CHAPTER XI SUBMISSION
COHESIVE forces of nature may be said to submit to one another. Those relatively stable forms of energy known physically as “matter” each possess attractive force toward all material bodies, and this force of mutual attraction is known as “gravitation”. The largest material body with which we come into daily contact is the earth itself. The attractive power of the earth operates in alliance with the attractive force which each of these smaller bodies exerts toward the earth. This alliance of attractive forces, with that of the larger body, the earth, predominating, results in a tendency of each smaller body to move towards the centre of the earth, its motion being accelerated continuously as it moves. This law of the behaviour of smaller physical bodies toward the earth is called “gravity”. Gravity, then, represents an alliance of attractive forces wherein the weaker attractive force progressively weakens itself by facilitating the compulsion exercised upon itself by the stronger attractive force. Such behaviour presents a perfect objective picture of submission. The lesser ally submits to the greater by decreasing itself to make the alliance closer.
Submission Response Requires
Thalamic Motor Centres
It seems an interesting fact, at least, that constant tonic motor discharge constituting the motor self is largely composed of reflex responses of the organism to gravity. The bodies of human beings and of animals, like all other material objects on this planet, tend to submit physically to the pull of gravity. The tonic energization of skeletal muscles counteracts this gravitational pull, and holds the body erect. Thus physical submission must be opposed and counterbalanced by psychoneural dominance, throughout the life of the organism. We have already noted, in the results obtained by Goltz and Sherrington, and others upon decerebrate animals, that the dominant, or tonic opposition to gravity is greatly exaggerated when all cortical influence has been removed. The condition of enhanced tonic posture called decerebrate rigidity results; and this tonic outflow, in the absence of the cerebrum, responds to all intercurrent motor stimuli dominantly, that is, with increase of itself to overcome the increased opposition. Compliance response is abolished; and submission response, which must occur in sex emotion, and which represents the exact integrative antithesis of the prevailing dominance reaction of a decerebrate animal likewise fails to appear. Goltz found, in fact, that no aspect of sex emotion could be evoked. We may be reasonably sure, therefore, that submission response, like compliance, requires the mediation of some motor centre integratively superior to the tonic centres. On the other hand, it was established more than a century ago[1] that only thalamic connections are necessary to spontaneous movements, and to centrally innervated sex response. Since the latter depends primarily, as we shall have occasion shortly to note, upon a submission type of integration, we may conclude that the primary emotional response of submission may be mediated by thalamic motor centres, in the absence of the cerebral hemispheres.
True Submission Appears in Infant Behaviour
Watson lists “love” response as an unlearned type of emotional reaction.[2] “The stimulus to ‘love’ response,” he says, “may be stroking of the skin, tickling, gentle rocking, or patting.” The response is also elicited by stimulation of the so-called erogenous zones, including the nipples, lips, and sex organs. If the infant is crying when thus stimulated, its crying will cease and a smile will take its place. Gurgling and cooing appear and the infant may extend its hand or foot to be tickled or stroked. Erection of the penis, changes in circulation and respiration, are also included by Watson in his list of love responses. All the reactions thus listed appear to depend upon a lessening of the tonic resistance to environment for the purpose of enhancing the effect which an allied motor stimulus is having upon the organism. In some of the reactions listed, such as erection of the penis, we know that cortical inhibitions antagonistic to the motor self and love reactions alike must have been removed by the motor stimulus, prior to its passage down the spinal cord to the sacral ganglia innervating the external genitals. Removal of this cortical inhibition could not be accomplished by the motor self under ordinary conditions and we know, therefore, that the motor stimulus must have proved itself to possess greater integrative strength than that possessed by the motor self. The same conclusion may be drawn from the effect of submission stimulation in successfully overcoming the over-dominant type of response probably expressed in crying. Whether the motor stimuli adequate to submission response gain their integrative power through superior allied volume or through innate prepotency of the nerve channels employed, need not be discussed. If the motor stimulus possesses superior strength to that of the motor self and is in alliance with the motor self, the stimulus falls within the definition of an adequate submission stimulus suggested in chapter five. Though parts of the sympathetic and sacral branches of the autonomic nervous system, innervating respectively the internal and external genital organs, seem to be antagonistic to one another, it is nevertheless a fact that internal and external genitals are excited simultaneously throughout the sexual act until this condition is terminated by the sexual orgasm. To bring about this simultaneous excitement in both sets of genital organs, however, the sympathetic or tonic motor discharge must apparently be reduced in intensity. Thus the final integrative condition during erection of the penis following environmental stimulus described by Watson, would seem to be a decrease of motor self for the purpose of increasing alliance with the stronger motor stimulus. This constitutes the nodal type of integration designated as submission response. The infant, during “love behaviour” described by Watson, decreases its motor self for the purpose of surrendering more completely to the direction of an allied motor stimulus.
