Understanding human behaviour is a highly complex and difficult task. It needs a correct and scientific vision and a rational thinking. Human mind is reflected in a manifest behaviour. It has been a rather wrong practice to divided a man into different units like social man, political man, economic man, religious man and the like, and then to explain the social, political, economic and the religious behaviour from a restricted and preconceived angle. The behavioural scientists have attempted at understanding human behaviour from their own angles without assigning reasons from the angles of others. Even within the same discipline the behaviour is explained in an isolated and segregated manner without considering the man as a total unit who is under multiple constraints. For example, in the field of Psychology the explanation of human behaviour is to be based on biological, psychological and socio-cultural approaches. The personality disorders are to be attributed to biological deficiencies, inheritance, chemical and endocrine imbalances, on the one hand, and to psychodynamics including unconscious motivations, faulty learning and cognition or perceptual awareness on the other. Still further, the socio-cultural environment including family environment, social norms, sick social conditions, faulty parental training, unhealthy living conditions and obsessed mores and traditions have been found to influence and individual's behaviour. Segregated approaches towards explaining a specific behaviour pattern cannot help in a scientific understanding of behavioural events. Even within the specific psychological field the explanation of Adler in terms of style of life and inferiority complex. Jung would attribute dream contents to an individual's effort at solving the present problem. Still another example can be cited by taking terrorism as expression of human aggression. Some will attribute unhealthy social, political and economic conditions to this act where as others may emphasize frustrations and the resulting aggression and failure of the functioning of super Ego and dominance of animal tendencies over the moral values. Still others can consider this phenomenon as a reflection of identity crisis and lack of proper channelization of human potentialities and energy. Perhaps there has been a faulty social conditioning and the energy of youths could not be properly utilized and chennelized in a productive and constructive fashion.

In the same way the national and international tension, racial conflicts and even war, national disintegration, social crimes, alcoholism and drug addictions, sexual assaults, prostitution and many other significant social problems, demand analysis in-depth of human behaviour being reflected in such activities. Various psychogenic, sociogenic and economic as well as political factors are operating behind such action. Hence multiple analysis is required from various angles by different behavioural scientists and the natural scientists.

While dealing with human behaviour from a purely psychological angle, it becomes a highly difficult task to establish a causal relation between the different events and behavioural manifestations. In this context it is to be pointed out that the judgement made on a behavioural event must be fully guarded otherwise it may be wrong and misleading. A single bit of behaviour is difficult to be judged without a correct knowledge of the time, place and person and other related components which constitute an environment. A very interesting example can be cited in this context to emphasise the knowledge of environment in which a particular behaviour is taking place. An observer was asked to analyse the hidden motive behind a specific behaviour for which no other cue was provided. The simple statement made was " A man was running on the road". The 'why' of running behaviour was to be searched out by the observer. Various assumptions were made: the man might be running on the road as he was chased by some one or he was chasing some one else; he might be feeling hungry or thirsty that is why he was running in search of food and water. Still other explanation was given in terms of his effort to catch a bus or a train. In this way various explanations were put and motives were attributed to the running behaviour. The fact was that the man was running on the road only for the purpose of exercise during the morning hour. What a funny thing it was which made the observations complicated. The reason behind is very simple. The observer did not enquire about the time, place and person and the context, otherwise the explanation could have been easier. Still another example of crying behaviour can be cited which occur in both the situations charged with extreme happiness and extreme sorrow. The manifest laughter of a man may not always be a true picture of his inner happiness rather sometimes it may be highly deceptive and may be an effort to conceal inner sufferings and unhappiness. In the same way the repeated failure of the student in proving his worth within a class may be due to lower level of intelligence, lack of aptitude and interest, domestic problems, personality characteristics and maladjustment with the school or college environment. Hence, if any body wants to identify the genuine cause of his failure and non-participation he will have to peep into the depth of the problem, because various problem areas are inter-linked. The cause behind this behaviour may even be physiological deficiencies.

