Managing Frustration of Personnel in Uniform

Mr. Abhay Jain, Lecturer, Department of Commerce and Business Management,

Guru Nanak Dev University,  Amritsar. 143001

A B S T R A C T

In the armed forces the Officers, JCO’s and ORs have their own wants, needs and desire to be fulfilled. Any obstacle or barrier which may be in the field of social, economic or Psychological field would adversely affect these men in uniform- thereby giving birth to frustration and tension. It was very pertinent to study these intricate aspects such as- sources of frustration and the causes of frustration among male and female army officers. There is an urgent need to bring down the level of frustration in Army male/female officers irrespective of the period of service experience. Those who are highly frustrated must be tackled accordingly so that they can return to the normal level. A few recommendations have been made in suggestive form, which may bring down the level of frustration among male/female Army officers. This conceptual paper highlights the small population of male and female Army officers to analyze the modes and levels of frustration and to recommend a few suggestions for bring down the level of frustration to the barest minimum".

 INTRODUCTION

“We human beings are constantly striving to establish a satisfactory relationship with our environments. In other words, we are trying to adjust to our environment. We are trying to fulfill our needs in order to live happily and function effectively. But the process of adjustment or of attaining and enjoying mental health is not always easy. Our needs cannot always be adequately satisfied in all situations. We have to face other people’s attitudes that are hostile – attitudes of criticism, faultfinding, nagging, scolding, scorn, & ridicule. In fact there are barriers or obstacles in satisfaction of our needs or desires. These barriers and obstacles cause frustration and produce tension. Thus Frustration is the thwarting of one’s desires and needs.

Frustration is one of the most dominating factors influencing the individual behaviour. It alters the normal behaviour pattern. The sources of frustration are many and diversified. The specific situations that bring about frustration are endless but can generally be put into three main categories – Physical Environment, Man’s biological limitations and Psychological make up. Inspite of its inevitability, frustration is a phenomenon of a great consequence to human happiness. Many Psychologists have pointed out the importance of frustration towards constructive side. The frustration may spur individuals to greater and better-organized efforts, determine to achieve ultimate success and satisfaction. It may increase the strength of the motive and to redouble the efforts to go ahead with the blocked line of activity. Many of the outstanding achievements have sprung out of deeply frustrated situation and backgrounds.   

According to Erikson, E. (1996) there are three different meanings of the term Frustration:

1. Frustration situation:

The essential characteristics are an insoluble problem situation, impossibility of moving out of the situation and motivation to respond. A. Amsel (1962) for whom a frustration situation is one in which non-rewarded trials are interpleading with or follow rewarded trial.

2. Frustration state: The frustrating situation will induce a state of frustration in the organism, the degree of frustration varying between individuals.

3. Reaction to Frustration: The principal reactions to the frustration state which have been studied in detail are:

Aggression, Regression, Fixation and Resignation.

Definitions:

“ Frustration occurs whenever the organism meets a more or less insurmountable obstacle or obstruction in its route to the satisfaction of any vital need” – Rosenzweig (1941).

According to Erikson, E. (1996) “Frustration is the state of emotional stress, characterized by confusion, annoyance and anger. Interruption to goal seeking behaviour causes frustration.” The person is aware of his inability to satisfy his desires, drives and needs and his failure to reach the goals he has set for himself, so he feels helpless and suffers from injured pride.

Freud,S.(1920) reported that aggression is an expression of frustration . According to him frustration occurs whenever pleasures – seeking or pain avoiding behaviour is blocked. Feeling of failure thus germinates frustration. The frustration – aggression hypothesis asserts that the occurrence of aggression always presupposes to existence of frustration, and contra wise, that the existence of frustration always leads to some forms of aggression. “Frustration – Regression hypothesis which reveals that frustration of one activity will produce lowered quality of performance in the second activity”. To the extent that it leads to the making of responses that are incompatible with or interfere with the responses of second activity (Barker et. al. 1941).

“The observations of behaviour of people in various frustrating situations, whether experimentally induced or occurring in actual life situation, have displayed marked individual differences in the way people react to frustration with each person learning a pattern of behaviour best suited to his needs and thereby developing his own coping up process for maladjusted forms of behaviour resulting from the frustrating situations”

Recently the effect of frustration in Army Male & Female Officers have been of great concern which is effecting their social, family and professional spheres of life. The need has been felt at higher echelons of to know the sources and causes of such frustration in Armed forces, keeping in view this proposition in mind, the paper has been undertaken with the aim to highlight the sources, modes, main causes of frustration and also suggest a few remedial measures of reduce the level of frustration of officers in their life.

