Notes Toward a Theory of Values
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Notes Toward a Theory of Values: The Place of Values
W. W. MEISSNER,
S.J.
In the contemporary setting of radical cultural change, there is no concept more central or more essential to an understanding of cultural change than the notion of value. The pace and flux of change force on us a concern with the formation and evolution of fundamental value-systems. Concern over the place and function of values in contemporary society reflects the uneasiness we feel before the changing constellation of value-systems that constitutes the cultural matrix of our personal existence. Yet it is no less the pattern of change that arouses our anxieties than the dawning awareness that our understanding of what contributes to and determines these changes is fragmentary and inadequate. Both from the point of view of changing cultural constellations and from that of the security of our more disciplined efforts to bring the resources of I am indebted to the following members of the Cambridge Center for Social Studies for critical suggestions: R. C. Baumhart, J. M. Becker, T. V. Purcell, J. L. Thomas, D. J. Wolf.-W.W.M., S.J. TH~ REv. W. W. MEISSNER,S.J., M.D., an advanced candidate at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, is affiliated with the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. During 1966-67, when his papers on values were written, he spent a year as research fellow at the Cambridge Center for Social Studies. He is author of Annotated Bibliography in Religion and Psychology, Group Dynamics in the Religious Life (1965), and Foundations for a Psychology of Grace (1966). His The Psychology of Authority will be published by Sheed & Ward this year. This is the first of a series of three articles. The second and third, subtitled "Values as Psychological" and "Values as Cultural," will appear in later issues.
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scientific interest to bear in coping with value change, we find ourselves confronted with a situation of some urgency. Cultural change is a dynamic process that is continually active and operative. It has an inexorable quality and an irresistible force. Cultural change is a group phenomenon, multidetermined and constantly adaptive. The place of values in this cultural context is primary. Values constitute one of the primary modalities of the expression of the culture at large and represent as well the most significant locus at which the cultural matrix touches and involves the individual member of the society. At the outset of a much larger theoretical endeavor, we are not so much concerned with the mechanisms of value formation and the systematic details of structure and function. That will come in its own good time--not quickly, I might add, since the many steps are fraught with complex issues of theory and fact. But at this point, we are concerned with the more global aspects of the problem of values. W e are interested in trying to bring into somewhat clearer focus what the problem or problems of values are and what are the relevant contexts within which they can be meaningfully considered. We are concerned, therefore, with some preliminary, yet very basic, issues relevant to the formulation of value-theory. Is there a meaningful sense in which value-theory can be regarded as a bridging concern of the social sciences? And further, what are some of the implications of evaluative formulations in social science--both methodological and applied? Values in social science Besides its origins in the philosophical literature, the concept of value has been largely the property of anthropology. Cultural anthropology has used the term in a broad sense, almost synonymous with the concept of culture itself, or at least incorporating most of the significative aspects of culture. The value concept reflects and synthesizes those aspects of the culture that are more or less goal directed. 1 While the culture as such embraces aspects of technology and material substance lying beyond the notion of value, there remains a set of attitudes, beliefs, and significances that in fact define the
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pattern of the manner in which individuals within the Culture adapt to and are involved in the more material aspects of any culture. Thus there is a constant inertial drag in the anthropological usage of the term "value" that subjects it 9 to a more generalized usage that is nearly coextensive with culture. Linton remarks that, "A value may be defined as any element, common to a series of situations, which is capable of evoking a covert response in the individual. ''2 And the covert response is itself an attitude. There is, then, a link between the value-system endogenous to any culture and the covert responses of the participating member of the society. The society, therefore, maintains control over the individual by both external and internal means. The external means are exercised through the structures of the legal apparatus and less formally through the instruments of mass communication and the infinitely broader and more significant determinants of public opinion and acceptance. But there are also internal means--the internalized norms of individual behavior that are in some sense generated and maintained by cultural processes, but that at the same time structure the internal frame of reference of the individual and serve as the valuative determinants of his behavior. It is not obvious, of course, that anthropological and individual values are synonymous. The values that originate by reason of cultural processes cannot simply be reduced to the values of the participating subjects of the culture. Nor can the values of participating subjects be identified with the cultural values to which they are exposed. The processes by which cultural values evolve are continually at work and continually interact with the intrapsychic processes through which individual values are generated. The area of overlap is often great and is probably extended in proportion to the generality and uniformity of the value-system within the culture. Here the value-systems of subcultural groupings and the heterogeneity of value-systems in a pluralistic society complicate the issues. But within these complex areas of interaction it is clear that the individual must achieve a certain degree of cultural conformity in order to achieve an acceptable level of adaptation. The community demands it. The issues, then, become issues of the degree of acceptable deviation from
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culturally established norms. The deviant is branded as criminal or mentally disturbed if he exceeds the level of tolerance of the community. At least one aspect of the community's anxiety is related to the implicit threat to culturally embedded values. There may be other aspects as well. It is interesting to speculate on the extent to which the community is able to tolerate deviant behavior that does not challenge cultural values. As Erikson has suggested, the homogeneous culture of the Sioux deals with its deviant members by assigning them a secondary role. 3 They are labelled as clowns, prostitutes, artists, or berdaches. And they are maintained in these roles without being freed from the ridicule and degradation other members of the society must utilize in order to suppress their own unconscious wishes to deviance. But primitive systems do not attack the stricken individual. They regard his deviation as the work of evil spirits, not as the product of personal motivation. In our more complex and sophisticated culture, the mechanisms are more elaborate but serve the same ends--at greater cost perhaps to the deviant member. The evolution of the notion of values in the anthropological context as major determinants of group and individual behavior has found a complementary development within the confines of sociological thinking. ~ The sociological and the anthropological conceptions of values converge on a common awareness of the function of values, even though they retain their distinctive concerns and enioy a rich heterogeneity of formulations within their respective concerns. The sociological process, cast in terms of group action, works itself out in relation to a set of beliefs, norms, and ideals that constitute the group value-system. Sociological action takes place within the context of cultural values and in part contributes to the generation of these same values. The sociological perspective and the anthropological perspective are thereby complementary, just as social action, group process, and cultural norms are reciprocally and complementarily related. Whether approached from the aspect of culture or from the aspect of group process, the valuesystem remains a central focus. There is little room for doubt that the extent to which the complex processes operating through social structures contribute to the formulation and
