No matter how urgent our social needs are, all of us have needs for solitude, for times alone with ourselves. Again, the optimum selfhood experiences includes a balance of solitariness, sociality, and peripheral interaction (spectatorship). There is in each of us a need for privacy and time alone. It is not so much a need to reject or repudiate others it is a need to go within, to get acquainted or re-acquainted with our selfhood. We like to roam about or own house with no one to disturb us. We can get to our own Within sleep or in church or in solitary walks in the country. Or we can attempt to commune with the Universe. “And the Lord will remember the prayers of the righteous, which have been put up unto him for them,” reports Mormon 5.21. This experience is like a periodic need to get back to natural roots. Sitting and enjoying a forest, watching the Sun change angles in the sky as it becomes visible, or disappears, is a commonly favored method. Watching the sea from the beach, wading in a swimming pool are other ways. What is behind this need?Maybe at times we do get tired of other people—their opinions, their conversations, their directives. Or perhaps we tire of the necessity of relating to others. When this happens, we need to move out of the other-directed circle into the area of solitary or inner-directed thinking, feeling, and doing and reassure ourselves that we have something or someone. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

Those who are able to move Within know themselves to be significant and feel that they have a right to solitary experiences. They do not feel lonely when they actually enjoy very congenial company! In early childhood, our first play experiences are solitary. We discover the pleasures of fingers and toes, of blocks and dolls and we enjoy using our new found coordination to manipulate toys or the physical environment. We are engrossed with the involvement and seldom experience loneliness of those times. Next comes parallel play,where we still play by ourselves but alongside others, with minimal social interaction. Then we learn to play cooperatively, and sharing and exchanging and bargaining become important parts of our social experience. This evolution from solitary to parallel to cooperative play is not a matter of discarding one form for another. The entire history of an evolution is invariably present in the optimum development. We all retain the Child as well as the Adult and the Part,the need to play or be solitary is present along with the needs for parallel and cooperative experiences. We have reduced the average working hours to about half what they were one hundred and sixty-three years ago. We today have more free time available than our forefathers dared to dream of. However, what has happened? We do not know how to use the newly gained free time; we try to eliminate the time we have saved, and are glad when another day is over. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Why should I continue with a picture which is known to everybody? Certainly, if an individual acted in this fashion, serious doubts would be raised as to one’s sanity; should one, however, claim that there is nothing wrong, and that one is acting perfectly reasonably, then the diagnosis would not even be doubtful any more. Yet many psychiatrists and psychologist refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of unadjusted individuals, and not that of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself. What is the incidence of mental illness in the various countries in the Western World? It is a most amazing fact that there are no data which answer this question. While there are exact comparative statistical data on material resources, employment, birth and death rates, there is no adequate information about mental illness. At the most we have some exact data for a number of countries, like the United States and Sweden, but they only refer to admissions of patients to mental institutions, and they are not helpful in making estimates of comparative frequency of mental illness. These figures tell us just as much about improved psychiatric care and institutional facilities as they tell us about increase in incidence of mental illness. #RandolpHarris 3 of 16

The fact that more than half of all hospital beds in the United States are used for mental patients on whom we spend an annual sum of over a billion dollars many not be an indication of any increase in mental illness, but only of an increase in care. Some other figures, however, are more indicative of the occurrence of the more severe mental disturbances. If 17.7 percent of all rejected enlistees in the last war were for reason of mental illness, this fact certainly bespeaks a high degree of mental disturbance, even if we have no comparative figures referring to the past, or to other countries.The only comparative data which can give us a rough indication of mental health,are those for suicide, homicide and alcoholism. No doubt the problem of suicide is a most complex one, and no single factor can be assumed to be the cause. However, even without entering at this point into a discussion of suicide, I consider it a safe assumption that a high suicide rate in a given population is expressive of a lack of mental stability and mental health. That it is not a consequence of material poverty is clearly evidence by all figures. The most least affluent countries have the lowest incidence of suicide, and the increasing material prosperity in Europe was accompanied by an increasing number of suicides. As alcoholism, there is no doubt that it, too, can be a symptom of mental and emotional instability. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

