The Ninth Street Center The Monographs

The Relationship of Adaptation and Fun and Pleasure to Psychological Growth [1975]
An Appendix to Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process

by Paul Rosenfels

Paul Rosenfels contrasts three areas of man's psychological life (adaptation, fun and pleasure, and growth). Tension and energy holding aspects are discussed for each area, and the concept of psychic residue or surplus is introduced. Topics include: harmonious and disharmonious stress and strain, and retreat and enlistment patterns. The role of sex and celebration in mental health is distinguished from that of simple fun and pleasure.

Opening passage:

      Civilized man needs a sense of his personal importance. He seeks to live in such a way that he experiences life fully. He does not want to die psychologically before the biological fact of death overtakes him. He cannot establish his importance without an inner identity. There are two aspects of man's relationship to his world. The first concerns the way he adapts to that part of his world which is beyond alteration by his personal influence. There are many elements in his world which he must accept as practical realities, such as the fact that when he is a child he is too undeveloped to survive on his own, that physical aging does occur, that various kinds of physical ill-health will have to be dealt with, that the day to day survival needs of society will have to be met through productive job activities, and that he must live in the particular era to which he is born with whatever stage of social progress exists at that time. The second aspect concerns the area of his personal choices, based on judgements concerning what is desirable for him. This is the independent aspect of man's nature. If his independence is to be real, he must have sufficient understanding of himself and others to be able to find alternatives on which to base a choice, and sufficient capacity for responsibility to make his choices effective. . . .

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