XIII.
Arisal of the idea that psychological health is an open ended
hierarchical process:
And so, at this point the idea arose that
psychological
health is a process
-
that it is a hierarchial process
that
is it an open ended hierarchial process.
.
. . . and that, at least,
some of the steps in the process are of the following character:
Express
self impulsively at any cost (found in the early 1960s)
- - - - changes to
Deny/sacrifice self for reward later
- - - - changes to
Express self for self gain but calculatedly/rationally
- - - - changes to
Deny/sacrifice self to get acceptance now
- - - - changes to
Express self with concern for others,
and not at the expense of others
- - - - changes to
Deny/sacrifice self to existential realities (appearing after
1959)
XIV.
Development of the idea that conceptions represented miniaturization of Personality
systems in operation:
It
was at this point that it occurred to me that I was not dealing
with psychological health. Instead, I was dealing with personality
systems in miniature. So I proceeded on that basis and continued my
search. The research project was now leading us to develop the idea that
the student’s conceptions of “psychological health” represented a
kind of miniaturization of personality systems in operation.
XV.
Explanations of hypothesized personality systems (Phase III):
In
subsequent classes I had in Industrial Psychology and in Abnormal
Psychology I was able to continue the research project. I was fortunate
in that most of my subjects were taking these additional classes. Since
I had gotten the idea that these conceptions represented systems
in operation. I started to explore the people who held the conceptions
rather than the conceptions itself.
Now,
keep in mind that the students did not know what was going on and I had
to collect the information – in the middle 1950’s . . . the
psychometric data, without the students having
any idea about what I was interested in . . . and . . . I had to
contrive the collection of this data in such a way that it certainly
seemed a perfectly reasonable part of what I was doing in the courses
that I was teaching.
In the class of Abnormal Psychology, under the statement that
“you are going to have the
opportunity to take certain psychological tests to learn something about
yourself and to see what diagnosis is like in the field of psychology,
etc.” . . . I administered
a number of different
psychological tests to these students.
In the Organizational Psychology classes I contrived a number of
behavioral situations involving
the subject matter of organizational – industrial – psychology and
put these students into these situations. I would take students with
similar conceptions of healthy personality and put them into particular
situations. Then I took other students with similar conceptions from
another category and put them in the same situations. And I watched them
to see what happened . . . . . . . and I got my data.