Citation

Frank LK. Am. J. Sociol. 1928; 33(5): 705-736.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1928, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/214537

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The development of personality may be studied from the point of view of the individual's learning how to manage his physiological tensions. Learning is to be considered as the process of structural and functional modification wherein the organization of internal process and of overt behavior is achieved. An organism may be viewed as a structure engaged in the capture, storage, and release of energy, the human organism at birth being least organized functionally of all the mammals, unable to execute movements beyond a few reflexes, and evidencing highly unstable physiological functioning. The child, during its long infancy, must achieve a relatively co-ordinated, integrated, and stabilized organism, physiologically and psychologically. One of the first tensional problems of infancy is presented by hunger, in the face of which the child must learn to sustain and diffuse tensions, which results in the regularization of activities. The hunger problems are made more acute at the time of weaning and the introduction of solid food, because of the substitution of a new for an accustomed stimulus. The holds for the pressure tensions incident to the elimination of waste and the muscular tensions which are released through sleep, or later through relaxation. The child is functionally complete and efficient at birth in the sympathetic reaction or so-called emotional response. As a result of shock or blocked activity a physiological condition of "panic" arises which presents tensional problems, to which the child must learn to react in terms of socially sanctioned behavior. The physiological instability of the human infant at birth presents tensional problems which are solved through the child's learning to react to gestures of those in his social world, and particularly language, which serve as substitutes for the tactual intimacies of infancy. Childhood and youth are periods which should be occupied with learning to sustain and diffuse tensions and to achieve ever more remote tensional releases according to the demands of social life. The period of adolescence represents a severe crisis to the personality, since it calls for a readjustment due to sex tensions which, if not adequately sublimated, may bring about faulty adjustment. The socialization of the individual is to be viewed as a continuation of parental and other adult instruction under which the child learns to observe the taboos and to use the institutional practices as the group-sanctioned patterns for tensional management. Status involves the relationship a person bears toward the persons around him as shown by the degrees of immunity he enjoys from their invasion of his person or goods and the taboos he must observe toward them. The ways in which individuals learn to meet these problems furnish the basis for the twofold classification of personalities into (1) the status type, and (2) the objective type. The former are predominantly concerned with the status they can create and sustain with other, even at the sacrifice of the consummations deemed most important. The latter have little or no difficulty in learning to manage their tensional problems and in facing their personal relations, and being therefore unaware of their personal relations, they will in their pursuits be primarily concerned with objective goals and the means for achieving them. The former resemble the schizoid type, and the latter the circular, cyclic, or syntonic type. This classification seems more promising and fundamental than the usual one according to occupation, interests, and other criteria, since it focuses attention first upon the organic tensions a person brings to life, and second upon the way he learns the social rules for adjusting those tensions.