Similar Submission in Behaviour of Older Children
Behaviour of older children in response to the hugs and caresses of a mother, or other loved adult, follow the same general trend of reaction discovered by Watson in very young infants. The child, when caressed, responds by yielding its body freely to the embrace or other stimulation imposed by the adult. If the child is in a state of “being naughty” (that is, overdominant), caresses and similar love stimuli will very frequently abolish the naughtiness or temper fit. Spontaneous caresses may be given by the child to the parent, and a general tendency to draw near to the parent may always be observed. Responses of so-called obedience to the loved one’s commands soon become an important part of the submission behaviour pattern. Such obedience to command is rendered spontaneously and gladly with an apparent accompaniment of extreme pleasantness.
Learning of Submission is Pleasant,
Learning of Compliance Is Unpleasant
It is necessary to emphasise the distinction between submission and compliance. Both are learned responses in the sense that there seems to be no submissive lowering of the strength or volume of the tonic discharge prior to birth, or at least none brought about by the transitory type of environmental stimulus which induces submission response in infants described by Watson.
Submission, however, is a response which appears to be learned much more readily and by altogether pleasant means. Whereas compliance, as we have seen, often requires very harsh and even destructive stimulation to evoke it directly. This initial point of contrast between submission and compliance response is brought out in the many cases of little boys, from three to seven years old, who respond obediently and affectionately to their mothers, or, sometimes to nursemaids and girls older than themselves, while they may react dominantly toward their fathers and toward older boys with whom they play. I have had occasion to study three or four cases of this type for short periods of time. One boy, aged four, in the public kindergarten obeyed the commands of an older sister, a girl between twelve and thirteen years old, without protest and apparently with considerable pleasure derived from the obedience itself. This same child, however, was reported as extremely rebellious toward his father’s authority, and also caused some difficulty at school because of disobedience to a woman teacher whose manner was rather harsh, and whose attitude was that of a strict disciplinarian. Another case in point was that of the boy Jack, already mentioned in chapter seven. Jack, it will be remembered, suffered from some glandular disturbance, which seemed to over stimulate his dominance to the point where he could not be compelled to comply, even by physical injury. Yet, Jack responded submissively to his “class teacher”, who was a very gentle-mannered girl of twenty-three or twenty-four. Despite her soft and pleasing approach, however, Miss B. was very firm in her commands, and had a reputation for keeping excellent order among the children in her charge. Jack responded to this treatment more readily, even, than did some of the other children. Jack and Miss B. were “great friends”. As we have already observed, Miss B. succeeded in obtaining Jack’s promise to forego his youthful gangster activities, and this promise was kept for as long a time as the child’s physical abnormality permitted. Jack’s promise to Miss B., and his marked obedience to her commands in the school room, were clearly expressions of submission and not of compliance. Jack admitted to me with some reluctance that he “liked to mind Miss B.” Submission, apparently, was even more pleasant to Jack than was dominance, though submission occupied a much smaller proportion of Jack’s life than dominance, because he was stimulated to dominance much more continuously than to submission response.
Stimulus Evoking Submission Must Be Allied to Subject; Stimulus Evoking Compliance is Antagonistic
These cases suffice to illustrate the fact that submission response is naturally, and always pleasantly learned, when it is learned at all; whereas in compliance, if the attempt is made to evoke it directly, it is extremely difficult to arouse, and requires great harshness and unpleasantness of stimulation. The same cases also illustrate the fundamental difference between an adequate stimulus to submission and an adequate stimulus to compliance. The sister who was able to evoke complete submission from her little brother, Paul, first evoked this response from the child by caressing and petting him. During the year preceding my examination of the children, E, the older sister, had been given almost complete charge of little Paul during his play hours. She had never, so far as I could learn, treated the child harshly or unjustly in any way. She had allowed Paul to play with children his own age, but had always insisted on prompt obedience whenever she decided it was time for him to stop playing. The mother stated that E. always brought Paul home in time for meals, and that he let E. wash his face and hands without protest. In short, E. had consistently acted for Paul’s benefit rather than for her own. This fact, strangely enough, seems to have impressed itself upon the consciousness of the child much more effectively than did the severe whippings which he had received from his father, from time to time. Paul submitted to E. because he felt E. to be an ally of superior strength. It is this allied quality of the stimulus which gives it the power to arouse submission. And it is the manner and general attitude, including vocal inflection and gestures, which seem to convey to a child the allied aspect of the older person’s behaviour toward him.
Submission Not Dependent Upon Erogenous Zone Stimulation
In the case just cited, the sister E. had, of course, kissed, caressed, and otherwise petted the child Paul, and it might be supposed, perhaps, that these caresses were the most important element in evoking the child’s submission. In the case of Jack, however, so far as I was able to learn from the teacher, and also from other persons who had observed Miss B’s relations with Jack, there had been no physical contact whatever between the two. The girl had not, so far as she could remember, even placed a friendly arm about the boy’s shoulder, nor had she taken him by the hand while talking to him. Yet Jack’s submissive behaviour toward Miss B. was pronounced and consistent. Jack was impressed, among other things, with the justness of Miss B.’s decisions and especially with the fact that she was “looking after the kids’ ” interests rather than her own. Again it seemed to me that the manner and attitude of the teacher were the aspects of her behaviour which made the greatest impression upon the children who submitted to her, including Jack. This teacher, by the way, spent her hours outside of school in further collegiate studies for her own advancement, so she had no contacts with the children except those in the school room.
