Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

Bibliographic data

Book

Document type:: Book

Collection:: POP - Possession, Ownership, Property

Title:: Ownership as interpersonal dominance: a history and three studies of the social psychology of property

Author:: Rudmin, Floyd W.

Year of publication:: 1988

Language:: English

Subject:: Besitz Eigentum Sozialpsychologie

Topic:: C - Psychology

Shelfmark:: C/R916 O9

Access:: Free access

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/pop.AC14489044

8 the emplricists began describing mechanistic psychologles of passions that biological mechanisms of possessiveness gained prominence. At the close of the eighteenth century, it was common to consider that man’s irrational nature was the product of instinctive passions. Kant (1798/1974) expressed this in social and ethical terms: Since there are only so many different instincts - that is, only so many different modes of pure passivity in the appetitive power- they deserve to be classified, not according to objects of the appetitive power as things (which are innumerable), but rather according to the principle of the use or abuse men make of their person and of their freedom, when one man makes another a mere means to his ends. -Properly speaking, passions are directed only to men and can also be satisfied by men. ...These passions are the manias for honor, for power and for possession. (Kant, 1788/1974, p. 137) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, passions were to become faculties, which in turn became instincts, and in turn psychodynamic libidinal forces. The theory of evolution helped make these transitions in Instinct theories and was also to helped provide the alternative theories of territoriality and dominance hierarchy that followed the demise of instinct theories. In the Cartesian and Hobbesian traditions of basing psychological passions on biological instincts, Cabanis (1802), Combe (1803), Hancock (1824) and others at the start of the nineteenth century considered psychological faculties to be instinctive. Included here was the instinct of acquisitiveness. The phrenologists all included a facuity of acquisitiveness; for example, Spurzheim placed acquisitiveness in the temporal lobe adjacent to constructiveness, secretiveness, combativeness, and cautiousness (Boring, 1950). Phrenology, of course, and faculty psychology fell into disrepute, but theories of instinct gained new support from nineteenth century developments in philosophy and biology. The first of these was German, post-Kantian philosophy, which had become focused on the dialectical processes and on manifestations of will. Schneider (1880) apparently combined these and, perhaps presaging Freud, argued that all instincts are manifestations of animal will expressed within the dialectic of expansion and contraction (Hocking, 1929). Acquisition and domination were both positive, expansive instincts (Schneider, in Hocking, 1929, p.74). According to Hocking (1929), James’ (1890) list of instincts was based on that of Schneider and thus included the instinct for acquisition. Hocking (1929) claims James (1890) was also influenced by Chadbourne (1872), who argued, not that the irrationality of instincts necessitated reason, but that the incompetence of reason necessitated instincts. Reminiscent of Malebranche, Chadbourne (1872) grouped the desires for knowledge, property, power, and esteem under the cateqorv of instincts for the progress of the individual and the race.

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