-
12. Existential Psychology and Intrinsic Motivation: Deci, Maslow, and Frankl
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
12 Existential Psychology and Intrinsic Motivation: Deci, Maslow, and Frankl Overview. This chapter surveys developments in psychological theory that support the existential account of projective motivation and applies the distinction between targetable and by-product goods to these debates. It critiques recent theories of intrinsic motivation and self-actualization on this basis and interprets Viktor Frankl’s ‘‘logotherapy ’’ as a projective theory. It also applies the goal versus byproduct distinction to the problem of self-regarding attitudes such as various types of ‘‘self-esteem.’’ The discussions are not technical and connect familiar themes in psychoanalysis with the work of wellknown philosophers such as Rawls, Noddings, and Frankfurt. 1. Twentieth-Century Psychological Theories of Motivation The debate we have traced between egoistic, eudaimonist, and existential theories of human motivation can also be found in twentieth-century psychology and psychoanalysis, where we now find support for the existential model of striving will. I will focus in this chapter on only a few among several areas of important work in contemporary experimental psychology. For the theories behind these experimental approaches often uncritically take over the Transmission principle and focus mainly on the etiology of long-recognized states of prepurposive motivation—for example, whether altruistic or sympathetic feelings could be evolved responses. As Edward Deci says, the fundamental disagreements between ‘‘metatheories’’ guiding different empirical methodologies (for example, concerning whether inner experiences are merely epiphenomenal or play a causal role in voluntary action and whether human action is ultimately determined or involves liberty ) result from philosophical hypotheses that cannot be directly tested. 418 Existential Psychology and Intrinsic Motivation 419 ‘‘The research does not substantiate the assumptions’’ that constitute the metatheory but simply coheres with the framework used to interpret the results.1 Deci provides a useful summary of the main approaches to motivation in twentieth-century psychology,2 which include: I. Mechanistic Theories which hold that behavior is a direct response to stimuli, while thoughts, feelings, and choices are epiphenomenal , playing no causal role in behavior. (A) Early psychoanalysis (Freud, Adler), which held behavior to be caused primarily by unconscious drives, conscious desires, and environmental stimuli. (B) Extreme behaviorism (Watson, Skinner), which ignores conscious processes and intentionality altogether. (C) Behaviorist drive theory (Hull), which focuses on internal associations between stimuli and behavioral responses. II. Organismic Theories which hold that behavior is primarily caused by conscious internal processes, including cognitive and affective states, and thus generally counts as voluntary action. (A) Affect arousal theories (McClelland, Young, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell), which hold that behavior follows quasi-mechanistically from positive or negative affects or feelings caused by past experiences and aroused again by similar environmental cues. (B) Cognitive theories (Vroom, Hunt, etc.), which hold that actions are caused by choices that are determined in turn by beliefs and desires (or in general, pro-attitudes). (C) Humanistic psychology (Buhler and Allen, Maslow, Laing), which adds free will to a cognitive picture of motivation, with a special emphasis on personal experience. To clarify their similarities and differences, it may also be helpful to picture the relation between these theories on a two-dimensional table: Motivation Theories Noncognitive Causes/Motives Cognitive Causes/Motives Nonconscious Extreme behaviorism (Skinner); Causes of Behavior James-Lange theory of emotion Unconscious Causes Early Freudian psychoanalysis Conscious Causes Drive theory (Hull); Affect Cognitive theories; Arousal theory Humanistic theories [3.90.187.11] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:56 GMT) 420 Will as Commitment and Resolve In this chapter, I will be interested primarily in ideas from theories in the bottom-right cell of the table, since the others proceed from assumptions now largely rejected in philosophical action theory (chap. 3). When they allow conscious states to play a causal role in generating behavior, these theories also tend to be absolutely egoistic. For example, affectarousal accounts imply that all motivation flows ultimately from the drive to maximize positive feeling and minimize negative feeling,3 as per the reward -event theory (see chap. 5, sect. 2.2). Similarly, Hull’s system conceives the telos of all desire as physiological ‘‘equilibrium,’’ with drives as disturbances in this equilibrium that have to be reduced by behavior. In this version of behaviorism, ‘‘Drives activate stimulus-response associations, and drive reduction strengthens stimulus-response associations,’’ as the organism learns what kind of behavioral responses will reduce the unpleasant feeling of the drive by returning it to homeostasis.4 On this theory, actions motivated by emotions such as pity would have to be regarded as energized by the agent’s desire to...