WILL POWER

WILL POWER 

THE MOVEMENT AND THE MESSAGE

Dr Birdwhistell, in his work in kinesics, has tried to pinpoint just what gesture indicates what message. One of the things he has uncovered is that every American speaker moves his head a number of times during a conversation. If you film a typical conversation between two Americans and then slow down the film to study the elements of posture in slow motion you will notice a head movement when an answer is expected. The head movement at the end of each statement is a signal to the other speaker to start his answer. This is one of the ways in which we guide our spoken conversations. It enables a back-and-forth exchange without the necessity of saying, 'Are you finished? Now I'll talk.' Of course, the signals for other regions of the world will be different. In theory it would follow that watching two people talk would give a good clue to their nationality. In our language, a change in pitch at the end of a sentence can mean a number of things. If there is a rise in pitch, the speaker is asking a question. Ask, ' What time is it?' and notice how your voice goes up on 'it'. 'How are you?' Up on 'you'. 'Do you like your new job?' Up on ' job'. This is a linguistic marker. Dr Bird whistell has discovered a number of kinesic markers that supplement the linguistic markers. Watch a man's head when he asks a question. 'What time is it?' His head comes up on 'it'. 'Where are you going?' His head comes up on the 'ing' in going. Like the voice, the head moves up at the end of a question. This upward movement at the end of a question is not limited to the voice and head. The hand, too, tends to move up with the rise in pitch. The seemingly meaningless hand gestures in which we all indulge as we talk are tied in to pitch and meaning. The eyelid, too, will open wide with the last note of a question. Just as the voice lifts up at the end of a question, it also drops in pitch at the end of a statement. 'I like this book.' With 'book' the voice goes down. 'I'd like some milk with my pie.' Down on 'pie'. The head also accompanies the voice down at the end of a statement, and according to Dr Birdwhistell, so do the hand and the eyelid. When a speaker intends to continue a statement, his voice will hold the same pitch, his head will remain straight, his eyes and hands unchanged. These are just a few of the changes in position of the eyes, head and hands as Americans speak. Rarely, if ever, do we hold our heads in one position longer than a sentence or two. Writers are aware of this and also aware that head movement is tied not only to what we are saying but to emotional content as well. To characterize a 'cool' person, one who shows and feels no emotion, a writer will have him appear stolid, physically unmoving. James Bond, in the movies made from Ian Fleming's 007 stories, was played by Sean Connery in a motionless style. His face rarely moved, even in the face of extinction. It was an excellent characterization, since he played a man who felt no emotion. In Jewish folklore a golem is a being who shows no expression and, of course, feels no emotion. The high fashion model holds herself in a rigid, unnatural pose to communicate no emotional overtones. When the normal man or woman talks, however, he looks to the right, to the left, now up, now down.

 He blinks his eyes, lifts his eyebrows, bites his lips, touches his nose - and each movement is linked to what he is saying." Because of the tremendous variation in individual movements it is often difficult to link a specific movement to a specific message, but it is still true enough to say that, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the movement is the message. Dr Scheflen, in studying psychiatric therapy sessions, has found that when a therapist explains something to a patient he may use one head position, but when he interprets some remark or behaviour he uses another position. When he interrupts the patient he uses still a third and he has a fourth head position for listening. The patient, too, when listening to the therapist, takes certain definite positions. In one situation studied by Dr Scheflen, the patient put his head to the right when he acted in a childish fashion, and he kept his head erect when he spoke aggressively and maturely. The difficulty in studying and interpreting these movements is that they are personal kinesic motions, related to events in the background of this or that particular patient. Not all patients put their heads to one side when they act childishly, and not all therapists make the same head motion when they listen. Yet it is pretty certain that the same man will repeat the same motion over and over. Dr Scheflen was surprised that these head movements which were repeated again and again during a thirty- minute interview were so stereotyped and rigid, yet he emphasizes that in this, as well as in many other sessions he has studied, the patient and doctor rarely used a great range of movement. It should not then be too difficult to find specific positions for a person and then relate them to statements or types of statements, questions, answers, explanations,, etc.

