion with a divine spirit, cultivation of the
experience becomes not merely permissible, but a duty. Failing
such knowledge, we can at least agree that a temperate use of
the experience is reasonable and desirable. Our lives should be
so arranged that we have periodic opportunities for tranquil
contemplation in environments which favour the development
of a sense of being (as the phrase so vividly puts it) 'at one with
the world' that is to say, chiefly in the depths of the country.

It seems possible that the oceanic experience may differ in one
important respect from those earthly pleasures we discussed in
the last chapter. These, we agreed, were generated in the process
of returning to a state of normality which was itself neutral.
Mystics seem agreed, however, that the mystical experience
endures: it is an end-state, not a transitional phenomenon. If
this be so, it becomes at once an objective beside which all
others are insignificant and futile. The problem of happiness
becomes immensely simple. The only relevant questions
remaining would be : is this experience open to everybody, and
how rapidly can it be attained ?

It is, therefore, on the assumption that complete preoccupa-
tion with mystical experience is not a practicable proposition
for the majority that this book, which deals only with the
ordinary psychical pleasures, is written.

iv Nature of Emotion

Just as in the case of pleasure, our thinking on the subject of
,emotion is confused by the loose way in which we use the word*
The word emotion is used to describe such feelings as joy,

1 For further parallels see G. Coster, Yoga and Western Psychology,
I934-

47

Conditions of Happiness

grief, anger, fear, pride, jealousy, love and hate. But are all
these indeed the same sort of thing ? Are they like the letters
of the alphabet, which though each is distinctively recog-
nisable are all comparable in nature*and function ?

A little consideration will show that they are not.

Love, anger and fear, are activities. There is, however, a
difference between love on the one hand, and anger or fear on
the other; the latter are responses to certain situations and
vanish when the situations are resolved. Thus, anger arises
whenever a programme is obstructed and fear when misfortune
threatens. In sharp contrast with this, love is an activity engaged
in as an end in itself. Anger and fear often arise when an attempt
to consummate love is obstructed; but the reverse does not
occur. In short, fear and anger are reactions, while love is an action . 1

Next, let us examine joy and grief. These are descriptions of
the -two extremes of hedonic tone. Joy is a state of extreme
pleasure, grief one of extreme unpleasure. We may say they
are adjectival in nature. To say that men 'need' joy is no more
than to say that they desire the fulfilment of their physical,
aesthetic and emotional programmes.

It is odd, incidentally, that these distinctions did not occur
to Prof. William James, the great proponent of the Lange

1 In a classic experiment Watson showed that the infants are capable
of only three emotions : love, when gratified ; anger, when the move-
ment of their limbs is obstructed ; and fear when left without support
or exposed to a loud noise.

All three art treated, you notice, as reactions to external situations,
but I have already given reasons for regarding love as something more
than that : the prisoner who loves a mouse, the mother who loves her
child, does not love it because of any gratification it has given them.

Nevertheless, the experiment does raise an interesting point since
it suggests that fear may be produced automatically and not from a
conscious evaluation of the dangers of the situation. I do not think that
this invalidates the treatment outlined here, because, once we accept
the existence of instinct, it is possible to admit the existence of an
instinctive or inherited* feeling that certain sensations portend danger
without denying the possibility of a conscious appreciation of it also.
In both cases it is a reaction to the situation and not an action. (See
J. B. Watson, Behaviourism, 2nd ed., 1931.)

Superphysical Needs

theory of the emotions. 'This theory, as most people know,
maintains that what we call an emotion is no more than the
sum-total of bodily changes which occur in ourselves, in given
circumstances, as they appear to us. This theory is always
illustrated with the case of fear. In fearful situations the
sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenals : adrenalin
pours into the bloodstream, speeding up the heart, raising
blood-sugar, inhibiting bowel action and generally preparing
the organism for flight. In Lange's view it is merely consciousness
of these changes which we call emotion. If a second instance is
needed, anger is chosen. But no attempt is made to describe the
bodily changes corresponding to pride, love and hate, joy and grief.
If any bodily changes occur, they are small and widely diffused.

So that even if we accept the James-Lange theory in respect
of fear and anger, it still does nothing to explain the primary
emotions love and hate.

However, recent work has rendered the James-Lange theory
untenable. Not only do animals from which the sympathetic
system has been removed continue to show signs of fear and
anger, but the evidence of encephalography is that emotion is,
in any case, centred in the mid-brain and not in the cerebral
cortex at all. 1 Moreover, as Ogden has pointed out, it is a
commonplace that we sometimes show all the bodily signs of
fear without experiencing the emotion. Modern observers note
that no emotion is felt when we are able to respond fully and
completely to a situation. It is only when response is blocked
by doubts or conflicts that emotion manifests. 2

The conclusion to be drawn from these distinctions is that
love is the only one out of all the so-called emotions which can
be described as a need. There is no need to hate, no need to fear
and no need to envy. They are but spontaneous reactions to
passing situations. But love is an activity, one of the primary
modes of functioning of the psyche, and as such a potentiality
of our nature which we must exercise if we are to be fully and
undistortedly human beings.

1 H. R. Grinker, Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine (Vol. I, No. i).
8 C. K. Ogden, The ABC of Psychology, 1929.

49

Conditions of Happiness

But while there are no other emotions which can be regarded
as primary modes of activity, or needs, yet there are one or two
other distinctive needs which appear to be quite fundamental,
and these I must now describe.

v Mastery and Frustration

Looking for fundamental characteristics of the living creature,
we can hardly find one more basic than the urge to do something
about painful or unpleasant circumstances. Even the amoeba
know enough to withdraw from heat, acids and electric fields.
But is this simply a response to an unpleasant situation, or is
it a drive in its own right ? The view taken here is that it is an
active drive. Deep in man's muscles and bones lies an itch to
mould and adapt his environment. This primary drive has been
called the drive to mastery. 1

That it is not merely a response to unpleasant situations is
suggested by the fact that men frequently go out of their way
to invent situations in which they can strive for mastery, e.g.,
competitive sport. In fact, it is precisely when man is least able
to master his personal environment that he finds the need to
devise substitutes. To exercise a function, to fulfil a poten-
tiality, is a source of pleasure and man needs the opportunity
of exercising the mastery function preferably on some-
thing useful, to be sure, but failing this in an artificial
situation.

It is an pbserved fact that when such efforts are frustrated
an emotion which we call anger is felt and the efforts are
redoubled. Naturally these efforts are now devoted to removing
the obstacle which is frustrating the original programme, since
this is the first step towards attaining the original objective.
Such intensive efforts to overcome an obstacle, accompanied by
anger, are generally described as aggression.

This is an important point. For, since all man's actions are

1 It is sometimes convenient to distinguish between crude mastery
in the handling of materials, personal mastery or dominance over
individuals and abstract mastery over problems and ideas.

50

Superphysical Needs

directed towards modifying the environment, physical or
psychical, in the face of various difficulties it follows that they
could all strictly be described as aggressive. In other words,
aggression is not a specific mode of activity which can, by
careful management, be eliminated. It is the very essence of our
being: The only man completely free from aggression is a dead
man or a man suffering from general paralysis of the insane^
Hence it is futile and fatuous to talk, as people do today, about
'putting an end to aggression.' Not only is it impossible, but
no one in his senses would want to waste all this valuable
energy. What we have to do, which is hard enough, is to see
that it is directed towards useful instead of evil ends.

We are led into this erroneous approach to aggression by the
fatal facility of language in giving labels to things which have
no disparate existence; which are not, so to speak, clinical
entities. As so often is the case, those who formed the language
were well aware of the true nature of what they were describing.
The Latin basis of the word means, of course, 'a step towards'
and does not, as it does in common speech, imply violence
or even that the movement is directed towards living
beings.

Aggression, as we shall shortly see in more detail, can readily
be diverted into substitute activities. Anyone who has worked
off his anger by violent physical activity wielding an axe or
a sledge-hammer is particularly effective will recognise the
truth of this. But what is less generally realised is that this is
only one aspect of a much broader principle. All forms of self-
assertion can be converted into one another. Hence a society
which offers insufficient opportunities for effective mastery of
raw materials will find that pent-up energy bursting out in
attempts to master people, i.e. in aggression, in the popular
sense.

There is another aspect of this drive which is of interest.
The crudest form of mastery is destruction. If you smash
something, so that it no longer exists as such, you have estab-
lished your superiority to it. But destruction is not a satisfying
form of mastery. For one thing, it is too easy. For another, it

51

Conditions of Happiness

tends to make the environment a less and not a more happy
place to live in. So normal people pass on to constructive forms
of mastery. Besides making use of what they have constructed,
they can show it to others and so win approval, thus gaining
two additional sources of pleasure, neither of which accrue in
cases of destructive activity. This progress from destruction
to construction can be marked in children. But when we fail
at construction we tend to revert to the earlier mode. Our anger
at failing to attain our objective is released in crude aggression.
'The hell with it/ we say, and give it a violent kick. 1

Hence societies where constructive opportunities are few
tend to find relief in destruction.

vi Creativity

The suggestion made so far is that human activity, in so far
as it is motivated by attempts to reach a certain emotional state,
is primarily an attempt to secure a loving relationship with
another individual or individuals.

As we survey human activities, testing whether they can all
be fitted into this category or one of those considered earlier
under the heading of physical sensations (and making due
allowance for the peculiar transformations of impulse caused
by the psychological superstructure) we come across one which
seems to resist our efforts. This is the creative activity of the
artist.

Artistic activity cannot be satisfactorily explained simply as
an attempt to modify the physical environment, even if some
arts, such as sculpture or architecture, do include an element
of mastery.

The psychologists suggest that the artist is attempting to

1 It might be thought that the word aggression can fairly be
distinguished from mastery by restricting its use to the intense, angry
mastery-impulse which manifests in destruction, as distinct from the
calm, persistent constructive drive. I cannot agree, for I have seen men
attack an obstinate constructive problem with a furious determination
which was quite clearly aggressive in nature. Their spoken comments
were also eloquently aggressive.

52

Superphysical Needs

dispose of an emotional problem which worries him by exter-
nalising it. This is, anyway, part of the truth, for artists certainly
achieve a feeling of release when they have completed their
work and no longer wish to work over it again (unless it has
failed in its purpose). But it is not quite enough, for it does not
account for the universal element in art: its power to appeal to
people of other places and periods. If the artist were merely
trying to get rid of his own problem he could make it as
individual as he liked ; why does he seek for universal elements
in experience?

Now another interpretation of art sees it as an attempt to
introduce a pattern into the apparently chaotic a definition,
incidentally, which would include a creative theoretical study
in the field of science. By reducing the aimless confusion of
life to some sort of order and endowing it with significance,
the artist ministers to the individual's feeling of isolation and
lack of security. Though primarily engaged in mastering his
own problems, the artist produces a solution which is also of
value to others who lack the time or the technical facilities for
achieving the same end themselves. Those who hold this view
would regard artistic activity as at once a subtle therapeutic
or religious technique and as a subtle form of mastery an
attempt to make the internal world of one's mind and
the external world of nature less frightening than they
seem.

Yet this functional explanation overlooks the vital element
in the process : the aesthetic pleasure induced. A chord in music,
as we have noted, induces pleasure just because it is harmonious,
not merely because it persuades us into feeling the universe is
harmonious. More complex works of art may possibly do this as
well, but that is not their whole function.

But even this does not provide us with a satisfying explana-
tion. If all we wanted from art was harmony, we would be
perfectly satisfied to listen to or look at art produced by others.
But it seems that some, if not, indeed, all, people require to
produce such harmonies themselves. Put more generally, we
may say that man stands for organisation. Though the energy

53

Conditions of Happiness

with which he organises is derived from the mastery drive, he
prefers to organise rather than to disorganise, to construct
rather than to destroy.

Furthermore, we must not overlook the connection between
creative activity and sex. While Freud has treated creativity
as a sublimation of the sexual act, many artists have noted that
when their creative efforts were frustrated the dammed up
energy suddenly diverted itself into sexual channels. (Later in
his life Freud modified his treatment, postulating a generalised
creative urge which could manifest either at sexual, artistic or
emotional levels.)

It would seem, then, that we need to generalise our concept
of the mastery drive into a broadly creative, organising urge,
and to interpret artistic activity as a special form of outlet for
this urge special in that its main purpose is to provide
aesthetic satisfactions, but also of great value because of its
therapeutic role and its psychological effects. Whether or not
this is correct as an analysis, it is certainly true that creative
activity and aesthetic experience are important sources of pure
happiness, and no well-designed society can afford to frustrate
or neglect them.

To many this may seem an almost insultingly brief and
arbitrary treatment of an involved and vital subject. The
difficulty is the absence of any agreed body of opinion about the
nature of art. This is no place for an excursus on that thorny
subject, yet I cannot possibly omit all reference to art. My
excuse must^be this: art is not just an activity among other
activities, it is an attitude towards all activities. All activities
involve the combination of various elements in patterns which
may or may not be harmonious, and to achieve this combination
gives play to man's creative, organising urge.

'A theoretical treatment, such as this, taking each factor in
turn, conceals the fact that each is but an aspect of one reality.
Just as a scientific theory can legitimately be described as
beautiful because it organises concepts into a harmonious form,
so also love can be called beautiful because it is the expression
of a harmonious relationship. It is, therefore, not word-

54

Superphysical Needs

spinning, but a perfectly accurate and meaningful statement to
say that truth is beauty, and beauty, love.^

vn Consistency and Variety

So far we have dealt with man's needs 1 at any given moment
in time; but as soon as we take the time dimension into con-
sideration we must recognise that he makes a contradictory
demand : there must be a certain consistency about his environ-
ment; but, second, there must also be variety.

The demand for consistency seems to be a product of the
process by which man learns and as such properly falls to be
considered in the next chapter: nevertheless, it is more conven-
ient to take it here. If man finds a certain action rewarding, he
makes a note of the fact and repeats the action. If, however, it
sometimes proves rewarding and sometimes painfully unreward-
ing i.e. if the response is inconsistent he cannot decide what
to do and an acute form of frustration develops. Experiments
with rats have shown that serious neurosis can be induced by
such methods. 2 Child psychologists have also established that
parents who one day mete out punishment for a certain act
and another day applaud it cause more frequent and severe
neurosis than parents who are consistently harsh.

This is a factor of considerable importance in the western
world today, for, as we shall see in more detail later, many
familiar patterns of behaviour have lost their former validity.
Thus, the workman who first learns that he can ensure the
necessaries of life by practising a technical skill and subse-
quently finds his skill useless and himself unemployed, is liable
to acute frustration and unhappiness, and will end by

1 It may seem stretching the definition of needs a little to make it
include something of which man would, presumably, not be aware if
he had no cerebral cortex. But since we mark the passage of time even
in our sleep, it may be that our sense of time is something more
profound than a mere enumeration of memories consciously
recorded.

* J. McV. Hunt, Personality and the Behaviour Disorder s t 1944
(contributions of H. S. Liddell and F. W. Finger).

55

Conditions of Happiness

abandoning all further attempts to cope with his environment. 1
But while man expects each action to evoke its appropriate
response, he does not want to be confined to a small number of
actions. He wants a large number of possible actions, and he
wants to combine them into ever varying patterns. Thus the
desire for consistency is not basically inconsistent with the
desire for variety, though the distinction is not always
appreciated.

This concludes our catalogue of psychical needs, but perhaps
one point needs bringing out. The dispassionate nature of our
analysis may have obscured the fact that these experiences are
marked by extremely strong hedonic tone. Successful achieve-
ment, unity with a loved one, perception of harmony, the
oceanic feeling, are marked by pleasure of such intensity that
we keep a special word for the sensation : bliss. Correspondingly,
defeat, loss of a loved one, chaotic disharmony and the sense
of isolation produce the most intense distress perhaps best
indicated by the word misery.

vin Self-Determination

There is one more point to be made: it is of the utmost
importance to us in the west today.

When surveying man's physical needs I emphasised that the
concept was a dynamic not a static one. We do not simply need
to be kept in a state of physical equilibrium. We need to keep
ourselves in. it by a continual process of absorbing material
from the environment and rejecting what we do not want. Ours
is the equilibrium of the tightrope-walker (so rightly called, in
the circus programmes, an 'equilibrist'). The same is true in the

1 This desire for consistency strongly colours our conception of
justice. We are much less concerned with the absolute justice of
regulations than we are with their equitable application. We are much
more concerned to see that rationing is equal than we are to find out
whether the ration could be made larger than it is. This attitude was
unconsciously summed up in Kipling's Stalky and Co., when the boys,
almost admiringly, characterised their housemaster as 'A beast, but a
just beast.'

56

Superphysical Needs

psychical sphere. We do not simply need to be given security;
we need to achieve it for ourselves. We do not need to have the
universe mastered for us, we need to master it. We do not
simply need to be loved,, we need to love.

It follows, therefore, that social patterns of the type it is
now fashionable to call paternalist are unacceptable. Or, to put
it in political terms, we need the power of self-determination.
(I avoid putting the matter in the form 'we need freedom,'
since freedom is a question-begging word.)

Another form in which we can usefully put it is that man
needs responsibility. And that responsibility is of two sorts.
In the first place he requires to be answerable to himself, at
the penalty of losing his self-respect. Secondly, he requires to
be answerable to society at the penalty of losing theirs. And
both these types of approval he greatly values. At this point
I shall so far anticipate the development of my argument as
to say that the only social institution known to me in which
a man can fulfil all these conditions is a self-governing,
co-operative group.

ix Freud's View

The view of man's motivation which I put forward, then,
is briefly this. That while his immediate motives are the
preservation of the physical body (a programme which leads
him into the pursuit of physical comforts) his ultimate motives
are at the level of the psyche. But of these there are, when it
comes to the point, only two: love and creativity.

The question which naturally arises in the reader's mind is
how far this view may be said to coincide with the orthodox
scientific view of the moment. If there is anything which can
be called an orthodox view at the moment I suppose it is
Freud's. Professional psychologists (as opposed to psycho-
analysts) though very reluctant to accept the whole of Freud's
formulation, have had quietly to jettison all they had to go on
before, which was the theory of William McDougall, who, as
I said in the last chapter, tried to explain behaviour in terms of

C.H.S 57

Conditions of Happiness

fourteen arbitrarily postulated drives. Though never officially
thrown on the dust heap, this theory is no longer felt to hold
water, and we need waste no time on it here.

It must be realised that Freud's treatment is much less
broadly based than the one given here. It started simply as a
clinical effort to find out what was wrong with certain obviously
ill people, and led to the concept of libido as a basic drive or
need. This concept, and the others that he built upon it proved
so useful that he gradually extended the field to account for
many facets of human motivation. But he never included
physical needs in his synthesis because he simply was not
interested in them. He left them to the doctors. Equally he never
paid much attention to aesthetic needs, though he tried to fit
them into his picture by regarding them as special outlets for
libido, on the lines indicated.

It is therefore only in regard to love and creativity that we
can compare Freud's views with those set forth here. In this
sphere the chief difference is that I have treated love and
creativity as primary concepts, and sexuality as a channel, one
of many, through which they can be expressed. Whereas Freud
treated sexuality as the primary concept, and love and creativity
as derived or modified forms of it. But Freud steadily broadened
his concept of libido as he grew older until in the end, after
he had renamed it Eros, it had taken on a much more general
form, hardly different from love and creativity as we have
described them. Only because Freud was dominated by the
mechanistic views of the psychologists who had preceded him,
he could neVer take the final step of regarding emotions as
existing in their own right. Rather than do this he had to invent
a new, mysterious entity with all the properties of emotion but
not the name. Freud's original concept of man as motivated
primarily by the urge to reduce the tension in his seminal
vesicles was aptly ridiculed by Suttie, who asked sarcastically
whether he supposed a woman undertook maternity simply to
relieve the tension in her breasts.

Suttie boldly completed the transition in Freud's views,
openly calling the primary motive love and treating the

58

Superphysical Needs

physiological manifestations as of secondary importance. 1 The
change was subtle but significant. It was because the child loved
its mother that it wanted to possess her, and not the reverse.
Adler, however, secedtfd from the Freudian school partly
because he perceived the importance of mastery-drives, and
partly because he perceived that the love relationship was not
confined to single objects but entered into our relations with
everyone we meet, which led him to formulate his theory of
social interest. 2

The present position may be summed up by saying even
Freudian psychologists treat emotion as if it really existed,
while denying that it does. Fortunately it is not necessary for
our purpose to await the solution of this controversy. We can
treat emotion as if it were a primary cause and it will not affect
the thesis of the book in any way if it turns out not to be.

Towards the latter part of his career Freud felt it necessary
to postulate a second destructive drive as counterpart to the
first creative one. Only thus could he explain such manifesta-
tions as sadism, and the perverse delight in destruction which
many people display. Other psycho-analysts, however, have not
found this hypothesis necessary. Destruction they see as the
simplest manifestation of the mastery instinct. To blow up a
building by touching a button what god-like power ! The
neurotic patterns, such as sadism, in which Freud saw the action
of Thanatos, the destructive drive, can also be explained without
recourse to this assumption, as will be seen in the next chapter.
The point is important. For if man attains civilised behaviour
only by suppressing an essential factor in his nature, he is
bound to do so at the cost of some degree of frustration and
neurosis. Whereas if his natural demands are positive and
friendly and if destructive behaviour emerges only when his
natural demands are frustrated then the possibility remains
open of creating a normal society in which the friendly feelings
will have full play and the destructive reactions will not be aroused.

1 See I. Suttie, Origins of Love and Hate, 1935. This is required
reading for all Freudians.

2 See A. Adler, Social Interest, English trans., 1938.

59

Conditions of Happiness
x Conclusion

To sum up, I suggest that basic human needs are as follows :
BODY Freedom from pain e

Health (maintenance of body in normal equilibrium)

Maintenance of the physical integrity of the body
MIND Love (active and passive)

Beauty

Creativity (purposive activity)
TIME Security through self-determination

Consistency

Variety

Presented with any such list of desiderata, it is natural to ask
why just nine requirements or whatever the number may be.
Our sense of fitness seems to demand a certain symmetry in the
array of ultimates. Closer examination of this list will show
that it has a certain harmony. Each of the postulates is of a
different order; they are not varieties of the same thing.

We have but a single motive: the pleasure-principle. Psycho-
logically, we have but a single source of pleasure : love. We have
but a single means to this end : creativity, or the mastery drive.
In order that the mastery drive can function effectively, a single
condition must be observed : consistency. We have but a single
mode of experience', change hence our appreciation of pleasure
must be characterised by change, or in different words, by variety.

Underlying all this we have the rather tiresome need to
maintain the. physical organism in an efficient state.

'Happiness has been defined as performing a task which is
so difficult as to try your powers, but not so difficult as to
defeat them. This is the same as saying that happiness is gained
from the fullest exercise of the mastery drive. But the definition
is faulty. To exercise mastery with no ulterior purpose is not
long satisfying. The ultimate purpose of mastery can only be
(a) to secure the physical pleasures of the body, or (b) to secure
the psychical pleasures of the mind, i.e., to love and be loved.
It is in love, therefore, not in mastery, that we find the true
source of human happiness^

60

IV
PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE

I Learning and Mislearning n Non- Valid Behaviour in Origin of
Neurosis iv Control of Aggression

I Learning and Mislearning

JLSYCHO-ANALYSTS, quite naturally, devote the greater part of
their time to treating people who are psychologically ill
people whose behaviour and problems are far removed from
the normal. In consequence many people suppose that analytical
psychology 1 concerns itself solely with such clinical manifesta-
tions and may conclude from the title of this chapter that in it
we shall be concerned solely with the happiness of this unfor-
tunate minority.

That is not so. The forces which the analytical psychologist
studies bear on all of us and affect the formation of our person-
alities. If he spends the bulk of his time studying those on
whom the effect has been most marked it is simply because it
makes his work easier to concentrate on the clear-cut cases.
There is no hard and fast dividing line between the mentally
healthy and the neurotic, between the 'normal' and the
'abnormal.' The difference is only one of degree.

To study psychology is to learn to understand our own^
motives but it is not simply to ensure our own happiness that
we must do so. The neurotic, in moments of stress, makes not
only himself, but others unhappy and this is also true in some
degree of all of us. Which of us can say that we have never, for
instance, vented ill-temper or frustration by snapping at some
innocent person ?

1 The name analytical psychology was taken by Adler and his
followers to distinguish their teaching from that of Freud, which was
known as psycho-analysis. I am not, of course, using either of these
terms in these specialised senses here.

6l

Conditions of Happiness

But that is not neurotic, you say. No, but it is a mechanism
very much within the scope of psychology it is, as a matter of
fact, an example of a process known to analysts as displacement,
and one which in certain contexts dm be a very important
influence on happiness.

In particular the analytical psychologist has much to tell us
about those forces which restrain us from anti-social behaviour
what we commonly call the conscience. These mechanisms,
though elaborate, do not always achieve their end, while in
other cases they achieve it at the cost of making the individual
concerned wretched. Since on the one hand happiness is
endangered if people behave selfishly while on the other it may
be destroyed by their efforts to behave unselfishly, it is clear
that the conscience presents us with a problem of fundamental
importance to the subject of happiness.

Psychological mechanisms, as most people now appreciate,
owe their somewhat mysterious character to the fact that a large
part of the human psyche is not accessible to consciousness.
This unconscious part of the mind seems to observe and reason
in much the same way as the conscious area but less critically
and with less foresight and sense of proportion, so that its
decisions when brought to consciousness by special tech-
niques often seem childish and absurd. But fundamentally the
mistakes it makes do not differ in type from those made by the
conscious mind: both are caused by man's defective powers of
learning. Man may indeed learn from experience but he does
not always learn correctly.

If people would only grasp that the business of the profes-
sional analyst is to discover what lessons have been learned and
teach his patient to relearn those which have been learned
incorrectly for to mislearn lessons is a potent cause of
unhappiness they would perhaps cease regarding analysis with
the suspicion and fear it too often evokes.

But where the analyst accepts these wrong lessons and non-
valid conclusions as a datum and concentrates only on rectifying the
consequences, for our purposes it is necessary to make a different
approach. We require to study how lessons come to be mislearned.

62

Psychological Superstructure

We need not go at length into the study of learning-theory,
a subject which has been complicated by much erroneous
teaching in the past fifty years: all we need to do is to draw
attention to certain points.

The chief process by which adult behaviour becomes
systematised is the one described by the proverb which says:
'the burnt child dreads the fire/ It is often supposed that such
a reaction is quite a simple process, a mere 'conditioned
reflex' ; but in reality two quite elaborate processes occur. First,
the child notes the association of two events and infers that they
are related as cause and effect. Secondly, he generalises this
discovery in two stages, (a) until he appreciates that all fires
burn, and (b) until he appreciates that they burn not only
himself but other people. (This is proved by the fact that a
small child, though it will withdraw its hand if burnt, will
repeat the mistake soon after.) Either part of the learning
process is liable to error and may lead to the learning of an
incorrect lesson. If this occurs, the plans which the individual
formulates with the object of attaining pleasure or avoiding
unpleasure will tend to be ineffective. 1

Let us consider a particular instance.

1 Though sufficient for our present purpose, this statement is
perhaps somewhat misleading, since it might be taken to suggest that
learning is performed by adding together a great number of such
individual lessons. This old view of the learning process has been quite
exploded by the gestalt psychologists who have shown very clearly that
all human beings, and even the higher animals, start by appreciating
the situation as a whole and only learn individual lessons within the
general context. To illustrate the distinction quickly and crudely we
may say that if the child was burnt by the mother, or even merely in
her presence, it would not merely record a scientific fact about the
properties of flame, but would almost certainly learn some distrust and
fear of the mother, and would associate the experience with the room
in which it took place or with any other fact which had captured its
attention.

The reader anxious to follow up the ramifications of modern learning-
theory should certainly read some book like K. Koffka's The Growth
of the Mind, 1924; though often regarded as a textbook of gestalt
psychology it gives an admirably-balanced outline of preceding
theories of learning.

63

Conditions of Happiness
ii Non- Valid Behaviour

Let us suppose that a man eats mushrooms for the first time
and is taken seriously ill soon after. Almost certainly he will
draw an inference 'My illness was caused by the mushrooms'
and then generalise it, perhaps in the form: 'I am allergic to
mushrooms' but more probably: 'Mushrooms are poisonous/
Thereafter he will avoid mushrooms like the devil. In short,
a lifelong pattern of behaviour may quite possibly be established
as the result of a single experience.

Now let us suppose that his illness was a pure coincidence,
and had nothing to do with the mushrooms at all. Since for the
rest of his life he will avoid eating mushrooms he may never
discover his mistake. How are we to describe his behaviour in
such a case? It is not correct to call it irrational; it is, rather,
strictly rational behaviour with an error in the reasoning. The
pattern of behaviour which results is out of harmony with reality.
I propose to call this non-valid behaviour, because it is based on
a non-valid generalisation.

In practice such non-valid conclusions are generally exposed
as erroneous by other people. The man who avoids mushrooms
sees other people eating them with impunity. Even so, he may
yet fall back on the hypothesis that he is allergic to mushrooms
rather than take the risk of another painful illness. Suppose,
however, that he does take the risk of eating some and again,
through an unfortunate coincidence, he falls ill. This will
confirm his -belief and it is extremely unlikely that he will ever
be induced to try them again, however convincing the arguments
of his friends.

In short, we learn our lessons almost too well. If fate is so
unkind as to mislead us twice or three times on the same
matter, our pattern of behaviour gets fixed for life, on non-
valid lines.

It will be appreciated that the crucial point in this story was
that the man was eating mushrooms for the first time. It is first
experiences which are definitive, because we have no contradic-
tory experience to offset them. Hence it is the lessons of earliest

Psychological Superstructure

childhood which are of dominant importance. The very small
child, or infant, is in a particularly vulnerable position. He does
not even have experience in analogous fields by which to test
any specially important experience and he cannot discuss his
profounder experiences with others for lack of vocabulary.
Quite definitely, experiences in our earlier infancy condition our
behaviour for the rest of our lives. They impel us to irrational
behaviour and beliefs, and they do it to an extent far greater
than the layman is ready to visualise. To the infant's case we
shall return in due course, but first let us proceed with the
subject of learning.

This tendency to 'fix' behaviour is noticeable even in a simple
case such as the one we have just considered, where the truth
is not difficult to establish and where the whole process is fully
conscious. Obviously such non-valid generalisations are still
easier to make on matters which are hard to establish, or difficult
to discuss. For instance, a person will readily conclude that
someone is untrustworthy on the basis of a couple of experiences.
Since trustworthiness is a relative concept, and since it is unwise
to discuss the matter except with intimate friends, non-valid
opinions of this type are very common.

How much more so, then, when the memory of the formative
experience is repressed ! If the man in our first instance had
repressed the memory of his illness, he would be left only with
a vague, unlocalised distrust of mushrooms. Since people do
not like to feel that their opinions are irrational, they tend to
invent plausible explanations which they come to believe
themselves ('rationalisations'). Thus a distrust of mushrooms
might be rationalised by the assertion that it was unlucky,
impious or barbaric to eat mushrooms. Since such beliefs would
be taught to children, and uncritically adopted, they would tend
to be perpetuated: so we can see how a taboo is born. A taboo
is simply a rule of behaviour for which the real reason valid
or non-valid has been forgotten or was never known. A
familiar instance is the taboo on walking under ladders which
protects you from having something dropped on your head.

I have gone into this matter of non-valid behaviour rather

65

Conditions of Happiness

carefully in order to drive home the fact that such behaviour is
not just a peculiarity of 'neurotics,' a product of diseased
minds, but something which affects all of us.

Since the most obstinate forms of such behaviour are those
in which the causative factors are repressed, we must now ask
ourselves the question: in what circumstances does repression
take place? The matter is too momentous for a hasty answer.
We must therefore interrupt our line of argument for a few
pages while we clarify this subject.

in Origin of Neurosis

Human beings and let us never forget that we are not
talking about something impersonal, like the scientists' rats and
guinea-pigs, but about ourselves feel the emotion of love
towards those who afford them pleasure, and of anger and hatred
towards those who frustrate and frighten them. Now it often
happens that we simultaneously feel both emotions towards one
and the same person. The child may, in general, love its
mother, but it feels anger and hatred when she punishes it or
forbids it to do what it wants. The wife may love her husband,
yet hate him if he does not live up to her conception of him.
When such a conflict of emotions arises, the individual may
manage to keep the two emotions intact. When the cliff of
affection is strong the wave of hatred smashes against it and
subsides. But when love and hatred are evenly matched the
person concerned is torn between two courses of conduct, both
painful. The child of cruel parents has a powerful motive for
leaving them : but it knows it is dependent on their support and
would get into serious difficulties if it did so. Such conflicts
are biologically dangerous because they lead to indecision.

In such circumstances the ego generally deals with the
situation by suppressing the inconvenient emotion. This
simplifies the conscious life of the individual, who is no longer
in a dilemma, and relieves him of the worst of his mental conflict. 1

1 Possibly this is only a particular case of a tendency to repress,
i.e., forget, any unpleasant experience.

66

Psychological Superstructure

But the adjustment is not achieved without cost. For
such suppressed hatred gives rise to a diffuse anxiety and unease.
This is so unpleasant that it generally involves the ego in
further attempts at adjustment often of a very complex kind.
Let us note, before passing on, that this unease is a primary
source of unhappiness and one of a most intractable description.

Thus far we have what has been called a situation neurosis.
It persists only as long as the external situation persists. And
even while the causative situation still operates it can generally
be cured by helping the patient to understand the nature of
the conflict within his mind. Once the conflict can be seen
objectively, it can be handled rationally. The wiser course can
be chosen and the disadvantages written off.

In illustration of this Horney relates the case of a young
woman happily married to a somewhat older husband who
finally became impotent. When approached by a young man
friend, the woman developed headaches and depression.
Analysis showed that she was torn between her loyalty to her
husband and family whom she did not want to harm or lose,
and her natural sexual desires. When she came to realise the
nature of her problem she was able to settle it rationally, and
the neurasthenic symptoms vanished.

But it is also possible that such an emotional conflict may be
generated by an experience which (for reasons which may or
may not be valid) is going to fix a pattern of behaviour in the
manner considered in the previous section. An example may
make this clearer. In a case which recently came to my atten-
tion, a man fell ill and his wife had to go out to work; in conse-
quence she was forced to leave her two-year-old boy alone for
long periods. The child, feeling it had been deserted by its
mother, formed a non-valid behaviour pattern which we may
call 'distrust of all women/ That was the quasi-rational side
of the experience. The emotional side was that it felt hatred
for its mother and this hatred conflicted with its natural love.
The hatred was suppressed and ultimately the whole incident
forgotten. It was therefore impossible for the child concerned
to break up the pattern of distrust by logical means, for he did

67

Conditions of Happiness

not know its cause. Naturally, he rationalised his distrust as
far as possible. Inevitably, the neurotic pattern became a
permanent component of his character, and in his adult life
he was quite unable to establish arfy satisfactory relationships
with women. Notice the characteristic feature of such behaviour:
its persistence. Whenever the stimulus is presented (in this
case, the presence of women) the same reaction (avoidance) is
produced. This rigidity is typical of neurosis and lines up with
such manifestations as agoraphobia and, indeed, all 'compul-
sive' activities. In short, a non-valid pattern has been established
and the victim continually repeats the same mistake.

Secondly, notice that the reaction though consistent with
the demand for happiness does not yield it. The man avoids
women because their presence makes him uneasy, yet, owing
to his biological needs, he is not happy without women. He is
trapped in a quandary. This is characteristic of neurosis. It
defeats the demand for happiness by creating opposing and
contradictory demands. This explains part of the mysterious-
ness of happiness.

Here, then, is the second way in which the psychological
superstructure of man's mind can become a barrier to happiness.
It can lead people into behaviour which, in the long run, is
detrimental to happiness : into desires and avoidances which are
based on non-valid conclusions.

This picture can be extended to explain such diverse types
of behaviour as sadism, masochism, sexual perversion, all
compulsive behaviour and many types of delinquency, as well
as self-indufced illness of the type we call hysterical, although
it may not be marked by the loss of control which corresponds
to the popular use of the word hysterics. In some of these cases
the mechanism is pretty complicated and the original non-valid
argument may take a wide variety of forms. For our present
purpose we need not explore these variations on the theme. All
of them constitute character neurosis, as opposed to situation
neurosis: and it is character neurosis which is generally meant
when the word neurosis is used alone.

Since the word neurosis is often used carelessly, perhaps we

68

Psychological Superstructure

should define precisely what we mean by it. Following Horney,
we may say that it is being constrained to follow a pattern of
behaviour which is rigid and non-valid^ By this we mean that
all situations of a certain general type are met with the same
attitude or behaviour, regardless of their true merits. This
definition of neurosis covers a much wider field than in the
popular use of the term. Many people who would not hesitate
to describe Hitler as a neurotic would never think of applying
the term to Himmler. But the sadist's pattern of impassive
cruelty is just as rigid and non-valid as the emotionalism of the
hysteric. Indeed, we are all to some extent neurotic. No one is
completely free of repressed emotion, no one can entirely avoid
learning a few non-valid lessons. Neurosis is a matter of degree.
Hence the subject matter of this chapter is significant not
merely for a few pathological individuals but for all of us.

More than that, it is not only those who have dealt with a
conflict by repression who are guilty of non-valid behaviour.
As I sought to show with the story of the mushrooms, mere
coincidence may establish patterns of non-valid behaviour.
Neurotic behaviour is only a special instance of this in which
the error is abnormally difficult to expose because part of the
material has been repressed.

The case of mushroom-eating is a very limited one. But a
man might just as well be so unfortunate as to fail in a number

1 This treatment of neurosis is drawn from the newer American
analytical psychologists as exemplified in K. Horney's The Neurotic
Personality of Our Time, 1935, an d subsequent works. The difference
from the Freudian view proves, on examination, to be chiefly one of
emphasis. Freud sees neurosis as the consequence of repressing a basic
drive, in his vocabulary the sexual or libidinal drive. But such repres-
sion, he agrees, takes place only because this drive is in conflict with
socially or personally approved behaviour patterns. Thus Freud does
not deny that repression is caused by conflict ; he merely puts his chief
emphasis on the word sex or libido. But he uses this word in such a
broad sense as to include almost every conceivable variety of conflict,
so that he approximates to the Horneyan view. It is, in the outcome,
simply a question of whether the libidinal aspect or the conflict aspect
is most fruitful in the context which, on any occasion, is under
discussion.

Conditions of Happiness

of bold enterprises and conclude that boldness was too risky,
where another more fortunate man might come to the reverse
conclusion.

One of the morals we can draw from this discussion is that
we can no longer discuss happiness solely in terms of satisfying
needs; where the need is neurotic or based on non-valid
conclusions, the proper course is to eliminate the 'need* by
resolving the error. We are not called upon to provide a society
in which the sadist can practise his cruelties nor one in which
the anxiety-ridden individual can attempt to find security by
accumulating wealth or power. It is not hard to accept this
declaration while we are thinking of notoriously anti-social
needs such as sadism or the lust for power. What is more
difficult is to apply it to the numerous relatively harmless
patterns of behaviour which are marked by rigidity and non-
validity. How many of our hobbies and enthusiasms would be
left if all neurosis could be dissolved is a question of almost
frightening magnitude.

Incidentally, it follows also that the economists' assumption
that man is a rational animal, and hence that it is proper for
industry to try and satisfy any demand which men are prepared
to express in terms of money, is wholly without justification.

IV Control of Aggression

I have talked of repressing conflicting emotions but the
possible varieties of conflict are very limited. Since, basically,
there are only two sorts of emotion, positive and negative,
love and hate, all such conflicts must either be clashes between
rival loves and rival hates or between love and hate. The case
just described, of the woman torn between her young lover and
her impotent husband, would be a case of rival loves, but much
the commonest combination is the clash between love and hate.

When such a clash occurs, the usual Solution is repression of
the hatred. Every one of us constantly has occasion to choke
down angry or bitter words and to inhibit the aggressive actions
which hatred inspires. Why do we do this? Ninety-nine times

70

Psychological Superstructure

out of a hundred because we wish to retain the goodwill of the
person who has angered us.

But in addition to these crude instances of simple aggression
aroused by short-lived contemporary situations, we also have
more serious ones in which the conflict is acute and in which the
aggressive feelings give rise to painful feelings of guilt or fear.
This is especially frequent in early childhood, and in such cases
the aggressive feelings are not only suppressed but repressed,
in the technical sense. Such repressed aggression cannot be
dissipated but comes to form a permanent part of the person-
ality and dominate the individual's behaviour. This repressed
aggression is at the bottom of many social problems. It may
occasionally happen that a man represses his desire for love
in order to be free to hate, and then we have the misogynist;
but undoubtedly the commonest outcome of such a conflict
is repression of hatred.

The person who carries a burden of repressed aggression (of
which he is not consciously aware) seeks to discharge it in one
of two ways. Either he displaces it on to some innocent victim
or he turns it against himself. To the practice of introjecting
aggression I shall recur in a few pages when considering guilt
and the super-ego. Displacement of aggression is a familiar
phenomenon. Just as the man who has had an unmerited rebuke
from his employer is liable to snap at his secretary or kick the
cat. Similarly, on a larger scale, people may displace their
permanent repressed aggression on to innocent parties. A child
may displace all the hatred it feels for its father on to an uncle
so as to be able to love the father without reservation.

It is this dislike of entertaining conflicting emotions which
impels us to divide the world into good people and bad people,
friends and enemies. It accounts for the hero and the villain
of drama (in real life people are seldom wholly good or wholly
bad) and contributes to the concepts of Good and Evil, God
and Devil.

Accordingly, the relations of a group become more harmon-
ious whenever their feelings of hatred can be displaced on to
some outside enemy. This is what happens in war-time, and is

Conditions of Happiness

one reason why people within a belligerent nation behave more
friendly to one another. This fact was once exploited in a satire
in which peace was brought to the peoples of the earth by
encouraging them to hate a fictitious race of villains on the moon.
But it is essential that the displacement shall take place in
some socially-acceptable direction. Before the war the Germans
achieved enhanced unity by displacing much of their aggression
on to the Jews, but this was hardly very satisfactory for the
latter. On the other hand aggression directed to the defeat
of social problems serves a useful purpose. Bad temper can be
worked off by chopping up firewood, or more subtly by solving
a mathematical or administrative problem. At present much
aggression is displaced into business competition, which, at
least, is preferable to physical violence against individuals, even
if it is only sometimes constructive in its results.

To sum up, it is necessary to face the fact that there is no
wholly reliable method of handling (repressed) aggression:
the only satisfactory solution is to prevent its formation in the
first place. If formed, it is better to discharge it in some socially
acceptable way than to repress it. Repression, it must be
remembered, only takes place when love and hatred are evenly
matched. When one has a big margin over the other the conflict
can be settled on the conscious level. Accordingly, if we cannot
deal with the problem by reducing hatred, we can always deal
with it by strengthening the positive factor the capacity for
love.

Unfortunately, in western society, there are taboos on
discussing love and the subject arouses a feeling of embarrass-
ment. 1 The work of many writers on aggression is vitiated by
their failure to understand this fact, and by failure to under-
stand the social factors in the control of aggression.

Any worthwhile scheme for increasing happiness must include
effective techniques for handling aggression, and especially
repressed aggression. The first step, perhaps, is to bring about
a wider recognition of its existence, so that people will come to
suspect their irrational animosities and realise that they need
1 The * taboo on tenderness* will be discussed further in Chapter V.

72

Psychological Superstructure

treatment; the second is curative treatment at an early age,
before the personality has become too rigidly set in this mould.
And we may hope that with wider recognition parents, employ-
ers, statesmen, and all others who have the opportunity will
often find themselves able to direct undischarged aggression into
socially useful fields into wars against cruelty, ignorance and
disease, instead of wars against other nations or the persecution
of individuals.

C.H. 6 73

V
PERSONALITY FORMATION

I The Infant Learns n Parent Identification in Guilt and Its

Origins iv Regulating Behaviour v Super-Ego Formation

vi Ideal Pictures vn Conclusion

I The Infant Learns

/Ys I said at the time, the crucial point in our story of the man
who was ill after eating mushrooms, was that he was eating
them for the first time. It is first experiences which are definitive,
because we have no contradictory experiences to offset them
and naturally first experiences occur most often in childhood,
indeed, in infancy. Hence it is the lessons of earliest childhood
which most commonly tend to mould our character by estab-
lishing rigid behaviour patterns. In his total ignorance, the very
small child, or infant, is in a painfully vulnerable position. There
can no longer be any doubt that many aspects of adult behaviour
which we normally regard as haphazard, unassailable elements of
human nature, are, in fact, created by these infantile experiences.

Now while to some extent the experience of every individual
is unique, there are also large areas of common experience.
Every child is born, is weaned, is house- trained. The shocks
which these processes administer inject a common element into
every mind, although with varying force.

About the effects of birth we know little, but of the subsequent
experiences and their consequences we can say something. 1
First let us try and visualise the state of mind of a new-born
infant.

1 But see O. Rank's The Trauma of Birth, 1929, for an attempt to
formulate a view. If he is right we should expect to find a difference of
personality in those delivered by Csesarean section as compared with
those born normally.

74

Personality Formation

The baby has no memory records and therefore no time-
sense. If an agreeable sensation ceases, as far as the baby is
concerned it has ceased for ever. The fact that it may return
does not occur to it. Equally, if it perceives an unpleasant
sensation, it has no reason to suppose it will stop. It lives for
the moment: if that moment is unpleasant it is as much a
disaster as an eternity of hell. The sensations which the baby
perceives are almost wholly through its tactile nerves, more
especially its mouth. It cannot focus its eyes, and its other senses
are equally imperfect. It is therefore unaware of its mother as
an individual: it knows only itself and a crowd of incoming
sensations from something which is not itself. Hence all
unpleasant experiences are alarming and arbitrary in the highest
degree.

Broadly speaking, there are for the baby two states of affairs.
One in which it is warm, replete, secure, loved; another in
which it is cold, hungry, and abandoned. To receive love, to
receive milk, to be secure, are fused into a single agreeable
pattern; and so are the complementary experiences. And so, for
ever after, to be short of food implies to be insecure and un-
wanted; and from this it is easy to proceed to the illogical
(unconscious) conclusion that the way to deal with a sense of
insecurity (in reality due to being unloved) is to acquire
physical property, especially food. 1 Conversely poverty is felt
as insecurity.

The importance to babies and small children of affection, as
distinct from care, is supported by a mass of evidence. Children
separated from their parents for prolonged periods in the first
years of their life almost invariably sustain permanent psycho-
logical scars. The commonest reaction seems to be a determina-
tion to do without affection, producing the so-called 'affectionless
character/ Where this is combined with a desire for revenge
against society (or some similar motive) it often leads to criminal
or ruthless anti-social behaviour. Psychologists have established

1 See M. Klein and J. Riviere, Love, Hate and Reparation, 1937.
This mechanism is behind some cases of persistent greediness, as with
German refugee children taken to America before the war.

