In 1948, Seattle authorities feared that a race riot would break out in a run-down housing
area. A thousand families—300 of them black—were jammed into temporary barracks built for war workers. Tension was in the air, rumors rife, a stabbing reported. The University of Washington, called on for advice, rushed 25 trained interviewers to the scene.
The interviewers went from door to door, trying to discover the extent of racial hatred. They were surprised to find very little. Ninety percent of the whites and blacks interviewed said that they felt "about the same" of "more friendly" toward the other group since moving into the area. What, then, was eating them？
These families were angry about the ramshackle buildings, the back-firing kitchen stoves and the terrible roads inside the property. Many were worried about a strike at Boeing Airplane Co. In short, a series of frustrations from other causes had infected the whole community, and could have resulted in a race riot.
This case is a dramatic application of a challenging theory about human behavior. exhaustively demonstrated by a group of Yale scientists in an old book, Frustration and Aggression, which has become a classic. Since reading it some years ago, I have met many of my personal problems with better understanding, and gained fresh insight into some big public questions as well.
A common result of being frustrated, the Yale investigator have shown, is an act of aggression, sometimes violent. To be alive is to have a goal and pursue it—anything from cleaning the house, or planning a vacation, to saving money for retirement. If someone or something blocks goal, we begin to feel pent up and thwarted. Then we get mad. The blocked goal, the sense of frustration, aggression action—this is the normal human sequence. If we are aware of what is going on inside us, however, we can save ourselves a good deal of needless pain and trouble.
The aggressive act that frustration produces may take a number of forms. It may be turned inward against oneself, with suicide as the extreme example. It may hit back directly at the person or thing causing the frustration. Or it may be transferred to another object—what psychologists call displacement. Displacement can be directed against the dog, the parlor furniture, the family or even total strangers.
The classic pattern of frustration and aggression is nowhere better demonstrated than in military life. GIs studied by the noted American sociologist Samuel A. Stouffer in the last war were found to be full of frustration due to their sudden loss of civilian liberty. They took it our verbally on the brass, often most unjustly. But in combat, soldiers felt far more friendly toward their officers. Why？ Because they could "discharge their aggression directly against the enemy".
Dr. Karl Menninger, of the famous Menninger Foundation at Topeka, pointed out that children in all societies are necessarily frustrated, practically from birth, as they are broken into the customs of the tribe. A baby's first major decision is "whether to holier or smaller"—when it discovers that the two acts cannot be done simultaneously. Children have to be taught habits of cleanliness, toilet behavior, regular feeding, punctuality; habits that too often are hammered in.
Grownups with low boiling points, said Dr. Menninger, probably got that way because of excessive frustration in childhood. We can make growing up a less difficult period by giving children more love and understanding. Parents in less "civilized" societies, Menninger observes, often do this. He quotes a Mohave Indian, discussing his small son. "Why should I strike him？ He is small, I am big. He cannot hurt me."
When we do experience frustration, there are several things we can do to channel off aggression. First, we can try to remove the cause which is blocking our goal. An individual may be able to change his
A．try to remove the obstacle on his way by all means
B．find an outlet for his rancor
C．take aggressive or even violent acts
D．indulge in despair to some extent
题目内容
（请给出正确答案）
如搜索结果不匹配，请 
