People are motivated by many things. The search for pleasure is certainly one of the great motivators of human beings. So are the search for power and the search for riches. There are also those among us who seek to be liked by others, to the extent that the search for adulation is their primary motivation in life.
If you have raised a child, you have had this experience. Your little boy or girl came home from school with a sample of his or her artwork. To you it just looked like a hodge-podge of scribbles, random color smears. But your child exclaimed, "Look, Mommy, it is a picture of the trees and fields that we pass on the way to grandma's house." Or, "Wow, Daddy! I drew the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky!"
Whenever I think of people I knew who dressed impeccably, I recall three of my favorite people. One was my maternal grandfather, a businessman who was firmly dedicated to religious observance, but who chose his clothing carefully and was proud of his collection of cufflinks, tie clips, and colorful suspenders.
My interest in the relationship between a person and his or her clothing goes back to my early days in graduate school. I was taking a course on human personality, under the tutelage of a remarkably insightful and erudite woman, Dr. Mary Henle. I was so enthusiastic about the courses that I took with her that I asked her to supervise my master’s degree thesis.
People are motivated by many things. The search for pleasure is certainly one of the great motivators of human beings. So are the search for power and the search for riches. There are also those among us who seek to be liked by others, to the extent that the search for adulation is their primary motivation in life.