Psychological autonomy—or the ability to acquire a self-determined internal guidance in one’s life and actions, to be psychologically liberated from various internal and external pressures and demands, and to be able to attain internal peace, harmony, and tranquility because of this liberation—is probably one of the oldest psychological enigmas that people try to solve. Almost every known civilization has tried to understand and solve the mystery of reaching such a state, but still today, people are struggling with their ability to achieve it and live autonomously. These attempts to solve this problem have been based on the assumption that people have the potentiality toward autonomy and agency and it is part of their nature. But the inability to fully realize this potentiality indicates that there are serious obstacles of different kinds that prevent it from maximum development. One of the most formidable hindrances to autonomous functioning is the pressure to conform to the social and cultural requirements of communities and societies and to live one’s life not according to self-generated principles, but according to the norms and expectations that are based on these requirements. This obstacle constitutes a fundamental problem of social sciences: the problem of agency and structure.
In contrast to the above statement about the detrimental role of sociocultural demands in autonomous functioning, it is well established within modern psychology that a human child acquires the psychological characteristics of a fully functioning person only through socialization and enculturation in a sociocultural environment. Starting with Lev Vygotsky, followed by the sociohistorical school of thought, and complemented by modern research in developmental psychology, this idea of becoming a psychologically mature individual through the internalization of sociocultural norms and regulations about how to think, to feel, and to behave in a particular community constitutes a pivotal point of modern human sciences. This proposition states that each human individual is essentially a social and cultural being and a product of his or her community or society.
If we accept both these propositions—that people have a potentiality toward psychological autonomy with cultural demands being the major impediment to the development of this potentiality and the idea that without culture humans cannot become fully functioning individuals and contributing members of their communities—then a problem emerges as we try to understand the relationship between culture and autonomy: are humans free or undeniably culture bounded? If humans are products of their cultures, then can they truly be autonomous and free from these cultures? If people can be psychologically free, then what role do cultures play in the acquisition and use of this freedom? In this chapter, I will address these questions and will try to elaborate on the complex and dialectical relations between culture and psychological autonomy.
I will start with a conceptual analysis of the main terms: psychological autonomy and culture. Then I will introduce the theory of cultural models (CMs) and use it as the basis for the following analysis. Specifically, I will focus on the CMs of and for understanding the individuals, their selves, and autonomy that different cultural communities have developed. Next, I will analyze three sets of such CMs: the Indian, Chinese, and Western ones, and I will examine the extent to which these models provide space for human autonomy, if any.
I will argue the following propositions:
Psychological autonomy, which can be defined as a particular state of mind, a set of certain mental skills, and a mode of functioning, allows a person to exercise mindful awareness, reflection, rational regulation, and decision making in regard to his or her goals and purposes, means and ways of reaching these goals, and various pressures. These pressures are both internal psychological, in the forms of thoughts and feelings, and external sociocultural, in the forms of norms, regulations, expectations, and demands (Chirkov, 2010, 2014b; Ryan & Saap, 2007). Table 4.1 illustrates this structure of psychological autonomy. The first two components—self-generated goals and the ways of achieving them—constitute the basis of the autonomous mode of functioning. They constitute the essence of a person’s “inner compass,” as some self-determination theory (SDT) researchers have labeled them (Assor, 2012). These components serve both as the compass (self-directedness) and the map (self-guidance) that steer a person between various options and alternatives in life. The other two components—psychological and sociocultural demands—constitute the actual options and alternatives among which a person has to choose in order to either follow or reject autonomous functioning. The core of psychological autonomy is the ability to mentally distance oneself from these four components through mindful awareness, reflections, and rational decisions and to exercise freedom in constructing, modifying, or rejecting these components and then deciding how to use them to guide ones’ life and actions. An important aspect of autonomy is a person’s willingness to discover, exercise, and be faithful to this way of psychological freedom, especially in the face of resistance from oneself and others regarding it.
This table also identifies different forms of autonomy. When it refers to the autonomy of a person as a whole who lives his or her life in a particular sociocultural environment, it introduces personal autonomy. When a person makes decisions about particular acts and behaviors according to the autonomous mode and has the will and power to do this, researchers talk about behavioral and motivational autonomy, or autonomous agency. When an autonomous decision refers to a particular aspect of a person’s psychological functioning, researchers speak about emotional, intellectual, and moral forms of autonomy. The presented table depicts the ideal types of autonomy that may serve as the ultimate guide for attaining an autonomous way of existence. People may be at different stages of acceptance and advancement in this mode of existence, but full autonomy is a rarely achieved ideal.
The idea of human autonomy and the related ideas of psychological freedom, harmony with the world and oneself, and, finally, an enlightened and liberated existence have been discovered and contemplated in all known civilizations; it is probably one of the most powerful and emancipating ideas in the history of humankind, parallel to the idea of God. This idea reflects one of the deepest levels of human functioning, and achieving it is considered as one of the ultimate goals of people’s existence (Baumeister & Tierney, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2004, 2006; Ryan, Legate, Niemiec, & Deci, 2012).
