You can tell me the truth. I am your own self, remember? I was darkly and passionately thrilled by all this, and I felt those chills again. If we are conscious of what is going on, we can, in however slight a way, influence the direction of the trends. We can then hopefully develop new values which will be relevant to our new cultural predicament. The libido exists in a certain quantity in the individual, that you can deprive yourself, economize emotionally in one way to increase your enjoyment in another, and if you spend your libido in direct sexuality you will not have it for utilization, for example, in artistic creation. The original Puritan movement, in its best representatives and before its general deterioration into the moralistic compartments of Victorianism at the end of the nineteenth century was characterized by admirable qualities of dedication to integrity and truth. Many people in our society, yearning for the nirvana of automatic change in their characters and relief from responsibility that comes from handing over one’s psyche to a technical process, have actually in their values of free expression, changed their clothes and their roles more than their characters. What was omitted was the opening of our senses and imaginations to the enrichment of pleasure and passion and the meaning of love; we relegated these to technical processes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

In this kind of free love, one does not learn to love; and freedom becomes not a liberation but a new straitjacket. The upshot was that our sexual values were thrown into confusion and contradiction, and sexual love presented the almost insoluble paradoxes we are now observing. It is important not to overstate the case, nor to lose sight at any point of the desirable benefits of the modern fluidity in sexual mores. The confusion being described go hand in hand and hand wit the real possibilities of freedom of the individual. Couples are able to affirm sex as a source of pleasure and delight; no longer hounded by the misconception that sex as a natural act is evil, they can become more sensitive to the actual evils in their relationships such as manipulation of each other. Free to a degree Victorians never were, they can explore ways of making their relationship more enriching. Even the growing frequency of divorce, no matter how sobering the problems it raises, has the beneficial psychological effect of making it harder for couples to rationalize a bad marriage by the dogma that they are stuck with each other. The possibility of finding a new lover makes it more necessary for us to accept the responsibility of choosing the one we do have if we stay with him or her. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

There is the possibility of developing a courage that is midway between—and includes both—biological lust on one hand and on the other the desire for meaningful relationship, a deepening awareness of each other, and the other aspects of what we call human understanding. Courage can be shifted from simply fighting society’s mores to the inward capacity to commit one’s self to another human beings. However, these beneficial benefits, it is now abundantly clear, do not occur automatically. They become possible only as the contradictions which we have been describing are understood and worked through. To share the grief, the joy, the agony, the ecstasy, the fears, and even the guilt of another person require a quality of relating that many do not achieve. It requires that the individuals be comfortable and accepting of their emotions. It also requires them to experience both sympathy and empathy. When you experience sympathy, you are able to feel the feelings of another person in close, but still removed and objective, way. When you experience empathy, you are almost one with that person—you feel what the other person feels. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Emotional intimacy requires a depth of feeling, an ability to identify with and relate to others. It is also vital that we be able to let these feelings be known, to share and express them. This is not easy for many people, who have been raised to deny, hide, or repress any hint of feeling or emotion. There are six patients who go to bed without ostensible shame or guilt—and generally with different partners. The women—four of the six patients—all state that they do not feel much in the sex act. The motives of two of them women going to bed seem to be to hang on to the man and to live up to the standard that sexual intercourse is “what you do” at a certain stage. The third woman has the particular motive of generosity: she sees going to bed as something nice you give a man—and she makes tremendous demands upon him to take care of her in return. The fourth woman seems the only one who does experience some real sexual lust, beyond which her motives are a combination of generosity to and anger at the man (“I will force him to give me pleasure!”). The two male patients were originally impotent, and now, though able to have intercourse, have intermittent trouble with potency. However, the outstanding fact is they never report getting much of a bang out of their sexual intercourse. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Their chief motive for engaging in sex seems to be to demonstrate their masculinity. The specific purpose of one of the men, indeed, seems more to tell his analyst about his previous night’s adventure, fair or poor as it may have been, in a kind of backstage interchange of confidence between men, than to enjoy the love-making itself. Let us now pursue our inquiry on a deeper level by asking: What are the underlying motives in these patterns? What drives people toward the contemporary compulsive preoccupation with sex in place of their previous compulsive denial of it? The struggle to prove one’s identity is obviously a central motive—an aim present in women as well as men. There is an egalitarianism of the sexes and the interchangeability of the sexual roles. Egalitarianism is clung to at the price of denying not only biological differences—which are basic, to say the least—between men and women, but emotional differences from which come much of the delight of the sexual act. The self-contradiction here is that the compulsive need to prove you are identical with your partner means that you repress your own unique sensibilities—and this is exactly what undermines your own sense of identity. This contradiction contributes to the tendency in our society for us to become machines even in bed. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Another motive is the individual’s hope to overcome his own solitariness. Allied with this is the desperate endeavor to escape feelings of emptiness and the threat of apathy: partners pant and quiver hoping to find an answering quiver in someone else’s body just to prove that their own is not dead; they seek a responding, a longing in the other to prove their own feelings are alive. Out of an ancient conceit, this is called love. One often gets the impression, amid the male’s flexing of sexual prowess, that men are in training to become sexual athletes. However, what is the great of the game? Not only men, but women struggle to prove their sexual power—they too must keep up to the timetable, must show passion, and have the vaunted orgasm. Now it is well accepted in psychotherapeutic circles that, dynamically, the overconcern with potency is generally a compensation for feelings of impotence. The use of sex to prove potency in all these different realms has led to the increasing emphasis on technical performance. And here we observe another curiously self-defeating pattern. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The excessive concern with technical performance in sex is actually correlated with the reduction of sexual feeling. The techniques of achieving this approach the ludicrous: one is that an anesthetic ointment is applied to the penis before intercourse. Thus feeling less, the man is able to postpone his orgasm longer. I have learned from colleagues that the prescribing of this anesthetic remedy for premature ejaculation is not unusual. One male patient was so desperate about his premature ejaculations, even though these ejaculations took place after periods of penetration of ten minutes or more. A neighbor who was a urologist recommended an anesthetic ointment to be used prior to intercourse. This patient expressed complete satisfaction with the solution and was very grateful to the urologist. Entirely willing to give up any pleasure on his own, he sought only to prove himself a competent male. A patient of mine reported that he had gone to a physician with the problem of premature ejaculation, and that such an anesthetic ointment had been prescribed. My surprise was particularly over the fact that the patient has accepted this solution with no questions and no conflict. Did not they remedy fit the necessary bill, did not it help him turn in a better performance? #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