75

Conditions of Happiness

a strong connection between thieving and early disturbances
of the child's affective life, the thieving being at once a symbolic
attempt to secure the good things which it has missed and a way
of revenging itself on society for not providing them. 1 Where
parents display hatred, not affection, towards their children
equally serious results are likely, though they may work out
in a more complicated way. Especially is this true where parents
are alternately neglectful and affectionate, or where one parent is
affectionate but not the other.

The orthodox Freudian view, now obsolete, was that the
child's real demand was for food, warmth and physical protec-
tion ; that the emotional demand was no more than a sublima-
tion of the physical demand. But the fact that children well-
cared for in hospitals and homes frequently develop these
psychological symptoms confirms the belief that it is the
emotion itself which is of primary importance.

Indeed, deprivation of affection may threaten not merely
mental health, but life itself. Well-run institutions for small
children tend to have a death rate markedly higher than that
for children brought up in quite insanitary conditions under thettr
mothers' care, and Ferenczi has gone so far as to say: 'Children
who are not loved don't live.' 2

To be sure, owing to the child's tendency to interpret a
failure of physical care as due to loss of affection, deprivation
of care especially of food is extremely important and we must
now proceed to consider the effects of an interruption or
uncertainty in the supply of food (milk): in the technical jargon,
oral frustration.

i. Oral frustrations. The baby's first major painful experience
after birth is likely to be finding itself hungry, and ipso facto
insecure and unloved. Unless the mother is constantly with it,
and is ready at any time to feed it this is almost certain to occur.
In many savage tribes, the mother is always with it, and is
always ready to feed it, but in the west we impose on the infant
rigid feeding schedules, largely to suit our own convenience.

1 See John Bowlby, Forty-four Juvenile Thieves, 1946.

2 Quoted in R. Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality 1 1947.

Personality Formation

Since the baby cannot comprehend that the deprivation is only
temporary and that it has only to wait to be satisfied, the
frustration is felt as an all-absorbing disaster in its little world.
It is interpreted as a permanent loss of security and affection.

This experience is repeated still more intensely when it is
weaned. If it is allowed to take the breast whenever it wishes
and is only offered other nutriment as an optional alternative,
and if it is allowed to return to the breast when it wishes at
any age as happens in some primitive societies no frustration
will occur. But if it is weaned more rapidly than this, as it usually
is in modern society, it is bound to record the experience as
alarming and painful.

It has been established quite definitely that these infantile
experiences, which seem to us adults so trivial, but which to the
child are catastrophic, do actually cause marked, permanent
changes in the personality. Parents who subject their children to
oral frustration imbue them with ineradicable feelings of
insecurity and lack of confidence, and these signs are lacking
in societies which avoid this error. (I have to put the conse-
quences of oral frustration rather vaguely at this point because
the form they will take necessarily depends on the other experi-
ences the child undergoes and on the peculiarities of the culture
into which it is born. They may, for instance, be concentrated
on fears for physical security, for the supply of foodstuffs, or
they may centre around emotional security; or they may take
yet other forms.)

In the west we now have a further variant of the problem in
that we rely very often on bottle feeding. The subject is still
but little investigated, but the position seems to be that if the
bottle is given by the mother personally, with the child in her
arms and all the evidences of affection present, as in normal
feeding, and if it is given on demand, the effects of frustration
will be avoided. Since, however, it generally is the case that
bottle-fed babies suffer the same frustrations as breast-fed ones,
as regards tod rigid feeding time-tables and too abrupt weaning,
and that in addition they may be left alone while they take the
bottle, it is probable that their emotional frustration is even

77

Conditions of Happiness

greater than the breast-fed child's. In practice, analysts havt
noted that bottle-fed babies tend to suffer from neurosis more
frequently than breast-fed ones.

2. House-training. The child's firs\: social lesson, as we have
seen, is connected with its mouth. Its second lesson is connected
with its anus : it is house-trained.

This process may be considered from two aspects. It may be
viewed as a task of holding something in, in order to win
approval, or as a task of producing something upon request. If
it is viewed in the former light, the child is apt to learn the
unconscious lesson: to be loved I must hold on to what I have
got, and this will tend to produce a grasping, stingy element in
the adult personality structure.

Suppose, however, that the emphasis falls on the productive
aspect. Suppose, that is, that the child remembers chiefly the
approval it won by producing upon demand rather than the
punishment it received for failing to retain. Then the lesson it
learns is, in generalised form, 'creative activity pays off.' But
the child's stool is something more than this : it is a love gift,
and if it is refused, it will tend to become shy of offering its
affection and friendship to others. Thus a house-training in
which the emphasis has been not on punishment for failure of
control but rather on affection given for successful production
tends to create a generous, responsive, and productive type of
personality. Where failure of control has resulted in loss of
affection with consequent formation of guilt feelings, a person-
ality preoccupied with cleanliness or self-control may result.
The test of this is to be found in the frequency with which, in
adults, obsessive cleanliness is associated with a materially-
tight-fisted and emotionally-stingy nature. Here, as in every
psychological field, neurotic patterns wreak their effects in both
emotional and practical directions simultaneously.

A further variation on this theme may occur. If the child does
not feel well-disposed towards its mother, it can retaliate by
retaining its faeces when asked to produce them. This is a
significant experience for by so doing it tastes power over others
for the first time. (It will already have exerted some power over

78

Personality Formation

others by crying, no doubt, but this is not quite on the same
plane, for when it cries it is making a request of its mother, but
now its mother is making a request of it.) The deliberate nature
of this act, and its association with emotional factors is vividly
shown in a case observed by Susan Isaacs, in which a small
child, which had for weeks been recalcitrant about excreting,
ten minutes after the arrival of a new nurse, whom it liked,
voluntarily fetched its pot and announced: 'For you I'll do it.' 1
In adult life this pattern may persist, transmuted into
appropriate forms. Property may be accumulated, for instance,
as a form of retaliation against society for not being sufficiently
accommodating. 2 The general equivalence of faeces and money,
which often seems to the laymen such a far-fetched idea, has
been abundantly proved by Freud and thousands of workers
since him. Popular resistance to 'symbolisms' of this kind is
generally based on too literal an interpretation. It is not, of
course, that the child says to itself: 'money is like faeces. I make
money and I make faeces/ Or anything so crude. It is rather
that the child learns a pattern which we can only express in the
form: 'I produce something and I am loved.' Then, on later
occasions, it tends to follow the same pattern, substituting
whatever is now the appropriate comparable action for winning
approval which in our society may well be making a lot of
money. Similar arguments apply, of course, to other situations.
Great resistance was aroused, for instance, by the parallel
Freud drew between the child's attitude to its parents the
son's love of his mother and his jealousy of his father and the
adult's attitude to women. But it is not suggested that the child
thinks of its mother in exactly the same way, in every detail,
as the man thinks of the woman he loves ; simply that both follow
the same pattern, so that implications of one tend to get carried
over to the other.

1 S. Isaacs, Social Development in Young Children, 1933.

2 Or, as Geoffrey Gorer has pointed out, it may lead to an obsessive
preoccupation with etiquette, as in the case of the Japanese. See The
Japanese Character, by Geoffrey Gorer, Penguin Science News
No. i, 1946.

79

Conditions of Happiness

Finally, I should point ^ut that the house-training pattern
must not be considered in isolation, but in conjunction with
the weaning-pattern which precedes it. For instance, if a harsh
house-training is combined with an* early weaning the two
patterns will fuse, property being doubly desired as a form of
(quasi-emotional) security and a retaliation for lack of it. It must
also be related to the pattern which follows it, namely, the
CEdipus situation.

3. CEdipus situation. The third of babyhood's major shocks
occurs some time after the child has learned to discriminate
between its mother and other human beings. One day it realises
that its mother is giving her attention and affection to the father
and it feels that it has lost this affection, perhaps for ever. This
sensation will naturally be more intense if its earlier experiences
have already laid the foundations of a sense of insecurity. This
is the basic situation which Freud called the (Edipus situation. 1
Frequently the child gets over its fears and disappointment, but
if the shock is sufficiently intense and if earlier or later experi-
ences reinforce the sense of being excluded from the mother's
affection, it may cause a permanent deformation of the person-
ality, termed an (Edipus complex. Such a non-valid behaviour
pattern is so common in our civilisation that Freud assumed it
to be a universal characteristic, though later work has shown
that it is weak or even non-existent in certain cultures (e.g.,
the Marquesans 2 and the Trobrianders 8 ).

One thing which seems definitely established is that children
experience ajsevere shock if at an early age they witness 'the
primal scene' their parents engaged in the sexual act. Such an
experience is powerfully productive of (Edipal jealousy and
guilt.

1 It is often thought that the name signifies no more than Freud's
acquaintance with classical myth. Jung has argued however that myths
are essentially condensations of experience shared in common by the
people making them, so that the CEdipus myth is actually a description
of this very process. Contributions to Analytical Psychology, Eng. trans.,
1928.

2 See A. Kardiner, The Individual and His Society, New York, 1939.
8 See B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Societies t 1927.

80

Personality Formation

The direct effect of the (Edipus. situation is to produce a
potential antagonism towards the father for having stolen the
child's position, or a resentment towards the mother for having,
as it seems to the child* betrayed its trust: or both. These
antagonisms are frequently extraordinarily powerful, especially
when reinforced by other circumstances, and come into sharp
conflict with the child's natural affection for its parents. The
child then finds a working solution by repressing the antagonism,
enabling it to act with affection towards the parents; but the
destructive wishes cooped up in its unconscious mind give rise to
powerful feelings of guilt, though these also remain unconscious.

As Freud demonstrated, and his thesis has survived countless
attempts to demolish it, the small child's affections are strongly
coloured by sex. Observation of children in cultures which do
not place the same powerful taboos on sex that we do abundantly
confirms this. The outcome of the CEdipus situation is therefore
apt to be that all sexual activity becomes associated with guilt;
or, to put it in its crudest form, with fear of retaliation from the
father. In this situation, the idea of castration often assumes
great significance. With the ambivalence which is typical of the
thinking of the unconscious mind, castration is feared as the
father's revenge on the child for its desires, and at the same time
is wished for because castration would solve its dilemma and
free it from guilt. Parents who threaten children with castration
(as a punishment for masturbation) powerfully reinforce this
feeling and foster the setting up of a rigid system of ideas in
the unconscious, i.e., a castration complex.

Masturbation, it is very important to stress, is a process of
the greatest importance for a child's development. For at first
the child is wholly dependent for its satisfaction on the minis-
trations of others a situation which is inherently frustrating
as the rage of an uncomfortable or unfed baby shows. The
moment, therefore, when the child finds that it can provide
itself with pleasure by its own efforts is supremely valuable:
it is the first step towards the state of adulthood in which it
relies on its own efforts instead of those of others. This moment
generally occurs through the discovery of masturbation.

81

Conditions of Happiness

Accordingly it is now held that infantile masturbation is a vital
stage in the child's development: it is the step which initiates
what we may call its psychological weaning. I have italicised the
word infantile because at a later agfc the situation is different.
If development follows its normal course, the child will soon
discover more constructive and rewarding methods of self-
gratification the whole world of experience will open out
and masturbation will be dropped and speedily forgotten.
Persistence of masturbation, or its recurrence, must be viewed
as the symptom of a failure to establish this wider relationship,
a failure to find gratification in the external world; it is a retreat,
when elaborate methods prove too exhausting or unrewarding,
to a more primitive device.

But to teach the child that masturbation is 'wicked' does more
than to handicap its psychic development. It strongly reinforces
the feelings of guilt which, thanks to the (Edipus complex, are
already connected with the idea of sex. (And, needless to say, it
does not effect any real cure : the only effective cure is to help the
child to establish a satisfactory relationship to the external
world.)

When a child develops strong and persistent feelings of
unconscious guilt about sexual activity it may deal with them
in various ways; one of the commonest, perhaps, is frigidity
or impotence. Inability to perform the sexual act achieves the
same results as castration. It prevents the performance of a
forbidden act and at the same time punishes the victim for
guilty wishes. It is a psychological castration. Impotence of this
kind does much more than deprive the victim of pleasure and
handicap his marital life; it may fill him with doubts of his
capacity in every sphere. Since all forms of creative energy are
manifestations of the life force, of Eros, to use Freud's name
for it, any failure to release it is liable to be reflected by impo-
tence in every department of the person's life.

Alternatively, the victim may be driven to prove his compe-
tence by excelling in some suitable substitute activity or
activities. Such a rigid compulsive desire for success and
approval is often called the urge for self-validation.

82

Personality Formation

The OEdipus situation, then, is a source of guilt and uncon-
scious aggression, especially of sexual guilt and of inhibitions
of the creative impulse. 1

In addition to these 'almost universal experiences, some
children undergo other painful experiences. For instance, their
physical movements may be impeded by swaddling clothes.
Such physical frustration may infuse into the structure of the
personality an impatience at restraint or opposition and
possibly lead to violent self-assertiveness in adult life.

In my efforts to clarify the effect of these basic experiences,
I may have given the impression that each produces a character-
istic result: irregular feeding, a sense of insecurity; harsh anal
training, preoccupation with cleanliness or property; the
(Edipus situation, aggression and guilt. In reality, however, one
cannot divide the personality into watertight compartments.
The personality is the outcome of all the contributory forces.
The effect of any specific shock always depends to some extent
on what other shocks have been experienced. For instance, the
effect of the (Edipus situation is sometimes to produce resent-
ment against the mother for her supposed faithlessness, rather
than hatred of the father. We may speculate that this reaction
would be most likely to occur if an abrupt weaning had already
sown doubts as to her constancy: unfortunately, the exact
mechanics of these interactions have not yet been established.
This observation should be borne in mind during subsequent
discussions of personality formation. Furthermore, the exact
form which neurotic compensation takes is influenced by the
customs of the society in which the individual finds himself.
Harsh anal training is more likely to produce stinginess in a
society which regards acquisitive activity as normal behaviour.

1 It should, perhaps, be mentioned that the (Edipus situation does
not work out in quite the same way for women as it does for men. In
either case the first object of affection is the mother, which for boys
is a heterosexual, but for girls a homosexual relation. Hence the father
enters the boy's world in the guise of a sexual rival, whereas to the girl
he appears simply as a more interesting and natural object of affection.
Adult homosexuality is frequently to be explained as an attempt to
solve this conflict, but the mechanism is highly complex.

83

Conditions of Happiness
ii Parent Identification

It is a well-established fact that children build up their
personalities by incorporating ideas find attitudes which they
find in those they love. The process at work is that which we
have already mentioned by the name of identification. The small
child wishes to 'be like' its mother or father, just as a little later
the schoolboy tries to model himself on his hero. Parents (or
nurses) are the normal objects for early identification, but it
does not always happen that the child draws from both indiffer-
ently. On the contrary, it usually tends to identify strongly
with one and reject the other. Which it selects almost certainly
depends on the way in which the CEdipus situation has worked
out previously.

We express our recognition of this fact when we say that
a child 'takes after ' one of its parents, and we notice that it does
not always model itself on the one it resembles physically.

Although parents differ widely, nevertheless there are broad
general differences in behaviour between males and females.
Consequently, whether the child chooses its father or its
mother as an object of identification will tend to make a pro-
found difference to its character. Alternatively, it may achieve
some degree of identification with both.

As Flugel has pointed out, in a highly significant passage,
those who identify themselves with the father tend to be
authoritarian, conservative, puritanical and individualist. Those
who identify with the mother, to be democratic, progressive,
co-operative and free from sexual guilt. He found it possible
to identify as many as twelve pairs of characteristics associated
with the two types. 1

So reliable is this correlation that intelligence officers
'screening' Germans to eliminate those with Nazi affiliations
at the end of the recent war used it, in conjunction with other
techniques, to identify adherents of the regime.

It must be made clear that these two types of personality
which we may call patriform and matriform represent

1 See J. C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society, 1945,

Personality Formation

extremes of a range and not two distinct categories. A child
normally incorporates elements derived from both parents into
its personality, and no doubt the kind of personality most
desirable both for the person concerned and for society lies
somewhere between these two poles. It is when a child has only
one parent, or when it reacts from one of its parents, that a per-
sonality influenced chiefly by the other results. And we must also
bear in mind other possibilities : for instance, a child brought up
by nurses will tend to introject their standards rather than those
of its parents. 1 Finally, it must be stressed that much of what
it derives from each parent is not, or not wholly, determined by
biological factors: much of what we regard as typically mascu-
line, or typically feminine, behaviour, is in reality a product of
the culture, as Mead and others have shown. 2

Now one type of character may be more conducive to the
possessor's happiness than the other according to which type
is best adapted to the society the owner is living in : moreover,
one type may be more conducive to the happiness of others.
So here, too, we have a factor which is very relevant to the
question of happiness, and about which we shall have more to
say in the next chapter.

From considerations of specific elements introjected into
personality, I must turn aside for a moment to a more general
concept, applicable to much that we have said, and much that
is still to come. To wit, guilt.

in Guilt and Its Origins

Guilt, no one will deny, is a source of unhappiness. Yet
no one would suggest that we should eliminate all guilt. If a
man feels no guilt for anti-social acts which he commits, his

1 This explains, incidentally, why men of position are sometimes
unable to build a satisfactory sex-life with women of their own class,
and are driven to maintain a mistress whose manners reproduce those
of their one-time nurses.

8 See M. Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies,
1935. The influence of culture is also discussed at some length in the
next chapter.

85

Conditions of Happiness

behaviour will become more and more intolerable. It is neurotic
guilt which is the danger; guilt which is out of all proportion
to the cause, guilt which generated by acts which, rightly
considered, are not guilty, guilt which persists long after the
error has been expiated. I think it must be failure to appreciate
this point which has caused some Catholic writers to attack
psychology most bitterly for its attempts to reduce guilt.

And neurotic guilt is certainly a major factor in contemporary
unhappiness. How, then, is it formed?

Guilt, essentially, is consciousness of having done something
forbidden, something 'wicked.' As we shall see in a moment,
the child's conception of what is forbidden is wholly arbitrary,
so it may easily happen that guilt is generated by deeds which
are in reality innocent, or, at worst, inevitable childhood
misdemeanours. The next question is: Why should contravention
of these prohibitions produce the unpleasant feeling we call
guilt? It seems fairly certain that guilt is really fear of the
consequences fear of punishment or fear of loss of approval
and affection. Of these the latter is much the most serious:
indeed, for the child it is intolerable. Hence undiscovered
crimes are a source of deep anxiety. So much so that the child
often longs to have the misdeed discovered and undergo punish-
ment so that it can regain a feeling of security and be confident
of approval and affection. 1

This desire for punishment is in direct conflict with the
normal wish to avoid painful experiences and it is owing to the
existence of- this conflict that guilty persons find it so hard to
avoid giving themselves away.

But conflict, as we know, evokes repression : so that memory
of the guilty deed is lost to consciousness. Yet the sensation of
having erred lingers on and this conduces to the formation of a

1 At the writer's public school, any boy who had been given 'lines'
up to a total of 500 automatically incurred a beating. It was not
uncommon for boys who had received 400, or even in some cases 300,
to bring the number up to 500 by some piece of deliberate misbehaviour
in order, at the price of a flogging, to dispose of the psychological
menace. In the same connection, the phrase 'I'll take my medicine* is
graphically descriptive.

86

Personality Formation

rigid, non- valid behaviour pattern which in severe cases may
last throughout life. The person suffering from a load of
unconscious guilt continually seeks new punishment or inter-
prets every misfortune as deserved. Naturally, all guilt causes
some unhappiness, but neurotic guilt goes much further.
Because all conscious recollection of the crime has been
repressed no amount of atonement ever succeeds in restoring
confidence. The unhappy victim passes his whole life in a hell
of insecurity and unease, and continually deviates from con-
structive activities to compensate for his mistake. Unless, indeed,
he deals with the situation by projecting his guilt on to others
and spends his time punishing these effigies of himself as the
Nazis did wkh the Jews.

Where this self-punishing attitude takes an acute form we
speak of masochism, and where it is projected, of sadism. In
many cases both attitudes exist alternately and we speak of
sado-masochism. l

The tragedy is that the original cause is generally trifling.
Owing to the extraordinary persistence of repressed experiences
adults may feel unconscious guilt for childish crimes which are
in reality quite trivial, and which, when exposed by analysis,
are seen to be ludicrously inadequate as justifications for the
amount of suffering undergone. What makes it worse is that
the mind, especially the child mind, is strongly disposed to
regard wishes as severely as deeds. Unconscious guilt is often
created by misdeeds which were never committed. Nearly all
small children at some time entertain destructive wishes
towards their parents for frustrating them, and especially
towards the father who appears in the light of a rival for the
mother's affection. Destructive wishes to rival brothers and
sisters are also common. If something occurs to dramatise these
early wishes a typical pattern is that such wishes are followed,
by chance, by the death of the parent or brother, of which the

1 The Freudian view, however, is that sadism is aggression 'fused
with* libido, i.e., sexual desire, while masochism is introjected sadism.
Almost certainly both aggressive and punitive factors are present, but
the subject is far from clear.

Conditions of Happiness

child then feels itself guilty neurosis is often established.
Unconscious guilt is a rather widespread feature of our
civilisation, as witness the strong . tendency to sadism and
masochism.

The practical task then, is (a) to minimise the formation of
guilt, especially infantile guilt, since it is around infantile guilt
that later accumulations crystallise ; and (b) to provide effective
means for discharging guilt and restoring a sense of emotional
security.

We could avoid the formation of guilt by never punishing
children in any way whatever. The Comanche Indians of North
America follow this course with great success, and several other
peoples punish exceedingly little. Unfortunately it is a counsel
of perfection, and one which works effectively only in societies
which are well-balanced in any case. So we must reckon on
having to make use of guilt-discharging techniques.

The nature of such techniques depends on the type of
punishment which is customary. In our society we teach that
wrong-doing can be expiated by physical suffering but other
societies teach that this result can be achieved by confession
and repentance, by making restitution, by self-denial, by
sacrifice to the gods, or other means. 1 All these are absolutely
effective, provided the guilty person believes they are. So the
practical question is to create belief in the method which is most
valuable socially. Restitution, as far as it is possible, is to be
preferred. It is valuable in cases of theft or destruction of
property, though useless in mutilation or murder.

Another point is that the device should not be too difficult to

1 Compulsive attempts to disperse neurotic guilt will take a corres-
ponding form. Thus the child who has been taught to make restitution
may go through life compulsively sacrificing its own interests to helping
others, to an extent out of all proportion with its obligations. Or it may
be neurotically scrupulous in avoiding * crimes* similar to its original
misdeed. Thus the puritan is often a person who feels neurotically
guilty about having experienced sexual pleasure, generally because he
has, as a child, been punished for masturbation. And we all know the
person who is morbidly obsessed with cleanliness, which is frequently
the result of guilt about failure of anal control.

88

Personality Formation

achieve. A man will not readily invite five years' hard labour to
clear his conscience though, at the other extreme, he will not
boggle at confession.

It is well not to lose sight of the fact that confession, for
anyone who believes in the priest's power of absolution, is a
one hundred per cent, effective method of disposing of guilt, and
as such is a therapeutic weapon of no mean value. And, in fact,
the whole Christian religion is well adapted for this purpose.
Anyone who believes that Christ really did take upon himself
the sins of the world is thereby freed of guilt. The only essential
is to have faith. Whatever else he was, Christ was a first-class
practical psychologist. Divine or not, His claim that he could
relieve people of the burden of sin was quite literally true,
provided that his hearers believed him. He was engaged in a
staggeringly bold experiment in mass psychology.

Those who doubt pay a high price for their scepticism, and
their only hope is to find someone or something they can have
faith in. Today that someone is the scientist, specifically the
psycho-analyst, who is thus the direct successor to the priest.

By the same token, the sacrifices made by the Romans to their
gods were equally effective in their way.

I said that the discharge of guilt should not be made too
difficult: equally it must not be made too easy, or an impor-
tant incentive to good behaviour is removed. In theory at least,
confession meets this requirement, for the priest can always
withhold absolution from the unrepentant.

But while such devices are effective in dealing with conscious
guilt they cannot cope with the unconscious variety.

So far we have considered the psychological superstructure
simply as a potential source of unhappiness to the possessor,
but now we must switch from the personal to the social view-
point and consider how far it is effective in regulating behaviour
so that it will not injure other people. It is this second obligation
which creates the difficulty. If we had only single individuals
to deal with we could reduce the formation of guilt by refraining
from punishing them at all, as do the Comanches. But our task
is harder. We can hardly escape the obligation of teaching
C.H. 7 89

Conditions of Happiness

children certain lessons. The most we can do is keep these
lessons to the minimum and provide sure and certain means
to the dissipation of guilt by reinstatement in parental or, in
the case of an adult, in social favour.

What are the bases of a code of behaviour ? Where does the
child obtain the standards by which it judges the permissibility
or otherwise of actions to which it is impelled?

iv Regulating Behaviour

One great force which restrains people from anti-social
behaviour is the fear of sacrificing the approval and co-operation
of their fellows. It is not, however, the only force. People do not
at once behave with complete selfishness when they know they
will not be found out: most of them are also restrained by an
inner compulsion we call the conscience.

In most western countries the conscience plays a very
prominent role but at the same time there are large numbers of
people whose consciences are much less exacting than the
majority's. This difference of standards causes unhappiness,
and it also tends to degrade the standards of the more conscien-
tious. It is therefore a matter of importance to study how the
conscience is formed and nourished.

The conscience can be analysed into two parts: first, man
has a picture of how he ought to behave; second, there is a
driving force which keeps him up to the mark. The first we
called, in Freud's terminology, the ego-ideal, the second the
super-ego. Hence anti-social behaviour may be the result,
either of the formation of a faulty ego-ideal, or of the weakness
of the driving force or of both. Accordingly the next step is
to ask (a) whence do we derive our ego-ideals ? and (b) whence
the driving force? 1

Research has shown clearly that ego-ideals are derived, in the
first instance, from parental behaviour. The small child loves
its parents and wishes to be like them. It models its behaviour

1 For an excellent summary of what is known about the formation
of super-ego and ego-ideal, see J. C. Flugel, op. cit.

9

Personality Formation

on theirs. In the jargon, it introjects parental attitudes. If the
parents later sacrifice its approval it may modify its ideal in
compensation; thus, if they are mean, it may come to set a high
value on generosity. Or it may seek to model itself on some other
admired figure: this is the process, common in slightly older
children, of hero-worship. In this early phase the child's
conception of right and wrong is purely empirical. Mme.
Montessori has observed that a child will, in a spirit of experi-
ment, perform a whole range of 'naughty* acts simply in
order to find out whether they are regarded as forbidden or
not.

Later, however, as Piaget has shown, a new phase opens. The
child begins to generalise from its own behaviour and its
experiences with other children. It discovers that certain
behaviour patterns are painful when it is the victim and begins
to realise they are equally painful when it is the operator and
someone else the victim. 1

What can we learn from this ?

I would like to draw attention to three things. First, there is
the terrible rigidity of infantile conscience. The child trans-
gresses parental edicts or patterns and is filled with guilt. Later
in life, having evolved a somewhat more rational code of behav-
iour these early transgressions seem trivial and ridiculous. We
laugh ruefully to think how much agony they cost us at the
time. But it is not the transgressions we remember which cause
the trouble : it is those of which the memory has been repressed.
Many people are burdened by unconscious feelings of guilt
for trivial transgressions much of the work of psycho-analysis
consists in bringing these incidents back to the conscious
memory so that they can be seen in proportion, and that is why
the recovery of memories alone has a therapeutic effect, even
though it does not necessarily of itself effect a cure.

Although the second phase of morality is rational in nature,

1 See J. Piaget and others, The Moral Judgment of the Child, 1932.
The effect of play with other children in stimulating a social sense
is studied by Susan Isaacs, The Social Development in Young Children,
1933-

Conditions of Happiness

it is by no means wholly rational but is much influenced by
social customs and standards which it takes for granted. For
instance, if a child is laughed at foj- being unconventionally
dressed it is likely to incorporate ideas about the proper way
to dress in its ego-ideal and, as an adult, will feel uneasy if it
fails to observe them. This is, of course, a perfectly practical
response though it may be in some cases excessive in degree
as far as the individual is concerned. He recognises that he
may lose approval by dressing unsuitably and naturally avoids
the blunder. But looking at society as a whole we see how
unimportant it is whether one has a ring in one's nose or in one's
ears. The mistake is for the people in a society to withhold
approval from people who fail to conform to these arbitrary
rules.

In short, our conscience in not a divinely-inspired guide but
a haphazard collection of rules of varying value. At the core is
the Golden Rule, the product of experience: do as you would
be done by. But it is overlaid by ghosts of what daddy did
and what Smith minor said that awful afternoon. That is
one reason why consciences produce such odd results in
practice.

And even the lesson of the Golden Rule may not be success-
fully learned. If a child finds that its attempts to be co-operative
to others are rewarded by co-operation towards itself it will
learn the lesson. But if its overtures are abused, it will tend to
learn the contrary lesson, that Might pays off. As is now widely
recognised, most vindictive behaviour (apart from the sadistic
elements it may contain) consists in an attempt to compensate
for injustices suffered in youth injustices the memory of
which has been repressed.

Finally, it must be pointed out that parents often fail to
teach children the lesson they think they are teaching. Children
are, above all, imitative. The father who thrashes a child for
(let us say) getting himself dirty, believes he is teaching him
cleanliness; he may be teaching him only that the best way to
achieve one's ends is by violence, especially if the father allows
himself the failing for which the child is punished.

92

Personality Formation
v Super-Ego Formation

The second question we were to ask was what is the origin of
the force which drives thfr individual to live up to his ego-ideal.
Though the details are obscure, it seems clearly established
that this is derived from the individual's own load of aggression
which is, to a greater or lesser degree, turned against himself.
In a classic experiment students were set a problem which was,
though they did not know it, insoluble and their reactions were
observed. It was found that some consistently blamed them-
selves for their failure, while others blamed the environment
the teacher or the puzzle. From this was derived the concept of
an intropunitive and an extrapunitive type, though it has not
been established that an extrapunitive never behaves intro-
punitively.

Extrapunitives, accordingly, are little troubled by conscience,
while intropunitives tend to be extremely conscientious. The
extent of their conscience depends, however, on the volume
of aggression at the disposal of the super-ego. The child which
has been much frustrated will tend to be the perfectionist,
worrying type and will, of course, display these tendencies to
the full whenever met by frustrating circumstances in adult
life.

All the same, I find it difficult to regard this as a full explana-
tion of the super-ego. The conscientious person, I suspect, is
also motivated by something akin to fear. Deep down in his
unconscious a little voice whispers, if you do that you'll suffer
for it. Or we can say, quite simply, that he knows that if he
goes against the dictates of his conscience he will feel
guilty.

But it must not be assumed that the super-ego is formed in all
individuals with equal force. As Bateson has pointed out, three
conditions are necessary to super-ego formation:

1. There must be some individual adult who makes it his or
her business to teach the child how to behave.

2. This teaching must be backed up by punishment.

3. The child must love the adult in question.

93

Conditions of Happiness

Where these conditions do not obtain the super-ego will be
weak or missing. 1 This we can see in our own society today.

VI Ideal Pictures

Unaware, perhaps, of Freud's existing concept of the ego-
ideal accounting for our moral and ethical ideas, Coulson has
proposed a similar but broader notion which he calls the
ideal picture* Everyone, he says, creates a conception or picture
of their life as they would like it to be. Such an ideal comprises
a certain standard of home comfort, of personal liberty, of
public approval and private regard, and so on. People regulate
their actions in accordance with this picture. They refuse to
live in a house which they think is c beneath them/ to wear
clothes of less than a certain quality or style, or to accept a wage
or salary below what they think is their due.

This ideal picture comprises certain standards of personal
behaviour too. People often say that they would think it
'beneath them* to behave in such and such a way.

Naturally, everyone constantly makes decisions on such
matters, but Coulson was suggesting something more than
this. He was suggesting that these decisions are not made afresh
each time on the merits of the case but are referred to a pre-
existing, internally consistent picture of oneself. How far this
is true is still uncertain: Coulson makes many assertions about
the way in which this picture was formed and revised which
were probably of little significance except as descriptions,
and it is not even established that any such organised view
exists.

Nevertheless, it is true that people have standards of what
is due to them, and that unhappiness results when these
standards are ill-chosen. I want, therefore, to try and clarify
the matter sufficiently for us to see what the practical implica-
tions are when it comes to designing a world in which we can be
happy.

1 J. McV. Hunt, Personality and the Behaviour Disorders, 1944.
* W. McDougall, Introduction to Social Psychology t 23rd ed., 1936.

94

Personality Formation

If we examine instances in which people have formed an
'ideal picture* (to use Coulson's terminology without
prejudice) which militate^ against their happiness we find they
are generally unsatisfactory for one, or both, of two reasons.
Either their pictures involve being superior to other people,
or it aims at the acquisition of things which are not, ultimately,
necessary to happiness.

The introduction of this comparative element into motiva-
tion, so that whatever one does or possesses one must do better
or possess more of than anyone else, I would regard as a disease
or distortion of normal ambition arising from the urge to self-
validation to which I have already referred. Its psychological
roots lie in a fear of organic inferiority impotence and this is
intensified if the person concerned is placed in an inferior
position by fate or his own deficiencies at a later age. It is a
common malady in western civilisation. The second error is
subordinate to the first. The man who wishes to excel over
his fellows, and so win their approval, must excel in the
things they value and so he tends to choose material things
rather than skill, aesthetic sensibility or spiritual insight,
when he lives, as we do in a society which values material
possessions, more strongly, on the whole, than non-material
ones.

This urge to live at a certain standard, whether it be inter-
preted in terms of knowledge, power or possessions, which
must exceed other people' s corresponds to what we call ambition,
in the strict sense the sort of ambition Wolsey meant when
he said: 'Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition/ In its
extremest manifestation it may amount to megalomania or even
delusional insanity, as in the case of the man who imagines
he is Napoleon, or God.

I fancy that the ideal picture in its material aspects is
normally a representation of one's childhood; in its non-
material aspects it is no more than the normal desire for
approval. The normal man wishes, for instance, to wear
clothes which will not bring him into disrepute with his friends,
and which will be comfortable. That is all. It is only if he begins

95

Conditions of Happiness

to use clothes as a device for being envied or admired that he
begins to accumulate a vast wardrobe; it is only when he
wishes to prove himself different frony the common herd (and
hence, he means, superior) that he may take to eccentric
attire.

In itself, then, the ideal picture is not likely to be a major
cause of unhappiness. It is primarily when it is distorted by
ego-considerations that it becomes so. There are, however,
two ways in which it can prove unsatisfactory. The first is
when it incorporates materialistic aims to the exclusion of
non-material ones. The second results from the division of
our society into classes of varying material wealth. The man
who has been born to circumstances of a certain degree of
comfort, and who is forced by fate or his own deficiencies
into poorer ones, suffers a frustration (over and above the
material discomfort involved) which does not afflict the person
born into those circumstances. Such frustration is hardly com-
pensated for by the sense of self-satisfaction which is felt by
those who have risen into a superior class, because the latter
will only be felt by those who are suffering from ego-inferiority,
while the former will assail all such people. This kind of
frustration will only disappear when differences in the material
standard of living either disappear or, as is more likely, cease
to be considered important.

It is an interesting fact that such considerations only apply
to material possessions. If a man felt frustrated when forced
by his own intellectual deficiencies into a milieu less intelligent
than the one into which he had been born, we could not do
anything about this, because we cannot ensure that every
milieu will be equal in such respects. But a man of little intellect
does not feel frustrated when in the company of other people
of little intellect; on the contrary, he would feel frustrated if
obliged to consort with intellectuals. Similarly, with aesthetic
and spiritual gifts.

This, of course, is not to say that a man of high intellectual
gifts who is forced by material (economic) circumstances into
unintellectual society is not frustrated: obviously he is.

Personality Formation

But this is precisely the sort of situation which can be
avoided by breaking up the economic classes in the way just
suggested.

vn Conclusion

This huge complex of mislearned and misapplied lessons at
which we have been looking impels man to many activities
which do not further his happiness, nor that of his fellow
men, and may even make it harder to attain. It is something
to have recognised its existence, but the odd thing is that we
have no word for it.

Those who study these matters refer to the field in which
these processes take place as the psyche, and to themselves as
psychologists, but this is to use the word psyche quite
differently from its dictionary meaning or its meaning in the
original Greek. The psyche is the soul, or spirit of man.
Whether this spirit has an objective existence or not is an
issue which may be, and often is, debated. But however the
debate is decided, there can be no doubt that this network of
behaviour patterns does not correspond to the idea of soul or
spirit. It corresponds much more closely to the idea of per-
sonality. In fact, many psychologists (as I must continue to
call them, in the absence of another word) would go so far as
to say that the personality is wholly a construct built up on
such lines and modified by physical influences such as the
endocrine secretions. 1

At least it is clear that we must regard it as very largely a
construct or artefact and pay much more attention than
hitherto to the forces which construct it. We must admit the
discouraging truth that to preserve a harmonious and undis-
torted personality, a rare combination of care and good fortune
is necessary.

And there, until recently, many writers would be content to
leave the matter.

1 See H. G. Wells, Doctoral Thesis : The Multiple, Unstable
Constitution of Individuality, 1944; Sherif, M., & Cantril, H., The
Psychology of Ego Involvements, 1947; etc.

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Conditions of Happiness

But today opinion is moving away from this extreme
emphasis on genetic factors towards a greater stress on environ-
mental ones. Psychological blows rryiy form the personality,
but customs and social pressures regulate the ways in which it
can express itself. Moreover, social situations can do much to
reinforce or soften the effect of these early lessons: indeed,
social factors regulate the lessons themselves.

To these cultural factors we must now turn our attention.

VI
SOCIAL MATRIX

I The Cultural Heritage n Basic Personality Structure m Cultural

Neurosis iv Patriform and Matriform Societies v Harmful Culture

Elements vi Origin of Culture Elements vn The Basis of Culture:

Values vin Genesis of Values

I The Cultural Heritage

1 HOUGH we are now beginning to recognise the extent to
which man's behaviour is governed by the forces within him,
few people yet appreciate how much it is influenced by the
customs, institutions and beliefs of the society into which he
is born. Hence we fail to grasp how intimately his chances of
happiness depend on the suitability of this heritage to its
several tasks.

In sociology, the whole complex of ideas, customs, con-
ventions, taboos, institutions, values, techniques and beliefs
which, within any given society, is handed on from one
generation to another is termed its culture ; and this concept of
culture as a moulding and determining force is of fundamental
importance. Perhaps the most concise definition of culture is
'the learned reactions of a group.' 1 Culture should not be
confused (as it often is) with the physical property which
reflects it the buildings, vehicles, tools, clothing, works of
art, etc. For these the sociologist prefers the term cultural
equipment, although the term material culture is sometimes
used. Men choose to live in social groups because they find
that, on the whole, they can satisfy their needs, psychological
as well as practical, more effectively by so doing than if they

1 Proposed by Gillin and Gillin, An Introduction to Sociology, 1942.
The precise definition of the term culture presents some difficulty.
See the discussion in The Science of Man in the World Crisis, ed. R.
Lint on, Columbia University Press, 1945.

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Conditions of Happiness

live in isolation. But although social existence yields benefits
it also demands sacrifices. No individual can be permitted to
satisfy his own needs at the cost of making it less easy for
others to do so, or the group will tend to dissolve. So the
function of society is twofold: to assist men in gaining their
ends and to restrain them from injuring one another.

To assist men in achieving their ends, societies adopt
customs and to restrain them from anti-social action they pro-
vide taboos* It is easy to see that a custom such as the rule
of the road simplifies life for everybody. The purpose of some
customs is less obvious, others have outlived their usefulness,
but initially all were functional in intention. Taboos are a
special sort of custom about not doing something. We can
either say it is customary for the captain not to leave a sinking
ship until passengers and crew are clear, or we can say that it
is taboo for him to leave earlier. An organised group of
customs we call an institution. Marriage is a good example.

A third type of culture element of great practical importance
is values. For most people the idea that values can be treated
as having a kind of independent existence will seem strange.
They are accustomed to think of values as no more than a
convenient way of describing behaviour. Thus, the statement :
'I like cake' (i.e. *I set a high value on cake') forms a convenient
clue to how I will behave when faced with cake, but when
I die the attitude disappears, if not before. It might seem,
therefore, that to say 'Men like cake* describes how men now
living react, .but has no significance for the next generation,
which might, conceivably, feel quite differently about it.

But the fact is that we take over many of our values quite
uncritically from our parents or our society, instead of forming
them by practical experiment, as we do in the case of cake.
Thus, among the Veddahs, who like eating the lice out of

1 Customs are usually classified as mores which have a moral
significance and are thought essential to the welfare of society, and
folkways which are simply a matter of convenience. Thus shaking hands
is a folkway, but monogamy is a mos. Similarly, taboos may or may not
be invested with moral significance.

100

Social Matrix

their friends' hair, this taste continues consistently from one
generation to another. Equally, vegetarian tribes continue
vegetarian and meat-eaters continue carnivorous. Our own
dislike of headlice as an item of diet is, after all, drawn from
the culture and not from experiment. Or, if it is difficult to see
the truth of such a bizarre example, consider the frogs and
snails of French diet, or even our aversion from the perfectly
palatable horsemeat.

In short, values, once established, tend to persist, and this
is just as true of subtler values, such as approval of wisdom,
courage or romantic love.

Further, the mere fact that a value is held tends to per-
petuate it, because those who do not conform to it sacrifice
public approval. Hence, values not only persist, but spread.
In this way, the values of a society tend, in the absence of
disturbing forces, to become uniform and self-consistent.

Living as we do inside a particular culture, we find it hard
to grasp to what a large extent our actions and beliefs are
predetermined. We take it for granted that we drink milk,
that women wear skirts, that marriage is monogamous, and
that most of the population are Christians, rather than
Buddhists or devil-worshippers. We have an illusion of free
will: anyone who feels strongly enough can be a Buddhist or
abstain from milk but for every two or three directions in
which we break away there are thousands in which we conform
without even hesitating about doing so. The fact seems to be
that men make decisions only with difficulty; they do not
have the energy to work out their own pattern of behaviour
in more than a handful of instances, and unthinkingly conform
to the approved pattern in the greater part of their beliefs and
actions. Indeed, occasionally conformity is made compulsory:
about polygamy we do not have even the illusion of free will.

Polygamy illustrates very well the curiously blinkered nature
of our supposedly free judgment. A man may feel that the
institution of marriage is not altogether satisfactory, and pro-
pose modifications in the marriage laws, but he is most unlikely
to propose abandoning monogamy for polygamy, and if he

101

Conditions of Happiness

does so he will gain no audience. In some strange way poly-
gamy remains outside our focus of attention, beyond our
mental horizon. It is not that we havq considered the arguments
for it and rejected them; it is that we never let our mind
inspect the subject at all. Monogamy is a datum in our culture.

Because of this basic conservatism, even when our attention
is drawn to the fact that there are other ways of behaving,
other beliefs, we mutely feel that our own way is somehow
natural and right. As a result, we remain obstinately blind to
the unsatisfactory and harmful features of our own culture.

Yet the moment we turn our attention to other culture we
see at once that they often exhibit stupid and harmful features.
At this point I will mention only a few crude and self-evident
examples: cicatrisation, which often causes death; clitoridec-
tomy, equally dangerous and fraught with psychological con-
sequences; suttee, the practice by which the wife is burned to
death on her husband's pyre; war. One a trifle subtler, but
obvious to us today because we have recently broken free of
it, is the seclusion of women and their exclusion from many
natural and rewarding activities. It is not difficult to see that
practices such as these or even such a simple custom as that
which forbids women to propose to men may be productive
of unhappiness. But beyond these self-evident examples there
lie customs and beliefs which act in the psychological sphere;
for instance, customs which cause anxiety and fear.* This is
not only true in the simple sense that the beliefs which made
the Spanish Inquisition possible were a source of misery to
its victims, but also in the sense that Calvinism made even
those who believed and practised it, harsh and joyless. The
power of such beliefs is made very obvious by comparative
anthropology. We note at once that in some cultures people
are fundamentally happy, in others anxious, vindictive and
hag-ridden. Since these attitudes bear no relation to the
physical environment, we can reasonably infer that it is some-
thing in the culture which makes them so. What these
tyrannous forces are will appear in the course of the chapter.

The object of this chapter, then, is first to establish some

102

Social Matrix

principles by which we can test culture elements from the
standpoint of their effect on happiness and to show how
undesirable elements cai^ come to be adopted. But first we
must consider a group of culture elements of peculiar
importance.

n Basic Personality Structure

In the last chapter I described how the child's earliest
experiences mould his character and named three experiences
as of particular importance: the speed and violence of its
weaning, the nature and violence of its house-training, and the
violence with which it encounters the (Edipus situation.

Now we must point out that these early experiences do not
depend wholly on the caprice of the parents, but are to a very
large extent regulated by relevant customs and beliefs obtain-
ing in the culture. To some people the idea that methods of
child training vary at all will be strange, and even are anything
but completely 'natural' and obvious will seem strange; and
if other societies differ from us, it must be simply because
they are savage and ignorant. But the fact is that practices
governing child-training differ considerably in different parts
of the world, and it is certainly unjustifiable to regard ours as
any more natural than anyone else's. In fact, from the view-
point of character formation, the customs of western culture
are very arbitrary and unnatural, as we shall see in a moment.

Because of this tendency to follow custom, there will be a
strong tendency for the children of a particular culture to
undergo similar experiences, and so to have similar elements
injected into their characters. Pioneer work has recently been
done in this field by Dr. Kardiner of Columbia University,
New York, 1 who has pointed out that even though the final
pattern may vary greatly between individual and individual,
and though the same element may give rise to different overt
character traits in different societies, nevertheless, we are

1 A. Kardiner, The Individual and His Society ', 1941 : The Psycho-
logical Frontiers of Society, 1945.

103

Conditions of Happiness

entitled to speak of the basic personality structure of a society.
It is because of the similarity of their personality structures
that each race has a characteristic,, way of behaving which
differs from that of other races. Many people still imagine
that such differences are due to inheritance, but this is
definitely not so: not only do people of one race, born in
another country, and brought up by indigenous parents take
on most of the characteristics of their country of birth, but the
stocks of most western nations are already so closely mixed
that the clear-cut differences we find between European
countries cannot possibly result from them. 1

This concept of a basic personality structure is of supreme
importance and plays a key role in the argument of this book.
Let us, therefore, consider it in more detail.

Though separation from the mother is perhaps the earliest
possible traumatic experience a child can undergo, most, if
not all, societies recognise the baby's need for its mother, and
separation is rare, except in so-called civilised societies. Every
society, however, has views about the proper way of weaning
a baby.

