Locus of Control

There is another way in which we can frame the debate between free-will and determinism. Like the third (and fourth) perspective I have just offered, this alternative way of viewing this debate might be of greatest value for a professional coach when assisting a client in making a major decision that involves both internal and external forces and factors. This alternative way involves the examination of the assumptions we (and our clients) make about the sources of control in our life.

In setting the stage for an exploration of this alternative, I return to the insights offered by Sigmund Freud—the advocate for unconscious determinism. Many years ago, Freud discovered (or did he invent?) the Ego. As I have already noted, Freud had already discovered that unconscious elements of the human psyche profoundly influence how we view our world. However, Dr. Freud was not satisfied with just examining intrapsychic, unconscious processes. He also wanted to analyze the relationship between internal and external events. While we are growing up, Freud proposed, we must confront the fact that the external world doesn’t always meet our immediate needs.

Our Viennese doctor suggested that we require some mechanism (which he called the “Ego”) to balance off intra-psychic impulses and needs with the realities of life in a demanding and restrictive society (and Vienna society was certainly demanding and restrictive). In recent years, we have come to see that the Ego which each of us has formed often comes with a bias. For some of us, this bias is toward the intra-psychic demands and potentials of life. For others, the external demands and potentials hold great sway. In the former case, we often assume an internal locus of control, while in the latter case we assume an external locus of control.

What exactly do these two terms mean? In brief, an internal locus of control is based on a cluster of assumptions (often untested) that lead us to believe that we are capable of strongly influencing or even controlling our own behavior and the impact which our behavior has on the world in which we live. We are ultimately responsible for the impact of our decisions and our actions in the world. We are assigned the opportunities and burdens of free will. By contrast, an external locus of control is based on a cluster of assumptions (often unacknowledged or unconscious) that suggests our thoughts, feelings and actions are strongly influenced—perhaps even dictated—by external forces over which we have little or no control. We lived in a world that is determinative of our decisions and actions.

As the determinist (and many of those who criticize this perspective) have noted, we can’t be held wholly responsible for our decisions and actions, nor for the consequences of these decisions and actions, for we are the recipients (benefactors) or victims (at least in part) of fate. This external fateful force may be identified as the vicissitudes of life or as God’s will. It can be identified, instead, (through use of social-psychological terms) as a powerful stimulus in our environment, a powerful societal force, or an all-determining shift in the economic, political or cultural reality of life. Freud or his sometime colleague, Carl Jung, would remind us that we are influenced or controlled by the physiologically based (Freud) or collective (Jung) thoughts, feelings and images that seem to operate like alien, occupying forces within our personal psyches.

Internal Locus of Control

I will return to the rather simplistic metaphor to distinguish an internal locus from an external locus. When an internal locus is assumed, we declare that we are captains of our ship. Furthermore, we declare that we are often (if not always) the motor that propels our ship through the water. We are not sailboats that depend on the fickle influence of the wind, nor are we whitewater kayaks that must cooperate with the powerful forces of turbulent water.