• BAHALANA!

Alfredo V. Lagmay
University of the Philippines

ABSTRACT

• A thematic apperception analysis ofbahala-na-situation stories reveals character

values that point to a basic psychological ascendancy in the Filipino-not submission.

• surrender. retreat or cessation of effort. The dynamics reflected in bahala na are: the
person saying it remains within the domain of the problem; he is accepting of his
situation and of things as they are for the moment; he is comfortable with the
unforeseeable; he is tolerant of ambiguity and the risley. Bahala na also generates a
natural layout for improvisation in the incompletely known future encounter .It is thus
suggested that, within the culture. bahala na is a positive, functional response to
uncertainty.

Apaperby Bostrom (1968) wastheinitial in the bahala na attitude as a basis for fuller
motivation for this inquiry, while the more research entry into this areaof work.
• immediate occasion was a fortunate access to
datafroman undergraduate student of anthro- The Problem
pology. The study of bahala na may be regarded
Bostromoffers a fair review of the avail- as an empirical problem of meaning DS de-
ableliterature on bahala na up to about 1967. fined by relevant situational and contextual
She workedon the hypothesis thatthe bahala conditions of experience.f An approximation
na attitude of Filipinos has a counterpart in to this kind of definition would be to ask the
American fatalism. She observed that thisfa- individual of his experience in concrete situ-
talistic attitude permeates the daily life and ations wherein he uttered babala na. The re-
habitual existence of Filipinos and that it is sulting datacould thenbe distinguished from
more prevalent in the Philippines than in the more interpretative, inferential, or specu-
America. lativemeanings variously attributed to bahala
One notes, however, a lack of data on na. Theviewis thata systematic classification
bahala na not only in the Bostrom paperbut of the facts would be a better foundation on
also in practically all of the references cited which any construction or inference may be
by her. On the otherhand,data has now been made.
made available for our inquiry, and, though
modest in terms of range and sample size, Procedure
were obtained by a method intended to give Fifteen subjects living-in the greater Ma-
materials in storyformwellsuitedto analysis nila area, were instructed to tell the inter-
and interpretation not verymuchunlikethose viewer a story of some concrete experience
of the thematic apperception test. 2 The pur- where bahala na wassaid.The objective was
pose here is simply to make a preliminary to obtaindata similarto those of th¢(hematic
exploration of possible conceptual elements apperception testinpsychological assessment

• Philippine Journal of Psychology 31

work. There wereno picturecards involved, A student says that he was going to take
unlike in the standard test where stories are an examination and there was no more
told aboutpictures presented in thecards. timefor anyformof preparation. Though
Using some.key concepts from clinical unprepared ... Bahala nat
andsocialpsychology, theresulting materials
werethencodedintermsof meanings directly One was caught extorting money from
extracted from the data. This procedure as- someone; a serious offense; no way out,
sumes that the framework for classification and he was being handcuffed. He cried
and interpretation is a significant factor for likea child,saying"Basta, bahala nal"
understanding bahala na.
The stories wereall very tersely worded,
•
RESULTS
Typicalexamples wereas follows:
Hereis one man,in deepthroes of suffer-
and small as the samplewas,even theirqual-
ity was not quite the ideal protocols thatoth-
erwise couldbe obtained by a skilledclinician
•
ing' who could not tum to anyone for doing the psychological test. Still, for a pre-
help. He had been in the midst of life's liminary exploratory step,theyare useful as a
confusing network of problems, such as starting point for parsing out some elements
being in conflictwith his spouse Bahala in the bahala-na situation.
nat
Bahala-na response is evoked when:
Another, without any plans, had to re-
spondimmediately to thegang (barkada) The prospective results or consequences
who came over to fetch him; but he had
to obligehis friends (makisama). Bahala
nat
of' a situation carinot be determined in
advance; •
There is a personal deficiency or lack in
Anindividual withnothing worthwhile to means, material resources or funding, in-
do; yet he has to do something and must formation or knowledge, and strength,
look for a way. He has enough informa- ability or capacity; .
lion, but he wishes to fmd out what his
limitations are,as well as hisdeficiencies The situation is serious or delicate(mase-
and. weaknesses. He is ready to take a Ian);
chance. Bahala nat
There is no plan or preparation for any
A photographer says that he will take reasonat all,e.g. a timefactorconstraint;
some pictures but has only one camera;
and he may run out of film, he says, or There is no help at the moment for a
that thecameramay fail to function, and serious difficulty; and/or
he doesnotknowwhere allthese willlead
to, even as he brings all his materials and One wishes to find out his limits, his
whatever else. Bahala nat strengths or weaknesses.

