I showered you with abuse. I was so very wrong. I was wrong to speak of your other fledglings the way I did, to speak of your long-ago tragedies with such coarsens and attempted cruelty. I should have never spoken to anyone with such callousness, let alone to you. It was spiritually and morally crude. And it was not my nature. When I say that, please trust me. It was not my nature. It was downright hateful. On the very day I was writing these words, a young intern reported in his psychoanalytic session a dream which is essentially parallel to the dreams of almost everyone who is in a crisis in one’s growth. This young man had originally come for psychoanalytic help as a medical student because of attacks of anxiety so severe and prolonged that he was on the verge of dropping out of medical school. His problems were chiefly due to his close tie to a female guardian, a very unstable but strong and dominating woman. Having by now completed his medical studies, he was a successful inter and had applied for the most responsible residency in the hospital for the next year. The day preceding the night on which he had this dream, he had received a letter from the hospital directors warding him the residency and paying him compliments on his excellent work as an intern. However, instead of being pleased, he had been suddenly seized with an attack of anxiety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

The dream follows in his own words: I was bicycling to my childhood home where my father and mother were. The place seemed beautiful. When I went in, I felt free and powerful, as I am in my real life as a doctor now, not as I was as a boy. However, my mother and father would not recognize me. I was afraid to express my independence for fear I would be kicked out. I felt as lonely and separate as though I were at the North Pole and there were no people around but only snow and ice for thousands of miles. I waked through the house, and in the different rooms were signs tacked up, “Wipe your feet,” and “Clean your hands.” The anxiety after his being offered the desired position indicates that something in it, or in the responsibility it entailed, very much frightened him. And the dream tells us why. If he is a responsible, independent person in his own right—in contrast to the boy tired to his mother’s apron strings—he will be ejected from his family, and will be isolated and alone. The fascinating vignettes in the form of the “wipe-your-feet” sign add a footnote which says the house is like a military camp and not a loving home at all. The real question facing this young man, of course, was why he dreamed of going home at all—what need was there within himself to go back to mother and father and the house he pictured as externally beautiful in the dream, when he is confronted with responsibility? #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Becoming a person, an identity in one’s own right, is the original development which begins in infancy and carries over into adulthood no matter how old one may be; and the crises it involves may cause tremendous anxiety. No wonder many persons repress the conflict and try all their lives to run from the anxiety! What does it mean to experience one’s self as a self? The experience of our own identity is the basic conviction that we all start with as psychological beings. It can never be proven in a logical sense, for consciousness of one’s self is the presupposition of any discussion about it. There will always be an element of mystery in one’s awareness of one’s own being—mystery here meaning a problem the data of which encroach on the problem. For such awareness is a presupposition of inquiry into one’s self. For such awareness is a presupposition inquiry into one’s self. That is to say, even to meditate on one’s own identity as a self means that one is already engaging in self-consciousness. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Some psychologist and philosophers are distrustful of the concept of self. They argue against it because they do not like separating mortals from the continuum with animals, and they believe the concept of the self gets in the way of scientific experimentation. However, rejecting the concept of self as unscientific because it cannot be reduced to mathematical equations is roughly the same as the argument nearly over a century ago that Dr. Freud’s theories and the concept of unconscious motivation were unscientific. It is a defensive and inflexible science—and therefore not true science—which uses a particular scientific method as a Procrustean bed and reject all forms of human experience which do not fit. To be sure, the continuum between mortals and animals should be seen clearly and realistically; but one need not jump to the unwarranted conclusion that therefore there is no distinction between mortals and animals. We do not need to prove the self as an object. It is only necessary that we show people have the capacity for self-relatedness. The self is the organizing function within the individual and the function by means of which one human being can relate to another. It is prior to, not an object of, our science; it is presupposed in the fact that one can be a scientist. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Human experience always goes beyond our particular methods of understanding it at any given moment, and the best way to understand one’s identity as a self is to look into one’s own experience. Imagine being able to lay in bed all day, watching TV, have three meals provided to you in bed, and treatments brought to you to make you feel comfortable. Well, that is what happens to people in the hospital and they do not seem to enjoy it all that much. In fact, they cannot wait to go home and get back to work. The consciousness of one’s identity as a self certainly is not an intellectual idea. Many people spend all their lives trying to find the basic principle for human existence, some spend a life time trying to forget or recover. Our clinical work gives some analogies to the crisis of will and throws light on our general problem. In life, people can get caught in deadlocks as we are in our World of reality. The catatonic’s problem hinges on values and will, and one’s immobility is one expression of the contradiction one experiences. A patient, John, Catholic, and intelligent professional in his thirties, was referred because of his repeatedly increasing anxiety. This anxiety reminded John of the time ten years previously when he had developed a full catatonic episode. Wanting to prevent a recurrence of the event, he sought treatment. I shall give some excerpts from this case report, particularly with respect to the original catatonic episode. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

