that the hysteria took place each time during an art session. The connection between the hysterical behavior and the art class appeared to be coincidental until all the minute elements of the art class were classified and analyzed.
The highly trained psychiatric social worker found something that would have been meaningless to the average teacher. She observed that the hysteria took place only when the children were painting with orange paint. They painted with red tempera on Monday, with blue on Tuesday, and on Wednesday with orange. For some reason, either planned or coincidental, the same orange paint was used again on Thursday and also, on Thursday, Jerry was hysterical. On Friday they painted with yellow and, although the boy was highly nervous, he carried through his art activity without incident. The following week and the third week there was the same correlation between the orange color and hysterical behavior of the six year old.
The boy was put with a group of children who worked with all colors except orange or colors closely related to orange. No hysteria showed up.
During the time the boy was attending the classes, another psychiatric social worker was meeting with the boy’s mother twice a week. When the correlation of the orange color and the boy’s hysteria was presented to the mother’s social worker, she began to ask the mother leading questions. Previously the mother had described her child’s hysterical behavior as coming on suddenly with no cause whatever. Now the following story came out.
The mother and her son were visiting relatives in another state when school began. Jerry therefore did not start school at the same time with the other boys and girls. When Jerry was brought to school by his mother for the first time it was just before Halloween. The class was given the project of drawing a pumpkin.
Because it was Jerry’s first experience with tempera he was timid about handling it and when the class session was over his pumpkin drawing was not finished.
The teacher was one of those who believe in enforcing discipline from the very beginning. She announced that all those who had not finished the drawing lesson must remain after class to finish it. Jerry watched the boys and girls rush out of the room to meet their mothers in the foyer. He alone had to remain to finish drawing the pumpkin.
The large class room suddenly became unnaturally quiet. He saw that he was alone with only the austere teacher sitting at her desk on a platform very high and very distant from him. He became terrified and began to cry out loud. The teacher rushed up to him and reprimanded him in a harsh voice that echoed in the large empty room. The boy became hysterical and the teacher dragged him out to his mother with the exclamation that he was a very bad boy, lazy and troublesome. This traumatic experience became associated in the boy’s unconscious with the color of pumpkin—orange.
Had this association of the sensation of an orange color with a traumatic experience not been discovered in the child, the boy could have grown up with a color complex that might have been a strong handicap in his adult life. There are many adults who have strong color phobias due to similar childhood traumatic experiences associated with colors.
Strong visibility, great retention power, high color preference, excellent image and color representation, plus easy eye-movement combine in making this point-of-sale poster a potent selling tool.
Human behavior is conditioned by habit and habit is as regular in its pattern as a set of gears and wheels driven by a motor. Evidence that behavior patterns are formed through habit and association has been most effectively brought out by J. P. Pavlov, the Russian scientist, author of the theory of “conditioned reflex.” The theory is based on very extensive experiments with dogs.
Pavlov regularly gave a dog a piece of meat immediately after the ringing of a bell. The association of the bell ringing and the meat eating was repeated until after a certain period of time the ringing of the bell without the meat produced a flow of saliva in the dog. The bell and the meat became synonymous. This is a “conditioned reflex.”
However, “conditioned reflexes” can be inhibited or changed. If, after a dog has been conditioned to associate the ringing of a bell with eating meat, the bell continues to be rung but is followed either by no meat or by some painful treatment for a continued length of time, the saliva soon ceases to flow. This is an “inhibitory reflex,” which if repeated too often can lead to neurosis.
Human beings are conditioned from infancy by their environment. The conditioning is neither voluntary nor conscious. A new-born child acts freely and instinctively. If we do not interfere with the infant’s spontaneous behavior and gratify his natural needs for food and fondling (love), the infant may grow up to be a very self-indulgent, selfish, and antisocial individual but he would not be in danger of becoming an inhibited individual. However, in order to make the child conform to family or group behavior patterns, the parents begin to inhibit the infant by restricting his spontaneous behavior and therein lies the danger of the child withdrawing from his environment into himself.
Excessive inhibition is the road to neurosis. Normally, there is a near balance between self-expression and inhibition. The less inhibited individual is called an extrovert; the overly inhibited person we describe as an introvert. Completely or nearly completely introverted or extroverted people are abnormal and since such individuals do not often go to stores to make purchases we will not discuss them here.
Normally, people are at the height of happiness when they express themselves freely. Actually it means that we are happiest when we do not have to think or exert any kind of effort or control over our emotional expression. However, your freedom of expression may inhibit your neighbor’s freedom of expression. And your neighbor’s or your brother’s freedom of expression may inhibit your freedom of expression. Therefore, we are all inhibited to some degree first by the family and then by society. In other words, normal people have dual behavior patterns, instinctive, original, libidinous and conditioned reflexes.
The love for red is normally instinctive. A negative reaction to black is normally instinctive. However, a person can be conditioned to react against red or, on the other hand, to react pleasurably to black.
Red expresses light and warmth; it stimulates. But suppose each time red was put before a new-born child (or any creature that has color sight, a bird for example, dogs do not see color) it was accompanied or followed by a pin prick or other type of painful experience, the child would grow up with a strong dislike for red.
Black by itself produces few pleasurable sensations. It is not only non-stimulating but inhibiting. However, suppose a newborn infant were given food in the dark, never had his hunger satisfied when there was light and suppose the infant were continuously fondled or given attention by the mother in the dark but never when there was light. Black or dark would then become a pleasurable sensation. This person would, in other words, have a “conditioned reflex” to associate black with pleasure.
Mothers don’t make a practice of wearing red robes while pricking their infants with pins and they generally prefer to sleep at night and feed and fondle their babies in the day time. Therefore, people normally enjoy looking at red and react unfavorably to black.
For physical as well as psychological reasons, any color (or object) looks better when placed next to or framed with black. Black plays an important role by negation; it