Whenonehassomething tobecarried out . In all of the foregoing, one could say that the
and the means are not adequate, for in- prospective future, whether distant or near,
stance,lackof money when goingout on because of some deficiency or other, is basi-
a date. Still he decides to make do with callyuncertain. Thisuncertainty is a common
•~
whathe has. Bahala nat essential feature of the bahala-na situation. I

•
32 Philippine Journal of Psychology
• We may conrider this veryobvious generali-
zationas a fi.st-order coding(categorization)
DISCUSSION
Considering that historically there has
of our data. been a notable lack of systematically-ob-
Staying yet close to the data, we extract taineddataon bahala na, thematerials for this
some of the characteristics of the bahala-na study afforded somerangeandvariety in fea-
response, properties which arenotso obvious tures which allowed for the application of
from the vocabulary of the stories but the concepts from contemporary psychology.
sense of wI: ich may easily be recognized by The main advantage of this procedure over
the native culture bearer. These properties previous speculations on the meaning of ba-
• translate ir.n categories of a somewhat ab-
stract natu:e and describe the dynamics of
hala na isthatnowthere isasomewhatclearer
region of separation of the data from any
bahala na in a way that is significant for further interpretative constructions.
• psychological theory. Thedescriptivecatego-
ries in effect give us a convenient second-or-
The method used for obtaining the raw
data was one of the many variations of the
der coding of the materials, which are as thematic apperception technique: in thiscase
follows: the subject is instructed to tell a story on
bahala na, thusapproximating theexperience
The speaker of bahala na remains with in context. The resulting story consequently
thep:oblem on hand.Bahala na does not enables one to identify directly some of the
indicate avoidance of the problem; the prominence features in the structure and dy-
perscn stays committed to an encounter namics of bahala na directly. The technique
yet tJ be; also affords the subject some measure of
spontaneous behavior wherein he has littleor
• This committed throwness intothefuture
perr .its him to extemporize on informa-
no opportunity to engage in extraneous be-
havior, e.g. tryingto figureout how the story
tim: and events as they come along the is going to be analyzed. More importantly,
way which is improvisation by defmi-
I however, is that,at this level,themeaningof
tior: ; bahala na may be found in the circumstances
and personal context of its occurence in the
Th; speaker accepts his situation and story. This inquiry adopted this perspective
thingsas they are for the moment within for understanding the immediate controlling
his existing perception of present defi- conditions of the bahala na response.
cincies and uncertainty as to thefuture; Asa firststep, thedatawereclassified by
recourse to a few common ideasarising from
TI:ere is tolerance for ambiguity in his the stories themselves. The first-order coding
pr.sent situation andhisperception of the reveals that bahala na usually is a response to
frure; and an uncertain distant, or not too distant, future,
arising from a perceived sense of personal
T'iere is trust in his capacity to meet any incapacity for the moment, or deficiency in
c.mtingency, a fleetingly emboldened knowledge, information, or material means
s; If-confidence inthefaceof uncertainty . for determining the outcome of a situation or
course of action.
".Jle foregoing descriptive cateogires lead The second-order coding of the stories,
to tt.~
generalization that bahala na, as an however, is different from the first in that it
organic response to unknown outcomes, ex- utilizes some concepts usually regarded as
presses a psychologically ascendant attitude; essential to the understanding of psychologi-
not cne of surrender or submission. calfunctioning. Theseconcepts may even be
Philippine Journal of Psychology 33
•
 "read out" of the protocols themselves, since
there is a recognizable "fit" in their applica-
tion to thedata, For instance, the speaker is
still withinthe domain of the problem, a very
hala na for dealing with the pervasively un-
certaincontingencies of daily living.
Hereabouts, another significant threadin
the discussion is the relevance of the culture