Another interesting behaviour event depicting superiority complex also indicates the multiplexity behind understanding human behaviour. The feeling of superiority and its resultant manifestation in different behaviour patterns is nothing but of underlying inferiority complex relating to biological, psychological, economic, political or social incompetence. It is a psychological fact that the basic feeling of inferiority is compensated either by excessive show-off tendency or by proving a man's own worth in other fields. A person having a poor muscles sometimes moves in a highly exhibinistic way. An individual having feeling of weak voice may start giving speeches in an excessive loudly manner; a dwarf may move very fast just to compensate his feeling of inferiority at unconscious level. Sometimes the basic inferiority feeling within a man may be compensated by torturing others or creating, conflicting situations and group rivalry and in extreme cases even in launching attack or war. The history of world wars has pointed towards some cases of warriors having basic inferiority within them, which generated an excessive sense of superiority. However, sometimes the inferiority feeling can be compensated in a healthy manner. The child who stammers during childhood may compensate his feeling by making all efforts to compensate it and may prove to be a very good speaker or orator. Some tines a weak student may compensate his weakness by becoming a good sportsman or a painter or asocial worker. All such examples are indicative of the fact how difficult the explanation of manifest human behaviour is!

Another significant example to be cited is that of the problem of language and communication. It has been rightly remarked that most of the social problems relating to conflict and prejudice are caused by either communication gap or lack of understanding or distorted message. The denotative meaning of a word is sometimes over masked by its connotative or underlying components like facial and postural expressions, and loaded emotions and feelings. A very common example of the complicated nature of speech can be cited by making reference to the speeches of a political leader which are interpreted from various angles either by the editors of the newspapers or magazines or by the masses and the critics. Hundreds of editorials are emerged on the one statement of a leader, which makes the leader's intention complicated and lead to various types of misunderstanding among the groups and sometimes even among the nations. Hence while understanding the communicative behaviour a study of various inter-linked components must be considered like the intention of the speaker, the textual context, the personality, his interest socio-economic background, his failures and aspirations and also his capability of using the appropriate words and references. It has been referred that when a person states 'I love you' it has hundreds of connotative meaning depending upon the person for whom this sentence has been spoken and in which context it has been remarked.

The understanding of human behaviour is also associated with individual's different modes of adjustment made to a single problematic situation. For example, if a five storied building catches fire in which four brothers are residing at the top floor may present four modes of adjustive patterns. One may jump to save his life, another may start shouting for help, third one who is of assertive type, may start fighting with the fire and the fourth one who is a highly religious man may start praying to God to save his life. All the four different patterns of adjustment aimed at saving one's own life. The pattern adopted reflects their style of life, presence of mind and the relative estimate of different modes. If we go deeper and deeper into the analysis of human behaviour we find various unconscious motives operating behind the expressed behaviour which are not even known to the individual himself. There are many examples, which indicate not only the role of healthy motives but even of unhealthy drives initiating, controlling and directing the human behaviour. There are individuals who develop duel or multiple personality and act in accordance with the split personality in different situations, which make the observer confused. There are various behaviour patterns, which exhibit different defences adopted at unconscious level to meet the, conflicting situation. For example, a man having deep sense of crime may project. it on others by levelling them as potential criminals. He is attempting at concealing socially undesirable motives even from himself by projecting them on others.

The clinical psychologists and psychiatrists have made observations of various personality disorders, which reflect unconscious motivation playing its role through overt symptoms. A nurse who developed a functional paralysis of hand during nay operation of her brother who died on the operation table itself. Now by developing paralysis unconsciously she wanted to minimise her anxiety and sense of guilt. The sense of an operation table could create high voltage of anxiety .The interesting feature was that the paralysis of hand was over after the ongoing operation was finished. Hence, the behaviour manifested in the form of transitory paralysis of hand was functional in character and a kind of defence from anxiety-provoking situation reviving severe sense of guilt. It is highly interesting to observe the torturing and sadistic behaviour of some persons who torture others either by inflicting physiological pain or by making extremely bitter criticisms. They do so due to their underlying sadistic tendency which sometimes become a highly deviated form of behaviour. Such persons sometimes even get pleasure by indulging in rape, mass killing, and individual assault. In the same way there are persons who are misfit in the society as they do not have control over their impulses. They may become pathological liar or mischievous or may steal a thing just for fun-sake.

Still going into the depth of human behaviour we observe that some types of fixation during early childhood may shape an individual's habit patterns and, obsessive behaviour patterns in later life. For example, the fixation of an individual at oral biting stage during early years of infancy and babyhood may develop within him a habit of passing severe criticism of others or it may develop a nail-biting or other types of biting behaviour. In the same way the fixation at an oral-sucking stage may lead to the development of a habit of sucking in an adult. He may be a chain-smoker, or may suck his thumb or other sucking objects. What I want to emphasize by citing such behaviours of an individual is that sometime we have to peep into the various developmental processes during childhood in order to have clear insight into the correct appraisal of behaviour.

