Relationship Types
Adjustment involves four types of relationships. There is the intrapersonal relationship, which consists of the individual's attempt to understand his own desires, abilities, and frustrations. There is the person-to-person relationship, such as the communication that takes place between student and counselor. When several people interact, for each person a person-ta-group relationship is involved. Finally, there is a person-to-object relationship, such as driver and car or typist and typewriter. In effect, adjustment means opening up to experience in each of these four directions.
We are, of course, familiar with several typical adjustments; let us mention a few by way of introduction, beginning with physiological adjustment. Body temperature regulation is an automatic type of adjustment. The human body operates with maximum efficiency at an internal temperature of about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and maintains this level within 1 or 2 degrees, If the external temperature becomes too high, the body meets the emergency in a number of ways. The capillaries in the skin dilate, exposing a larger amount of blood to the cooling influence of the body surface. Also the skin secretes perspiration, the evaporation of which lowers the heat of the body. When the env:i.conment becomes too cold, the capillaries contract, . driving blood from the skin. These adjustments are made without voluntary control. However, individual choices aid the physiological adjustments. When he is warm,.a person will avoid physical exercise, retire to a shady place, dress lightly, or enter an air-conditioned place; when he is cold, the opposite occurs.
We adjust to hunger by eating and give reflex responses to being' burned. We make sense organ adjustments by moving our eyes or turning our heads toward the source of sound. We make adjustments to a complex set of stimuli in driving an automobile, Sometimes, of course, we find a problem' situation to which we cannot adjust immediately on the basis of reflex, past experience, or habit. This type of problem solving is an example of intellectual adjustment. And, ih some ways, social adjustment,rpay be the most complicated of all. The social contacts of groups of people require subtle and delicate adjustments. Learning what to do is quite involved.
