New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson [Wilson, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, Psychology, History
ISBN: 9780976040217
Publisher: Maurice Bassett
Published: 1974-04-01T13:30:00+00:00

II

Higher Ceilings for Human Nature

‘MY STORY BEGINS in 1932 when I was working with Harry Harlow on delayed reactions in monkeys’, says Maslow, in his paper on ‘The Need to Know and the Fear of Knowing’. ‘Why did they work at this boring problem? It soon became clear that it wasn’t just the bit of food that they got as a reward for their patience. They would work almost as successfully for a bit of bread that they didn’t much care for. . . Furthermore, often they would successfully solve the problem and then casually throwaway the food reward, which, according to the motivation theory of that time, was the only reason for working at the problem and seeing it through. From conversations about these puzzling happenings emerged Dr Harlow’s suggestion that I try little blocks of wood as a lure instead of food. When I did this it was found that the monkeys worked almost as well, though for a shorter period of time. Apparently we could count on the animals to work at these problems and solve them for reasons that had little to do with hunger and food. . . Later on Harlow and various of his students [performed] a brilliant series of experiments which showed that monkeys would work hard and persistently to solve simple puzzles without any external reward; that is, just for whatever satisfactions are inherent in the puzzle-solving itself.’

This was not only counter to the various motivation theories of the time: it seems to contradict our ordinary human common sense. The sort of people who enjoy solving mathematical problems, or even doing The Times crossword puzzle, are of a certain type—intellectuals you might call them. The majority of human beings find this kind of problem-solving a bore. As to animals, their major interest seems to be in food and other such physical matters. Says Grey Walter in his book The Living Brain (1953), ‘The nearest creature to us, the chimpanzee, cannot retain an image long enough to reflect on it, however clever it may be at learning tricks or getting food. . .’ And the same assumption is inherent in Sir Julian Huxley’s distinction between three levels of existence: first, dead matter, which possesses no freedom or capacity to change itself: next, living matter, from amoebas to chimpanzees, which possesses a certain degree of freedom, but which is trapped by its environment, completely dependent upon it for stimuli; third, the human level, which possesses a new dimension of freedom, the ability to think, to imagine, to plan. ‘Unable to rehearse the possible consequences of different responses to a stimulus, without any faculty of planning, the apes and other animals cannot learn to control their feelings, the first step towards independence of environment and eventual control of it’, says Grey Walter, underlining Huxley’s point. Sartre says about a character in Nausea: ‘When his cafe empties, his head empties too.’ And that, according to Huxley and Walter, describes the lower animals. How can we reconcile

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