The understanding of human behaviour is also based on the concept of conditioned behaviour, where a natural response is attached to an unnatural stimulus and it even goes on towards making generalisation. A simple incidence of a person who becomes disturbed over the sight of any red thing may be quoted in this context. An individual who perceived a dead body in pool of blood became so much disturbed that after some times he became aversive of anything which was red in colour. It was an extreme when he could not tolerate even a red rose. At the very sight of it he developed convulsion. Many such examples of day to day behaviour indicate the complexity behind a simple bit of behaviour. However, it is to be noted that some behaviour patterns are pathological in nature which are difficult to be analyzed by a common man but even the so called nonnal behaviours are difficult to be understood in its true spirit.

Now a days, the Psychosomatic approach in medicine which has provided a psychological telescope to the eyes of the physicians and the physiological cues to the eyes of clinical psychologists, has revolutionized the thinking of both the groups. The prolonged emotional stress may develop in a physiological disorders like peptic ulcer, respiratory and circulatory disorders. Hence the underlying conflicts are to be resolved for the eradication of the disorders. The effort to understand the behavioural manifestation is to be intensified for correct diagnosis and appraisal.

The multiplexity of human behaviour is reflected in all the fields of enquiry. Minor mistakes of our daily life, such as slip of tongue, slip of pen and forgetting of names etc., are the products of unconscious motivation of which the individual is not aware. It has been remarked that even forgetting behaviour is purposeful and we forget because we want to forget. Nothing is incidental, as every behaviour has a cause and its effect. It is our task to establish a relation between these two components failing which the correct interpretation of behaviour can not be made. An interesting event is being cited for the purpose of indication the role of sub-conscious or unconscious behind a slip of tongue. Four intellectuals were participating in a lively discussion over a burning social affair. Among the participants one of the learned speakers was holding a high administrative post but was also a scholar of history. Another professor who was moderating the discussion addressed the office by using the word 'Doctor', though he was aware that he never has a degree of doctorate. Upwardly it was a slip of tongue of the moderator but a psychological analysis made it clear that the scholarly approach to the historical events of the participant and his extra-ordinary dedication to History had influenced the moderator so intensely that unconsciously he thought that the participant cannot be less than any person having a Ph.D. degree in History. This simple analysis clearly reflects the intention behind any expressed behaviour which is not even known to the individual himself. Another example is cited of a man who frequently remarked 'I am happy to see you off whenever a guest arrived at his residence. Immediately he felt sorry for it and said 'I am happy to welcome you'. This slip of tongue was attributed to his unconscious aversion towards any guest as he was basically a miser man.

While understanding human behaviour one must consider the fact that an individual's behaviour is the product of his bio-psycho-socio-cultural, economic and political components and hence all of these components must be considered before the interpretation of behaviour is made. Efforts must be made to understand a man who is carrying his past, living in the present and thinking in terms of future goals. An individual's failures in the past and present and his aspirations for the must be taken into consideration for the analysis of his behaviour. The individual's perceptual angle and mental functioning must be given due importance. A diseased eye perceives every thing to be unhealthy and the polluted mind functions behind various pollutions. Hence the behaviour of an individual is guided and controlled by his mind and perceptual frame of reference which has a number of components within.

In the light of various examples cited above one can well appreciate how difficult is the task of understanding and interpreting human behaviour which appears to be quite simple, but in its depth it has storage of multiple components which demand attention. The approach which is to be adopted for understanding human behaviour must be holistic in character at individual level. An interdisciplinary approach must be adopted for the correct diagnosis of social, racial and economic problems exhibited by a group of individuals. The attempt must be made at isolating the most relevant factor attributing to the manifested behaviour event. Above all, the observer's or the perceiver's view of others behaviour is itself influenced by his own motives, needs, attitude, prejudice, profession, training, mental set, socio-economic background, expectations, frustrations, aggressions, emotional attachment, identification, frame of reference, intellectual level, interest, personality, communicative and interpretative skill, clarity of vision, level of understanding and cultural background. That is why an objective and scientific observation of human behaviour becomes difficult due to subjective components and consequently sometimes it is remarked that "we do not perceive the world as it is, rather as we are".

This statement clearly reflects that understanding and interpreting behaviour becomes more complex because of the observer's own characteristics and components as stated above. Hence the judgement on the basis of reflected behaviour of an individual must be made with full precautions and reservations.

(*)Former :Chairman, Bihar State University (Constituent Colleges) Service Commission, Patna
Vice-Chancellor, Nalanda Open University
Prof. & Head. Department of Psychology
Director, Institute of Psychological Research and Services &
Director, D.D.E., Patna University.