| Components | Levels of Functioning | Mindful Awareness | Reflection and Contemplation | Rational Regulation and Decision Making |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-determined goals and values—end-states for life and actions | Awareness of one’s authentic core values and life goals; mindfulness of their existence and importance | Contemplation on these goals and their correspondence with existing societal and communal values and goals | A decision to follow or reject self-generated and authentic values in one’s life and actions Basis for all forms of autonomy |
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| Self-determined principles, means, and ways of reaching the end-states | Awareness of self-generated moral principles and ways of achieving self-determined goals | Deliberation on plausibility of these principles and ways of life and their congruency with existing conditions and morals in the society | Using the results of these deliberations to guide ones’ life and actions toward achieving self-generated goals Basis for personal motivational, and behavioral autonomy |
|
| Psychophysiological and psychological pressures coming from within one’s body and mind | Mindfulness about internal demands and pressures: one’s thoughts, emotions, desires, and wants | Reflection on the sources of these pressures, their mechanisms, and consequences for achieving the chosen goals | Deciding of how to deal with these demands and pressures: either to follow or reject them; taking responsibility for these decisions. Emotional, motivational, and intellectual autonomy |
|
| Sociocultural demands and pressures: expectations, norms, and prescriptions | Mindfulness of the social and moral demands, as well as of self-determined values and moral principles | Contemplating on the social and self-generated values, goals and principles; examining origin and mechanisms of societal demands and their consequences for achieving self-determined goals and values | Choosing to live and act in accord or against these demands; accepting responsibility for this decision; follow an autonomous way despite pressure to confirm to imposed social norms Personal, behavioral, intellectual, and moral autonomy |
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Each and every culture recognizes the existence of this autonomous mode of functioning and makes efforts to harness it for the benefit of humans and their societies. However, autonomous individuals, because of their freedom to think and act independently from the direct prescriptions of sociocultural communities, may pose a threat to the existing social status quo and potentially disturb the standing social order. Because of this, communities are interested in controlling and in some cases, like in autocratic and dictatorial societies, dramatically limiting the development of and access to such a capacity (Chirkov & Knorre, 2015). Autonomy is, psychologically, a very challenging way of running one’s life, and some people are simply incapable of handling it (Baumeister, 1993; Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice., 1994; Gruen, 2007; Kalis, 2011). In addition to failing on an individual level, people may resist autonomous functioning on the level of sociocultural communities by building and maintaining CMs of autonomy avoidance (Fromm, 1941). Even societies that support autonomy may experience problems with this mode of functioning (Gaylin & Jennings, 2003).
The concept of autonomy (auto in Greek means “self” and nomos means “law”) is based on the idea of self-generated laws and principles that are used to self-determine and self-govern one’s life and actions. It is obvious from this etymological analysis that a person’s self stands at the center of all these states and processes. Because of this, in studying autonomy it is crucial to understand the nature, development, and mechanisms of a person’s self and the role culture plays in shaping it (Ryan, 1991).
A persons’ self is conceptualized in this chapter as the center of awareness, experience, and actions taken from the first-person perspective of an acting individual (Deci & Ryan, 1991; Gallagher, 2000; Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Martin, Sugarman, & Hickinbottom, 2009). It is the phenomenological experiential core of a person that constitutes the heart of his or her internal private subjectivity. This core experiential self is a system that consists of components and dimensions, which reflect both universal and culturally specific aspects. The universal part is composed of the proto and core self (Damasio, 2012) or prereflective minimal self (Gallagher, 2000), while the culture-relative one is composed of a verbally framed, autobiographical reflected self (Gallagher, 2000). The minimal core self is the direct unreflected-upon first-person experience of one’s psychological reality, the reality of perceived, cognized, and acted upon external and internal worlds. The experience of the minimal self is accompanied by a sense of ownership and agency. This sense of ownership and agency means that these perceptions, thoughts, and feelings are experienced as belonging to me, not others—they are mine and they emanate from me, and it is I and not others who act on them (David, Newen, & Vogeley, 2008; Gallagher, 2000). The core experiential self that is based on the minimal self “is conceived as the invariant dimension of first-personal givenness in the multitude of changing experiences” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 204). And this invariant dimension is present in the experiences of each and every person on Earth independently of their ethnic, cultural, or linguistic affiliation.
Through “the narrative [autobiographical] self - a [core] self [is] linked to sociality, memory, and language” (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008, p. 205). And because it is linked to sociality and language, it essentially becomes a sociocultural self (Fivush & Haden, 2003) and connects the core self to a person’s life history and to the social and cultural conditions of his or her life. This development of autobiographical self means that a person becomes capable of reflecting on his or her core self and its immediate experiences of ownership and agency (Kirmayer, 2007; Snow, 1990). A person who experiences events through the autobiographical self cannot only, for example, perceive another person but also reflect on the act of perceiving him or her and be aware of the dependence of a perception of that person on the perspectives, attitudes, and feelings of the perceiver. This reflected self operates in terms of both internalized cultural (which I later call “CMs”) and idiosyncratic categories and frameworks, which are articulated in verbal terms (hence, conceptual self, by Neisser, 1988; Neisser & Jopling, 1997). This self has a temporal dimension that allows a person to establish the continuity of his or her sense of core self across time and places. When fully trained and equipped, this autobiographical, narrative, remembered, reflected, and conceptual self becomes the center of autonomous functioning. As I will discuss later, the autobiographical cultural self may be considered to be comprised of three dimensions: a familial or interdependent dimension, an individualized or independent dimension, and a spiritual dimension (Roland, 1988; Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 2003). The interplay among these three dimensions constitutes the main scene of a person’s struggle for autonomy between cultural and authentic individual aspects of self; in different cultures, this struggle unfolds differently.
For the benefit of the following analysis, it is useful to differentiate Culture (capital “C”) and a culture (small “c”) or cultures. Culture stands for a universal human-made sociosymbolic environment created by communities of people regardless of where they live, of what languages they speak, and of what ethnic background they are. Culture is an intentional, intersubjective, and taken-for-granted reality that is maintained by interactions among its members (Chirkov, 2014a, 2016) and constitutes a species-specific niche for human development and functioning (Tomasello, 1999). Culture is a universal and necessary condition for any human individual to become a person anywhere in the world and is a primary regulator of humans’ behaviors and experiences. Humans without or outside Culture cannot and do not exist.
Conversely, cultures (small “c”) are specific representations and arrangements of Culture in particular places and at particular times. These cultures represent themselves through the diversity of languages that their members speak, the variety of norms, values, rituals, and practices they exercise, and the multiplicities of mentalities that these members acquire. Because of this diversity, there are specific names for these cultures: various national cultures, like Japanese, French, or German; cultures of religious communities, like Judeo-Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist ones; cultures of various ethnic communities, like Aboriginal cultures, cultures of particular tribes or ethnoses; and cultures of specific communities and groups, like urban or rural cultures, university campus cultures, youth cultures, gang cultures, and so forth.