In some primitive societies the child is never refused the
breast, and simply resorts to it less and less because other
food seems more interesting. In such cases weaning generally
completes itself by the third or fourth year, though individual
children (probably those who through some mischance have
formed a sense of insecurity) may continue to suck the breast
occasionally up to seven years, or even later. In others, by
contrast, weaning is completed in six months by violent
methods, the child being slapped whenever it reaches for the
breast. The age at which weaning starts does not seem to
matter greatly: what matters is that the child should feel it
always can resort to the breast if it wants to. It is the conclusive
end of weaning which is decisive.

As will be understood, the anxieties generated by abrupt

weaning will be greatly reinforced if natural conditions make

the food supply or, for that matter, the supply of affection

1 G. Dahlberg, Race, Reason and Rubbishy (Trans, ), 1943.

104

Social Matrix

with which it is equated unreliable in adult life. That adult
food anxieties are not necessarily the consequence of real
shortages is clearly established. Thus, the Dobu of New
Guinea, who live in fertile country, are beset by food anxieties,
while the tribes of Central Australia, who are constantly
threatened by drought, have none. 1 The Dobu, as might be
imagined, practise abrupt weaning, the Australians do not.
The food anxieties of the Dobu are thus non-valid or neurotic ;
and so, one might add, is the confidence of the Australians,
though the idea of neurotic confidence has received little
attention from psychologists.

It is worth stressing that when the adult environment by
chance justifies an anxiety originally formed by non-valid
generalisation its neurotic character will be concealed and it
will appear as a perfectly rational mode of behaviour. This is
true of our own society, where genuine adult insecurity masks
the effects of abrupt weaning.

The pressure to complete an early weaning in the West
stems clearly enough from the social preoccupations of the
mother, her clothing, and the absence of numerous dependent
females in the household who can do the cooking and
cleaning. 2 Similarly, in the case of house-training, it is the
complex and easily damaged nature of household furnishings
and the relative remoteness and complexity of sanitary equip-
ment which makes the mother anxious to complete house-
training, while making it difficult for the child to attend to its
own needs. In the mud-floored huts of the Pondo, 3 the child
has only to wander outside the door to relieve itself: there are
no buttons to undo, and no pot to aim at. And if it fails in

1 R. F. Fortune, Sorcerers of Dobu, 1931 : and G. Roheim, The
Origin and Function of Culture y 1943.

2 Weaning could, of course, be postponed if the mother chose to
employ a wet nurse. For obvious reasons, this is unlikely to become the
practice of the majority. Nor is it a psychologically satisfactory solution
since it creates a problem of divided allegiance in the infant's mind.

8 See M. Hunter, Reaction to Conquest for an account of the Pondo.
The Tanala are described by R. Linton, in a contribution to Kardiner's
The Individual and His Society.

C.H. 8 X05

Conditions of Happiness

this, the floor is not irreparably damaged. In contrast, the
Tanala of Madagascar carry their children with them con-
tinually in a shawl: any incontinen9e is highly inconvenient
for the mother, especially since for this tribe fabric is costly
and difficult to replace. Naturally, the Tanala try to effect a
rapid 'sphincter control/ Not surprisingly, the Tanala are
grudging and unproductive in adult life.

Thirdly, there is the (Edipus situation. It is still far from
clear what factors favour or hinder the formation of an
(Edipus complex, but considerable light is thrown on the
situation by the case, fully investigated by Malinowski, of the
Trobriand Islanders. 1 As is now widely known, the Trobrianders
do not recognise the biological father as responsible for his
children. The responsibilities of a father, including the obliga-
tion to punish or maintain discipline when necessary, devolves
on the mother's brother.

As Malinowski has argued, the Trobrianders form virtually
no (Edipus complex and, as might be deduced, they have
absolutely no guilt feelings about sex and place extremely
few restrictions on the sexual act. Significantly enough, how-
ever, they are much concerned about incest, and are scandalised
if a young couple should fall in love with one another, although
they have no objection to them living together, providing no
affection is involved. In general, the Trobrianders are a
remarkably happy, well-balanced people in contrast to the
Amphlett Islanders, not far away, who have more orthodox
family arrangements, have rigid sexual taboos, and suffer from
guilt, anxiety and suspicion.

The explanation would seem to be that the child can project
all its hatred at restraint and discipline on to the uncle, while
reserving its love for the mother and (true) father thus avoid-
ing the conflict created by the normal (Edipal situation.
I am not suggesting that anyone should follow the Trobriand
pattern, which is not wholly devoid of neuroticism, as is
shown by the preoccupation with incest and the curious

1 B. Malinowski, Sexual Life of Savages in North-west Melanesia ,
1932, etc.

106

Social Matrix

pretence of ignorance about the biological significance of the
sexual act. But it does suggest very strongly that the quantity
of (Edipal guilt displaced by a society depends on specific
circumstances, and that if we can reduce this guilt to the
minimum we can produce much happier, better-integrated
personalities than we usually do at present.

Further light on the importance of these culturally-
determined practices with regard to children is thrown by
the case of those peoples who restrict the infant's physical
movement, whether by carrying it in a birchbark tube,
strapping it to a board or swaddling it in clothes. Such peoples
are often marked by a personality impatient of any restraint
and reacting with great violence to any restriction of liberty.
Half a century ago, however, when babies were swaddled to
a much greater extent than now, it may well have been a
significant factor in character formation and played its part in
creating the pathologically individualistic characters which
abounded in that period. Arthur Bryant, discussing such types,
tells of one man who directed that spikes be placed on his
grave so that no one should walk over him.

In the last chapter we referred to taboos on infantile
sexuality, especially masturbation, as a powerful formative
influence, and here again it is obvious that there will be a
high degree of uniformity throughout a society in the attitude
of parents to such behaviour. Some societies display such
taboos; others, like the Trobrianders, accept infantile sexuality
as natural.

Uniformity is not always so marked in the case of the
'reinstatement pattern.' Our own society uses a variety of
methods of punishment though, on the whole, it prefers
isolation and deprivation of rewards to shaming or using
threats, and has recently made much less use of physical pain.
Other societies are more limited in method; much depends on
precisely what is regarded as worthy of punishment. In our
own society, noisy, violent behaviour and damage to property
are chiefly objected to, and disobedience is not, in itself, a
very heinous crime; we even admire a certain independence

107

Conditions of Happiness

of spirit in a boy, and regard an absolutely obedient child as
spiritless. Among the Tanala, in contrast, the whole emphasis
is on obedience. A moment's reflection will show how largely
our adult attitudes reflect this pattern: the boor is resented,
but the unconventional character, who ignores society's minor
rules, is treated with amused tolerance. Correspondingly, the
adult Tanala seeks to achieve all his ends by conformity.

Social patterns may also regulate the formation of the
super-ego. In societies where the inculcation of socially
approved behaviour is not reinforced by punishment (including
withdrawal of affection) or those where no effective emotional
link develops between child and teacher, it will be weak.
Indeed, Bateson suggests that the combination of needed
factors is rather rare, pointing out that in many cultures
(e.g. Samoa, Lepcha, Bali) the baby is left chiefly in the care
of a small girl, so that if anything is introjected it will be the
standards of a juvenile. 1

The extent to which adult behaviour is modelled by early
experience, and the extent to which such experience is
approximately uniform throughout a society is probably quite
clear by now to the reader. It is not necessary for me to
elaborate the picture by discussing every possible influence:
yet there is one more which should be mentioned. Many
societies have two (or more) contrasting patterns of treatment
for children. Thus, the Tanala, though they train the majority
of the children for obedience, treat the first-born male quite
differently, .and train him for initiative. Similarly, a society
which supports a slave population will, for a very early age,
begin to train slave children differently from freemen,
emphasising obedience and humility for the former, indepen-
dence and authority for the other. Where this differential
training becomes of almost universal importance is in the
distinction between the sexes. The small boy is taught not to
be Unmanly, 1 the girl to be 'ladylike.' Thus, the natural
behaviour of each is moulded to match a concept of behaviour
which may have no basis in nature. How artificial this
1 G. Bateson, in J. McV. Hunt, op. cit.
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Social Matrix

behaviour can be is shown by Margaret Mead's famous study.
She found one society in which both sexes approximated to a
masculine ideal of behaviour (as we would think) another in
which both sexes were encouraged to typically female
behaviour, and a third in which the sex roles were reversed. 1
But while this is an extreme, it is certainly true that many
societies, including our own, force upon each sex a role which
is largely artificial. In the case of our own society we have only
to compare the Victorian girl with the modern woman to see
how artificial was the Victorian concept of how a woman
should behave. And just as the Victorian concept of truly
feminine behaviour was much more feminine (if one can use
such an expression) than natural feminine behaviour, so also
it is probable that our concept of typically masculine behaviour
is really much more masculine than is natural. The truth is
that there are masculine and feminine elements in everybody,
and to insist on suppressing one fraction and emphasising the
other is an important, but little appreciated, cause of
unhappiness.

As can be seen from this example, many of the influences to
which we submit children are extremely difficult to detect as
influences, so much do we take them for granted. To bring
out this important fact, let me give one further example. It
has probably never occurred to the reader that the personality
of western man is permanently conditioned by his being
brought up in a monogamous family. The Marquesans, how-
ever, are polygamous, and each wife regards herself as equally
the mother of all the children, regardless of biology. Similarly,
each child regards himself as having several equally important
mothers. So if he is rejected by one mother, he does not
worry too much: he knows that another will be along in a
minute to look after him. This attitude is easily detected in
the adult Marquesan, who rarely treats any disaster as final,
and to whom the European idea of 'finding the one girl in the
world for me/ or, in more formal language, the idea of a life-
long romantic love for one individual, seems completely
1 M. Mead, op. cit.

I0 9

Conditions of Happiness

mysterious and irrational. 1 Thus, our own idea that the only
really valid and rewarding relationship is with a single person
of the opposite sex is simply a conclusion from our childish
experience, when this was, in fact, the case. We should not be
too eager to justify this attitude by hasty rationalisations,
since, in many respects, the Marquesan attitude is much more
conducive to happiness and peace of mind than our own.

From such instances we can see why we must speak of a
basic, and not an overt character structure. All these factors
interact, and the final overt behaviour is the result of all of
them. A sense of insecurity, generated by irregular feeding,
will drive a Tanala first-born to initiative, while it will drive
a younger son to obedience. In another society, irregular
feeding may produce resentment against the mother, rather
than a sense of insecurity, and in another the most careful
cherishing of the mother. Anal training may lead to stinginess
or creative generosity, according as the reinstatement pattern
is based on rewarding good behaviour or punishing bad. The
concept is an analytical one.

For our present purpose it is not necessary to study in
detail how the underlying structure works out in overt
behaviour: what matters is the realisation that human per-
sonality is largely, if not wholly, an artefact; and the differences
in personality between different races is artificially produced
likewise. It is not a natural phenomenon that the Chinese
behave differently from us, but the result of childhood
experience modified, certainly, by cultural patterns and by
environmental circumstances.

From this it further follows that there is only one ideal,

undistorted personality and everyone who differs from this

mean must be regarded ^as to some extent the victim of

neurosis. Furthermore, since whole populations undergo, to a

greater or lesser extent, the same experiences, these whole

populations are neurotic and we are entitled to speak of

'cultural neurosis.' This is such a novel and important concept

that I propose to devote a separate section to it.

1 R. Linton, op. cit.

JJO

Social Matrix
in Cultural Neurosis

Many writers have been struck by the widespread existence
of neurotic elements in our culture, and now that psychological
knowledge is being assimilated into comparative anthropology,
field-workers are beginning to recognise the behaviour of
other peoples as typically neurotic. There has, therefore, been
a growing tendency to speak of the neurosis of a whole culture
(the idea was developed, particularly, in relation to Nazi
Germany) yet, in the absence of any theory as to the way in
which such a widespread neurosis could be generated, many
people have scoffed at the idea and dismissed it as loose thinking.

Since it is humanly impossible to inspect our own culture
without bias, it will be best to start by looking at a couple of
others. First, there are the Dobu, who live in a state of per-
petual suspicion which, if we observed it in a single individual
in our own society, we should unhesitatingly diagnose as
paranoia. So intense is this suspiciousness that the most
ordinary, friendly acts are consistently interpreted as having
some subtle and sinister motive. This attitude, which we
should most certainly regard as a form of insanity, is so
general among the Dobu, that they regard an unsuspicious,
friendly individual as weak in the head. 1

Or let us consider the Kwakiutl of Puget Sound. Unlike
ourselves, who regard it as natural to spend all our time
accumulating wealth, the Kwakiutl spend all their time giving
it away. They devote their best efforts to preparing for, and
holding, ceremonial feasts or potlatches, at which their most
precious possession, sperm oil, is poured on to the fire, and
their largest monetary unit, a copper sheet, is torn in pieces,
because to do this reflects glory on the individual concerned. 2

In order to be able to detect similar elements in our own
culture we need some rules or standards. As was said in the
last chapter, the characteristic features of a neurotic response
are that it is rigid i.e. it occurs whether the circumstances

1 See R. Fortune, op. cit. and A. Kardiner, op, cit. for an analysis
in the light of psycho-analytic theory.

* R. Benedict, Patterns of Culture, 1935.

Ill

Conditions of Happiness

justify it or not and it is disproportionate to the stimulus.
Suspicion, for instance, is not in itself neurotic. Some circum-
stances justify suspicion. What is neurotic is to be continually
suspicious, or to be much more suspicious than the
circumstances warrant.

The most prominent of several neurotic elements in our
own culture is, I suggest, the need to validate the ego a
need which is more marked in the United States than else-
where. It is quite normal and unneurotic to work and make
money with which to support one's family. But to work
incessantly, subordinating all other interests and modes of
activity to one's work, to work with frenzied application, day
after day, is distinctly neurotic. It is because such activity
reduces his internal tensions that the American businessman
is impelled to repeat the same pattern day after day. And in
a wider sense, so is the modern preoccupation with accumu-
lating goods neurotic. Western man's frenzied pursuit of a
technological progress which bids fair to undo him is as
suggestive of neurosis as are the ruinous potlatches of the
Kwakiutl, the exhausting prestige wars of many Indian tribes,
or the dangerous self-mutilations of Australian aborigines.

Such neurotically-determined codes of behaviour undermine
happiness with double force. Not only is the neurotic unhappy
when he is among normal people who do not observe his
customs and taboos or rather, not merely unhappy, but
disgusted, nauseated and outraged but the normal individual
is painfully Constrained to unnatural behaviour, if he wishes
to avoid persecution, when he lives among neurotics: or, if
he refuses to conform, he is despised and humiliated.

As is now being more widely recognised, where a whole
culture is neurotic, it is the abnormals who are thought to be
neurotic, while the neurotics pass for normal. Just as among
the Dobu, the paranoiac is regarded as normal, and the
unsuspicious man as contemptible, half-witted or ill, so among
ourselves, many of those who pass for neurotic because they
are uninterested in (let us say) competitive sport or out-
smarting a business rival are, perhaps, healthy, while it is

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among the most successful figures in business, sport and
public life that we must look for the diseased.

Since they are really healthy, for such pseudo-neurotics
there is no cure possible. It is society which must be cured.
Like the sighted man in the country of the blind, they must
accept the situation as best they may and subscribe to the
general errors.

From this point it is but a short step to realising that such
a culture will adopt Values' which reflect its neurotic needs.
It will value sport, or economic success, or the giving of
potlatches, and all other actions will tend to be judged by
how far they contribute to such ideals.

Now values, as I shall argue, are the most powerful determin-
ants in a culture. So that once irrational values creep in, the
culture is doomed to unhappiness. But before taking up this
point, let us complete our review of basic personality formation.

iv Patriform and Matriform Societies

As, in the last chapter, I mentioned that two distinct types
of personality, which I called patriform and matriform, can
be identified in individuals, according to the parent with
whom they have identified themselves, it is not unreasonable
to expect that similar patterns may dominate whole societies.
And in truth, it is easy to recognise that some cultures are
authoritarian, conservative and puritanical, while others are
progressive, co-operative, and free from sexual guilt.

There are two patterns of behaviour resulting from the
type of parent identification which we can observe better in
whole societies than in individuals, since the individual is, in
any case, much influenced by the cultural environment and
also because he may hesitate to confess his attitude freely
when it is at variance to the one approved by the culture:
I mean the moral code of the culture and its religious beliefs.
The patriform society regards offences against authority and
property as the most serious crimes and looks less severely
on crimes against women. (We can see this pattern in Fascist

Conditions of Happiness

Germany.) And it tends to punish such crimes by castration
or death. (The German interest in the sterilising of alleged
anti-social persons is significant, as is that of some of our own
authoritarians.) By contrast, the matriform society regards
offences against women as most serious and typically punishes
them by expulsion from the family, i.e. from society. It centres
the concept of sin on the food supply: that is, it regards failure
to provide people with the necessities of life as the real crime.
In contrast, the patriform society centres the idea of sin on
sex and on desire generally.

Social history is, in fine, a story of the struggle of matrists
(if I may borrow a word and provide it with a feminine form)
against the rigid, authoritarian, puritanical, guilt-burdened
rule of patrists. Unfortunately, the matristic revolutions are
always taken over by dispossessed patrists, and invariably end
in the replacement of one tyranny by another. 1

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this subject is the
accuracy with which the religious beliefs of a society reflect
the polarisation of the personality. As Suttie pointed out,
patriform societies consistently favour religions centred round
a god who is conceived as a father, located in the sky i.e.
above them. Matriform societies worship an Earth Mother
that is, they conceive the earth as the fruitful source of all
good things, and engage in some variety of nature- worship,
or conceive of God as immanent in all things. Religion thus
provides us with a simple method of determining the
personality" slant.

Suttie's observation, I believe, enables us to clear up some
puzzling features in the history of Christianity features which
provide a remarkable example of how people twist religion to
suit the needs of their personality. Coming to a guilt-ridden,
strongly patriform society, Christ made a tremendous attempt
to introduce a guilt-free society based on loving co-operation,
not on authority. He continued, however, to refer to God by

1 Possibly this provides the factual basis for Kant's intuitively-
perceived distinction between 'Promethean* and 'Epimethean* types
of character.

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the symbol, familiar to his listeners, of a father. When the
new religion reached areas which were predominantly matri-
form, the demand for & mother figure swiftly hoisted the
Virgin Mary into the key position of protectress and interceder
with the Father by now no longer conceived as inherently
merciful and loving. In predominantly patriform areas, there
was never any need felt for the concept of the Virgin Mary,
and the religion was swiftly transformed into one of authori-
tarian type, differing but little from the primitive Jehovahism
which Christ had sought to displace.

The forces which determine which attitude is adopted have
never, so far as I know, been adequately investigated, though
it can hardly be doubted that they are derived from the
OEdipal situation. If the child identifies with the father, as
sons most often do, he will tend to dominate the mother,
while if he identifies with the mother, he will adopt a more
passive attitude to the father, and will be 'a mother's boy.' As
Suttie pointed out with remarkable prevision of the modern
approach to anthropology, if the father uses force to dominate
the mother, might will seem to the child the proper method of
winning approval this goes some way to explain the consistently
aggressive and belligerent behaviour of patriform societies. 1
Whereas, if the relationship between the parents is based on
love, the child can only win its mother's love by a loving
attitude, including with this a loving attitude to its father. It
rather looks, therefore, as if the attitude of the father to the
mother is the chief factor determining the nature of the
parental identification; and we might even go as far as to
suggest that the (Edipus complex in its classic form can only
exist in a patriform society a fact which would line up with
the weakness of the (Edipus complex among the Trobrianders,
who are, of course, a matrilineal society. 2

1 I. Suttie, op. cit.

8 Robert Briffault's The Mothers : a study of matrilineal and
matrilocal societies, 1927, gives colour to this view : but the work was
unfortunately written without psychological factors of this sort in mind,
and so is often unenlightening.

Conditions of Happiness

Suttie also attempted to connect what he called the taboo
on tenderness with the patriform society. He noticed the
characteristic embarrassment of many Englishmen at the
display of tender emotion towards themselves, and pointed out
how small boys switch abruptly from an unself-conscious,
affectionate attitude, to one in which all tenderness is stigma-
tised as 'sloppy' or 'cissy.' He suggested that this 'taboo on
tenderness' develops whenever the mother has no social
function other than that of being a mother. If bringing up
children is her only reason d'etre, she will try and prolong the
period of their dependence upon her, for otherwise she will
be useless, unwanted, and bored. The children react from this
dependence to the other extreme, in their attempts to break
free. It is not tenderness, but too much tenderness, which
they are escaping from. This analysis seems to be borne out
by the fact that the taboo on tenderness is far stronger in those
sections of society where women lead lives of rather empty
leisure than where they have a job, or have so many children
that they are only too glad to let them become independent.

Here, once more, we have a vicious circle. The patriform
personality tends to put women in a subordinate position in
society, and this position leads them to drive their children
into patriform attitudes. Of course, the matriform attitude may
produce patriform offspring, too : for if the woman is so pre-
occupied with her work that she neglects her children, they
may disguise their frustrated desire by reacting on the sour-
grapes principle. The core of the matter is that we are up
against the biological fact that a child's first emotional
relationships are with its mother. If these fail or turn sour,
we are liable to get the patriform personality. The sad fact is
that such relationships very often do fail, and that is partly
why we have so many aggressive, authoritarian, patriform
societies in the world today.

Summing up the argument so far, then, we see that per-
sonality is, to a quite surprising extent, a product of forces in
the cultural environment. To change personality, to improve
it, we must change the customs which mould it. Many writers

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in the past have argued that personality was affected by
environment, but always in a quite general way. What
Professor Kardiner has done, is to make the nature of that
interdependence perfectly precise; in so doing, he has,
perhaps, opened a new chapter in the history of human
progress.

Important as are the customs which mould the developing
personality, they are not the only customs, and so we must
now consider culture in more general terms. What makes a
culture good or bad, and how does it originate ?

v Harmful Culture Elements

While customs such as we have been considering exert an
indirect effect on behaviour by modifying the personality
structure, all customs regulate behaviour directly, and their
influence plays a far greater part in our lives than we are
accustomed to recognise. The word summons up the idea of
rather trivial conventions, such as whether we drive on the
left or the right, whether we shake hands or rub noses, but in
reality, customs affect our happiness intimately, as in our
custom of monogamy, to take a single instance.

It is, therefore, worth our while to consider in general terms
the ways in which culture-items may be unsatisfactory. Some
are obvious, and I shall mention them only briefly.

Evidently a custom ought to be well adapted to fulfilling
its ostensible purpose. To build houses of mud or make
ploughs of wood is less effective than to make houses of stone
and ploughs of steel. Such instances are very apparent, because
we have already adopted better solutions; this must not lead
us to overlook the fact that many of our customs are highly
inefficient, yet we are hardly aware of their inefficiency. To
take a crude instance, the House of Commons has no internal
telephone system, and sends all its messages by hand. A more
serious instance of our reluctance to adopt valuable customs
was the continued refusal, until the government's big campaign
during the war, to adopt the immunisation of babies against

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Conditions of Happiness

diphtheria, a refusal which has cost many thousands of lives.
A slightly less obvious case occurs when a society adopts
customs which may, perhaps, be perfectly efficient as regards
their confessed purpose, but which, all unbeknownst, obstruct
a basic need at another level or in another sphere. I say 'all
unbeknownst/ because the danger is not appreciated in prim-
itive and unself-conscious cultures. In the case of our
highly conscious and analytic culture, what usually seems to
happen is that the danger is not appreciated at first, but later
begins to dawn on people. Even then, it is a long time before
people consent to change their habits. For instance, both men
and women have, in almost every part of the world, at one
time or another, adopted customs of a more or less painful or
dangerous character in order to be admired. From the native
who cicatrises his skin to the Edwardian beauty with her
wasp waist ; from the Turkish harem girl, over-eating in order
to be fat, to the western woman starving herself to be slim,
people have risked their health, and even their life, to win
admiration.

From the viewpoint of the individual concerned, the action
was not necessarily stupid. If men do, at a given period,
admire thinness, it is advantageous to women to make them-
selves as thin as possible. But obviously, in the long view,
such expedients are not necessary. It is quite possible to have
societies in which women of normal figure are admired, and
cultures which demand the biologically abnormal are clearly
introducing unnecessary obstacles to happiness. In a moment
I shall try and explain how it is that cultures make these
absurd demands, but first let us continue cataloguing the
ways in which culture elements can be undesirable.

In the case just considered, a physical need was thwarted
in order to meet an emotional need, but the reverse situation
is much more serious. Psychical needs are often frustrated in
order to meet physical ones: for instance, a man may take a
job which he finds frustrating to his sense of mastery and
creativity, or which he finds degrading, in order to ensure
that he can afford to eat and have a roof over his head. In our

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Social Matrix

own culture, as I shall shortly show, in more detail, we have
many customs designed to raise our material standard of
living which obstruct emotional, aesthetic and spiritual needs.

These psychical frustrations are doubly dangerous, inasmuch
as they may permanently distort the character, and thus make
it permanently impossible for the victim to live a satisfactory
existence as regards his psychical needs.

The worst feature of these cultural legacies, however, is
that it is almost impossible to escape them. We are born into
a culture and must, to a very large extent, accept the practices
we find in it, even when we can see them to be dangerous.
In a society which holds that woman's place is the home, or
that sexual experience is wicked, we can only defy these
limitations at the cost of so much disapproval, that it is
questionable whether it is worth kicking over the traces.

The second way in which customs and beliefs can cause
unnecessary unhappiness is by generating unnecessary guilt or
anxiety. Really, this is not a distinct category from the one
just mentioned so much as a different way of looking at the
subject. The culture prescribes what we shall think and do,
and penalties for those who do not conform. So whenever we
do not conform, we feel anxious or guilty. Now it is, by and
large, desirable that a man shall feel guilty when he has
committed a real crime against a fellow man or men but it
is pure waste of spirit for people to feel guilty about breaking
stupid or meaningless taboos. The savage who dies of terror
because he has inadvertently looked upon the face of the King
at the time when to do so is forbidden, is only the extreme
case of a situation which affects all of us. The schoolboy who
feels anxious because he has walked on a strip of ground
reserved for prefects, or the suburban housewife who is
embarrassed because her lavatory cistern is heard discharging
in the middle of dinner, are making themselves miserable for
reasons which, sub specie aternitatis, are futile and meaningless.
Whether we say that we hold the belief that it is wicked to
look upon the King (or turn our back on him, if you prefer a
domestic example) or whether we say more mildly that it is

ng

Conditions of Happiness

the custom not to do so, is immaterial. The point is that such
futile culture elements cause unhappiness to those who
observe them, and feelings of guilt in those who ignore or
transgress against them.

This raises the question of how we come to adopt customs,
and why we sometimes adopt such irrational ones.

VI Origin of Culture Elements

The most obvious of the reasons why societies often adopt
unsatisfactory beliefs and customs is sheer lack of forethought
or inventive ability, as in the case of the mud- walled house.
This is probably the biggest single influence, but it is quite
straightforward, and we need not consider it further.

By an extension we can also consider here the very common
case of meeting a cultural need by borrowing from another
culture, and the case of adapting an item originally devised
for one purpose to serve another. A well-known example of
this is the handshake, which was originally adopted as a
precaution in a period when all men went armed with daggers,
and has been retained because there are advantages in having
a formalised mode of greeting. This is typical of the uncritical
way in which many culture items originate. They are not
consciously devised for a purpose, like a plough or a house,
but grow up, or are adopted or retained by a myriad
unthinking decisions.

Perhaps -the next most obvious source of unsatisfactory
customs is changing circumstances, which render old customs
futile, or even dangerous. To take a rather picturesque
instance: it was until recently the case that the newly-elected
President of the United States could not take power for four
months after election, in order to allow time for delegates
from the remotest States to reach the capital a fact which
caused serious consequences in 1933, when many American
banks crashed during the interregnum because there was no
one at the helm to take remedial action. This is a specialised
example, but it is not too difficult to think of serious modern

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Social Matrix

instances of old customs proving inadequate, and of failure
to replace them by new ones. It is the combination of a
conservative attitude with a changing environment which is
at fault.

From these simple matters let us turn to something a little
more complex.

Men do not choose cultural items (whether consciously or
by general unconscious consent) simply upon their merits,
or their suitability for the end in view, even within the rather
limited range of possibilities which their imaginations make
available to them. Their choice is further restricted by their
feeling that such items must not contravene certain established
'moral' principles. I put the word moral in quotation marks
to indicate that men feel that there is something inherently
right in them, although closer examination often shows that
they are not based on any coherent ethical scheme at all.
Similarly, their choice is limited by the nature of the universe
as they understand it, the 'facts' of existence, as they conceive
them. Whether this conditioning belief is quasi-scientific or
quasi-moral, it is accepted as an unquestionable fact.

For instance, men work in order to satisfy material needs,
and they adopt customs regulating their work so as to satisfy
these needs the more effectively. But if they believe that women
should not work, or that they should only do domestic work,
all their customs will be restricted to the case of male labour.
Or, to take the case of values, if they set a high value on
individual freedom, they will exclude certain methods of
regulating work as inconsistent with this valuation.

Thus, values and beliefs exercise a powerful determining
influence on the type of customs and institutions we adopt.
Now if the beliefs held in a given culture are incorrect or
irrational or if the values are irrationally based this will
effect a quite unnecessary limitation of the customs selected,
excluding many which might be useful, and even leading to
the adoption of futile practices. For instance, the African
who believes that you can acquire a quality such as courage by
eating the heart of a creature possessing it, will pursue lions

C.H. 9 121

Conditions of Happiness

in order to obtain and eat their hearts. If he is injured or killed
so doing, that is a cause of unnecessary unhappiness, since the
risk was, in reality, taken in vain. Afid if he chooses to pursue
other men in order to eat them with a similar object in view,
this is obviously an even more serious source of unhappiness.
History and anthropology provide us with many examples
of customs based on mistaken beliefs about the nature of the
universe, and with even more based on faulty values. All the
elaborate apparatus of Nazi ideology was based on the belief
that the State was more important than the individual with
what dire consequences for human happiness we all know
too well.

vii The Basis of Culture: Values

Since values are so important, it is worth considering them
in more detail.

Clearly, the values obtaining in a society do more than
limit the type of custom adopted; they govern, to a great
extent, the whole character of the behaviour of its members.
Thus, in a society which places a high value on physical fitness
and skill, many people will be predisposed to try and gain the
public approval they need by excelling in some sporting
activity. If, on the other hand, a society despises sport and
values art, we shall expect to find a majority of its members
seeking to develop their artistic abilities.

To the reader unfamiliar with sociology, this will seem like
putting the cart before the horse. People pursue sporting
activities because they enjoy them, they will object, and the
statement that their society values sport is merely a conclusion
from how they behave. Thus, values are dictated by actions,
and not actions by values, as you suggest. But this is not
altogether true. As I argued at the beginning of this chapter,
people do accept many of their valuations ready made, and
model their actions to suit.

The extraordinary thing is how uncritically we accept our
values. So much so that we rarely consider the possibility of

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Social Matrix

holding any other attitude. For instance, if we explain our
habit of carrying umbrellas by saying that they keep us dry,
we tacitly imply that physical comfort is a good thing, i.e. we
commit ourselves to a valuation. The possibility that it might
be better to get wet and be uncomfortable hardly occurs to
us. Yet such an attitude is not inevitable, as is shown by the
fact that only a few hundred years ago in Britain the abhor-
rence of comfort extended in some people to self-flagellation
and the wearing of hair shirts. Presumably a penitential friar
would not have been a good sales prospect for an umbrella. 1

Owing to this tendency to accept values as being above
question it is necessary to infer a people's values from what
they do, rather than what they say. Thus, we may note that
in a certain society the men are very reluctant to marry
women who have had previous sexual experience, although we
may not hear the word virgin so much as mentioned. By the
same token, values are transmitted to children much less by
direct instruction than by example. Indeed, it may sometimes
happen that formal instruction is directly contrary to practised
values. A child born into our own culture inevitably notices
the vast part played by distractions' ; that is, entertainments in
which the person entertained takes no active part, and comes
to assume that time should be spent in being distracted,
although this view is not formally taught.

Not only actions, but beliefs and dreams are clues to codes
of value. A society which rations food, which believes that food
has magical or therapeutic or religious significance, and whose
members link food with status or tend to dream about
incidents involving food, can be described as a society which
values food, even if it is thought bad form to discuss it.
(Substitute the word sex for food in the previous sentence,
and you have a description which can be applied to our own
society.)

Values are transmitted chiefly by implication. Every film,

1 Though when such practices have become institutionalised and
the original fervour of conviction has evaporated many such incon-
gruities of behaviour develop.

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Conditions of Happiness

book, newspaper article or broadcast intentionally or not
implies a scheme of values and influences the public towards
the acceptance of those values. When*(as in a recent film) the
heroine sings a ditty asserting that no one remembers intel-
lectual girls, but that success comes to those who use their
sex-appeal, the implied valuation is that intellectual achieve-
ment is not of value, while sexual achievement is.

I do not propose to broach the subject of what are good and
bad values at this point, since the whole book is, in effect, a
contribution to the difficult task of adjusting our value system,
but there is one rather specialised way in which value systems
can cause unhappiness which requires to be mentioned. I refer
to the question of their internal consistency.

Situations not infrequently arise in which people find it
hard to know which of two values or principles to take as
their guide.

For instance, a man faced with the need to disclose a fact
which would hurt someone else, might have adopted as a
principle * Always tell the truth/ in which case he would
speak up, or he might have adopted the principle, * Spare
other people pain/ in which case he would tell some form of
lie or evasion. Quite often, however, cases arise in which two
standards conflict, and a person who has adopted both of them
(as might well happen in the instance quoted) finds himself
in a dilemma.

Such dilemmas are often extraordinarily painful. We can
begin to appreciate the fact if we look at the dream, which is
based very largely on such dilemmas; interest in it consists
for many people almost entirely in studying how other people
have worked out the dilemma for themselves. The man who
owes a duty to his family and also to his country which shall
he serve? The man who owes a duty to himself and to
another shall he put himself into difficulties or deny himself
a prize in order to save the other person? The person who
pities someone for their sad history, but dislikes them for their
disagreeable habits what shall he do ?

Some such dilemmas are unavoidable, but there are many

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Social Matrix

which could be avoided by working out a coherent philosophy
of life.

Some of the dilemmts caused in this way are not due to
mere difficulty of knowing how to apply a scheme of valuation,
but are due to the existence of definitely contradictory valua-
tions. For individual values may be collected into harmonious
families: thus, there may be a whole code of values built
around the idea of selfish behaviour and another contradictory
set built around the idea of ruthless egotism. Or again, a whole
set of beliefs and values can be erected on the proposition
that the State is more important than the individual, and a
contrary set on the reverse proposition. If an individual adopts
a consistent set of valuations, he reduces the number of moral
dilemmas in which he is likely to find himself to the minimum,
but if through unthinking adoption of his values he acquires
elements from several different systems, he is bound to run
into trouble.

In our own culture this inconsistency is quite marked. In
particular, we propagate one set of values based on the idea
of unselfish behaviour and giving way to other people, and
another based on the idea of personal success: we admire
economic and political success and despise economic failure.
Consequently, people often find themselves in situations where
they have to sacrifice one or the other. They often try to meet
this by adopting two codes of behaviour, one for business life
and another for social contacts, but it is not always possible
to maintain the separation: as we revealingly say, personal
considerations sometimes 'intrude* into business.

In short, such conflicts are not a mere matter of chance,
but are due to lack of organisation in the sphere of values.
The task of working out the organisation of values is known
as ethics, and it is a singular criticism of our culture that we
regard it as a theoretical pursuit fit only to pass the time of
philosophers in universities. In reality, ethics is of the most
urgent practical interest, and we cannot hope to get our value
system tidied up until we devote the same enthusiasm and
attention to it that we devote to other technical problems.

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Conditions of Happiness

(This is not to say that our incoherent values are due simply
to intellectual errors. On the contrary, as we shall see in a
moment, they are caused by active, ierational elements in our
minds, and we shall have to neutralise these forces if we are
to reconstitute our values. But having neutralised them,
intellectual effort will be needed to fill the gap left by the
collapse of the old irrationally-derived values.)

Generalising these remarks, we may say that a culture is
required to be consistent in itself. This concept of cultural
consistency was first demonstrated by Malinowski, but the
application of it in the field of values is, I believe, a new one,
and more work needs to be done on it. When a culture is
divided so that its values fall into two clear groups divided,
that is, by a conflict of values at a fundamental level we
may speak of cultural bifurcation. Such a description would
cover, in broad terms, the conflict between totalitarian and
individualist ideals such as existed in Germany in 1932.!
When the conflicts exist at many levels of complexity, so that
different customs conflict within quite narrow sections of the
culture, owing to differences in specific, derived beliefs and
values (compare, for instance, the contemporary value put on
safe driving and on having a fast car) we can speak of cultural
chaos. Our own culture is in such a state.

However, it must not be concluded that a culture which is
consistent within itself is necessarily well adapted to happiness.
It will be stable, but that is not enough. Many stable, but
unhappy, cultures are known to anthropologists. Cultural
patterns must be based on values which are well chosen with
regard to man's nature and the nature of the universe.

Faulty beliefs and values are not, however, always caused
by innocent error by a mere technical failure to analyse the
universe correctly. Very often they are brought into existence
by irrational that is, emotional forces, and especially by

1 No real-life case has the simplicity of a theoretical example, and
Germany, in 1932, was certainly split to a lesser extent along several
other planes, as well as being in an advanced state of cultural chaos
generally.

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Social Matrix

unconscious emotional fbrces, more particularly those we have
defined as neurotic. Let us now see how this occurs.

vin Genesis of Values

As with institutions, values arise because certain attitudes
prove rewarding. (In applying this dictum we must again
always remember that psychological comfort is more important
to us than physical comfort.) If values can be defined as what
people feel they need, then the formation of 'bad* values is
due to the same causes as the formation of 'bad' institutions:
that is, failure to take account of long-range consequences,
failure to abandon obsolete patterns, and readiness to cater for
non-valid needs. If human sacrifice is a 'bad' institution, then
admiration for human sacrifice is a 'bad' value.

But values are subject to a further order of error, since
they can get out of step with institutions. For instance, a
'bad' institution, having become obsolete, may be dropped,
but the attitude of approval may persist for some time after-
wards, just as confirmed Nazis continue to value totalitarianism
after the formal break-up of the Nazi regime. Indeed, such
attitudes may even flourish more robustly in such circum-
stances, since the evils of the institution can be conveniently
forgotten, and only the more attractive features remembered
through a rosy glow of illusion. Conversely, men may convince
themselves of the value of institutions never yet seen, as
revolutionaries commonly do when planning a new order of
society. It is a general truth that values precede action, rather
than follow it. And this leads to the highly important con-
clusion that we should seek to achieve reforms by changing
values, rather than by trying to control actions.

This practice is often followed, of course. Those who wish
to introduce legislation making divorce harder (shall we say)
naturally try and foster the attitude that divorce is a damnable
institution. Unfortunately, it is a very slow method, and it
may be impossible to create the required attitude in a majority
of the population. The determined reformer is then tempted

127

Conditions of Happiness

to resort to introducing the legislation first, and trying to
bring values into line after. This is what we mean by anti-
democratic or 'Fascist* methods.

But it would be quite wrong to suppose that the origin of
values is always rational. Clearly, every society will unhesita-
tingly adopt or invent culture items which subserve or relieve
its neurotic needs, though it may not do so consciously. In
choosing between one of several ways of achieving some
practical end, it will all unconsciously favour the one which
meets these neurotic needs which provides it with a sense of
security, relieves its guilt, or whatever it may be. Indeed,
more than this, it may, still all unconsciously, adopt a custom
purely for neurotic reasons: but because it does not recognise
or admit the reasons, it will be driven to provide 'rationalisa-
tions' reasonable-seeming excuses for its conduct. For
instance, a tribe which projects its aggression and relieves its
guilt by human sacrifice may rationalise the action by saying
it is demanded by a god or powerful spirit. Or a people which
devotes excessive enthusiasm to sport, because sport subserves
its need for ego-validation, may rationalise it by saying that
sport is valuable for health, or for inculcating 'the team spirit.'

Such irrational valuations are widespread. The African
political parties 1 which value excision of the clitoris so highly
that their political slogan is 'Clitoridectomy, Communism,
and better education!' no more understand the root of their
attitude than the European who believes his wife should be a
virgin when he marries her. The more intensely we hold to
a valuation, the more likely it is that our attitude is energised
by a neurotic need. Correspondingly, it follows that any
change of custom which alters the basic personality will also
alter our values. Indeed, we can go further, and say that no
attempt to change values is likely to be effective unless we do
change basic personalities. The Nazis knew this and sought
to produce cruel, aggressive personalities by harsh treatment
of the young, in order that the values of ruthlessness and

1 e.g. The Kikuyu Central Association; see B. Malinowski, The
Dynamics of Culture Change t (ed. P. M. Kaberry), 1945.

128

Social Matrix

power which they taught might take root. The only variant of
this principle which may occur is when a basic personality is
already predisposed to *find value in some new institution.
The guilt-loaded personalities of the ancient world were easy
meat for a guilt-relieving religion such as Christianity. It
follows that it is futile to preach internationalism and
co-operation in a world which contains large numbers of
people who have identified on their fathers and acquired an
authoritarian approach to life.

VII
FUNCTIONING SOCIETY

I Nature of Society n Function and Status in Types of Status

iv Determination of Status-Base v Society as an Organism

vi Conditions of Happiness

I Nature of Society

WHAT, technically speaking, is the difference between a
society and a mass, between a group and a mob?

It is this: each individual in a group is aware of the other
individuals as individuals; he recognises each one as in some
way distinct from all the others; he feels liking, hatred, fear,
jealousy, contempt or respect for each, or some combination of
these or at the very least, he feels curiosity or a sense of
possible emotional development concerning each. In a mob, on
the other hand, no such emotional links exist. When we
consider societies which contain within themselves many groups,
the picture becomes more complex. No individual knows all the
members, and some of his emotional reactions are directed
towards groups rather than individuals. Nevertheless, the same
principle holds good: a society is shot through with personal,
emotional relations and is, what's more, dependent for its
stability and continued existence on the presence of such
emotional links. In a mass, on the other hand, these linkages are
either non-existent, or they have become confined within certain
areas of the whole, so that the society is composed of groups
which, though perhaps tightly knit internally, are separated
from one another by chasms across which no links stretch. Such
a society is in imminent danger of coming apart, and can only be
held together by special techniques which do not concern us here.

^It will be clear then that society is something quite distinct
from culture. Culture is the system of ideas, habits, values and
beliefs which are handed down from generation to generation

130

Functioning Society

(while being gradually Inodified) within a society. Culture is
thus an important influence on behaviour and thus on man's
chances of attaining hapfKness. Society, on the other hand, is a
source of rewards in itself. %

The importance of these emotional responses in the scheme
of happiness is often lost sight of today, because many people
believe that men form themselves into groups for purely
practical reasons: merely because together they can produce
more goods or protect themselves more easily from attack. It
is true that many groups are formed initially for practical
purposes. But we note that such groups, once formed, often
continue long after the practical purpose has ceased to exist.
Old Boys' Societies and Regimental Clubs are typical of the
attempts which such groups make to survive. Nor does the
member of a functional group, say, a cricket club, resign the
moment he ceases to have a function. If he can no longer play
cricket, he will often seek to justify his continued membership
of the group by finding a substitute function, perhaps as one
of the officials of the club.

So powerful are these emotional considerations that they may
come to override every consideration of self-interest, as we see
in cases of patriotic self-sacrifice. I am sure it is true to say that
if, in some exceptional circumstances, a collection of people had
no common functional purpose whatever, they would still form
themselves into a group. Man, in fact, is a social animal. He is
not happy in isolation, and gets to know his fellow men primarily
because he finds such personal relations rewarding in themselves.

It is worth our exploring the emotional structure of groups
a little, because many contemporary problems and much
unhappiness originate from defects in this structure.

II Function and Status

Because groups normally have a practical purpose, it follows
that each member normally has a function. Groups will rarely
tolerate the presence of functionless members, who draw bene-
fits from the group without contributing to its purpose. In

Conditions of Happiness

fulfilling his function each individual acquires a rating in the
eyes of the other members based on the value of the contribution
he makes. This rating we call his prestige or status. 1 Thus the
best cricketer in a cricket club will normally have the highest
status of any of the members. Status is thus a measure of a special
type of public approval and goodwill which we win by our merits.

When we raise the discussion from the level of a small group
like a club to society as a whole the picture necessarily becomes
more complicated. Our standard of judgment broadens, and
we do not necessarily accept the judgment of the small group :
which depends chiefly on some single aptitude. The most
skilled member of the Magician's Circle, I am sure, enjoys high
status among magicians but must be content with lower rank
in the estimation of society as a whole. But the main outline
remains the same. Status of this kind is an extremely important
source of happiness. All normal people attach great store to
public approval and feel lack of status as a serious deprivation.

It should also be noted that status is something quite distinct
from and independent of the evaluation one individual makes
of another's value to him personally. A man who is generally
disliked as an individual may yet enjoy a high status on the
strength of his contribution to the community. 2 Competent

1 The relations between individuals within a group tend to become
'institutionalised.' There grows up a popular conception of how a son
ought to behave towards his father, an employee towards his boss,
or a host towards his guest. It has become customary to refer to the
appropriate behaviour as a role and to the position which calls for such
behaviour abstains, so that we make such a comment as : 'in his status
of guest, he should not have criticised his host's taste in decoration.'
This specialised use of the word status is not employed in this book.

2 A story which illustrates this point, and also shows how status
comes to depend on obsolete indications, as mentioned below, is told
by Whitehead : a new hand joined a works where status had long
depended on skill with the cold chisel, although this tool had in modern
times been replaced by power machinery. He aroused considerable
dislike as an individual, but the men reserved their verdict until a
break in the work, when they gathered to watch the new hand demon-
strate his skill with the traditional tool. He did this very successfully
and ever after retained respect as a man who 'certainly knows his cold
chisel.' (See T. N. Whitehead, Leadership in a Free Society, 1936.)

132

Functioning Society

doctors, for instance, always enjoy high status because their
value is recognised, even when excessively brusque in manner.

Other forms of status exist it is true, but I shall come to them
in a moment. But first let me comment on function and status
as we have so far identified them.

One of the great errors of nineteenth century treatments was
to suppose that the performance of function is a tribute which
man unwillingly pays for the privilege of membership in society.
This is quite wrong. It is a valued privilege in itself. We all
know how anxious a small child is to help in the activities
around it. In this there is no doubt an element of the mastery
drive and an element of satisfaction in being wanted; and
perhaps there is something else, something in the nature of a
wish to serve. To be deprived of function to be unemployed,
as we say is inherently thwarting. And since to be deprived
of function is to be deprived of status, it is doubly distressing.

It is, therefore, an essential condition of happiness that society
shall provide function and status for its members. This our own
society is very far from doing. The unemployed man is threat-
ened not only with starvation but with loss of function and
status, and in some senses this is the more serious loss,
permanently undermining his character.