THE MASOCHIST AND THE SADIST

In many cases masking can be used as an instrument of psychological torture. Take the case of Annie, married to Ralph, an older man, older and better educated and very conscious of the fact that Annie, intellectually and socially, was not his equal. Yet in a strange and somewhat perverted way Ralph loved Annie and realized she was the best wife for him. This did not prevent him from playing his own type of game with Annie, a game that involved masking to an intricate and exact degree. When Ralph came home from work each day there was a well-standardized ritual. Annie must have his supper ready and waiting at exactly six-thirty, neither later nor earlier. He would arrive home at six, wash and read the afternoon paper until six-thirty. Then Annie would call him to the table and take her seat, watching his face furtively. Ralph knew she was watching him. She realized that he knew. But neither admitted to this. Ralph would in no way indicate that the meal was either good or bad and as they ate Annie would construct a soap opera in her head. She would feel a sick despair in the pit of her stomach. Does Ralph like the food or doesn't he? If he doesn't, she knows what to expect: a cold upbraiding and a silent, miserable evening. Annie would eat uneasily, watching Ralph's impassive face. Did she prepare the dish correctly? Did she season it properly? She followed the recipe, but she added some spices of her own. Was that a mistake? Yes, it must have been! She would feel her heart sink, her whole body tighten with misery. No, Ralph doesn't like it. Isn't his lip twisting in the beginning of a sneer? Ralph, living the same soap opera, would look and for a long moment keep his face inscrutable while Annie would die a thousand deaths, and then he would smile his approval. And suddenly, miraculously, Annie's entire being would sing with happiness. Life is wonderful, and Ralph is her love and she is terribly, terribly happy. She would go back to her meal, enjoying the food now, ravenously hungry and delightfully pleased. By careful manipulation of his mask, by timing his body language, Ralph has contrived a delicate torture and reward. He uses the same technique at night when he and Annie are in bed. He gives her no hint or indication of what he feels, of whether he will make love to her or not, and Annie goes through the same elaborate game of 'Will he touch me? Does he still love me? How will I stand it if he rejects me!'

When finally Ralph does reach over and touch her Annie explodes in passionate ecstasy. Now the question of whether Annie is a victim or an accomplice is not for us to decide. The use of a mask to achieve the torture is the point to consider. The sado-masochist relationship of Annie and Ralph benefits both of them in a strange way, but for most mask-wearers the benefits of wearing the mask are more realistic.

THE SILENT COCKTAIL PARTY

It was true, but the ability to cut across the lines of taste and privacy is a rare thing. Not all of us have it, and not all of those who have it can avoid giving offence. I wonder, too, if my friend would have been as successful with someone who was his superior. Commissionaires are seen by many of us as non-persons and may react with gratitude to any notice. But even if we cannot reach out verbally, we can devise methods of reaching each other in non-verbal ways, ways that may or may not include physical contact. One very successful way was a cocktail party given recently by a psychologist friend. He invited his guests with little invitations that informed them this was to be a nonverbal gathering. 'Touch, smell, stare and taste,' his invitation read, 'but don't speak. We're spending an evening in non-verbal communication.'

My wife and I groaned at the precious quality of the invitation, but we couldn't gracefully get out of it. We went and to our surprise found it fascinating. The room had been rearranged so that there were no available seats. We all stood and milled around, danced, gestured, mimed and went through elaborate charades, all without talking. We knew only one other couple, and all our introductions were self-made and handicapped, or helped, by the imposed silence. We had to really work at getting to know each other, and amazingly enough we ended the evening with a clear and deep knowledge of our new friends. What happened, of course, was that the verbal element of masking was taken away. All the rest of our masks were only half supported. They slipped easily and we found that we had to do without them to make our best contacts, and the contacts were physical for the most part. In the silence, all accents and speech inflections and their link to status were eliminated. I shook hands with one man and noticed the callouses on his palm. This led to an acted-out version of his job with a construction crew and, without the barrier of words, to a closer understanding than is usually possible between two men in different class situations. This is very much a parlour game, but a parlour game with a difference. There are no losers, and the total result is a more meaningful understanding of the people with whom you play. There are other games designed to enhance communication, to make body language understandable and to break down the barriers we erect to protect ourselves.

