الميول والنزعات ، طبيعة الميول .. كتاب علم النَّفس جميل صَليبا

Tendencies and inclinations, the nature of inclinations

Tendencies and tendencies

We said in explaining pleasures and pains that they arise from inclinations and inclinations, and that a person does not become aware of these inclinations directly, but rather perceives them through pleasures and pains, because they are hidden and the pleasures and pains are apparent. If the man who observes himself exceeds the limits of pleasure and pain, he comes into contact with the subconscious and the darkness, and his sensory certainty turns into a rational assumption. Therefore, if psychologists wanted to classify inclinations, they would classify them according to pleasures and pains. They still place an inclination behind every pleasure, and an inclination behind every pain, in order to create the emotional forces and portray them in the language of inclinations.

Inclination is not a force independent of other psychological conditions, but rather it is a general condition that accompanies all forms of agency. Scientists often differentiate between instincts and inclinations, but after analysis you find that inclinations are divided into three categories: some of them are instinctive, some are major and learned, adapted by habit, and some are voluntary and strengthened by the will. For example, selfishness may be an instinctive tendency, it may be acquired and habitual, or it may be voluntary. Research into selfishness is due to the study of each of these three sections. Likewise, mattaf may be instinctive, it may be learned and acquired, or it may arise from contemplation and choice. Therefore, inclination is not a force independent of instinct, habit, and will.

Research into instinctive inclinations calls for more attention than research into acquired inclinations, because acquired inclinations are fertilized with instinctive inclinations and are based on them. It is the goal of education, because the educator often does not create new inclinations, but rather develops instinctive inclinations or works to transform them.

1- The nature of tendencies

A - Its vital nature
Every living being must maintain its balance inside and outside, but this balance never remains in one state, but rather changes with changes in environmental conditions. Whenever these conditions change, the organism is forced to adapt accordingly. Sometimes his adaptation is passive and at other times it is active. The passive is the organism’s compliance with all the conditions of the environment, and the active is its taking these conditions as a means to achieve its goals. Animals cannot benefit from the conditions of the environment unless they maintain their internal balance by nourishing their tissues, regulating their movements, preserving their forms, and coordinating the functions of their organs. Food and reproduction are the paths to individual survival and species survival. There is no survival for a living organism unless all its organs perform their functions. Performing these functions generates necessary needs without which life cannot survive, which are: What we call objective necessities.

As you rise through the ranks of life, from a lower to a higher horizon, your needs multiply and diversify. Look at the needs of a single-chamber plant, and you will find that they are limited to representation and reproduction. As for the financial plant, the difference in its parts is proportional to the difference in its functions and the diversity of its needs. Likewise, if you rise from a lower plant to a higher plant, you will see that the functions of life become more closely intertwined, and the needs increase in diversity and multiplicity, until you move from the last horizon of the plant world to the first horizon of the world. Animal, you have seen the clash of functions and multiplicity of needs that you are not familiar with.

The animal, as Aristotle defined it, is a “moving plant.” It has new organs, functions, and needs that are not found in creatures below it, such as the need for movement, activity, and others. The impact of these needs is reflected on the soul, and many inclinations and inclinations are generated from their reflection. So inclination is a psychological image of a natural need.

There is no doubt that knowing the structure of the body correctly leads to knowing its needs, tendencies, and inclinations. This knowledge is only achieved in the science of life (biology), because this science studies the structure of tissues, reveals the functions of the organs, and explains the body’s needs, nature, patterns of nutrition, and conditions for its survival.

The first of these needs is the need to breathe, and it is one of the needs that we do not feel in the normal state, because the air that the lungs need is available to them in abundance, and in fact it is free, but if the air is spoiled, and a person feels chest tightness and suffocation, his need to breathe intensifies.
The second of these needs is the need to eat and drink. It is the reason we feel hungry and thirsty, and it is related to our inclination towards harmful things and feelings of repulsion and disgust.

These include the need to urinate and defecate, and the need to keep warm in the winter and cool down in the summer. Among them is the need for participation, the need to operate the muscles, and the need to operate the senses, such as touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight. The child makes a lot of movements. He sucks, licks, chews, bites, grinds his teeth, laughs, smiles, cries, runs, and lies on the ground. These movements join with other conflicts, generating the tendency to play, sports, and dance.

Natural needs include the need to rest after being tired, the need to sleep after staying up late, and the sexual need.

The emergence of the sexual need is later than the other, and it is different from love, because love requires preferring one individual over another member of the species. The sexual instinct does not differentiate between individuals.

We do not feel the tendencies that correspond to our natural needs, unless these needs are something whose satisfaction can be delayed, such as the need to eat and drink, or to share, or to reproduce. As for the need to breathe, repeating it in one pattern invalidates our feeling of it.

B - Its psychological nature
Since we cannot now return to the science of life to deduce inclinations and tendencies from the needs of the body, we must limit ourselves to researching them from the psychological point of view.
But tendencies, as we explained previously, are subconscious states, so how do we perceive them? We said that we know them by their effects, just as we know electrical forces by their phenomena. Inclinations are absent from sight, but pleasures and pains are true connotations and apparent indications that guide us to them. Likewise, desires are the best psychological phenomena that indicate inclinations, because they arise from need and desire, and they push a person to act. For example, a normal person does not desire food except when he feels hungry. Who among us can know? The reasons for all his desires? We have many desires in our souls for which we cannot find a reason. Desire, as Plato said, is the daughter of (Phorus) and (Phinea), that is, the daughter of luxury and want. Luxury is its father and poverty is its mother. This is caused by need, and the other is explained by hopes. However, desire does not always indicate the presence of a hidden inclination behind it, and if it does indicate it, there is no correct relationship between it and him. Desires may be vague, or they may be illusory and false and do not apply to the reality of what the soul contains. A person often does not know what he desires, especially in the days of youth, when wishes clash and dreams become mixed. Although desires may be clear, imagination prompts them to change the facts of their subjects. Thus, desires may be clear, and yet they are illusory and false, and a person often imagines that the thing he desires is honorable and noble, but when he achieves it and realizes his destiny, despair takes over him, sadness overtakes him, and his hopes fall like autumn leaves, because he finds the ideal that He dreamed of it contrary to reality, far from the truth, and he was hurt by this imaginary happiness that he imagined existed behind his dreams.