The effectiveness of an adequate stimulus to submission does not seem to depend upon stimulation of the “erogenous zone” directly or indirectly, nor does it appear to depend upon the duration of the stimulus.
Stimulus Evoking Submission Must Be Stronger Than the Boy But Not Too Intense
When children, especially boys, reach adolescence, a somewhat more intense type of stimulation seems to be necessary in order to evoke submission response. A very nice adjustment of this intensity must be made, oftentimes, for if the intensity is not sufficient, a dominant boy is apt not to perceive the stimulus as stronger than himself, even though he recognises its allied quality. Whereas, if the intensity of stimulation is too great, a dominant boy almost invariably regards it as antagonistic rather than allied. One example illustrating the former situation, where stimulation was of insufficient intensity, may be taken from the case of a high school teacher, Miss R., who “loved” all the youngsters in her various classes, the word “love” being Miss R.’s own description of her attitude. Miss R. was, in fact, an excellent teacher, but a complete failure as a disciplinarian. In one case which I actually observed, a large, dominant football-playing youth rose calmly at the back of one of the school rooms, and threw a book at another football player who happened to be reciting at that moment.
“Now, now, Edward,” protested Miss R., in a voice of deep concern, “is that a fair thing to do?
I didn’t think that of you, Edward; I am surprised.”
Edward agreed: “That’s right, Miss R., I’ll wait till Ben is looking next time.
It’s not fair to hit a fellow when he isn’t looking, I know.”
The class broke into a roar of unsuppressed merriment, and that was the end of the incident. Miss R., though she flushed deeply, and seemed for the time undecided whether or not to send Edward to the principal for discipline, finally ignored the action altogether and went on with her teaching.
Miss R.’s conduct is not to be interpreted, I believe, as over compliance or “fear”, for she had performed many acts during her teaching career which expressed both moral and physical courage. She was herself over-submissive and could not, therefore, evoke submission from others. Edward, and nearly all the boys under Miss R.’s tutelage, however, were extremely fond of her. Edward, in fact, took her to one of the school dances after the incident narrated above. He explained his action by stating that “he was afraid he had hurt Miss R.’s feelings” in the book-throwing occurrence. But this regard for Miss R.’s feelings did not make Edward or any of the other boys obedient to her at that time, or at any other subsequent period. Miss R. impressed herself upon the boys as an allied stimulus weaker than themselves. Such a stimulus fails to evoke submission. In the same school was an assistant head master who was regarded by the boys as a strict disciplinarian. The more intelligent of the youths under his charge did not question the man’s sincerity, or the fairness of his decisions as to where the guilt for any misdemeanour should be placed. The less intelligent boys concocted traditions supposed to reveal the injustice and egotism of Mr. Y. Both the intelligent and the less intelligent youths, however, agreed that Mr. Y. was a “hellion”, and not only did they fail to obey him, but also it had seemingly become a matter of principle with them to find ingenious and subtle methods of “beating” Mr. Y.’s commands. One example of the harshness, or over-intensity of stimulation with which Mr. Y. sought to evoke submission will suffice to reveal the emotional cause for the boys’ disobedience. It was a school custom to give as punishment for minor offences one or two hours extra work in some appropriate school subject, to be performed in the afternoon after the other pupils had been dismissed for the day. One boy had quite inadvertently knocked an eraser off the rack. In picking it up from the floor, this youth drew it across the back of another boy, who was at the board working with his back to the room. The children, of course, laughed, and the class teacher reported the culprit to the assistant head master for the usual minor disciplinary measures. Instead of sentencing the boy to the customary one or two hours extra work, however, Mr. Y. delivered a terrific lecture to this youth, calling him everything but a murderer, and concluded his tirade by giving the boy forty hours extra work to be performed in the afternoons. From my own studies of Mr. Y. and his methods, I am convinced that he acted sincerely, and, as he thought, for the boy’s own good. This particular youth had been doing poorly in his school work, and Mr. Y.’s idea was that he should bring him back to a submissive frame of mind by sheer severity of punishment. Not only, however, did Mr. Y. fail to evoke the desired submission but the boy actually left school with the approval of his parents (who sent him to another, more fashionable school), rather than comply with the punishment sentence meted out. Even though a stimulus is actually allied in nature, it will be regarded as antagonistic if it is too intense, and in such case will not evoke submission.