'.
likely unconscious statement that it is not an bearerin the analysis of the data. The culture
escape or retreat from, nor a surrender or bearer, as, the locus of convergent forces in
.submission to his difficulty. He remains personal history, the habit systemof society
within thecircleof theproblem and.iherefore, and .the environment, is possessed of a rich
committed to an encounter yet to be. His mosaic ofexperiential processes whichcanbe
possibilities naturally would bedifferent were
he not so committed.
triggered' by word and situation into a' pat-
ternedresponse. Bahala na isonesuchtrigger •
Other conceptual features in bahala na for an experience very much sharedby other
are that the speaker is accepting of things as
theyare,ora situation as it is for the moment;
members of the culture. A good part of the
experience or response thus triggered and set
•
hasa tolerance forambiguity; animplicit trust into motion will likely be spontaneous and
in himselfand,therefore, makes the tacitdec- unconscious, and,even as it drawsessentially
laration of self-confidence in meeting any from thefertilematrixof theculture bearer's
future contingency. sensibility, much of the dynamics of the ba-
, All these,as an integral posture, point to hala-na response will remain hidden from
a psychological ascendancy in bahala na, an him because they are societal automatisms
entirely contrasted picture to that of fatalism that may be understood oftentimes only
presented in the Bostrom paper. through effort at anotherlevelof analysis. '
Beyond the refutation of fatalism, how- The non-culture bearer, on the other
ever,hasbeenanunexpected fmding, namely,
that of a tacitly-induced situational structure
hand, probably would be hard put to under-
standan experience to whichhe has not been
•
for Improvisation, which generates an open enculturated. For exam~e, a nativeJapanese
attitudetoward the future. The attitude holds who had been some fou} years in one of our
that only the actual event will tell one what Philippine universities saidoncethathecould
can bedone,for extemporization is a continu- notunderstand whatbahala na means withall
ous threadof moments the next one of which theexplanations andreadingmaterials profer-
may bear new infonnation of its own. One red himby his Filipino mentors. A necessary
follows, the lead of the moment and ection condition forunderstanding bahala na would,
shapes itself into the molds of the changing in all likelihood, be a prolonged exposure to
situation. Bahala na therefore becomes un- theculturein thevarious contexts of itsoccur-
conscious practice in ,the improvisatory, ex- rence. The experiential base is the intuitive
temporaneous mode. framework by which thisJapanese couldhave
Still on the same point, in the study of put the verbal materials furnished hiin alto-
Filipino character, there is the widely-held gether into a single grasp of the substantive
impression among Filipino native culture meaning of bahala na.
, bearersthat Filipinos are givento improvisa- And fmally, one needs reminding some-
tion in moments of difficulty or stress. This times aboutan appropriate theoretical frame-
apparent improvisatory attitude, as opposed work forinterpreting theexperience of bahala
to rigid action syties, should perhaps be a na. Many cultural processes are sensitive to
goodoccasion toconsider a majorhypothesis: ideological appropriation throughinterpreta-
that Filipino culture has indeed a built-in tion,and this is a hazardthatmustbe avoided
mechanism of f1exibity and resiliency in ba- ,in research work.The concepts to be utilized
mustconsider vety seriously thepossibility, of
34 Philippine Journal of Psychology
•
• auributions » bahala na of meanings that are
not really It ire. For purposes of this inquiry,
The culture bearer is a significant factor
for reconstructing the experience of bahala
concepts were chosen from mainstream ply- na. A suitable theoreticalframeworkfor inter-
chology for coding and analyzing theexperi- preting the data should be carefully consid-
ence of bal. ila na. ered. Also, an adequate data base should be
able to distinguish itself from speculative or
CONCLUSION inferential levels of discourse about the sub-
Using 1 variation of the thematic apper- ject. And lastly, the problem of understanding
ception tee.miquefor obtaining data approxi- bahala na includes a prior decision on how no