To explain the mechanisms of person-culture interactions in the development of a sense of self and autonomy, I will use the theory of CMs developed by cognitive anthropologists (D’Andrade & Strauss, 1992; Holland & Quinn, 1987; Shore, 1998, 2002; Shweder, 1996; Strauss, 1992). CMs are collective systems of knowledge, meanings, interpretations, and behavior regulations that sociocultural communities develop in order to regulate, control, and coordinate activities of their members. CMs are “the presupposed, taken-for-granted, commonsensical, and widely shared assumptions which a group of people hold[s] about the world and its objects” (Hollan, 1992, p. 285). These models exist both out there in the communities and in people’s minds; they are not exclusively external or internal. They are intersubjective and exist only when they are internalized by members of a community, are enacted by them, and, finally, are externalized and instantiated in different forms of sociocultural practices and institutions. Communities have developed CMs of each and every aspect of their members’ lives and functioning, including CMs of the universe, the natural, and social worlds, of individuals and their places in the world, and of the human mind and various psychological states and processes, including the autonomous ones. They have also developed CMs for doing some things—similar to manuals or guidebooks that prescribe how to do different things, like give birth, raise children, eat, sleep, date, make love, and hundreds if not thousands of other nuances of communal and personal lives. Learning and internalizing these models constitute the essence of becoming a human being through socialization and enculturation.
A newly born child driven by his or her protoself starts interacting with members of his or her community, first with parents and siblings, then with relatives, and, finally, with other community members. Initially all his or her impressions of the world are nonsymbolic, explicit, and direct. They push a child to behave reactively upon them. Through social interactions, a child learns and internalizes various CMs and makes them a part of his or her own system of psychological and behavioral regulations (Cicchetti & Beeghly, 1990). As a result of this socialization, a child learns language and attaches verbal labels to mental impressions, thus developing symbolic mental representations of his or her mental world including an experiential self. The internalization of CMs also contributes to a transformation of the minimal protoself of a child into the mature autobiographical narrative self. This happens as a child acquires knowledge and experience about others as intentional agents and that these intentional agents are similar to her- or himself; the child learns first-person pronouns—“I” and “Me”—and attaches a personal name to him- or herself (Bates, 1990; Meltzoff, 1990; Stern, 1985; Tomasello, 1999). All these representations are building blocks that a person later uses to construct his or her autonomous way of being. The newly developed autobiographical self becomes an agent of manipulations of the symbolic representations and of a psychological distancing from them. All these new acquisitions and regulations create the potentiality for autonomous regulation and self-development.
Thus, we may say that Culture stands at the roots of developing a potentiality toward autonomy in each and every member of human communities. In the next section, I will focus on cultures that shape this potentiality into culturally specific autobiographical selves and teach their members how to use these selves for self-guidance and self-regulation according to the CMs for autonomous functioning.
In addition to the CMs of common things, events, and interactions that surround members of cultural communities, there are CMs of and for selfhood, motivation, agency, and autonomy. This means that every culture has indigenous models of self-based agentic and motivational activities (M. W. Morris, Menon, & Ames, 2001) as well as systems of practices for training and optimally using these capacities. Individuals’ autonomous functioning unfolds within the limits provided by these models.
A capability toward autonomy is universal as are people’s core experiential sense of self, their sense of “I,” and their ability to differentiate “I” and “Me” from “Others.” SDT research has a long history of postulating and empirically verifying the cultural universality of the need for autonomy and of autonomous motivation (Chirkov, 2009; Ryan & Deci, 2010). These conclusions are well complemented by anthropological data. For example, anthropologist Brown (1991) comprised a portrait of “universal people” (UP)—hypothetical human beings that represent the universal psychological and social makeup of humankind that exists through the majority of known cultures. This is what he wrote about the self and agency of these people:
The UP have a concept of the person in the psychological sense. They distinguish self from others, and they can see the self both as subject and object. They do not see the person as a wholly passive recipient of external action, nor do they see the self as wholly autonomous. To some degree, they see the person as responsible for his or her action. They distinguish actions that are under control from those that are not. They understand the concept of intention. They know that people have private inner life, have memories, make plans, choose between alternatives, and otherwise make decisions (not without ambivalent feeling sometimes). (p. 135)
This quote identifies that cultural communities universally have models of and for a person, the self, and autonomy. What is culturally specific is the way in which different communities prescribe how people should experience their selves, how they have to manage their self-regulation in everyday life, what they should focus on, what they should reflect upon, and with what results; what it means to initiate autonomous ideas or actions and how to manage them (Hsu, 1985).
After the above theorizing, it becomes clear that in order to understand the interactions of culture and autonomy, we have to explore various CMs of person, self, self-determination, and autonomy as well as the way these models are internalized, experienced, and used for self-regulation by actual members of cultural communities. In the following sections, I will analyze three cultural communities with regard to their understandings of individual, self, and autonomy: Indian, mostly Hindu; Chinese, both Taoist and Confucian; and Western.
All CMs are organized in hierarchical systems (Shore, 1998). At the very top there are broad and encompassing CMs that are rooted in the main religious and/or philosophical and ideological doctrines of communities. This level of models is typically concerned with the world ontology, principles of human existence, and very broad recipes for life. Usually they are explicitly articulated, are written in the main cultural texts, and are recognized by the majority of members of communities. Then there are lower level models that are nested in the higher order ones and that reflect and prescribe how members of the communities should regulate their everyday lives and functioning. These models embrace all possible domains of life including being a person, running family life, being related to others, experiencing motivation, emotion, cognition, and almost everything that is concerned with psychological functioning in general and autonomous functioning in particular. These models are typically less clearly articulated; they are mostly taken for granted and they guide people’s lives and actions semiconsciously. These are the models that members of communities are socialized and enculturated into and which become actual mental regulatory systems when internalized. Such models can be extracted and conceptualized by anthropologists, cultural psychologists, psychiatrists, and other specialists who work as ethnographers or clinicians with members of various cultural communities. The third level of analysis is the level of individuals who, after internalizing all these models, actually live and function in their communities and enact various models of functioning. These individuals use the different dimensions of their experiential and autobiographical selves and undergo conflicts and challenges as they adjust these selves to ever-changing sociocultural environments. This is the level where autonomous functioning actually happens and manifests itself. An analysis at this level is usually conducted by psychological anthropologists and cultural psychologists (Bennardo & de Munck, 2013; Levy, 1973; Mines, 1994; Parish, 1994).