Though, in the years following the 1931 depression, a
beginning was made with studying the psychological cost of
unemployment, hardly any attention has been given to the case,
psychologically similar, of futile or degrading employment. The
girl engaged in making some ridiculous knick-knack, the man
engaged in compounding some worthless specific, like the
burglar and the stockbroker, must inevitably be haunted by a
sense of something missing. Obscurely, they must appreciate
that their work fails to give them a genuine functional status. 1

1 The criminal, or the man preying on society just within the pale
of the law, must also be irked by the same feeling. The vast benefac-
tions of the shadier industrial millionaires probably represent an
attempt, belated indeed, to win back their status. It may be added that
to bestow public honours on such men is a very unwise course,
since it undermines the most important sanction on anti-social
behaviour.

Conditions of Happiness

Society is failing in one of its most vital purposes whenever
it fails to provide function and status for all its members. But
the fault is not always society's. OWing to our lack of under-
standing of the subject, many people voluntarily relinquish
function and cannot imagine what makes their life so empty.
I refer, of course, to those who are so rich that they need not
work, and thereupon choose not to. This applies with increasing
force to women, whose domestic duties become steadily lighter,
and who are often able to delegate some, or all of them, to
servants. They then try and fill in their tedious leisure with
cinemas, bridge, flirtations or other distractions. The wisest
among them undertake voluntary work or public duties, but
this tradition grows weaker as the number of people placed in
such a position grows.

Since the subject of status is so little understood, I propose to
develop it a little at this point.

in Types of Status

The status which derives naturally from function may be
called functional status. There are, however, various other
standards by which status may be measured, notably power,
wealth and birth. Between functional and non-functional status
systems there is an important difference. In power, birth and
wealth systems only a small number of people can have high
status ; some must be at the bottom of the scale, a humiliating
position. Sjuch hierarchical systems are therefore always more
or less frustrating. Only a few people can achieve widespread
success, most will be in receipt of less respect than they would
wish, while a few will receive none. In contrast, a functional
status system contains room for all. Respect for father as the
breadwinner does not take away from respect for mother, whose
claims are based on different ground. The best dentist in the
community is not the less respected because someone else is the
best ploughman. Hence functional status systems are produc-
tive both of less rivalry and more satisfaction than power or
wealth systems.

FUJ ctioning Society

There is, however, a farther criterion by which we must judge
status systems : that of security. By this standard, status systems
based on wealth are very Unsatisfactory. It is at all times possible
to lose wealth, frequently through no fault of one's own.
Physical injury, old age, obscure economic forces may transform
a man's position within a very short time, leaving him, after
a life of high status, to drag out a dishonoured old age. Systems
based on rank, on the other hand, are extremely secure: too
secure, really, since a man may continue to enjoy status even
when, through some moral deterioration, he no longer deserves
it. Only functional status systems provide security combined
with adaptability. Since people continue in a stable, integrated
community to honour a man for his past achievements, he loses
no status in his old age or if he is injured, unless he acts in such
a way as to dissipate public respect.

Recently, the theory has been put forward that the ideal type
of status is 'mobile status.' This view originates in the United
States and represents an attempt to justify the American status
pattern as against the European. According to this theory,
European status systems (which are hereditary) are unsatis-
factory because it is impossible for those not born into high
rank to rise into it, whereas the American status system, based
on wealth and notoriety, offers high place to all who are ruthless
enough or skilful enough or lucky enough to get there.

But, as has been pointed out, if you can move up you can also
move down, so that the American status system is a source of
much anxiety, whereas the European status system, while not
really quite so immobile as depicted, offers considerable security.
In reality, the American status system is much inferior to the
European, but its worst defects have been concealed during the
past century by a fortunate accident. Owing to the great influx
of immigrants, and the rapidly expanding population and
national income, it has been the general experience of Americans
to move up, rather than down, the status scale. Hence the
advantages of mobility have been seen, but not its disadvan-
tages. 1 When, in 1933, considerable numbers were compelled,
1 This point has been made by M. Mead, The American Character, 1 942.

135

Conditions of Happiness

temporarily, to move down the scale, (anxiety and resentment
were enormous.

If you cannot have a truly functional status system it is
probably better, therefore, to select a hereditary system and
equip it with a number of ladders by which persons of excep-
tional talent can move up, than to choose one based on power
or wealth.

I said just now that status was apt to be erected on non-
functional bases and this raises the question of how this occurs.

iv Determination of Status-Base

It is a matter of no little practical importance to discover what
induces societies to adopt non-functional status-bases. As far
as I know, the subject has not been explored, but it would seem
that at least two main forces are at work, one overt, the other
covert.

In the first place, it is clear that people bestow their approval
in accordance with their scheme of values. A group which
values a sport will naturally honour sportsmen to a far greater
extent than an intellectual group would, and vice versa.
Correspondingly, if a society bestows respect on those who have
accumulated wealth it is because the people of that society think
the accumulation of wealth a worthwhile aim and make it their
principal object. Valuations of this kind, as we have seen, can
be traced to a psychological base : they are expressions of the
basic personality structure.

It is interesting to note, however, that the erection of arbitrary
status-bases does not have the effect of completely destroying
functional status, at least where the function is evident. Even in
a system devoted to wealth and power we find that the doctor
and the nurse are generally respected, because their value to
the community and the individual is obvious : even in our own
society it is probably true to say that doctors enjoy higher
prestige than, say, the proprietors of greyhound racing tracks,
even though the latter are distinctly wealthier.

Distinct, however, from the erection of alternative status-

136

Functioning Society

bases we must note the tendency of functional status to deter-
iorate. In the incident mentioned in a footnote a few pages back
we saw how steelworkers Continued to assess a man's worth by
his skill with the cold chisel after it had been replaced by modern
machinery. Here an overt sign of status has persisted and con-
tinues to carry weight long after the functional meaning has
vanished. (The explanation, no doubt, was that the new
machinery was so largely automatic that it afforded no oppor-
tunity to demonstrate skill, and so the old method was retained
perforce.)

Within the small group, in which everyone knows everyone
else, such deterioration is uncommon. But in society at large,
it is easy. Because we cannot possibly know everyone personally
we have to accept their status badges, such as titles, without
question and even have to infer status from speech, clothing or
possessions. If status badges are obtained by corrupt means,
we cannot easily discover the deception. We are easily led into
wrong inferences from secondary signs, such as clothes. Indeed,
so complex are some modern activities, (such as administration
or finance), that we can hardly judge whether a man has
performed them well or ill, even when we know the facts.
This weakening of functional status strengthens the hand of
the non-functional types which are competing with it.

The problem becomes acute when status is made hereditary.
In the past, people could be persuaded that the son of a worthy
father was himself likely to be more than ordinarily worthy.
Today we know there is little or no basis for any belief in the
inheritance of nobility and we no longer feel any real respect
for the inheritors of status badges, whether titles, power or
'wealth. Yet the badges persist, and out of mental inertia we
continue half-heartedly to honour them.

This decay of status reaches an extreme stage in the modern
mass society, which is so large that personal acquaintance with
more than a fragment of the population is impossible. Hence
opinion tends to be based overwhelmingly on such meretricious
evidence as wealth or power. Modern status systems are there-
fore almost wholly non-functional.

C.H.IO JJ7

Conditions of Happiness

Now status is not only an attributj;, it is a sanction. In the
small community, every member is strongly constrained to avoid
anti-social action for fear of loss of status, culminating, if neces-
sary, in ostracism. In the mass society, anti-social individuals
can shelter behind the anonymity of joint-stock companies and,
through them, can operate in zones far removed geographically
and socially from those in which they live. Mass society has lost
the most powerful of the instruments by which society main-
tains its cohesion.

v Society as an Organism

This brings us up against the third element in the emotional
structure of society: purpose. Since people come together in
groups with some purpose in view, it is essential to their
happiness and to the continued existence of their group that
their common purpose should be satisfactorily fulfilled. The
members of a cricket club which, for lack of equipment, is
unable to play any games are bound to feel frustrated; they
will also feel frustrated if the executive committee fails to
arrange suitable matches, to fix them for days which suit the
convenience of members, and so on.

The common purpose of the members of society as a whole is
the maximisation of individual happiness in its broadest sense.
Consequently, great dissatisfaction will arise whenever those
who administer society fail to administer it so as to maximise
happiness or are thought to do so. That is a statement in
sociological terms of all the unrest and dissatisfaction with
political and economic organisation which is rife in the world
today. It is necessary to make it in order to stress that this
dissatisfaction is something over and above any direct unhappi-
ness caused by maladministration itself. It is one thing to be
hungry because their is no food, quite another to be hungry
and know that simultaneously food is , being deliberately
destroyed. The second situation adds a sense of exasperation
quite lacking in the first. Thus, even in a society in which the
level of happiness is being raised, there will be frustration if

138

Functioning Society

people think that the advance could be more rapid than is the
case, or if they fail to recognise that any advance is being made.

In short, it is a condition of happiness that people shall feel
that the purposes of society coincide with their own individual
purposes. 1

I would like it to be quite clear what this means. It does not
mean that society must be perfectly organised so as to meet
man's needs: people recognise that organisation is imperfect and
that circumstances are frustrating. It does mean that people
need to feel that society is getting somewhere, that it is making
progress towards improving its organisation and conquering
circumstances, with the object of raising their happiness. Thus,
this condition of happiness does not raise the issue of what is
the ideal economic and political organisation, but merely the
issue of whether the government has got a proper grip of the
situation.

It is, nevertheless, a condition of the utmost importance,
because on it the whole cohesion of society depends. People will
not desert their society merely because conditions are bad, but
they will desert it, or make violent attempts to reconstruct it,
if they think it is not coping effectively with these circumstances.
That society should be stable and cohesive is, of course,
a fundamental condition of happiness. Our own society is
so marked by this sort of frustration and its cohesion is so
seriously threatened in consequence, both on the national and
the international scale, that the subject demands discussion in
much more detail than is possible here. I propose, therefore,
to defer the whole matter to another book, under the title
Theory of Social Collapse.

One thing, however, may be said. Maladministration of society
is not due simply to defective techniques. It is also due to ill-
will, to selfish and unco-operative behaviour on the part of
individuals. Societies develop various devices for restraining this
kind of selfishness-r-such as the withdrawal of public approval
or ostracism, as already mentioned, and others of a more

1 The significance of function, status and purpose is brilliantly
analysed by Peter Drucker in The End of Economic Man, 1939.

139

Conditions of Ha&biness

obscure nature but these devices canAot cope with more than
a small amount of unco-operativeness. The final basis of social
cohesion is co-operativeness, in other Kvords, the ability to feel
affectionately and generously towards other people.

vi Conditions of Happiness

Let us now try and sum up all the considerations we have
discussed so far: let us try and tabulate the conditions of
happiness in order that we can test various societies against
this standard in the chapters which follow.

Since affection is the mainspring equally of social cohesion
and of the individual's psychic life, the cardinal condition which
a culture must satisfy is that it should foster the production of
responsive personalities and provide suitable opportunities for
the expression of their affective impulses. It must thwart their
legitimate aspirations as little as possible while restraining them
from developing illegitimate aspirations.

In short, the first tests we must apply to any culture are : does
it provide outlets for affection and for mastery ? Does it foster
the creation of sound basic personalities? Secondly, we can
ask: does it assist the individual to meet his physical needs?
Thirdly, does it assist him to obtain security without sacrifice of
variety ?

But from these tests, which measure the society in terms of a
single individual, we must turn to tests in terms of its own
structure. We^must ask: is the culture functional? Is it inte-
grated or internally cohesive and consistent? Does it provide
its members with function and status? Does it meet their
purposes? Finally, we must measure it with especial care
against an absolute scale of values: its values must be wise,
consistent and durable. Since values reflect the basic personality,
this brings us back to our starting point, the customs which
condition personality.

In applying these standards we must never forget that they
are abstractions from real-life situations. Each practical issue
must be measured separately against all the conditions. Work,

140

Functioning Society

for instance, provides inan with far more than the means of
satisfying his material nfeds. It gives him function and status;
security and purpose; opportunities for mastery and the
exchange of affection. It is conditioned by customs and institu-
tions and dominated by certain values. When we say in ordinary
life, analysing the situation in familiar terms, that full employ-
ment is a condition of happiness, we imply all this. And until
we understand the full complexity of the numerous conditions
of happiness implied in any such practical issue, we cannot
even begin to devise suitable organisations in the political and
economic fields.

The method of analysis used here is thus one which takes
place in a different dimension from the more familiar analysis
in terms of institutions. In applying our conditions we must
apply them to every kind of institution and activity throughout
the societies we examine.

141

Part Two

DIAGNOSIS

VIII
CONTEMPORARY UNHAPPINESS

I Characteristics of Industrial Society n Mastery in the Modern
World in Physical Needs in the Modern World iv Emotional Needs
in the Modern World v Modern Life and the Oceanic Feeling
vi Consistency and Variety in the Modern World vn Self-Deter-
mination in the Modern World vm Social Cohesion ix Our
Defective Institutions

I Characteristics of Industrial Society

WE are now in a position to assess contemporary industrial
society against the standards we have evolved and thus to find
out not, indeed, whether it is happy, for we know it is not
but where the roots of its unhappiness lie.

It will help us to trace the sources of modern unhappiness if
we first consider very briefly what are the most characteristic
features of industrial civilisation.

Probably the first thing which would strike a visitor from the
eighteenth century would be the enormous increase in the
density of population and, in particular, the concentration of
millions of people into huge cities and 'conurbations/ At the
same time great tracts of countryside, formerly common land,
have been enclosed and converted into private property. The
result is that it is now very difficult or even impossible for men
to engage in the sort of out-of-door activities which have been
customary for thousands of years. Except for a few wealthy
men, and for such limited outlets as walking and fishing,
physical activity must take the form of organised sport in which
a comparatively large number of men obtain exercise in a
comparatively small area of land. A second result is that people
are brought into much closer contact, and so their power of
injuring one another is increased. Consequently, there has been
a great growth of regulations designed to reduce such interference.

144

Contemporary Unhappiness

A man who lets his hoilse catch on fire in the country injures
only himself; in the to\^i he endangers others.

This unparalleled crowding together of humanity has many
other consequences, but these are the two which matter most
in the present context : first, the cutting off of habitual physical
activities and, second, the vastly increased power of people
inadvertently to annoy, injure and obstruct their fellows.

The second highly characteristic feature of modern society
is a dual one : the ever-increasing specialisation and mechanisa-
tion of work, including both the constructive and the adminis-
trative aspects. It must be stressed that specialisation and
mechanisation are distinct processes: it is possible to have
specialisation without mechanisation and vice versa. Special-
isation is the consequence of the growing complexity and scale
of industrial and administrative operations which have become
too large for a single man to handle. Mechanisation is the result
of having cheap power available.

Because of specialisation the modern worker does not, as did
his forebears, carry through an undertaking from start to finish,
whether alone or co-operatively : such an undertaking as making
a chair or gathering in a harvest. Instead he handles only some
tiny fragment of the process. And because of mechanisation
he may use no more effort than is needed to pull a lever or
depress a key although many strenuous tasks still remain.

The third thing on which our imaginary visitor would certainly
comment should perhaps be listed as a derivative of mechanisa-
tion: I mean the great development of communications. This has
had the effect of bringing people into closer contact and so
reinforces the effects of the increase in population density. The
economic and political significance of modern communications
has been copiously commented on, but much less has been said
about their effect in mixing and modifying cultural patterns. 1

Fourthly, he would certainly notice a huge disparity in
wealth. Today we are impressed with the rise in the income
of the poorer classes, but we must remember that in the

1 See, e.g. E. Staley, World Economy in Transition, and H. G. Wells,
passim.

Conditions of Happiness

nineteenth century the living standard? of the poor were forced
down far below those of the previous Century: especially is this
true if we take into consideration the toll of long hours and
degraded surroundings, the disruption of family life and the
growth of disease. Today the poorest classes have barely
recovered the ground lost, 1 while the richer members of the
population are able to command luxuries inconceivably more
elaborate than any available even to kings in the past. By this
I do not mean merely that the millionaire commands novel
products television sets and motor cars which were not
available to mediaeval kings, but that they command the product
of a greater number of hours of skilled labour, however
used.

Another thing he would notice would be the emergence of a
clear-cut distinction between work and leisure and the employ-
ment of part of this leisure for self-education in the widest sense
of the term, i.e. for reading, travel, etc.

The list might be extended very easily, but these few main
trends will give us the background we need.

II Mastery in the Modern World

Let us start our diagnosis by considering the effect of these
changes on the satisfaction of mastery drives. Mastery, it may
be pointed out, occupies a position of particular importance in
our culture in consequence of the relatively strict sexual morality
which still persists. For, as Unwin's monumental study showed,
sexual energy is converted into constructive social energy when
its normal outlet is restricted. 2

It can hardly be denied that the general effect of industrial-
isation has been to decrease opportunities for mastery. The
reader will recall that we drew a distinction between crude
mastery involving the moulding of physical material; personal
mastery dominance over people ; and mastery of problems and
ideas. Obviously, mechanisation has displaced many processes

1 C. Clark, National Income and Outlay t 1938.

2 J. D. Unwin, Sex and Culture, 1934.

146

Contemporary Unhappiness

involving crude mastery. The old-time baker mixed and moulded
the flour with his hands; \he modern loaf is made by machinery.
The horse set the rider a bigger problem of control than does a
car. Moreover, the overall effect of mechanisation is to reduce
the number of people handling materials while increasing the
number in clerical, administrative, distributive and other
ancillary occupations, in which crude mastery is generally quite
absent.

Specialisation has also been responsible for reducing mastery,
since people now purchase many services they formerly per-
formed for themselves. The cook buys tinned foods; the traveller
goes by train instead of riding; the housewife buys ready-made
clothes instead of making her own.

Carpentry affords a convenient instance of a rather more
elaborate form of mastery in which several processes of crude
mastery are combined in a creative task, the latter coming under
the heading of constructive mastery. By buying his wood cut
and planed the modern jobbing carpenter sacrifices much of
the crude mastery while still retaining the creative element. If,
however, he enters the employ of a large cabinet-maker, where
he is required to turn out chairs of a standard pattern, the
element of idea-mastery vanishes; while if he is reduced to
specialising in a single process the creative element vanishes
entirely.

It is true that modern industrialism has given as well as taken
away in the sphere of idea-mastery: the wide range of technical
problems and new devices has created a flood of new creative
and constructive problems. This, however, is in the nature of a
short-term effect. The long-term trend is to standardise the
design of these devices and submit them to the division of labour
method until they, too, have become lifeless. Even such an
operation as tracing a fault in a radio-set, which might be
thought to offer an interesting challenge to ingenuity, has already
been reduced to a routine.

Closely allied with the concept of mastery is that of creativity.
While industrialism destroys the creative element in productive
work, potentially it makes possible a vast increase in creative

147

Conditions of Happiness

activity during the rest of the day. Millions of people who, in
primitive times, would have been obliged to labour long hours
for a pittance can now afford the time and energy to follow some
creative activity in their leisure. The ease with which knowledge
can be spread today is also a favourable factor. Yet in point of
fact we notice that the mass of people today spend their leisure
being distracted by sport, gambling, the cinema and other
entertainments which call for no personal participation being
urged to such behaviour by all the arts of advertising. In
addition, a host of small household jobs of a mildly creative
character has been handed over to paid employees or specialists.
Few people still design their own clothes, and it has even
become customary, among those who can afford it, to leave so
personal a matter as the decorative scheme of their house
to professionals.

The subject of creativity leads to that of beauty, or, more
generally, harmony. No one, I suppose, would dare to claim
that the modern urban environment is particularly beautiful,
while it is also generally admitted that industrialism has ravaged
great areas of the countryside with suburban development, to
say nothing of defiling beauty spots with mines, quarries,
power-stations and other undertakings. 1 In addition, extensive
farming methods (as practised in the U.S. and the dominions)
do not contribute to the beauty of the countryside. The
mechanised society has, certainly, produced some novel forms
of beauty (even if by accident, as in the much-quoted case of
the high-sp"feed monoplane), but these are not sufficiently
numerous to transform the environment. Perhaps it comes
nearest to a praiseworthy achievement in the interior of the
home, where new standards of design have been applied to old
problems and where so many new materials are now available
for decorative purposes; but uncultured taste has generally
succeeded in carrying the result at some expense to a lower
artistic level than the inexpensive interior of mill or farmhouse.
Clearly, industrial society fails to meet man's needs for mastery
and creative activity.

1 C. Williams-Ellis, Beauty and the Beast, 1937,
148

Contemporary Unhappiness
in Physical Needs in the Modern World

So far modern society pas scored low marks but if there is
one sphere in which it might reasonably hope to claim a success,
presumably it is in the matter of meeting man's physical needs.

As we all know, science has practically vanquished the forces
which endangered man's food supply and has gone far to weaken
those which threatened his health, while industrialism has iced
the cake by placing at the disposal of the ordinary citizen a far
wider range of material goods than ever before. But starvation
and disease, driven out by one door, have crept back by another.

Though average crop yields per acre were higher than ever
in history, more than half the pre-war population of Britain
was suffering from some degree of under-nutrition. 1 Mysterious
economic and social forces had nullified the agrobiologists' and
geneticists' gifts. The ignorant savage starves when harvests are
bad. It has taken western ingenuity to discover how to starve
when they are good.

Similarly, while medical science and sanitation were busy
vanquishing major diseases, crowded urban living conditions
were increasing the toll of ill-health by imposing new strains
on the town dweller continuous noise, insufficient sunlight,
impure air.

The effect of such factors is largely concealed by our habit
of treating as healthy anyone who is not incapable or suffering
from a diagnosable disease. If we turned our attention to the
general low physical tone which marks most members of an
urban population the picture would look very different. The
Peckham Health Centre has found that fewer than 10 per cent,
of its members are in perfect health. 2 Experimental work on
these sub-critical factors is fragmentary, but we are beginning
to know something about the serious effects of deprivation of
ultra-violet light, such as is effected by the foggy atmosphere

1 Sir J. B. Orr, Food, Health and Income, 1937.

8 Pearse and Crocker, The Peckham Experiment, 1939. See also
Scott-Williamson and Pearse, Biologists in Search of Material, 1947,
especially the section on devitalisation in which two forms, hypotonia
and dystrophy, are identified.

149

Conditions of Happiness

of cities and by an indoor habit. The very real effect that light
can have on health is suggested by experiments with the soya-
bean which becomes a sturdy herb, when grown in a blue-violet
light, but a delicate twining vine when grown in a red-yellow
one. 1

Attention is also being turned to noise. Measurement of noise
in city streets has shown it to attain the appalling level of 90
decibels, about as loud as the roaring of a lion at a distance of
25 feet. Before industrialism, few people heard a noise of such
volume in the whole course of their lives.

As Simmel observed half a century ago: 'With every crossing
of the street, with every fluctuation in the tempo and variety of
domestic, professional and commercial life, there arises in the
perceptual foundations of the personality a deep cleavage with
the slow, habitual, smooth-flowing rhythm of the psycho-
physical structure of life in the small town or countryside.' 2

Modern technology has also introduced new industrial
diseases, and, together with modern transport, has enormously
added to the dangers of death or mutilitation. In addition to
new diseases, it has vastly increased the death rates from familiar
ones. Thus the death rate from chronic interstitial pneumonia
among Welsh anthracite miners and among sandstone quarry-
men at the last census was about 150 times that among agri-
cultural labourers. 3 And as is well known, industrial conditions
evoke a rapid rise in the incidence of cancer.

Specialisation also contributes to poor health since it compels
people to use a single set of muscles continuously, and perhaps
to sit in a cramped position. This is almost certainly a causative
factor in rheumatism. 4 Furthermore, the skeleton may become
warped in an effort to meet the demands thrown on it. JLane

1 H. W. Popp, Contribs. from Boyce-Thompson Institute for Plant
Research. I, 1929, 241.

* Quoted by N. Carpenter, The Sociology of City Life, 1931, from
Simmel, 'Die Groszstaedte and das Geistesleben' in K. Bucher, et al.:
Die Groszstadt, Dresden, 1903. (Translation abridged and freely
rendered.)

1 Registrar-General's Report on Occupational Mortality, 1938.

4 Report of British Rheumatism Council, 1939.

Contemporary Unhappiness

reports such permanent changes as fusion of the intervertebral
discs among those carrying heavy weights. 1 Such changes
always shorten life.

Pre-industrial man, compelled to take frequent and violent
physical exercise, sweated freely and compensated with a large
intake of fluid so that there was a steady 'turnover' in his body's
water content. Similarly, spells of effort on short commons
periodically forced him to mobilise his reserves of body fat.
In eliminating such emergencies, civilised life has modified
fundamental processes of bodily metabolism. This is quite
probably a factor contributory to the city-dweller's indifferent
health.

An aspect of the health situation which might equally be dealt
with under the rubric of emotional life, is that of sexual potency.
The matter is still imperfectly investigated, but it has been
claimed that impotence and frigidity are on the increase in the
civilised world. Where the causation is psychological, it can
often be traced to the effect of our unnatural sexual ethic on the
upbringing of children, but physical causes are also suspected.
There is also some evidence that urban life increases the
difficulty of childbirth.

iv Emotional Needs in The Modern World

That modern society does not meet our emotional needs is
obvious enough from the frequency of neurosis and psychosis,
from the high proportion of unsuccessful marriages, and from
the many bigoted and ruthless individuals we see around us.
But it would be an exaggeration to suggest that incjustrial
civilisation is unique in this respect. Many other contemporary
cultures and many periods in the past of our own culture
hav been unsatisfactory from the emotional point of view.
Besides, there is a marked difference between the emotional
life of today and that of the last century. In some respects it has
improved, in others grown worse.

To analyse the emotional life of our time in detail would
1 Sir W. A. Lane, Acquired Deformities, 1900.

Conditions of Happiness

require, at the least, a whole book. Here the most we can do is to
indicate the main factors and see how far modern conditions
are favourable to them.

Any such analysis must approach the subject from two angles.
First, it must seek to show how far society tends to produce a
personality capable of affection; secondly, how far social
institutions favour the establishment of enduring emotional
relations. Personalities which are practically incapable of any
emotional response are rather common in our society and some
degree of emotional anaesthesia affects the majority of us. As this
fact is at the bottom of nearly all our troubles, I propose to
discuss it at some length in Chapter X, under the heading of the
Industrial Personality. At this point I shall deal only with the
barriers which modern society places in the way of those who
are reasonably capable of forming emotional relationships.

I will deal, first of all, with the affection and respect which
normally develop between individuals of either sex who come
into close association and not of such specialised relationships
as marriage.

The conditions for the development of such feeling are that
we should meet other people and that we should meet them
sufficiently often to form some conception of them as individ-
uals. Various institutions have been devised for the purpose but
none is so effective as co-operation in a common project. It is
there that we learn to know the true value of people and to
discount the oddities of character which flaw the surface of their
personalities.

The primitive in-group provided an unsurpassed example of
this type of association. Not only did it engage in common tasks,
such as harvesting, but it spent many of its leisure hours
together, meeting for marriages, funerals and festive occasions.
Such groups develop strong internal cohesion. We may find a
modern instance in the ship's crew, or the members of a regi-
ment or school who continue to meet long after the functional
purpose for which they were gathered together has vanished.
Hardly less effective, is the small, unmechanised undertaking
in which people work together in conditions which favour a

152

Contemporary Unhappiness

certain amount of co-operation and social intercourse. Some
semi-intellectual activities fall into this category: thus, the
members of a research laboratory often develop a corporate
feeling due to mutual knowledge and understanding.

In sharp contrast stands the modern factory, in which extreme
specialisation has reduced co-operation to zero and where noise
and separation of workers generally preclude social exchanges.
A recent refinement of ingenuity applicable where there is no
mechanical noise, is to flood the workroom with dance music,
which virtually prevents conversation and induces a mildly
hypnotic state in which the rhythmic movements of modern
industry can be performed more smoothly and untiringly, with
suitable effects on output; the effects on the personality are
disregarded. The object is achieved by suspending the worker's
attention to the external world and almost certainly contributes
to his dependence on fantasy and his need for distraction in his
(or her) leisure.

The factory, however, is not the only sphere in which social
contacts have been minimised. The bus-driver, the airplane
pilot, the linotype operator, the lift attendant, the man on the
pneumatic drill is temporarily as isolated from his fellow men
as if he were a Trappist monk.

In the primitive community, in contrast, the worker was not
often separated from associates for any considerable period.
Even in the fields, in the pre-mechanical era, people went
sowing and reaping in considerable groups. Today, a single
man on a tractor can handle an entire field, alone. In primitive
society, too, the worker was not necessarily separated from his
family and friends while at work. The modern worker travels
to a factory where he spends the day away from home. Again,
the big city affords a strange isolation in which it is possible
for a person to spend months without forming a friend a
fact which is a commonplace of experience. The village or small
town is potentially more friendly, even though hard material
conditions sometimes create an embittered type of individual,
who nullifies, by his personal animosity, the benefits of the
village's lack of social separation.

C.H. ii 153

Conditions of Happiness

Certainly, the improvement of communications does not
favour the establishment and growth pf enduring relationships.
Relationships grow during prolonged association, but, as
Chapman has stressed, 1 the needs of modern industry have
forced on people a greater mobility than is natural to them
and war, of course, does still more to disrupt relationships.
Today we tend to form more numerous but much shallower
friendships. Human relationships are cemented by shared
experience, but the atomistic character of modern life forces us
to undergo some of our most pregnant experiences in emotional
isolation.

Nor does our civilisation provide wholly adequate outlets for
the need to serve others. The craftsman making an essential
piece of domestic or agricultural equipment can feel that he is
serving the community, as can the workers in certain basic
industries, but nowadays a great proportion of the population
is engaged in activities of dubious social value, some of which
are actually anti-social in their effects. This not only thwarts
the need to serve but undermines a man's self-respect.

This brings us to the subject of status, since functional status
depends on the social value of the individual's function. But
the status system of European countries is largely hereditary,
modified by the fact that status is associated with wealth. In
America it is almost entirely based on wealth. As long as it is
possible for any penniless individual to reach the top of the tree
within his lifetime, a system of status based on wealth gives an
illusion of being a functional system, but in advanced stages
of industrialism the need for capital excludes all but a few
newcomers, and the status system merges into the hereditary.
Hence we may say that no industrial country satisfies the require-
ments in this respect.

From these general considerations I turn briefly to intensive
relationships between two individuals. The first thing which
strikes the anthropologist is that, in western society, such
relationships are almost entirely confined to people of opposite
sex. Unlike the Arabs, for instance, who regard friendship
1 G. Chapman, Culture and Survival, 1940.

154

Contemporary Unhappiness

between two men as an experience of far greater depth and value
than any which is possinle between a man and a woman, we
regard relationships between persons of the same sex with some
suspicion and only approve them if they are extremely undemon-
strative. We stress the element of respect and co-operation and
minimise the element of love. The psychologist will hardly
hesitate to explain this by reference to our fear of homo-
sexuality. It is extremely hard to induce any member of a
western society to recognise that the western attitude to relations
between members of the same sex is quite irrational, even though
it carries all the earmarks of a neurotic attitude such as the
immediate provoking of disproportionate anger, disgust and
aggression.

Turning, next, to marriage and noting the number of
marriages which are ridden with spite and aggression, we are
justified in asking whether the marriage institution as it exists
in the west is adequately designed. Modern western marriage
(which we too often suppose to be the only possible form of
marriage) is marked by three highly arbitrary beliefs. We think
it should be based on romantic love, that it should be mono-
gamous and that it should be lifelong. There are very obvious
arguments for polygamy in any society in which the numbers
of the two sexes are not equal. The length of time it endures
should be a function of its effectiveness, provided the interests
of any offspring are protected.

It is, however, the belief in the validity of romantic love
a belief which has only grown up in the last two centuries,
and which still does not hold in many parts of Europe which
is the strangest feature of our emotional environment. Dispas-
sionate examination shows that the violent infatuations which
we call being 'in love,' rarely, if ever, endure unless they are
thwarted. To marry on the strength of them means that when
the passion burns out, two individuals often little suited to one
another are left to start from scratch the erection of a more
enduring relationship.

Just as in the case of ordinary friendship, perhaps more so,
enduring affection is slowly built up out of shared experience,

Conditions of Happiness

co-operation in a common purpose and reciprocal help. We
can blame the culture of western society for its failure to instruct
adolescents in the nature of emotional relationships, and I think
it is true to say that it is worse in this respect than most primitive
cultures, and than most stages in its own previous history.

Nor is it rational to let people undertake the building of a
complex structure without first trying their hands at more
elementary ones. A period of experiment, such as many
primitive societies allow to adolescents, is essential.

I suppose I need hardly say that this is not a plea for complete
promiscuity before marriage. To say one objects to one extreme
does not mean one should fly to the other. If experimental
relationships are permitted as they are in fact permitted
they should be governed by values, customs and even laws,
designed to prevent abuses and maximise the good. To permit
them a hole-and-corner existence without benefit of social
sanctions or approved modes of conduct, is to get the worst of
both worlds.

However, it is not the purpose of this chapter to say what we
should do, but to point out the defects of what we do do. It can
safely be said that our rigid and limited marriage institution
looks singularly impoverished when seen against a background
of the many and complex institutions which various societies
have worked out at different times, and it is an intolerable
conceit to suppose that we, of all people, should have found the
only satisfactory solution, or even that the best solution for
one set of conditions is necessarily the best for another. It can
also safely be said that our high valuation of infatuation, our
absence of training for marriage and our ignorance of the way
in which sentiments are formed, are serious defects.

Finally, it might be said that it is a mistake to make marriage
an absolute condition of sexual satisfaction. Not only does this
thwart those who cannot find suitable mates, not only does it
drive many into unsuitable marriages, but it gives to marriage
itself the character of a primarily sexual relation, instead of
making it a primarily emotional one.

This being so, it is not surprising that investigation of reasons

156

Contemporary Unhappiness

for the break-up of marriage relationships give a high place to
failures of the sexual relationship, 1 whether this be due to
ignorance (and thus to our rigid sexual taboos) or whether to
frigidity or failure of potency.

v Modern Life and the Oceanic Feeling

It is hard to say whether or not ipodern life is badly adapted
to producing that supreme emotional experience we have called
the oceanic feeling, since we do not know with what frequency
it occurred in the past or occurs in other cultures. Still, it seems
that it comes most easily in vast lonely places and when the mind
is empty of thought and free from the claims of immediate
sensation. These conditions are not readily realised in modern
society. One is perpetually surrounded by others, perpetually
subject to trivial stimuli of noise and movement. 2 Moreover,
a mechanised society demands a much more sustained attention
to material things.

vi Consistency and Variety in the Modern World

Modern civilisation wears an ambiguous air when assessed
from the standpoint of variety. By making possible the impor-
tation of distinctive products from all parts of the world, it has
certainly greatly widened the range of goods available to the
ordinary man. Also, by bringing many products, formerly
luxuries, within the range of a modest purse, it has achieved
a similar effect. Yet there is certainly a contrary trend at work.
Mass-production methods tend towards similarity of product.
We can get into a friend's car and find that in everything
(except perhaps the colour) it is the replica of our own. Such an

1 K. B. Davis, Factors in the Sex Life of 2,200 Women, 1930.

2 There is, perhaps, one case when this experience does not demand
isolation and that is when a group of people are all simultaneously in
a mood of empty attention, such as happens at a musical performance,
at a religious service, or possibly at a public meeting at which great
abstractions are propounded. In the latter case there is a serious danger
that the mood may be misused by the orator, as in the case of many of
Hitler's meetings.

Conditions of Happiness

experience would be exceptional if it were a sailing boat. On
a more subtle level, there is the standardisation of taste implied
in such words as fashion. The rapid dissemination of ideas and
habits reduces the need for evolving one's own. Not, of course,
that fashion is a modern invention, but today fashions are wider
in range of influence. Media such as printing and the cinema
impose fashions on an enormous area. Typical of the ugly
monotony produced by modern industrialism is the monotonous
regularity of nineteenth-century slums a poor exchange for
the variety and balance of an Elizabethan village or the dignity
of a Georgian crescent.

Again, modern civilisation has made striking advances in the
direction of freeing people from the vagaries of the environment.
It has largely conquered the physical dangers of fire and flood,
tempest and wild beast, which beset our ancestors. It has
eliminated the famines which ate up their food supply. But
simultaneously, it has introduced vastly more costly sources
of insecurity. Economic conditions reintroduce the element of
insecurity on a larger scale for if one is out of work not only
one's food, but one's clothes, one's home, one's self-respect,
one's status and all else are in jeopardy.

Then again, as already mentioned, modern industrial
machinery and transport has greatly increased the risk of
physical harm both to oneself and those one loves. The suburban
mother, quite reasonably, is anxious whenever her children go
out alone, just as the miner's wife is never quite free from
anxiety when her husband is down the pit. Such anxieties go
far to undo the advances which have been made in conquering
disease and the precarious limitations we have placed on the
power of oppression. Finally, it need hardly be said that modern
total war represents a far more serious and widespread actual
or potential threat to life and property than even the most
destructive wars of the past.

No, we cannot say that the modern world offers a satisfactory
degree of personal security. Underlying all these fears for
personal security is the lack of emotional security, to which we
have already referred.

Contemporary Unhappiness

To close this section I will mention one more form of
emotional security whose origins are social rather than psychol-
ogical : insecurity of status. As I argued in the preceding chapter,
only functional status offers security combined with justice.
Hereditary status at least had the advantage of offering security:
though it was hard to move up it was equally hard to move down.
Today, in western Europe, we have practically abandoned
hereditary status in favour of the highly insecure form of
status which is based on the accumulation of wealth.

vil Self-Determination in the Modern World

Finally, it must be noted that the mass society of today has
greatly undermined man's power of self-determination. The
era of 'free enterprise* seemed at one stage to be increasing the
power of each individual man to determine his own life, but
this was an illusion due to the fact that we thought exclusively
in economic terms. In the event, each man has greatly reduced
choice. He may choose which industry he will work in but in
every one he is held to an eight (or nine, or ten) hour day, he is
obliged to live in a vast city and spend a great part of his day
in travel . . . and so on. He can do nothing about the vagaries
of the trade cycle, he can do nothing about the spread of urban
development, he can do nothing about the wars which are
precipitated by the negotiations of remote officials. He sees a
state department or a large business concern appropriate a tract
of land and flood with water the village where he has been wont
to live . . . The charge has been made so often by the opponents
of socialism that its terms are tediously familiar. But the fact is
that this charge can be levelled with equal or greater force at
finance capitalism.

So-called private enterprise, actually the enterprise of vast
public corporations, imposes its decisions on the private
individual just as arbitrarily. It is realisation of this which has
produced the so-called 'we-they' attitude in which a mysterious
'they* is saddled with the responsibility for all social decisions.
And the attitude is wholly justifiable. It reflects the undoubted

Conditions of Happiness

fact that the ordinary man does not have any part in the decisions
which determine the patterns of hum^n life. The existence of
the popular phrase 'just a cog in the machine* is good evidence
of the general feeling of inability to control one's own life and
the dismay this has caused.

vni Social Cohesion

There is yet one more standard by which we may assess
modern society, a standard which to some extent affects all those
considered up to now, that of social cohesion. If society does
not hold together, it inevitably fails in its task of enabling the
individual member to satisfy his needs.

A glance at the world today shows that society has failed to
achieve cohesion between nations and no arguments need be
adduced to prove the point. Within each national society the
picture is less clear, but it is nowhere very encouraging. The
most evident split is between capital and labour. Each has been
organised into a coherent body and the better the organisation
of each group, the poorer the unity of society as a whole. From
the viewpoint of society, the Federation of British Industries
and the Trades Union Council are equally undesirable. In both
Britain and America the two chief parties are able between them
to command the confidence of the bulk of the nation, but in
France, as in Germany after the first World War, it is practically
impossible for any party to inspire sufficient confidence to
enable it to carry on the task of administration, and disintegra-
tion becomes so marked that people look for a strong man to
restore cohesion by dictatorial methods.

However, it is not only these organised and warring groups
which threaten the cohesion of society, much more is it the
element of the population which endeavours to get from society
more than it contributes. This parasitism is not confined to the
deserter, the spiv and the black-marketeer; all those who receive
incommensurate rewards, those who buy cheap and sell dear,
those who make an income without contributing to the welfare
of society, the makers of worthless medicines and useless

160

Contemporary Unhappiness

gadgets, the sellers of food without nutritive value, literature
without literary value, and publicity without public value, the
speculators in stocks and shares, in goods and in land, the legis-
lators who do not legislate and the councillors who do not
counsel, the purveyors of hopeless hope and loveless love, all
these bear witness to the failure of society to integrate many of
those who live within its formal influence into its essential
emotional structure.

As I have said, the anonymity of modern life has rendered
the old social sanctions largely futile. And while on the one hand
the anti-social individual is not known to those he victimises,
and cannot (if he keeps the law) be ejected from the group, on
the other many innocent people felt themselves unwanted by
the group and so take to anti-social behaviour. Cohesion is
further undermined when the individual sees rewards being
distributed in a manner which is both unequal and unrelated
to merit, and while this is by no means a new phenomenon, in
a mechanised society it becomes more acute, since the much-
enhanced total output of goods exaggerates the discrepancy,
while improved communications and more general education
make people more widely aware of the state of affairs.

ix Our Defective Institutions

To say that modern society does not provide outlets for
emotion and mastery, does not ensure security and variety, fails
to bestow function and status, is to accuse our institutions of
being defective. If unemployment threatens an individual's
sjupply of food, and his right to function and status, it is the
institutions through which we give employment that are at
fault. If mass-production thwarts his need for mastery and
creative activity and condemns him to monotonous isolation,
then it is the productive institution which is wrongly designed.

Why are the institutions of modern society so extraordinarily
badly designed as to produce all the evils we have catalogued
in the earlier part of this chapter? Why has this period, more
than any other, achieved such a remarkable low?

161

Conditions of Happiness

Three reasons spring to mind, the first is the rapid obsoles-
cence of traditional institutions owing to the mechanisation
of production and communication. Hand in hand with this
goes the short-sighted way in which we have designed new
institutions to replace the old.

Man, thanks to his power of appreciating the total configura-
tion (gestalt) of any situation, when devising institutions to meet
his needs, instinctively models them to meet all his needs, or
at the least, to do violence to none. Thus marriage, though
primarily connected with the task of reproduction, is so planned
as to provide companionship, and emotional outlets. It is also
an effective economic arrangement (division of labour and
pooling of risk) increasing security and variety. It also plays
its part in the integration of the community and so on. Similarly,
the productive task, when planned by primitive man, though
primarily designed to meet physical needs, also offered outlets
for mastery, for physical exercise and for creativity. It yielded
social contacts and introduced an element of variety and was
often so organised as to increase security (e.g. it may be
organised on a collective basis).

Modern man, however, approaches the productive problem
not instinctively, but consciously. He is aware of the primary
purpose but not of the subsidiary functions. Accordingly he
proceeds to reorganise the institution so as to serve the prime
purpose better, unaware that he is destroying its secondary
functions. This is particularly true of the productive process.
The whole tr$nd of factory management, of what is called
rationalisation, is to adopt any measure which will increase
output, regardless of other consequences. Hence the employer
does not hesitate to introduce mechanisation, being uninterested
in the fact that it diminishes mastery, he does not hesitate to
introduce standardisation, being uninterested in the fact that
it reduces creativity and variety, he does not hesitate to intro-
duce specialisation, being uninterested that it makes still
further inroads on both. Furthermore, he tries to reduce the
pauses which used to be filled with idle gossip and to fill them
with work, not caring that contact with other workers is a

762

Contemporary Unhappiness

primary source of satisfaction for the human being, nor feeling
that it is morally undesirable to ask anyone to spend eight hours
without contact with his fellow creatures. With the same object
he brings the task to the worker, rather than to let the worker
seek the task, thus reducing both the worker's opportunities to
relax his attention and his working muscles, his opportunity
to take some general exercise, and his opportunity to exchange
the time of day with other workers.

All this occurs because men ceased to evolve methods of
behaviour instinctively and approached them rationally. Unfor-
tunately their knowledge of what they were doing was more
fragmentary than they supposed. They little suspected the
complexity of the life processes they were so confidently
tampering with.

Realisation of this fact enables us to begin to shape a dynamic
theory of history. The moving force is man's attempt to deal
with his problems rationally. In the primitive state society is
regulated by powerful, unseen forces which, though they do
not always ensure happiness, at least maintain cohesion and
prevent total collapse. Primitive society resembles a tree. If it
grows in an unfavourable position exposed to gales, parched by
the sun, in sandy soil, it will become stunted and distorted in
its attempts to keep alive, but in that one aim it will succeed as
long as it is physically possible, for all other considerations are
subordinated to it. Modern man, ignoring the unseen forces,
attempts to deal with the situation rationally. It is as if he should
attempt to force the tree to grow tall and straight. Comes the
gale, and it is snapped and splintered. He does not know all
the factors at work in the situation he dares to remodel. He is
more ignorant than he believes.

Modern history (and ancient history, too, I believe) is a story
of man's wilful and ignorant interference with social and life
processes in an attempt to gain some possibly quite desirable
end, with the result that he brings about the death of the culture
which he is trying to modify.

The third reason is more fundamental. It is that our values
are defective. The fact that when we design an institution for

163

Conditions of Happiness

productive work we suppress all its other functions in favour
of its productive function argues that we regard this as the most
important function. It is a materialistic valuation. The fact that
men are prepared to sacrifice time which might have been spent
in comparative freedom in some open-air activity to work in a
factory for higher pay, shows that they value that pay, and the
goods which they can buy, higher than the freedom. It may be
true that, now the system is established, many of them have
little choice. But once they did have the choice, and they took it,
they left their farms and flocked to the factories. That it was
possible at one stage to refuse is shown by the men of Harris
and Lewis, who refused to work in Lord Leverhulme's factory
at Stornoway and obstinately stayed on their crofts.

The fundamental question therefore is what has happened to
our personalities, that we have adopted material values ? What
has happened to us ? To this question I shall recur in the next
chapter but one, when I shall also consider the unconscious
causes of unhappiness in modern society. But first I have some
more to say about the overt aspects of the problem.

164

w.

IX

VICIOUS CIRCLE
Substitute Satisfactions n Demand for Distractions

I Substitute Satisfactions

HAT I now have to say seems to me so important that it
merits the dignity of a chapter to itself, even though it can be
said in a few words.

As the urbanisation and mechanisation of life proceeds, the
drives which are being thwarted find release, to an even greater
extent, in substitute forms. For instance, whereas in the natural
society the need for exercise is met in an incidental manner in
the course of performing daily tasks, in the industrial society it
is met chiefly by rather highly organised sports, or even in an
absolutely direct form, such as Swedish drill, the use of rowing
machines, dumbbells and other exercises, or still less function-
ally by recourse to Turkish baths and massage. The distinction
is not quite absolute of course: the non-industrial society has
its sports, to be sure, but they are performed for pleasure, not
as a duty. On the other hand, the modern citizen often plays
squash, gardens, or walks primarily for the good of his health,
and only secondarily for pleasure.