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vitality of the sociocultural value-system is considerable. The resources of the social sciences are strained to encompass the levels of complexity of interaction and signification involved in these processes. If we envision the value-system of a social organization not as a static property of a given social structure, but as a continually and dynamically evolving process, it becomes apparent that the value-system at any point in its evolution represents and derives from variables that depend on economic, political, religious, sociological, and cultural functions. All of these processes are constantly at work, interacting in a complex fashion to modulate and modify the dynamically shifting configuration of beliefs, attitudes, and ideals that constitute the valuesystem. These processes are in fact poorly understood. This in part reflects their complexity, but also in part reflects the lack of a central integrating concept of the value-function. We have fragments of understanding that have arisen within the disparate contexts of disciplinary concerns. The concept of value, however, stands at the interface of societal and individual processes. The value-system at the social level remains an abstraction, even as the social organization itself is conceptually constructural. The sociocultural value-system derives in some complex sense from the value-orientation of individuals. The objective and subjective are ultimately related and interdependent. The primary reality of the value-system resides in the subjectivity of the human person. The subjectively held and elaborated value-system is generated as an intrapsychic reality by the individual, but the generation is not an unrelated or solipsistic phenomenon. The individual value-function operates within a richly determined and complex context of influences. The direction of influence in the developmental setting runs downhill, as it were, from prior societal investments in value structures to the emerging individual psyche. The latter enters this interaction innocent of all values. As the process continues, however, the relations become considerably more complex. Values are not merely assimilated; they are formed. The formation rests upon creatively autonomous processes within the individual psyche. Piaget's considerations of assimilation and accommodation are perhaps relevant here. The in-
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jection of an autonomous element into the process of value formation adds another aspect to the evolutionary character of the sociocultural value-system. The system of group values rests upon the formational processes of individuals, and these processes are continually and uniquely operative in the respective participating members of the group. The individual, then, contributes to a progressive modification of his own value-system, and secondarily and derivatively to the value-system at work in the culture at large. The value-function, both in terms of its operation at the level of social action and in terms of its function within individual personality, is embedded in an economic matrix. The accumulation of capital, the distribution of goods, the evolution of technology, the resources for production--all economic factors--along with other economic elements too numerous to catalogue, form a constantly modulating and shifting constellation of influences that affect the character of values in multiple, complex, and subtle ways. For the moment, we can only advert to the significance of this aspect of the value problem. The relations are undoubtedly reciprocal insofar as economic determinants contribute to the formation and genesis of values, and conversely the operative value-systems at all levels are determinants within the economic process. The flux of economic processes has an intrinsic relevance to psychological processes, but the pattern and mechanisms by which such relevance is established and maintained need elaboration. The elaboration is problematic from both ends--the economic and the psychologic. As Veblen has commented: "Insofar as it is a science in the current sense of the term, any science, such as economics, which has to dowith human conduct, becomes a genetic inquiry into the human scheme of life. ''5 It need only be added that the human scheme of life is equivalently the context of value-formation. Inextricably interwoven into the fabric of social action, the political structures and functions of the social organism both express and concretely depend on the value-orientations of its citizens. The unimpeded exercise of public administration requires the consensus of the governed in some fundamental fashion. Where government has divorced itself from the roots of political value-formation in a society, the fate of government becomes precarious.
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At the same time, the political organization takes its concrete form as an expression of the value aspirations of its people. This is a transparent process in the democratic or republicai1 forms of government where individual values are systematically brought to bear in the exercise of franchise. But it is also at work in more totalitarian forms. Furthermore, to the extent that government has become active in the manipulation of the resources of the society, particularly in economic terms, the political process has become all the more intimately involved in complex ways with the forms of social action that impinge on value-formation. As Easton points out, "what distinguishes political interactions from all other kinds of social interactions is that they are predominantly oriented toward the authoritative allocation of values for a society. TM Values and psy chic function
The ultimate locus of value-formation and the primary level of organization of the value-system reside in the human psyche. Even at this fundamental level, however, the as yet unanswered questions abound. The place of values as a functional aspect of human personality is by no means secure. There has not yet emerged any systematic attempt to articulate the psychology of values. Implicit in such a theory of value, there are any number of sticky issues. It is apparent that values are at once a consciously-held and within limits articulable aspect of the personality. Yet they are simultaneously the vehicle of individual beliefs and the dictates of conscience. They, therefore, open out onto a highly-organized level of personality function in which ethical demands and prohibitions become relevant aspects of behavior. In psychoanalytic terms, then, the value-system seems to serve as a functional system with close relations to both ego-functions and superego-functions. Behind the issue of value formation and structure as part of the psychic organization, the complex and fluid interaction of ego and superego would seem to demand clarification. It seems safe and perhaps more significant to suggest that the value-system