India possesses one of the most elaborate collections of CMs of the worlds’ ontology, of people’s place in these worlds, of human nature, and of numerous spiritual and divine spheres that interact with the human worlds. These CMs are articulated by major religions, like Hinduism or Buddhism, or by main philosophical systems, like Vedānta, Yoga, or Ayurveda. I will analyze the Vedānta model of human functioning (Bharati, 1985; B. Morris, 1994; Paranjpe, 1988; Paranjpe & Rao, 2008). To understand its conception of self, self-realization, and autonomy, it is important to introduce the concepts of Dharma, Karma, and Moksha. Although they refer to high-level CMs of Hindu’s cosmology and ontology, they are deeply internalized by Indian people and, as Roland (1988) mentioned, it is very difficult to understand their selfhood, motivations, and psychological conflicts without considering these ideas.
Dharma may be interpreted as the duties and obligations that are prescribed for people based on their status and the caste into which they were born (B. Morris, 1994; Shweder et al., 2003). Indians see society as an orderly whole where each person has his or her place and duties. A person must behave according to this place to maintain the harmonious existence of the social whole, and it is his or her moral obligation and duty to find this place. Dharma is not directly given to a person; he or she has to discover it in order to reach salvation. A quest for one’s Dharma is an important existential aspect of any Indian’s life. Shweder and colleagues (2003) talk about the search for one’s individual Dharma that identifies a person’s moral obligations, which are conditioned by his or her capabilities, resources, and existing circumstances. This quest is not predetermined; it requires mindfulness and reflections, which are the attributes of autonomous functioning. The notion of Dharma is intrinsically connected to the notion of Karma, another crucial idea related to humans’ actions and their motivation. Karma “is a theory of moral causation and implies that every human action has consequences for good or ill. All events thus have antecedents and what a person is is determined by past actions” (B. Morris, 1994, p. 81). Shweder et al. (2003) call Karma “a law of personal responsibility” that has a powerful potential “to generate prescriptions for agency and control” (p. 115). Because every behavioral act has consequences, a person has to be careful in choosing his or her actions in order to not spoil his or her Karma. The most beneficial actions are those in accord with one’s Dharma, as well as charity, support of religious institutions, sacrifice, worship and meditation, and reading and contemplating the scriptures; they are all considered to be meritorious. Often the demands of duties and obligations
come into conflict, features of context plus the resources and constraints of the agent enter into casuistic consideration of the principles that govern the case in point. Morality therefore, is not simply a matter of following rules (see Shweder and Much, 1987). It involves personal effort of discrimination and judgment. It is a personal responsibility to cultivate this kind of knowledge and intelligences. (Shweder et al., 2003, p. 120)
When applied to a particular person at a particular place and time, the notions of Dharma and Karma not only provide space for but actually require the exercising of intellectual and moral autonomy in order to harmonize all the demands.
It is difficult to discuss autonomy without referring to the ultimate goals of personal strivings according to the Vedānta CMs. I will omit discussing the goals of Kama, pleasures and hedonics of life including erotic ones, and Artha, acquiring wealth and power in honorable ways, which each require reflections and contemplations in order to follow one’s Dharma without spoiling one’s Karma. I will highlight the goal of achieving Moksha, which “refers to the primary goal of life liberation from the world of Karma, the continual cycle of rebirths (Samsara). It signifies not only retirement from worldly activity but rejection of the world. It constitutes, in Hindu culture, the ultimate aim of existence” (B. Morris, 1994, p. 82). Moksha means liberation: the acquisition of freedom from all obligations and duties by discovering one’s true Self and uniting with it. It is a bliss that is revealed to a person after following his or her Inner (Brahman) Self (Saraswathi, 2005). Thus, it is possible to say that Moksha is the state of ultimate spiritual and psychological freedom or, in our terms, autonomy.
Marcel Mauss (1985) suggested that Indian sages were the first people in the history of human civilizations who articulated and conceptualized the existence of individual consciousness, thus inventing the idea of self. They coined the term ahamakāra, the “creation of the ‘I’” (p. 13). Paradoxically, these sages were also the leaders in rejecting this “I” “as a fiction constitutive of an undesirable worldly consciousness” (Sanderson, 1985, p. 190). Most commentators on the self in various spheres of Indian spiritual and philosophical thinking emphasize the unimportance of an existential empirical self that is equated with bodily functions and a person’s ego that experiences emotions, desires, and other mental phenomena, as well as with social selves and public manifestations. “… The self as the basis of such important human achievements as scholarship, artistic skill, technological invention, etc. is totally ignored in the Indian philosophical texts (Bharati, 1985, p. 89)” (cited from B. Morris, 1994, p. 70). The primary and cherished center of human authentic existence is the “Inner/Eternal/True Self,” or Brahman, or Ātman (Saraswathi, 2005). The discovery and cultivation of this true self leads to the salvation that constitutes the ultimate goal of human existence.
The true self or Ātman is something that transcends the various aspects of personality covered by the concept of jīva [vital energy of life] as well as the concept of ego. The Ātman accounts for the unity and selfsameness of the “I.” It is characterized as the capacity to witness—or to be aware of the various states of consciousness—and is claimed to be blissful in nature. Finally, correct discrimination between the self and the nonself is regarded as a means to realization of the blissful nature of the true self. (Paranjpe, 1988, p. 197)
This quote describes the state of Moksha presented above, which is also considered “self-realization” (Paranjpe, 1988, p. 203), salvation, reaching bliss, and reaching inner peace and tranquility. Independent of what eternal life goals are emphasized, all of them can be reached by discovering and devoting one’s life to the cultivation of the Brahman self.