SOURCES OF FRUSTRATION

The psychologists in the area of frustration hold the view that the barrier of frustration always lies in the environment either internal or external. Frustration originating out of external environment may be either personal or impersonal. In other words, frustration mainly arises from three important sources as listed below:-

·        Physical obstacle

·        Social obstacles –

·        Society and culture.

·        Religion

·        Psychological obstacles.

·        Art & Literature

·        Role of personality development

·        Unconsciousness.

·        Self-Devaluation.

Physical Obstacles:

It is caused from the physical environment and leads to a wide variety of frustration in one’s needs and efforts. Major frustrations out of the physical obstacle/environment are – Drought, storm and cyclones, floods, injuries, accidents, wars death of near and dear ones.

Social Obstacle:

Deviation from social norms and values such as Rape, Homosexuality, physical violence, children sexually assaulted, child labor etc. these causes punishment to the Ego. Thus unable to cope up with such irrational and antisocial desires, the individual meets with frustration. The role of society and culture norms is important to thwarted frustration.

Psychological obstacles:

In psychoanalytical theory of art & literature, Freud has clearly mentioned that the frustration and disappointment of the artists, the writers or the poets unconsciously projected in the contents of their creations. Frustration experienced during infancy and in later life becomes an important determining factor for the type of personality make-up of the individual in question.

Freud has also recognized the importance of unconscious, which embraces the whole field of Freudian psychology, with regard to the role that it plays in frustration. In order to maintain psychological harmony and integration one has to feel adequately whereas frustration makes an individual difficult to adjust.

MODES OF FRUSTRATION

Frustration has a different set of behaviour mechanism. It is expressed in various modes such as –

·        Aggression

·        Resignation

·        Fixation and

·        Regression.

Aggression:

The credit for developing the concept of frustration goes to Freud. He has established causal relationship between frustration and aggression. Aggression plays an important role in behaviour disorders, he therefore developed frustration – Aggression theory in a systematic way where frustration occurs whenever pleasure – seeking or pain – avoiding behaviour is blocked. Existence of frustration always leads to some forms of aggression. Aggression as a behavioral phenomenon indicates that aggressive behaviour may stem from learned habits of responding as well as from excessive frustration (Bandura. A 1965). It may be expressed in terms of irritation, quarrelling and fighting, disrespect to elders, negative reactions to traditions and beliefs etc.

Resignation:

In resignated behaviour there is extreme elimination of needs, no plans, no future orientations, withdrawals from social contacts, isolation, lack of interest in surroundings etc. persons who are severely frustrated in given situation may try to escape or withdraw from that situation. It may be due to the psycho- physical components – it meant that the actual physical behaviour may be more or less open, observable and direct in its withdrawal or escape implications. There is no actual physical withdrawal without psychological components and no pshchological withdrawal without physical implications. The organism makes withdrawal responses and so called physical and psychological processes are involved in varying degrees.

Fixation:

The persistency of behaviour appears to be much greater in frustration than in verbal situations. Maier contents that fixated behaviour can’t be explained by using learning principles. Frustration instigated behaviour is without goal orientation. It is a terminal response and not a means to an end. Here behaviour is repeated over and over again without variations and shows a degree of resistance to change. Fixated person a usually attached with interests and emotional attitudes belonging in forming new attachments and adaptations. Fixation may occur due to frustration of the normal expression of instinctual drive, or its over gratification of trauma and weakness the ego of the individual. Fixation responses are simply well conditioned responses where certain human habits persist inspite of other apparent non- adaptive nature.

Regression:

Freud.S (1920) also suggested frustration – regression hypothesis. His notion was that frustration could cause and individual to revert to modes of action that had characteristics his behaviour to early development stage. It had stated that people under stress regress to more “Primitive level’ when he has learnt habits at younger age. Regressions lower constructiveness and represent a backward step in development. It is expressed in behaviour characteristics like- defective speech, homesickness, escapist attitude, lack of self control, thinking old days, excessive day dreaming etc.

Thus frustration has its own system. It has four modes of reactions to a situation – aggression, resignation, fixation and regression. Aggression indicates frustration dynamics in hostel situation, regression is the condition to go back and fixation is the compulsive type of behaviour.

CAUSES OF FRUSTRATION IN ARMED FORCES

Frustration is the phenomenon, which is defined as a condition of extreme tension, and it is commonly interpreted as a strong emotional tension caused by the blocking of impulses. The individual is said to be frustrated because he does not know how to rid himself of his tension. The men in uniform, too, suffer from this phenomenon during various phases and stages of their lives.