Allied Stimulus of Superior Volume Effectively Evokes Submission
Mr. H., principal of a continuation school in New York City, may be cited as an example of a person using an effective degree of intensity in evoking submission from boys twelve to seventeen years of age. A continuation school is designed to give instruction to those children who have gone to work before completing the grades of school required by law. The pupils in such a school are apt to be much more dominant than those in the ordinary day school. For example, while we were engaged in surveying Mr. H.’s continuation school, one pupil was discovered to be a full-fledged boot-legger, and another was intercepted by Mr. H. in the act of manufacturing a black-jack in the carpenter shop, “for sale to a friend” as the boy said. Mr. H.’s method of handling these youths was first of all to impress upon them in every way possible the fact that he was ready to act in their interests at all times, whatever the inconvenience to himself. He obtained positions for his pupils, appeared for them in juvenile court whenever he could legitimately do so, and undertook to assume a sort of paternal guardianship over boys of notoriously bad character. As a result of these activities there were no doubts in the boys’ minds that Mr. H. was their best friend. On the other hand, Mr. H. insisted upon strict obedience to the rules which he laid down, not only as to conduct in the school itself, but also in regard to the boys’ behaviour while working at the jobs Mr. H. obtained for them, and in the home and local community. Mr. H. was continually alert in obtaining information as to the boys’ conduct, and very prompt and emphatic in calling the boy to task for any misdemeanours which might be discovered. Mr. H., however, used a method of discipline quite the opposite from that employed by Mr. Y. in the case last cited. Mr. H. restrained the boys, by force, if necessary, from doing something they wanted to do, as punishment for misdemeanours. But never, so far as my observation went, did Mr. H. impose positive punishment upon an offender which required active compliance or which gave the boy punished actual pain or suffering. Mr. H. might require a boy to remain in a certain recitation room instead of going to do the shop work which that boy especially liked. Again Mr. H. might withhold certification which would enable the boy to take a desired position. Or Mr. H. might refuse to allow the boy to come to his school for a time (one youngster kept coming every day for several months before Mr. H. took him back). In extreme cases, Mr. H. might withdraw his endorsement of a boy who had misbehaved very badly, thus causing the youth to be discharged from a lucrative position, or exposing him unprotected to some juvenile court penalty. These punishments, which were all of a restraining or withdrawing nature, were actually more severe in many cases than a sharp physical whipping would have been. But here severity was felt as one of volume rather than intensity. The effect of superior volume seemed to be that the allied aspect of the stimulation remained unchanged, while the stimulus, Mr. H., assumed the rĂ´le of superior strength. Of course, there were individual instances in which the punished boy would react dominantly for the time being. But in all the cases I studied, with a single exception, such initial dominance later turned into submission with increased affectionate obedience to Mr. H. after this final submission had been evoked. We may summarize Mr. H.’s method by the statement that an allied stimulus capable of impressing both its allied character and its superior strength of volume upon the subject is maximally efficient in evoking submission, especially from dominant subjects.
Woman’s Strength Seldom Felt as Superior by Adolescent Males
Under our current social conventions and existing social attitudes, it is decidedly more difficult for a woman teacher or disciplinarian to impress her superiority of strength upon adolescent boys and girls than for a male teacher of corresponding ability.
One young woman who acted as principal of the major portion of a combined grammar and high school which we studied, succeeded in evoking submission by the sheer strength of her physical alertness and intensity of manner. Most women preceptors who attempt this method succeed only in making themselves felt as antagonistic to their pupils.
This particular woman, however, was young and good looking, and, like Mr. H, took a personal interest in the welfare of her charges outside of school activities. She helped them in many ways, and impressed upon them her regard for their interests even more strongly than she impressed upon them the tenseness and vigour of her physical attitude.
Some of the older and more dominant boys, however, failed to be impressed with her superior strength; and although they expressed a liking for her, they did not submit to the extent that might have been brought about by a male teacher possessing only a small part of the acting principal’s regard for her pupils.
Allied, Intellectual Superiority May Evoke Submission
I have discovered only one woman teacher of pupils of high school age (thirteen to eighteen years) who was able to impress her superior strength upon the most dominant of the youths under her charge. One of these youths, after he had become a college professor, told me that he considered this teacher to have exerted over him one of the strongest and most beneficial influences that he had ever felt. He described her as an “inspiration, and a wonderful woman”. Miss C. M. seems to have devoted herself, without stint, tc helping her students with their own personal problems, in every way possible. So far as I could determine, this woman teacher not only studied her pupils individually, giving each the treatment best suited to his or her needs, but also proved herself so resourceful in quelling the rising dominance of an obstreperous youth before it broke out into open rebellion, that the pupils felt her influence over them to be mysterious or magical. This teacher’s method might be called the intellectual technique of making one’s superiority of strength felt by those from whom submission is to be evoked It requires not only intellect in its ordinary sense, on the part of the teacher, but also a subtle understanding of the emotions of the pupils whose obedience is to be exacted. By means of this superior insight, dominance can be met at its inception and transferred to objects other than the teacher. The result of such ingenious handling of a pupil’s own emotional responses impresses the youth strongly, it seems, with the irresistibleness of the teacher’s influence, while her power is felt to be one of volume rather than intensity.
In the ability of Miss C. M. we find exemplified, therefore, another very effective type of submission stimulation. An allied stimulus may be applied so skilfully to the individual emotional mechanisms of dominant subjects that dominance is never evoked toward the stimulus person, and the stimulus is felt to be of superior strength at all times, thus evoking submission successfully.