A self-realized person would not be swayed by the egoistic biases that see the world as prompted by desires, possible selves, and personal projects. Through relentless cognitive deconstrual, the ego of such a person is rendered powerless to the point of its virtual destruction. Through this process, the self-realized person uncovers the true self, which—as noted—is claimed to be blissful by nature. According to the Bhagavad-Gītā (2.17), only a person without a sense of mineness or egotism—a person who abandons all desires and acts free from egotistic longings—attains peace. Needless to say, it is the attainment of inner peace and tranquility—not wealth, power or fame—that is considered that most desirable thing in life. (Paranjpe, 1988, p. 209)
It is possible to interpret such a state of self-realization as absolute psychological autonomy, when nothing but the true self governs a person’s actions, when such a person remains undisturbed by the perpetuations of earthly life and by the waves and tides of internal and external demands and pressures; this person reaches complete harmony within him- or herself as well as between him- or herself and the universal world order (Dharma). This ideal state of being is rarely achievable for modern individuals.
Although these high-order CMs denigrate the existential selves of individuals, these selves do not stop existing and functioning and, as with all human beings around the world, they may be disturbed and even become pathological to the point that they need help from clinical psychologists or psychiatrists. The most detailed accounts of the structure and dynamics of Indian experiential selves have been presented by Indian and transcultural psychiatrists and psychological anthropologists (Kakar, 2008; Mines, 1988; Roland, 1988). A clinical psychoanalyst from the United States, Alan Roland (1988, 1996), provided one of the most compelling accounts of the manifestations of Indians’ existential selves and deep reflections upon the nature of these selves and their relations to people’s functioning. According to his theorizing, which is based on psychotherapeutic practices both in India and the United States, the Indian existential self can be divided into three components: the familial self, the individualized self, and the spiritual self (1988, p. 6). A similar distinction regarding Indian selves was articulated by Shweder and colleagues (2003) who identified three main discourses in the interviews of their respondents: community, autonomy, and divinity. These scholars suggested that this triad of self-components is probably universal across cultures and that cultures differ with regard to the order of the components in people’s functioning in different situations and circumstances.1 It is suggested, for example, that in the West, people possess the same three aspects of the self, but the individualized autonomous self is the focus of cultivation, whereas both the familial or communal and spiritual selves are in the relative background (of course some subcultures within Western civilization may differ from this profile) (Hollan, 1992). In Hindu communities, the familial and spiritual selves are the most important to cultivate, while the autonomous individualized self is still acknowledged but is not given primacy and importance.
The familial self is “an inner psychological organization that enables women and men to function well within the hierarchical intimacy relationships of the extended family, community and other groups” (Roland, 1988, p. 7). This self can also be labeled “interdependent,” “collectivistic,” “social,” or “communal.” It is characterized by feelings of intimate connectedness and interdependence with members of one’s extended family or other important social groups, as well as attitudes of deference and obedience to those who are higher in the hierarchy; it is related to perceiving the world and its objects in a highly contextual and symbolic way; individual self-esteem is associated with the We-self and self-ideal is based on following rituals, social etiquette, and traditions of social relationships (p. 8). It also includes a strong sense of duty toward others, a sense of hierarchy, and a feeling of interdependence (Shweder et al., 2003, p. 106). This component of self is formed by the middle-level CMs for familial and communal living that are refined, complex, and of primary importance for Hindu people. These models and the corresponding self are so strong that many Western scholars see the Hindu culture as exclusively communal, collectivistic, and hierarchical (Dumont, 1998/1970, for example).
The individualized or autonomous self is also present in the everyday-level CM of self of Indians. This component of self is “characterized by inner representational organizations” (Roland, 1988, p. 8) that are tied to the individualistic mode of functioning, personal interests, desires, and preferences, like pride, guilt, and personal happiness (Shweder et al., 2003, p. 104); to actions that are efficient, mobile, and highly adaptable to extra-familial relationships (Roland, 1988, p. 9); to representations that are tied with rationalism, reflectivity, and orientation toward abstraction; to self-esteem based on the cultivation of individualistic I-self “with relatively self-contained outer ego boundaries, [and] sharp differentiation between inner images of self and others” (p. 8); and to self-ideals that are structured by relatively abstract values and principles. Finally, cultivating this component of self is “oriented toward the ongoing self-creation of one’s own self-identity … through the exploration and realization of inner potentials in various activities and relationships” (p. 9). Anthropologist Mattison Mines (1988) argued that contrary to the broadly accepted notion that all Indians are overwhelmed by their familial and interdependent selves, these people possess well-articulated individualized selves. He interviewed Indians and discovered through open-ended interviews about their individual goals, intentions, and actions that their individualized selves do exist and are efficient in structuring and guiding the personal and motivational autonomy of these people. Psychoanalytic anthropologist Kathrin Ewing (1991) investigated the “intrapsychic autonomy” of Pakistani women and came to the same conclusion that the individualized self exists and is important even among such a strongly restricted and controlled group of people as women in Pakistani extended families. Shweder and colleagues (2003) differentiated a “highly particularistic individual dharma” (p. 105) and “the dharma or obligation assigned to the person by virtue of … gender, caste, age, family relationships, and so on” (p. 105). The dharma that is related to the social positions is assigned to a person, but his or her individual dharma has to be discovered, and this discovery requires autonomous thinking and acting. In this interpretation, the autonomous self becomes strongly related to the spiritual or divine aspects of individual existence. Roland (1988) mentioned that Hindu culture “accords a remarkable degree of freedom in feeling, thinking, and maintaining a private self, while greatly encouraging the cultivation of one’s inner life, in counterpoint to the considerable constraints in behavior in the social hierarchy” (p. 240).
The divine or spiritual self is present to differing degrees within every person’s subjectivity through beliefs
that a sacred order is immanent in the world, that godliness permeates or interpenetrates the human social order as well as the natural world and interacts with both, that there are important communicative exchanges going on all the time between persons and the realm of divinity. (Shweder et al., 2003, p.109)
Shweder and colleagues (2003) suggested that the spiritual self penetrates other components of the Indian self and may serve as the main battleground for individuals to strive for their individuation, psychological autonomy, and ultimately their self-cultivation and enlightenment. Roland (1988) pronounced a similar idea that it is in the domain of spirituality where Indians seek, cultivate, and develop their autonomy.
