¹Native Americans did not build totem poles to represent totems.  ²A totem is a spirit, often appearing in animal form that is thought to govern a group of people, such as a family or tribe. ³Sometimes, the so-called totem pole, a beautiful column-like carving found in North America, would display these spirits, but such poles were seldom created as spiritual or religious monuments. ⁴They were partly heraldic in nature—that is, they displayed the official crests of noble families and the likenesses of people, animals, and spirits. ⁵A tribe would usually plant a totem pole to celebrate a great accomplishment, so these landmarks acted more as monuments than as religious icons. ⁶The totem pole’s multiple images served as a mnemonic for storytellers, reminding them, through the arrangement of images, of the events in a great story, the rank of the main characters who took part, and identities of the spirits or animals involved.   
⁷Totems themselves, for anthropologists, are spirits that watch over groups of people. ⁸Though the word totem comes from a North American Indian tribe (from the Ojibwa language), today it is used to describe the spirit of a tribe or family in any culture in the world. ⁹In some cultures the totem is seen as an ancestral being, such that a family actually regards itself as having a particular animal at the head of its family tree. ¹⁰In such cases, a totemic myth describes how a family line came into existence.  
¹¹In modern times, individual people have adopted an animal image as their “personal totem,” a spirit that has special meaning for them. ¹²Some of these people even claim that it was the spirit that chose them and not they who chose the spirit.  ¹³Anthropologists tend to dismiss this New Age revival of the totem as shallow and non-traditional because the animal symbols for these modern people are personal instead of tribal or ancestral. ¹⁴The anthropologists claim that these personal “totems” do not watch over of a group of people like true totems. ¹⁵However, the modern claim to an individual totem is not without precedence. ¹⁶It is not something that began with the New Age movement or with the Mythopoetic men’s movement of the 20^th century.  ¹⁷For example, the ancient Greeks believed in spirits that governed all kinds of classifications: ancestors, living families, households, city-states, and even natural settings such as caves, mountains, or springs.  ¹⁸These presiding spirits, called daimones, were said to exist everywhere, presiding over every imaginable category and subcategory of existence. ¹⁹This means that the Greeks had their own form of totemism. ²⁰However, these daimones were perceived to govern individuals too. ²¹Each individual person also had a daimon of his or her own, similar to a totemic spirit, which presided essentially over his or her destiny. ²²This spirit, if it was powerful or famous enough, could become an ancestral totem and govern a family’s lineage, satisfying the anthropologists’ requirement for a “true” totem.

¹By the 1950s, behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory were the most influential schools of thought in psychology. ²However, many psychologists found these two schools unappealing, mainly because both are “dehumanizing.” ³Psychoanalytic theory assumes that behavior is dominated by primitive, sexual urges. ⁴Behaviorism assumes that the study of animal behavior is enough to understand humans. ⁵Both theories suggested that people are not masters of their own destinies, but that disguised biological processes and animalistic qualities control them. ⁶Above all, both schools of thought failed to recognize the unique qualities of human behavior. 

⁷Beginning in the 1950s, the diverse opposition to behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory blended into a new school of thought called humanism. ⁸In psychology, humanism focuses on the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth. ⁹It breathes soul back into psychology.

¹⁰People are not pawns of their animal nature or of their environmental circumstances. ¹¹Furthermore, people are fundamentally different from other animals.  ¹²In fact, research on animals has little relevance to the understanding of human behavior.  ¹³The most famous contributors to the humanistic movement have been Carl Rogers (1902-1987) and Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). ¹⁴Rogers, in 1970, argued that human behavior is governed mainly by each individual’s sense of self, or “self-concept”—which animals lack. ¹⁵Both he and Maslow maintained that, to fully understand people’s behavior, psychologists must recognize the fundamental human need for personal growth.  ¹⁶They argued that people have a basic drive to evolve as human beings and to fulfill their potentials. ¹⁷In fact, the humanists claimed that many mental disturbances result from thwarting these uniquely human needs. ¹⁸To date, the humanists’ greatest contribution to psychology has been its new forms of treatment. ¹⁹Examples are Gestalt therapy, encounter groups, art therapy, and sensitivity training. 
²⁰Humanistic psychologists support the idea that individuals are unique, so it should come as no surprise that humanists have many different, individual theories about what it means to be human. ²¹Arguments over these different beliefs and opinions have reduced the influence of humanism in recent decades. ²²Despite this, humanism maintains a position ultimately supportive of humans as more than animals, accepting the reality of experiences that go beyond the measurable world. 
²³Humanism is, therefore, not purely scientific. ²⁴It accepts that other disciplines, such as art and philosophy, also have something to say about human behavior. ²⁵Most interestingly, it does not turn a blind eye to deep concepts like imagination, myth, soul, and spiritual dimensions of experience. ²⁶Behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, are the tools that are easily used by the interests of money-hungry corporations. ²⁷The behaviorist sees humans as little more than bestial, so it lends itself easily to the exploitation of people as little more than cattle. ²⁸An increasing awareness of these abuses suggests that we are, today, at the beginning of a rebirth in humanistic values. 

The Theory of Inclusive Fitness

If a blackbird’s primary instinct is self-preservation, why does it risk death in order to warn others in the flock that a hawk is approaching? Why does a young man, who has his whole life ahead of him, jump in front of a speeding bus to save a child? Are these behaviors spiritually altruistic, or is there some biological explanation for self-sacrifice? The traditional theory of evolution in the early 1900s proposed the idea of “survival of the fittest.” This idea made evolution seem like a competition between individual creatures, and it did not explain why animals sometimes make sacrifices to help each other. However, in 1964, W. D. Hamilton proposed the theory of “inclusive fitness,” which seems to explain the mystery of self-sacrifice.
The instinct to protect one’s young, or one’s family, is easily understandable in terms of evolution. According to Hamilton, an organism may contribute to its own chances of passing on its genes if it helps others that share the same or similar genes. This same helpful behavior can be extended to other, more distantly related members of the same species. Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness says that not only do we have an instinct to protect our own young, but we also have an instinct to protect the reproductive success of others, as long as they are somewhat related to us.
The theory of inclusive fitness suggests, of course, that the probability of the young man heroically rescuing the child will decrease as the degree of relatedness between him and the child decreases. But if the child is his own, the likelihood of him helping is far greater than if the child is not in his family. This rather disturbing prediction has been supported by studies of organisms as diverse as ground squirrels and humans alike.

¹Since 1970, the average age of a woman at her first marriage has increased about three years. ²Also, women have entered the workplace in increasing numbers, causing some to delay having children until their financial situation improves. ³Other working women have decided not to have any children at all. ⁴Naturally with these developments, overall birthrates have declined. ⁵The birthrate in women between the ages of 15 and 44 has decreased by about 20 percent. ⁶The peak childrearing years in 1970 were between 20 and 24 years of age. ⁷In 1991, they were between 25 and 29. ⁸In the last few decades, clearly, the entry of women into the workforce has resulted in a reduction in the rate of population growth. 

—From LEFRANCOIS. The Lifespan 1e (p. 372). Copyright © 1996 Cengage Learning