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As I said at the end of my last post, I'd be discussing text from the section "Functionalism" of Schneider's journal article.
"There were at least two major orientations of Functionalism: (1) the functions of cognition and behavior in adaptation to the environment and (2) the role of individual differences in the capacity to adapt. Functionalism, then, offers another orientation to answering the question Gestalt psychologists hypothesized that people apprehend and create order because they have no choice. Functionalists proposed that order is apprehended and created so people can function adaptively in their world. In considering this question of adaptation, however, there were two forms the hypothesis took - adaptation as a generalized phenomenon and individual differences in adaptation." (p. 451)
I guess I hadn't really thought of Gestalt in relation to these types of situations as being a mandatory situation, where the person is driven to understand his/her new surroundings. If this is the case, then as much as I would like to have understood the mission, I wasn't driven enough to overcome the ethical obstacles which seemed to block my path to enlightenment and true understanding of the mission. So Gestalt was not a sufficient theory to explain my attitude towards these things. In any case, the phrase in this paragraph "because they have no choice" automatically knocks me out of Gestalt territory, because I did have a choice, and I used it, as hard as it might have been.
Turning now to functionalism - and we're just starting in on this - I should say that I'm a little bit Eastern in that I don't believe that action is everything. There is also something to being and there is also something to conscience. So, while I certainly did want to function in the mission, I also wanted to maintain a clear conscience, and I had thought through a lot of ethical issues, including studying Scripture on it, auditing a theology class by Joseph Ton (a Romanian Baptist pastor on exhile at the time from in the USA). So I was not exactly green in the field, and I had some knowledge and experience behind me, maybe more than the mission realized. I was told I'd be a secretary and I was committed to functioning well as a secretary and I understood that missionary work involved more than just doing your job, but I didn't realize I'd be pressed in from all sized, so that even those I wrote letters to would be censored.
I tried to adapt to thing I felt I either agreed with or at least didn't disagree with. But in the end I adapted to some things, like giving up my Austrian activities, out of sheer exhaustian from fighting against them, standing against them. So that was my adapting. What was wrong with my Austrian activities? Nothing. Had I ever done anything that had compromised their security in my Austrian activities? I doubt it, although there were a couple unusual situations that were a bit out of the norm. One probably was an Austrian intelligence checking me out, although I can't be sure. The other had the potential of being an issue, but I don't think it was, and that was when I took, a Russian tutor class for a while. The tutor could potentially have been a problem but I have no certain indication he was, so he might not have been either.
So why did the mission treat me so badly, especially at the end of my time with them, when it was, by that time, so clear that nothing I had done by way of work with the Austrians had been a security problem? Why, then, would they have kept pressuring me to stop my involvement with the Austrians? Basically, it felt like they just wanted complete control over me.
Functionalism. Functionalism for what? To be a secretary? I tried to be a secretary, but they kept moving me around. Adapt to my environment. What environment? The Austrian office or the North American office?
I think I have a very good capacity to adapt, which is why I was able to hang on so well. Actually, I've not put it that way before, but put it as "a very good tolerance for ambiguity." But my tolerance for ambiguity was taxed really past the limits there with the Vienna mission, and it was the mission, and nothing to do with the country of Vienna. A capacity to adapt might not be exactly the same thing as tolerance for ambiguity, but I think they go together frequently.
The thing for me, of course, though, was that I could only adapt as far as (1) I understood and (2) I agreed with morally. So no matter how funtional something might be, if I didn't understand what was going on (which I guess would be the part 1 of functionalism) and I didn't agree with it once I did understand it, then I wasn't going to do it unless I was somehow forced to do it, which is what happened with some behaviors at the end of my time with the mission that I'd held out on for a long time; I finally caved in.
So both functionalism and Gestalt are limited by my ethical beliefs that affected my time in Vienna.
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"Adaptation as general phenomenon. Functionalists would say that people have a fundamental need or desire for information about the status of their behavior vis a vis their environment. They seek information so that they can adapt to, or be in homeostatic balance with, their environment." (P. 451)I do not remember having too much need for feeback for at least a couple reasons. First of all, my initial job responsibility was to study software manuals (this was 1987 remember) for a few weeks. This does not require much feedback.
Then also right off the back I was blown away with 1) more of a welcome than I expected while at the same time 2) discrepencies and things that were dishonest, which taken together put me early on on my guard so that I was more interested in watching and trying to figure out what was going on than in in how I was doing.
Maybe I should have asked how I was doing more, but I didn't. To me asking how I was doing would have been an act of vulnerability, but the watching and trying to figure things out I was doing was more aking to putting my guard up, so these two acts would have been incompatible, I think. If I had sought information regarding the status of my behavior vis a vis the environment at the Vienna mission, I would have done it through observation, rather than verbally.
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This is in the sub-section "Individual differences.""[P]erformance equals ability and a climate which stresses the display of individual differences. Dunnette (1973, p. 25) concludes similarly that 'An employer's goal, quite simply, should be to do everything he can to assure ('allow') each employee to give full expression to his abilities, skills and aptitudes.'" (p. 457; initial part is in italics in original)
The Vienna mission was not particularly interested in this. It was first and foremost interested in security. After that none of this other stuff was guaranteed, but it's possible you might land it fortuitously (or God willing).
So the thing is that at the mission you most definitely had people there who were intelligent and talented, so they had the "ability" part of the equation covered. (Of course, it depends on what position you put them in, but I know of no one, at least when I was with the mission - with the possible exception of me - who was in a position they were not qualified for. I wasn't a professional secretary; I'd just worked temp jobs and typed about 40 wpm. at the time.)
Climate. As far as I could tell everyone liked the work climate at the mission and felt it was conducive for their work. So I was the odd woman out there. I didn't like it because of the ethical differences. Otherwise, it was definitely very friendly (when they wanted to be, that is; otherwise, they cold also be very unfriendly when they wanted to be, too).
In the Vienna mission, I don't think they were particularly interested in assuring "full expression..." They just wanted people who could get the work done, do a good job, be reliable, and keep the security. A little individuality and creativity might be okay, such as for quality lesson planning, problem solving, etc. I'm assuming that based on how they treated me is how they might treat others, that they like people to pretty much tow the line, so there might be a limit as to how much expression a person could give his or her abilities, skills or aptitudes, and how s/he expressed them. Presumably, however, if the person had fully internalized the missions norms and values this might not be too much of a problem. They knew the limits of what was okay and what wasn't, they'd come to terms with it and maybe even found ways to be challenged within the mission's norms. But still, it does mean that this aspect of functionalism doesn't completely fit the Vienna mission completely, because there would be a limit to the expression of one's gifts that the mission might accept. This was, I think, because of the security issue and the need or desire for control.
I should also say that it might not be accurate to be assuming that my experience is a good comparison with others' if my experience at the mission is tainted by affects from my dad's work in star wars.
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So, what is it? It's not quite Gestalt, and it's not quite functionalism. My experience in Vienna and my adjustment to working at the mission there seems to have been not quite either, but something else. At least we have socialization to fall back on, but it would have been nice to have such a nich high brown word like Gestalt or functionalism. But it just wasn't meant to be, I guess.I tried though. I think that's all I'm going to use from that article, so next time we'll start a new one.
