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Religion, Practice and Science of Non-Violence
refused to buy it for him. For the second child the ice-cream cone has not only an intrinsic value, but may also be the carrier of psychological values.
Take another instance. The question: Does sexual deprivation. give rise to all or any of the many effects of frustration, e.g., aggression, sublimation etc? The answer to it depends on two different situations. There are many cases in which celibacy has po psychopathological effects, in others it has many bad effects. The factor which determines which effect prevails in an individual, depends upon whether or not sexual deprivation is felt by the individual as representing rejection by the opposite sex, inferiority, lack of worth, lack of respect, or isolation. Sexual deprivation can be borne with relative ease by individuals for whom it has no such implication.
Similarly, criticism from a friend may be taken in two different ways, Ordinarily the average person will respond by feeling attacked and threatened (which is fair enough because so frequently criticism is an attack). But if he is conviced that this criticism is not an attack or a rejection of him, he will then not only listen to the criticism but possibly even be grateful for
it.
After having discussed situations which may or may not lead to frustration, let us now have a look at the situations that necessarily cause frustration.
Suppose a subject was to direct two subordinates in a building task, but the subordinates never allow him to attain the goal of completing the small structure; or a subject who is not allowed to complete a task and is told that he has not met a criterion of performance and that he will not receive a reward; or stimuli are applied that divert the subject's attention from the task at hand, e.g., of a student reading for examination; or each time an experimental dog feels hungry and wants to pick up a morsel of meat, he gets an electric shock. The above different factors such as, barriers, failures, distractors and conflict, lead to interference in the instrumental responses and consequent frustration.
Now, the question is: Does frustration always lead to aggression? While earlier, it was suggested that the intensity and/or frequency of aggression co-varies with the strength of frustration, which is determined by the strength of the response
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