Stimulus Person Must Resemble Subject to Evoke Submission
A common factor to be found in all the adequate stimuli to submission response so far examined, is a close resemblance in species, race, and habits of behaviour and speech between the person who evokes submission response and the subject from whom submission is elicited. I have been informed by a Chinese professor of psychology that he and his fellow students, when first attending school, expressed very little submission toward English and American teachers. In Chinese schools taught by “foreigners”, the Chinese boys, while feeling genuine submission toward learned men of their own nationality, were not impressed with the genuineness of the friendship for them which the mission teachers expressed. The Chinese boys, as a means of obtaining the instruction which they desired, complied very skilfully and subtly with the exactions of their foreign teachers. Their response, however, was one of passive appetite emotion combining active compliance with the teacher and passive dominance over the student’s own scholastic needs. Though the behaviour of the young Chinese had the appearance of submission, it did not, in fact, contain any submission response at all. The reason for the failure of the foreign teacher to evoke submission seemed to be the outstanding difference in dress, colour of skin, and eyes, facial features, language, vocal inflection, mannerisms and social standards of conduct. These so obvious differences between stimulus and subject prevented the Chinese students from feeling the foreigner as an allied stimulus, no matter how much the teacher might actually do for the student, or how friendly an attitude the teacher might express in the class room. Of course, the general attitude of Chinese toward foreigners may be advanced as the conditioned cause of their behaviour. But whence arises the general failure to submit to foreigners in friendly intercourse, if not in their dissimilarity to the subjects? The first requisite, therefore, which must be possessed by an adequate stimulus to submission in order to impress upon the subject its allied quality would seem to be the requirement that the stimulus should be a human being of a race and civilization possessing general characteristics similar to those of the race and civilization of the subject. Normal human beings seldom, if ever, submit to animals, and never, save by perverted transfer of a response first evoked by some fellow human, do they submit to inanimate objects. The reason for this fact seems to lie in the dissimilarity between a human subject and the animal or material stimulus which, therefore, fails to impress its allied quality upon the subject’s organism. It is a well recognized social phenomenon that foreigners are seldom, if ever, accepted on the same social basis as natives of the social community in question. “Foreigners are not understood”. They are regarded as “queer” and probably antagonistic, in secret at least, to the interests of the natives. Social opposition to a foreigner occurs frequently. On the other hand, foreign mannerisms of a supposedly cultured or distinguished type frequently serve to impress certain types of persons, notably women, with the supposed superior ability of the foreigner. This effect of foreign mannerisms is enhanced by popular stereotypes, attaching glamour or romance to certain types of foreigners. Thus in America, mannerisms suggesting those of the British nobleman, or the French, or Italian diplomat are often sufficient to lend temporary social superiority to the person of some very ordinary European, who may very possibly, also, be a fortune seeking imposter. On the other hand, members of the Asiatic races, no matter how clever or socially superior they may actually be seldom succeed in evoking personal submission response from Americans of either sex, the difference of skin colour, facial features, and bodily mannerisms and customs being too marked. In summary, then, we may say that only human beings are normally felt to be sufficiently allied to other human beings to evoke submission responses. Skin colour, and general racial types of body and social customs, must also be similar within comparatively narrow limits to be felt as sufficiently allied to evoke submission response. If, however, this requirement of general similarity of species and race be met, minor differences in language and social mannerisms may serve to add the necessary impression of superior strength to a given individual to furnish the second necessary attribute, superiority, rendering that individual an adequate stimulus to submission response.
Female Behaviour Contains More Submission Than Male Behaviour
Finally, my own emotional studies have shown that girls between the ages of five and twenty-five manifest a much larger proportion of submission response in their total behaviour than do males of ages corresponding. It must be remembered that this comparison does not refer to the amount of submission response in comparison with inducement reactions, but simply refers to the relative importance of submission in the total behaviour pattern.
A large proportion of the submission responses of those girls within the ages mentioned whose behaviour I have been able to study in clinics appears to be directed toward the girls’ mothers, or in some few cases, toward an especially beloved woman teacher or girl friend, usually older or more mature in some way than the girl herself. The usual feminine attitude toward males or toward male parent and lovers, though containing a great deal of submission response, is nevertheless more markedly characterised by inducement, as we shall have occasion to observe in a subsequent chapter. It is the girl’s attitude toward her mother, or especially toward her girl friend which, according to my own observations, contains the greatest proportion of true submission. Many adolescent girls whom I have talked with during a personality interview seem never to have questioned the advisability of rendering complete submission to the mother, even in the matter of rejection of friendships with members of both sexes which the girl dearly longed for. Italian girls fourteen to sixteen years old, though far from submissive to some of the school authorities, their brothers, and their fathers, nevertheless submitted to their mothers’ commands to the extent of working six to eight hours a day at weaving in the home, besides attending public school. Several of these girls told me that they “were crazy to go to dances and movies”, but, as a matter of fact, they were not allowed to go more often than three or four times a year.