John, one of four children, recollected attacks of anxiety going back to his early childhood. He remembered how much he needed to cling to his aunt who brought him up. The aunt had the habit of undressing in his presence, causing him mixed feelings of excitement and guilt. Between nine and ten there was an attempted homosexual relation with his friend, and fleeting homosexual desires thereafter, and also the customary masturbation. He did well in school, and after puberty became very interested in religion, considered becoming a monk especially in order to control his pleasures of the flesh. This control was in a certain way opposite to that of one of his sisters who was leading a very promiscuous life. After college he decided to make a complete attempt to remove pleasures of the flesh from his life. He also decided to go for a rest and vacation at a farm for young men where he could cut trees. On this farm, however, he became anxious and depressed. He resented the other fellows increasingly, who he felt were rough and profane. He felt that he was going to pieces. He remembered one night saying to himself, “I cannot stand it any more. Why am I in this way, so anxious for no reason? I have done no wrong in my whole life.” However, he would control himself by thinking perhaps he was experiencing was in accordance with the will of God. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

Obsessions and compulsions acquired more and more prominence. He found himself “doubting and doubting his doubt, and doubting the doubting of his doubts,” and possessed by intense terror. One day in the terror he observed a discrepancy between what he wanted to perform and the action that he really carried out. For instance, when he was undressing and wanted to drop a shoe, he instead would drop a log. He was mentally lucid and perceived what was happening, but he realized he had no control over his actions. He though he could commit crimes, even kill somebody. He said to himself, “I don’t want to be damned in this World as well as in the other. I am trying to be good and I can’t. It is not fair. I may kill somebody when I want a piece of bread.” Then he felt as if some movement or action he would make could produce disaster not only to himself but to the whole camp. By not acting or moving he was protecting the whole group. He felt that he had become his brothers’ keeper. The fear became so intense as actually to inhibit any movement. Petrified, in his own words, he “saw himself solidifying, assuming statuesque positions.” He was aware of one purpose—to kill himself—better to die than to commit crimes. He climbed a big tree and jumped down, but was taken to the hospital with minor contusions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

In the hospital John would not move at all. He was like a statue of stone. During his hospitalization John made 71 suicide attempts. Although he generally was in state of catatonia he would occasionally makes impulsive acts such as tearing the strait jacket to pieces and making a rope to hang himself. When the doctor asked him why he had to repeat these suicidal attempts, he gave two reasons—the first was to relieve the feeling of guilt and present himself from committing crimes. However, the second reason was even more atypical—to commit suicide was the only act which would go beyond the barrier of immobility. This, to commit suicide was to live; the only act of life left to him. One day John’s doctor said to him, “You want to kill yourself. Isn’t there anything at all in life that you want?” With great effort John mumbled, “Eat, to eat.” The doctor took him to the patients’ cafeteria and told him, “You may eat anything you want.” John immediately grabbed a large quantity of food and ate in a ravenous manner like he was at Golden Corral. Without going to the rest of the details of John’s catatonia and his overcoming of it, let us note several things. First, the homosexual stimulation he was exposed to at the camp. Second, the refuge he sought in religious feeling. Third, the obsessive-compulsive mechanism and the fact that the anxiety which was first connected with any action that had to do with sexual feelings became extended to practically every action. #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Every action became loaded with a sense of responsibility, a moral issue. Every motion was not considered as a fact but as a value. The doctor noted that John’s “feelings were reminiscent of the feelings of cosmic power or negative omnipotence experienced by other catatonics who believe that by acting they may cause the destruction of the Universe.” We see in John a radical conflict in will, tied up with the values he held. To me, the doctor’s questions, “Don’t you want something?” is very significant, since it shows the importance of getting at the simple wish, the point where every act of will starts. The doctor points out that when one bears a tremendous responsibility as John did, his passivity is entirely understandable. It is not transference or conformism in the hypnotic sense. “The patient follows orders because these orders are willed by others, and therefore he does not have the responsibility of them.” This is parallel, in extreme form, to the fact that in our confused age people go apathetic comparable to John’s stupor, and unconsciously yearn for someone to take responsibility for them. Such a patient is in a “state where volition is connected with a pathologically intensified sense of value, so that torturing responsibility reaches the acme of intensity when a little movement of the patient is considered capable of destroying the World. Alas, this conception of the psychotic mind reminds us of its possible actuality today, when the pushing of a button may have such cosmic effects! Only the oceanic responsibility of the catatonic could include this up-to-now unconceived possibility.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