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has decisive involvements with man's affective development. The psychic structure must be seen in its integral totality. One of the essential insights of the psychological perspective is that the highest levels of psychic functioning are derivative from, dependent on, and reciprocally interactive with the fundamental, affective, and instinctual roots of human existence. The value-system represents an organized system within the mental apparatus that serves an integrative and directive function, and thus represents a high level of psychic activity. Yet values have their roots in the basic driving forces of human nature. Their understanding requires a careful elaboration of this relationship, just as the understanding of ego-functions in general cannot stand alone. They stand in intricate yet specific relation to the vital stratum of the mind and must be understood as such. Between the evolved value-system and its correlative sense of identity in the structure of ego, on the one hand, and the dynamic forces of the unconscious, the roots of narcissism, aggression, libido, and the basic instincts that provide the motive power of life, on the other hand, the connections are complex and multiple. Ethical relevance In terms of this form of analysis, we can begin to bring into focus some of the fundamental problems regarding the inner meaning of basic ethical concerns. Values are rational and authentic, or they are irrational and inauthentic. It is only in relation to an evolved psychology of values, however, that it becomes possible to clarify the bases of choice so that authentic values can be recognized and realized. The authenticity of the value-system rests on a mature and integral psychological foundation. Thus authentic values should emerge from an inquiry into their bases purified and confirmed. Inauthentic values, however, rooted as they must be in unconscious fear, guilt, and infantile anxieties and wishes, would show their true substance. It is important, at this juncture, that we be clear about the role of an emerging psychology of values. The psychology of values aims at understanding the nature of value-formation and function. Its object is values, authentic as well as inauthentic, ethical as well as nonethical, religious as well as
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irreligious. The scientific interest is neutral; it makes no value judgments. Its conclusions, however, need not be neutral. If it exposes the infantile roots of inauthentic values, that relation is neutral. If, however, it concludes that such infantility underlies immature, conflictuaI, and neurotic behavior, the conclusion strains credulity if it claims neutrality. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic is paralleled by another distinction between values that are expressive and those that are repressive. Expressive values flow from the totality of man's psychic need and are correlative with it. But only those values can be regarded as authentic that express the fundamental needs of man at all strata of his existence in some integral fashion. Unquestionably, the biological and instinctual dimension is vital and significant, but the authentic system of values cannot express this dimension of human existence without at the same time expressing the more complex levels of the mental apparatus. Authentic values cannot express the instinctual without simultaneously expressing the intellectual and moral. They cannot satisfy the id and at the same time deprive the ego and superego. Authentic values, then, imply a certain integrality that is correlative with the spontaneity and autonomy of psychic functioning. Values can be repressive as well. They are particularly so when they serve the demands of a harsh or severe superego. But repression, or better, the repressive aspect of values is not synonymous with lack of authenticity. Insofar as the value-system in some degree serves the purposes of instinctual renunciation, it is repressive. It can also be authentic and serve the same ends. There is also no question that cultural values can be repressive in the sense that they repress the free expression of autonomous personality out of false motives of fear and taboo. The same repressive morality in the individual distorts the authenticity of the value-system in a kind of sphincter morality that reflects the inner imbalance of personality. Neurotic guilt can only stem from an inauthentic and repressive value-structure. Value-theory and ethics
One must be careful to strike a balance in working out the relations between
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value-theory and ethics. T h e balance is delicate and too easily t h r o w n out of kilter. A recent propagandizing book had this to say: The values of a free society are the expressions of an unthwarted emotional foundation. Potential feelings of affection are liberated from warping, constricting social forms. The creative imagination then conceives social relations in which emotional lives can grow to fullness, with minimal frustration and defeat. Happiness liberates human affections and energies through its own emotion, and all authentic values share in this liberation. ~ T o add balance to this formulation, we would have to add that authentic values cannot be achieved in the face of completely unthwarted emotion, that they imply and express some form of social constraint, and finally that authentic values not only liberate human affections and energies but also serve the construction of psychic structure and the diversion of instinctual energy to constructive and positive enterprises. Needless to say, the balance is difficult to attain and maintain without an integral theory of value-function. T h e development of such a theory is the w o r k of science, psychological and social. T h e further question is whether the theory is to become normative, whether it is itself to represent a scientifically-derived value. It is not the place of science to issue axiological directives. T h e relation between value propositions and indicative statements of fact is complex. Certainly normative statements must be kept distinct from descriptive statements, even though descriptive and theoretical statements can validly be made about the psychological processes involved in either. As H a r t m a n n has remarked: The relevant difference is rather between the empirical study of actual valuations, their study in the context of psychology or social science, on the one hand, and the decision on what "ought" to be valued, on the other. The concept of moral value has to be demarcated from the concept of those mental acts by which these values are set or realized. 8 T h e decision as to what "ought" to be valued is an ethical decision. One must respect the autonomy of ethics as a specific and separate discipline. T h e issue is inevitably raised, however, regarding the relation of psychology and
Notes Toward a Theory of Values
13 3
ethics. It is not enough to say that psychology makes descriptive statements and ethics makes normative statements. The matter is more complex, for psychology, and the other social sciences, for that matter, make affirmative statements that are scientifically relevant and at the same time implicitly evaluative. The interaction and reciprocal interplay of ethics and socialscience approach to values can only be raised here, but it requires exploration. It is clear that the decision as to what "ought" to be valued belongs to ethics, but it is not clear to what extent that decision is or ought to be derived from a prior scientific statement about the nature of man and his behavior. Sexuality
An area where this problem becomes more or less critical is in relation to human sexuality. The human sexual response is the object of the most intense psychological and ethical concern. The theory of values cannot be divorced from a theory of sexuality, any more than the functioning valuesystem can function in isolation from the motive power of libido. The broader implications of sexuality are intimately involved in the emergence and integration of the mature adult personality. Personal identity rests on and includes a mature sense of sexual identity. Further, a mature and authentic value-system is a correlative of the mature sense of identity. Such a value-system is highly relevant to the individual's attitudes toward and participation in sexual activity. Sexual behavior is, in fact, the vehicle for some of the most significant aspects of the value-system. From the point of view of ethics, the ethical system contributes specific normative statements that set the standards for sexual behavior. W e are concerned on one level with the manner in which such prescriptive statements become incorporated into the cultural and individual value-systems. But on another level, we are concerned with the question of the extent to which social science contributes to the ethical decision. Can the norm of mature personality development and autonomous adaptation serve as a standard for judging ethical matters? Or are the grounds of ethical decision quite independent?