Work was done at the mother’s command, however, without the slightest feeling of rebellion, so far as I could discover; and the personal part of the submission response to the mother appeared to give these girls very great pleasure. In such instances the mother, of course, was acting for her own interests rather than for those of her daughter.
But the relationship and early training of the children had been such that the possibility of selfishness on the mother’s part had never occurred to the girls. The mother who had always cared for and clothed them ever since their earliest recollections, was accepted as a completely allied stimulus, and by virtue of the same earliest experiences and training, was endowed with the attribute of superior strength. So far as I could discover, physical caresses played only a minor part in the relationship between mother and daughter.
In other instances, girls whose families were of various racial stocks including English, Irish, German, and French, had gone to work outside the home, yet gave their full pay regularly to their mothers without question. Many of these girls’ brothers at a much younger age had refused to bring home their pay envelopes, and some of these boys, when threatened by the father with a beating, had left home altogether. I found two instances, moreover, where girls had similarly left home when the father had attempted to compel the girl to further obedience by threat of punishment. These same girls had frequently been whipped by their mothers without rebellion.
It was the custom, however, in these particular families for the children to give over their earnings to the father rather than to the mother, and it was this situation which resulted in the breach of relationships reported.
In clinical work with college girls, I found that the most effective influence could frequently be brought to bear upon an over-dominant girl through the help of another girl whom she especially admired or cared for. In one instance a girl was easily persuaded by her friend to engage in certain social activities which proved most beneficial to the subject, though she had previously failed to respond to attempted persuasions by relatives and male admirers. In several other instances girls responded submissively to their older sorority sisters, attaining marked improvement in college grades as a result. These submissive responses were seemingly more easily evoked and enduring in character than any submissive reactions evoked from male subjects under similar conditions, in my experience. In all instances of submissive response cited in this chapter, especial attention should be given to the fact that we are dealing, as far as possible, with simple submission, and not with the compounds of submission and inducement which form the love response. Emphasis has been laid purposely upon relationships of the subject and stimulus person which do not involve strong love attachments of complicating nature. Some of the results herein cited will undoubtedly be seen to vary considerably when a complete emotional response of love is involved, especially those relating to influence exerted by one sex upon the other. Active and Passive Submission In all the instances of submission response thus far cited we have found the stimulus to be a human being whose behaviour is closely allied with the subject’s own, but who manifests at the same time superior strength to that of the subject. In technical terms adopted for purposes of describing emotional mechanisms, an environmental stimulus closely allied and superior in volume to the portion of the subject’s organism stimulated, tends to evoke motor stimuli allied to the motor self and possessed of superior volume to the motor self. The response of submission, in each instance considered above, consists of a voluntary weakening of the subject organism’s resistance to the environmental stimulus, and an allied movement of the self thus weakened tending to establish still closer alliance between the subject and the person to whom the subject is submitting. In more precise terms, we may describe this situation by saying that the motor self, responding to adequate submission stimulus, decreases its own strength in order to move itself as directed by the stimulus. Passive submission may now be defined as a decrease in the strength of the motor self sufficient to permit the motor self of the organism to be moved by the motor stimulus, but with no active movement on the part of the motor self destined to further the purposes of the motor stimulus. The baby, when it ceased crying and permitted itself to be stroked or caressed without resistance, or the woman lying passive in her lover’s arms, constitute examples of passive submission. Active submission requires a decrease in the motor self to whatever point is necessary for the motor self to move as directed by the motor stimulus, and also an active movement of the self to bring about the accomplishment of those ends toward which the motor stimulus is tending to move the subject organism. Examples of active submission may be found in infant behaviour, when the child under its mother’s caresses pushes itself closer to the mother’s body, or, when older, presses its lips actively against hers when kissed. Active submission may be evidenced in the conduct of adults, when, for example, a male lover changes his residence or occupation at the behest of the woman whom he loves.
Motor Self Decreases Its Strength Sufficiently to be Controlled
The measure of the decrease of strength of the motor self which occurs during submission seems to differ somewhat from a similar measure of change in motor self strength during dominance and compliance. During submission response the motor self may frequently increase its strength toward objects other than the submissive stimulus, for the very purpose of carrying out the commands of the person to whom submission is being rendered. Yet, the motor self must be kept in a sufficiently weakened state in its relationship with the submission stimulus to permit the stimulus to direct the reaction of the self toward other objects. The measure of this decrease in the motor self, therefore, will be equal, approximately, to the difference between the original strength of the motor self and the strength at which it can be wholly controlled by the motor stimulus to submission. Thus if the motor stimulus were a very strong one, and the motor self of comparatively low intensity, only a slight decrease of strength might enable the stimulus to direct the self to the fullest extent. On the other hand, if there were very little difference in strength at the inception of the submissive response, between motor stimulus and motor self, the motor self might be compelled to reduce itself by a very large proportion of its initial strength before coming under full control of the motor stimulus. Examples of these two extremes may be cited as follows. A little girl five years of age, who is trained to submit promptly to her mother’s commands, only needs to reduce her existing outflow of energy sufficiently to fix her attention upon the mother’s words in order to become fully controlled by the instructions of the mother. The superiority of the strength of the motor stimulus evoked by the mother is naturally very great because of the habitual relationship between mother and daughter, the great difference in physical size and strength between adult and young child, and the integrative influence of systematic training in this same type of response. As an example of the opposite extreme of required reduction in the strength of the motor self in order to submit to an appropriate motor stimulus, the case of a tired business man who is required to submit to being “the horse” for his small son, might be cited. In this instance the father’s physical size and strength is very much greater than that of the child. The thresholds of all the responses of his entire organism are raised by fatigue, and his habitual emotional attitude toward the child is one of inducement or command rather than submission. Yet such a man’s emotional responses toward the child may have been organized in such a way (perhaps through the wife’s influence) that submission has been learned as a response to the child’s demand to “play horse”. Tremendous reduction in the strength of the father’s motor self must occur if it is to be put under the control of the motor stimuli evoked by the child’s lisped commands and tiny tugs at the reins. That such tremendous reduction in the motor self may be made successfully, however, is a matter of everyday experience.
