That such a will exists is also basic to personal experience. The will is known to us through the effort we often feel necessary to pursue a rational cause against our desires; through the conscious strength of will required to overcome a habit, such as smoking or drinking; through the act of altering our future, as when we decide to get married, to volunteer for military service, or to go to college; through the affirmation of our beliefs and the denial of those of others; and through the dogged determination with which some oppose their enemies, torturers, and executioners. In short, the will is what brings the mind to rational or physical action. It is not rational thinking or doing itself, as when we carry out a logical deduction or make a chess move, but the will is the power to actualize these rational potentials.

Because both the self and the will are powers, what is their relationship? The will is a facet of the self, a particular ability (power) to exercise conscious choice and use practical reason. It is a particularization of the self's power, as is the ego in coordinating and controlling choices, the memory in recalling past experiences and ideas, intelligence in the quality and nature of the choice, and so on. The will, however, is the specific aspect of the self guiding the person through practical reasons toward self-actualization and self-esteem. It is the will as power that enables a person to choose and make ² his chess moves against nature.

With this understanding of will, I can now make more understandable my use of will in previous chapters. As a power, the will is ontologically a vector. It has direction and strength (length) associated with that direction, and as a distinct power the will is separable as, a vector from the other powers and aspects of the dynamic field. Recall from that a person's behavior is partly the product of the personality and situation on the one hand, and partly the product of behavioral dispositions and expectations on the other. The personality encompasses those powers of the self called abilities and ego, as well as the superego and self-sentiment. It also includes the basic motivational powers, temperamental dispositions, and moods and states. The personality, however, is insufficient by itself to complete the connection between behavioral dispositions and expectations, for there is lacking a rational director to link intentions with situations and behavioral dispositions with expectations. The will is the power of choice; it is the power to bring the person to act in a specific way; it is the mode of transformation of potentials, dispositions, needs, sentiments, and interests into manifestations; it is the active force that adjusts the motivations and temperamental dispositions to one's intentions in a particular situation. As such, the will is a pure vector of power which completes the vector equation called the tetradic structure, as portrayed in Figure 29.1.

For my purposes, little more need be said about the nature of the will and self. The self is power, a facet of which is will. The will is practical reason bringing the person to action. Now, for the question: Do we have a free will? 

* Scanned from Chapter 29 in R.J. Rummel, The Dynamic Psychological Field, 1975. For full reference to the book and the list of its contents in hypertext, click book. Typographical errors have been corrected, clarifications added, and style updated.

1 . In spite of Bergson's argument (Time and Free Will, New York: Macmillan, 1910) that choice points are only an ex post facto framework imposed on a continuous process of consciousness and doing, a compelling datum of experience is that there are points in our life where we made a decision among alternatives, and were conscious of doing such at that moment.

2 . The will can bring the body to act, but cannot assure the action itself. The chess board may be overturned before the person can act as determined by the will. This distinction is important in assessing the will's freedom.

---

You are the visitor since 11/28/02

Go to top of document