Why shy away from shyness?
By Jyotica Pragya Kumar

"DEAR doctor! I am in a soup!" said a patient disconsolately while entering the clinic. "I have heard people saying that you have a panacea for all sorts of problems. Please! Listen to me. I am in a predicament. I am told, I am suffering from a strange sort of a disease. I don’t know what kind of disease is this. I am not sick. Don’t you see, I am perfectly hale and hearty! But people tell me that there is something terribly wrong with me. Others tell me that I am coy, demure, prudish, bashful or even ‘sheepish’! Such ‘labels’ are given because I betray uneasiness in the company of others".

A person with a retiring disposition is so right from childhood onwards. As one grows older one should be able to overcome this ‘silly shyness’ in the process of socialisation. This increasing diffidence virtually destroys the precious inner self. A lot of people need help in getting rid of this stupid shyness, this social phobia, which is said to be a serious social handicap.

It is quite natural to feel despondent, but, it gives some solace if one knows now in this mad world of today, one is not the only one who is caught in (perhaps unwittingly) this social phobia of shyness.

The phobic problem is not an isolated phenomenon, it is not culture-specific either.

In The Sunday Times, it was reported, hold your breath, that nearly there are three million chronically shy people in Britain along with at least ten million others admitted to varying degree of social awkwardness. In fact, it was the alarming magnitude of this problem that has impelled a team of British scientists to devise an anti-shyness pill. The moment this pill is administered, it starts acting on the brain. In increases the level of seratonin in the brain — a chemical which induces a sense of euphoria, and boosts a feeling of well-being. This, in turn, instantly takes away shyness and generates new self-confidence. Isn’t it wonderful? It is true that this anti-shyness pill is a costly affair: It instantly adds £ 700 million a year to Britain’s National Health Service bills! But look at the immense benefit of this pill: it is a ready remedy for curing social phobia.

The recently reported news of the "the successful testing" of an anti-shyness pill in Britain raises many questions. However, it brings to the fore a couple of sociological issues worth pondering. Is ‘shyness’ always an ignominious trait? Isn’t it an attribute of the value system? Even if it is considered a social phobia under certain situations, is pill-therapy a real solution to the social problem? On the social plane, we do know well that values are highly contextual. Shyness, being a social value, is, therefore, also contextual.

This merely means, that in a given social and cultural context, at times one is expected to inculcate the attribute of shyness, whereas at other times one is preferred to be bold by eschewing shyness. All this one learns gradually but surely through the on-going process of socialisation. In India, for instance, a young girl, while being introduced to a prospective life partner, invariably feels shy, especially in the company of others. That is why we often experience and say: "She lowered her head and eyes in a shy reaction!" or "She simply smiled shyly at him". Here shyness is a much admired value because it symbolises "innocence" and "simplicity of soul". In another contrasting situation, when the same young lady is made to face, say, an interview board while being considered for a senior executive position, she is expected to withstand the challenge with utmost courage and conviction without any shyness. Against this principle of differentiation, the anti-shyness pill completely overlooks this much desired contexualism.

This means, even where ‘shyness’ is considered a virtue, anti-shyness pill would claim to make the person not just "not shamefaced" but also "shameless". This indiscriminate levelling effect of the pill is culturally counter-productive. Besides, we are also indulging in, what we call in sociological parlance, "biological reductionism"; that is, reducing a higher order phenomenon to the phenomenon of a lower order. This is nothing but an attempt to explain a highly complex psychological process simply in terms of a simple physiological process. The end result of anti-shyness pill measured on the scale of perceived social effects would thus be the creation of a fleeting "false consciousness". Is this an emancipation of the recipient of anti-shyness pill from the unwished ‘phobic condition’?

Let me state the social solution to this much resented "social phobia". In the course of social interaction, if we use the conceptual innovation of Charles Horton Cooley, the idea of "looking glass self" operates upon an individual. In this, one perceives oneself as mirrored and reflected through the eyes of others. In this train of thought, if in certain social situations, one betrays shyness where, by collective conscience, one is not supposed to show it, the same needs to be encountered and corrected on the social plane in a desirable social way, say, through the support of such social institutions as the family and the family-physician. These can help the individual to overcome the negative elements of shyness, such as recurrent fear or nervousness, which are labelled as irrational and undesirable by others.

Against this backdrop, I venture to suggest, that for overcoming shyness we need to go in for an interpretive understanding of the inwardness and meaning of the social action — to find out the cause of this social problem. And for this we must redirect our resources. We must re-align and strengthen our doctor-patient relationship on a social rather than merely on a medicinal level.

In this venture, our family-physician, instead of administering the ‘pill’, would be committed to cure his or her patient’s psychological inhibitions. Else, the doctor would be shying away from his or her bounden duty to bring about much needed humanism. This is true that it would be a long course.

It takes years, nay decades, to build a better social order comprising ‘full human beings’. Such persons would undoubtedly be endowed with such traits as initiative, courage, compassion, independence, originality, and so on. But, then, how do we produce the models of human excellence in, say, sports at the international level? Certainly not by administering ‘pills’.

Drugs are rather fiercely banned for this purpose, because they produce effects that are against the gain of nature. Let us, therefore, follow nature for producing healthy, happy stable social order by agreeing unreservedly with Herbert Spencer that "nature is far more intelligent than human beings, and, therefore, we should not interfere with the natural processes going on in societies".