 The motives for homicide are probably less indicative of pathology than those for suicide. However,though countries with a high homicide rate show a low suicide rate, their combined rates bring us to an interesting conclusion. If we classify both homicide and suicide as destructive acts, our tables demonstrate that their combined rate is not constant, but fluctuating between the extremes of 35.76  and 4.24 (per 100,000 of adult population). This contradicts Dr. Freud’s assumption of the comparative constancy of destructiveness which underlies his theory of the death instinct. It disproves the implication that destructiveness maintains an invariable rate, differing only in directions toward the self or the outside World. Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden and the United States of America are the counties with the highest suicide rates,and the highest combined suicide and homicide rate, while Spain, Italy, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are those with the lowest suicide and homicide rate. The figures for alcoholism show that the same countries—the United States, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark—which have the highest suicide rate, have also the highest alcoholism rate, with the main difference that the United States of America are leading in this group, and that France has the second place, instead of the sixth place it has with regard to death by suicide. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

This evidence is startling and challenging indeed. Even if we should doubt whether the high frequency of suicide alone indicates a lack of mental health in a population, the fact that suicide and alcoholism figure largely coincide, seems to make it plain that we deal here with symptoms of mental unbalance. We find then that the countries in Europe which are among the most democratic, peaceful and prosperous ones, and the United State of America,the most prosperous country in the World, show the most severe symptoms of mental disturbance. The aim of the whole socioeconomic development of the Western World is that of the materially comfortable life, relatively equal distribution of wealth, stable democracy and peace, and the very countries which have come closet to this aim show the most severe signs of mental unbalance! It is true that these figures in themselves do not prove anything, but at least they are startling. Even before we enter into a more thorough discussion of the whole problem, these fundamentally wrong with our way of life and with the aims toward which we are striving. Could it be that the middle-class life of property, while satisfying our material needs leaves us with a feeling of intense boredom, and that suicide and alcoholism are pathological ways of escape from this boredom? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Could it be that these figures are a drastic illustration for the truth of the statement that people live not by bread alone, and that they show that modern civilization fails to satisfy profound needs in humans? If so,what are these needs? Fate and death are the way in which our ontic self-affirmation is threatened by nonbeing. Ontic, from the Greek on, being,means here the basic self-affirmation of a being in its simple existence. (Onto-logical designates the philosophical analysis of the nature of being.) The anxiety of fate and death is more basic, most universal, and inescapable. All attempts to argue it away are futile. Even if the so-called arguments for the immortality of the soul has argumentative power (which they do not have)they would not convince existentially. For existentially everybody is aware of the complete loss of self which biological extinction implies. The unsophisticated mind knows instinctively what sophisticated ontology formulates: that reality has the basic structure of self-World correlation and that correlation and that with the disappearance of the one side the World, the other side, the self,also disappears, and what remains is their common ground but not their structural correlation. It has been observed that the anxiety of death increases with the increase of individualization and that people in collectivistic cultures are open to this type of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

The observation is correct yet the explanation that there is no basic anxiety about death in collectivist cultures is wrong. The reason for the difference from more individualized civilization is that the special type of courage which characterizes collectivism, as long as it is unshaken, allays the anxiety of death. However, the very fact that courage has to be created through many internal and external (psychological and ritual) activities and symbols shows that basic anxiety has to be overcome even in collectivism.Without its at least potential presence neither war nor criminal law in these societies would be understandable. If there were no fear of death, the threat of the law or of a superior enemy would be without effect—which it obviously is not. Humans as in every civilization is anxiously aware of the threat of nonbeing and needs the courage to affirm oneself in spite of it. The anxiety of death is permanent horizon within which the anxiety of fate is work. For the threat against human’s ontic self-affirmation is not only the absolute threat of death but also the relative threat of fate. Certainly the anxiety of death overshadows all concrete anxieties and gives them the ultimate seriousness. They have,however, a certain independence and, ordinarily, a more immediate impact than the anxiety of death. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