However, by the time that young man got to me, he was impotent in every way imaginable, even to the point of being unable to handle such scarcely ladylike behavior on the part of his wife as taking off her shoe while they were driving and beating hum over the head with it. By all means the man was impotent in this hideous caricature of a marriage. And his penis, before it was drugged senseless, seemed to be the only character with enough sense to have the appropriate intention, namely to get out as quickly as possible. Making one’s self feel less in order to perform better! This is a symbol, as macabre as it is vivid, of the vicious circle in which so much of our culture is caught. The more one must demonstrate his potency, the more he treats sexual intercourse—this most intimate and personal of all acts—as a performance to be judged by exterior requirements, the more he then views himself as a machine to be turned on, adjusted, and steered, and the less feeling e has for either himself or his partner; and the less feeling, the more he loses genuine sexual appetite and ability. The upshot of this self-defeating pattern is that, in the long run, the lover who is most efficient will also be the one who is impotent. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Therefore, transpersonal intimacy is difficult for many people to comprehend. It is called transpersonal because it seems to be experiences between, or above and beyond, the persons involved. It is very difficult to define this dimension. Transcendence (from the Latin, trans, meaning beyond, and scandere, meaning to climb) refers to that which is above personal or private experience, highly abstract, beyond human knowledge. It is the intimacy of inner experiences, of nonmaterial, inexpressible feelings. It is based in the concept of transcendence. Transpersonal intimacy between two persons may be expressed as an intuitive sharing, as communication that does not require (or cannot have) words. Transpersonal intimacy can also define the relationship people feel with their God or whatever higher consciousness guides their spiritual life. As one can see, intimacy represents differing faces of closeness. They are different ways of experiencing another person. Only people who have a wide range of experience and who are really aware of themselves can fully experience all of these forms of intimacy. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