The instance of sport is a very simple one, but much the same
is true of more subtle needs. For instance, the primitive man
exerts his mastery in activities of direct value to himself and
the community his skill as a doctor or farmer and so forth. The
industrial man, whose functional activities are largely auto-
matised, must find substitute outlets for mastery in such
activities as tennis or driving a high-powered car: or, if his need
is for mastery at more subtle levels, by building himself a
radio sit, playing cards, running a model railway or solving a
crossword puzzle.

165

Conditions of Happiness

Such activities are at least first-hand : a lower level of substi-
tution is reached when people try to fulfil their vital needs by
proxy, as in watching football, cricket or boxing matches or
other contests, or through books, radio and cinema. I do not
suggest for a minute that there is anything wrong in these
activities as such; just as with alcoholic drinks, it is wholly a
question of how they are used. There is no harm, but much good
in watching sporting contests as a supplement to engaging
personally in them. The danger comes when vicarious sport is
wholly substituted for personal participation. The difference
between these two attitudes is quite clear. The man who
himself performs, when he stops to watch others, is primarily
concerned to study technical skill and perhaps to enjoy the
beauty of the movements involved; he is rarely interested in the
question of who wins. In contrast, the onlooker who is using
the game as a substitute for the outlet of mastery impulses is
first and foremost a partisan. He is much more concerned who
wins than how. This attitude reaches its extreme in the bettor
who does not even attend the contest and whose interest is
solely in the outcome.

Such contests may, of course, be used for the outlet of
aggression, in which case the amount of violence inflicted
becomes the primary consideration, rather than the outcome.
This naturally applies chiefly to sports involving violence, such
as boxing and all-in wrestling. 1

The tremendous contemporary trend towards substitute
experience is nowhere more obvious than in the case of the
cinema, and here similar considerations apply. When the cinema
is used as a clue towards the meaning of life or a means of
assisting the assimilation of real experience (which is often too
complex and too overwhelming to absorb at the time) that is,
when it is used as an art it is of the utmost value. But that is

1 Even the apparently innocuous sport of rowing can be utilised
for such purposes. In a case known to the writer, it was used by a
seriously-maladjusted woman as an outlet for death-wishes against
the male sex. She would station herself opposite the winning post
because, as she would gleefully say, she ' liked to see them flop.'

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Vicious Circle

not how it is used by 99 per cent, of those who visit it today.
It is used as a substitute for emotional experience, and for
discovery about the world of personal relationships, more
particularly sexual experience and sexual relationships. The
parallel between the 'pin-up' photos which plaster the walls of
the lonely, sex-starved soldier and the pictures of male film-
stars which adorn the walls of the adolescent girl is too obvious
to need stressing. Yet it would betray a lack of perception to
interpret the impulse as wholly or even primarily sexual; it is
the desire for companionship in its full sense which motivates
these actions, not unmixed with a desire for the ideal.

The flapper's bedroom also displays photos of the female
stars, which betray that identification is taking place. Thus the
cinema becomes a vicarious source of prestige and admiration.
Correspondingly, the male cinema-addict, identifying himself
with the cowboy or gangster hero, finds a substitute outlet for
his mastery impulses and a vicarious access to status. The great
importance of the cinema as a mastery outlet is betrayed, I think,
by the acute comment of Seldes that the unique attraction of
moving pictures is that they move : pure movement being per se
exciting, irrespective of its purpose. 1 The explanation, no
doubt, is that crude mastery impulses can only be expressed
through movement.

It has been suggested that another function of the cinema is
to provide a spillway for aggression and this it does both by
providing villains on to whom aggression can be displaced and
by providing heroes with whom the onlooker can identify
himself. But such substitute outlets are not to be placed in the
same class as direct, overt action and leave behind much
undischarged aggression which, in a simpler society, might have
been usefully worked off in sport or constructive activity.

Social workers have tended to see in the cinema little more

than a means of escape from a too-crowded home or a sordid

environment into warmth, comfort, spaciousness and relative

privacy. While not denying the force of these motives, I am

convinced that the insistent attraction of the cinema rests on

1 G. Seldes, Movies for the Million, 1937.

167

Conditions of Happiness

something much more positive. It is not just to escape some-
thing but to obtain something that the cinemagoer pays his
mite.

These remarks apply in slightly lesser degree to the radio
and to escapist literature. Not, as a matter of fact, that I would
sweepingly condemn even escapism. In moderation it is harm-
less, even therapeutic in its effects. But however delightful as
an occasional indulgence, as a regular diet like caviare it
becomes disgusting to any normally-constituted person. To
demand it continuously betrays the existence of a perversion of
normal personality.

II Demand for Distractions

The discussion has brought us to a point where we must
consider a manifestation uniquely characteristic of urban indus-
trialism, the need for distraction. The majority of modern spare-
time activities are distinguished by the passivity of the person
taking part. He sits in his chair and is distracted by the efforts
of others, without contributing anything himself. In contrast,
the amusements of a less sophisticated people generally demand
a high degree of active participation. It is perfectly true that
a certain proportion of spectatorship occurs even in primitive
peoples; what we have to explain is the emergence of distrac-
tions to a dominant position, and the fact that they have invaded
a much larger proportion of the day even the working hours,
in the case of "many factory workers, who are now regaled with
dance music while they work.

This is partly of necessity, since the city-dweller cannot
easily find space for vigorous activities, but the principal reason
is to be found, I suggest, in that word 'distract.' To distract
signifies to divert the attention from something. From what?
Doubtless from the gnawing dissatisfaction which springs (did
people but know it) from the frustration of their deepest needs.
The factory worker demands dance music because her work is
so tedious, provides so little opportunity for initiative, mastery
and skill, that her mind is empty and bored. Into the cinema go,

168

Vicious Circle

among others, those who can find 'nothing to do at home/ To
point out that there are books to read and concerts on the radio
is no answer, because it is emotional relationships that the
individual needs. The blame lies with the social conditions and
the psychological weaknesses which make it difficult for him to
construct such relations in the real world.

It would be easy to extend the catalogue of substitute satis-
factions to much greater length. It is tempting to analyse the
daily Press in terms of distractive emotional experience, or to
demonstrate how such distractions represent an attempt to
combat the deadly monotony of much of modern life. But the
argument is already clear. So let us consider, instead, just what
such substitutes mean in terms of happiness.

The first point to stress is that these substitute satisfactions
are never as fully satisfying as the originals. First-order substi-
tutes, such as engaging in sports and pastimes, are devoid of the
sense of purpose and the essential rewards of primary mastery
activities. The man who builds himself a home in the back-
woods has made a major step towards securing his own comfort
and even continued existence, and that of his family. The man
who builds a rabbit-hutch enjoys these gains in diminished
form: he has the benefit of the physical exercise and skill and
has something to show for his pains, even if it is of relatively
minor value in his scheme of life. But the man who, without
even a back garden, is reduced to building a model of the town
hall from match sticks is wholly deprived of such basic satis-
factions; his action hardly brings him any nearer in his life
objectives.

Similarly, the man who defeats a living enemy has won a
more satisfying victory than the man who beats an opponent at
tennis, and a still more satisfying victory than the man who
beats an opponent at throwing dice, while the man who merely
watches a boxer (a second-order substitute, i.e. watching a
person engaged in first-order substitute combat), is even less
satisfied. Nervous excitement may, indeed, rise to a higher
pitch during the conflict, but the permanent achievement, the
furthering of major life-objectives, is totally absent. Third-

cvri. 12 i6g

Conditions of Happiness

order substitutes, watching an actor simulate a cowboy
winning a combat, do more to arouse awareness of the need
than to satisfy it.

The second characteristic of the trend towards substitutes
and this cannot be too strongly emphasised is that it is self-
propagating. The more life becomes industrialised, the more
difficult it is to enjoy primary satisfactions. The more we turn
to manufactured substitutes the more we foster the growth of
the industrial machine. In this way a vicious spiral of industrial-
isation and substitution is established leading us further and
further away from true happiness.

The great bulk of the goods produced by the industrial
machine today would never be needed if there were no indus-
trial machine.

If there were no industrial machine, there would be no
urbanisation. If there were no urbanisation, there would be no
need for the bulk of surburban transport and communications,
and for the complex machinery of substitute satisfaction. With-
out the bulk of the railways, buses, cinemas, radio factories,
cars, telephones, printing presses, cameras, etc., capital industry
would be greatly reduced in size. We could probably produce
all the goods we really need for a satisfactory existence, includ-
ing a sane proportion of the aforesaid mechanical devices with
about four hours of labour a day, or alternatively three full days
a week, which would enable us in the other hours not, indeed,
to do nothing, but to produce many of such goods as are wanted
by individual processes of craftmanship which contribute to
personal happiness. Such processes would not scorn the use of
machinery, but they would reject the second-order division of
labour which deprives the workman of the satisfaction of being
the unitary maker of the finished goods.

The crazy use we make of our productive effort is well shown

by the case of photographic cameras. American manufacturers

estimate that, on the average, the buyer of a camera exposes

six spools of film and then loses interest. 1 A study of prints

made by any professional developing and printing service shows

1 Privately communicated.

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Vicious Circle

that an infinitesimal proportion are of any lasting interest. The
majority are photographs of people, often casual acquaintances,
and most of the rest are views of places visited, much inferior
in quality to the postcards which could be bought by anyone
interested in retaining a memento.

It must be clearly understood that I am not asserting that to
own a camera and take such photographs does not give any
pleasure to the person concerned: obviously it does. I am not
even suggesting that, in our society, any single individual would
be well advised to refrain from pleasures of this type, because
he cannot, merely by refraining gain access to the other sort of
satisfactions which are sacrificed by an industrial society. What
I am saying is that if everyone would agree to use a very much
smaller number of such devices, it would be possible to remodel
society in such a way as greatly to increase other forms of
satisfaction, and there would be a mighty profit in happiness
when the gains were balanced against the losses. Looked at
solely from the viewpoint of the number of hours of labour
involved, and ignoring the indirect costs of industrial civilisa-
tion, it is questionable whether the average person gets a
happiness-profit from the purchase of a camera. A good camera
represents many hundreds of hours of labour: the buyer must
have put in a comparable number of hours of work to obtaia
the money to buy it (modified, naturally, by the relative size
of his salary to that of the men making the camera). Given a
straight choice between taking those hours as leisure or working
and getting the camera, quite a few people would choose the
leisure.

But that is not the choice to which I am directing attention.
I am saying that by giving up the general availability of all these
costly mechanical toys, we could so enormously reduce the
output of our industrial machine, effecting all sorts of incidental
savings in reduced transport and other services, that it would
be possible to remodel society so as to make life vastly more
satisfying; and by so doing we should effect still further gains,
because we should reduce crime, ill health and the need for
distractions, enabling us to dispense with most of our police,

171

Conditions of Happiness

and legal experts, some of our doctors, nurses and psychiatrists,
and all our mass-entertainment employees.

All these mechanical toys are, to be sure, valuable when used
aright. The telephone is a boon when it brings the doctor to
a lonely bedside. But once we instal a telephone service people
start to use it for gossiping over, and so the whole telephone
system grows, demanding millions of man-hours and woman-
hours of our precious time and labour.

The industrial pattern therefore commits two errors. It
teaches people to try and satisfy their needs by buying things.
Thus, the assertion that the best people own such and such a
make of car is, from the sociological viewpoint, an attempt to
persuade people to base status on ownership of goods. And, let
us not forget, it succeeds in its aim. Once a community begins
to reckon status in this way then ownership of goods becomes
the indubitable road to status, and the status-seeking individual
is obliged to follow it. Similarly with fashion. Once it has been
established that a girl who does not wear silk stockings or lipstick
is a frump, then any girl who does not is at a very real social
disadvantage. The truth of this was well illustrated during the war.

But in a community totally without silk stockings, lack of
them is no disadvantage. Thus the introduction of silk stockings
to a stockingless community ultimately benefits no one, but
saddles everyone with the task of producing the required
number of silk stockings. In this way industrial civilisation has
saddled itself with a farrago of 'needs' all of them real enough
to the individual but collectively more or less futile. 1

We are all busy producing goods, half of which we only need
because we are so busy producing goods.

1 This formulation throws a revealing shaft of light on the preten-
sions of economic science. Economics is rooted in the supposition that
every human need can be legitimately expressed as a * demand* and
satisfied by a productive process. The possibility that the need would
be better met by doing and not by buying is not considered. The fact
that single institutions can satisfy several needs at once implies that
an institution which satisfies only a single need may be undesirable,
even though a 'demand* for it can be clearly demonstrated. The truth
is, the science of economics, sensu stricto, has still to be formulated.

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Vicious Circle

The second error of the industrial machine is to hold out to
people the ultimate vision of an efficiency so great that all
conceivable goods can be produced with the labour of a few
hours a week, leaving the rest of the time free for 'leisure.'
Such empty leisure would be intolerably vapid and boring. The
object of life is not to do nothing but to do something and,
what is more, to do something which matters. The only sane use
for such leisure is to employ it in establishing human relation-
ships, and after this in producing things (and providing
services) which are really needed by the methods which are
most satisfying. 1

To achieve such an end machinery is, of course, essential.
Only by using it to do the tedious and dangerous jobs can we
free men to do the interesting and creative ones. The only way
in which we can spend a large part of our life in such pleasant
constructive activity, and still have a reasonable standard of
living, is if we use machinery to make up the total to the
required level. This is no reactionary plea for a return to a
sentimentally-conceived past. The past, though often psycholo-
gically satisfying, was also physically degrading for all but a
favoured minority.

The error we make is to believe that every new technical
process must be adopted automatically. Happiness will only
come when society learns to pick and choose, adopting only
those processes which can be made to serve the scheme of
happiness and rejecting the rest.

1 This definition does not, as might be thought, exclude such
innocent recreations as, e.g., going on a picnic. On the contrary, this
is an excellent example of meeting a basic need in an agreeable fashion.

X
INDUSTRIAL PERSONALITY

i Culture and Personality n Formation of Personality in Western

Values as Causes iv Basic Personality Structure v Western Values

as Effects vi Western Culture

I Culture and Personality

3o far it is in overt terms only that I have tried to analyse
industrial culture, seeking to show how it directly frustrates our
fundamental needs. But, as everyone knows, people may be
unhappy even when external circumstances seem most promis-
ing. Sometimes such unhappiness is due to failure to make the
best use of the available advantages, as when a rich woman
spends her time in vapid activities because she cannot visualise
the intensity of the satisfactions which are bought at the cost
of discomfort and effort on the material level. But more often
this mysterious unhappiness is irrational : it is due to 'psycholo-
gical' doubts and fears.

In this chapter, therefore, I shall be concerned with this
irrational kind of unhappiness, but I would like to preface the
subject by stressing the connection between this kind of
unhappiness aad the one we have just been considering.
Psychological unhappiness is not a special kind of unhappiness
but runs straight back to the general human desire for love,
approval and security. But instead of being concerned with real
and tangible threats to approval and security it is concerned
with imaginary ones with illogical beliefs about not being loved
and not being safe, based on false premises. Yet, though the threat
is imaginary, the unhappiness is very real, just as real as the terror
which assails the victim of the hallucinations of delirium tremens.
In fact, it may be the most important source of contemporary
unhappiness. Probably much more of our unhappiness is due

174

Industrial Personality

to this sort of cause than we imagine: certainly most of the
suicides and most of those who take refuge in drink, drugs and
madness are accountable to it. Moreover, it is this which gives
the real sting to overt frustrations. It is precisely when we have
a neurotic sense of insecurity (for example) that we find real
insecurity most intolerable.

Accordingly, the question we must now ask is : is our culture
well designed to build sound personalities or is it likely to
produce cultural neurosis?

To this end we must consider what effect industrialism has
on the first experiences of the infant, those experiences which
we designated as decisive for the formation of personality. We
shall see that wherever industrialism flourishes much the same
influences are brought to bear upon the infant. That is why we
are entitled to speak of an industrial personality structure^
regardless of whether it is Russia, Germany, Britain or the
United States which we may have in mind in any instance. Since,
however, every culture carries an enormous number of elements
drawn from its pre-industrial phase, some of which are signifi-
cant to the formation of personality, industrial personalities
are not ipso facto identical. Fortunately for our purpose, the
whole of Europe, the United States and the nearer parts of
Russia have long exhibited considerable cultural unity. In
particular they have embraced the same religion and have
derived from it many similar values. Hence we can, without
too much inaccuracy, speak of a 'western industrial personality'
and treat it is an entity for purposes of discussion. Not that the
word 'western* is entirely satisfactory, since this culture has
also been carried to Australia and other parts of the world,
but it is hard to think of a better.

Of course, only parts of the western cultural area are yet
industrialised, so that the concept of 'western industrial
personality' describes rather a pattern towards which we are
rapidly moving, rather than a cross-section of the pattern which
currently exists.

So much for preliminaries. Let us now consider the decisive
infantile experiences,

'75

Conditions of Happiness
ii Formation of Personality

The child's first traumatic experiences, we said, are likely to
be deprivation of affection or deprivation of nourishment, which
it interprets as being a sign of lack of affection also.

Though western society does, in a general way, recognise the
infant's imperious need for its mother's presence and affection,
it can scarcely be denied that it subjects the infant to temporary
separations on a relatively marked scale. Whereas the mothers
of many primitive tribes carry their smallest baby around with
them wherever they go, the western mother leaves it with a
nurse, or even leaves it alone for considerable periods, while she
is otherwise engaged. In particular, she leaves it when it is
asleep, so that if it wakes it finds itself deserted. And though
help usually comes in due course, this does little to mitigate
the shock.

How little we really appreciate the child's need for affection is
shown by the extraordinary fact that many hospitals forbid
parents to visit hospitalised children except when they are
asleep. (It was, as a matter of fact, a case of this sort which led
Bowlby to notice the connection between separation from parents
and the formation of the 'affectionless character.' 1 )

If separation of this drastic kind is rare, to every child comes
the shock of periodically remaining unfed when it is hungry,
followed by the major experience of being weaned. 2

In many primitive communities the mother or wet-nurse is
always at hand and there is no taboo on publicly giving suck;
frequently the-breasts are not concealed at any time. Though
the giving of alternative foods may start early the breast is not
wholly refused until quite late long after the child has become
old enough to know that this refusal does not imply withdrawal
of affection or danger of hunger. In the industrial west, however,

1 J. Bowlby, op. cit.

2 On the other hand, the more conscientious mother makes the
mistake of insisting on a mechanically regular feeding schedule,
instead of feeding the baby when it is hungry. It does not seem to be
generally realised that thumb-sucking is a reaction pattern to oral
frustration. Thumb-sucking is common among babies in our culture.

176

Industrial Personality

breast-feeding is very inconvenient for the mother. Everyone is
more mobile today, and women are free, far more than formerly,
to contract obligations outside the family circle, whether they
be social or in the nature of work : the need to feed the baby
interferes with these activities. A mother cannot take her infant
with her to work, committee meeting, cinema or cocktail party,
and is therefore strongly tempted to vary its feeding times to
suit her plans, and to discontinue breast-feeding altogether as
soon as practicable.

Physiological factors also play a part and many city mothers
are unable to supply adequate milk of suitable quality.

In consequence the industrial child tends to be fed irregularly,
to be bottle-fed rather than breast-fed, and to be weaned as
early as possible. Weaning is generally started about the third
month and is frequently completed by the sixth: that is,
considerably before the child has become mentally capable of
perceiving the enduring nature of its mother's affection, while
the early irregularities occur before it has become confident
of the reliability of its food supply.

Hence the western child is liable to develop deep-lying
doubts as to whether it is loved, and may also suffer from food
anxieties. The various forms which these doubts may take will
be discussed later.

The child's second lesson is connected with its excretory
function. It must learn to contain its urine and faeces 'to please
mummy,' and to produce them upon demand for the same
reason. As I have said, this act is significant both because it is
the child's first creative act, and because it is the first act by
which it can influence other people.

In the western world there is strong social pressure towards
completing the anal training of children as early as possible.
The savage child, naked and playing most of the day on grass
does no material damage by incontinence. The western child
is clad in garments which must be changed and washed and
liable to damage relatively delicate carpets and upholstery by
incontinence. In addition, western habits of cleanliness make
us more sensitive to odours and so more intolerant of excretory

777

Conditions of Happiness

smells. As a result, most mothers try to complete anal training
by the earliest possible date; the age of two years seems to be
widely regarded as the point by which a reasonably reliable
standard of continence may be expected.

Furthermore, lapses are generally treated as crimes : the child
is told that it is 'naughty,' or that 'mother is cross.' In western
society, therefore, retention of excreta becomes a way the way
to win maternal affection; failure to do so becomes a source
of guilt. There is also a third factor. Though the western mother
is at first delighted by the production of faeces on demand the
day comes when she treats faeces as dirty or disgusting. When
this happens it seems to the child that its love-gift, so welcome
before and so proudly offered, has been rejected. Apart from
inculcating a somewhat rigid dislike of dirt, this inconsistency
of its mother must produce much conflict and a sense of doubt
about the effectiveness of all its actions. It seems reasonable
to suppose that this tendency to regard faeces with disgust has
been much intensified as our civilisation becomes more hygienic.
The discovery of the role of 'dirt' in fostering bacteria played
straight into the hands of our neurotic tendency.

The third element in character formation is the phallic.
Masturbation, as I said, is important as marking the child's
discovery that it can gratify its desires by its own actions. I have
not been able to find satisfactory evidence which would show
whether or not the taboo on masturbation has changed in
intensity over the European culture as a whole. It is certain,
however, that it became particularly intense during the
Victorian period and though it still remains strong, it is not
punished to the same extent or treated with the same horror.
One would therefore expect to find the contemporary child
more independent, and more able to create his own interests
without parental help than the Victorian child. This seems to
be the case, but we should not make too broad an inference
about the improvement of psychical weaning. The youngest
child always has the greatest difficulty; hence the modern
tendency to smaller families, which means that the population
contains a higher proportion of youngest children, acts in an

Industrial Personality

adverse sense. The tendency for parents to have children at a
greater age may also contribute to the child's difficulty in
breaking free.

There should, in addition, be a decrease in the tendency to feel
that pleasure is wicked, and in asceticism and puritanism generally.

Fourthly, there is the CEdipus situation. Without opening
the question of whether the child's affection for its mother is
fundamentally sexual, we can agree that it will feel jealousy for
the father.

To begin with, western society is monogamous, in itself a
predisposing factor: in addition in western society the infant
may not become aware of its father as an individual for some
time, since he may spend the day at work, returning after it has
gone to bed. It seems a reasonable speculation that the belated
discovery of a rival comes as more of a shock than if he has been
in the child's world from the beginning. Hence we may expect
rather strong repressed aggression and guilt to mark western
personality.

It is strongly held that the most powerful factor favouring
the formation of an CEdipus complex is for a child to witness
the 'primal scene.' In the overcrowded conditions of contem-
porary industrialism, in which children often share their
parents' bed, this experience becomes rather general, as many
social workers have noted. 1

A vital point in personality formation is the approved method
of dealing with guilt: the reinstatement pattern. Western
society is still strongly committed to the practice of atoning
by punishment especially physical punishment, isolation and
deprivation of rewards rather than confession, reparation or
humiliation. Such methods contribute to feelings of being
unwanted, to the belief that the way to get out of difficulties
is to go without something ('to tighten one's belt') or undergo
some unpleasant experience ('take one's medicine') and to the
interpretation of sado-masochistic elements in terms of physical
cruelty and deprivation rather than humiliation or psychological
tortures.

1 Cf. M. Paneth, Branch Street, 1944.
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Conditions of Happiness

However, the violence of punishment seems to be decreasing.

It is perhaps worth pointing out that western society offers
an unusually high degree of general frustration to the ordinary
child. A modern house, even a small one, is full of delicate
bric-i-brac, easily dirtied surfaces, technical equipment (gas-
stoves, radios, sewing-machines), sharp and dangerous tools,
fragile accessories such as books, chinaware and lamps and
miscellaneous personal property (fountain-pens, watches,
barometers) which a child can damage. The western child is
told 'don't touch' infinitely more often than, say, the Samoan
or the Rhodesian baby. In fact, western society has been driven
to the extreme of inventing a miniature prison for small
children, called the play-pen, an extraordinary commentary on
the unwelcomeness of the infant in the contemporary domestic
milieu. Here is a fruitful source of aggression. It may also lead
to a resigned and sheep-like attitude in which nothing can be
attempted because it is a foregone conclusion that it is forbidden.
So much for ontological factors : but neurosis can also be created,
or enhanced, by situational factors, that is, elements in the
cultural environment. These may be treated more briefly, since
their chief effect is to intensify or exploit patterns laid down in
infancy, these being the real determinants of personality.

in Western Values as Causes

The most striking feature of the western value system is that
it puts forward -two conflicting codes of action for almost every
situation. We are taught to admire strength and success, but
also to be unselfish and love our neighbour. We are taught a
revealed religion which asserts the existence of a future life
and a body of science which denies all knowledge of it. We are
taught hedonism and asceticism. We are taught that art is
admirable but are not expected in practice to bother much
about it.

Each individual is left to resolve this conflict as best he may.
Little wonder that he frequently finds himself torn between two
courses of action. This, as we have seen, gives rise to neurosis.

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Industrial Personality

Finally, we must mention an influence which lies somewhere
between the two foregoing groups : the formation of standards
of behaviour by the introjection of parental attitudes.

Since in western society parental attitudes are conflicting,
the child naturally tends to introject conflicting standards. It is
probably true that in western society the child sees more of its
mother and nurse than of its father, so, other things being equal,
it will tend to introject womanly rather than manly standards.
We must not rely on this too much because repeated intro-
jections are made, and because the mother will generally teach
the child to admire the father and if it is a boy will teach it that
certain attitudes are proper to boys ('only little girls cry.')
Then again, if relations with the mother are unsatisfactory, the
child may react into rejection of the mother and her standards.

IV Basic Personality Structure

What kind of character structure do these experiences com-
bine to create?

In answering this question we must not make the mistake of
drawing a picture which is too clear-cut. Western personality,
even at its worst, contains favourable elements: if it were
wholly neurotic western society would have collapsed long ago.
It is the contradictions which are interesting and dangerous.
Again, many of the elements we shall find in it are not undesir-
able in themselves : they become dangerous only if we push them
to an extreme if they become an obsession. Finally, we must
not hope for a static picture: western personality is in a rapid
atate of change and we shall often have to talk in terms of
trends rather than of states.

The principal contradiction we must face is that the predom-
inant element is western personality is not a product of indus-
trialism, but has dominated western Europe (not to mention
other cultures and periods) for the last millenium. This is the
ascetic element which makes us feel that all pleasure is won from
a jealous universe and must be paid for by suffering. It is
frequently rationalised in the form that pleasure is wicked, and

181

Conditions of Happiness

as such an assertion is quite impossible to justify by any rational
method it is attributed to the fiat of God. It would be a fascinat-
ing piece of research for someone to trace the way in which
asceticism was grafted on to Christianity in defiance of consider-
able evidence in the new testament that Christ was actually
opposed to asceticism for its own sake. 1 A brilliant instance is
the way in which some Christian sects have made teetotalism
a tenet of their religion, despite the fact that Christ (and St.
Paul, too, which is odder) accepted moderate wine-drinking as
normal.

This ascetic element certainly originates in the sexual taboos
which have flourished in our society for so long. Here we have
a typical vicious circle : the taboos produce a personality which
feels, guilty about sex, and such a personality maintains the
taboos in its turn. However, such a circle can grow in size or can
contract: which it does will depend chiefly on the violence of
sexual guilt generated by the CEdipus situation, and to some
extent on guilt generally. At the moment it is decreasing but
we must not overestimate the amount of this decrease. Struck
by the contrast between our own customs and those of a century
ago it is a commonplace to complain that our sexual morals are
lax. In reality they are still extremely strict. The sexual act is
taboo in ordinary conversation, even when performed between
legally married couples. Extra-marital sex, though common, is
generally condemned. To attempt to acquire a skilful sexual
technique is thought outre, and all variants from the approved
pattern are regarded as being to a greater or lesser extent
perversions. Quite a number of people feel that the only real
justification for the sexual act is procreation. And, despite the
overwhelming evidence of psychology and anthropology to the
contrary, people obstinately resist the idea that children have
sexual wishes.

The marks of a neurotic reaction are excessive violence and
rigidity; by this standard the reaction of most people to the idea
of homosexuality and other abnormal sexual relationships can

1 As far as I know this has not been done in detail, though there is
a short sketch in John Macmurray's Reason and Emotion, 1935.

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Industrial Personality

fairly be described as neurotic. To say this is not in any way to
imply approval of or indifference to sexual perversion : a normal
attitude is to regard it as a sad or even calamitous disability, a
thing to be lamented and fought as we lament and fight tuber-
culosis or cancer. But the typical western attitude to perversion
is distinctly different from the typical attitude to a terrible
physical perversion like cancer. It contains elements of resent-
ment and anger: the typical reaction is not to pity and help but
to drive out and destroy. We are not honest if we fail to recog-
nise that a neurotic fear of homosexuality is, and long has been,
an element in the western personality structure.

The word homosexuality alone covers several distinct
behaviour patterns and I cannot attempt to open up the difficult
and still somewhat controversial subject of the pathology of
perversion. I will, however, briefly mention a single typical
pattern to help the reader unversed in analytical psychology to
relate these remarks to what he already knows of personality
structure. Faced with the (Edipus situation, in which his love
for his father comes into conflict with his desire to possess the
mother exclusively, a male child may seek to resolve the prob-
lem by identifying himself with the father, or with the mother
as already described. 1 To the extent that he identifies with the
mother he adopts a female role and desires the sexual atten-
tions of the father. All this, of course, is at the most primitive
and unconscious level of his mind. Growing up into a society
in which homosexual relations are tabooed, he is forced to
repress strictly his desire for his father.

Now it is a typical pattern that people resent most bitterly
IH others the things which tempt them most themselves. We
have no sympathy for our own failings when we meet them in
others and in punishing those others we punish ourselves. (This
may seem a rather arbitrary statement but it has been proved
in detail again and again in clinical work. 2 ) Thus western man's
intense antagonism to homosexuality in others entitles us to
suspect a repressed urge to engage in it himself. This is not to

1 See p. 84.

* Examples may be found in, e.g., C. Berg, War in the Mind, 1944.

183

Conditions of Happiness

say that western men are all on the verge of homosexuality,
because if the urge were once made conscious it would be seen
for what it is an infantile and impractical pattern, inferior in
reward to normal intercourse and in most cases it would be
rejected and disposed of permanently.

This element finds expression in the rigid fear of being
thought effeminate or 'cissy' which marks both British and
American culture. Any detached observer of our societies would
certainly find it a matter for comment that men fear to be
thought effeminate whereas women do not, to anything like
the same obsessive extent, fear being thought masculine. Thus
no odium attaches to a woman who wears trousers, while it is
unthinkable that a man should wear a skirt.

I shall have some further reflections to make upon this
element in due course, but first let us continue with the outline.

The most serious effect of our rigid sexual ethic is its inhib-
ition of potency, and the creation of a drive to justify one's
manhood in substitute forms. This we have already referred to
as the drive to self-validation. It is this which has produced the
thousand-year-long spasm of productive and creative energy
which has marked western civilisation. Perhaps this is the
outstanding feature of the western personality and it owes its
strength to the way in which it is reinforced by other elements
in the personality. For instance, we can see that an uncon-
sciously-motivated fear of 'being a cissy' will intensify the drive
to prove one's manhood by excelling in whatever activities are
regarded by society as the proper domain of men in our case,
sport and business activity. And, as we shall see in a moment,
this drive ateo derives energy from both oral and anal, as well as
phallic levels.

Last of the direct consequences of sexual taboos is western
man's outstanding inquisitiveness. Since I am thinking here of
scientific investigation, the urge to explore and plain curiosity,
perhaps I should dignify it by a grander term; let us say 'the
investigatory character.' Because sexual knowledge is hidden,
the child hitches its sexual drive to the discovery of hidden facts.
Facts which are imparted to it voluntarily by adults have little

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Industrial Personality

charm, but anything which constitutes a mystery and a challenge
is a very different matter. And to the extent that it is a challenge,
the situation borrows force from the self-validatory urge.

These four elements : self- validation, asceticism, curiosity and
fear of homosexuality, have played a considerable role through-
out the history of western civilisation, as well as in some other
cultures. Since our sexual taboos have been relaxed a little in
the last fifty years there may have been some tendency for these
elements to become less marked, but we cannot conclude that
such a relaxation is part of a long-term trend. Our history shows
that such relaxations have usually intensified guilt feelings and
created new waves of asceticism, as when the Roundheads
replaced the Cavaliers.

If industrialism has had any overt effect, no doubt it has been
to weaken sexual taboos by inducing a practical and material,
rather than a mystical and moral attitude. Its most obvious
covert effect, however, has probably been to intensify guilt,
and it would not take very much to direct this guilt into ascetic
channels again. On the other hand, if it has favoured mother-
identification it has helped to weaken sexual taboos which are
jcertainly related to the father's unconscious desire to keep his
woman to himself.

Let us now turn to character elements which though far from
new, have been more obviously intensified by the industrial-
isation of western life. First, there is anxiety. Few would chal-
lenge the assertion that we are much less self-assured, much
less self-confident than our forefathers. Today such an attitude
is justified by the overt world situation, but it is not caused by it.
The attitude has been developing for years, and the overt
situation merely provides it with a justification. This anxiety
can be traced primarily, I think, to the abruptness of weaning
and irregularity of feeding, which we have mentioned, but it
also elements at the anal level (fear of loss of affection through
loss of anal control) and at the phallic level (fear of impotence,
fear of homosexual urges).

Since this anxiety is primarily caused by loss of affection we can
identify in the personality a neurotic desire to be loved. The desire

C.H. 13 185

Conditions of Happiness

to be loved is, of course, normal enough; but here it becomes
rigid and excessive or obsessive.

Second, there is guilt. Few would challenge the assertion
that today we tend to blame ourselves, to ask 'what have we
done wrong ?' when the situation is adverse and to resign our-
selves to misfortune by 'tightening our belts': that is, we expect
our mistakes to be met with punishment. Here again, our
attitude is probably perfectly appropriate to the situation: it
generally is our own fault, at least in part, when things go
wrong. But the significant thing is that our forefathers rarely
accused themselves, even when obviously in the wrong; nor
did they project the blame on to some other party, which is
merely a way of dealing with guilt. They put it down to ill
luck and left it at that.

The most generally recognised source of guilt is the QEdipus
situation, though I think we may also have to look still further
back for it, since children often seem to interpret the real or
apparent loss of their mother's affection as due to some defect
in themselves. Guilt is also present at the anal level. (Fear of
punishment for loss of sphincter control.)

The third great character element is drawn primarily from
the anal level and takes on a dual form: retentiveness and
productiveness, especially at the material plane. Western man
likes piling up property or money both by accumulating it and
by producing it. Single individuals may favour one or the other
according as in their experience, failure to retain was greeted
by punishment or productiveness rewarded by approval.

Though productivity is most generally interpreted in material
terms we must not forget that it also appears as creativity.
Obsessed as we are with the productive character of our society
it is easy to overlook its remarkable creativeness.

This element draws important forces from the oral level also,
since to pile up a supply of good things helps to assuage the
fear that the source of all good things may suddenly be cut off.
It is, I believe, true that house-training is the most violent of our
disciplines. The damage to property, the element of shame
(borrowed from sex, since the excretory organs are so close to

186

Industrial Personality

the sex organs) the dirt, all combine to make the mother quite
rigidly insistent on anal control, and prolonged failure is often
met with most violent beatings and other punishments.

If we are realistic we must also designate cleanliness, or rather
shame at dirtiness, as an element in western character. This
derives, naturally, from the anal situation and is certainly far
more marked in the west than in almost any other culture.

To complete our survey it is necessary to deal briefly with
parent identification and aggression. Western character has long
been comparatively aggressive, as characters go in the world
as a whole, a fact which can probably be traced to defective
social control, permitting individuals to place obstacles in the
way of their fellow men. Recently, however, the picture has
changed in important respects. The growth in size of society
and the failure of its natural sanctions has both permitted
individuals to frustrate their fellow men on the economic plane
and has evoked, by reaction, a central government which seeks
to stop these attempts at the cost of imposing new frustrations.
At the same time, the overt expression of aggression in violence
has become much harder. In consequence aggression is bottled
up and escapes either in converted forms (sado-masochism,
racialism, political vindictiveness, vindictive written criticism,
etc.), or in those periodic waves of aggressive activity we call
war. In short, I should call suppressed or converted aggression a
feature of industrial personality.

Finally we may note a tendency to change from a patriform
to a matriform society. Today crimes against the supply of food
and goods are taken more seriously than crimes against pro-
tected women, the sky-father religion is in decline, democracy
(so-called) is rapidly extending and authoritarianism is in decline.
Once the father was the dominant figure in the home; today, as
studies such as that of Radke has shown, the mother rules the
roost. 1

To sum up, the contemporary western personality is obsessed
by the need to validate itself, by fear of homosexuality and the

1 M. J. Radke, The Relation of Parental Authority to Children's
Behaviour and Attitudes, 1946.

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Conditions of Happiness

need to find out. It is anxious and guilty. It is retentive and
productive, materialistic but creative. It is anxious to co-operate,
but full of bottled-up aggression. Its energy and creativeness are
strong points, but they are made into bad ones by being carried
to an obsessive extreme. Its fear and guilt are bad points. As it
stands, it is not a personality we can expect to yield happiness
to its possessors.

v Western Values as Effects

I have already said almost enough, I imagine, to indicate how
closely the pattern of western society is dictated by the irrational
demands of the western personality, and certainly enough to
show that our society is deeply marked by cultural neurosis.

However it may crystallise the picture finally to list briefly
the main values which we derive from this personality, for
values are the determinants of the socio-cultural pattern.
Inevitably it is a society which concentrates its energies on
finance and production, and conceives success in terms of money,
power and goods.

Probing more closely one can detect five valuations which
chiefly dictate the shape of western society. The first is mater-
ialism, a preoccupation with the material world of things and
people in their material aspect. About this enough has been
said.

Secondly, there is preoccupation with success. How deep this
preoccupation goes is shown by the fact that it scarcely strikes
us as odd that people should value success. Yet would it not be
more rational to value happiness ? Few are so naive as to suppose
that the men we call successful are the happiest among us, yet
we censure the man who eschews fame and retires into a happy
mediocrity for wasting his talents.

Thirdly, we set an absurdly high value on our food supply.
To insist on enough food for nutritional needs is reasonable,
but we don't do this. We carry our eating to extremes of gourman-
dise and even have ritualised it. When we want to do honour
to a man, we give a banquet ! Try and put yourself in the position

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Industrial Personality

of a detached observer and perhaps you will see how truly
astonishing that fact is. The luckless man is not in need of food:
he would much prefer something useful, such as a free pass on
the railways. We would honour ourselves much more if we
honoured him by giving a concert or a ballet.

This preoccupation with food becomes confused with our
preoccupation with winning approval, with the result that we
hold those who fail to secure food in low esteem. This corres-
ponds to the frequently heard assertion that the unemployed
are not to be pitied as they could get work if they had more guts.
And to the equally scornful but quite contradictory assertion
that they are unemployed because they are unemployable.

Fourthly, there is our growing tendency to idolise the mother ',
who is doubly important because she is also the original source
of our food supply. Here we may think of the American
institution of Mothers' Day, which is generally supported, while
recent attempts to institute a Fathers' Day were a total failure.
American mother-worship may also be seen in many films and
the commission of both civil and military crimes is presented
as fully justified when the object is to gratify a mother. 1 Rather
naturally, this value seeps over into our sexual life, and a
striking feature of American culture, which is also emerging
in Britain, is breast- worship. The quasi-pornographic semi-
nude drawings known as 'pin-up girls' are distinguished by the
anatomical peculiarity of slimness amounting to serious under-
development, except in the region of the mammary glands
which are depicted as of phenomenal size and in a state of
tension, such as exists only when they are in milk. They are
relatively much larger than those on the Venus de Milo, although
in every other respect the figure is much slimmer. 2 This
graphically illustrates the oral anxieties of the American charac-
ter and reveals why the American man cannot escape from the
domination of the mother-figure.
Many other facts could be adduced, such as the fact that the

1 One of many instances : Hail the Conquering Hero.

2 Cf. also the almost proverbial American belief that the highest
standard in cooking is 'as mother used to make it.'

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Conditions of Happiness

American conscience is primarily derived from maternal
standards, or the choice of a female figure for the national
emblem (the Statue of Liberty, Britannia) but the point is
already clear, and the only important qualification which should
be made is the fact that Germany forms an exception to this
pattern, as we shall see in the following chapter.

Finally, we must mention the high value placed on competition
between males. Though its origin lies in doubts of potency, this
pattern gathers particular force in America because it becomes
the way to win maternal affection. Another typical pattern in
western society is to urge the child towards manhood. It is
constantly told that it is too old for certain types of behaviour,
or that it will be allowed certain desired freedoms when it is
older. Margaret Mead has observed a distinct correlation
between this practice and competitiveness in the adult. 1 Here,
again, we readily tend to take the competitive pattern for
granted, ignoring the fact that nature displays as many co-
operative as competitive patterns, and ignoring too how little
it governs the actions of women. A woman does not cook
primarily with the object of cooking better than her neighbour,
and in general no devices exist for establishing comparisons in
women's skill, except a few imported from the masculine
world. In the male world, however, the most unlikely activities
have been dragged into conformity with this pattern, and the
preoccupation with the idea of establishing a record has become
proverbial.

It is clear^ then, that the pecularities of western society are
the reflection of our peculiar non-valid needs. Just as the
Marquesan indulges in human sacrifice to bolster his confidence,
despite the endless train of bloodshed and reprisal; just as the
Dobuan lives out his life in paranoiac suspicion and fear; just
as the Kwakiutl asserts himself by prodigal wastage and destruc-
tion; so western industrial man seeks to relieve the tensions in
his soul by the unremitting production of goods and the
accumulation of money, heedless of the cost in frustration and

1 M. Mead, Co-operation and Competition among Primitive Peoples,
1937-

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Industrial Personality

fear. Little does he understand that his efforts only intensify
for those who follow the anxieties from which he is trying to
escape.

vi Western Culture

Our thesis is stated: society conditions personality, but
personality conditions society. The familiar commonplace that
our psychological problems are due to our competitive environ-
ment turns out to be only a half truth. With more originality
and equal accuracy, we may point to our psychological problems
as the source of the competitive system.

Discovery of this interlocking relationship is, I would firmly
suggest, one of the most important steps in the history of
society. We could not understand our past, nor had we any
hope of determining our future until it had been made. Theories
of history and sociology which ignore unconscious forces are
so much bunk. Ford was very nearly right. Attempts to account
for our position in terms of society alone or psychology alone
are futile and we must look for causes in a direction at right-
angles to the vicious circle. In the case in question the immediate
external cause is undoubtedly modern technology. Man would
be glad enough to pursue happiness by other means if he knew
them. Technology offers him a reliable, easily accessible device
for meeting at least the very vivid needs for food and shelter,
and indirect means of satisfying some of his other desires. Small
wonder that he takes the opportunity; and the more he concen-
trates on this particular instrument for achieving happiness, the
easier it is for subsequent individuals to follow the path; indeed,
the harder it becomes to follow any other.

But modern technology has its roots primarily in curiosity
and the drive for self-validation, so that we can trace our
present situation back primarily to our sexual taboos; and these
in turn are chiefly predicated on the patriform personality, with
its desire to isolate women sexually. Thus, as far as western
society is concerned, Freud was right to point to the CEdipus
complex as the dominant factor.

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Conditions of Happiness

Western man's mistake is thus to have advanced much too
far on one sector, while the armies on his flanks are still fighting
heavy defensive battles with the enemy. At any moment he
may be cut off and wiped out in one of these 'battles of
annihilation' of which we used to hear so much. Indeed, the
battle may already have started. In such a position, if it is not
too late, the only course is to withdraw. This does not mean that
civilisation must 'reject the machine.' It must absorb it. Scien-
tists are right to reject the rural Utopias of Morris and Butler
as unrealistic retreats from the problem. But they are wrong
when they argue that civilisation must be adapted to the
machine. It is the machine which must be adapted to civilisation.

But that is not the course the world is following at present.
So, before we try and visualise the structure of a machine-
using, as opposed to a machine-dominated, civilisation, let us
examine two contemporary reactions to the problem of western
unhappiness communism and fascism.

192

XI
FASCIST SOLUTION

i Popularity of Fascism n Fascism Defined in Appeal of Fascism

iv Status Under Fascism v Integration under Fascism vi Why

Fascism Fails vn Fascism's Values vm The German Mind

ix War and Happiness x Danger of a Fascist Revival

I Popularity of Fascism

1 HE phenomenon of fascism has not been disposed of by the
victory of the United Nations any more than pneumonia is
disposed of when a patient is cured.

We cannot expect to be safe from fascism until we have
discovered why it possesses such a hypnotic power over people's
minds, for if it displayed it once it may do so again. Indeed,
it does so at this moment, for in many countries authoritarian,
quasi-fascist regimes still flourish, and receive a considerable
measure of support from the population.

Nothing is more misleading that to conceive of fascism as a
hated regime maintained by force. A regime maintained by
force is what we commonly call a dictatorship, and there have
been many dictatorships before fascism was thought of. What
concerns us is how fascism differs from straightforward dictator-
ship. The characteristic feature of fascism is that it is welcomed
in spite of its authoritarianism, in spite of its cruelties, in spite
of all the objections which strike the onlooker as so obvious.
Clearly it has (or seems to have) something to offer that is so
desirable as to outweigh all these frightful disadvantages.

Anyone who was present in Germany when the Nazis were
coming to power, or anyone who has had the opportunity of
reading the diaries of dead German soldiers, or who had any
other window into the German mind, will have been struck by
the tremendous conviction many Germans displayed that here
was something worth fighting for, something which justified

Conditions of Happiness

all personal sacrifice, all cruelties and treacheries, something so
absorbing that without it life was scarcely worth living.

If we apply to fascism the criteria we have established as
conditions of happiness, I think we shall gain an idea what that
something was. We shall see that fascism undertook to satisfy
essential psychological appetites, even at the cost of many
physical needs. We shall also see why the solution did not prove
an enduring one.

ii Fascism Defined

First, however, we had better agree on what we mean by
fascism. The word has been so used and misused during the past
ten years that it is no longer any more an abusive epithet applic-
able to anything we don't like. For instance, it is often said that
fascism is 'gangster rule' but this shows a complete misunder-
standing of the nature of fascism. If it were merely gangster
rule it would be far less dangerous than it is. Fascism embodies
a perfectly coherent political philosophy, one quite capable of
attracting the support of people who would never be found
supporting gangsters. It happens that in Germany the regime
made the mistake of gathering round it many individuals of
what may loosely be called the gangster type (though a profes-
sional psychologist would probably not agree even to this)
while in other cases, such as Argentina, crude dictators have
borrowed fascist devices to help in keeping the public under
control. I will revert to this point at the end of the chapter, but
first let us see what fascism really is.

