Psychology - Robert S. Woodworth (trending books to read TXT) 📗

one source of satisfaction in the more active games. In fact, joy in motor activity must be counted as one of the most general sources of play-satisfaction. Another {489} general element is the love of social activity, which we see in dancing as well as in nearly all games and sports. Another, akin to the mere joy in motor activity, is the love of manipulation, with which we began this whole discussion.

The "escape motive" deserves a little more notice. Though you would say at first thought that no one could seek fear, and that this instinct could not possibly be utilized in play, yet a great many amusements are based on fear. The "chutes", "scenic railways", "roller coasters", etc., of the amusement parks would have no attraction if they had no thrill; and the thrill means fear. You get some of the thrill of danger, though you know that the danger is not very real. Probably the thrill itself would not be worth much, but being quickly followed by escape, it is highly satisfactory. The joy of escape more than pays for the momentary unpleasantness of fear. The fear instinct is utilized also in coasting on the snow, climbing, swimming, or any adventurous sport; in all of which there is danger, but the skilful player escapes by his own efforts. If he lost control he would get a tumble; and that is why the sport is exciting and worth while. He has his fear in check, to be sure, but it is awakened enough to make the escape from danger interesting. Nothing could be much further from the truth than to consider fear as a purely negative thing, having no positive contribution to make to human satisfaction. Though we try to arrange the serious affairs of life so as to avoid danger as much as possible, in play we seek such dangers as we can escape by skilful work. The fascination of gambling and of taking various risks probably comes from the satisfaction of the fear and escape motive.

But of all the "instincts", it is the self-assertive or masterful tendency that comes in oftenest in play. Competition, one form of self-assertion, is utilized in a tremendous number of games and sports. Either the players compete {490} as individuals, or they "choose sides" and compete as teams. No one can deny that the joy of winning is the high light in the satisfaction of play. Yet it is not the whole thing, for the game may have been worth while, even if you lose. Provided you can say, "Though I did not win, I played a good game", you have the satisfaction of having done well, which is the mastery satisfaction in its non-competitive form.

When the baby gets a horn, he is not contented to have somebody else blow it for him, but wants to blow it himself; and very pleased he is with himself when he can make it speak. "See what I can do!" is the child's way of expressing his feelings after each fresh advance in the mastery of his playthings. Great is the joy of the boy when he, himself, can make his top spin or his kite fly; and great is the girl's joy when she gets the knack of skipping a rope. Great is any one's joy when, after his first floundering, he comes to ride a bicycle, and the sense of power is enhanced in this case by covering distance easily, and so being master of a larger environment. As boys, I remember, we used to take great delight in the "apple thrower", which was simply a flexible stick, sharpened at one end to hold a green apple. With one's arm thus lengthened, the apple could be thrown to extraordinary distances, and to see our apple go sailing over a tall tree or striking the ground in the distance, gave a very satisfying sense of power. All of those toys that enable you to act at a distance, or to move rapidly, minister to the mastery impulse. Imitative play does the same, in that it enables the child to perform, in make-believe, the important deeds of adults. Children like to play at being grown-up, whether by wearing long dresses or by smoking, and it makes them feel important to do what the grown-ups do; you can observe how important they feel by the way they strut and swagger.

{491}

All in all, there are several different ways of gratifying the self-assertive or mastery impulse in play: always there is the toy or game-situation to master and manage; often self-importance is gratified by doing something big, either really or in make-believe; and usually there is a competitor to beat.

Empathy

There is still another possible way in which play may gratify the mastery impulse. Why do we like to see a kite flying? Of course, if it is our kite and we are flying it, the mastery impulse is directly aroused and gratified; but we also like to watch a kite flown by some one else, and similarly we like to watch a hawk, a balloon or aëroplane, a rocket. We like also to watch things that balance or float or in other ways seem to be superior to the force of gravity. Why should such things fascinate us? Perhaps because of empathy, the "feeling oneself into" the object contemplated. As "sympathy" means "feeling with", "empathy" means "feeling into", and the idea is that the observer projects himself into the object observed, and gets some of the satisfaction from watching an object that he would get from being that object. Would it not be grand to be a kite, would it not be masterful? Here we stand, slaves of the force of gravity, sometimes toying with it for a moment when we take a dive or a coast, at other times having to struggle against it for our very lives, and all the time bound and limited by it--while the kite soars aloft in apparent defiance of all such laws and limitations. Of course it fascinates us, since watching it gives us, by empathy, some of the sense of power and freedom that seems appropriate to the behavior of a kite. Perhaps the fascination of fire is empathy of a similar sort; for fire is power.