Most people can only experience and express closeness in one or two dimensions, except perhaps during times of crises. Most of us do not have the full repertoire or experiences necessary to know another person in such full and deep ways. The full expression of intimacy is an ideal, perhaps—something only a few people experience. The fact that it does not occur easily or readily in most people should not be a source of discouragement, however, nor should it convince you that only very special people are able to experience many dimensions of closeness. It is more likely that the number of people who are able (or willing) to devote enough time to the study and perfection of the art of loving is very small. It is not that these people are any more favored than the rest of us. It is simply that they put the ability to experience and express closeness further up on their list of priorities than others do. Some people who could once relate to others closely have lost this skill or have given it up because of the risks involved. Having once been hurt or taken advantage of, some people steadfastly refuse to ever again become intimate with another person. These people find that they become too vulnerable, too open to exploitation or threat, if they allow others too close. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Intimacy is risky indeed because it involves letting others into the innermost parts of your being. The risk is just as great on the other extreme, however. You can lose touch and become so protected and invulnerable that nobody gets in. Then your experience closeness with no one. You are safe and secure, but all alone. In the center of the Protestant courage of confidence stands the courage to accept acceptance is spite of the consciousness of guilt. Martin Luther, and in fact the whole period, experienced the anxiety of guilt and condemnation as the main form of their anxiety. The courage to affirm oneself in spite of this anxiety is the courage which we have called the courage of confidence. It is rooted in the personal, total, and immediate certainty of divine forgiveness. There is belief in forgiveness in all forms of mortal’s courage to be, even in neocollctivism. However, there is no interpretation of human existence in which it is so predominant as in genuine Protestantism. And there is no movement in history in which it is equally profound and equally paradoxical. In the Lutheran formula that “one who is unjust is just” (in the view of the divine forgiveness) or in the more modern phrasing that “one who is unacceptable is accepted” the victory over the anxiety of guilt and condemnation is sharply expressed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

One could say that the courage to be is he courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable. One does not need to remind the theologians for the fact that this is the genuine meaning of the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of “justification by faith” (a doctrine which in its original phrasing has become incomprehensible even for students of theology). However, one must remind theologians and ministers that in the fight against the anxiety of guilt by psychotherapy the idea of acceptance has received the attention and gained the significance which in the Reformation period was to be seen in phrases like “forgiveness of sins” or “justification through faith.” Accepting acceptance though being unacceptable if the basis for the courage of confidence. Decisive for this self-affirmation is its being independent of any moral, intellectual, or religious precondition: it is not the good or the wise of the pious who are entitled to the courage to accept acceptance but those who are lacking in all these qualities and are not aware of being unacceptable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

This, however, does not mean acceptance by oneself as oneself. It is not a justification of one’s accidental individuality. It is not the Existentialist courage to be as oneself. It is the paradoxical act in which one is accepted by that which infinitely transcends one’s individual self. It is in the experience of the Reformers the acceptance of the unacceptable sinner into judging and transforming communion with God. The courage to be in this respect is the courage to accept the forgiveness of sins, not as an abstract assertion but as the fundamental experience in the encounter with God. Self-affirmation in spite of the anxiety of guilt and condemnation presupposes participation in something which transcends the self. In the communion of healing, for example the psychoanalytic situation, the patient participations in the healing power of the helper by whom one is accepted although one feels oneself unacceptable. The healer, in this relationship, does not stand for oneself as an individual but represents the objective power of acceptance and self-affirmation. This objective power works through the healer in the patient. Of course, it must be embodied in a person who can realize guilt, who can judge, and who can accept in spite of the judgment. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Acceptance by something which is less than personal could never overcome personal self-rejection. A wall to which I confess cannot forgive me. No self-acceptance is possible is one is not accepted in a person-to-person relation. However, even if one is personally accepted it needs a self-transcending courage to accept this acceptance, it needs the courage of confidence. For being accepted does not mean that guilt is denied. The healing helper who tried convince his patient that he was not really guilty would do him a great disservice. He would prevent him from taking his guilt into his self-affirmation. He may help him to transform displaced, neurotic guilt feelings into genuine ones who are, so to speak, put on the right place, but he cannot tell him that there is no guilt in him. He accepts the patient into his communion without condemning anything and without covering anything up. Here, however, is the point where the religious acceptance as being accepted transcends medical healing. Religion asks for the ultimate source of the power which heals by accepting the unacceptable, it asks for God. The acceptance by God, his forgiving or justifying act, is the only and ultimate source of courage to be which is able to take the anxiety of guilt and condemnation into itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