As the person becomes increasingly involved in the realization of the spiritual self, he or she still relates to others and fulfills responsibilities, but without the intense looking to the other for the fulfilment of wishes, esteem and the desire to be needed. What is termed detachment can be viewed psychologically as increasing involvement in the spiritual self and a loosening of the powerful emotional bonds in familial-social relationships. (p. 307)
This involvement may be interpreted as a progression toward psychological autonomy but not (or not exclusively) through the individualized autonomous self, wherein intensive cultivation is not supported by existing CMs, but through the refinement of one’s spiritual self and merging it with the individualized self. Such a form of autonomy is fully supported and encouraged by the Indian communal CMs for personal development.
Based on this analysis we may conclude that the Indian culture (in the form of the Vedānta teaching) has refined models of anthropological ontology and models for psychological functioning of its members, where psychological autonomy has its legitimate place. Indians can strive to achieve such a state, although their interpretation and practicing of it is different from those in Western cultures.
The Chinese civilization has developed different but also deep, insightful, and elaborate approaches to people’s selves, self-determination, and autonomy. These approaches are usually discussed within three major philosophical-religious schools of thought: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. I will focus here on the first two schools of thought. It is also important to note that, compared to Indians, there are far fewer publications about the psychological and/or psychoanalytical investigation of experiences of Chinese individuals who possess or struggle with their autonomy; because of this, I have very little material for describing the personal level of autonomy in Chinese.
B. Morris (1994) classified Taoism as a form of mystical naturalism that is different from both Hindu and Confucian CMs of a person’s functioning. Taoism has received little attention from cultural and clinical psychologists, thus it is difficult to present it from an exclusively psychological point of view. To understand the self and the mode of autonomous functioning in this teaching, it is necessary to first introduce two concepts: Tao (or Dao) and Qi. Tao (the “Way”) can be conceptualized as the fundamental principles, laws, and dynamics of functioning of universe and nature and of human beings as a part of them (B. Morris, 1994; Watts, 1975). In relation to autonomy, the concept of Tao conveys a rule “that if everything is allowed to go its own way the harmony of the universe will be established” (Watts, 1975, p. 43). Qi (translated as “energy” or “breath”) is a force that makes functioning of the universe, nature, and life possible. Human beings are simply parts of the universe and are guided and driven by the same laws and by the same universal energy of Qi. Human beings are seen as microcosms that mirror and represent all the elements of the world order where the penetrating power of Qi keeps these elements together. The ultimate purpose of human existence is to find a way to live in harmony with Tao, allowing it and the accompanied cosmic Qi to guide and govern the functioning of a person’s body and mind and thus providing health, immortality, and spiritual enlightenment. Completely merging with Tao and the worldly Qi can be interpreted as the ultimate autonomous functioning: recall the fundamental principle of Tao (above) that by allowing everything (including humans) to go its own (autonomous) way, balance and tranquility will be reestablished. Such a state in its fullness is attainable only by a few highly trained sages: practitioners of the Taoist yoga. On an everyday level, Taoist scholars talk about the state of wu-wei (translated as “no action,” “no doing”) (Slingerland, 2003). This state is interpreted as an indigenous Chinese conceptualization of a particular form of autonomy in action.
It describes a state of personal harmony in which actions flow freely and instantly from one’s spontaneous inclinations—without the need for extended deliberation or inner struggle—and yet nonetheless accord perfectly with the dictates of the situation at hand, display an almost supernatural efficacy, and … harmonize with the demands of conventional morality. (p. 7)
The amazing strength and efficiency of kung fu martial artists may be partly explained by this concept: by their training they get into this state of wu-wei and by following the natural inclinations of their bodies and energy they perform superefficient actions without visible efforts and strains. The closest Western conceptual analog for this idea is flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990/2008). Slingerland (2003) clarifies that wu-wei is not a habitual, automatic, mindless, reflex-like motion, but an action that
calls for some degree of awareness on the part of the agent, and allows for considerable amount of flexibility of response. Although it does not involve abstract reflection or calculation, it is not to be viewed as “mindless behavior”, but should rather be seen as springing from what we may call “embodied mind”. (p. 8)
It is even more important that this “embodied mind” acts in accord with universal Tao and expresses the will of Heaven. “This is why the state of wu-wei should be seen as a religious ideal, for it is only by attaining it that the individual realizes his or her proper place in the cosmos” (p. 8). Thus, the state of wu-wei represents a very peculiar but explainable and efficient form of psychological autonomy with tremendous benefits for a person.
Although Taoists do not use the concept of self, it can be understood as an embodied mind (B. Morris, 1994) that is based on the unity of Jeng (essence), Qi, and Shen (spirit), which are interconnected and which interpenetrate each other in providing a person’s health, longevity, and liberating enlightenment. To reach these states, Taoists cultivate special forms of meditation (Taoist yoga) (Jou, 1983; K. u. Y. Lu, 1973) accompanied by special forms of movements and exercises (Qi Gong and Tai Chi) (Dorcas, 1997; Reid, 2000; J.-M. Yang, 2010) that allow the internal alchemy to take place (Mu, 2011). This cultivation of internal alchemy, or the cross-transformation of essence into energy and energy into spirit, psychophysiologically merges a person with the universal Tao and Qi and is accompanied by achieving what may be called a state of autonomous physical, psychological, and spiritual functioning. If we were to apply the principles of Taoism and Taoist yoga—to be rooted, centered, and balanced—to psychological autonomy, then the Taoists’ prescription may look like this: in order to be autonomous, a person’s mind has to be rooted in a full understanding of the laws and principles of nature, society, and the human psyche, must be centered around his or her body and the authentic self that are synchronized by the above rootedness, and must be balanced against the tides and waves of emotional and social demands and disturbances.
