ABSTRACT
There is a problem with the concept of self-control and it appears early, with definitions. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in general use in American clinical psychological and psychiatric work, describes a broad category of psychiatric conditions it calls “Impulse-control disorders.” It is true that the nature and range of spontaneous or habitual action, the range of what is automatically allowable in given circumstances and what is not, is different in different sorts of personality. Self-control or the capacity for restraint is no more than an aspect of those volitional processes. More moderate examples of comparative lack of restraint are those mildly impetuous people, most often though by no means exclusively women, who are also described as flighty or frivolous. The idea of an independent faculty of self-control, a muscle with its own strength, hinting at a capacity for self-transcendence, is not secure as a strictly psychological concept.