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Methodology T h e problem has been approached from a slightly different angle in W e r k meister's essay on the problem of values in relation to the social sciences. H e says: I submit that "the problem of value" occurs in the social sciences in at least three basic forms; that these three forms must be strictly separated if we are to solve "the" problem at all; and that each form, in its own way, is ultimately related to an all-inclusive value theory . . . . And I submit, more specifically, that in dealing with "the problem of value" in the present context we must speak of (a) the value of the social sciences, (b) values in the social sciences, and (c) values for the social sciences. 9 T h e value of the social sciences is a major presumption of our approach, and not part of the problem. But the place of values in and for the social sciences touches the problem directly. T h e role of values in social science deserves exploration. T h e y function both as objects of study and as explanatory constructs. T h e y are pertinent to the understanding of man's behavior as purposive, which is to say, more than adaptive. While it is apparent that values are operative at large in all areas of human endeavor, the consensus on the admissability of values as such to consideration by the social sciences is not complete. Values resist attempts to reduce them to hard-data, tough-minded approaches. Yet they are there, operative, a functioning aspect of psychic and social processes, but not without methodological complexities. Values, indeed, represent a complex aspect of human behavior. T h e y are subjectively verifiable and can be inferred from the behavior of individuals, groups, and societies. Yet they are difficult to verify and identify directly. While the methodological problems are considerable, it also remains true that many of the most fundamental areas of behaviorist concern share similar problems in conceptualization and analysis. 1~ It is noteworthy that the debate over this central and provocative methodological issue does not slow the pace of heuristic thinking and research.
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Despite these problems, it seems clear that values have a decided place in the social and psychological sciences, precisely as explanatory constructs. If accepted as no more than heuristic and transitional concepts, they are extremely useful in the understanding of behavior. This is so, I feel, precisely because they are operative at such diverse levels of the social system, yet serve as a focal point of interaction and reciprocal influence among these many levels. Kluckhohn et al., in their excellent discussion of values, cited a comment of the Cornell value-study group: The concept "value" supplies a point of convergence for the various specialized social sciences, and is a key concept for the integration with studies in the humanities. Value is potentially a bridging concept which can link together many diverse specialized studies--from the experimental psychology of perception to the analysis of political ideologies, from budget studies in economics to aesthetic theory and philosophy of language, from literature to race riots...11 Ethical neutrality
The role of values for the social sciences and psychology is something else again. It raises ethical issues. The exercise of Weberian ethical neutrality remains a scientific ideal, subserving the scientific objective of objectivity. The ideal is no less applicable i n the social sciences than in any other. This, of course, represents a major value for the functioning of scientific method. But it applies primarily at ttle investigative, research, heuristic, and theoretical levels. But more and more in the contemporary setting, the social sciences are being drawn into the areas of social action, into social planning, into the areas of application of scientific understanding. At this level objectivity and neutrality are less pertinent and evaluative judgment comes into greater prominence. The value-system inherent in the discipline and the value-system of the individual scientist become operative parts of the processes of decision and direction by which science is applied to personal and social problems. The psychologist will take a stand against mental illness, the sociologist against anomie. But is there anything in the investigative and theoretical
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approaches of these sciences that dictates these value-decisions, or are they based on nonscientific determinants of valuation? Whatever the answers to the foregoing question, it is not difficult to see that the question itself brings us to the fringes of scientific concern where science is brought face to face with fundamentally ethical concerns. At this level the need for a meeting ground between the scientific and the humanistic disciplines becomes acute. The one area of concern they share is that of values. Particularly significant in this regard is the social and personal function of religion. Religion or religions are the social repositories of specific valuesystems. Part of the social science study of religion entails the examination of religious values, which may or may not be embedded in a moral code, but which inevitably underly religious behavior and cult. The religious influence is unquestionably one of the most important determinants of cultural values and has a profound influence on the emergence of personal values as well. But the religious function, if we may call it that, does not operate in a vacuum. It participates and reciprocates with all the complex forces of social and personal change. It is a part of the complex interaction, not apart from it. Consequently, organized religion as a social structure not only influences the value-system but it is continually interacting in the cultural matrix with forces that cause it continuously to adapt, modify, clarify, and reinterpret the value-system that is its unique and traditional inspiration.
Conclusion We have tried to raise here in a more or less programmatic way the problem of values and its implications. While the issues are complex, it becomes readily apparent that there is a primary need for a theory of value formation and structure that might provide the basis for integration of the respective contributions of the various social sciences. Values are major forces in individual and social behavior. The understanding of values assumes a primary significance as an objective of the social sciences. But this objective cannot be appropriated to any one of the approaches to the study of man. Its inherent
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complexity requires the combined and integrated contributions of a variety of disciplines. Beyond that intrascientific objective, the problem of values has important reverberations with other nonscientific human concerns. T h e fact that values, systematically understood, offer an area of convergence with these peripheral interests introduces the further prospect of meaningful communication and understanding of human behavior. References
1. Belshaw, C. S., "The Identification of Values in Anthropology," Amer. ]. Sociol., 1959, 64, 555-562. 2. Linton, R., The Cultural Background .of Personality. New York, Appleton-Century, 1945, pp. 111-112. 3. Erikson, E. H., Childhood and Society, 2nd ed. New York, Norton, 1963, pp. 149-153. 4. Adler, R., "The Value Concept in Sociology," Amer. J. Sociol., 1956, 62, 272-279. 5. Veblen, T., The Place of Science in Modern Civilization. New York, Huepsche, 1919. 6. Easton, D., A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., PrenticeHall, 1965, p. 50. 7. Feuer, L. S., Psychoanalysis and Ethics. Springfield, Ill., Thomas, 1955, p. 30. 8. Hartmann, H., Psychoanalysis and Moral Values. New York, International Universities Press, 1960, pp. 51-52. 9. Werkmeister, W. H., "Social Science and the Problem of Value." In Schoek, S., and Wiggins, J. W., eds., Scientism and Values. New York, Van Nostrand, !960, p. 4. 10. Meissner, W. W., S.J., "Non-constructural Aspects of Psychological Constructs," Psychol. Rev., 1958, 65, 143-150. -, "Intervening Constructs-Dimensions of Controversy," Psyehol. Rev., 1960, 67, 51-72. 11. Kluckhohn, C. et al., "Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action." In Parsons, T., and Shils, E. A., eds., Toward a General Theory of Action. New York, Harper, 1962, p. 389.