Confucius and his followers intensively elaborated on the notions of a person, his or her self, and their developments, and they emphasized the communal and moral aspects of people’s existence (Hwang, 2012). According to the Confucian CM of a perfect person (Jen) (B. Morris, 1994), the familial self takes the lead in motivating human actions. This self is guided by several virtues that are all social in nature: filial piety, humanness, righteousness, loyalty, consideration of others, benevolence, sincerity, and ritual propriety (Ho, 1995; B. Morris, 1994; Wong, 2008). In an environment saturated by these virtues, social relations become of paramount importance and a person’s self acquires a predominantly “relational identity,” thus becoming the “relational self” (Ho, 1995, pp. 116–117). As a result, “social actions follow not so much from volition, sentiments, or needs as they do from perceptions of one’s relationships with other people. Relationship dominance ascribes primacy to reciprocity, interdependence, and interrelatedness among individuals, not to the individuals themselves” (p. 116). As with the conceptualization of Hindu selves, this relational self of the Chinese is so dominant that many scholars have identified this dimension with Chinese selfhood, leaving nearly no space for the individualized self. But more thorough analyses of the texts has allowed scholars to state that both this self and human autonomy have their places in Confucian teaching as well (Cheng, 2004; Chong, 2003).
An important concept related to psychological autonomy is the concept of self-cultivation, which means “a self-reflective understanding of the self” (Cheng, 2004, p. 125). Based on such an understanding, a person moves toward bettering him- or herself, toward what Western psychologists may label personal growth and flourishing. A person has internal structures and guiding principles that direct his or her self-cultivation. Of paramount importance is a person’s xin (the heart/mind) (Wong, 2008). The heart/mind is a system of cognitive and affective capacities that produces thoughts, feelings, and motivations in a person that allows him or her to deliberate on a situation and to manage attention to different aspects of it.
One capacity of the heart/mind (xin) that is particularly important for Confucian thinkers is its ability to set directions that guide one’s life and shape one’s person as a whole. Such directions of the heart/mind are referred to as “zhi”, a term sometimes translated as “will”. (Shun, 2004, pp. 185–186)
Thus, self-cultivation can be presented as “the process of constantly reflecting on and examining oneself, setting one’s heart/mind in the proper direction [based on the virtues], and bringing about ethical improvements in oneself in this self-reflective manner” (Shun, 2004, p. 187).
In contrast to Indian sages, Chinese sages fully accepted the importance and relevance of a person’s empirical, experiential, and narrative selves as centers of awareness, reflections, and actions and as an important part of the heart/mind. Their interpretation of the structure of the self is similar to the Western one. Although there are arguments about an exact conceptualization of self in the writings of Confucius and his followers (Finarette, 2003; Lo, 2003), such a conceptualization recognizes the dual nature of a person’s experiential self: the “I” (zi) is the active and initiating aspect of self that is related to agency, and Me (ji) the reflective component of self that follows and reflects upon the actions undertaken by zi (Cheng, 2004; Shun, 2004). The actions of zi can be directed toward oneself and ji can reflect on these actions, thus providing the grounding for psychological autonomy as mindful reflections and decision making based on a deep understanding of oneself, the situation, and related circumstances. The power of will (zhi) that emanates from the heart/mind (xin) and its center in the self (ziji) allows a person to project his or her goals for the future, to make life choices while reaching these goals, and to help a person stay self-directed in times of adverse and unfavorable conditions.
In academic literature, it is nearly impossible to find descriptions of Chinese persons experiencing autonomy and/or conflicts relating to exercising it under the pressure of social norms. Those that are available (Tung, 1996) indicate that Chinese immigrants in the United States can experience conflicts between their relational and individualized selves and may find emancipation by going along with their autonomous selves. There is a number of quantitative psychological studies on Chinese participants of different ages guided by the SDT of human motivation that measure their need for autonomy and autonomous motivation (Bao & Lam, 2008; Vansteenkiste, Lens, Soenens, & Luyckx, 2006; Vansteenkiste, Zhou, Lens, & Soenens, 2005). Many of these studies established the equivalence of these measures, which indicates that Chinese participants well understand Western formulations of the individualized forms of motivation and autonomy. As in the Western studies, these forms of autonomy were positively associated with numerous favorable outcomes, providing additional validity evidence for the relevance and importance of autonomous selves for Chinese people.
But according to the Confucian CM, how do these autonomous selves interact with societal demands and how does the relational self coexist with the individualized one? For Confucians, leading a good life means leading a virtuous and moral life guided by one’s heart/mind and will. Chan (2002) suggested that Confucians proposed two processes through which autonomy and moral social life can be reconciled: voluntary endorsement and reflective engagement. These two processes are closely related. The first one highlights that moral social actions should not be coerced by punishments or rewards; rather, they should be voluntarily endorsed by individuals in order to be authentically and autonomously moral. The second one means that these endorsements should be based on reflections, deliberations, and judgment (p. 284); a person accepts particular social and moral norms by freely contemplating them and then deciding either to follow them in a self-determined fashion or to reject them. Self-determination theorists (Deci & Ryan, 2012b) call such a process the “internalization of social demands” and the form of regulation that is based on such internalization was labeled “integrated motivational regulation,” when a person endorses a particular motive based on contemplations and reflections about it. If, for example, the values needing to be endorsed are related to benevolence toward others, then, when they are reflected upon and volitionally supported, self-determination theorists talk about benevolence that is executed autonomously. Thus, pure collectivist values and practices become part of autonomous regulation and, according to Chan (2002), this fits well with what Confucian followers promote and try to cultivate.
The coexistence of these two self-orientations, individual/autonomous and social/relational, constitutes one of the directions of research by indigenous Chinese psychologists (L. Lu, 2003; L. Lu & Yang, 2006; K. S. Yang, 2004). These scholars discovered that the selves of modern Taiwanese Chinese encompass both of these orientations, but in different proportions depending on their socioeconomic status and level of modernization. Each of these orientations provide unique contributions to people’s subjective well-being and self-actualization (L. Lu & Gilmour, 2004; L. Lu & Yang, 2005).