• mating the experienceof bahala na, one finds

this idio n a psychologically ascendant,
define the meaning of words and verbal ex-
pressions. In this study, it was arbitrarily de-
functiona .y positive response to uncertainty . cided to define the meaning of words, for the
• This is ir: sharp contrast to the widely-held
view that bahala na has strains offatalism in
most part, in terms of the controlling situation
and personalcircumstancesof the expression.
it and tht . the individual saying it surrenders
his initia.ve and commitment to his problem.

NOTES

'o- ginallypublished in Ulat ng lkalawang around eachof tenam biguously constructed pic-

• Pambaisang Kumprensiya Sa Sikolohiyang

Pilipinc, Antonio, Lilia F., et al. (eds.) Quezon
City: Punbansang Samahan ng Sikolohiyang
tures. The resulting storiesare thenanalyzed as
to how the characters, particularly the centra!
figure, handle theirsituations in the stories. The
Pilipin: 1977. This original publication is a stories are assumed to project the personal psy-
transla.ron into Filipino from the English text cbological functioning of the storyteller.
which Has a transcription of the lecture deliv- 3Meaning in terms of contextual conditions
eredb. the authoron November 11,1976, at the of usage represents the view that meaning is to
Paulir; >GarciaAuditorium , NSDB Bldg.atHer- be found in thecontrail ingcircumstances of the
ran-Trft Avenue, Manila. This paper, now in speech act, part of which is, of course, in the
Engli- h, is a formalization of that lecture. The history of the individual. This is to be distin-
spiritmd content of that lecture have been pre- guished from formal linguistics analysis which,
serve.I in this paper, which is actually closerto at times, may be useful butwhich may havelittle
the notesI had thenwhen I delivered it to do with what is going on in the actual verbal
"TheThematic Apperception Test isa tech- situation.
niqu.: which requires the subject to tell a story

•
Philippine Journal of Psychology 3S
•
 REFERENCES •
Bostrom, Lynn C. (1968). Filipino bahala na and Guthrie, George (1961). The Filipino Child and
American fatalism. Silliman Journal, 15 (3), Philippine Society. Philippine Nomial Col-
399-413. lege Press, Manila.
Guthrie, George & Pepita 1. Jacobs (1966). Child-
The following references cited in the Bostrom rearing practices and personality develop-
. paper were also consulted: ment in the Philippines. Pennsylvania State
University Press.
Bulatao, Jaime (1962). Philippine values: the
Manileiio's mainspring. In Four readings on
Hollnsteiner, Mary. (1962). Reciprocity in the low-
land Philippines. In Four readings in Philip-
•
Philippine values. Compiled by Frank Lynch, pine values. Canpiled by Frank Lynch, IPC
!PC Papers No.2. Papers No.2.
•
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks.are due Ms. Cristina del Carmen test without pictures; to Professors Lilia F.
for her original data which were the basis for Antonio and Jesus Ramos who arranged for
this analysis; to Professor Leticia A. Lagmay the translation of the taperecorded lecture
who persuaded Ms. del Carmen, then a stu- . from English into Filipino, so that the lecture
dent in her course in culture and personality,
to conduct the interviews in accordance with
the requirements of a thematic apperception
could be published in the 1976 Proceedings of
the Second Conference on Philippine Psy-
chology.
•

•
36 Philippine Journal of Psychology