Causes of Frustration:

There are numerous leading to frustration in the Armed Forces which may be enumerated below:

·        Personal & Family causes

·        Professional causes.

·        Economic Causes.

·        Psychological causes.

·        Social causes.

1. Personal & Family Causes :

The personal and family causes are very crucial and important which are the inevitable and complex ingredients lead person towards frustration. These may be listed as below:

·       Family Separation: This is one of the most important causes in a person to get frustrated when he is away from his kith and kin. He keeps remembering about his family members and at times can’t adjust himself with separation from family because by order he can’t keep his family near border areas.

·        Children Eucational Difficulties: Another basic problem faced by Armed forces officers is the inadequacy of educational facilities in Engg. or Medical colleges the person does not get the leave, hence he gets frustrated.

·        No. of Dependent’s Living with the Officer: in our society it is a tradition that in’ Laws will generally stay with their son/ daughters, this at times creates rift in the relations between husband and wife and culminating into strained relations and into a frustrated situations in the family.

·        Physical Handicap: whenever a person is physically handicapped due to natural or artificial circumstances, he feels inadequate in may respects and he develops the feelings of inferiority complex which, if not checked, would cause him frustration.

·        Inability to Achieve Predetermined Goals : As per the definition itself, this statement is true since any normal person whenever wants to achieve some-thing in life, but unable o do so due to various reasons, would fall prey to frustration. the only measure to recover from it is to set those goals which could be achieve easily.

2. Professional Causes :

In armed forces, too, the frustration is more or less has taken up its roots. This type of frustration is due to professional incompetence, jealousness, too often transfers etc. these reasons could be explained as below: -

·        Service Conditions: In Army, officers are posted in the border area(field area as these are commonly called in Army parlance) where there is not a good infrastructure for living, education and recreational activities. Uncongenial climate of snow bound areas, jungles, desert adds to the plight of degree of frustration among the officers.

·        Frequent Transfers: Another major ingredient of germinating frustration is frequent transfer of officers from place A to place B. this not only upset the officer mentally but also causes a lot of difficulties in setting up house at new place, looking for educational facilities. If the new place of transfer does not have these facilities, you can imagine the multitude of modes of his/her frustration.

·        Job Dissatisfaction/ Monotonous Job: by doing the similar job in the same way for couple of year in some of the branches of the Army certainly gives rise to mild degree of frustration and if not checked in time would lead to severe frustration.

·        Suppression: One of the crucial and very important factor of frustration among Army Officers is suppression. The person feels that he has not been rated by the system as per his/her qualities, but the fact remains that one has to get superseded at last since there is only one General, the Chief of Army Staff.

·        Defective/Inappropriate/Rigid Performance Appraisal System: linked with suppression is the faulty system of performance appraisal. In Army we are following an age-old system of performance appraisal, which needs to undergo a change. This may reduce the level of frustration among Army Officers in future.

·        Lack of Incentives for Higher Calibre Officers:- when an officer works more than his/her capability, there is no financial and at times no non-financial incentive given to him/her. In fact in Army a person who works hard and does his job religiously, that person comes up in the eyes of his superiors. Believe it, he is the person who would be given maximum no. of jobs in future because the senior officer does not want to take chance with any other officer. This officer when over loaded with work feels frustrated since other officers are not as over loaded as he is.

3. Economic Causes:

Economic deprivation in the Armed forces causes the disease of frustration. In the first place economic deprivation leads to high degree of frustration which results from in adequacy of facilities of materialistic world of today.

·        Lower Rate of Pay & allowances: in our National policy the endeavor has to rate the Armed Forces low among class-I Gazzetted Officers Cadre. Any time Pay Commission makes the recommendations, the forces do not get their dues and the over-all frustration level shoots up due to double standards of Government.

·        Tendency to Equate Armed Forces Life with Civilians Counterparts: Within Officers Category, the officers try to compare themselves with their equivalent counterpart in the civil administration and feels frustrated keeping in mind their perks, power, authority and political influence. The Officers get frustrated because in Civil Deptt. They do not get their dues at all.

·        Corruption in Civil & Semi-Government Institutions: In Army there is nothing known as corruption whereas in almost all departments of civil Administration there is nothing but corruption. The law makers are the law breakers. Whenever the legal things are to be done through Civil Department, the Army Officers are faced with numerous hurdles, which makes them feel frustrated because without bribe his work will not be done.

·        Deterioration of Armed Forces Image: In these days the image of the army has come down because the Army is being used for those tasks, which are not to be carried out by the Army. While doing so there bound to be some untoward incidents of looting, rape and ransome since Army soldiers are all human beings and can be lured by the three W’s Woman, Wine & Wealth. The respect and status, which Army is to maintain in civil Departments, is deteriorating these days thereby giving rise to frustration among Army Officers.