Having thus found the mastery impulse here, there, and {492} almost everywhere in the realm of play, we are tempted to assume a masterful attitude ourselves and say, "Look you! We have discovered the one and only play motive, which is none other than the instinct of self-assertion". Thus we should be forgetting the importance in play of danger and the escape motive, the importance of manipulation for its own sake, and the importance of the mere joy in muscular and mental activity. Also, we should be overlooking the occasional presence of laughter, the occasional presence of sex attraction, and the almost universal presence of the gregarious and other social motives. Play gratifies many instincts, not merely a single one.

Further, it is very doubtful whether the whole satisfaction of play activity can be traced to the instincts, anyway, for play may bring in the native "likes and dislikes", which we saw [Footnote: See p. 180.] to be irreducible to instinctive tendencies; and it may bring in acquired likes and interests developed out of these native likes. Play gives rise to situations that are interesting and attractive to the players, though the attraction cannot be traced to any of the instincts. The rhythm of dancing, marching, and of children's sing-song games can scarcely be traced to any of the instincts.

The sociability of games goes beyond mere gregariousness, since it calls for acting together and not simply for being together; and at the same time it goes beyond competition and self-assertion, as is seen in the satisfaction the players derive from good team work. It is true that the individual player does not lay aside his self-assertion in becoming a loyal member of a team; rather, he identifies himself with the team, and finds in competition with the opposing team an outlet for his mastery impulse. But at the same time it is obvious that self-assertion would be still more fully gratified by man-to-man contests; and therefore the {493} usual preference of a group of people for "choosing sides" shows the workings of some other motive than self-assertion. The fact seems to be that coördinated group activity is an independent source of satisfaction.

If the self-assertive impulse of an individual player is too strongly aroused, he spoils the game, just as an angry player spoils a friendly wrestling match or snowball fight, and just as a thoroughly frightened passenger spoils a trip down the rapids, which was meant to be simply thrilling. The instincts are active in play, but they must not be too active, for human play is an activity carried on well above the instinctive level, and dependent on motives that cannot wholly be analyzed in terms of the instincts.

Day Dreams

Daydreaming is a sort of play, more distinctly imaginative than most other play. Simply letting the mind run, as in the instances cited under free association, where A makes you think of B and B of C, and so on--this is not exactly daydreaming, since there is no "dream", no castle in the air nor other construction, but simply a passing from one recalled fact to another. In imaginative daydreaming, facts are not simply recalled but are rearranged or built together into a story or "castle" or scheme. A daydream typically looks toward the future, as a plan for possible doing; only, it is not a serious plan for the future--which would be controlled imagination--nor necessarily a plan which could work in real life, but merely play of imagination. If we ask the same questions here as we did regarding child's play, we find again that it is easier to define the end-result and the source of satisfaction in daydreaming than it is to define the stimulus or the exact nature of the imaginative process.

{494}

Daydreams have some motive force behind them, as can be judged from the absorption of the dreamer in his dream, and also from an examination of the end-results of this kind of imagination. Daydreams usually have a hero and that hero is usually the dreamer's self. Sometimes one is the conquering hero, and sometimes the suffering hero, but in both cases the recognized or unrecognized merit of oneself is the big fact in the story, so that the mastery motive is evidently finding satisfaction here as well as in other forms of play. Probably the conquering hero dream is the commoner and healthier variety. A classical example is that of the milkmaid who was carrying on her head a pail of milk she had been given. "I'll sell this milk for so much, and with the money buy a hen. The hen will lay so many eggs, worth so much, for which I will buy me a dress and cap. Then the young men will wish to dance with me, but I shall spurn them all with a toss of the head." Her dream at this point became so absorbing as to get hold of the motor system and call out the actual toss of the head--but we are not after the moral just now; we care simply for the dream as a very true sample of many, many daydreams. Such dreams are a means of getting for the moment the satisfaction of some desire, without the trouble of real execution; and the desire gratified is very often some variety of self-assertion. Sometimes the hero is not the dreamer's self, but some one closely identified with himself. The mother is prone to make her son the hero of daydreams and so to gratify her pride in him.

The "suffering hero" daydream seems at first thought inexplicable, for why should any one picture himself as having a bad time, as misunderstood by