The basic concept of fascism, as I understand it, is that the
state is held to be more important than the individual. The state,
instead of being seen as a convenient arrangement formed by
individuals to assist them in attaining their individual ends,
acquires a mystic significance and the role of the individual is
to serve the state. In this it is different both from capitalism
and from communism; for the communist revolution, even if
it has tended to become an end in itself was always advertised
as a device for benefiting individuals in the end, while monopoly
capitalism, even in its extremest form, can hardly be analysed

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Fascist Solution

as anything but an attempt to benefit individuals, even if only
a minority of them. 1 One of the things which has helped to
confuse the issue has been the communist description of fascism
as 'the last stage of monopoly capitalism.' This would make it
no more than another dictatorship. According to this descrip-
tion the exploited masses are rigidly held down by their fascist
masters but as we have just noted, the significant feature of
fascism is that millions of 'exploited workers' supported it.
On the other hand, capitalist apologists have suggested that
there is little difference between fascism and communism but
we have already noted a crucial difference and will explore the
matter further in the next chapter. The truth is, capitalism and
communism are economic methods, fascism dictatorship and
democracy are political methods. Fascism might employ either
communism or capitalism for its purpose, just as democracy
or crude dictatorship might. 2

From this central concept of the subservience of the individual
to the state flow the other features of fascism. Since the state is
all, the actions of the individual are subject to state control.
But this control is not exerted by an individual dictator as such;
the leader is only the interpreter of the destinies and needs of
the state. The idea that the fortunes of the state are the only
interest which matters leads naturally to the concept that
military power and territorial conquest are proper objectives,
since these are often held to redound to the glory of states.
Naturally, but not, I think, inevitably. It is conceivable, on
paper anyway, that a fascist state might exist which thought its
glory better served by peaceful behaviour and the maintenance
of a high standard of living for its citizens. In practice, the
combination is improbable, because goodwill and a belief in

1 For a clear-sighted discussion of the nature of fascism, see E. B.
Ashton, The Fascist: His State and His Mind, 1936.

* Fascism's readiness to use state ownership of the means of production
as a method whenever convenient is explicitly stated in the fascist Carta
del Lavoro of April 21, 1927, Art. IX : * State interference in economic
affairs takes place only where private initiative is lacking or insufficient,
or where political interests of the state are affected. Such interference
can take the form of supervision, aid, or direct assumption of control.

195

Conditions of Happiness

authoritarianism rarely go hand in hand (since one is based on
mother identification, the other on father identification). Similar
considerations apply to cruelty and ruthlessness : it is possible
to conceive a fascist state which did not rely on cruelty, but the
psychological attitude which welcomes authoritarianism is usually
prone to cruelty too though not necessarily to the pathological
extreme exhibited by Germany. Thus the links between fascism
and cruelty and aggression are psychological rather than political.
But it is not the appeal of fascism to specialised psychological
types with which we are now concerned, but its appeal to the
population as a whole. To explain this appeal we do not have
to resort to clumsy generalisations about the German character.
Incidentally, it is always the German character which occupies
writers on the psychology of fascism as if there were no other
fascist nations. Instead, we can interpret it in terms of the prim-
ary needs and appetites which are common to all humanity.

in Appeal of Fascism

Fascism rediscovered the remarkable paradox that people are
happier when devoting themselves to a larger purpose than when
working for their own material satisfaction. Fascism offered a
cause to work for, and thus reimbued people's life with purpose.
It enabled them to sink their personal identities in a larger unit
and thus to forget their personal sense of isolation and helpless-
ness, of futility and mortality, while giving them a stake in its
achievements and a sense of sharing the glory of its achievements.

This cause, as we now can see, was not worthy of the devotion
it inspired but the point is that, at the time, many people
thought it was. It is easy to be wise after the event. The victims
of fascism might have been less easily duped if an alternative
cause of equal attraction and solider credentials had been
available. As a matter of fact there was an alternative cause:
communism. And it was precisely from the ranks of the
communists that the Nazis won many of their most fervent
supporters. Hitler was quick to see that the same mentality
which turned in its dissatisfaction to communism might turn

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Fascist Solution

equally well to Nazism. As we know, he even chose red as the
colour of the Nazi flag in order to attract people into his
meetings under the impression they were communist meetings. 1

Why communism failed to hold its converts we shall consider
in the next chapter. What is more relevant here is to ask why
the capitalist democracies were unable to offer a programme
and a purpose at , least as enthralling. To their failure to do
so the successes of fascism are, in an important sense, due.

Participation in a larger purpose not only dissolves the sense
of personal unimportance and helplessness but fosters a feeling
of mastery. This feeling was fed by parades of armed strength
in which the feeling of power could be savoured in vivid form.
Even the most frustrated office worker could feel that he was
playing a part in a programme of power and this banished the
sense of futility in his job. The steady elimination of luxury
trades and services and the transfer of labour into industries
serving the task of national reconstruction and expansion also
helped to provide the cog-in-the-machine worker with a new
sense of purpose. Such transfers often meant a loss of pay
but they led to few protests because the psychological satis-
faction of the new role outweighed the material loss.

Apart from the increase in vicarious mastery implied by
membership in a masterful state, there was a marked increase
in crude mastery. The transfer of workers from clerical to
manual jobs, the induction of men into the armed forces where
they could operate guns, tanks and planes, the labour battalions
of the Hitler Youth, all provided outlets for crude manual
mastery, while the huge administrative machine, the party,
the secret police and the expanding forces also provided open-
ings for mastery of the administrative and executive kind.

Further, the fascist programme added to the sense of personal

security, not only in the spiritual sense we have just considered,

but also in the material sense. The almost complete elimination

of unemployment assured the ordinary individual that, however

small his stipend, he could at least rely on it continuing to be

paid. Moreover, he knew that employers were not free to try

1 A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1934.

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Conditions of Happiness

and force his wages down, but must conform to the wage-fixing
agreements made at the national level. In addition, the more
erratic personal crises of marriage, illness, and death which
represent such a bugbear to those who have no margin of
savings were largely met by grants and relief organisations.

Of course, these gains in security were not unequivocal.
Enjoyment of them was absolutely contingent on conformity
to the purposes of the state. Deprived of membership in his
state-approved trade union or professional association, no one
could get any kind of a job. The choice was total security or
nothing. And as we know the long-run consequence was war,
which leads to extreme insecurity. But in the early days of the
party this was obvious to few.

Much has been made of the rule of terror maintained by the
secret police. But in reality even in Germany where it was most
marked, this factor did not affect the bulk of the population.
It was only the active opponents of Nazism, the Jews and the
communists, who went in terror of their lives. The ordinary
man saw little of the Gestapo, for all that he heard many
rumours. (After the war began to go against Germany, of course,
things were different.) If he was afraid of anyone, it was more
probably the local party official. But in the early days, when the
fascist movement appeared in the light of a great crusade, the
local party organiser (who was generally an old inhabitant of the
district, well known to all) appeared in the light of a hard-
working and public-spirited individual.

Fascism, then, yielded dividends in mastery, security and
purpose. To these we may add a fourth consideration, consis-
tency. The conflicting values of democracy were replaced with
a clear-cut standard. No longer need one waver between the
command to 'be a success* and the command to 'love your
neighbour.' For these were substituted one janequivocal criter-
ion : does it advance the cause of the state ? And lest there should
be any doubt whether specific actions did or did not do so,
a copious propaganda was at hand to point the right road out.
A striking feature of the German basic personality seems to
be the existence of large quantities of guilt. It has become

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Fascist Solution

customary to attribute these feelings to the 1918 defeat, but
there is not the faintest evidence that mass-neurosis can be
produced in adults in this simple way. What the 1918 defeat did
was to serve as a convenient rallying point for already existing
guilt feelings and as a rationalisation of them. Such guilt
feelings must have been induced separately in each individual
at an early age and are almost certainly of QEdipal origin. This
conforms with what we know of the German basic personality,
with its strong father-fixation.

One of fascism's, specifically Nazism's, most remarkable
achievements was its successful handling of this source of
misery. Two methods were employed, one to deal with pre-
existing guilt and one to minimise the chance of further guilt
arising. For the first, a scapegoat or series of scapegoats, were
chosen: the Jews, the communists and the plutocrats. The
1918 defeat was explained as a 'stab in the back* by traitorous
radicals. Economic misfortunes were the work of the Jews, and
so on. This mechanism has been several times described. 1
Less attention has been devoted to the other mechanism. By
means of the leadership principle, and in virtue of being the
subject of widespread identification, Hitler was able to take
over super-ego functions for the whole nation. Any misdeed,
any cruelty, any betrayal was on Hitler's conscience, and Hitler's
alone. The citizen's only duty was obedience, and provided he
gave that he could sleep sound. That is why Germans could
tolerate mass-executions and concentration camps, and why
they looked so dazed when the Allied armies held them
responsible.

iv Status Under Fascism

The concept of the all-important state made possible a
dramatic transformation of the German status-system. Before
the Nazis came to f>ower it was strongly hereditary, though in a
manner quite different from England. In the latter country
birth gave access to the best social circles, to the fields of politics
and diplomacy, and was a factor in the higher command of
1 Cf. P. Nathan, The Psychology of Fascism, 1943.

Conditions of Happiness

the army. In the Germany of Bismarck the influence of birth
was much more pervasive. To enter the civil service, even in
the humble grades of postal and customs officials, it was neces-
sary to have been born into one of the right families. In the
army, birth played a role beside which its influence in the
British army seems insignificant. It is hardly an exaggeration
to say that only a nobleman could be an officer. 1 By the time
of the Weimar republic this system had naturally lost some of
its severity but the feeling of the omnipresence of privilege
was still strong among the solid bulk of the population.

For this rigid system the Nazis substituted the principle of
advancement and prestige according to the value rendered to
the state. This principle was enforced with considerable
thoroughness. Low economic and social status was never the
slightest bar to advancement in industry, in the party or in the
armed forces. On the contrary, it seems as if the Nazis took
especial pleasure in advancing the lowly, no doubt reckoning
that they thereby gained loyal supporters since their hopes of
maintaining their new position were wholly dependent on the
success of the National Socialist movement. This policy was
applied with determination even in the caste-ridden Reichs-
wehr. The ranks were combed through and through for potential
officer material; promotion was no longer dependent on length
of service and good conduct stripes but on initiative and
resource in the severe mock battles of training. Moreover,
commissions were often awarded on the field without further
ado by umpires who attended for the purpose.

Again, the establishment of the Nazi party and the growth
of the forces and the administrative machine created countless
new 'status ladders' for the ambitious, while the transfer of
labour from luxury industries to industries serving the purposes
of the state greatly reduced the number of people in jobs devoid
of natural status.

The fascist type of status can best be described as pseudo-

1 In 1860, after the Manteuffel purge, two-thirds of the line
officers, all the guards officers, and 95 per cent, of the other cavalry
officers were nobles. See F. Neumann, Behemoth, 1942.

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Fascist Solution

functional. Once the tenet that the state comes before the
individual is accepted, this type of status appears as functional.
But as long as one believes that the object of the state is to serve
the individual then status based on value to the state is only
functional as long as the state is truly subserving individual
needs. (This, of course, is the crucial issue in assessing any
fascist device.) Accordingly, what the fascist call functional
status does not coincide with the natural assessment of the
ordinary man who, unless converted to fascist ideology, tends
to assess status by value to individuals. But the distinction does
not become obvious until the fact that the state is not serving
individuals 'needs becomes obvious. Thus the task of the Nazis
in the early days was a double one: to convince people that
Nazism was, indeed, serving their needs by such obvious
benefits as reduction of unemployment, road building, and the
'strength-through-joy' movement while steadily working to
convert people to the belief that their overriding interest was the
glory and renown of the Nazi state.

A pseudo-functional status system of this type has both
advantages and disadvantages when compared with a truly
functional system. Its main advantage is that status is never
in doubt. The most familiar instance of such a system in
democratic countries is the status system of the army ; a man's
status is at once revealed by his badges of rank and consequently
there need be no hesitation whether to defer or whether to take
the lead whenever two or more men meet. When two individuals
meet in a non-militaristic status system, each must seek to
impress the other with his value by devious means, and many
find this obligation exhausting or exasperating (hence, of
course, such unofficial status-badges as the old school tie). The
disadvantages of any such system is that official rank does not
always conform with true value, even when this is measured
on an arbitrary scale, such as value to the army or the state.
That party favourites were promoted was, as is well known, a
common complaint in the later days of Nazism. But what the
Anglo-American observer almost always failed to realise was
that the complaint was really a complaint that the authorities

C.H. 14 201

Conditions of Happiness

were not adhering to true fascist principles, rather than a
complaint against fascism itself. Just as a complaint of unjustified
promotion in the British army would not represent any objection
to the army as an institution.

v Integration Under Fascism

But it was in the task of integrating the community that
fascism scored its most definitive success. As Ashton has pointed
out, both Germany and Italy had but recently emerged from a
struggle to unify the state by extinguishing the authority of a
score of petty princelings. For each of them central rule
represented not dictatorship, but a greater degree of freedom
than they had known under a system of local and individual
freedom, so-called. The disruption of the post-war years, when
scores of splinter-parties battled for a following and none had
control, and when several towns established soviet independent
governments, recalled with uncomfortable vividness the days
of the dukedoms. Thus unity was an objective of supreme
importance, such as we in Britain can hardly conceive.

Fascism provided the effective political integration needed,
and also integrated the industrial sphere, but it did not stop
at this. It also provided the individual with opportunities to
sink his identity in something greater, in consciousness of the
united state. The mass rallies, the processions, and the broad-
casts of the leader which seemed so ridiculous to watchers
overseas actually performed a vital function.

The weakness of fascist integration was that it spurned the
traditional stages in the hierarchy of integration family, in-
group, clan and so on and substituted artificial hierarchies of
party, youth movement, professional chamber and workers'
front. In doing so it cut across irrefragable biological and
emotional ties. Consequently integration could only be main-
tained by a continuous frenzied effort of propaganda. But owing
to the disruption of the basic ties natural cohesion steadily
diminished, so that the attempt to whip up an artificial unity
had to be executed with ever more frenetic energy. Actually,

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this process had not proceeded far: the consequences of the
disruption of family ties had hardly come home to roost by
the time fascism was dethroned. In the short run, it could claim
an undeniable success. Only a fool would call the Germany of
1935 less integrated than that of 1925.

vi Why Fascism Fails

So far, then, we have seen that fascism provides a plausible
answer to the demands for mastery, security, integration,
purpose, consistency and functional status. In regard to the two
other primary needs it is less successful. It does not, in essence,
do anything to improve variety; on the contrary, the high
degree of centralisation involved and the emphasis on consis-
tency, must inevitably reduce variety. As against this, some minor
gains may be recorded. For instance, the obligation to do mili-
tary training took many people out of a humdrum middle-class
groove and introduced to them new friends, new surroundings
and new tasks. But chiefly fascism relied, as does democracy,
on distraction. The constant political manoeuvres of the state
(and, in the event of war, its military fortunes) provide a
spectacle in which the onlooker can find vicarious excitement
on an unparalleled scale.

Fascism's most manifest failure, however, is in regard to love.
Fascism is obliged to try and induce people to direct all their
affection towards the state. Affection between individuals is
only permissible if it does not interfere with the purpose of
the state. It was in accordance with this need that the Nazis
were obliged to teach children to spy on their parents; the
normal emotions of family solidarity could not be allowed to
stand in the way of the state's needs. Since they conceived the
purposes of the state in terms of military aggression, the Nazis
were obliged to go further and frown on all exhibitions of the
tender emotions as 'unmanly.' And not merely on exhibiting it
but on feeling it.

They sought to divert the emotion thus dammed up on to
Hitler, as leader of the state. Hitler always addressed his vast

203

Conditions of Happiness

audiences with the intimate *Ihr' and sought to assume the
position of a father surrogate. But as we know, frustrated
affection turns to hate, and so the Nazis had to deal with
abnormal quantities of aggression. This was not altogether
inconvenient, for in so far as they could turn it against other
nations they created the requisite attitude to approve war, while
in turning the overplus against the Jews in the domestic sphere
they were able to provide an alibi for all their failures.

These are the immediate failures of fascism. The ultimate
weakness is, however, its orientation towards war. The con-
ception of the paramountcy of national interests is almost
certain to be interpreted in territorial or economic terms and
must finally lead to a clash. Only if a fascist state were to inter-
pret national pre-eminence in terms of emotional, intellectual
and artistic achievement could war be avoided and then we
should have the chance to see whether the immediate disad-
vantages would finally undermine its position.

vn Fascism's Values

It was, I think, Peter Drucker who first pointed out that
fascism represents an abandonment of the materialist (or
economic) code of value, and stressed the great significance of
this fact. 1 Practically all political and economic thinking during
the last hundred years has been based on the assumption of
classical economics that man is a creature who rationally
pursues enlightened self-interest and interprets his interests
solely in terms of goods and services. It is, for instance, always
pointed out in defence of industrialism that it has raised the
"standard of living* and no compunction is felt in defining the
standard of living wholly in terms of goods and services. The
disastrous reduction effected by industrialism in the standard
of living, measured in real terms, was never assessed, or even
recognised. Now suddenly comes a reaction from this benighted
doctrine. Progress is no longer seen as economic progress. Status
is no longer defined in terms of economic success. Rewards are

1 See The End of Economic Man for a most suggestive discussion.

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Fascist Solution

no longer distributed in simple economic form. In short, econ-
omic considerations cease to be the constitutive motive. In
the perspective of history the change can hardly fail to stand
out as a turning point in the human story.

It was, of course, not the first time that anyone has proposed
non-economic standards of values. Christianity made just such
a proposition offering salvation as a motive, and measuring
success in terms of asceticism and humility. But the fascist
proposal was no mere reaction, it offered a new code of values.
Progress was to be defined in terms of national progress. Status
was to depend on service to the state. In accordance with this
conception, German newspapers ceased, after 1933, to describe
millionaires as men who were 'successful.' Advertisements and
films did not hold out a goal of material wealth. On the con-
trary, as far as material goods went, the approved ideal was
self-denial so as to spare more for the ends of the state : guns
not butter. And along with the ideal of self-denial went the
ideal of service. No kind of personal eminence, physical,
intellectual, economic, military, social, mattered a jot unless it
redounded to the power and glory of the state.

By the same token, the central tenet of fascism led to a
reaction from individualism. This we have already discussed
under the heading of integration. Popular journalism has
concentrated on German worship of force and ruthlessness, and
has said little about their fostering self-denial and service, since
these are in themselves rather admirable characteristics. But
it is stupidity to suppose that any fascist regime, German or
otherwise, in actual fact cultivates admiration for force as an
end in itself y whatever it may say on the subject: it is force in
the service of the state which it approves. The private
individual who appropriates goods by force for his own ends
is as severely treated as in a democracy. Some misuse of force
is tolerated as an inevitable product of training in the use of
force as in the case of the inevitable looting by soldiery in
war-time. Now force turned to right uses is admirable no one
has ever suggested one should admire weakness. Hence the
worship of force is not, in itself, a crime. The evil aspect is

205

Conditions of Happiness

solely in the way force is used, and here we again come up
against the central doctrine of fascism. If you believe that the
state matters and the individual does not, force which aids the
state at the cost of the individual is no crime. It is not on its
anti-democratic nature, not on its aggressiveness, not on its
foul persecutions that we must arraign fascism: these are
secondary and derivative. It is on the central doctrine that
conviction must be obtained.

vin The German Mind

So far we have considered reasons why the fascist system
might appeal to anyone. Over and above all this, however, it
offered a special appeal to persons at one end of the psychological
scale, those who had established father-identifications. This,
as we have seen, is the type which welcomes authority and
which often gravitates towards the army or the church. Then
again the readiness of fascism to use force against individuals
offers an appeal to the sadistic type of individual, while its
demand for self-sacrifice appeals to the obverse type, the
masochist. Both patterns seem to result from the frustration
of normal mastery drives. Thirdly, fascism can use fanatics,
especially those who are trying to compensate for an over-
whelming sense of inferiority by exerting power over others
and by tearing down and humiliating those who have shown
their superiority.

Consequently^ fascism tends to gather round itself a praetorian
guard of abnormal, even pathological, types. It is not difficult
to see why fascism developed in its extremest in Germany. Over
and above all the evils common to industrial states, Germany
was split into scores of warring factions. People felt acutely
the humiliation of the first World War. Unemployment and
civil violence left everyone with a sense of insecurity. Fascism
united the factions, restored security and charmed away the
humiliation.

As Drucker has argued, the functioning society must provide
the individual with function and status, its purposes must make

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Fascist Solution

sense in terms of individual purpose, and its power must be
legitimate. Thanks to the German sense of humiliation, fascist
purposes did for a long time make sense in terms of individual
purpose. Function and status it provided in abundant measure.
Power was legitimate, as long as the Nazi leaders and the party
were felt to be the most efficient people to perform the task of
running the country. In the early days as Germany regained
unity and prestige, and as unemployment diminished, the
Nazis undoubtedly had widespread support. The existence of
corruption, the rumours of barbaric cruelties, could not, of
themselves, undermine this position. For the Nazis, even if
imperfect, still seemed to the German the best available choice.
To return to the weakness and shuffling of the Weimar days
was unthinkable. A little corruption and cruelty was infinitely
preferable. It was not until they began to lose the war that
the Nazi leaders' power was seriously called in question.

ix War and Happiness

The appeal of fascism is, it will be seen, very much the appeal
of war.

War has very definite advantages to offer, and if it were not
for the overwhelming disadvantage of destruction and loss of
life, would form an almost perfect pattern of living. It is no
accident therefore, that the life of peace-time depends so largely
on small-scale wars with the risk and destruction removed, that
is, on competitive teamwork.

War gives admirable scope for mastery drives. It puts power-
ful machinery in the hands of every soldier and thus endows
him with a sense of power which contrasts sharply with his
former frustration. It provides a wide variety of active jobs
calling for skill and initiative. And while it provides numerous
constructive outlets for those with organising and inventive
ability, it provides a wealth of outlets for that cruder and more
infantile form of mastery, destruction. For a civilisation in which
the mastery drives of so many individuals has been arrested at a
pre-adult level, this is almost too good to be hoped for. Bruno

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Conditions of Happiness

Mussolini's celebrated remark about the joy of bomb-dropping
was as revealing as it was indiscreet.

Above all, the mastery outlets which war provides are
subordinated to a purpose and no trumped-up little goal like
winning the stewardship of a silver cup for twelve months, but
one vitally important to the future of every individual concerned.

In the emotional sphere war is less satisfactory, but even here
it has certain solid assets. To begin with it provides a clearly-
defined status system predominantly functional in type. The
constant elimination of men as battle casualties ensures periodic
promotion for all but the most unfortunate, and it must be
remembered that whenever an officer is killed, this involves a
promotion for someone in every one of the subordinate ranks :
the death of a major makes possible the promotion of seven men.
At the same time the men in each unit derive pleasure from the
unit's prestige. This pleasure is with few exceptions much
acuter than any corresponding satisfaction in the prestige of
the firm in civilian life.

The comradeship of the barrack-room, which is no figment
of a sentimental imagination, offers a substitute for the com-
radeship of the club and of marriage, and it is regrettably the
case that it is sometimes found superior to the potentially
closer ties of matrimony. The hierarchical arrangement of the
services enables the individual to sink his identity in larger and
larger units and brings home to him the relationship to the major
unit of the nation. In support of this, war provides unlimited
opportunities for service, as well as for egotism.

Nor must it be overlooked that war provides unparalleled
opportunities for sexual achievement.

It is, perhaps, paradoxical that war provides a marked
increase in security. In place of the responsibilities and risks of
civilian life is substituted an existence in which every material
need is provided for and all risk of this care ceasing vanishes.
Status, too, is more secure, for downward promotion is almost
inconceivable.

It is in variety that war is perhaps weakest, but even here
there are short-run gains. The mere fact of joining the army

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at first provides a change from civilian routine. Overseas service
promises a wide range of novel experiences. With every pro-
motion and every new course, new fields of interest are opened

up '

Last, but not least, war provides the most effective possible

outlets for aggression. 1

The foregoing remarks are made with the fighting man
chiefly in mind. The civilian also finds new outlets for mastery
and status, though admittedly on a milder scale. The unem-
ployed man, if not called up, gets a job and an income. The
labour shortage lends security to employment. The nation is
integrated and a common purpose lends new meaning even to
the habitual routine of production. Opportunities for service
abound. It is only in the matter of variety that the civilian is
wholly worse off than in peace.

Small wonder then that many of those who escape personal
loss or injury have a sneaking approval of war; and when time
has obscured its drearier features look back with almost un-
mixed pleasure to their days in blue or khaki. This is a dangerous
factor. Until peace can offer a life at least as satisfying as war
it will never mobilise unqualified support.

x Danger of a Fascist Revival

In thus interpreting fascism as a bid for happiness we endow
it with a much broader base than is conceived by the stock
communist and democratic evaluations of it. To the communist
it is the last stage of feudal capitalism. This interpretation
betrays a complete failure to understand the difference between
fascism and common or garden dictatorship. It is true that a
ruling class, faced with popular unrest, might resort to dictator-
ship. It is true that in such an event they might use a programme
of militaristic imperialism to justify their imposition of control.
It is, in fact, true that German capitalists supported the Nazis
in the belief that they could control their authoritarian machine,

1 For a fuller account of the attractions of war, see, e.g. D. Harding,
The Impulse to Dominate, 1941.

2og

Conditions of Happiness

and because they concurred in their programme of strengthening
Germany, and because they regarded Nazism as an insurance
against communism. But this is not enough to justify the
communist thesis. Its basic assumption is that Nazism is a
dictatorship imposed by force on an unwilling proletariat: only
thus can the picture be brought into line with marxist theories
of history. But this assumption is demonstrably untrue.

Of democratic interpretations there are broadly two. The
first is that the Nazis were a group of 'gangsters' who seized
power, thanks to the witlessness of the German people in
general, and the Reichstag members in particular. The second
is usually expressed in the form that 'there is little to choose
between fascism and communism. 1 This I take to mean that
both are attempts to achieve Utopia by crude and violent
methods which defeat their own ends. This overlooks the very
important fact that the fascist Utopia is wholly different from
the communist Utopia so much so that democracy and com-
munism are nearer to each other than they are to fascism. That
is why each could fight fascism and find adequate ideological
justification for so doing.

Now if this view is correct, that fascism owes its power to the
fact that it appears to offer a profounder satisfaction of psycho-
logical needs than does democracy then it becomes clear that
the defeat of the German has done nothing to 'put an end to
fascism.' Fascism is not dead, but sleepeth. As long as democ-
racy thwarts people and breeds unhappiness, so long will
people turn to a system which appears to offer a way out. The
ultimate blame for fascism rests on the democracies and in
particular on the political and economic agreements after the
first World War which made German democracy so abnormally
frustrating and hopeless. Perhaps it is because they realise that
it is they themselves who are ultimately guilty that some of our
diplomats (and others) make such frenzied attempts to pin the
whole blame on the Germans as if no other country but
Germany were fascist ! Without question, the Germans made of
fascism a filthier thing than any other country : nothing justifies
their phenomenal cruelties and betrayals; a heavy load of guilt

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Fascist Solution

and blame lies on them. But fascism and cruelty are not iden-
tical. There have been other regimes in history as cruel but
they were not fascist. And fascism would be a disaster, even if
purged of cruelty.

Yes, fascism is still an omnipresent danger. So far from
putting an end to fascism, the military defeat of the Germans
has probably given fascism a new lease of life. For defeat makes
it possible for the short-sighted to argue that if only fascism
had won, all would have been well. The miseries now being
suffered are the result, not of fascism, but of failure to be fascist
enough. Whereas if fascism had avoided war it would neces-
sarily have perished from internal stresses, as its failure to
provide a truly satisfying purpose became clear.

How, then, can we prevent a re-emergence of fascism? It is
not enough to remind people that the benefits of fascism are
largely illusory, that in the end it leads to frustrations so serious
as to negative its advantages; it is not enough to remind them
that it is likely to lead to the final disaster of war. We must do
something positive and constructive: we must show that
democracy can achieve permanently what fascism achieves
temporarily. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to teach
such doctrine to others until we have proved it in our own case. 1
As long as democracy fails to meet fundamental needs, fascism
will remain an ever-present danger.

The paradox on which fascism is founded is that people can
find greater happiness in serving a cause, even if this ends in

1 Herein was the weakness of our propaganda position during the
war. We could slang the Nazi system as much as we liked, but this was
of no effect unless we could show that our system was better at those
very things which fascism excelled in : the creation of unity, purpose
and status. Through failing to grasp the realities of the situation, our
broadcast propaganda endlessly played into German hands. For
instance, it made a point of reporting strikes, on the theory that this
showed the German worker how free the British worker was. All it
did was to fill him with contempt and determination that such a state
of affairs, in which a minority could, for selfish reasons, endanger the
state, should never recur in Germany. The B.B.C. even made the
incredible error of broadcasting in German talks about the 'chaos of
the post-war years*.

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Conditions of Happiness

mutilitation or death, than in working for their selfish satis-
factions. Now this is perfectly true. The real weakness of
fascism is not that it makes great demands on the individual
and propaganda which points to the greater comforts enjoyed
by citizens of democratic countries merely reveals the petty,
self-indulgent and materialistic nature of the ideals thus attri-
buted, by implication, to democracy the real error of fascism
is this : that it believes that to serve a cause is enough
in itself. It fails to appreciate that this service must be con-
sonant with and based on justice, liberty, variety, individuality,
beauty and love.

212

XII
COMMUNIST SOLUTION

I Contradictory Pattern of Communism n Appeal of Communism
in Status Under Communism iv Integration v Future of Commun-
ism vi Communist Values vn The Real Danger vm Conclusion

I Contradictory Pattern of Communism

WHEN we say communism we inevitably think of Russia, and
it is with Russian communism, as it exists in practice, not with
some hypothetical method of organisation that I intend to deal
in this chapter.

As in the case of fascism, the significant thing about com-
munism is not what is bad about it but what is good. So strong
is opposition to communism today, at least in the United States,
that many Americans would not hesitate to tell you that there
is nothing good about it. This is an extremely foolish and naive
attitude. If there were nothing apparently good about commun-
ism, there would be nothing dangerous about it. The Russian
people would not tolerate it, and even support it as they do,
and the peoples of many other countries would not flirt with it.
It is precisely its superficial good points which make it dangerous
and until we understand what those points are, and why they
are not really satisfactory answers to our present problems,
we cannot hope to resist its advance effectively on the world scale.

Perhaps I should apologise for undertaking to analyse a
society which I have never visited. But Russia is so vast and
various that a short acquaintance is worse than none at all or
so we are assured; and this book would be seriously incomplete
if we made no attempt to apply the technique here developed
to a country which occupies such a crucial position in the con-
temporary world picture. And in the event I believe it illumin-
ates much that appears obscure about Russia today.

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Conditions of Happiness

Every student of Russia is warned against the danger of
making generalisations about this vast and puzzling country.
Nevertheless, certain generalisations can be made provided we
approach the subject the right way. First, we must relate our
generalisations to the fact that Russia is in a state of rapid
change, from primitive agriculture to advanced industrialism.
Now, while the many primitive communities within the
U.S.S.R. differ widely both psychologically and sociologically,
the end-point to which they are all converging is the same:
the typical pattern of western industrialism which we have
already examined. Even though the economic organisation is
different, the 'way of life* towards which Russia is tending is
indistinguishable from that of the west. It is a pattern which
. gives absolute priority to material satisfactions and makes man
subservient to the process of production.

Communism is often thoughtlessly presented as the opposite
pole from capitalism, but the truth is that, in every respect
except that of economic method, communism is based on the
same premises as capitalism. And, from the point of view of
happiness, the economic aspect is of minor importance.

Once we recognise this converging tendency, this uniformity
of trend in Russian development, we can make generalisations
about Russia which will not be invalidated by the fact that
various parts of the system are more or less distantly removed
from the end-point and have sprung from differing origins.

The second polarising force in the Russian continuum is less
obvious; it has to do with the tendency, which we discussed
earlier, of societies to fall into patriform or matriform patterns.
Now communism as a theory is essentially the product of the
matriform mind the benevolent, co-operative, progressive
mind. It is conceived as a system which will make people happier
which will like a mother supply them with the means of life,
and in which all will co-operate gladly for the common good.
We can also trace the matriform origins of communism in its
rejection of the guilt-loaded sky-father religion and its prefer-
ence for a belief in a happy and spontaneous naturalism; or in
its desire to take the woman from her lowly position by

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Communist Solution

the hearth and make her the equal, if not the superior, of
man.

But the predominant attitude in Russia in urbanised cis-
Ural Russia at all events is patriform. We can detect this in
the prevalence of a deeply orthodox religious feeling of the
usual sky-father type; or in the conception of the Czar, and
later Stalin, as 'the Little Father.' The stubborn opposition of
the agricultural population to collectivism was also typical of
the patriform attitude although this is not to say that some of
the obscurer provinces are not matriform. Even if the popula-
tion is not uniformly patriform, there can be little doubt that
the Russian leaders are patriform and authoritarian to the last
extreme. From the fall of the Kerensky government onward,
the movement got wholly into the hands of the aggressive,
authoritarian type. As usual, matrists made the revolution, but
patrists wound up on top.

This explains why the Russian system has undergone a steady
conversion from its original equalitarian, libertarian, progres-
sive ideals to an authoritarian, disciplinarian, conservative
pattern. But the authoritarians, having only a muddled and
degraded conception of the original objective, still carefully
preserve the institutions they have been taught to regard as
constitutive that is, the economic institutions while blithely
changing everything else. It is this that constitutes the funda-
mental contradiction which makes nonsense of so many
generalisations about Russia.

It is this fact, too, which accounts for the difficulty of defining
communism. For, whereas fascism embodies a coherent
philosophy, communism (Russian communism) is little but a
dogma about a means. The declared objective of communism
is social justice but then that is the declared objective of many
systems. The distinctive feature of communism is that it main-
tains that social justice can only be achieved by public ownership
of the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Finally, this enables us to assess the oft-repeated charge that
the Russians are abandoning communism. In the sense in which
it is ordinarily meant, this is sheer nonsense. The Russians

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Conditions of Happiness

are not abandoning public ownership of the means of produc-
tion and are not likely to. In the remoter sense of a system of
freedom and equality, the Russians are not abandoning com-
munism because they never had it.

ii Appeal of Communism

The circumstances in which communism made its appeal are
of course historically different from those in which fascism
operated; psychologically, however, they are much the same.
Where fascism presented an alternative to the frustrations of
modern industrialism, communism appeared as an alternative
to a corrupt feudalism. Under the Czar the average Russian
or rather, the type of Russian who played an active part in the
establishment of communism, which is to say the serfs and
industrial workers west of the Urals was acutely frustrated
in respect of purpose, mastery, security, variety and status.
Physically he was at the mercy of his feudal lord and agricul-
turally he was at the mercy of drought and famine. The rigid
status system deprived him of any hope of improving his
position, the obsolete system of land tenure not only depressed
his standard of living, but limited him to the most arduous and
brutish kind of physical labour. Life offered no inspiring
purpose : often it was all he could do to keep alive.

Accordingly, in considering the appeal of communism, we
must judge it by two standards how it compared with life
under the Czar and how it compares with life in an industrial
democracy. The first will tell us why the communists came to
power, the second whether communism offers any solution for
our own contemporary problems.

There can be no doubt that by the first of these standards
communism offered overwhelming advantages. It presented the
majority of Russians with enormously enhanced security, an
absorbing purpose, a predominantly functional status system,
and far greater consistency and variety than they had previously
enjoyed to say nothing of a higher standard of living. It also
offered unique opportunities for service. It is absurd to contrast

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Communist Solution

the Russian way of life with that of England or America, and
pity the Russian because he is less free, and less wealthy, or
because great differences of rank exist. All this is true, but what
matters to the Russian is that he is much more secure, much
freer, much wealthier than fifty years ago. The present differ-
ences of rank, great as they are, are trifling compared with the
difference between the overlord and serf; moreover, the pros-
pect of attaining high rank is now open to all. Just like the rich
man in America, the privileged man in Russia is an object of
envy and admiration rather than of resentment. And in addition
to all this, the Russian has something he never had under the
Czars, a purpose.

At the same time he suffers, as yet, from few of the disad-
vantages of industrialism. Overcrowding, noise, misfeeding,
strain, have not yet had time to undermine his physique; the
obligations of civilised life have not yet corrupted his basic
personality structure ; no detritus of obsolete mores and taboos
exists to clog the social system. All in all, is it probably true to
say that up to 1939 the Russians were the happiest people west
of the Urals.

Nevertheless, their happiness was not unalloyed. In the
excitement of the great improvement in their affairs they were
in no mind to quibble over minor imperfections, but these
minor imperfections may prove all-important in the long run.
Let us therefore examine some of the factors in communist
happiness a little more closely, in order that we can subse-
quently assess its potential appeal to the industrial west. I shall
start with the particularly significant matter of status.

in Status under Communism

The interesting thing about the Soviet status system is that
it corresponds much more closely to the theoretical ideal, as
we have argued it, than it does to the ideal embodied in com-
munist doctrine. We asserted that status must grow naturally
out of function: everyone must have a function and their
status must depend on a free public evaluation of the way in
C.H. 15 217

Conditions of Happiness

which they fulfil that function. Now communism has unques-
tionably succeeded in giving everyone a function. No one
remains idle (not even the criminal) and no one wastes time
in fatuous trivialities. Every citizen is made aware of the part
he is asked to play in the purposes of the group. And status
is certainly based on that function. It is the stakhanovite worker,
the fanatical party member and the ballerina who delights tens
of thousands who enjoy the highest status in Russia, with the
supreme position going naturally enough to those who direct
the purposes of the group.

Such status is mobile, but at present enjoys the great advan-
tage that it is chiefly mobile in an upward direction even more
so than in America. All over Russia untrained manual labourers
are becoming technicians and adding to their self-respect and
to their public status as they do so. Any worker, if he has what
it takes, can become a stakhanovite ; he can even aspire to be a
party member. It is true that there are certain alarming snakes
among the ladders. The party has its purges, the factory manager
who fails may be liquidated/ those who arouse the suspicions
of the NKVD are transported in a flash to Square One, Siberia.
But these measures, though brutal, effectively preserve the
functional nature of status. They ensure that no one retains the
appurtenances of status after he has ceased to deserve them.

The Russian status system can only be criticised at a very
subtle level of discrimination. Though it is essentially func-
tional, the concept of functionalism (we might object) is con-
ceived too mych in economic and materialistic terms. The
Russian system is functional as long as we accept the purpose
of the state as a satisfying purpose. But if we choose to challenge
the purpose of the state we raise very broad issues and lift the
whole argument on to the plane of sociology. Provided the
purpose of the state effectively embodies the purpose of its
constituent citizens, it will appear to them as functional and
status derived from it will be functional status. On this basis
we cannot even object if the state seeks to make the citizen
concur in the purpose of the state, for this will add to his
happiness. We can only challenge this conception if we feel

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Communist Solution

able to adduce absolute standards by which purpose can be
assessed, so that even a generally accepted purpose can never-
theless be shown to be wrong. This general issue cannot be
discussed as a pendent to the subject of status but requires a
section to itself. Provisionally, therefore, we must think of the
Soviet status system as functional.

How does orthodox marxist teaching compare with all this ?
Marx notes the injustices of a rigid, non-mobile system of
hereditary classes and proceeds to the conclusion that Utopia
will be a 'classless society.' His followers speedily read into this
phrase the meaning that 'everyone will be equal/ and started
an argument which continues to this day. But what is a class ?
Marx's basic objection to the so-called class system is, that
members of the class acquire the privileges of the class wholly
or partly by virtue of birth and not wholly by merit. That is,
he objects to the status conferred being non-functional. His
second objection, more dimly perceived, is that the status of
classes is arranged in the form of an economic ladder. Those at
the top receive not only more respect but more goods than those
below them. In fact, so important have goods become that' they
have ceased to become a mere privilege of high status but have
come to be the hallmark of it. So much so that goods actually
confer status on persons who would otherwise have little claim
to public respect.

The logical conclusion should therefore be that in Utopia
status must not be, directly or indirectly, hereditary and that
it must not depend on the endowment of goods. In Russia this
is actually the case. A person of high status may be given a
high salary or privileges as a mark of respect but never
acquires status by the simple virtue of having managed to
acquire goods. Goods are quite incidental; respect is all. But to
the short-sighted and materialistic person goods are paramount.
Hence the popular view that in Utopia incomes must be equal,
and the popular error of believing that because Russian
incomes are not equal the classless society has not been realised.

The trouble is the phrase 'classless society* is too ambiguous.
It suggests a society in which there will be no division of people

Conditions of Happiness

into groups by any standards. This is a human impossibility.
There will always be the strong and the weak, the stupid and
the intelligent, the kind and the cruel, and many more cate-
gories. The only sense in which we have any say about class-
lessness, is in the distribution of privileges, The object of the
reformer is to distribute them according to some logical principle
(according to merit or according to needs) and not haphazardly.
An equal distribution would be almost as unjust as a haphazard
one.

iv Integration

Communism's other great achievement is the creation and
maintenance of a functioning society. What enables it to achieve
this is ready availability of a purpose which was generally
acceptable rapid industrialisation. Thanks to this the purposes
of the state make sense in terms of individual purpose and the
power of the leaders is legitimised. Cohesion is thereby ensured
and the individual provided with the purpose I almost wrote
religion which sustains and vitalises his life.

But it will be appreciated that industrialisation offers no final
solution of the problem. Before long it will have been so far
achieved that the Russians must look for some higher purpose,
precisely as are the democracies at the moment. Moreover, the
Russians have little understanding of the real nature of social
cohesion, and here as elsewhere are banking on the accumulated
credit of a long history of primitive, unindustrialised social
organisation. Their strength is that, unlike industrial capitalism,
they emphasise the social weal rather than individual goals and
thus avoid the error of fostering the egotism which is at the root
of social disintegration.

v Future of Communism

When, furthermore, we look more closely at the advantages
brought by communism we begin to notice that many of them
are not inherent in communism as such but are rather products

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Communist Solution

of the process of industrialisation. When the peasant gains in
mastery by abandoning the hand-plough and driving a tractor,
that is a simple consequence of industrialisation : he would gain
in just the same way under a capitalist administration. When a
higher national income gives him facilities to travel, or brings
him the cinema and the radio, that is also primarily due to
industrialism.

Communism can claim some credit in the matter on two
scores: first because it undoubtedly brought industrialisation to
Russia much more rapidly than would have occurred under the
Czar, and perhaps more rapidly than under any other alternative
regime which might have replaced him; and second, because
it affected a redistribution of income and a breaking of feudal
bonds which enabled the peasant to take the maximum advan-
tage of the rise in the national income. A communist economy
is not under the paradoxical need to export which I analysed
in an earlier book. 1 But though it is true that communism
effected in five years a social transformation that took a century
or more in Britain, that does not give it exclusive rights in the
benefits of industrialisation. Having achieved the transforma-
tion, why should communism not step down, its work done?
that is the rhetorical question we may ask to induce it to
justify its existence.

The fact is, communism provides no true solution to the
characteristic problems of an industrial civilisation. It cannot
re-educate our emotions. It cannot provide mastery, variety,
or purpose; it cannot restore cohesion. On the contrary, it is,
if anything, slightly worse off in these respects. It has put all
its eggs in the one basket of material production and has left
even fewer backwaters for the exercise of mastery, even fewer
alternatives for the manufacture of variety, even fewer beliefs
or illusions from which a purpose might be derived. And it
restricts personal freedom besides.

In a formal sense, perhaps, communism can do all these things.
Because it is not tied down by considerations of profit it is free
to modify the industrial system as it will, even to deindustrialise
1 Economics for the Exasperated, 1947.
221

Conditions of Happiness

again. In theory it provides the pre-conditions for such a
renaissance. What it lacks is the philosophy which would
enable it to tackle such a problem, the insight which would
enable it to detect its existence and the appropriate basic
personality to execute the solution.

Summing up, then, we see that the communists are tempor-
arily in an abnormally fortunate position.

The course of industrialism follows a curve which rises at
first and then falls back. In its early stages it enjoys a great
legacy of cohesion, of effective institutions and well-integrated
basic personalities. On this legacy it lives while it adds goods
and services to life and for a while only benefits seem to result.
But as time passes the goods it supplies suffer from the law of
diminishing satisfactions and meanwhile the social legacy is
running out, so that suddenly numerous disadvantages develop
while its advantages vanish into thin air.

Russia is still living on the rising part of the curve. For the
moment it is enjoying all the benefits of industrialisation and
none of the costs. The essential question is, has communism
developed institutions and values which will prevent the
ultimate debacle ? There is not the slightest reason for believing
that it has. On the contrary, the later stages of industrialisation
under communism may be slightly drearier than in the democ-
racies. In a highly industrialised country the Russian will suffer
as much from lack of variety and mastery. The customs
governing the basic personality are just as likely to be evilly
affected. The web of customs and taboos which hold society
together will have been torn down even more drastically than
with us. Status might, indeed, remain functional 1 though
reports from Russia suggest that is, in point of fact, becoming
less so. Most serious of all, there will be a serious decay of
purpose. When industrialisation has been achieved it will no

1 Indeed, it might even become free of the popular objection that
goods are unequally distributed, for as the national income rises there
will be decreasing need to bestow special privileges on the most
important public benefactors and such privileges will differ by an ever
smaller margin from the normal standard of living.

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Communist Solution

longer serve to inspire loyalty and unity, so that with the decay
of purpose will go a decay of cohesion. At the same time power
will cease to be legitimate, for the purpose of the group will
cease to make sense in terms of individual purposes.

If the Russian leaders are people of exceptional elasticity
of mind they may be able to change over to the pursuit of
happiness but this implies abandoning all the techniques of
mass leadership and all the ideological background which they
have so long proclaimed and which will by this time have
attained the force of a sacred tradition. In fact, the system will
cease to be communism, as we at present use the word. Such a
change is so unlikely of achievement that they are almost
certain to do one of three things: revert to dictatorship, turn
to fascism, or fall back on the old favourite, war.

It has often been said that no more difficult scene for the
communist experiment could have been found than Russia
on the grounds that the backward nature of the population
put great difficulties in the way of industrialisation. In truth,
however, Russia was in an exceptionally favourable position
for such an experiment.

To begin with, as we have said, Russians were so phenomen-
ally badly off under the Czar that almost any change was bound
to be a change for the better.