THE SPACE WE HOLD INVIOLATE

The need for personal space and the resistance to the invasion of personal space is so strong a thing that even in a crowd each member will demand a given amount of space. This very fact led a journalist named Herbert Jacobs to attempt to apply it to crowd size. Since estimation of crowd size tends to vary according to whether the observer is for the crowd or against it, the size of political rallies, peace rallies and demonstrations are inflated by the marchers and deflated by the authorities. Jacobs, by studying aerial photographs of crowds where he could actually count heads, concluded that people in dense crowds need six to eight square feet each, while people in loose crowds require an average of ten square feet. Crowd size, Jacobs finally concluded, could be gauged by the formula, length times width divided by a correction factor that took density of the crowd into account. This gave the actual number of people in any gathering. On the subject of crowds, it is important to realize that  the personal territory of the people in a crowd is destroyed by the very act of crowding. The reaction to this destruction can, in some cases, change the temper of the crowd. Men react very strongly when their personal space or territory is invaded. As a crowd gets larger and tighter and more compact, it may also get uglier. A loose crowd may be easier to handle. This need for personal space was known to Freud, who always arranged his sessions so that the patient would lie on the couch while he sat in a chair out of the patient's sight. In this way there was no intrusion upon the patient's personal space. The police are also well aware of this fact, and they take advantage of it in their interrogation of prisoners. A text-book on criminal interrogation and confessions

suggests that the questioner sit close to the suspect and that there be no table or other obstacle between them.

Any kind of obstacle, the book warns, gives the man being questioned a certain degree of relief and confidence. The book also suggests that the questioner, though he may start with his chair two or three feet away, should move in closer as the questioning proceeds, so that 'ultimately one of the subject's knees is just about in between the interrogator's two knees'. This physical invasion of the man's territory by the

police officer, the crowding in as he is questioned, has been found in practice to be extremely useful in breaking down a prisoner's resistance. When a man's territorial defences are weakened or intruded upon, his self-assurance tends to grow weaker. In a working situation the boss who is aware of this can strengthen his own position of leadership by intruding spatially on the man under him. The higher-up who leans over the subordinate's desk throws the subordinate off balance. The department head who crowds next to the worker while inspecting his work makes the worker uneasy and insecure. In fact, the parent who scolds the child by leaning over him is compounding the relationship between them, proving and reinforcing his own dominance. Can we use this intrusion of personal space to arouse defensive measures in others, or can we, by avoiding it, also avoid the sometimes dangerous consequences of an intrusion? We know that tailgating a car is dangerous from a purely physical point of view. If the car ahead stops short we can smack into it, but no one talks about what the act of tailgating can do to the nerves of the driver ahead.

A man driving a car often loses an essential part of his own humanity and is, by virtue of the machine around him, once removed from a human being. The body language communication that works so well for him outside the car often will not work at all when he is driving. We have all been annoyed by drivers who cut in front of us, and we all know the completely irrational rage that can sometimes fill the driver who has thus had his space invaded. The police will cite statistics to show that dozens of accidents are caused by this cutting in, by the dangerous reaction of the man who has been cut off. In a social situation few men would dream of acting or reacting in this fashion. Stripped of the machine we adopt a civilized attitude and allow people to cut in front of us, indeed we step aside quite often to permit people to board a bus or elevator ahead of us.

A car, however, seems to act much like a dangerous weapon in the hands of many drivers. It can become a weapon that destroys many of our controls and inhibitions. The reason for this is obscure, but some psychologists have theorized that at least a part of it is due to the extension of our personal territories when we are in a car. Our own zones of privacy expand and the zone of privacy of the car becomes much greater and our reaction to any intrusion on that zone is greater still.

THE SMILE THAT HIDES THE SOUL

There are many methods with which we defend our personal zones of space, and one of these is masking. The face we present to the outer world is rarely our real face. It is considered exceptional, almost peculiar behaviour to show what we really feel in our facial expressions or in our actions. Instead we practise a careful discipline when it comes to the expression of our facies and bodies. Dr Erving Goffman, in his book, Behavior in Public Places, states that one of the most obvious evidences of this discipline is the way we manage our personal appearance, the clothes we select and the hairdos we affect. These carry a body-language message to our friends and associates. Dr Goffman believes that in public places the standard man of our society is expected to be neatly dressed and clean-shaven, with his hair combed and his hands and face clean. His study, written six years ago, didn't take into account the long hair, unshaven and careless or freer look of today's young people, a look that is slowly gaining acceptance. But this look, too, is one that is expected or formalized. It conforms to a general ideal. Dr Goffman makes the point that there are times, such as during the subway rush hour, when the careful masks we wear slip a bit, and 'in a kind of temporary, uncaring, righteous exhaustion', we show ourselves as we really are. We let the defences down and out of weariness or exasperation we forget to discipline our faces. Play the game of looking about a crowded bus, subway, or train during the rush hour after a day's work. See how much of the bare human being is allowed to show in all the faces. Day after day we cover up this bare human being. We hold ourselves in careful control lest our bodies cry out messages our minds are too careless to hide. We smile constantly, for a smile is a sign not only of humour or pleasure but it is also an apology, a sign of defence or even an excuse.

