Organic Traits and Their Measurement

Before attempting to view more closely the process of learning, by which this organic system develops still more complex interrelations, it may be well to pause here to answer an insistent question: Under what conditions can the individual organic system be analyzed and measured so as to reveal the organic traits of the person--his physiological strengths and weaknesses, especially the strengths of his drives; his tendencies to excitement and relaxation; his proneness to one rather than another type of physiological integration? Clearly, if we are to answer this question, we need a working conception of traits considered as aspects of the living system, and also a conception of the relations between traits.

From the foregoing it would appear that the observation and measurement of human traits from an organic or biological point of view must involve chiefly the direct observation and measurement of individual tension systems, or indirectly the observation and measurement of their expression. If so, the conception of personality traits from the organic point of view comprises at least three kinds of dispositions, in accordance with the three developmental levels described above.

First, at the level of general undifferentiated response, we may look for the characteristic mode of responses of the tissues, taken collectively. Thus the individual's metabolic rate, though depending partly upon a specific organ, the thyroid, is in some respects a generalized property of his existence even before the thyroid gland appears; it may manifest itself by influencing thresholds for specific response patterns. Since the classification of traits must, so far as is possible, be in terms of their roots, we must first look for the roots in the general dispositions of tissue.

Second, there are traits which depend not globally upon the properties of tissues taken collectively, but upon the properties of specific kinds of tissues; they represent the second, differentiating level of development. Thus the central nervous system, though suffering from no injury, may as a totality be inadequate, whereas the autonomic and peripheral systems are adequate. Or, to use another example, the nerve cells throughout the body may have a long or short latent time or when aroused may exhibit a great or slight lag, compared with corresponding nerve cells in other individuals. Such traits as long warming-up time or extreme perseverative tendency may well express the idiosyncrasy of the nervous system.

Third, traits may arise from a patterned interstimulation of various specific differentiated tissues. Here the trait is traceable not to a specific tissue situation, but only to a mode of interdependence among the tissues. A visceral drive may be an expression not of a single local visceral tension but of a system of tensions, the outer behavior being sometimes an additive, sometimes a much more complex expression of an inner tension system. Similarly, stable or chronic personality dispositions may arise from stable tension systems, unstable dispositions from unstable tension systems. Thus lassitude may conceivably be traceable to a neurocirculatory inadequacy; apprehensiveness, to an endocrine involvement. To be sure, it is hard to imagine such systematic idiosyncrasies without some local source or sources; nevertheless, the trait that actually confronts us arises not from the local but from the patterned situation.

From the organic point of view, personality tendencies of these three types comprise all that the organism is, and all personality traits are included under one or another of these types. There is therefore no special meaning in asking whether the organic point of view is relevant only to extreme but not to normal cases, or to acquired but not to constitutional responses. Organic responses vary from one person to another and from time to time in the same person, and what is extreme from one point of view is the norm for the purposes of some other comparison. If the psychosomatic approach is sound in looking for psychic manifestations of the organic and for organic manifestations of the psychic, there is no sudden transition to a region in which the organic approach becomes "relevant," no point on a distribution curve in which personality may be "practically conceived" to be an organic system. There are indeed all-or-none responses in tissues, and there are all-or-none traits; but if these particular responses do not occur, or these particular traits do not appear, other traits, with their psychosomatic relations, will appear. If extreme hypothyroidism (say a basal metabolic rate of -- 35) "produces" a trait, slight hypothyroidism (say a basal metabolic rate of -- 10) also "produces" a trait.

The confusion on this point, resulting in the widespread belief that "within the normal range" tissue changes are irrelevant to personality, arises largely from the failure to note that the functional significance of a tissue situation in terms of its ultimate effects on behavior may be quite different at different points in a distribution. This is true even with respect to the first and second classes of traits mentioned above. For example, the "degree of overt activity" may be greatest when the tissues are at a certain critical point, so that any increase beyond that point reduces activity, while increase up to that point heightens it. It is even more palpably true of the third class of traits, in which the recognizable trait depends on a network of relations, so that an increase in a local tissue response may either increase, decrease, qualitatively alter, or completely restructure the patterned basis of the trait. All this does not mean that tissues are important only within normal limits; rather, it means that their significance requires intensive empirical research.

And confronted as we are with an organic system which behaves in a certain way because it is so constituted at the time, it does not help us to ask whether the organic point of view is more valid for hereditary conditions, for the after-effects of disease, or for brief "functional disturbances." The organic approach is of course used in different ways, depending on whether the organic situation has been there always (if so, it is usually likely to continue) or only since the time of an injury or disease (if so, the condition and the behavior may be removed), or is a momentary situation (if so, the behavior too, so far as it depends on the specific situation, will be momentary). If the organic situation is there, it will make behavior different. Organic situations change continually in some respects with growth, with tissue modification, with reorganization of inner energies in the learning process; but this does not mean that some situations are organic, others "purely functional" or "purely a matter of habit." Functions and habits, too, are organic events occurring in tissues. Like all other organic events, the function and habit depend both on the dispositions of tissues and on the forces acting upon them.

It must instantly be conceded that this is a schema and a promise, not a completed picture. For purposes of method it is important to insist that personality is a coherent, consistent, organic system, not a scattered group of organs with non-organic cross links between. The concept should become clearer and more valuable as we proceed. Whether a unified view of personality could be achieved without it is doubtful. It is true that many personality dispositions are more easily treated at present by placing the emphasis upon other conceptual tools. When these other tools have had their trial, we shall look back and restate the organic view in such fashion as to indicate the interrelations between the tools in the unified task of personality study.

From the organic standpoint we have, then, to deal with traits as (1) broad characteristics of tissue response; (2) persistent modes of reaction of individual tissues or organs; or (3) persistent modes of interaction between tissues or organs. All three kinds of traits are useful "constructs" in relation to the complex actualities. They are, however, constructs which, like electrons, may serve a conceptual purpose before anyone sees them, or, like zero and infinity, are useful in the absence of any possibility of perceptual verification. On biological grounds, especially the embryological, they appear to be more comparable to the electron than to the mathematical type of construct. For many animal strains and for many human clinical types there are, if not continuous, at least intermittent observations on all three kinds of traits; ratings and experimental behavior observations have already been brought into meaningful relations with all three.

A serviceable example of a trait at the first level is speed of tissue response, as was noted earlier. The general speed of cellular differentiation characterizes not part but all of the growing individual. The question arises: Is there a connection between physiological speed and speed of intellectual response? Evidently there is, for Rounds found a substantial correlation between speed in the DuBois tests and speed in the Achilles tendon reflex. This is not to close a complicated question, but rather to suggest the value of conceiving speed in generic instead of segmental terms. Incidentally, the word "speed" may lead to misunderstanding, for there is little or no connection between this primitive speed attribute and the "congenial pace" of the individual, molded by cultural and subcultural factors and by varying personal motivations. In contrast to generalized speed in this sense must be mentioned various specific speeds, such as speed of walking, or talking, or writing, which are distinctive of the individual; speed in one of these functions is practically independent of speed in others.