Secondly, because Russia is so largely unindustrialised the
disadvantages of industrialism have scarce begun to appear,
while the advantages of a larger supply of material goods are
overwhelming. Industrialisation therefore provided the Russian
leaders with a widely acceptable purpose which could be
represented, and truthfully represented, as a road to greater
happiness. 1

Thirdly, the Russian basic personality is still largely

1 It is an ironical reflection that the war, which so many opponents
of Russia wanted to see prolonged until she was irretrievably weakened,
has actually provided communism with a longer lease of life, by post-
poning the day when a new purpose must be found. And it is equally
ironical that the Communist leaders are desperately trying to undo the
effects of this stroke of good fortune.

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Conditions of Happiness

unwarped by industrialism. The middle-class characters, guilty
and frustrated, portrayed by Dostoievski and others, are not
typical of the mass of the Russians. The Russian personality is
generally cheerful, guiltless and unaggressive. 1 Such people are
easily led, and having firmly-integrated personalities free from
the spiritual sources of unhappiness anxiety, guilt and frus-
tration are more easily able to endure primitive physical
hardships and the absence of the more elaborate forms of self-
expression.

Finally, the Russian leaders had the benefit of working with
a society which enjoyed immense reserves of social cohesion.
The age-old systems of institutions and taboos still ensured the
survival of society as a functioning organism through all the
vicissitudes of the revolution and the clumsy surgery of the
period of reconstruction.

Lenin believed that communism was dependent upon indus-
trialisation. He could not have been more mistaken. The truth
is, communism can be made to work in Russia only because it
is not industrialised.

vi Communist Values

The faults of communism can be traced to its system of
values and it is probably best to approach the subject from this
angle.

The outstanding mistake of communism is to overvalue
material thipgs and undervalue psychological needs. People are
apt to forget that the one implies the other; they criticise
communism for its preoccupation with materialism but attach
no importance to its deliberate neglect of emotional factors.
It was typical of the communist approach that they should
have planned to take children away from the degrading
influence* of their parents and bring them up in institutions.
Indeed, they not only planned this but tried it, and needless to
say it was a resounding failure. What pathetic ignorance ! This
tendency to treat man as a machine is as evident in the work
1 See, for instance, E. Bigland, Laughing Odyssey, 1939.
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Communist Solution

of Pavlov as in the stories of Gogol and forms the basis of the
materialist conception of history.

Accordingly, communist teaching does not stress the impor-
tance of the love relationship and attempts to treat marriage and
parenthood as purely economic associations. Thus, so far from
providing new institutions in which emotional relationships
may be advanced, it works to undermine existing ones. It is
true that, in the light of sad experience, it has been forced to
retreat somewhat from its theoretical ideals but it has not
shifted its ground of principle.

What is so odd is that communists fail to appreciate the
fundamental contradiction in their attitude. They believe they
are trying to operate a system which will bring good to all men :
thus their own attitude to other people is a non-economic one.
It is motivated by universal goodwill. And yet they deny for
others the reality of such emotional motives and would have
it that they are economic integers.

This contradiction runs through the communist value
system. Communism sets out with immense determination to
raise the level of education and then finds it has to restrict
freedom of thought. It would deeply like to have a rich and
flourishing art but it has to bring pressure to bear on its
artists that restricts their achievements to the level of talented
mediocrity.

Now, as we have already seen, a contradictory value system
is an unfailing source of neurosis. No artist can survive in a
regime which limits his freedom to work as he feels. No scientist
can endure a dogma which tells him, on a priori grounds, that
what he has discovered must be wrong when he knows it to be
true. Truth remains truth, however it be denied. Only fanatics
that is, neurotics can convince themselves that black is
white.

vii The Real Danger

The relationship of communism to happiness is complicated
in practice by a further novel factor. The Russian policy of

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Conditions of Happiness

educating people to approve of communism while eliminating
all who prove recalcitrant amounts to an attempt to fit the
people to the system rather than the system to the people. The
policy was started, no doubt, in the genuine belief that only
those with a vested interest in the old regime would have to be
eliminated, but as it continues it is bound to result in eliminating
not merely those who from traditionalism or base self-interest
oppose communism but equally those who, having sincerely
tried it, find it does not suit them. The authorities have
committed themselves irretrievably to the attempt to attain
happiness by the device of public ownership ; what is more, they
have come to have a vested interest in the attempt. No longer
revolutionaries, they are conservatives. If they find their regime
unpopular they will be irresistibly tempted to try and make
the people like what they have got.

For the purposes of this book it is not necessary to discuss
the ethics of such an attempt, which are less straightforward
than they look, since even the most democratic regimes indulge
in the same practice to a certain degree. All that matters is
whether such an attempt would, if successful, be conducive to
happiness. If it is truly possible to make people unreservedly
like what they have got, this may be a much simpler course
than changing the system. As long as people are happy in the
end, what matters the means ?

The answer is that determined attempts to secure acquies-
cence in a regime are always likely to prove successful. As
anthropology ^shows, people who know no other way of life,
acquiesce without hesitation or questioning in regimes which
are far from perfect. And not only acquiescence may be obtained
but even fanatical support, if the individual can be made to
identify the success of the regime with his personal drives. Thus,
the real danger is not that people may be unhappy under
communism but that they may be too nearly happy.

Popular support is never a proof that a regime is satisfac-
torily designed. This is just as true of democracy, where
popular support is given to a programme of industrialism
which, in reality, is undermining happiness all the time. Only

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Communist Solution

those who understand the nature of happiness are in a position
to appraise the success of a society or the desirability of a regime.
However, in a society which places no barriers on free thought
there is some likelihood that the underlying failure of an
unhappy society will be pointed out, whereas any society which
seeks to regiment thought will tend to continue in its error.
And freedom of thought is in any case a condition of happiness.
Hence, regulation of opinion is incompatible with the purposes
of a society seeking happiness.

As long as it eliminates those who do not like the system it
becomes an attempt to provide not happiness for all but
happiness for those who like the particular approximation in
stock. The objective of social justice is not attained.

vin Conclusion

In conclusion let me reiterate my original point. Communism
is based on the same false premises as capitalism. Marx's Das
Kapital is limited in precisely the same sense that Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations is limited. Both deal with that fictive entity,
economic man. Both make the gross mistake of conceiving
social justice (sciL happiness) in materialist terms.

To Marx social justice was pre-eminently the fair distribu-
tion of goods and services. He could not conceive the proletariat
as revolting because industrialism had made them profoundly
unhappy but only because it had deprived them of their due
share of the goods produced. Marx can scarcely be blamed for
his limited vision. He wrote at a time when materialism was
at its zenith, and at a time when poverty was so acute that to
attack the forces producing it was a sufficient life's work. The
trouble is that his writings have been invested with such
sanctity that today, eighty years later, when the perspective
has changed, they are still treated as gospel.

Because the communist analysis of unhappiness is hopelessly
defective, the means proposed to remedy it are laughably
insufficient. Even if public ownership could be proved to be
the most efficient means of production this would still not prove

22J

Conditions of Happiness

its desirability. All the dreary arguments about the relative
merits of private and public ownership are an abortive waste
of time. In this respect dommunism is the reverse of fascism ;
for where fascism seeks a bad end by a comparatively efficient
means, communism seeks a good end by a quite inadequate one.

The communist analysis of happiness is defective because it
has not had the elasticity or the imagination to modify its
philosophy in the light of the teachings of psychology and
sociology as they became available.

Hence all its mistakes. Its ignorance of sociology led it to
such lamentable errors as the attempt to break up the family
and the institution of marriage, its scorn for tradition and taboo,
its attempt to annihilate religion, and its pursuit of the mirage
of the classless society. Its ignorance of psychology led it to the
belief that men would become perfect if only the environment
were perfect.

Ingenious and stimulating when first formulated, it has failed
to evolve and having got into the hands of patrists it is never
likely to. It can only do one of two things : regress to simple
dictatorship or follow the kiwi and the dodo.

228

Part Three

SYNTHESIS

XIII
SOCIOLOGY OF HAPPINESS

I Reconstructing Society n Population Density m Remechanisation
iv A Paraprimitive Society v Changing Human Nature vi Econo-
mics of Decentralisation vn Consistency or Variety ? vm Nature of
Man ix Security or Self-Determination ? x The Problem of Purpose

I Reconstructing Society

1 HAVE attempted to interpret the ills of contemporary society
in terms of the frustration of human needs and have suggested
that fascism and communism have proved attractive, at least,
in the short run, because they seem to offer a greater degree of
satisfaction of these needs. The task which remains is to suggest
some constructive alternative : to draw from this analysis some
ideas about the ideal way to organise society and to deduce steps
which might carry us towards it.

And certain conclusions do seem to me to emerge very
clearly. The first is that man cannot hope to satisfy his basic
needs in the crowded environment of the modern city. For one
thing he needs space and quiet. He needs scope for physical
activity: and not merely scope which would be satisfied by
parks and sports grounds but a manner of life which makes a
good deal of physical activity purposeful and rewarding. He
needs, too, a calmer rhythm of life. But there is a second group
of objections to the city: it is a poor psychological environment.
As we have seen, it does not favour the growth of closely-knit
groups bound by emotional links derived from shared experi-
ence. It is devoid, too, of those social sanctions which do so
much to preserve cohesion and ensure co-operative behaviour.

Man seems to need membership in a fairly clearly defined
social group of such a size that he can know every member by
sight and recognise a high proportion as people. (By this phrase

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Sociology of Happiness

I am trying to refer to a nameless but essential process which
consists in forming an estimate of another person's significance
in relation to oneself, and vice versa.) So I infer that the main
structural element in an integrated society would be a social
group of a few thousand people.

Such communities would have to be interlocked, primarily
through members of one having a proportion of their friends
in others. There would also be numerous functional organisa-
tions which would cover the territory of several communities
and these would, if properly designed, serve to weld them
together. While the proper design of such groupings is a matter
for study (and has recently come to receive a certain amount of
attention in the industrial field) it can be said that they should
certainly not be pyramided in a hierarchical manner culminating
in a central executive. A few threads may lead to the centre, but
the weight of authority must be local and co-operation with
other groups must be carried out on a person-to-person basis. 1
Equally, the ambit of such groups must not be sharply limited
by national boundaries.

I stress this decentralisation of control because man needs
the power of self-determination. Aldous Huxley has well
phrased man's political needs as 'personal independence and
responsibility towards and within a self-governing group.' 2

In short, we seem to need a cohesive local group, both for
emotional and political reasons; and we need a quasi-rural
environment. All this seems to point to a dispersal of population
through the re-establishment of the village, rather than through
the provision of isolated country cottages or to skyscrapers set
among parklands on the Corbusier pattern. However, the needs
of cultural and economic life would seem to suggest that villages
should be diversified by small towns Clough Williams-Ellis
has suggested 50,000 as the most suitable size.

1 A glimpse of what can be done in this way was given by the army
during the war. Though constitutionally given to the formation of
hierarchies, it often achieved great functional co-operation between
units in the field, under the pressure of necessity.

* Science, Liberty and Peace, 1947.

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Conditions of Happiness

This seems remarkably near the pattern of pre-industrial
Britain, but we must not, of course, envisage the change simply
in terms of a return to the past. The village was, and is, often
the scene of intense jealousies, ignorance, narrow-mindedness,
sexual repression (alternating with promiscuity or perversion)
and other evils. I am speaking for the moment of the physical
rather than the emotional or cultural structure. 1

As soon as we begin to envisage a dispersal of population
on these lines, we at once have to consider the question of the
overall size of the population in relation to the available land
area. In a word, population density. If the population of
London were dispersed over England the countryside would
become one vast suburbia.

ii Population Density

It is now becoming widely accepted that, for any given piece
of land, there is a theoretically optimum population. 2 If the
population is less than the optimum, transport charges are
likely to be high, the population has to carry an unduly large
load in maintaining fixed equipment such as roads, and in
human terms it suffers from isolation. On the other hand, if the
population is too dense people begin to get in one another's
way; traffic becomes obstructed; money, time and effort has
to be spent getting people to and from work; and a considerable
apparatus of control is required to prevent neighbours infring-
ing one another's rights. 3

1 It would also be unduly optimistic, I think, to see in the present
plan to establish new towns outside the main London area, any real
progress in the direction indicated. This plan is being carried through
chiefly in an attempt to relieve the gross congestion of the capital,
rather than as part of a constructive attempt to remodel the environ-
ment. It still leaves London as one of the most densely packed assem-
blies of human beings in the world, and the new towns themselves
are too large for cohesion and will certainly undermine the rural life
of their neighbourhood.

* P. Sargant-Florence, Over-population > Theory and Statistics, 1926.

1 See Roy Glenday, The Future of Economic Society , 1944.

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Sociology of Happiness

The concept remains a theoretical one partly because we do
not know in what terms to measure it, partly because it is
affected by the way population is distributed within the area.
But that does not make it wholly useless. Even if we cannot
calculate the optimum, we can at least recognise serious under-
and over-population when we see it. In Britain, while much of
the Highlands is under-populated, there is gross over-population
in central and southern England. It has been tentatively
suggested that fifty persons per square mile (which is a little
more than the figure in the U.S.A. today) is about right. In
Elizabethan England the figure was about seventy per square
mile, and for contemporary England and Wales the figure is
727 per square mile a higher figure than for any area of
comparable size except Java. But these figures give us little
clue to the real situation since much of Wales, the Pennines
and the Lake and Border country is almost uninhabited. It is
more to the point that one-sixth of the population lives in the
four home counties at a density of almost 3,000 per square mile,
and a rough calculation shows that over half the population of
England and Wales lives in fourteen counties at an average
density of 1,700 per square mile.

This astounding change has come about not simply in conse-
quence of a drift to the capital but also because populations have
been allowed to grow to the limit set by the food which could
be grown or imported. That they have now virtually ceased to
grow is probably, as Glenday argues, a direct consequence of
the overcrowding, as happens with animal communities. In the
future, with increased powers of production and improved
techniques of transport and control, Britain still more
America could doubtless support even denser populations if
it were thought desirable. But can it be doubted that it will
limit populations to a much lower figure a figure which will
make access to country and to solitude available to everyone?
Not only this, it will hardly force people to live in the rainy and
foggy areas of its domain. It will seek to establish an optimum
ratio of population to favourable environments, rather than
to its total land area. In fact, we may imagine that people will
C.H.-I6 233

Conditions of Happiness

drift away from the colder and less hospitable areas altogether,
and confine themselves to the shores of the Mediterranean,
California and the isles of the Pacific.

in Remechanisation

The second broad principle which seems to emerge is that we
should be prepared to sacrifice a considerable part of modern
mass-production technique. If work on the production line is
frustrating, we must if happiness is our object keep it to
the minimum. And this applies to other things beside the
production line. If, for instance, work underground is judged
too dangerous or unpleasant, we should try and get our power
in other forms, even if they are technically less efficient. For
lack of a better word, let us call this kind of change demechan-
isation, though by it I do not imply that power will not be used,
so much as that work will be less repetitive and automatic.
Both demechanisation and remechanisation are needed. Nor
is it only a matter of removing the isolation and repetitiveness
from work. We must seek to make work actively interesting by
re-endowing it with creative elements.

The change implied here is basically a change of attitude. In
the past we have assumed happiness came only through con-
sumption of goods and services; hence we have felt that every
technique which increased the output of goods and services
was justified, however great the cost. In the future we must argue
as follows. Happiness is a function of living. Half our waking
adult life is spent at work. Therefore work must be made as
absorbing as possible.

These two views represent extreme positions, of course.
Just as we have always protected the worker from certain crass
forms of exploitation, no doubt we shall always be prepared to
make certain sacrifices in the interests of efficiency in the future ;
and the growth of the limitations on exploitation of the worker
in recent years indicates the steady change in our attitude. This
change will have to go much further than we imagine.

Nevertheless, the suggestion that we should demechanise

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Sociology of Happiness

industry will seem to many so radical that we must examine it
more closely. We agreed, earlier, that the main features of an
interesting job were that it should provide scope for initiative
and skill, that it should not be monotonous, and that the
individual or the work-team should carry the whole process
through from start to finish. To be exact, it is not mechanisation
but automatisation and subdivision which have made many
modern factory jobs dull. Studies made during the war in the
U.S.A. suggest that work can be so arranged that the same
individual or team works on the product right through from
raw material to the finished article. No doubt, if we seriously
turn our attention to it, we can find other ways in which interest
can be restored without any sacrifice of efficiency.

But I am suggesting something more than this. I am suggest-
ing that we must be prepared to sacrifice productive efficiency,
too. I am suggesting that a certain fall in the standard of living
as measured in goods would be more than compensated in terms
of happiness by the increased pleasure of making them. Only
if this point is quite clearly established, am I ready to go on and
say that, for several reasons the fall in the material standard of
living need only be slight. First, as discussed in our earlier
chapter, a considerable part of modern production is marginal,
in the sense that people's desire for the goods is very slight in
comparison with the effort expended in making them. Many
people buy precision cameras whose needs would be amply
served by a simple inexpensive model. This is like giving an old
lady a racing Bugatti or drawing a milk-cart w r ith an Arab mare.
The motives are, no doubt, connected with prestige and self-
flattery: and by the same token we find much conspicuously
wasteful -expenditure in many other fields. Some people have
far more clothes, larger houses and more numerous cars than
they need. And, like the millionaire's yacht, representing many
thousands of man-hours of labour, they lie unused a great part
of the time.

All these marginal goods could be dispensed with and the
labour, which at present goes to make them, devoted to more
important activities. Given this extra labour, these industries

235

Conditions of Happiness

could then decrease their degree of mechanisation while main-
taining the same total output. (Let us take the economics of
such a change for granted at the moment.)

The second reason for supposing the ultimate loss to be small
is that there are extraordinary inefficiencies in production and
distribution in modern society: the U.S. dustbowl may stand
as a symbol of them. With the reconstruction of the economic
side of society (to which I am about to refer) many of these
should disappear. Not least of them is the wastage due to war.

And should we, as suggested in a later section, succeed in
re-establishing society on a co-operative rather than a competitive
basis, it would become possible to eliminate the vast apparatus
of police, prisons, lawyers, judges and the like whom we require
at present to restrain anti-social behaviour; also many of the
bureaucrats who, not only in times of shortage, are required
to regulate the activites of our complex society. 1

As a further outgrowth of this idea of demechanisation and
remechanisation I should hope to see a change in the nature
or our concept of leisure. As noted earlier, the distinction
between work and leisure is an artificial modernism. 2

Here, too, I think we must resume the earlier pattern of life.
Work must be done in a leisurely manner. A rationally-
organised society, instead of devitalising productive activity,
and then trying to restore the balance by administering tonics
to an equally devitalised leisure, will set to work to make the
productive process vital and interesting, and the demand for
leisure will be weakened.

There is a third and still more intractable reason why we
should accept some degree of demechanisation. Men cannot
be happy while engaged in making fatuous luxuries or perform-
ing unworthy services. Man needs a worthwhile purpose. To
grow food, to make a ship or a house, to weave clothes, to

1 Viscount Samuel estimates that hours of work could be reduced
to 20 weekly at once, by such eliminations, if only the needed co-opera-
tion were forthcoming. See The Unknown Land, 1941.

1 See G. Chapman, Culture and Survival, 1940, to which I am
indebted for my appreciation of this point.

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Sociology of Happiness

tend the sick all these and many more provide a satisfactory
motive and justify the effort and hardship they demand. But
as we enter the field of luxuries the sense of purpose declines.
This is not to say that there is no satisfaction in making, let
us say, precision cameras or vintage port. The satisfaction
depends on one's estimate of the role it is to play. It is the
suspicion that the camera is to be used a few times by a wealthy
flaneur and then put on the shelf or the port poured down some
guzzling gullet which discourages.

These principles point uncompromisingly to a method of
organisation which we are pleased to regard as primitive. They
suggest a nexus of small-scale individualists working in their
own time, for their own ends, at the tasks which attract them
most. We are familiar with the disadvantages of primitive
industrialism : technically it is less efficient and it is handicapped
by lack of co-ordination, economically it cannot support
research and sales organisations and cannot easily spread its
risks. The technical problem is therefore to apply the machine
to such small-scale industry in such a way as to raise its efficiency
and to make use of technological knowledge to bring about the
necessary co-ordination. Society cannot nothing is more
certain do without the machine. What it has to do is make the
machine its servant instead of becoming itself the slave of the
machine. We must not modify society to suit machine produc-
tion, we must modify machine production to suit the needs of
society.

iv A Paraprimitive Society

We begin to get a picture of a country with a scanty, scattered
population, neither concentrated in great towns and cities nor
spread quite evenly over the land as in a primitive farming
community, but gathered into little knots and clumps, some
larger than others; here centred round a factory, there congre-
gating in a modest town; here meeting for some functional,
productive purpose, there subordinating productive purpose to
psychological considerations.

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Conditions of Happiness

Each scattered community will be free to meet its own
problems in its own ways, and will develop its own institutions
and cultural idiosyncrasies.

Life will flow slowly and smoothly but more widely. It will
not often reach the violence of outstanding achievement and,
perhaps, such eminence when it does occur, will be half regretted
but on the other hand, it will not leave great masses of the
population devitalised and incapable of any achievement.

To suggest this kind of pattern as an ideal may invite the
accusation of indulging in romantic archaism, of attempting
to escape into the past and of imagining it as a golden age. I
must emphasise, therefore, that the view here put forward is
not to be classed with these unrealistic, romantic archaisms.
The Natural Savage of Carpenter's works is, in fact, often
undernourished; tortured by yaws, hookworm, and many
another revolting disease; worn down by strenuous labour;
plagues by superstitious fears; harrassed by an oppressive
religion ; and even hag-ridden by neurotic compulsions like the
Dobu and the Kwakiutl. I recognise the psychological motives
which turn men's thoughts back to a primitive state and put
a romantic halo round it. I accept the argument that, without
machinery, society would not be Utopian but squalid. The task
is to take the best features from the primitive pattern and to use
machinery and technology to eliminate the drudgery, disease,
and expense of spirit, instead of proceeding from one ridiculous
extreme to another. What I assert is that man must use
machinery deliberately: must adopt just so much of it as is
necessary to transform the environment but must be firm in
rejecting it whenever it would distort his existence. Machines
are something to employ or ignore, according as they subserve
the needs of the Good Life or not. Today, in contrast, we adopt
each new machine without question or hesitation. The machine
is our master not our servant.

For a decentralised and 'demechanised* community which,
nevertheless, makes full deliberate use of machinery and
technology to serve its purposes, I propose the description
'paraprimitive.'

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Sociology of Happiness

There is also a further sense in which we can afford a return
to something resembling primitivism, though it is hard to pin
down. Man seems to need to feel that he is playing his part in
the whole vast process of life. This has been expressed by saying
he needs to live symbiotically, or that he needs to live in an
organic, and not merely a mechanical relationship with his
surroundings. Here we are dealing with a concept too fragile
for the coarse analysis of contemporary science. Whatever the
rationale of this need, and for my part I would connect it with
the oceanic feeling, it certainly exists and is evident in many
primitive societies. Probably it is in this sense more than any
other that we need a paraprimitivism.

v Changing Human Nature

As we discuss the sort of changes which might make life
more satisfying, the question insistently arises: how could such
changes be brought about ? It is all very well to say that factories
should deliberately lower their efficiency, but it is hard to
conceive of any business man doing it today, and he would
probably go bankrupt if he did. It is all very well to suggest
that people should live in small towns in the country, but the
fact is that they steadily flock into the metropolis.

I think we must suspend our argument to tackle this funda-
mental problem at once. Indeed, there are certainly many
improvements we could introduce, quite apart from the far-
reaching changes here considered, if only people would behave
differently. And that, of course, is the heart of the problem:
the real task is to get people to behave differently. Since it would
defeat the purpose of happiness if people were compelled to
live where they did not wish, or compelled to follow any other
principle of some abstract theme, we are bound to operate at
the level of making people want what is good for them. 1

1 This will cause some readers to raise the question : who is to say
what is good for them? And they will suspect that I am merely
substituting for the arrogance of planning other people's lives the
greater arrogance of planning their personalities. This danger is
discussed later in the chapter (p. 249).

239

Conditions of Happiness

And once we achieve this, no further 'planning* is necessary,
or even desirable. It is a faulty approach to work out principles
in the way we have just been doing. The only effective approach
is to work for human self-development. To be sure, a technical
problem remains, the problem of providing people with the
best environment for right action which means, before all,
giving them the data on which to base their decisions but this
is a minor problem compared with the hopeless and self-
defeating task of trying to compel people to right action.

At this point a good many people will be murmuring that you
can't change human nature, which in the present context, must
mean: people will always be selfish, acquisitive and aggressive.
But if we inspect other societies and ways of living throughout
the world we find that many, probably a majority, avoid the
errors of our own civilisation. They do not devote themselves
to the manufacture of goods to the point where this distorts
their whole life. Their members do not try and accumulate a
maximum share of what goods there are. Nor do they strive for
power. When they employ labour they do not pay it as little as
possible and demand as much effort as the worker can be induced
by the fear of discharge to give. And some of them never wage
war. Nothing could be further from the truth than to suggest
that the pattern of western society is implicit in human nature.
So the question arises, why do they behave in this way ?
To some extent this is to be explained in terms of their basic
personality structure. Thanks to childhood training, both
deliberate*education and the unplanned lessons of weaning and
the development of the maternal relationship, they often are
less aggressive, acquisitive and selfish than we are. Similarly,
the values they absorb are, frequently, those of co-operative
behaviour and self-restraint, rather than of personal 'success*
or conspicuous wealth. But, more important than these, they
possess different patterns for expressing their needs. To use a
technical concept from anthropology, they 'phrase' their needs
differently.

For instance, a desire for the respect and admiration of others
is general in humanity. In our culture it is often phrased in

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Sociology of Happiness

terms of personal economic success: the man who makes money
is regarded with envy and approval, the man who fails is
regarded with scorn. (Note how our phrase 'makes money*
automatically implies 'for himself/ But in many cultures only
making money for others would evoke admiration; making it
for oneself would evoke scorn. This is an example of how we
'phrase* our needs.)

But there are plenty of ways of earning approval which do
not depend on money at all. The most satisfactory, perhaps, is
to earn it by one's productive skill. This was commonly the
case in our earlier history and still survives in a limited number
of fields. Similarly, institutional outlets for aggression, such as
the duel or the tournament, conducted under strict rules,
provide a spillway for aggression which, without them, might
burst out in uncontrolled form.

In my opinion, then, we can only solve the problems of
modern society by a double change. We must change our values,
but in order to make such a change effective we must also
change the nature of our social pattern. To put it baldly, we
must change from a competitive and individualistic basis to a
co-operative basis. I do not believe that any change of values,
any deeper understanding of the conditions of happiness, is
enough in itself to stop the rot. We have to change the whole
basis of our society.

Those who pin their faith to the need for a change of values
(important as this is) forget that values are based in experience.
If people flock to the towns it is because they actually find life
in the towns, on balance, more agreeable than life in the country.
If they take jobs on production lines, this is because they find
such jobs more agreeable than no jobs at all. The choice which
each man has to make is the choice between the alternatives
which exist in his society as it is. Something must be allowed
for convention and custom, but basically this is the position.
Actions which would be wise in society as it might be are not
rewarding in society as it is. Thus, it is only by a creative effort that
we can solve our problems. We need the imagination to visualise
a different pattern of society and the courage to work for it.

241

Conditions of Happiness

The foregoing statement of the double attack which we must
make on society requires a second gloss which is already
obvious. It is that values cannot be changed effectively unless
personality is changed. And co-operative behaviour is also a
matter of personality formation. So really the task is a triple
one: to reconstruct personality, values, and institutions (or, if
you prefer, phrasing).

The concept of a co-operative society needs expansion. So
bound are we by our own experience that it is difficult for us
even to imagine society organised on a substantially different
basis from that we know. To work out the pattern of a co-
operative society for a machine-civilisation cannot be done in a
book or a paragraph, and I shall not attempt it. To give some
hint of what I mean I can mention one or two features of life
in primitive co-operative societies.

In general, people do not work for their own advantage. They
spontaneously undertake projects for the good of the group
or rather of a group, it may be the family in-group or it may be
the whole community. Sometimes the community will call on
them to take such an initiative, for which their skill or experience
fits them, and they accept this call, proud of the honour, but
somewhat reluctantly, In return the group shares out its
'income* and possessions among its members. Occasionally such
societies have aberrant members who take but do not give. They
are regarded as a liability. Of course, the community has
certain recourse against those who do not play the game. It can
ostracise tHem or cut off the supply of goods. It can refuse to
co-operate in their projects.

When we compare such a pattern with that of industrial
society we find it so difficult that we can hardly imagine follow-
ing it. We can scarcely visualise the business entrepreneur
conducting business for whatever pittance society chooses to
give him. But on looking more closely we find the differences
are less striking. The civil servant does attempt to conduct the
community's business for a sum which is relatively small. The
prominent man does undertake work on committees and delega-
tions as a matter of public spirit. The strength of such patterns,

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Sociology of Happiness

once established, is well shown by the case of the family. The
businessman, however egoistic, does provide for his family
without receiving any material return. If occasionally a man
refuses to provide for his family he has the whole weight of
public opinion against him, and the law can also be invoked to
enforce his conformity with the approved pattern.

The fact is, our society, like almost all societies, contains
many co-operative elements. The concept of the pursuit of
self-interest put forward by Adam Smith never had any justifi-
cation as a comprehensive analysis of human behaviour. But
during the nineteenth century, encouraged by Darwin, we
steadily built up the competitive elements at the expense of the
co-operative. We came to believe that society really was com-
petitive. The truth is that competition, a disruptive force, can
only function as long as co-operation is present to limit its
evil effects. 1 Unfortunately we have begun to believe in competi-
tion as an unqualified good; the task today is to shift the
emphasis back on to co-operation.

Such a change offers, without doubt, great difficulty. The
transition must set up enormous tensions. While some people
in the society are working to a new pattern and some to the old
there will be disputes between them; and often individuals will
be at conflict within themselves, torn as they must be between
two codes. In fact, it is because we are engaged in a change from
one pattern to another that our society is so disorganised and
unhappy today. Unfortunately, we have no clear idea of what
we are changing to, and the probability is that we shall have
gone through all this torment without achieving happiness. The
society at which we arrive may be stable, all right, but that does
not mean that it will necessarily be co-operative and it is
only in a co-operative society that we can hope to achieve
happiness.

1 Anthropologically speaking, the division of society into co-opera-
tive and competitive elements is inexact . . . Properly, individualism
is the other extreme from co-operation. Competition, as we understand
it, lies midway between, since competition implies competition
between'groups, but co-operation within them. See M. Mead,
tion and Competition among Primitive Peoples, 1937.

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Conditions of Happiness

The interesting feature of Hitler's regime is that he clearly
understood the nature of the problem of social change. His aim
was the disastrous one of the totalitarian state, but his technique
was on the right lines. He attacked at the level of personality
(the Hitler Youth employed quite deliberate techniques for
making young Germans selfless and aggressive) at the level of
values, through the propaganda machine, and at the level of
institutions, such as the Arbeitsfront, Kraft durch Freude, the
Hitler brides, the mass rallies and countless others. The fact
that Germany was defeated on the field of battle, while not
unrelated to her ultimate aims, casts no reflection on the
effectiveness (it was all too effective in the circumstances) of
Hitler's social technique.

vi Economics of Decentralisation

But even if we establish such a society the technical problem
remains. How will a decentralised community avoid wasteful
disorganisation, futile duplication of effort, and unnecessary
barriers to intercourse ? And can it absorb the effects of local
catastrophe by spreading it over the community as a whole ?

If anything can solve this dilemma it is the machine. As I see
it, the ideal society will be it must be comprised chiefly of
small closely-woven communities. To a much larger extent than
now, these will produce for their own needs. There will be
much less to-and-fro movement of goods about the country.
Administration will be very largely in local hands. There will
be much less emphasis on consistency between one area and
another. To knit these communities into a large organism there
will be required a delicate but sensitive nervous system. Here
a biological parallel may help us. It will not be, as at present,
a system terminating in a great central brain with quasi-
dictatorial powers over every part, but rather one terminating
in a solar plexus which will, all unconsciously, balance out the
counter-pulls of many local decisions.

In less imaginative terms, the local communities will have
to keep the plexus informed weekly or even daily of their rate

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of consumption and production. The plexus, which we may
conceive of as a statistical office housing a battery of electric
calculating and integrating machines, will sum all this informa-
tion and indicate continuously whether production is going to
balance consumption, in every class of goods, over the whole
territory. On the basis of such information, received every
morning, local consumers and producers will be able to adjust
their behaviour so as to restore a balance.

We need not suppose that the administrative system will be
rigidly compartmented. The administrative areas will vary
according to the purpose they serve. The physical difficulties
of bringing together committees involving people in different
areas will be readily overcome by radio and television.

Nor need the principle of local autonomy be applied rigidly.
Society should certainly not be developed according to a formal
plan. Large industrial enterprises will not be wholly eliminated :
such complex tasks as manufacturing aircraft or atomic energy
plants will necessarily be organised on a regional or zonal basis,
and no doubt these factories will themselves be the nucleus of
a social grouping or community. In fact, variety of organisation
should be one of the most striking characteristics of a reconstituted
society. The great freedom of the local autonomous units will
ensure that. But wherever consistency is logically indicated
as in standardisation of electric voltages for instance a
'hook-up' of all interested parties on the television circuits will
make the reaching of agreement a relatively easy matter.
(Goodwill we are, of course, taking for granted. The problem
here considered is the technical one.)

One of the arguments most frequently brought against
decentralisation is that small industrial units are inefficient. The
idea that size and efficiency are positively correlated is quite
incorrect. Colin Clark, investigating forty industries in five
countries found that 'no correlation existed between size of
firm and net output per worker.' Going more closely into the
matter, he showed that in certain industries large firms are more
efficient than small, while in others the reverse is the case;
in yet others still more complicated rules prevail. Thus, in the

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case of Britain, at the time of the 1930 census of production,
large firms were more efficient than small in the case of such
industries as petrol refining, flour milling and tube making;
small firms were more efficient than large in iron and steel
smelting, cotton weaving, linen weaving and jute manufacture ;
firms of medium size were more efficient than large or small
in wire making and non-metalliferous mining; both large and
small firms were more efficient than medium sizes in aluminium,
lead, cotton spinning, silk, sugar and iron and steel blast
furnaces. 1

Particularly interesting is the work of Ralph Borsodi in
America. In practical tests carried out over many years in an
experimental community near New York, he and his co-workers
have shown that small-scale production is more economical than
large in very many fields. Even in the case of flour milling, where
Clark found large units more efficient than small, he has
demonstrated that it can be done in the home with electric
equipment at much less than commercial cost, even when full
allowance is made for capital charges, depreciation, repairs
and labour. 2

Possibly the reader will expect me at this point, since I am
writing under the heading of economics, to deal with such
technicalities as inflation, the budget or the balance of trade.
If so, he has misunderstood the role of economics. In mediaeval
society what people did in the economic sphere was settled
by custom and, where custom failed, by agreement as to the
most suitable course. Profit was not a primary consideration,
nor did ownership bestow the right of disposing of property
as the owner saw fit. But, as Sir Henry Maine pointed out long
ago, status was gradually replaced by contract: that is, a man
was held free to act as he wished provided he observed any
explicitly stated conditions. Ownership of property entitled him
to dispose of property as he liked. In short, economics became
a system of control. The use to which land was put, for instance,
was settled not by tradition or public feeling, but by whoever

1 C. Clark, Conditions of Economic Progress, 1940.

2 See R. Borsodi, Prosperity and Security, 1938.

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could afford to become the owner. This was the conception of
economics developed by Adam Smith.

But I am now postulating a thoroughly public-spirited citizen
as the indispensable basis of social reconstruction. Such a
citizen will not feel himself free to exploit the situation for his
own benefit within the limits imposed by contract. Such a
citizen will feel obliged to ascertain the general feeling and to
seek the best social solution. In these circumstances economics
ceases to be a method of control, and becomes a technical
problem. If a project is considered desirable and funds are
lacking, all that is required is to pipe them in from some point
where funds have accumulated. The 'owner' of such funds will
have no more objection than does the chief engineer of a power
station which is called on to put current into the grid. That is,
he is free to object on technical grounds but not on grounds of
proprietorship.

To work out the terms of a technical economics is a technical
problem which must not be underrated. It would however be
a waste of effort to undertake it at this stage, for this, of course,
is not the direction in which we are moving at present. The
course of leaving control to economics having produced such
disastrous results as soon as it was applied without restraint,
we have chosen to give to the state the role of imposing limita-
tions on the contract. This method is quite ineffective and leads
to the accumulation of more and more controls. The only
workable control is one's own conscience.

The thing which makes the maintenance of such local
communities as living organisms possible is the paradox that
the more people can travel the less they need move. In the mass
economic organisation of today a man must go where the job
sends him, and owing to the pulsations of the trade cycle he is
likely several times to change his employer. On each such
occasion he may have to move house and family to a new district,
cutting at one blow all the emotional and social roots he and
his family have established in the district. Hence, in part, the
disintegration and loneliness of modern suburban life. With
the much greater diversification of local industry which we

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foresee for the future, and the increasingly attractive nature
of most productive processes, together with greater economic
stability, such moves should be far fewer. On the other hand,
when the job does take a man away from home, speedy travel
will enable him to return to his normal residence between his
brief stints of work, rather than tear up his home and carry it
to the neighbourhood of his work.

In short, although people will travel more and will doubtless
on their holidays visit all parts of the world, they Vill neverthe-
less grow much firmer roots in the soil of the county they have
chosen to make their own.

VII Consistency or Variety?

A society such as I am visualising would necessarily exhibit
great local variation. Such variation would probably affect the
standard of living, and this may appear to some as an obstacle.
We do not fully realise how dominated we have become in the
west by the idea of consistency. We think it a genuine injustice
if we find people getting unequal pay for equal work. The
whole basis of trade unionism and hence of labour socialism
is to establish consistency of pay and conditions for given
jobs. The same assumption supports the plea of equal pay for
women.

What is not understood is that this desire for consistency
extends only to material goods and services. We do not think
it wrong that one person should have more power than another,
and so we see nothing ridiculous about constructing a system
in which power is made more unequal in order to make the
distribution of goods more equal. Still less do we worry about
whether people have equal access to emotional, aesthetic or
spiritual experiences.

The citizen of the future, not needing goods to bolster his
personality, will attach relatively little importance to goods
and so will doubtless be quite uninterested in whether the
distribution is equal or not. People will take as much or little
as they fancy and anyone who shows a pathological desire for

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goods will recognise himself as ill and consult his doctor. If
they worry about consistency at all, it will be in the emotional,
aesthetic and spiritual sphere. But I doubt if they will worry as
we do. They will recognise that, here as in so many things, one
loses on the roundabouts what one gains on the swings. The
more consistency, the less variety. Between these two they will
try and hold a balance, and will, if anything, think variety the
more important.

vm Nature of Man

The objection may be offered by some that any attempt to
change human personality by deliberate methods inevitably
introduces satanic dangers. Everyone remembers the terrifying
picture, drawn by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (and
sometimes oddly referred to as an Utopia) of a race conditioned
from birth to behave as the state sees fit. Is this the danger which
we run if we try to produce citizens for Utopia ?
. This problem really turns upon the nature of our concept
of man. If we conceive him as fundamentally unselfish our work
can be confined to removing the handicaps which stunt and
restrict his development. A gardener does not determine the
ultimate shape of the tree ; he merely seeks to enable it to realise
to the fullest extent the potentialities which were ever implicit
in the seed. He cannot make an elm grow like an oak; he can
only make it into an apotheosis of elmhood. It is only when he
undertakes the distinctive arts of Japanese gardening or topiary
that he begins to distort its treehood. As long as we confine
ourselves to gardening pure and simple there can be no inherent
danger in any attempt to foster human development.

If, however, human nature is essentially unco-operative and
unloving any attempt to make men co-operate implies a policy
of restricting development and implies the setting of an artifici-
ally-conceived target or pattern of desired behaviour. In this
case attempts to improve behaviour are attended with a very
real danger. This does not necessarily mean we should not
make them, but it does mean we shall have to be extremely

C.H. 17 24 9

Conditions of Happiness

careful to avoid dogmatism about the end and the danger of
unscrupulous men misusing these new-won powers.

The view on which this book is based is that man embodies
two principles, one self-assertive and primarily selfish, the other
loving and remarkable in that it both gratifies his own needs
(i.e. makes him happy) and simultaneously leads him to
unselfish behaviour. If man contained simply selfish and unselfish
drives no stable solution would be possible. It is solely due
to the extraordinary fact that love gratifies selfish needs in the
course of unselfish behaviour that any satisfactory solution can
be imagined.

ix Security or Self-Determination ?

Finally we come to the question of security. Here we have a
good deal of confused thinking to dispose of. Man has at all
times to preserve a balance between his needs, and this is true
of security. Man needs to feel himself a responsible agent in
control of his own fate. A purely paternalistic security frustrates
this need. The task which confronts us is not so much to
provide security as to increase man's power to control his own
fate.

The modern world has found subtle ways of undermining
that power. The workman is deprived of his livelihood by
impersonal economic forces, he is caught up in wars whose
genesis baffles his understanding, and so forth the arraignment
is quite familiar. But let us have no false romanticism. The primi-
tive is also at the mercy of an arbitrary fate crops may fail,
disease may strike, catastrophe break loose. I don't doubt that
he is worse off than industrial man in this respect.

In principle, technology does give man an added power to
control his own fate. The task is to place that power in the
hands, not just of man in general, but of each man individually.
Society must be so organised that he can use that power.

In the sphere of economics there is no insoluble difficulty.
The farmer can always survive a bad year or two. How does
he manage it ? First, he produces for subsistence he produces

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necessities, and can always meet his own basic needs. The fact
that he produces necessities means there is always some sale
for his goods. People may stop buying luxuries altogether, but
they cannot wholly stop buying goods. If the money mechanism
breaks down they will revert to barter to get them. The second
element in the situation is that the peasant farmer can always
spread the work thinner. If sales fall off he does not discharge
men, he farms more extensively and less intensively.

Both these principles could be applied in a community of the
type I have been describing. A co-operatively-run factory, in
which the staff was bound together by ties of respect and affec-
tion, would always prefer to spread the work, and the pay,
thinner rather than to throw out some of the workers, just as a
family cuts its standard of living all round during a depression
instead of throwing one of the children in the street. Secondly,
the small local community, as I visualise it, will have diversified
occupations and, owing to the reduced emphasis on luxuries,
a considerable part of its activity will be concerned with neces-
sities. Much more than now, it will verge on being self-
supporting. At the same time, the existence of large regional,
national and international networks of credit and communica-
tion will enable it to borrow to meet temporary crises in a way
which is not open to the true primitive community.

<*;

x The Problem of Purpose

After all has been said and done, the irritating doubt arises:
will the inhabitants of our paraprimitive Utopia really be
happy ? We cannot resist the suspicion that, like the seamen in
The Unknown Land, they will feel bored. As Oscar Wilde said,
there are only two tragedies in life: not having everything you
want, and having it.

Thinking round this paradox we recall how often one
struggles to attain some objective, believing it will bring
happiness; and when one attains it, for a time it seems to do
so, but before long one is off again pursuing some new goal.
Looking back, it seems to us that we were happiest when we

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were still striving for happiness, From this the view derives
that happiness is a by-product of the effort to pursue some
ulterior end, and must not be pursued as an end in itself. If this
is so, for what end are the Utopians to struggle ?

These considerations puzzle us because we view the problem
from within the limitations of our own culture. Western society
is, as we have argued, abnormally preoccupied with striving,
with attempts at self-validation. When we are striving success-
fully, the neurotic anxieties which cause this behaviour are
temporarily appeased, and so we do obtain a temporary increase
in happiness. This is why Shaw can make Captain Brassbound
say: 'Give a man a course to steer and he will be too busy to
worry about happiness.' Any course, you note. But only a
warped individual could be satisfied without asking to what
destination the course led.

There is one purpose for which the Utopian must struggle,
and that is, to meet his own needs. As I argued earlier, the
concept of needs must be interpreted dynamically. Man does
not simply require to have his needs satisfied; he needs to.
satisfy them by his own efforts, and to take the responsibility
which this implies. If he is to be happy, his life must be so
arranged that he is directly engaged in contributing to his own
self-preservation and self-fulfilment and that of others.

Yet we know that no man can undertake undivided responsi-
bility for himself all the time. There are bound to be occasions
when misfortune and ill health defeat him. Therefore he must
live among others who will at such times step forward to help
him in just such measure, and for just so long as he needs help.
And when I say help I mean much more than material aid; I
mean also sympathy, moral support, wise counsel, intellectual
stimulus and good example. Correspondingly he must stand
ready to offer such aid to others. Finally, he will also be ready
to take part in the collective purposes of the group.

At the same time, our preoccupation with purpose makes us
fail to realise that many activities can be rewarding not just as
means to ends, but in themselves.

It is because of this obsession that we get the classic western

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definition of happiness as the devotion of the maximum effort
to the best possible end. It is because of this obsession that we
cannot conceive the Utopians being happy in a static Utopia.
The idea that they might be happy doing things for the happi-
ness of doing them eludes us.

When we look around and try to classify those who in our
own culture or some other have truly achieved happiness, we
invariably observe that they have rejected striving; that they
find their happiness in 'just living*, and in the security of a
satisfactory relationship. We may suppose therefore that the
Utopian citizen will be content to lead a life which, judged by
contemporary standards, would appear as dull and stagnant.
Judged by his own, it will seem rich and exciting, splendid with
a great range of experience, feeling and discovery. While our
obsessive, distractive, emotionally starved, artistically drab,
intellectually stereotyped lives will seem sour and stagnant to
him.

To the Utopian, having everything he wants, and not having
.it, will be matters of equal indifference.

253

XIV
POLITICS OF HAPPINESS

I A Revolution in Thought n The Double Delusion in The
Synthetic Approach iv Society is an Organism v Progress or
Regress ? vi Reconstructing Values vn Inducation vm Is Happi-
ness Possible ?

I A Revolution in Thought

IT is difficult to over-emphasise the tremendous and far-
reaching significance of the social and psychological discoveries
which I have attempted to describe in this book. Many of the
details may be wrong, yet the main thesis can hardly be denied :
that men and society interact, and only an attack at the key-
points of this process has any hope of success.

Even if the analysis is only approximately correct it calls for
a complete reconstruction of our ideas about politics, economics,
morality and how to live our daily lives. The bulk of human
activity in the west is seen to be abortive. Most of its plans
for the future are revealed as futile. The pattern of life needs
reconstructing from the ground up.

Perhaps our most serious defect is to have lost the power of
wonder. We scarcely recognise a revolution when we see it.
Amazing technical miracles cause only a passing interest: even
the miracle of the atomic bomb inspires no amazement, only
fear. The man who tries to re-awaken our sense of wonder is
accused of taking himself too seriously. Nothing ever changes,
says the cynic from his comfortable superiority, ignoring the
fact that things change all the time. The reasons for this attitude
are easy to see: to admit that drastic readjustments are needed
is to commit ourselves to an exhausting and anxious process of
revision: we have to challenge all our hard-won convictions and
reject many of them. We may have to change the habits of a

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lifetime. The assertions in the last paragraph but one may seem
sweeping, but I believe that we have here the beginnings of a
revolution in human affairs, and to awaken an appropriate
reaction in my readers I must risk the accusation of having
overstated my case.

