心理学的影响
我们这个时代的社会和心理学理论对我们的信念也有影响。在过去的数十年前，人们被鼓励自律，自我批评，和自我超越。他们被鼓励实践自我否定，追求自我认知，按照能够确保维持自尊的方式行动。自我中心被认为是不道德的。“努力工作，”他们被这样告诫，“取得成就，这样可以获得满意和自信的回报。”大体上，我们的祖辈已经内化了这些教导。当他们遵照这些教导行动时，他们感到骄傲，当他们违背时，他们感到羞愧。
今天，这些理论实际上已经变化了，甚至彻底相反了。自尊，十九世纪的讽刺作家安布罗斯比尔斯（ Ambrose Bierce）把它定义为“错误的称赞，”现在却被认为是必须的。自我为中心已经从恶习转化成美德了，奉献生命去帮助别人的人，曾经认为是英雄和圣人般的人，现在被说成受到“取悦的疾病”的困扰和折磨。自我感觉良好开始成为成功和幸福的准则。学校里的差生，工作中不能应对挑战的工人，药物滥用者，违法者——从诊断的结果看，都是典型的缺乏自尊。
另外，就像我们的祖辈内化了他们那个时代的社会和心理学理论，大多数现代美国人都内化了自尊的教条。我们听到人们喝咖啡时说道它；我们在脱口秀中不断听到它被提及。对这个准则的挑战通常会遇到批评。
但是这个自尊的理论不是不证自明的吗？不。很显然，对于我们能力的负面感知（评价）会妨碍我们的表现。马克斯维尔.莫尔茨（Maxwell Maltz）博士介绍了一位教师通过改变学生自我认知提高他们成绩的神奇效果。这位教师观察到当这些孩子认为他们自己在某些科目上很愚蠢（或者各科都蠢），他们会无意识的按照这种自我映象去行动。他们相信他们愚蠢的，因此按照这个方式做事。明白了是他们失败主义的态度而不是能力缺乏损害了他们努力的结果，这位教师开始改变他们的自我印象。他发现当他做到这一点后，他们不再表现愚蠢了！莫尔茨从这个和其他案例中得出结论，我们的经验会以一种自我催眠的方式对自己产生作用，暗示自己的结局并鼓励自己将它变成事实
莫尔茨的案例认为自信是成功的重要因素，很多自尊理念的支持者比他走的更远。他们宣称并不存在太多自尊的情况。研究并不支持这个说法，例如，马丁.塞利曼（Martin Seligman），著名心理学研究者，积极心理学运动的创始人，引用了重要的证据，现代社会对自尊的强调引发了包括抑郁症在内的个人和社会问题，而不是解决这些问题。
莫尔茨的研究说明了缺乏自信会妨碍表现，这是一个有价值的洞察。但是这些研究没有解释为什么遍布全球的自尊的概念占据主导地位。这个问题的答案在于阿伯拉罕.马斯洛（Abraham Maslow）这样人文主义心理学家工作的普及。马斯洛描述了他称之为人类分层需求的金字塔结构，生理需求（吃、喝）构成基础。上面，从下往上依次是，安全需求、归属和爱的需求、尊重和认可的需求、美学和认知的需求（知识，理解等等）。在最顶端是自我实现的需求，或者说是我们实现潜能的需求。马斯洛认为，底层的需求必须先于更高一层的需求得到满足。很容易从马斯洛的理论推导出这样的观念：自尊是成就的前提。
当然，或许可以采纳其它的理论。一个著名的理论是澳大利亚精神病学学家维克特.弗兰克尔（Viktor Frankl）所提，这个理论大约和马斯洛的理论同时出现，基于弗兰克尔的职业实践和他在希特勒集中营的经验。弗兰克尔认为一个人的需求可以比自我实现更高：自我超越，高于狭隘的专注于自我的需求，用弗兰克尔的话讲，"最初的人类学事实［是］作为人类需要被引导，指向自身以外的人或者事情：指向一个要实现的意义或者相遇的一个人，从事的某个事业或者爱上的一个人。"一个人"通过忘记他自己，奉献他自己，忽视他自己并且关注于外在事物"成为完整的人。
用弗兰克尔的观点看，将自我实现（或者幸福）当做我们追求的目标，最终都是失败的；这种满足仅仅在"自我超越的无意的结果"才发生。弗兰克尔相信，对于生活，恰当的看法不是它能给我们什么，而是它对我们有什么期待；生活在于每天——甚至每个小时——质询我们，挑战我们去接受“找到问题的正确答案的责任，完成不断在【我们每个人】提出的任务。”
根据弗兰克尔的理论，寻找意义，包括“感受现实中内含的可能性”以及寻找挑战性任务“谁的成就可能会为［自己的］存在增加意义”。但是这些感受和寻找的人由于关注自己而受到挫败：“当现代文学局限于而且满足于自我表达——更不要说自我展示——这反映出作者毫无用处甚至荒谬的想法。更重要的是，这还创造荒谬。这很好理解，意义必须是被发现的，而不能被发明。感觉不能被创造，那些被用心创造出来的感觉都是没有意义的。”
不管我们是否完全同意弗兰克尔，有一件事是清楚的：如果在过去的几十年，弗兰克尔的理论比马斯洛和其他人文主义心理学家的理论更受重视，当代美国的文化将会显著不同。我们的态度，价值观，和信仰都会受到影响——我们只能想象一下这会有多深刻。
原文：
The Influence of Psychology
The social and psychological theories of our time also have an impact on our beliefs. Before the past few decades, people were urged to be self-disciplined, self-critical, and self-effacing. They were urged to practice self-denial, to aspire to self-knowledge, to behave in a manner that ensured they maintained self-respect. Self-centeredness was considered a vice. “Hard work,” they were told, “leads to achievement, and that in turn produces satisfaction and self-confidence.” By and large, our grandparents internalized those teachings. When they honored them in their behavior, they felt proud; when they dishonored them, they felt ashamed.