Summary
Submission is found as a principle of reaction between inanimate objects, in the behaviour of a smaller unit of matter which is drawn toward a larger unit by the attractive force of gravitation. Both objects are allied in the mutual force of attraction which they exert over each other. The smaller material object decreases its own force by moving itself in such a way as to increase the force exerted upon it by the larger object, and thereafter the smaller object’s attractive power is entirely directed by the larger object. It seems to be an interesting fact that the motor self, or continuous tonic discharge is produced by reflex opposition to the body’s physical submission or the force of gravity exerted upon it by the earth. Psycho-neural submission, therefore must consist of lessening the motor self’s opposition to gravity sufficiently to permit control of the motor self by an allied motor stimulus of superior volume. Experiments upon decerebrate animals indicate that the primary emotional response of submission requires the mediation of some motor centre integratively superior to the tonic centre. It further appears from the work of the physiologists that thalamic motor centres suffice for the appearance of the submission response. Submission has been shown to occur as a spontaneous and apparently pleasant response of very young infants. Though submission, like compliance, is probably a learned response, it may be distinguished from compliance by the ease and pleasantness with which submission response is acquired. The comparatively great efficiency with which the submissive response is learned seems to be due to the allied character of the stimulus, since positive pleasantness is experienced in yielding of the motor self to allied motor stimuli. Submission response is found well established even in overdominant children from whom the response of compliance can not be directly evoked even by environmental stimuli so intense as to be physically injurious. If submission is to be evoked from dominant subjects, the environmental stimulus in addition to being capable of impressing its allied character upon the subject must also be capable of evoking motor stimuli of perceptibly greater strength than the motor self of the subject. Increasing the alliance characteristic of the environmental stimulus is found not to compensate for insufficient strength of the allied stimulus. Too great intensity of the environmental stimulus, even though it be actually completely allied with the subjects’ interests is found to evoke antagonistic motor stimuli within the subject’s organism. If the subject from whom submission response is to be evoked is a human being, the environmental stimulus must also be a human being, in order to possess the alliance characteristic of an adequate submission stimulus. In most cases, also, an adequate degree of alliance in the stimulus is obtained only when the individual submitted to belongs to the same race as the subject and possesses the same or similar bodily and social characteristics. Within these limits, however, national differences in social culture may serve to imbue the person submitted to with a certain spurious superiority of strength to the person from whom submission is evoked. As far as my own studies of emotional response have progressed to date, girls between the ages of five and twenty-five appear to express a greater absolute amount of true submission response than do males of corresponding ages. Girls show lower thresholds to the submissive type of reaction. Submission response seems to be evoked from these girls most readily and most extensively by women older or more mature than themselves, notably their mothers, teachers, and especially selected girl friends. Active submission consists of spontaneous readjustments and movements of the motor self at the dictation of the motor stimulus to submission. Passive submission consists of decrease of the strength of the motor self to a sufficient degree to permit passive movement of the organism and passive readjustment of the motor self by the submission stimulus. The measure of decrease of the motor self during submission response consists of the difference between the initial motor self intensity and volume, and the intensity and volume at which the motor self can be completely controlled by motor stimuli of the strength actually evoked by the adequate environmental stimulus to submission response. Pleasantness of Submission Submission response, according to unanimous introspective agreement, is pleasant from beginning to end. Since the environmental stimulus is, by definition, in complete alliance with the total interests of the subject organism, the adequate motor stimulus to submission, once it is aroused, must be correspondingly in complete alliance with the motor self. There may be an intermediate period, however, before the allied character of the environmental stimulus impresses itself fully upon the organism, when preliminary, transient motor stimuli are aroused, antagonistic to the motor self. These preliminary stimuli may cause temporary conflict, with consequent unpleasantness, before the motor stimulus adequate to submission is evoked and the submission type of integration is initiated. A child, for instance, may first reply, “I won’t do it!” to the mother’s command; then, dominance giving way to submission, the child may add, “Oh, yes I will, mammy”, in repentant tone of voice. The momentary, initial flare-up of dominance may be unpleasant, and its memory may give a tinge of unpleasantness to the beginning of the subsequent submission response, in the form of regret for initial disobedience. But once the submission behaviour is fully under way, without admixtures of dominance or compliance, the reaction becomes extremely pleasant. Again, it is always necessary to determine whether the response is one of true submission, or only one of compliance. In the latter case, as when