For the ultimate power of self-affirmation can only be the power of being-itself. Everything less than this, one’s own or anybody else’s finite power of being, cannot overcome the radical, infinite threat of nonbeing which is experienced in the despair of self-condemnation. This is why the courage of confidence, as it is expressed in the mortal like Martin Luther, emphasizes unceasingly exclusive trust in God and rejects any other foundation for his courage to be, not only as insufficient but as driving one into more guilt and deeper anxiety. The immense liberation brought to the people of the 16^th century by the message of the Reformers and the creation of their indomitable courage to accept acceptance was due to the solafide doctrine, namely to the message that the courage of confidence is conditioned not by anything finite but solely by that which is unconditional itself and which we experience as unconditional in a person-to-person encounter. Many people desiring this Larger Experience have avoided traditional religious involvements and have found vehicles in movements or programs that are somewhat like cults. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

The word “cult” has to be rescued from traditional usage, in which it was given a status somewhere below church, similar to a superstition, more radical than a sect, and usually populated by oddballs. The redefined concept means that activity become cultic when it is raised to a high enough level of seriousness and fervor to center the life interest of participants and make them devotees rather than just workers or players. A cult is more than a place or situation through which one gains kicks or expression of freedom. It is intimately involved with the search for identity, and usually, with a search for personal significance. Many people, young and old, have felt a need for more identity-experiencing than the traditional religions have been able to offer. To many people, the Gothic structure, the stained glass and pipe organ, the formalism and ritual are all too fixed, too rigid, too cold, and do not invite them to participate in a religious experience. They feel that religions is such a setting is a spectator activity, a spectacle. And, for others, to gain membership in fundamentalist sects means to give up much freedom and to take on a feeling of total worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

So, the religious cults grow up. Many full-scale denominations of today began as cults, became sects, and are now respectable religious bodies: Quakers, Amish, Methodists, Assembly of God, and so forth. However, in their beginnings they shared with today’s religious cults the same kinds of qualities: personal involvement through rituals, emotional activity and feeling, promises of inner peace (or salvation), a leader with whom to identify, and a definite feeling of belonging, which is the identity sought for by most of the members. There are so many religious cults we hardly know where to begin. We will mention only a few—Self-Realization Fellowship, Father Divine’s followers, the Temple of Krishna Consciousness, and many others that have connections with various Eastern Philosophies. The word esoteric comes to mind when you see or hear of the belief systems and practices of these groups. However, esoteric, or even the word exotic fails to describe them fully. Of course, like anything else, a person cannot fully know a cultic activity from the outside; one must become a fully participating and believing member. One does what the ritual demands, not just to be a member, but because one believes in the rituals and what they mean. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

While a few of these groups offer salvation, in the traditional sense of glorious with-God life after death, any of them only talk about a present-day, contemporary form of salvation. It may be the nirvana of the classical Buddhism or the satori (enlightenment) of Zen, or it may be a total cosmic awakening and Oneness that comes from mediation and/or chanting. Whatever the terms, the salvation often consists in some form of Larger awareness of who you are and of what your beings consists. I have tried to give a general picture of the alienation of modern mortals from themselves and from their follow mortals in the process of producing, consuming and leisure activities. Now, we should deal with some specific aspects of the contemporary social character which are closely related to the phenomenon of alienation, the treatment of which, however, is facilitated by dealing with them separately rather than as subheadings of alienation. The first such aspect to be dealt with is modern mortals’ attitude towards authority. #RandolphHarris 18 of  19

We have discussed the between rational and irrational, furthering and inhibiting authority, and stated that Western society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was characterized by the mixture of both kinds of authority. What is common to both rational and irrational authority is that overt authority. You know who orders and forbids: the father, the teacher, the boss, the king, the officer, the priest, God, the law, the moral conscience. The demands or prohibitions may be reasonable or not, strict or lenient, I may obey or rebel; I always know that there is an authority, who it is, what it wants, and what results from my compliance or my rebellion. Authority in the twenty-first century has changed its character; it is not overt authority, but anonymous, invisible, alienated authority. Nobody makes a demand, neither a person, nor an idea, nor a moral law. Yet we all conform as much or more than people in an intensely authoritarian society would. Indeed, nobody is an authority expect “It.” What is It? Profit, economic necessities, the market, common sense, public opinion, what “one” does, thinks, feels. The laws of the market—and just as unassailable. Who can attack the invisible? Who can rebel against Nobody? #RandolphHarris 19 of 19