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Notes Toward a Theory of Values: The Place of Values
W. W. MEISSNER,
S.J.
In the contemporary setting of radical cultural change, there is no concept more central or more essential to an understanding of cultural change than the notion of value. The pace and flux of change force on us a concern with the formation and evolution of fundamental value-systems. Concern over the place and function of values in contemporary society reflects the uneasiness we feel before the changing constellation of value-systems that constitutes the cultural matrix of our personal existence. Yet it is no less the pattern of change that arouses our anxieties than the dawning awareness that our understanding of what contributes to and determines these changes is fragmentary and inadequate. Both from the point of view of changing cultural constellations and from that of the security of our more disciplined efforts to bring the resources of I am indebted to the following members of the Cambridge Center for Social Studies for critical suggestions: R. C. Baumhart, J. M. Becker, T. V. Purcell, J. L. Thomas, D. J. Wolf.-W.W.M., S.J. TH~ REv. W. W. MEISSNER,S.J., M.D., an advanced candidate at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, is affiliated with the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. During 1966-67, when his papers on values were written, he spent a year as research fellow at the Cambridge Center for Social Studies. He is author of Annotated Bibliography in Religion and Psychology, Group Dynamics in the Religious Life (1965), and Foundations for a Psychology of Grace (1966). His The Psychology of Authority will be published by Sheed & Ward this year. This is the first of a series of three articles. The second and third, subtitled "Values as Psychological" and "Values as Cultural," will appear in later issues.
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scientific interest to bear in coping with value change, we find ourselves confronted with a situation of some urgency. Cultural change is a dynamic process that is continually active and operative. It has an inexorable quality and an irresistible force. Cultural change is a group phenomenon, multidetermined and constantly adaptive. The place of values in this cultural context is primary. Values constitute one of the primary modalities of the expression of the culture at large and represent as well the most significant locus at which the cultural matrix touches and involves the individual member of the society. At the outset of a much larger theoretical endeavor, we are not so much concerned with the mechanisms of value formation and the systematic details of structure and function. That will come in its own good time--not quickly, I might add, since the many steps are fraught with complex issues of theory and fact. But at this point, we are concerned with the more global aspects of the problem of values. W e are interested in trying to bring into somewhat clearer focus what the problem or problems of values are and what are the relevant contexts within which they can be meaningfully considered. We are concerned, therefore, with some preliminary, yet very basic, issues relevant to the formulation of value-theory. Is there a meaningful sense in which value-theory can be regarded as a bridging concern of the social sciences? And further, what are some of the implications of evaluative formulations in social science--both methodological and applied? Values in social science Besides its origins in the philosophical literature, the concept of value has been largely the property of anthropology. Cultural anthropology has used the term in a broad sense, almost synonymous with the concept of culture itself, or at least incorporating most of the significative aspects of culture. The value concept reflects and synthesizes those aspects of the culture that are more or less goal directed. 1 While the culture as such embraces aspects of technology and material substance lying beyond the notion of value, there remains a set of attitudes, beliefs, and significances that in fact define the
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pattern of the manner in which individuals within the Culture adapt to and are involved in the more material aspects of any culture. Thus there is a constant inertial drag in the anthropological usage of the term "value" that subjects it 9 to a more generalized usage that is nearly coextensive with culture. Linton remarks that, "A value may be defined as any element, common to a series of situations, which is capable of evoking a covert response in the individual. ''2 And the covert response is itself an attitude. There is, then, a link between the value-system endogenous to any culture and the covert responses of the participating member of the society. The society, therefore, maintains control over the individual by both external and internal means. The external means are exercised through the structures of the legal apparatus and less formally through the instruments of mass communication and the infinitely broader and more significant determinants of public opinion and acceptance. But there are also internal means--the internalized norms of individual behavior that are in some sense generated and maintained by cultural processes, but that at the same time structure the internal frame of reference of the individual and serve as the valuative determinants of his behavior. It is not obvious, of course, that anthropological and individual values are synonymous. The values that originate by reason of cultural processes cannot simply be reduced to the values of the participating subjects of the culture. Nor can the values of participating subjects be identified with the cultural values to which they are exposed. The processes by which cultural values evolve are continually at work and continually interact with the intrapsychic processes through which individual values are generated. The area of overlap is often great and is probably extended in proportion to the generality and uniformity of the value-system within the culture. Here the value-systems of subcultural groupings and the heterogeneity of value-systems in a pluralistic society complicate the issues. But within these complex areas of interaction it is clear that the individual must achieve a certain degree of cultural conformity in order to achieve an acceptable level of adaptation. The community demands it. The issues, then, become issues of the degree of acceptable deviation from
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culturally established norms. The deviant is branded as criminal or mentally disturbed if he exceeds the level of tolerance of the community. At least one aspect of the community's anxiety is related to the implicit threat to culturally embedded values. There may be other aspects as well. It is interesting to speculate on the extent to which the community is able to tolerate deviant behavior that does not challenge cultural values. As Erikson has suggested, the homogeneous culture of the Sioux deals with its deviant members by assigning them a secondary role. 3 They are labelled as clowns, prostitutes, artists, or berdaches. And they are maintained in these roles without being freed from the ridicule and degradation other members of the society must utilize in order to suppress their own unconscious wishes to deviance. But primitive systems do not attack the stricken individual. They regard his deviation as the work of evil spirits, not as the product of personal motivation. In our more complex and sophisticated culture, the mechanisms are more elaborate but serve the same ends--at greater cost perhaps to the deviant member. The evolution of the notion of values in the anthropological context as major determinants of group and individual behavior has found a complementary development within the confines of sociological thinking. ~ The sociological and the anthropological conceptions of values converge on a common awareness of the function of values, even though they retain their distinctive concerns and enioy a rich heterogeneity of formulations within their respective concerns. The sociological process, cast in terms of group action, works itself out in relation to a set of beliefs, norms, and ideals that constitute the group value-system. Sociological action takes place within the context of cultural values and in part contributes to the generation of these same values. The sociological perspective and the anthropological perspective are thereby complementary, just as social action, group process, and cultural norms are reciprocally and complementarily related. Whether approached from the aspect of culture or from the aspect of group process, the valuesystem remains a central focus. There is little room for doubt that the extent to which the complex processes operating through social structures contribute to the formulation and