children are required to perform various household tasks before being permitted to play, the affective tone at its best is one of indifference, and usually contains positive unpleasantness. The differential criterion, of course, by which one may judge whether submission or compliance is being expressed, is the motor attitude of the subject toward the task imposed. If the work is regarded as “something that has to be done”, even though the subject does not “want” to do it, then the motor stimuli controlling the situation are antagonistic to the motor self and the reaction is one of compliance. This is true, also, if the necessity compelling the action is one of hoped-for reward only. In such case, there is dominance also in the compound, making the total response one of appetite emotion. But if the subject “wants” to do the task imposed, “because mother wants me to do it”, then the response is one of submission. If the act is performed “to please mother”, there is probably present some inducement emotion, and possibly an admixture of submission and inducement, making the compound emotion, love. But in this case, just as in the case where the response is one of fairly unmixed submission, the affective tone is strongly and continuously pleasant. The pleasantness of true submission response, (as exemplified in love passion, for instance) may increase continuously from its inception to its consummation. Even when the submission is not compounded with inducement to form any aspect of love emotion, but appears as a unit response by itself, increase of pleasantness seems to accompany increase of alliance between subject and stimulus. That is to say, pleasantness increases pari passu with successful accomplishment of the submissive task undertaken at the command of the person to whom the subject chooses to submit. The pleasantness decreases toward indifference only if the task imposed tends to separate the subject from the person submitted to; in which case, of course, the true submission response itself diminishes, or changes its emotional character to that of compliance simply because actual perception of the submission stimulus is necessary to maintain a pure submission response at full strength. So long as any memory or stimulus intimately associated with the person originally submitted to remains, however, some vestige of pleasantness and of the initial submission reaction also remain. And under no possible conditions can true submission be unpleasant.
Distinctive Conscious Characteristics of Submission Emotion
Various inexact terms applied to submission emotion, or to some complex emotional pattern based principally upon submission, may be listed as follows: “willingness”, “docility”, “sweetness”, “good nature”, “a good child”, “kindness”, “tender-heartedness”, “soft-heartedness”, “benevolence”, “generosity”, “being obliging”, “being accommodating”, “being considerate”, “gentleness”, “meekness”, “obedience”, “slavishness”, “admiration”, “being tractable”, “being manageable”, “being an easy mark”, “altruism”, “unselfishness”, “willing service”, “servility”, “slavery”, “being a willing slave”. An interesting characteristic of a majority of the terms listed is the objectivity with which they describe submission behaviour, no matter whether the submission referred to is regarded as a character trait or as a type of relationship to other people. In cases of both dominance and compliance, introspectively derived words like “will” and “rage”, or “timidity” and “fear”, seem to be prevalent in popular parlance. But submission is a type of conduct which writers appear quite willing to describe as an attractive sort of behaviour when performed by someone else, but which they rather shrink from acknowledging as a conscious element of their own emotional life. When submission is given unreserved endorsement, as by the terms “obliging”, “considerate”, and “accommodating”, the spontaneous emotional enjoyment of submitting to another person is tacitly justified or excused by adding a tinge of compliance, or appetite. There is a certain suggestion contained in the words “obliging” and “accommodating” that the submissive favour is done as a habit of action found efficient in procuring appetitive reward. Among fifty male subjects recently questioned, only two expressed unqualified pleasure in the possibility of being a “happy slave”; that is only two admitted without disguise that pure submission emotion was pleasant to them per se. (Perhaps the “happy slave” emotion is a compound, constituting passion, as we shall have occasion to note in the next chapter; but, even so, its controlling element is active submission). There is little equivocation, however, in the emotional implications of the submission behaviour jointly referred to by the popular terms listed above. By submission, in every case, is meant a decrease of the self to permit an allied person to direct at will, not only the organism apart from the motor self, but the motor self, also. Active submission would consist of positive selections from among its activities which the motor self might be compelled by the submission stimulus to make. Passive submission would occur when the motor self voluntarily refrained from one or more of its natural activities under compulsion of the submission stimulus. Introspective descriptions of submission emotion, mostly obtained from girls, though some were male reports, dealing with the experiencing of submission during passion, suggest the definitive characteristic of submission to be: wanting to give the self helplessly, without question, to the dictation of another person. This feeling, increasingly pleasant in proportion as the self is increasingly controlled by the person submitted to, constitutes submission emotion.
FOOTNOTES: [1] A. Desmoulins and F. Magendie, Des Systemes Nerveux, 1825, yol. II, p. 626. [2] J. B. Watson, Behaviorism, p. 123.
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