The term fate for this whole group of anxieties stresses one element which is common to all of them: their contingent character, their unpredictability, the impossibility of showing their meaning and purpose. One can describe this in terms of the categorical structure of our experience. One can show the contingency of our temporal being, the fact that we exist in this and no other period of time, beginning in a contingent moment, ending in a contingent moment, filled with experiences which are contingent themselves with respect to quality and quantity. One can show the contingency of our spatial being (our finding ourselves in this and no other place, and the strangeness of this place in spite of its familiarity); the contingent character of ourselves and the place from which we look at our World; and the contingent character of the reality at which we look, that is, our World. Both could be different: this is their contingency and this produces the anxiety about our spatial existence.One can show the contingency of the causal interdependence of which one is apart, both with respect to the past and to the present, the vicissitudes coming from our World and the hidden forces in the depths of our own self. Contingent does not mean causally undetermined but it means that the determining causes of our existence have no ultimate necessity. They are given, and they cannot be logically derived. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Contingently we are put into the whole web of casual relations. Contingently we are determined by them in every moment and thrown out by them in the last moment. Fate is the rule of contingency, and the anxiety about fate is based on the finite being’s awareness of being contingent in every respect, of having no ultimate necessity. Fate is usually identified with necessity in the sense of an inescapable causal determination. Yet it is not causal necessity that makes fate a matter of anxiety but the lack of ultimate necessity, the irrationality, the impenetrable darkness of fate. The threat f nonbeing to human’s ontic self-affirmation is absolute in the threat of death, relative in the threat of fate. However, the relative is a threat only because in its background stands the absolute threat. Fate would not produce inescapable anxiety without death behind it. And death stands behind fate and its contingencies not only in the last moment when one is thrown out of existence but in every moment within existence. Nonbeing is omnipresent and produces anxiety even where an immediate threat of death is absent. It stands behind the experience that we are driven, together with everything else, from the past toward the future without a moment of time which does not vanish immediately. It stands behind the insecurity and homelessness of our social and individual existence. It stands behind the attacks on our power of being in body and soul by weakness, infirmary, accident. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

In all these forms fate actualizes itself, and through them the anxiety of nonbeing takes hold of us. We try to transform the anxiety into fear and to meet courageously the objects with which we struggle that produce the anxiety but the human situation as such. Out of this the question arises: Is there a courage to be, a courage to affirm oneself in spite of the threat against human’s ontic self-affirmation? Many people cannot be alone. For them, to be alone is to be lonely, isolated, exiled. They have no inner resources upon which to draw or which they can enjoy. When they are alone, they are literally alone: no one is there! This is a tragedy. These are the people who are compulsive about their social activity: they must be around others, they must have the opinions and the regard of others. These same people have no ideas or suggestion or direction of their own. Ask them what they are going to do for fun that night and they are just as likely to ask you what you are going to do and say, “I think that is a good idea. Mind if I join you?” Unable to count on themselves, they are exceedingly empty or devoid of ego strength or beneficial self-esteem. #RandolpHarris 11 of 16

A psychiatric designation for many of these people who need to be around people all the time is Inadequate Personality. They have trouble getting or holding jobs, making and keeping friends, giving or accepting love. However, for the self-actualizing person, there are many times in one’s varied life experience that one enjoys getting of by oneself, to explore one’s root-relationships with nature or to find out more about oneself. One is able to experience newness and refreshment from these times. They re-create in one a sense of personal appreciation. These times of solitary experiencing can do other re-creative things for us. We can experience our own physical being. Most of us have grown away from the sheer enjoyment of our physical bodies, and solitary self-experiencing puts us into direct communion with our physical nature. Whether we are sailing alone over the ocean or walking through the park, we become increasingly conscious of our bodies. Sailing, for instance, demands continual vigilance and the body becomes attuned to the slightest change in wind or the tension of the sheet or tiller. At a time like this we are dramatically reminded that the body is more than a container for vital organs. “And a portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God,” Alma 18.35. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