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vitality of the sociocultural value-system is considerable. The resources of the social sciences are strained to encompass the levels of complexity of interaction and signification involved in these processes. If we envision the value-system of a social organization not as a static property of a given social structure, but as a continually and dynamically evolving process, it becomes apparent that the value-system at any point in its evolution represents and derives from variables that depend on economic, political, religious, sociological, and cultural functions. All of these processes are constantly at work, interacting in a complex fashion to modulate and modify the dynamically shifting configuration of beliefs, attitudes, and ideals that constitute the valuesystem. These processes are in fact poorly understood. This in part reflects their complexity, but also in part reflects the lack of a central integrating concept of the value-function. We have fragments of understanding that have arisen within the disparate contexts of disciplinary concerns. The concept of value, however, stands at the interface of societal and individual processes. The value-system at the social level remains an abstraction, even as the social organization itself is conceptually constructural. The sociocultural value-system derives in some complex sense from the value-orientation of individuals. The objective and subjective are ultimately related and interdependent. The primary reality of the value-system resides in the subjectivity of the human person. The subjectively held and elaborated value-system is generated as an intrapsychic reality by the individual, but the generation is not an unrelated or solipsistic phenomenon. The individual value-function operates within a richly determined and complex context of influences. The direction of influence in the developmental setting runs downhill, as it were, from prior societal investments in value structures to the emerging individual psyche. The latter enters this interaction innocent of all values. As the process continues, however, the relations become considerably more complex. Values are not merely assimilated; they are formed. The formation rests upon creatively autonomous processes within the individual psyche. Piaget's considerations of assimilation and accommodation are perhaps relevant here. The in-
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jection of an autonomous element into the process of value formation adds another aspect to the evolutionary character of the sociocultural value-system. The system of group values rests upon the formational processes of individuals, and these processes are continually and uniquely operative in the respective participating members of the group. The individual, then, contributes to a progressive modification of his own value-system, and secondarily and derivatively to the value-system at work in the culture at large. The value-function, both in terms of its operation at the level of social action and in terms of its function within individual personality, is embedded in an economic matrix. The accumulation of capital, the distribution of goods, the evolution of technology, the resources for production--all economic factors--along with other economic elements too numerous to catalogue, form a constantly modulating and shifting constellation of influences that affect the character of values in multiple, complex, and subtle ways. For the moment, we can only advert to the significance of this aspect of the value problem. The relations are undoubtedly reciprocal insofar as economic determinants contribute to the formation and genesis of values, and conversely the operative value-systems at all levels are determinants within the economic process. The flux of economic processes has an intrinsic relevance to psychological processes, but the pattern and mechanisms by which such relevance is established and maintained need elaboration. The elaboration is problematic from both ends--the economic and the psychologic. As Veblen has commented: "Insofar as it is a science in the current sense of the term, any science, such as economics, which has to dowith human conduct, becomes a genetic inquiry into the human scheme of life. ''5 It need only be added that the human scheme of life is equivalently the context of value-formation. Inextricably interwoven into the fabric of social action, the political structures and functions of the social organism both express and concretely depend on the value-orientations of its citizens. The unimpeded exercise of public administration requires the consensus of the governed in some fundamental fashion. Where government has divorced itself from the roots of political value-formation in a society, the fate of government becomes precarious.
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At the same time, the political organization takes its concrete form as an expression of the value aspirations of its people. This is a transparent process in the democratic or republicai1 forms of government where individual values are systematically brought to bear in the exercise of franchise. But it is also at work in more totalitarian forms. Furthermore, to the extent that government has become active in the manipulation of the resources of the society, particularly in economic terms, the political process has become all the more intimately involved in complex ways with the forms of social action that impinge on value-formation. As Easton points out, "what distinguishes political interactions from all other kinds of social interactions is that they are predominantly oriented toward the authoritative allocation of values for a society. TM Values and psy chic function
The ultimate locus of value-formation and the primary level of organization of the value-system reside in the human psyche. Even at this fundamental level, however, the as yet unanswered questions abound. The place of values as a functional aspect of human personality is by no means secure. There has not yet emerged any systematic attempt to articulate the psychology of values. Implicit in such a theory of value, there are any number of sticky issues. It is apparent that values are at once a consciously-held and within limits articulable aspect of the personality. Yet they are simultaneously the vehicle of individual beliefs and the dictates of conscience. They, therefore, open out onto a highly-organized level of personality function in which ethical demands and prohibitions become relevant aspects of behavior. In psychoanalytic terms, then, the value-system seems to serve as a functional system with close relations to both ego-functions and superego-functions. Behind the issue of value formation and structure as part of the psychic organization, the complex and fluid interaction of ego and superego would seem to demand clarification. It seems safe and perhaps more significant to suggest that the value-system
