Are People Born Good or Bad?

The essential nature of human beings has, across every era and every culture, sparked one philosophical debate after another. Whether we are born good or born bad is hardly something a few words can settle. The theories of psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology hold very different views on what human nature is. Rather than trapping ourselves in a loop of circular thinking, it may be more rewarding to look at how these two schools of psychology see things — and to see whether we can catch a flicker of insight that, like a flare, drives away the darkness within the loop.

The school that argues we are born bad — psychoanalysis

According to Freud's psychoanalysis, the human psyche is divided into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. Freud held that the id follows only the pleasure principle; it gives no thought whatsoever to the rules of society, and Freud went so far as to describe it as immoral. He stressed that people are driven by the survival instinct, with an emphasis on reproduction. In discussing psychological growth and development, Freud put forward his theory of psychosexual development, arguing that people pass through different stages of growth, each with a different erogenous zone, and that the degree of satisfaction at each stage shapes a different personality. Psychosexual development is built on the idea of infantile sexuality, which Freud raised in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905); he believed that humans possess sexual desire from birth, infants included. Freud also proposed the Oedipus Complex, arguing that boys, out of castration anxiety, wish to kill their fathers and marry their mothers, while girls, out of penis envy, wish to bear a child by their fathers. By framing human nature in sexual terms, Freud placed people on a par with animals: a creature fated to turn against its own father differs little from the beasts.

Clearly, though, people are not creatures who pursue sex alone; in everyday life they still follow norms and take account of reality. Freud pointed out that as people grow they develop a superego — the inner representation, within the psyche, of the moral standards of the outside world. When certain unacceptable impulses from the id surface, such as sexual desire or the aggressive instinct, a person feels anxiety, and turns to defence mechanisms to resolve that psychic tension. A person may deny the thought, project it onto others, sublimate it into higher-order creative work, and so on (Freud, 1936/1948). Yet the existence of the superego and defence mechanisms only interprets human behaviour; in psychoanalysis the unconscious is still charged with primal desires. As for why, for so many years, we have never been aware of this darkness in human nature — it is simply because the unconscious cannot be observed by any means. So if the theories of psychoanalysis all rest on an unconscious that cannot be observed, can it still be called a science? That, again, is another debate for the academic world.

The school that argues we are born good — humanistic psychology

Where Freud focused on the unconscious that people cannot perceive, humanistic psychology studies people's conscious experience. Carl Rogers, the founder of humanistic psychology, believed that everyone has a drive towards positive development, and he called this drive self-actualisation. Self-actualisation is the capacity of a living being, even under the constraints of its environment, to preserve a sense of self and to grow into an independent individual (Rogers, 1951). Unlike the id and defence mechanisms of psychoanalysis, self-actualisation does not merely seek psychic calm; it places greater emphasis on the joy and sense of fulfilment that come from bettering oneself. Rogers's views did not remain at the level of theory but extended into psychotherapy. One condition of individual psychotherapy is unconditional positive regard. In therapy, the therapist maintains an attitude of consistently accepting everything about the client, accepting the client's behaviour, so that the client feels heard and valued (Rogers, 1957). The use of unconditional positive regard reflects precisely Rogers's confidence in human nature — the belief that human nature carries a positive driving force, and that self-actualisation can benefit a person's growth without doing any harm.

So who is right and who is wrong?

Some criticise Freud's psychoanalysis for lacking falsifiability and for theories that are grandiose yet detached from reality; equally, some criticise Rogers's theory for oversimplifying the human psyche, while empirical work has questioned the effectiveness of unconditional positive regard (Schmitt, 1980). That said, their theories not only gave the development of psychology a good deal of direction but still carry a certain influence today; a fair number of techniques in present-day counselling continue to draw on Rogers's theory. Yet whether it is Freud or Rogers, neither's doctrine can fully account for every aspect of a person's inner psychology or outward behaviour. Survey the various doctrines of personality psychology, and not one of them can interpret a person's character systematically and comprehensively. Even the single question of whether we are born good or bad is hard to answer in a way that satisfies everyone — let alone the complex and ever-changing human heart. Some hope that neuroscience will be able to give the questions of psychology an ultimate answer. When neuroscience reaches that day, scholars may well find themselves back at the problem of the explanatory gap, beginning yet another round of philosophical contemplation.

References
Freud, A. (1936/1948). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. London: Hogath.
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centred therapy: its current practice, implications and theory. Boston: Houghton.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21, 95-103.
Schmitt, J. P. (1980). Unconditional positive regard: The hidden paradox. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and practice, 17(3), 237-245.