ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to develop a few distinctions and to point to a few of the relationships of values to the framework of thinking about man in society which may make one direction of conceptualization more profitable than another. A person's superego values are primitive and obscure, by definition not accessible to his reflective awareness without distortion. But self-values, to the extent that they fit our definition, are ideally approached by verbal means. As ingredients of inner discourse, we can tap them through the interview and its derivatives if we enjoy good rapport with our subjects. That we are tapping something "merely verbal" is no occasion for dismay: the verbal symbolism by which values are knit into the fabric of the self is a source of their importance, not a limitation. Indeed, the notion that "behavioral values" would somehow be firmer stuff than the verbal values, could we only get at them, seems quite mistaken.