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has decisive involvements with man's affective development. The psychic structure must be seen in its integral totality. One of the essential insights of the psychological perspective is that the highest levels of psychic functioning are derivative from, dependent on, and reciprocally interactive with the fundamental, affective, and instinctual roots of human existence. The value-system represents an organized system within the mental apparatus that serves an integrative and directive function, and thus represents a high level of psychic activity. Yet values have their roots in the basic driving forces of human nature. Their understanding requires a careful elaboration of this relationship, just as the understanding of ego-functions in general cannot stand alone. They stand in intricate yet specific relation to the vital stratum of the mind and must be understood as such. Between the evolved value-system and its correlative sense of identity in the structure of ego, on the one hand, and the dynamic forces of the unconscious, the roots of narcissism, aggression, libido, and the basic instincts that provide the motive power of life, on the other hand, the connections are complex and multiple. Ethical relevance In terms of this form of analysis, we can begin to bring into focus some of the fundamental problems regarding the inner meaning of basic ethical concerns. Values are rational and authentic, or they are irrational and inauthentic. It is only in relation to an evolved psychology of values, however, that it becomes possible to clarify the bases of choice so that authentic values can be recognized and realized. The authenticity of the value-system rests on a mature and integral psychological foundation. Thus authentic values should emerge from an inquiry into their bases purified and confirmed. Inauthentic values, however, rooted as they must be in unconscious fear, guilt, and infantile anxieties and wishes, would show their true substance. It is important, at this juncture, that we be clear about the role of an emerging psychology of values. The psychology of values aims at understanding the nature of value-formation and function. Its object is values, authentic as well as inauthentic, ethical as well as nonethical, religious as well as
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irreligious. The scientific interest is neutral; it makes no value judgments. Its conclusions, however, need not be neutral. If it exposes the infantile roots of inauthentic values, that relation is neutral. If, however, it concludes that such infantility underlies immature, conflictuaI, and neurotic behavior, the conclusion strains credulity if it claims neutrality. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic is paralleled by another distinction between values that are expressive and those that are repressive. Expressive values flow from the totality of man's psychic need and are correlative with it. But only those values can be regarded as authentic that express the fundamental needs of man at all strata of his existence in some integral fashion. Unquestionably, the biological and instinctual dimension is vital and significant, but the authentic system of values cannot express this dimension of human existence without at the same time expressing the more complex levels of the mental apparatus. Authentic values cannot express the instinctual without simultaneously expressing the intellectual and moral. They cannot satisfy the id and at the same time deprive the ego and superego. Authentic values, then, imply a certain integrality that is correlative with the spontaneity and autonomy of psychic functioning. Values can be repressive as well. They are particularly so when they serve the demands of a harsh or severe superego. But repression, or better, the repressive aspect of values is not synonymous with lack of authenticity. Insofar as the value-system in some degree serves the purposes of instinctual renunciation, it is repressive. It can also be authentic and serve the same ends. There is also no question that cultural values can be repressive in the sense that they repress the free expression of autonomous personality out of false motives of fear and taboo. The same repressive morality in the individual distorts the authenticity of the value-system in a kind of sphincter morality that reflects the inner imbalance of personality. Neurotic guilt can only stem from an inauthentic and repressive value-structure. Value-theory and ethics
One must be careful to strike a balance in working out the relations between
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value-theory and ethics. T h e balance is delicate and too easily t h r o w n out of kilter. A recent propagandizing book had this to say: The values of a free society are the expressions of an unthwarted emotional foundation. Potential feelings of affection are liberated from warping, constricting social forms. The creative imagination then conceives social relations in which emotional lives can grow to fullness, with minimal frustration and defeat. Happiness liberates human affections and energies through its own emotion, and all authentic values share in this liberation. ~ T o add balance to this formulation, we would have to add that authentic values cannot be achieved in the face of completely unthwarted emotion, that they imply and express some form of social constraint, and finally that authentic values not only liberate human affections and energies but also serve the construction of psychic structure and the diversion of instinctual energy to constructive and positive enterprises. Needless to say, the balance is difficult to attain and maintain without an integral theory of value-function. T h e development of such a theory is the w o r k of science, psychological and social. T h e further question is whether the theory is to become normative, whether it is itself to represent a scientifically-derived value. It is not the place of science to issue axiological directives. T h e relation between value propositions and indicative statements of fact is complex. Certainly normative statements must be kept distinct from descriptive statements, even though descriptive and theoretical statements can validly be made about the psychological processes involved in either. As H a r t m a n n has remarked: The relevant difference is rather between the empirical study of actual valuations, their study in the context of psychology or social science, on the one hand, and the decision on what "ought" to be valued, on the other. The concept of moral value has to be demarcated from the concept of those mental acts by which these values are set or realized. 8 T h e decision as to what "ought" to be valued is an ethical decision. One must respect the autonomy of ethics as a specific and separate discipline. T h e issue is inevitably raised, however, regarding the relation of psychology and
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ethics. It is not enough to say that psychology makes descriptive statements and ethics makes normative statements. The matter is more complex, for psychology, and the other social sciences, for that matter, make affirmative statements that are scientifically relevant and at the same time implicitly evaluative. The interaction and reciprocal interplay of ethics and socialscience approach to values can only be raised here, but it requires exploration. It is clear that the decision as to what "ought" to be valued belongs to ethics, but it is not clear to what extent that decision is or ought to be derived from a prior scientific statement about the nature of man and his behavior. Sexuality
An area where this problem becomes more or less critical is in relation to human sexuality. The human sexual response is the object of the most intense psychological and ethical concern. The theory of values cannot be divorced from a theory of sexuality, any more than the functioning valuesystem can function in isolation from the motive power of libido. The broader implications of sexuality are intimately involved in the emergence and integration of the mature adult personality. Personal identity rests on and includes a mature sense of sexual identity. Further, a mature and authentic value-system is a correlative of the mature sense of identity. Such a value-system is highly relevant to the individual's attitudes toward and participation in sexual activity. Sexual behavior is, in fact, the vehicle for some of the most significant aspects of the value-system. From the point of view of ethics, the ethical system contributes specific normative statements that set the standards for sexual behavior. W e are concerned on one level with the manner in which such prescriptive statements become incorporated into the cultural and individual value-systems. But on another level, we are concerned with the question of the extent to which social science contributes to the ethical decision. Can the norm of mature personality development and autonomous adaptation serve as a standard for judging ethical matters? Or are the grounds of ethical decision quite independent?