Today the theories have been changed—indeed, almost exactly reversed. Self-esteem, which nineteenth-century satirist Ambrose Bierce defined as “an erroneous appraisement,” is now considered an imperative. Self-centeredness has been transformed from vice into virtue, and people who devote their lives to helping others, people once considered heroic and saintlike, are now said to be afflicted with “a disease to please.” The formula for success and happiness begins with feeling good about ourselves. Students who do poorly in school, workers who don’t measure up to the challenges of their jobs, substance abusers, lawbreakers—all are typically diagnosed as deficient in self-esteem.
In addition, just as our grandparents internalized the social and psychological theories of their time, so most contemporary Americans have internalized the message of self-esteem. We hear people speak of it over coffee; we hear it endlessly invoked on talk shows. Challenges to its precepts are usually met with disapproval.
But isn’t the theory of self-esteem self-evident? No. A negative perception of our abilities will, of course, handicap our performance. Dr. Maxwell Maltz explains the amazing results one educator had in improving the grades of schoolchildren by changing their self-images. The educator had observed that when the children saw themselves as stupid in a particular subject (or stupid in general), they unconsciously acted to confirm their self-images. They believed they were stupid, so they acted that way. Reasoning that it was their defeatist attitude rather than any lack of ability that was undermining their efforts, the educator set out to change their self-images. He found that when he accomplished that, they no longer behaved stupidly! Maltz concludes from this and other examples that our experiences can work a kind of self-hypnotism on us, suggesting a conclusion about ourselves and then urging us to make it come true.21
Many proponents of self-esteem went far beyond Maltz’s demonstration that self-confidence is an important ingredient in success. They claimed that there is no such thing as too much self-esteem. Research does not support that claim. For example, Martin Seligman, an eminent research psychologist and founder of the movement known as positive psychology, cites significant evidence that, rather than solving personal and social problems, including depression, the modern emphasis on self-esteem causes them.22
Maltz’s research documents that lack of confidence impedes performance, a valuable insight. But such research doesn’t explain why the more global concept of self-esteem has become so dominant. The answer to that question lies in the popularization of the work of humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow. Maslow described what he called the hierarchy of human needs in the form of a pyramid, with physiological needs (food and drink) at the foundation. Above them, in ascending order, are safety needs, the need for belongingness and love, the need for esteem and approval, and aesthetic and cognitive needs (knowledge, understanding, etc.). At the pinnacle is the need for self-actualization, or fulfillment of our potential. In Maslow’s view, the lower needs must be fulfilled before the higher ones. It’s easy to see how the idea that self-esteem must precede achievement was derived from Maslow’s theory.
Other theories might have been adopted, however. A notable one is Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s, which was advanced at roughly the same time as Maslow’s and was based on both Frankl’s professional practice and his experiences in Hitler’s concentration camps. Frankl argues that one human need is higher than self-actualization: self-transcendence, the need to rise above narrow absorption with self. According to Frankl, “the primordial anthropological fact [is] that being human is being always directed, and pointing to something or someone other than oneself: to a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter, a cause to serve or a person to love.” A person becomes fully human “by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.”
Making self-actualization (or happiness) the direct object of our pursuit, in Frankl’s view, is ultimately self-defeating; such fulfillment can occur only as “the unintended effect of self-transcendence.”23 The proper perspective on life, Frankl believes, is not what it can give to us, but what it expects from us; life is daily—even hourly—questioning us, challenging us to accept “the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for [each of us].”24
Finding meaning, according to Frankl’s theory, involves “perceiving a possibility embedded in reality” and searching for challenging tasks “whose completion might add meaning to [one’s] existence.” But such perceiving and searching are frustrated by the focus on self: “As long as modern literature confines itself to, and contents itself with, self-expression—not to say self-exhibition—it reflects its authors’ sense of futility and absurdity. What is more important, it also creates absurdity. This is understandable in light of the fact that meaning must be discovered, it cannot be invented. Sense cannot be created, but what may well be created is nonsense.”25
Whether we agree completely with Frankl, one thing is clear: Contemporary American culture would be markedly different if the emphasis over the past several decades had been on Frankl’s theory rather than on the theories of Maslow and the other humanistic psychologists. All of us would have been affected—we can only imagine how profoundly—in our attitudes, values, and beliefs.
网友评论