I sit down next to you in a crowded restaurant. A weak smile says, 'I don't mean to intrude, but this is the only vacant place.' I brush against you in a packed elevator and my smile says, 'I am not really being aggressive, but forgive me anyway.' I am thrown against someone in a bus by a sudden stop, and my smile says, 'I did not intend to hurt you. I beg your pardon.' And so we smile our way through the day, though in fact we may feel angry and annoyed beneath the smile. In business we smile at customers, at our bosses, at our employees; we smile at our children, at our neighbours, at our husbands and wives and relatives, and very few of our smiles have any real significance. They are simply the masks we wear. The masking process goes beyond the facial muscles. We mask with our entire body. Women learn to sit in a certain way to conceal their sexuality, especially when their skirts are short. Men wear underwear that often binds their sexual organs. Women wear brassieres to keep their breasts in place and mask too much sexuality. We hold ourselves upright and button our shirts, zip up our flies, hold in our stomachs with muscle and girdle, and practice a variety of facial maskings. We have our party faces, our campus faces, our funeral faces and even in prison we have particular faces to wear. In a book called Prison Etiquette, Dr B. Phillips notes that new prisoners learn to 'dogface', to wear an expression that is apathetic and characterless. When the prisoners  are alone, however, in a reaction to the protective dog facing of the day, they overreact and exaggerate their smiles, their laughter and the hate they feel towards their guards. With advancing age the masks we use often become

more difficult to wear. Certain women, who have relied on facial beauty all their lives, find it hard in the mornings of their old age to 'get their faces together'. The old man tends to forget himself and drools or lets his face go lax. With advancing age come tics, sagging jowls, frowns that won't relax and deep wrinkles that won't go away

MEGHNAD SAHA (1893-1986)

Meghnad Saha was born on 6 October 1893 in Sheoratali village near Dhaka in present day Bangladesh. His father Jagannath Saha was a grocer in the village. After primary education, he was admitted to a middle school that was seven miles away from home. He stayed with a doctor near the school and had to work in that house to pay for his boarding and lodging. Overcoming all these difficulties, he stood first in the Dhaka middle school test, thus securing a Government scholarship and joined the Dhaka Collegiate School in 1905. Great political unrest was prevailing in Bengal, caused by the partition of the province by the British against strong popular opinion. Meghnad Saha was among the few senior students who staged a boycott of the visit by the then Governor, Sir Bampfylde Fuller and as a consequence forfeited his scholarship and had to leave the institution. He then joined the Kisori Lal Jubilee School where he passed the entrance test of the University of Calcutta standing first among students from East Bengal. He graduated from Presidency College with mathematics as his major. He then joined the newly established Science College in Kolkata as a lecturer and pursued his research activities in physics. By 1920, Meghnad Saha had established himself as one of the leading physicists of the time. His theory of high-temperature ionization of elements and its application to stellar atmospheres, as expressed by the Saha equation, is fundamental to modern astrophysics; subsequent development of his ideas has led to increased knowledge of the pressure and temperature distributions of stellar atmospheres. In 1920, Saha went to Imperial College, London and later to Germany. Two years later he returned to India and joined the University of Calcutta as Khaira Professor. He then moved to the University of Allahabad and remained there till 1938, establishing the Science Academy in Allahabad (now known as the National Academy of Science). In 1927, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He returned to the University of Calcutta in 1938 where he introduced nuclear physics into the post-graduate physics curriculum. In 1947 he established the Indian Institute of Nuclear Physics (now known as the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics). Later in his life, Saha played an active role in the development of scientific institutions throughout India as well as in national economic planning involving technology.?