4. Psychological Causes:

Lastly there are a few causes, which are of psychological in nature resulting into the frustration level of Army Officers. These are given as under: -

·        Mental Depression: this is a common cause to all persons and Army officers are no exception to it. This depression could be due to prolonged separation, suppression, uncordial husband-wife relations etc. this is more of a mental state of mind, which results into severe frustration.

·        Army Customs/ Traditions, Restrictions & Taboos: the Army traditions and customs are sometimes held responsible for raising the levels of frustration e.g. Boss is always right- on a particular issue your perception may be right but senior’s orders are to be obeyed – hence occurs frustration.

·        Non- Realization of Personal Deficiency: this is also known as inadequacy of Ego-defence mechanism. The person gets frustrated because he is not able to know his weaknesses. He should carry out introspection to overcome this difficulty otherwise he would be a frustrate persons.

·        Conflicts of Motives within the Individual: Whenever there is conflict of motives, it gives rise to frustration. Individual must decide one aspect of the issue and not let the conflict, come up. Decide one goal/motive and move towards it. Whenever there are temptations to deviate or do more things than originally perceived, the conflict will arise and you will fail to achieve your motive and hence frustration will occur.

·        Physical Illness: Prolonged Illness of any kind- physical or mental will ultimately result into frustrating the patient. He would always feel deprived of something, which he could have don/achieved when he was fit. This feeling always get on to his nerves and slowly starts destabilizing his mental make up and person get frustrate to the highest degree.

There are many reasons, which exist and which could be held responsible for various degrees/ modes of frustration. These levels do exist in all officers but the levels of degree vary from a situation to a situation and person to person. There are remedial measures, which could reduce the level of frustration because you can’t totally eliminate the frustration from any person.

RECOMMENADATIONS & SUGGESTIONS

The following recommendations are being offered which may help in reducing the level of frustration.

·        To reduce the period of separation of family which means adequate number of family stations as forward to the borders areas as possible for officers.

·        To create better infrastructure for educational and hostel facilities for Army Officer’s school going children as well as for under graduate and post graduate level.

·        To increase the number of Army Public Schools as well as Military Sainik Schools throughout the country.

·        To increase the number of Engg. Mgmt. Medical and Computer Colleges exclusively made for Army Officers Children and establishing a National level Army/armed Forces University catering for the educational needs of Army Officers children’s.

·        New ways and means to improve the deteriorating Image of Armed forces in civil life. This may be done by sending fixed number of officers on deputation for the period of 2 to 3 years in each civil department. At present this aspect is getting a lip service only.

·        A change in the methods and procedure of performance appraisal of officers is the crying need of the hour. One way could be the peer-appraisal, appraisal by juniors and senior officers to get an objective appraisal of officers.

·        Another method of reducing frustration level of superseded officers is to give them financial incentives as per the length of service and adequate perks available for their counterparts in the civil departments.

·        Another factor which is responsible for frustration which comes up when comparison of civil and Army life takes place in the minds of officers. The perks and the facilities and the influence which class II & III officers of Civil Adm. can exert in getting their jobs sorted out is not within the reach of Army Class I Officers. This factor can be eliminated to a considerable extent by granting ‘Priority of work’ to Army personnel in all civil Departments.

·        If possible frequent transfers to be reduced to min. & peace tenure to be increased to 6 years.

To reduce the frustration level among these officers whose level of frustration is either average of high, our endeavor should be to change their environment and uproot the causes of their frustration, which may be of family, professional of psychological in nature. It may be possible that this frustration level may be due to one or more modes of frustration being of very high magnitude.

References:

Amsel. A (1992)   The Role of frustration non-rewarding, non-continuous reward  situations, Psychology, 1958, pp55, &102-109

Bandura, A (1965)    Social foundation of thought and action, Social and  Behavioural    Sciences 11(3):14.

Barker et. al (1941)      Advance Item Analysis, McGraw-Hills, New York.

Erikson, E. (1996).    The Galilean Sayings and the Sense of "I", Psychoanal. Contemp. Thought, 19:291-338.

Freud.S. (1920)    Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses, London: Int. Psycho- Analytical Press.

Maier - (1972)             Effects of Educational level on production of training success  &

                                    A study of behaviour with a goal Psychol. Bull. 55:102-119.

Rosenzweig (1941)    The Experimental Measurement of types of Reaction of Frustration. HA Murray (Ed.) Exploration in Personality pp.585-599.