The body-consciousness experience helps us to regain the understanding of just how deeply rooted we are in nature. It also helps us to see how important body functioning is to the functioning of everything else we do. We become aware that the body is capable of communicating its needs and desires to our mental consciousness and that we should learn how to pay more attention to this communication. How many times, when we are with others, do we get the message that we are tired, and yet ignore it. We feel it is rude to yawn or excuse ourselves to go to bed, though this is precisely what our bodies and our knowledge are telling us to do. In times of solitary experiencing, we get back to holistic experiencing and sleep when we are sleepy, eat when we are hungry, walk when we are restless, rest when we are tired, and do things more unnaturally. Afterward, our entire being is refreshed and more in tune. Why we do not take these clues more often to heat is one of the mysteries of cognitive life. “Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts,” reports Amos 5.14-15. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

Another thing that solitude does for us is to give us more experience with the unconscious. We can enjoy our fantasies, our daydreams, our night dreams. In our imagination we can do or be anything we wish. And again,exploring our imaginations and the nature of our wishes and fantasies is an excellent way of discovering the reality that is our own being. Super-realists to the contrary, the dividing wall between reality and fantasy is not essential and impenetrable as they would have us believe. Many psychologist know that a self-actualizing,mentally healthy individual is often one who is highly skilled at leaping back and forth over the wall. However, make no mistake: one knows the wall is there,which side is one’s on, and how to get to the other side. Fantasy has a definite self-syntonic or beneficial aspect to it, just as dreams apparently have. We know too that much creativity is fostered by the imagination. Giving the fantasy life free rein at times may be a very healthy, even fun, experience for everyone; for the creative artist, it is a prime requisite for continued existence.#RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Humans are the most social beings—out of desperate need and exuberant play. As they grow up, other mammals unlearn to play—humans never do. In this, one is ever an infantilized being—and one capable of a maturity of such richness, depth, and complexity as no other mammals can attain. Play, even in its most complex and esoteric manifestations—the brilliant leas of the scientist reconstructing the Universe, the soaring poetry of the creative artist, the fabulous beguilements of the master confidence humans—draw every from and every renew the great and inexhaustible forces of the unconscious, liking humans to their evolutionary past, projecting them into a future ever changing yet ever the same, also lifting one beneficently out of the stream of time altogether into the joy of an unbound now of total absorption. Play can be found in, and thus, confound, all of its supposed antitheses. It is not work? However, work can be the highest play, for the scientist we have seen through Roe, the artists through Schneider, the shaman through Roheim, the comic through Lenny Bruce, and any person who love the task of that daily bread. “Wherefore, if a person has faith one must need to have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope,” reports Moroni 7.42. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

Re-creation and play, whether solitary or social, are essential and natural aspects of human experience. They have been de-emphasized or ignored in the past because we have never been too certain that they were right, partly because of the Work-Sin Ethic and partly because we could not put their benefits down on a balance sheet or productivity chart. From recent literature, clinical and laboratory studies, and our own personal experiences, we have been able to infer the existence of some survival value in these lighter experiences, like humor, pleasure, play, and laughter, because they have counterparts in every culture. In addition to mere survival value, they play a vital part in enhancing and enriching human experience. A healthy personality is one that is capable of experiencing the full range of human emotions and seeking out a full range of human experiences. Play, laughter, humor, and leisure-time activities are re-creational: they enable us to re-create and replenish the exhausted store of human strength and self-respect. “I will pour out my Spirit in those day. I will show wonders in the Heavens and on the Earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The Sun will be turned to darkness and the Moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved,” Joel 2.29-32. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16