Science, then, can be a defense. It can be primarily a safety philosophy, a security system, a complicated way of avoiding anxiety and upsetting problems. In the extreme instance it can be a way of avoiding life, a kind of self-cloistering. It can become - in the hands of some people, at least - a social institution with primarily defensive, conserving functions, ordering and stabilizing rather than discovering and renewing.
The greatest danger of such an extreme institutional position is that the enterprise may finally become functionally autonomous, like a kind of bureaucracy, forgetting its original purposes and goals and becoming a kind of Chinese Wall against innovation, creativeness, revolution, even against new truth itself if it is too upsetting. The bureaucrats may actually become covert enemies to the geniuses, as critics so often have been to poets, as ecclesiastics so often have been to the mystics and seers upon whom their churches were founded (48, ch. 4).
Taking it for granted that the function of science is not only revolutionary but also conserving, stabilizing, and organizing - like every social institution - how can the pathologizing of this conserving function be avoided? How can we keep it "normal", healthy, and fruitful? The essential answer is, I believe, about the same as the one in the previous chapter: to become more aware of the psychology of individual scientists, to realize fully their individual characterological differences, to recognize that any of the goals or methods or concepts of science can be pathologized either in the individual or in the social institution. If there are enough of these individuals, they may "capture" the institution and then label their constricting point of view "the philosophy of science". This pulling and hauling between individuals is paralleled by a similar conflict within each individual. The struggle between fear and courage, between defense and growth, between pathology and health is an eternal, intrapsychic struggle. The great lesson we have learned from the pathology and therapy of this conflict within the individual is that to be on the side of courage, of growth and health, means also to be on the side of truth (especially since healthy courage and growth include healthy soberness, caution, and tough-mindedness). [4-1]
In other publications (38, 43, 44, 49) I have tried to demonstrate that dichotomizing is responsible for much of the pathologizing of thought. In contrast to thinking that is inclusive, integrative, and synergic, dichotomizing splits apart that which belongs together. What is left appears to be a whole and self-sufficient entity, but it is really separated and isolated pieces. Boldness and caution can be either dichotomized or integrated with each other. Boldness that remains integrated with caution within the same person is very different from boldness not tempered with caution ("mere boldness") which thereby turns into rashness and lack of judgment.
The sensible caution of the healthily bold man is different from caution dichotomized from boldness, which is often a crippler and a paralyzer. The good scientist must be both versatile and adaptable, that is, he must be capable of caution and skepticism when they are called for and capable of daring when it is called for. This sounds like the not very helpful recommendation of the intuitive cook to add "not too much salt, not too little, but just the right amount". But the situation for the scientist is different because for him there is a way of judging the "right amount", namely, that which is best for discovering truth. [4-2]
To some extent, the distinction between Kuhn's (30) normal scientist and his revolutionary one parallels the development from the adolescent to the adult male, or from immaturity to maturity. The boy's conception of what a man should be like is more embodied in the "normal" scientist, the obsessional character, the practical technologist, than it is in the great creator. If we could understand better the difference between the adolescent's misconception of maturity and actual maturity, we should thereby understand better the deep fear of creativeness and the counterphobic defenses against it. This in turn should illuminate the eternal struggle within each of us against our own self-actualization and our own highest destiny. The female version of immaturity, which is more apt to take a hysterical form, is less relevant to the formation of scientists.
The pre- and postadolescent boy is caught in a conflict between wanting to stay young and childish and also wanting to grow up. Childhood and maturity both have their pleasures and their disadvantages. In any case, both biology and society give him little choice. He is in fact growing biologically older, and society generally demands that he behave as the culture dictates.
