Self-Consciousness and Shyness

The students themselves, and especially the freshmen, who consulted the psychiatrist about lack of social success, usually attributed their failure to "shyness" or "self-consciousness." Their diagnosis, of course, describes two emotional sensations without identifying the factors contributing to them. Both words cover a multitude of things. Shyness describes the emotional condition of a person unwillingly isolated in a group. Self-consciousness may be experienced by the shy and the aggressive; in either case the individual is keenly aware of himself in a group, of his relations with people, of their attitude toward him, and their opinions of him. Both shyness and self-consciousness are in a sense generic words and one can distinguish a range of personality problems among the group to which they are applied. At one end are the problems of ordinary freshmen who are not quite able to size up their new environment and adjust themselves in it. At the beginning of the term, for example, a freshman may become homesick or depressed and shy.

Sympathy and stimulus from his counselor or from another student may help him to overcome his loneliness and find a place in a group. Such a maladjustment is mild, temporary, and easily remedied. But some people need more help. For them the shyness they feel on first coming to Yale is not a new sensation, but a condition persisting for many years. External factors, the home environment, the social attitudes of parents may have strengthened a natural tendency in the student so that he cannot easily overcome it. Such individuals had to be given special help in bolstering their desire to overcome feelings of shyness and self-consciousness and in the organization of their social lives. Most of them had had little social experience and needed direction in making overtures to the group and in building up a solid, continuous relation with it. For other students, shyness and self-consciousness were the outward signs of distress arising from emotional difficulties requiring investigation and treatment. Some were involved in a struggle to free themselves from family pressure and in fluence which absorbed their attention and energy and directed it away from the college; others were conscious of social barriers because of race, class, or economic status, and experienced feelings of inferiority which kept them from mingling with the group. Still others were preoccupied, as has been shown, with the scholastic adjustment, and there could be no social ease for most of the students whose security was constantly threatened by their inability to comply with the preliminary requirements of the environment.

A student who is habitually shy and self-conscious usually needs to be educated socially. For these feelings, especially shyness, are most often associated with a history of unsuccessful social experience. A lonely childhood without benefit of group contacts and subsequent lack of experience in mingling easily with contemporaries may strengthen a student's shyness and render it difficult for him to find friends. In order to overcome this feeling the individual needs to be able to evaluate his environment and decide how to organize his efforts to adjust himself in it. In most cases of this kind the student needs concrete help in attacking his problem. For social inexperience frequently results in an inability to direct his own activity toward fruitful ends. Moreover, the habit of solitude is not easy to break and the student usually needs encouragement to sustain his desire for a place in a group.

The preliminary issue of social technique, namely, the adequacy of an individual's social experience to prevent complete isolation, presents itself in the cases of sophomores and juniors in much the form which appeared in the freshman cases.