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Methodology T h e problem has been approached from a slightly different angle in W e r k meister's essay on the problem of values in relation to the social sciences. H e says: I submit that "the problem of value" occurs in the social sciences in at least three basic forms; that these three forms must be strictly separated if we are to solve "the" problem at all; and that each form, in its own way, is ultimately related to an all-inclusive value theory . . . . And I submit, more specifically, that in dealing with "the problem of value" in the present context we must speak of (a) the value of the social sciences, (b) values in the social sciences, and (c) values for the social sciences. 9 T h e value of the social sciences is a major presumption of our approach, and not part of the problem. But the place of values in and for the social sciences touches the problem directly. T h e role of values in social science deserves exploration. T h e y function both as objects of study and as explanatory constructs. T h e y are pertinent to the understanding of man's behavior as purposive, which is to say, more than adaptive. While it is apparent that values are operative at large in all areas of human endeavor, the consensus on the admissability of values as such to consideration by the social sciences is not complete. Values resist attempts to reduce them to hard-data, tough-minded approaches. Yet they are there, operative, a functioning aspect of psychic and social processes, but not without methodological complexities. Values, indeed, represent a complex aspect of human behavior. T h e y are subjectively verifiable and can be inferred from the behavior of individuals, groups, and societies. Yet they are difficult to verify and identify directly. While the methodological problems are considerable, it also remains true that many of the most fundamental areas of behaviorist concern share similar problems in conceptualization and analysis. 1~ It is noteworthy that the debate over this central and provocative methodological issue does not slow the pace of heuristic thinking and research.
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Despite these problems, it seems clear that values have a decided place in the social and psychological sciences, precisely as explanatory constructs. If accepted as no more than heuristic and transitional concepts, they are extremely useful in the understanding of behavior. This is so, I feel, precisely because they are operative at such diverse levels of the social system, yet serve as a focal point of interaction and reciprocal influence among these many levels. Kluckhohn et al., in their excellent discussion of values, cited a comment of the Cornell value-study group: The concept "value" supplies a point of convergence for the various specialized social sciences, and is a key concept for the integration with studies in the humanities. Value is potentially a bridging concept which can link together many diverse specialized studies--from the experimental psychology of perception to the analysis of political ideologies, from budget studies in economics to aesthetic theory and philosophy of language, from literature to race riots...11 Ethical neutrality
The role of values for the social sciences and psychology is something else again. It raises ethical issues. The exercise of Weberian ethical neutrality remains a scientific ideal, subserving the scientific objective of objectivity. The ideal is no less applicable i n the social sciences than in any other. This, of course, represents a major value for the functioning of scientific method. But it applies primarily at ttle investigative, research, heuristic, and theoretical levels. But more and more in the contemporary setting, the social sciences are being drawn into the areas of social action, into social planning, into the areas of application of scientific understanding. At this level objectivity and neutrality are less pertinent and evaluative judgment comes into greater prominence. The value-system inherent in the discipline and the value-system of the individual scientist become operative parts of the processes of decision and direction by which science is applied to personal and social problems. The psychologist will take a stand against mental illness, the sociologist against anomie. But is there anything in the investigative and theoretical
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approaches of these sciences that dictates these value-decisions, or are they based on nonscientific determinants of valuation? Whatever the answers to the foregoing question, it is not difficult to see that the question itself brings us to the fringes of scientific concern where science is brought face to face with fundamentally ethical concerns. At this level the need for a meeting ground between the scientific and the humanistic disciplines becomes acute. The one area of concern they share is that of values. Particularly significant in this regard is the social and personal function of religion. Religion or religions are the social repositories of specific valuesystems. Part of the social science study of religion entails the examination of religious values, which may or may not be embedded in a moral code, but which inevitably underly religious behavior and cult. The religious influence is unquestionably one of the most important determinants of cultural values and has a profound influence on the emergence of personal values as well. But the religious function, if we may call it that, does not operate in a vacuum. It participates and reciprocates with all the complex forces of social and personal change. It is a part of the complex interaction, not apart from it. Consequently, organized religion as a social structure not only influences the value-system but it is continually interacting in the cultural matrix with forces that cause it continuously to adapt, modify, clarify, and reinterpret the value-system that is its unique and traditional inspiration.
Conclusion We have tried to raise here in a more or less programmatic way the problem of values and its implications. While the issues are complex, it becomes readily apparent that there is a primary need for a theory of value formation and structure that might provide the basis for integration of the respective contributions of the various social sciences. Values are major forces in individual and social behavior. The understanding of values assumes a primary significance as an objective of the social sciences. But this objective cannot be appropriated to any one of the approaches to the study of man. Its inherent
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complexity requires the combined and integrated contributions of a variety of disciplines. Beyond that intrascientific objective, the problem of values has important reverberations with other nonscientific human concerns. T h e fact that values, systematically understood, offer an area of convergence with these peripheral interests introduces the further prospect of meaningful communication and understanding of human behavior. References
1. Belshaw, C. S., "The Identification of Values in Anthropology," Amer. ]. Sociol., 1959, 64, 555-562. 2. Linton, R., The Cultural Background .of Personality. New York, Appleton-Century, 1945, pp. 111-112. 3. Erikson, E. H., Childhood and Society, 2nd ed. New York, Norton, 1963, pp. 149-153. 4. Adler, R., "The Value Concept in Sociology," Amer. J. Sociol., 1956, 62, 272-279. 5. Veblen, T., The Place of Science in Modern Civilization. New York, Huepsche, 1919. 6. Easton, D., A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., PrenticeHall, 1965, p. 50. 7. Feuer, L. S., Psychoanalysis and Ethics. Springfield, Ill., Thomas, 1955, p. 30. 8. Hartmann, H., Psychoanalysis and Moral Values. New York, International Universities Press, 1960, pp. 51-52. 9. Werkmeister, W. H., "Social Science and the Problem of Value." In Schoek, S., and Wiggins, J. W., eds., Scientism and Values. New York, Van Nostrand, !960, p. 4. 10. Meissner, W. W., S.J., "Non-constructural Aspects of Psychological Constructs," Psychol. Rev., 1958, 65, 143-150. -, "Intervening Constructs-Dimensions of Controversy," Psyehol. Rev., 1960, 67, 51-72. 11. Kluckhohn, C. et al., "Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action." In Parsons, T., and Shils, E. A., eds., Toward a General Theory of Action. New York, Harper, 1962, p. 389.