In studying the Chinese self and the related issues of psychological freedom and autonomy, it is expected that researchers will adequately address the decades of the Maoist Cultural Revolution (Ho, 1988) that strove to cultivate a “‘new Chinese man,’ or a new self-concept” (Chu, 1985, p. 268) for people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In addition, they will address the political, economic, and social differences between Chinese people in the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Chinese diasporas all over the world. Further research on the Chinese and Indian selves should focus on how these people deal with the transformations happening in their cultures and how their selves adapt to these changes. In both of these cases, the role of the autonomous self becomes more and more prominent, and it is a task of great importance to help these people reconcile it seamlessly with individuals’ familial and spiritual selves.
The Western cultural zone has traditions rooted in Greco-Roman and early Judeo-Christian systems of ideas and practices, followed by Protestant, Enlightenment, and other modern sociocultural, political, mostly liberal democratic, and religious ideologies developed in Western Europe and North America. It possesses perhaps the most elaborate and consistent set of CMs for propagating and supporting human autonomy through the individualized self, which is known as the CM of individualism (Dumont, 1986; Johnson, 1985; Kirmayer, 2007; Lukes, 1973; Roland, 1996). Individualism represents people as separate, self-contained, and bounded entities that negotiate their social existence through social contracts. This ideology prescribes that individuals’ primary goals are cultivating their individuality, identity, and autonomy by moving toward self-realization and personal fulfillment. This cultivation is protected by social contracts (laws) that guard individuals’ interests, freedoms, and rights. Individuals are free to serve their own interests within the limits of the laws and are responsible for their actions.
The individual came to be considered inviolate, the supreme value in and of himself or herself, having his or her own rights and obligations, with each equal to the other. Society is considered to be essentially subordinate to the needs of individuals, who are all governed by their own self-interest in mutually consenting, contractual relationships in their political and economic strivings. (Roland, 1996, p. 6)
Individualism focuses on people developing their individualized autonomous selves. This means that
children are socialized simultaneously to be obedient, to submit to rules which protect the rights of others, and to develop a progressive independence. Operationally, independence means being able gradually to assume responsibility for their own actions, to be able to abbreviate their demands on others, and to exercise (internal) control over their actions. (Johnson, 1985, p. 123)
The conceptual schema of psychological autonomy presented in the first part of the chapter is rooted in and is an expression of this CM of Western2 individualism. It is exclusively based on the individualized self, which becomes an agent of autonomous functioning with an almost complete denial of the familial-interdependent and spiritual selves that also function within the minds of Western people. These two latter components of self are governed by the individualized self, which negotiates and arranges a person’s relations with others, including family and broader social arrangements, as well as his or her relationships with God or other divine entities.
The SDT of human motivation is an example of Western theorizing about the nature and mechanisms of human autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 2012a). Yet, cross-cultural research indicates that the predictions of the theory are supported in a diversity of cultures (see Chirkov, 2009; Chirkov, Ryan, & Sheldon, 2010 for reviews). There are three autonomy-related constructs within this theory. First, there is autonomy as a basic psychological need. Next, autonomous regulation is a motivational state within the continuum of five forms of motivational regulations. Finally, autonomy support is one of the components of a sociocultural context that is crucial for autonomy to flourish, both as a need and as a state. All three constructs represent the autonomous/individualized self within the above-discussed trifold model of the experiential self. The main purposes of empirical cross-cultural investigations driven by SDT are to demonstrate the equivalence of these and other motivational constructs across cultures, languages, and nations and to show that the positive effects of cultivating and supporting autonomy are indeed culturally universal.
For example, in a large project to develop the Multidimensional Work Motivation Scale, Gagné and her collaborators (2014) developed and validated the scale across seven languages (English, French, Dutch, Chinese, German, Indonesian, and Norwegian) and nine countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Indonesia, Norway, Sénégal, Switzerland, and United Kingdom) in order to evaluate both autonomous and controlled aspects of work motivation. With some disparities, researchers established the configural, metric, and structural invariance of this scale across nine languages. This invariance indicates that participants from different linguistic communities similarly understand and interpret the items of this scale, including the autonomous ones. The researchers also examined the relations of this scale with different outcomes, expecting that independently of the country or language, these associations would occur in predicted direction; namely, that scores on autonomous items would be positively related to vitality, affective commitment, proficiency, adaptivity, proactivity, and job effort, while negatively related to emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions. These predictions were all supported, providing additional evidence of the universality of the positive effects of motivational autonomy. In another large study, sport psychologist Quested and her colleagues (2013) investigated the ability of autonomy support and basic psychological needs to predict the probability of young players dropping out of soccer across five European countries: England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain. The researchers hypothesized that scores on autonomy support would positively predict the basic needs parameters that, in turn, would positively predict enjoyment and desire to stay on the soccer team. The authors established invariance of all the constructs across the samples and reported nearly universal relations among them in the predicted directions. In a cross-cultural study examining the role choice plays in people’s agency, Miller, Das, and Chakravarti (2011) investigated how the ability to choose prosocial activity was related to participants’ agency in India, where helping others is a moral imperative, and in the United States, where helping others is the choice of a person.3 It is important to note that in this study, there was an interplay between the Indian familial self and its relation to autonomous agency and the U.S. individualized self in promoting its autonomy. The authors’ general conclusion (which is in accord with the SDT predictions) is that the internalization of prosocial obligations (which is related to the development of a strong familial self) does not prevent Indian participants from experiencing the feeling of choice and volition when committing the benevolent acts. These findings also validate the proposition about a strong universal component in people’s individualized selves, where the capability to think for oneself, to reflect on one’s own values and goals in relations to the social demands and pressures, lies at the core of their mature, harmonious, and fulfilling existence.
The provided analysis demonstrates the complex dialectical relations between culture and autonomous individuals: Culture makes autonomy possible and cultures shape the way autonomy unfolds. Cultural communities create CMs of and for human selfhood and autonomy, and individuals are encouraged to exercise their autonomy within these models. These models of autonomy are structured around three dimensions of self and establish a complex set of dialectical interrelations within and across them. Members of cultural communities may experience conflicts within their selves and between their selves and societal demands, and their autonomous functioning may be thwarted or diminished. A strong individualized self may promote successful solutions of such conflicts.
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