ulty, and to account for his behavior without reference to the fact that man can reason or that his mind is his basic
means of survival.
The behaviorist projection of man as a stimulus-response machine is one version of this attempt. The projection of
man as a conscious automaton, activated by instincts, is another.
The function which the concept of "demon" served for the primitive savage and the concept of "God" serves for the
theologian, is served for many psychologists by the concept of "instinct"—a term denoting nothing scientifically
intelligible, while creating the illusion of causal understanding. What a savage could not comprehend, he
"explained" by postulating a demon; what a theologian cannot comprehend, he "explains'' by postulating a God;
what many psychologists cannot comprehend, they "explain" by postulating an instinct.
"Instinct" is a concept intended to bridge the gap between needs and goals, bypassing man's cognitive (i.e.,
reasoning and learning) faculty. As such, it represents one of the most disastrous and sterile attempts to deal with
the problem of motivation.
Instinct theory enjoyed an enormous vogue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the early years of the
twentieth. Although its influence has been declining for the past several decades, it is still a major pillar of the
(orthodox) Freudian school of psychoanalysis.
Observing certain types of behavior which they believed to be characteristic of the human species, instinct theorists
decided that the causes of such behavior are innate, unchosen, and unlearned tendencies which drive man to act as
he does. Thus, they spoke of a survival instinct, a parental instinct, an acquisitive instinct, a pugnacity instinct, and
so forth. They seldom attempted to define precisely what they understood an instinct to be; still less did they
trouble to explain how it functioned; they vied with one another in compiling lists of the instincts their particular
theory assumed man to possess, promising to account thereby for the ultimate sources of all human action.
The most prominent of these theorists were William James, William McDougall, and Sigmund Freud. "Instinct,"
writes James, "is... the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends,
and without previous education in the performance."^3 "We may, then," writes McDougall,