What then is the case being made by Robert White for the upending of traditional concepts of drive-based human motivation. White (1966, pp. 247-248) is making his case based on the fundamental adaptive function being engaged by playful and exploratory behavior:
“A clear advantage in terms of survival would appear to lie with a creature at spontaneously explored and manipulated things, building up out of sheer curiosity a certain knowledge and skill in dealing with the environment; this prior competence might well make the difference between life and death in a crisis provoked by hunger, thirst, or external danger. But we need not rely on speculation. Observation of young animals and children reveals a great deal of playful, manipulative, and exploratory activity that seems to go on without the instigation of visceral drives. These activities are done for the fun of it, but they serve a serious biological purpose. Part of the fun can be described as a feeling of efficacy—or sense of mastery-and the biological purpose is clearly the attaining of competence in dealing with the environment.”
White (1966, p. 248) recognizes that his model of competence and efficacy is playing havoc with the established models:
“To conceive of this striving as a drive is apt to create confusion. It appears to originate in the nervous system itself rather than in visceral tension. It does not follow typical patterns of drive arousal and reduction; it shows as a more or less continuous activity while the animal or child is at peace with his drives but still wide awake, and it subsides only with the gradual onset of fatigue. Nevertheless, the frequency and persistence of such activity in children entitles us to rate the need for efficacy as a fundament motive that is highly important in the growth of personality.”
White (1966, p. 248) more fully establishes the value of his model by showing its broader applicability:
“This need [for efficacy and competence] provides a broader basis for being interested in things that is implied in the concept of drive. . . . [The feeling of efficacy] is, of course, not all that is involved in human interests, but it greatly improves our power to understand what keeps people absorbed in enterprises for their own sake. There are ways of being quite directly interested in things even when drive satisfaction is a remote contingency.”
Given the pervasive and beneficial role played by competence in our life, then couldn’t the experience of efficacy be represented in the liberating experience of leaving the constraints of being earth-bound? Couldn’t we experience competence in finding ourselves able to fly “up, up and away” like Superman? Couldn’t we find the same delight as Wendy, John and Michael Darling when they found that they, like Peter Pan, could fly—and find liberation in sailing off to Neverland?
Were my early dreams perhaps about my emerging sense of competence. Was I experiencing “effectance” while soaring in the sky. When I gave my monster a kick, perhaps I was experiencing a bit of my own competence in dealing with fears in my life. When I was looking down upon both the leaves of Autumn and the Gardens of Spring, was I beginning to explore my world. Was this evidence of an early appreciation for diversity? Was I coming to see that beauty is often found in diversity?
