Read this short paragraph on Frustration !
In-spite of the amenities of civilization and around development in every sphere of human life, life is not and had never been a bed of roses.
In a remarkably complex and complicated world of today, the organism is constantly subjected to a rich varieties of needs and demands from the moment of birth.
According to Otto Rank the process of birth brings the greatest frustration in human life. The never ending frustration of life undoubtedly starts with birth cry. Rank (1932) views that for the first time frustration is experienced by the new born baby through the process of birth and therein.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Frustration is a key concept of both academic and clinical psychology. As a matter of fact, everybody is subjected to some amount of frustration during his life time. Frustration is not some thing which occurs rarely and it should never be considered a sign of misfortune. Life comprises a series of needs and activities directed towards meeting them.
According to Alexzander Franz (1950) pleasure is dependent on previous displeasure and that gratification without some antecedent frustration is hardly conceivable. Therefore, frustration should be accepted as a usual course in life and it is unavoidable and inevitable.
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A man has lost his way in the woods and the water supply runs out. He is feeling hungry. But there is no food to eat and satisfy his hunger and so he is frustrated. As his hunger becomes acute and is intensified, the degree of frustration increases and the need becomes stronger and stronger, but there is no means to satisfy the need.
The most common example of frustration given by Miller and Dollard (1939) is the case of James, a boy who wanted to eat an ice cream in a hot afternoon, but was prevented from eating it. Such an interference with an occurrence of instigated goal response is called frustration. A person who fails to marry his sweet heart or when a sex pervert is obstructed while going to rape a small girl, experiences severe frustration due to the inability to reach the goal or need because of some interference or obstruction.
A baby’s ball has gone over the garden of a neighbour and is out of reach of the baby. The fence acts as a barrier which frustrates the baby’s effort to get back the possession of the ball. Thus, by and large, when the goal oriented behaviour suffers interference or blocking it leads to frustration. In other words, when satisfaction of an existing need is blocked or obstructed or interfered with, there is frustration.