Whatever else may be cast in doubt, I believe it is beyond
question that the many political and economic theories which
occupy the world today, which absorb so much devoted support
or embittered opposition, and which are held to justify so much
brutality and bloodshed, are 90 per cent, error, both as regards
ends and means. Movements like socialism which are primarily
concerned to help men in meeting their physical needs, not
only leave psychological needs unsatisfied but are bound to
intensify frustration by the very means they adopt to further
their main end. Socialists and communists are dominated by
the same error as industrial capitalists: all believe or act as
though they believe that the thing is to maximise the supply of
goods and services.

If the conclusions of this book are correct, socialism and
communism are pursuing the wrong end. Whatever they may
say or believe, what in practice they are doing is trying to
produce even more goods than capitalism and to distribute them
according to a different system. But goods, in our view,
constitute a trivially unimportant factoi in happiness. It is no
counter-argument to point to an undernourished man sitting
workless in a slum and to expatiate upon the improvement there
would be in his lot if he had a modern flat, more food, and a car
to take him into the country, because the chances are that
were it not for the industrial machine he would not be in the
slum, he would not be workless, he would not be starving, and
he would be in the country. The average crofter in the north-
west of Scotland lives in accommodation which if it were in
the centre of a slum would be intolerable, he spends on food
a sum which if he had to spend it in a big city would be
insufficient to support life, but which in the quite different
circumstances of the country are only a little less than adequate.
I am not suggesting that the crofter's lot is ideal it is far from

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Conditions of Happiness

that but if I had to choose between a croft and a Glasgow
slum I should not have to think twice.

It is a symptom of our misunderstanding that conservatives
attack socialist proposals, such as nationalisation, on the grounds
that they will not work efficiently and socialists defend them by
denying this. The argument is idle. Even if we could prove
that nationalisation will raise output, that is no reason for
introducing it. 1 The question which matters is, will it raise
happiness ?

These criticisms apply with equal force to capitalism.

Socialists will point to the existence of undernourishment
and overcrowding. Is it no contribution to happiness to attack
these evils they will demand ? Of course it is within the con-
text of our current type of society. It is also a good thing to give
parachutes to the passengers of a burning aircraft, but it is still
better to put the fire out : and there may not be time to do both.

Socialists will point to social security measures. At least you
cannot object to them, they will say, for you have yourself
stressed the need for security. But the same argument applies.
Unemployment as we know it is a symptom of industrialism.
With a less highly-differentiated industrial machine and an
output confined to essentials, plus communal spirit, what little
unemployment emerged could at once be absorbed by local
readjustments of working schedules, just as it is in a primitive
farming economy. The need for a costly social security
organisation is created by the vast and specialised industrial
machine -on which both capitalism and socialism equally rely.

By the same token, our so-called science of economics is
revealed as no science at all. It bases its arguments on the
premise that happiness will result from supplying goods and
services to meet a demand expressed in money. But as we have
seen, men cannot express their most important demands in
terms of money and supplying goods and services cannot meet
them.

Equally, contemporary politico-economic devices are futile

1 Except possibly as a temporary measure to meet post-war short-
ages and reconstruction problems.

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Politics of Happiness

considered as means. They attempt to change human behaviour
without changing human personality. They can only succeed
to the extent that human nature is ready for the change. Ration-
ing, for instance, is a device for ensuring the equal distribution
of scarce supplies. In England it works because the majority
of the population regards such sharing as desirable and is
morally ready to co-operate in such a scheme or, if that is
putting it too high, let us say, is not so extremely egoistic as to
make a serious effort to wreck the scheme. In many European
countries it fails for the converse reason. If efforts are then
made to enforce it by heavy penalties what is really happening
is that the authorities are trying to raise the moral level of human
behaviour by force. Such attempts are futile. Even if they
succeed for a time in changing overt behaviour, they fail to
bring about any moral change, and the oppressive nature of
their methods will produce a moral retreat. The use of force
begets force, not co-operation.

Thus, if Britain can operate a socialised economy today it is
because Britons are, on the whole, ready to co-operate in such
a programme. If Americans are not ready, it is because they
are still in a more individualistic, i.e. egoistic stage of develop-
ment. Socialism is only an administrative device ; it depends
for its success on a moral advance which it cannot foster or
control, and this advance is the only real progress in the
situation. The rest is a matter of technique.

Marxists will protest that I have mis-stated their views. Of
course, we recognise the necessity of producing better people,
they will say, but how can you hope to produce decent person-
alities in slum conditions ? This is a half-truth. The chances of a
satisfactory psychological and physical environment are
undoubtedly low in a slum. But they are not very high else-
where. It is not from the ranks of the very poor, but from the
bourgeois sections of society that most neurotics come. Some
of the most ruthless and bigoted men in history were born in
materially quite favourable conditions.

The marxist is correct in attributing to wrong environment
the creation of distorted personalities. His trouble is, he does

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Conditions of Happiness

not know the nature of the connection and instead of arraigning
just those elements in the environment which are responsible,
he seized only on those which strike the eye. If marxists want
to save their thesis they would do well to bring it into line with
modern research instead of treating it as a sacrosanct doctrine
given ex cathedra.*

ii The Double Delusion

One of the most serious errors in our political thinking is our
division of the field into two mutually exclusive camps, right
and left, conservative and socialist. As we have just argued, both
right and left subscribe equally to a materialist outlook; they
differ only as to the means. We should do better, therefore, to
divide the field into materialists and non-materialists. This is a
difference of ends.

It may be that there would be fewer non-materialists in the
left-wing camp than the right: much would depend on the
size of the political field we were examining, and the moment
in time that we chose. Certainly there is a distinct tendency
for the non-materialists those who have an intuitive grasp of
the psychological necessities of life to find the left-wing camp
uncongenial and flock to the conservative colours, where they
find themselves in uneasy alliance with the commercial-
materialists to whose ideals they are in reality fundamentally

1 The acrobatics performed by western marxists in their attempts
to reconcile analytical psychology with their dogmas provide much
quiet amusement for onlookers. The first stage was an attempt to
match Freud's social theories (he sees the origin of social action in a
revolt of sons against their father to obtain possession of his women)
with the history of the Russian revolution. (See R. Osborn, Freud
and Marx y 1937). But when these were generally rejected by sociolo-
gists, marxists turned to the American school of psychologists
represented by Homey, Fromm, Erich and others, who had begun
to stress the importance of social factors in neurosis, and began to
misrepresent them as attaching no significance to genetic factors. Now
that Kardiner has shown that genetic factors can be traced to the
environment, perhaps we shall see a reaction in favour of Freud, and
the canonisation of Prof. Kardiner.

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Politics of Happiness

opposed. Here they are blinkered by tradition and reined-in
by vested interest until they are incapable of preventing the
destruction of the values they admire. It is, after all, in the name
of individual freedom that millions have been degraded by
unemployment, and that much of the countryside has been
desecrated, just as it is in the name of freedom that American
citizens lynch negroes. Thus, while the materialist-socialist is
making rapid progress in the wrong direction, the progressive
conservative is looking in the right direction and walking
steadily backwards.

But there is another way of dividing the field of human
aspiration which is more useful to our present purpose than
either of these : we can make a valid distinction between those
who wish to improve society by social action, that is, methods
directed outwards from the self against others, and those who
wish to improve it by individual moral effort, directed inward
towards the self.

Those whose temperaments incline them to action want to
. prevent misbehaviour by the use of force. When they see some
nuisance being committed their reaction is : there ought to be
a law against it. Though, paradoxically as it may seem, when
they find themselves restrained by a law from some course they
wish to follow they complain of the imposition with the strongest
annoyance. Unfortunately, the attempt to make people behave
co-operatively by forcible methods can never succeed. The
use of force begets force, not co-operation. The most a law
can do is express the general conscience of the group, in which
case it compels a minority of backsliders to fall into line. But
if the group as a whole does not approve it no authority can
enforce it. Even, however, if such an attempt forcibly to
reform people could be carried through, it would inevitably
fail in the ultimate objective of achieving happiness because the
oppressive and frustrating nature of the regime would make
happiness impossible.

People who, nevertheless, put their faith in the use of force
are to be found in both the right- and left-wing camps. They are
the possessors of patriform personalities, the fascists and the

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Conditions of Happiness

communists, the militarists and the militant pacifists, the arch-
conservatives and the fanatical revolutionaries. Too impatient
to wait on the slow process of personal self-development, they
try to take the short cut to Utopia, but succeed only in intro-
ducing the police-state and end in the irony of compulsory joy.

Equally vain is the second and contrary delusion, that man
can be made into the perfect citizen by moral effort. According to
this view, if we all would only try sufficiently hard to do our
duty and behave according to the dictates of our consciences
the world would be as nearly perfect as we have any right to
expect.

If the authoritarian view is the view of the extremists and the
patrists, the 'do your best' theory is the credo of the middle-of-
the-roaders and the matriform types. It is the faith of the religious
who call it behaving like a Christian, and of the atheists, who
call it behaving decently. Unfortunately, this attitude pays no
heed to the effects of environment in distorting personality.
The neurotic and the criminal are viewed as people who,
starting with equal endowments, just did not try hard enough
to keep to the approved path. Of recent years some allowance
has been .made by this school for exceptional temptations
(such as may confront the poor) and disadvantages in the way
of inadequate education, but fundamentally they regard the
lapse as a failure of will. But the failure is really a failure of the
power to love : it is a neurosis. Now as we have seen, neurosis
is not a divagation from the path of life, but a desperate attempt
to adapt tolt. It is only because of his neurosis that the neurotic
manages to get as near normality as he does. To ask him to
make an effort and conquer his neurosis is like asking a lame
man to give up his limp. It cannot be done by an effort of will,
only by a fundamental cure. In psychological terms, the only
solution they see is an intensification of super-ego control : that
is, improvement through the imposition of a self-discipline
which, because it thwarts natural impulses, inevitably becomes
more and more puritanical. This leads to a society in which the
puritan, or calvinist, not only makes himself miserable but
prevents anyone else from being happy either.

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Politics of Happiness

Furthermore, the religious or self-discipline approach (if we
may so call it) implies a pessimistic view of the possibilities of
progress. Each new individual that is born into the world must
make the same old effort at self-control all over again. He gets
no help from the achievements of those who preceded him,
except perhaps the cold comfort of a mark to aim at. The defects
of such systems is that, like Mrs. Partington with her mop,
they register trifling tactical victories while being steadily
defeated on the main front. And that orthodox religious
teaching has been defeated on the main front cannot be denied
by anyone who looks honestly at the world today. The picture
disclosed by analytical psychology, on the other hand, is much
more encouraging. By attacking the forces which create character
distortion we can ensure a better start for all who come after.
The path is difficult, but it does lead upwards.

The self-discipline approach is also susceptible of criticism
on more fundamental grounds. By appealing to us to obey our
consciences it accepts our ego-ideals as above criticism. But
.these, as we have seen, are no more than a reflection of the
general values of our society, as transmitted through the imper-
fect channel of introjection. In sober fact our consciences often
permit the undesirable and still more often disallow what is
quite permissible. They are a sort of automatic pilot keeping us
on whatever course we were following when they were switched
on. They do not enable us to dispense with a navigator.

By another paradox, the advocates of personal effort are the
last to complain when the advocates of direct action promulgate
a law regulating some aspect of behaviour. In secret truth, they
welcome it because it relieves their super-ego of some of its
burden. 1

As so often when two opposing theses have both proved
impotent, a solution is found in a new synthesis which embodies
features of both. The view put forward here can claim to be
such a synthesis. According to this view neither social action
nor personal self-discipline alone or in combination will suffice
to bring us nearer a better world. The solution the only
1 R. West, Conscience and Society, 1942.

Conditions of Happiness

solution is to attack at the points where society and personality
meet. There are two. The customs which influence the forma-
tion of basic personality and the values which provide the field
of force in which personalities operate. These are the decisive
factors. All other reformative activities are as useless as putting
more comfortable seats in a car which is travelling towards a
precipice.

This thesis is a true synthesis: it agrees unreservedly with
the moralists and religious reachers that society can only be
reformed through improving individuals; it agrees unreservedly
with the marxists that the pre-condition of better behaviour
is improved environment. It goes further than both in specifying
precisely which elements in the environment are the crucial
factors in the case.

in The Synthetic Approach

In the final analysis, the defect of contemporary politics and
economics is that they are flat two-dimensional views of a
complex multi-dimensional reality. The reality with which
we have Jto deal is man-in-society a delicate reciprocal
relationship which in my opening chapter I called the psycho-
social nexus. The moment we begin to lift some part of this
nexus out of its natural context and consider it separately we
introduce a source of error into our calculations.

The simplest of such abstractions is to try and discuss man
alone, ignoring the influence on him of society, and this
individualistic approach generally leads to a reaction in which
we begin to discuss society, ignoring its origin in men. Neither
psychology nor sociology can be accurate as descriptions of
their chosen subject as long as they ignore the other, because
these two cannot in any real sense be separated. A biologist
who attempted to discuss the human brain without reference
to the body in which it is located would produce as partial
and inaccurate an analysis as a biologist who attempted
to describe the body without reference to the brain which
controls it.

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Politics of Happiness

How much more inaccurate must our analysis be when we
abstract some narrow group of functions, such as political or
economic activities, from the complex of man-in-society.
Immediately we are led into the error of treating an economic
institution, as if it were only an economic institution, ignoring
the fact that it has emotional, aesthetic and social functions too.
Immediately, we treat political devices as if their sole function
were to deploy power over individuals and forget that the real
purpose of politics is to free those individuals from any but their
own power.

The analytic method, by which we isolate objects from their
context for closer study has its merits, but we have pushed it to
the point where it has led us into disastrous errors. We must
return to the synthetic method that is, the method of building
up fragments into coherent wholes. The situation will perhaps
be clearer if we take a simple analogy : the case of a designer
specialising in magnetos. Such a designer can never afford to
forget the engine in which his magneto is to function. Though
for short spaces of time he may isolate some small detail from
its context, he must constantly refer back to the overall picture
and every detail of his design will be dictated to spme extent
by whether he is designing a magneto for a Spitfire or for a
motor-cycle. He must, therefore, have in his head a clear picture
of the functioning of petrol engines in general and even of the
detail design of the particular engine for which his magneto
is intended. A magneto designer who worked in an intellectual
vacuum would soon be out of a job.

Similarly, the man who poses as an authority on economics
and politics must be fully educated in the whole range of
man's motivations, so that he can see his political or economic
motives in their proper context. Similarly, he must under-
stand the nature, function and context of all social institutions
before he presumes to design new economic or political
institutions.

We are very far from such a state of affairs today. Few
economists or politicians have any but the most rudimentary
understanding of psychology and still fewer any understanding

263

Conditions of Happiness

of social structure. The ludicrous errors of economists are
chiefly due to their childishly naive view of human motivation,
so long described by textbooks as 'the rational pursuit of self-
interest.'

iv Society is an Organism

In particular, we must open our eyes to the fact that society
is an organism. Unfortunately, our fathers' excessive preoccupa-
tion with the individual that is, with the first term of the nexus
man-in-society led to a violent reaction in which a great part
of the world has become preoccupied with the second term of
the nexus, and has tended to conceive social organisation and
man in his collective aspect as the primary reality. Since
society is made for man and not man for society this is an even
more serious error than the first.

The solution is certainly not to react once more into the first
error, but to build a new synthesis out of these two antitheses.
It is in this context that we must consider the social organism.
Even if its purpose is no more than the purpose of its
component.units that is no reason for ignoring the reality of its
structure.

Society is an organism held together primarily by the desire
of man for the companionship and help of his fellow men, with
whom he forms emotional links which are the ultimate purpose
of his earthly existence. No politics and no economics is of
any value \vhich does not respect these emotional links, and
make their preservation and growth its main concern. What,
then, are we to say of a politics which (as in the Versailles
Treaty) blandly transfers whole populations from one area to
another and draws lines through the middle of others, severing
such emotional links by the million? Simply that it is blind
madness. The statesmen, so-called, of Versailles were at no
higher mental level than the child which cuts a worm in half
to see if it will grow a new tail except that the child at least
has the excuse that it has been misinformed by its elders in the
matter.

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Politics of Happiness

How dare people set themselves up to direct the affairs of
men without having studied for many years in deep humility
all that human wisdom has accumulated in the way of informa-
tion about men and their societies? To practise politics
without a degree in social science should be a crime more
serious than performing a surgical operation without having
done a course of study in medicine and surgery. To be sure,
social science is still most imperfect, but the greater our
ignorance the greater our duty to make use of the few facts we
have established.

The example of Versailles is a crass one, and we have now
come to realise the depth of folly it implied, but in slightly
less obvious spheres we repeat the mistake all the time. We
blithely undermine the structure of society by releasing tech-
nical devices like the motor-car and the radio without a moment's
preliminary consideration of their effect. We cheerfully shift
populations about, or appeal to women to go into factories
without even wondering what effect this will have on a primary
^ocial unit like the family.

Despite the fact that every anthropologist knows that violent
mixture of two cultures is a disastrous mistake we even commit
the supreme folly of founding organisations to promote the
dissemination of culture-patterns and thus increase the violence
of acculturation, and we send films of life in New York into the
remotest villages of the Balkans and the valleys of Norway,
believing that in some way we are doing good!

As a matter of fact we even commit mistakes on the scale of
Versailles; have we not divided Germany into four zones?
Today we are beginning to see the economic consequences of
such folly which any competent economist could have pointed
out at the time but it is our children who will have to grapple
with the social and psychological consequences of this act,
just as it is the present generation which has had to pay the
price of Versailles. Let every young and middle-aged reader
take heed: our children will hurl at us in twenty years just the
same accusation that we hurled at the generation before us:
'you got us into the mess, now we have to get you out/

C.H. 18 265

Conditions of Happiness
v Progress or Regress ?

Faced with the reconstruction of all our political and econ
omic thinking, dimly aware of the titanic errors in which we an
involved, and with an inkling of the vast reconstruction o
daily life which a policy of happiness implies, it is natural t<
shrug one's shoulders and say: it is too much effort. If that is th<
price of happiness let us go on as we are.

But one cannot stay still, one must go on or go back. In th<
ultimate analysis, the process to which we are committed i
the growth of consciousness. As Heard and Whyte have argued
we are slowly changing from a mode of existence in which ;
great part of the mind was at the unconscious level, and societ;
was held together by unconscious forces, to a mode in which w<
must be consciously aware of our unity with all men, and thu:
consciously refrain from doing anything to harm them, anc
consciously build a society held together by forces of which w<
are aware. 1 Such a development is, it would seem, part of th<
irreversible evolution of the race. If we, homo faber miscalle<
sapiens, fail to take this step forward we will be replaced, in du<
course, by a creature better fitted to do so.

But evert if we do not choose to look so far ahead, the prospec
still makes action imperative. Western society, beset by strain
greater than have afflicted any in the history of the world, i
bound to break up. In a final convulsive effort to prevent tha
catastrophe (for catastrophe it is to the people within the society
central governments impose a rigid control. It is a new nigh
of totalitarianism which faces us, beside which the long nigh
of barbarism under the Goths, the Vandals and the Huns wil
be, as they say, a picnic.

What, then, shall we do?

The first thing, I suggest, is some research. If one-tenth par
of all the sums which are now being poured into research
into physics, chemistry, electronics, and the other science;
which are primarily responsible for our present plight were t<

1 G. Heard, Man The Master, 1942; L. L. Whyte, The Nex
Development in Man, 1944.

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Politics of Happiness

be spent on research into the only sciences which could get us
out of it, the outlook would be completely transformed. 1 If for
every physicist we train at our universities we trained a psycho-
logist, and for every chemist a sociologist, and for every doctor
a social pathologist, we should have at least a sporting chance
of survival.

It is constantly said that man's control over the physical
world has outrun his control over himself, or that his knowledge
of external nature has outrun his knowledge of moral and social
forces. If that is true, as it obviously is, he has only himself
to blame. Social research is the Cinderella of the sciences.

In this book I have quoted much anthropological work; I
must now emphasise how unsatisfactory it is. Few cultures
have been investigated by more than a single investigator, and
many of them are being swamped so fast by western culture
that no further investigation is possible. Each investigator
brings to his study the prejudices of his own society, the people
from whom he collects information are not a random sample,
.because he naturally chooses those who are most loquacious
or most easily bribed, and their readiness to speak is conditioned
by their liking for him as an individual. Many such investigators
have had no psychological training and ignore just those facts
which are most crucial to the analysis. 2

All this work needs repeating again and again with improved
techniques. And much work must be done on the techniques
themselves. Devices such as the Rohrschach test, and the
Murray thematic apperception test hold out the promise of a
more objective and more rigidly standardised type of investiga-
tion than any hitherto, but they are still in a comparatively
experimental stage. 3 Many other criticisms could be adduced.

1 In 1947, in Britain, something like 120,000,000 was spent on
research in the classical sciences as compared -with little over 500,000
on the social sciences.

8 For a fuller discussion see R. Linton, Cultural Background of
Personality, 1946.

8 See, for instance, S. J. Beck, Introduction to the Rohrschach
Method, 1937; and H. A. Murray, Explorations in Personality, 1935.

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Conditions of Happiness

Admitting, then, that our ignorance is still profound, what
does it look as if we shall have to do ?

Firstly, we must strenuously revise the techniques by which
we train and educate our children.

I conclude, any intelligently founded programme of reform
would start not with nationalisation or investment control, not
with proportional representation or raising the school-leaving
age, not with social security or town planning, but with a huge
campaign to produce better people combined with a campaign
to revise values. It would concentrate on improving the social
environment rather than the physical environment. The
Minister of Happiness, the supreme member of the peace
cabinet, would devote to the instruction of mothers the same
ingenuity that the Ministry of Food has employed in connection
with their function as cooks. Happiness insurance would entitle
one to routine psychiatric treatment just as health insurance
covers medical treatment.

It might even be advisable, as a temporary measure at any
rate, to make, not marriage as in some countries, but motherhood .
dependent on passing an examination an examination which
would not only ensure some knowledge of methods but also
psychological fitness.

Next we must investigate the break-up of family life. It is
insufficiently realised that the family (or, alternatively, in-
group) is a miniature society in which the child learns many of
its primary lessons in socialisation. But for the family to play
this role, -two things are necessary. First, it must contain a
considerable number of persons. The only child of two parents
living in a flat learns no lessons of socialisation, and when there
are two children the relation is liable to become one of domin-
ance and resistance to dominance. And while families have
grown smaller the in-group has vanished altogether. Since
the enormous families of the past are undesirable both from
the viewpoint of the mother and of the total population,
the solution seems to be a wide reintroduction of the
in-group.

The second condition is that the child be left in the family

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Politics of Happiness

during all his formative years; but we send the child away to
kindergarten and school at an increasingly early age and throw
on the school almost the whole responsibility for training it.
Small wonder that the child comes to look to an impersonal
authority to regulate its life and meet its needs and so finds it
natural to depend upon an impersonal state.

One of the most alarming features of contemporary society is
the breakdown of super-ego control, or in classical terms, the
decay of conscience. Selfish, violent or anti-social behaviour
of an extraordinarily callous sort is becoming the rule rather
than the exception as the columns of the more lurid Sunday
newspapers have long been witnessing. I have no doubt that
one of our most urgent duties is to restore such control in
reasonable measure.

As Bateson has told us, the formation of the super-ego is
dependent on the establishment of an effective link between
child and parent. Harsh, unloving parents are liable to create
anti-social children. Children who are separated from their
.parents are likely to become anti-social. But these things happen
daily.

Secondly, the parent must, in fact, teach the child a code
of behaviour. Social workers in the slums report that many
such parents do not do so, or, worse, teach an actively harmful
code.

Thirdly, parents must reinforce their teaching with some kind
of punishment (including in this term such things as deprivation
of affection). But many parents punish so capriciously, some-
times laughing at behaviour which on another occasion they
will punish, sometimes venting their spleen by punishing
innocent acts, that no lesson except doubt is taught.

Insensibly we have passed from the subject of the immediate
physical environment of the child to the mental environment
the role to which he is brought up and the patterns which he
learns from his parents and from society and introjects into his
personality. Having ensured that something is introjectcd, the
question becomes: what? This complex subject is most easily
discussed under the heading of values.

269

Conditions of Happiness
vi Reconstructing Values

The ideal code of values is one which both encourages
people to behave in those ways which foster happiness and
which deters them from actions which are inimical to it.

The origin of codes of values, however, is in practical experience.
And this is where the trouble originates. The unthinking man,
and especially the young man, tends to attach value to experiences
which are immediately rewarding, without considering the
long-term consequences. The reconstruction of values therefore
involves a constant fight by the most long-sighted and experi-
enced individuals (not necessarily the oldest) to modify the
spontaneously -formed valuations of the short-sighted.

Great importance, therefore, attaches to the machinery avail-
able for deriving permanent values and especially to the
machinery available for propagating them. Most primitive
societies include crude but fairly effective devices for the
purpose. The formation of values is left to the elders of the
tribe (not the leaders) and their great prestige normally ensures
the acceptance of their opinions. In addition the social life of
the tribe usually provides them with opportunites for advocating
publicly the values they hold. In modern society this machinery
has largely broken down. In the mass society it is only possible
to propagate values by means of instruments of communication
newspapers, books, films and broadcasts. To a very large extent,
however, these are at the disposal of people whose opinion on
values is -worthless. For all practical purposes, the values
disseminated by these media are decided by the handful of men
who control them.

Now the people most likely to reach positions in which
they can control these great engines of opinion are those who
are wholeheartedly devoted to the pursuit of wealth and power.
In addition we have one fact that, whatever their personal
beliefs, in an industrial civilisation it is in the interest of
business magnates to cultivate a desire for goods and services:
this is the sole object of advertising. In short, communication
media are in the hands of men selected for their ignorant,

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Politics of Happiness

selfish and material viewpoint. Thus, we have established an
enormous machine for the inculcation of materialistic values.
(To the above list we may add the fields of publishing and
drama : true, these also serve to disseminate good values though
hardly in such quantity as they disseminate bad ones; and we
must qualify our indictment in the case of radio systems which
are not subservient to commercial interests.)

This situation makes nonsense of democracy, and nonsense
of education. The underlying idea of democracy is that every
individual is free to make up his own mind his own way, and
that out of the mass of freely-formed individual opinions a
general consensus will emerge which represents the will of the
people. It is questionable whether this was ever wholly true,
but it is certainly far from true in the industrial state with its
mass media for the inculcation of values. (This is typical of the
way in which technology has made nonsense of the classical
political concepts to which we still cling.) The far-sighted
modern ruler does not seek to establish a dictatorship of force
but a dictatorship of values a bondage more secure and
infinitely less troublesome to maintain. By these standards, our
supposed democracies are in many respects dictatorships
already, dictatorships not of fascism or communism but of
materialism.

In our ignorance we confine our criticisms of the press, and
other media, to the question of whether they report the facts.
We fail to realise that a paper can report the facts with perfect
accuracy and still disseminate the most disastrous values.

We are emerging from an age of individualism in which the
law was ready to restrain people from committing actions or
making statements damaging to individuals but was slow to
restrain them from damaging the state. Recently we have begun
to recognise that individuals can harm the public weal by overt
acts, but we are so egregiously ignorant of sociology that we do
not recognise the subtler forms of damage to society. We see
nothing very wrong, for instance, in advertising a face-cream as
status-conferring, and those of us who are sophisticated enough
to see the factual fallacy laugh at it. That the true significance

271

Conditions of Happiness

of such a claim lies in the field of values and is independent of
whether or not it is untrue escapes us.

vn Inducation

It is a platitude beloved of those who address schoolboy
audiences that education means drawing out and not putting in.
Grammatically this is correct; factually it is not. Even if the
theoretical ideal is that the prime function of education is to
develop the innate capacities of the pupil, nevertheless in
practice all education involves a huge amount of putting in.
I do not refer merely to factual material, dates and chemical
formulae, but to attitudes, interpretations and ideas. Any reader
who doubts this should, if he is not a Roman Catholic, go to a
Roman Catholic school and listen to the teaching of the
history of the Reformation, while Catholic readers should try
the same experiment at a non-Catholic school; or he might
compare British and American versions of the War of
Independence.

Apart from formal education, all forms of communication
propaganda, advertisement and even what we suppose to be
factual information or artistic truth inevitably contain a large
element of putting-in. This putting-in process plays such an
important part in our life that it is time we recognised its
existence. It might be easier to do so if it had a name. I shall
call it inducation. (And a pox on any don who objects.) By it I
mean something much broader than propaganda, which implies
a deliberate aim which is often absent in inducation. For instance,
a school which provides religious services or a cinema which
plays the national anthem at the close of the performance are
inducating a respect for religion and the royal family respec-
tively but it would be inexact to describe either as propaganda.
The headmaster may be an agnostic and the cinema manager
a republican: but each defers unthinkingly to custom and public
opinion.

Similarly, the producer of an American film does not
deliberately inculcate materialistic values, or so I suppose.

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Politics of Happiness

Presumably he presents the values which he thinks the charac-
ters he is representing would normally hold. But if these values
are wrong values he may be inducating wrong values into his
audience, especially if, in his ignorance of sociology, he presents
such values in a favourable light. He will, in general, be inclined
to present the values which exist in his own culture as being
good values, though the fact that values exist is, of course, no
guarantee of their suitability. In addition, he will later send his
film abroad into other cultures, possibly holding superior values
to his own, and thus will be engaged in inducating the audiences
of that country.

Because of the enormous weight and ubiquity of the induca-
tory forces, it is farcical to discuss the reform of education
properly, so-called. Its inducatory content is poor enough, but
its effect is in any case trifling as against these overwhelming
forces.

The question arises, if we are to try and impose a value
system on people, are we not running headlong into that very
process of compulsion which we have already indicted ? Is this
any different from fascism ? Here, I think we have to make up
our minds. Either all values are equally worthy, or else there
are good and bad values. If the latter, then the question which
arises is, can we distinguish good from bad values? I believe
we can\ and that there is only one acceptable system of values
that based on love. Even if one distrusts religion and despises
ethics one has to admit the bald fact that, fundamentally, only
two schemes of value exist, those based on love and hate,
respectively. The latter generates a vicious spiral of destructive
activity and multiplies human misery ; the former a benign spiral
of happiness.

Provided that this fact is recognised, people can be left to
work out courses of action they will, no doubt, disagree
violently on what course to take in given circumstances, but
if their values are sound the result can be awaited with some
confidence. Control or regulation of values is thus something
very different from regulation of actions 'planning' as we call
it. For control of values leaves entire freedom to the individual.

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Conditions of Happiness

Nor can it of its nature be perverted to the uses of dictatorship,
as can political power to regulate actions.

The only dangerous possibility and it is the possibility
which has become actuality today is that men should band
together to preach false values on a massive scale. Is it too
optimistic to believe that if sound values are preached with
equal force the public will soon recognise the false values for
what they are and that their advocates will be compelled to
change their tune by the force of public opinion ? If it is, the
outlook is indeed black. There remains the ancient social
device of a college charged with the duty of protecting values.

In the past it was always a firm principle that the temporal
power should be restrained by a spiritual power. This spiritual
power was represented by the Church and the theory was that the
Church, being uninterested in political issues and earthly gains,
could advise or denounce impartially. The Church was thus
conceived as the guardian of society's values. Unhappily the
Church has not successfully sustained this proud role. The
Protestant Church has shrunk from the responsibility of con-
demning those institutions and persons who contravene the
values it preaches and has lost the prestige essential to its
function in consequence. The Roman Catholic Church has
been less cowardly but more venal. Though it has continued to
pontificate on social and political issues, often most wisely,
it has gained the reputation of concerning itself in material
issues for material ends and has lost prestige likewise.

Society badly needs a corpus of wise men, selected not so
much for experience, eminence or success as for breadth of
vision, humanity and integrity, who will concern themselves
not so much with the minutiae of day-to-day legislation (as does
the Senate and the House of Lords) but with the broad general
picture of our times. But to establish a 'Standing Committee
for the Maintenance of Values' would not at first be enough
for it would be many years until it acquired the necessary
prestige. Since the Church, despite its defects, still has vastly
more prestige than any government department, possibly it
should take the initiative in such a step: but it should not seek

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Politics of Happiness

to keep such a commission under its control. It should base it
broadly, calling on all elements in the community to play
their part.

vni Is Happiness Possible ?

I have attempted to analyse the unhappiness of our society.
I have tried to show that our society is the reflection of our
personalities. It is we who, by an elaborate process, make
ourselves unhappy. I have suggested that machinery has stimu-
lated this process of self-immolation, not because of anything
inherent in machinery, but because of the way we use it. And
I have suggested that totalitarianism is bound to gain ground,
in fact to triumph, unless we can find a superior solution for
our problems.

How this process comes about, what initiates it, is a question

with which I have not attempted to deal. It raises such wide

issues that I must leave it for another book. In any case we do

. not need this knowledge in order to see how sick our society is.

For too long we have pictured society as inherently stable,
capable of healing by its own vital force the rough scars we
inflict upon it by political surgery. We must force ourselves to
think of it as assailed by a bombardment of technical change
which threatens its very existence. Desperately strained as it is
by the effort to adapt to shifting circumstances it has little
vitality to spare for absorbing deliberately introduced readjust-
ments when these prove ill-conceived. Social engineering of a
delicate order and on a cyclopean scale is called for but it is
the most dire of errors to suppose that social engineering, even
in conjunction with personal improvement, will suffice to
restore happiness. Everyone might employ their best endeavours
to be friendly in a society as stable as a gyroscope, and still be
frustrated, anxious and bored. Only if values are sound can we
hope for happiness.

It is a commonplace to say that we are living in a revolution
but the assertion is dangerously misleading. The revolution
in the technological environment is the cause of our troubles.

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Conditions of Happiness

The cure is a revolution in the field of values. And that is a
revolution which is still to come.

Nevertheless, there is one thing which emerges from the
present analysis from which we can take comfort. Behind all
man's questioning lies a deeper unspoken question. Is the
universe so designed that happiness is possible, or is it funda-
mentally antagonistic? Can we be assured that man's nature
is in harmony with the nature of things if only 'the paralysing
corruptions of custom would stand from between ?' The answer I
find in these researches is 'yes.' A cautious 'yes,' certainly, for the
paralysing corruptions of custom are seen to be more subtle and
complex than Rousseau dreamed, (feut basically the answer is
favourable. Man's final need is to love and be loved. That is a
need which answers the needs of other men, so that the more
any one man attains his own true happiness, the more he must
assist others in attaining theirs. In this reciprocal nature of the
love-function lies the promise of final harmony. It is no easy
promise. We have to labour to achieve it. There is no guarantee
of success : indeed, we can easily fail altogether. It is not so much
a promise as a challenge.

276

INDEX

ADLER, A., 59, 61
Adrian, E. D., 20, 24
^Esthetic needs, 17, 24 ff., 158
Aggression, 19, 50-2, 70, 155, 166,

167, 179, 1 80, 187, 209, 241
, control of, 70 ff., 241
Alcoholism, 3, 14
Amphlett Islanders, 106
Anal training, 78, 105-6, 177
Anger, 50-2

Anxiety, 86, 104, 158, 177, 185
Art, 52-4, 1 66, 225
Asceticism, 179, 180, 181-2, 185,

205, 260

Ash ton, E. B., 195, 202
Authoritarianism, 85, 114, 129,

187, 193, 196, 215, 260. See also

Society, patriform

BASIC PERSONALITY STRUCTURE,

103 ff., 181 ff., 198, 223, 240. See
also Industrial personality struc-
ture

Bateson, G., 93, 108, 269

Beauty, 55, 148

Beck, S. J., 267

Behaviour, non- valid, 64 ff.

Benedict, R., in

Berg, C., 183

Bergson, H., 43

Berman, L., 33, 34

Bigland, E., 224

'Blisses/ 25, 26

Borsodi, R., 246

Bostock, J., 27

Bowlby, J., 76, 176

Briffault, R., 115

British Rheumatism Council, Re-
port of, 150

Bucke, P. M., 44

Butler, Dom C., 44

CANTRIL, H., AND SHERIF, M., 97
Capitalism, 256 ff.
Carpenter, .,238
Carpenter, N., 150

Castration -complex, 81. See also

Self-validation
Cawadias, A. P., 33
Chapman, G., 154, 236
Character, affectionless, 75, 176
Christ, 89, 114, 182
Christianity, 81, 114, 129, 182, 205
Cinema, 158, 166-7, 168-9, 189,

272-3

Claremont, C. A., 32
Clark, C., 146, 245-6
Class, 219

Cleanliness, 78, 178, 187
Clitoridectomy, 102, 128
Cohesion, social, 138, 139, 160,

202, 224

Comforts,' 22, 26
Communications, 145, 154
Communism, 196, 213 ff. See also

Marxism

Competition, 190, 241 ff.
Conflict, emotional, 66-7, 70, 178
of values. See Values* conflict of
Conscience, 90 ff., 108, 199, 261,

269

Conservatism, 84, 258-9
Consistency, 55, 157, 198, 248
Controls, social, 161
Co-operation, 241
Coster, G., 47
Coulson, R. G., and Reynolds,

B. T., 40, 41

Cranfprd, V., and Seliger, R. V., 3
Creativity, 52, 83, 147
Crocker, L. H., and Pearse, I. H.,

149

Cultural chaos, 126
Culture, 99 ff., 130
Culture items, harmful, 120
Customs, ice, 103, 117-20
, harmful, 120
, origin of, 120-2

DAHLBERG, G., 104
Davis, K. B., 157
Decentralisation, 231, 244
, economics of, 244 ff .

277

Index

Decomposition, 71
Demand, economic, 13, 70, 172
Destructiveness, 51-2, 59, 207
Dicks, H. V., 3
Dirt. See Cleanliness
'Discomforts,* 22, 26
Displacement, 62, 71-2, 167
Distractions, 123, 168 ft., 203
Dobu, the, 105, 111-12, 190
Drives, 18, 20 ff.
Drucker, P., 139, 204, 206

EFFICIENCY, industrial, and size of
plant, 245-6

Ego-ideal, 90, 261

Ellis, C. Williams-. See Williams-
Ellis, C.

Emotion, nature of, 47

Emotions, 25. See also Love, Hate

Encyc. Brit., 3

FAMILY, 202, 242, 268
Fascism, 193 ff., 244
, defined, 194
Father-identification, 84, 115, 129,

196, 206, 215
Ferenczi, 76
Finger, F. W., 55
Florence, P. Sargant-. See Sargant-

Florence, P.
Flugel, J. C., 84, oo
Food supply, 105, 1 88
Fortune, R. F., 105, in
Freud, S., 40, 44, 54, 57 ff., 81, 87
Frustration, general, 50 ff., 96,

1 80, 216

, oral, 76, 104-5, 176-7
Function and status, 131 ff., 154,

201

GERMANY, cultural bifurcation in,

126. See also Fascism
Gillin, J. L., and Gillin, J. P., 99
Glenday, R., 232-3
Gorer, G., 79
Grinker, H. R., 34, 49
Group, 1301, 2301. See also In-

group
Guilt, 81, 82, 84, 119 ff., 128, 179,

182, 185, 186, 198-9

HAPPINESS, conditions of, 140
, defined as purpose, 60, 252
, meaning of word, 1 1 ff.
, not object of existence, 7 n.

Harding, D., 209
Hate, 39, 48, 49, ?o-i, 273
Head, H., and Rivers, W. H. R., 20
Health, mental, 3. See also Neu-
rosis

, physical, 23, I49~5i
Heard, G., 266
Hedonic tone, 20 ff.
Hedonism, 15, 180
Heredity, 34-5

Hitler, A., 196-7, *99, 203, 244
Homosexuality, 83 n., 155, 182-3
Horney, K., 67, 69, 258
House-training, 78-9, 105-6, 177-8
Hunger, 22

Hunt, J. McV., 55, 94, 108
Hunter, M., 105
Huntington, E., 34
Huxley, A., 231, 249

IDEAL PICTURE, 94 ff.

Identification, 39 ff., 45, 84, 167.
See also Father-identification

In-group, 152, 202, 242, 268

Individualism, 241 ff.

Inducation, 272 ff.

Industrial personality structure,
174 ff.

Industry, size and efficiency, 245

Inquisitiveness, 184

Insecurity, 158, 196-7. See Secur-
ity, Anxiety

Instincts, 30 ff.

Institutions, 100, 161-2

Introjection, 71, 181, 261

Isaacs, S., 79, 91

Isolation, 153

JAMES, W., 44, 48-9

James- Lange theory of emotions,

48-9
Jung, C. G., 35, 80

KANT, I., 114

Kardiner, A., 80, 103, 105, in,

117, 258 n.
Kipling, R., 56
Klein, M., and Riviere, J., 75
Kluver, H,, 44
Koffka, K., 63
Kwakiutl, the, 111-12, 190

LANCET, THE (quoted), 34

Lane, W. A., 151
Learning, 61 ff., 74

275

Index

Leisure, 146, 173, 236
Lichtenstein, P. M., and Small,

S. M., 3

Liddell, H. S., 55
Linton, R., 76, 99, no, 267
Love, 37 ff., 46, 55, 70, 75-6, 106,

155, 177-8, 250,273, 276

MACMURRAY, J., 182
McDougall, W., 30, 57 ff., 94
Malinowski, B., 80, 106, 126, 128
Markham, S. F., 34
Marquesans, the, 80, 109, 190
Marx, 227

Marxism, 210, 219, 257 ff.
Masochism. See Sado-masochism
Mastery, 50 ff., 146 ff., 165-7, 169,

197, 207, 216, 221
Masturbation, 81 ff., 107, 178
Materialism, 188, 204, 212, 224,

227, 258, 271

Matrists, 114, 189, 215, 260
Mead, M., 33, 85, 109, 135, 190,

243

Mechanisation, 145, 234-5
'Miseries,' 25

Monogamy, 101, 109, 155, 179
Morality, open and closed, 43
Mother-identification, 84, 113, 189
Motivation, 18 ff. See also Needs
Mottram, V. H., 34
Murray, H. A., 267
Mysticism, 44 ff.

NARCISSISM, 38

Nathan, P., 199

Nazism, 128. See also Fascism

Needs, aesthetic, 24, 30

emotional, 25, 151

for consistency, 55-6, 157

for variety, 55-6, 157

hierarchy of, 26

neurotic, 14, 128

physical, 21, 149

spiritual, 44 ff. See also c Oceanic
feeling*

, summarised, 60
Nerve-division experiment, 20
Neumann, F., 200
Neurosis, 3, 55, 66 ff., 112, 151,

1 80, 182, 260
, character-, 68
, cultural, 105, iu-12, 175, 188
, situation, 67
Newman, H. H., 35

Nexus, psychosocial, 8 ff., 191
Noise, 150, 153

'OCEANIC FEELING/ 44 J 57
CEdipus situation, 80 ff., 106, 115*

179, 186, 191, 199
Ogden, C. K., 49
Orr, J. B., 149
Osborn, R., 258

PAFN, 19

Paneth, M., 179

Paraprimitivism, 237

Parran, J., 3

Pearse, I. H., and Crocker, L. H.,
149

, and Scott- Williamson, G., 149

Peckham Health Centre, 149

Personality and society, interac-
tion of, 10, 191, 262

, changes of, 34-5

, industrial, 176 ff.

, matriform, 84

, patriform, 84, 113, 116, 191,

2i5 259

Phrasing of needs, 240-1, 242

Piaget, J., 91

Plato, 21

Pleasure, 18

'Pleasures/ 25

Popp, H. W., 150

Population, density oft 144, 232 ff.

Potency, sexual, 82, 95, 151

Prestige, 132. See also Status

Primal scene, 80, 179

Production, misuse of, 170

Productiveness, 186, 236

Progress, 266

Psyche, I9n., 97

Punishment, 55. See also Rein-
statement pattern

Purpose, 60, 138, 196-7, 217, 252

RADKE, M. J., 187

Rank, O., 74

Registrar- General's Report, 150

Reinstatement pattern, 107, 179

Religion, 114, 187, 214-15. See also

Christianity
Remechanisation, 234
Repression, 66, 71
Research, 267
Reynolds, B. T., and Coulson,

R. G., 40, 41, 42, 46
Riviere, J., and Klein, M., 75

Index

Rivers, W. H. R., and Head, H., 20
Roheim, G., 105
Role, 132

SAt>0-MASOCHISM, 59, 68, 87, 179

Samuel, Viscount, 236, 251

Sargant-Florence, P., 232

Scott- Williamson, G., and Pearse,

I- H., 149
Security, 38, 75, 158, 162, 197-8,

250. See also Insecurity
Seldes, G., 167
Self-consciousness, 266
Self-determination, 56, 159, 231,

250
Self-validation, 82, 112, 184, 191,

252

Seliger, R. V., and Cranford, V., 3
Sexuality, 33

Sherif, M., and Cantril, H., 97
Simmel, G., 150
Small, S. M., and Lichtenstein,

P. M., 3
Socialism, 8, 255 ff. See also

Marxism
Society, functioning, I3off., 202,

220
, patriform and matriform,

113 ff., 115, 187, 214-15
Specialisation, 145, 147, 150
Staley, E., 145
Standard of living, 146, 204, 216,

255
Status, 131 ff., 154, 159, 199 ff-,

217

, mobile, 135, 218
Status-base, i36ff.
Stoicism, 15

Substitute satisfactions, 13, 165 ff.
Success, 1 88, 205. See also Self-
validation

Suicide-rate, 3

Super-ego, 90 ff., 108, 199, 261,

269
Suttie, I., 3, 37, 5^-9, "5

TABOO ON TENDERNESS, 72, 1 1 6, 203

Taboos, 65, 100

, sexual, 81, 107, 151, 157, 182,

185, 191

Tanala, the, 105-6, 108, no
Taylor, G. R., 139, 221
Tennyson, A., 44
Thumb-sucking, 176
Time-sense, 55
Trobriand Islanders, 80, 106, 115

'UNPLEASURE,' 19, 25
Unwin, J. D., 146

VALUES, 100, 113, 122 ff., 163-4,

1 80, 224, 270 ff.

, conflict of, 124, 1 80, 198, 243
Variety, 55, 157, 162, 248

WAR, 207-8

Wealth, disparity of, 145

Wells, H. G., 97, 145

Watson, J. B., 48

Weaning, 76, 177. See also Frustra-
tion, oral

West, R., 261

Whitehead, T. N., 132

Whyte, L. L., 266

Wickes, F., 35

Williams-Elks, C., 148, 231

Williamson, G. Scott-. See Scott-
Williamson, G.

Wordsworth, W., 44

YOGA, 47

280