Comprehensive perspective

Finally, we return to the insights offered by Gordon Allport on determinism and free-will which he presented in his small book, Becoming (Allport, 1955). The four points which Allport makes seem to quite effectively sum up many of the ideas made by the other psychologists in this third category.

Allport first notes that it is essential that we distinguish the viewpoint of the observer from that of the acting person. The observer is in a position where they may regard all of other people’s actions in terms of a wide perspective; the observer sees a multiplicity of factors regarding all actions and is not limited to immediately relevant factors, Consequently, they gain insight into the deterministic nature of the other actor’s decisions. However, in studying the acting person in this manner, the observer has adopted a frame of reference which differs from that of this acting person.

Allport offers an analogy in making this point:

The situation is much like that of the watcher from the hilltop who sees a single oarsman on the river below. From his vantage point the watcher notes that around the bend of the river, unknown as yet to the oarsman, there are dangerous rapids. What is present to the watcher’s eye still lives in the future for the oarsman.

The superior being predicts that soon the boatman will be portaging his skiff — a fact now wholly unknown to the boatman who is unfamiliar with the river’s course. He will confront the obstacle when it comes, decide on his course of action, and surmount the difficulty. In short, the actor is unable to view his deeds in a large space-time matrix as does an all-wise God, or the less wise demigods of science. From his point of view he is working within a frame of choice—not of destiny. (Allport, 1954, pp.83-84)

For the individual (boatman) seeking to return home·-the immediate decision is paramount. The viewpoint of the observer is immaterial, i.e. “the way a man defines his situation constitutes for him its reality.” (Allport, 1955, p. 84)

Given this phenomenological perspective, the psychologist can only begin to understand psychological humankind when he leaves the grandstand and enters onto the playing field, When the psychologist does so they will find that each of us (or most of us) feels that choices are being freely made. Hence, we are inclined to perceive ourself as free. If we do not, then there is cause for concern—and remediation.

Allport makes a second point. He proposes that all psychologists, regardless of deterministic persuasions, will concede that certain conditions ma.ke for relatively greater or lesser freedom within the individual, Deterministic psychoanalysts like Freud, Mailloux and Lipton have pointed to the greater “effective” freedom which can be gained from increased understanding and insight into the nature of humankind. Psychoanalysis and most other modes of psychotherapy give hope that a corrected self-image, a more rational assessment of one’s limitations, and a clearer insight into one’s determined behavior will reduce compulsions, induce order and free channels of development in accord with chosen aims and objectives. Thus even a scientific psychologist must con­ cede that “self-knowledge may lead to a relative freedom.” (Allport, 1954, p. 84)

A third point is made by Allport: paradoxically, the greater the number of determining tendencies which the individual harbors within his psychic system the greater will be his freedom. Stated in another manner, relative freedom depends upon the individual’s possession of multiple determinative possibilities for behavior. Thus, the dogmatic intolerant individual who seriously considers only one alternative is less free than the “open-minded” individual who considers a number of alternatives. Consequently, even the omnipotent political or social leader who appears to have complete freedom of action may be the most confined and determined, for he frequently is committed to one limited cause or belief which dictates his every move. He no longer is “superordinate” — to use Kelly’s terminology — to the cause which he created, but is now “subordinate to it, and hence determined by it.