So he has to tear himself loose - in our society at any rate - from his love for his mother. It is a force pulling him backward, and he fights it and her. He tries to achieve both independence and freedom from dependence on woman. He wants to join the company of men, to be the autonomous companion of his father rather than his dutiful, subordinated son. He sees men as being tough, fearless, impervious to discomfort and pain, independent of emotional ties, dominant, quick to anger and frightening in their anger, earthshakers, doers, builders, masters of the real world. All of this he tries to be. He drowns his fears and timidities - overdoing it, of course, with his counterphobic defenses - in an inability to refuse any challenge or dare. He enjoys striking fear into the hearts of all the little girls - and the big girls, too. He taboos his tenderness, his loving impulses, his compassion, his sympathy - all in the effort to be tough or at least to look tough. He fights the adults, the establishment, the authorities, and all the fathers, for the ultimate toughness is not to fear the father. He tries to throw his lifelong dominators (as he sees them) off his back and out of his own psyche while he still feels the yearning to depend on them. And of course the elders are, to some extent, real dominators and think of him as a child to take care of.
We can see these concepts incarnated and projected before our eyes, if we know where to look. For instance, we can find them made visible in the figure of the cowboy, of the tough delinquent or the gang leader, of the "Fearless Fosdick" type of detective, or of the G-man, or perhaps also many "sports-men". To consider only one example, look at the acting-out and fantasy elements in the cowboy figure in the standard Western movie. The most obvious characteristics of the boy's dream of glory are all there. He is fearless, he is strong, he is "lone". He kills easily and in a magical, wish-fulfilling way: he never misses, and there is no blood, pain, or mess. Apart from his horse he doesn't love anyone, or at least he doesn't express it except in the most understated, implied, reverse-English way. Least of all does he have any romantic or tender love for women, who are either prostitutes or "good women". He is in every respect imaginable the far, polar opposite of the pansy type of homosexual in whose realm he includes all the arts, all of culture, all intellect, education, and civilization. These for him are all feminine, as are also cleanliness, emotion of any kind (except perhaps anger), facial expressions, orderliness, or religion. Fantasy cowboys never have children, nor do they have mothers or fathers or sisters (they may have brothers). Observe also the revealing fact that while there is much death, there is little or no blood, mutilation, or agony. And observe also that there is always a hierarchy of dominance, or pecking order, and the hero is always at the top of it.
The actually mature man, mature not only in years but also in personality development, is, to say it briefly, not threatened by his "weaknesses", by his emotions, by his impulses or cognitions. Therefore he is not threatened by what the adolescent would call "femininity" but what he would prefer to call humanness. He seems able to accept human nature, and therefore he doesn't have to fight against it within himself, he doesn't have to subdue portions of himself. A certain bullfighter, is reputed to have said, "Sir, anything I do is masculine". This kind of acceptance of one's own nature instead of living up to some external ideal is characteristic of the more mature male who is so sure of himself that he doesn't have to bother proving anything. Openness to experience is characteristic. So also is postambivalence, i.e., being able to love wholly, without tinctures of hostility or fear or the necessity of control. To get a little closer to our topic I would also use the word for being able to give oneself over completely to an emotion, not only of love but also of anger, fascination, or total surrender to a scientific problem.
But just these characteristics of emotional maturity correlate highly with the characteristics of the creative man that have so far been discovered (I won't say "eminent" or "talented" men; that can be quite different). For instance, Richard Craig (13) has demonstrated an almost complete overlap between the personality characteristics of creative men listed by Torrance (72) and those that I had listed for self-actualizing people (38). The two concepts in fact seem almost to be the same.
Which characteristics of average scientists might be expressions of immaturity and are therefore to be worried about and examined closely? There are many that are relevant, but a single example will do. Let us examine one excessive emphasis on controlling and excluding in the senses that I have described for adolescents. These latter suppress and exclude whatever they fear looks weak or feminine. So also the overdefensive or overobsessional or "immature" scientists, in accordance with his basic dynamics of mistrusting his impulses and his emotions and in his stress on control, tends to exclude, to set up hurdles and to close doors, to be suspicious. He is apt to dislike lack of control in others as well and to dislike impulsiveness, enthusiasm, whimsicality, and unpredictability. He is apt to be cool, sober, and stern. He is apt to prefer toughness and coolness in science to the point of synonymizing them. Clearly, such considerations are relevant and should be researched far more than they have.