Psychosomatic Medicine 5:85-92 (1943)
© 1943 American Psychosomatic Society

Preface to Motivation Theory

¹ Brooklyn College

The integrated wholeness of the organism must be reemphasized.

We should not take a localizable, somatic, partial drive as paradigm for motivation theory.

The study of motivation should stress ultimate rather than partial goals, ends rather than means to ends. a) not only conscious but also unconscious motivations must be accounted for in a theory of motivation.

There are, customarily, different cultural paths to the same goal. Therefore, conscious, specific, local desires are not so useful for motivation theory as fundamental, unconscious goals.

Motivated behavior, either preparatory or consummatory, must be understood to be a channel through which many needs may be expressed or satisfied. Usually acts have more than one motivation.

Practically all organismic states are to be understood as motivated.

Man is a perpetually wanting animal; the appearance of a need rests on prior situations, on other prepotent needs; needs or desires must be arranged in hierarchies of prepotency.

Lists of drives will get us no place for various reasons. Any classification of motivations must deal with the problem of level or specificity of classification.

Classifications of motivations must be based upon goals rather than upon instigating drives.

Motivation theory must be anthropocentric, not animalcentric.

The situation or the field in which the organism reacts must be taken into account but it must be done with a dynamic interpretation of the situation or the field.

Not only the integration of the organism must be taken into account but also the possibility of isolated, specific, partial or segmental responses must also be included.¹²

This article has been cited by other articles:

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