In relatively normal persons, in contrast to John, the beleaguered will takes refuge in half-measures that temporarily promise it some viability. When the will is gradually emptied of content, one is always the shadow of their adversary, waiting for him or her to move so that you can move yourself. Sooner or later, your will becomes hollow, and may then be forced back to the next line of defense. This next defense is projection of blame. The self righteous security that is achieved by means of blaming the other gives one a temporary satisfaction. However, beyond this gross oversimplification, we pay a more serious price for such security. We have tacitly given the power of decision over to our adversary. Blaming the enemy implies that the enemy has the freedom to choose and act, not ourselves, and we can only react to him or her. This assumption, in turn, destroys our own security. For in the long run, we have, against our intention, given him or her all the power. Will is this further undermined. We see here an example of the self-contradictory effect of al psychological defensiveness: it automatically hands the power over to the adversary. In these unsatisfactory measures, the activity of will becomes more and more tautological and repetitive, and finally tends toward apathy. And if apathy cannot be transmuted into an impetus to move to a higher state of consciousness in order to embrace the problem at hand, the person or group tends to surrender the capacity for willing itself. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

If apathy is to be avoided in such paralysis of will, the individual needs to ask sooner or later: Is there possibly something going on in myself that is a cause of, or contributes to, my paralysis? The machine society, especially through its exploding mass media, has confused people’s sense of reality and personal identity. There is a confused blur between mass media, news, drama, and live experience. Existence has increasingly become a spectator sport. If this is to be the pattern of the future, we need to ensure that humanistic personas are among those selected to set society’s goals, to establish its norms, to program the activities, and to produce the learning. Totalitarian government is a very real possibility for any society that gives up its human responsibilities and forgets the essential lessons of Christ and ecology: that we are all part of each other, and what affects one of us affects us all. We are in the midst of a rapid and revolutionary period. We are experiencing changes of so many kinds and so rapidly that many of us are not able to keep up with them. Stress occurs not only because of inner conflicts, but also simply because of change. If we do not prepare for change or develop some system of adaptation, we will drown under the tidal wave of change that hits us today. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

How to we prepare for change? Parents can first of all keep their child’s environment relatively free from dramatic changes and help their children experience consistency in their daily lives. The World is not always consistent, but this early stable environment will help the child later when he or she must cope with rapid and sometimes bewildering change. We can also inform the child, at an age when their consciousness is beginning to unfold, that there are many inconsistencies and illogical experience to living. Fairy tales generally portray the World in two stark contrast: good guys and bad guys, princesses and bad witches, helpful animals and ferocious beast. Children learn early what is reality and what is fantasy. Fairy tales can help prepare the child for both the good and bad events they will face in their lifetimes. Of course, the World is not always absolute. A true picture of the World is made up of shifting patterns. If we want to prepare for the future, we have to realize that it is here already. The seeds of tomorrow were planted yesterday. All we do today is water and nurture them in out daily acts of living. We can catch glimpses of what is going to be happening in the future, however, flashing on the scree of our minds and the media and in the conversations we have with others. The future may loom large and exciting to some, but to others it represents threats of all sorts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

To some, the future means maturity, freedom, enjoyment, and things to be planned for now. For others, it means getting older, losing hair and vitality, facing unknowns that have only shown themselves in nightmares. For still others, it is a combination of both. Whatever the future brings, we need to prepare for it now. We need to recognize that change is one of the immutable laws of the Universe, and if we want to live in that Universe, we must keep up. It can be fun and very challenging. It can also knock us down. It is up to each of us to make the future what we want it to be. To believe in the human condition might be regarded as the attitude of a fool, but to despair of it is the act of a coward. Are we heading for a society of oppression and control, where individual rights and life-styles will be sacrificed for the sake of the state? Of course we hope it will not. We believe people with intelligence and concern and respect for humanity will summon all their humanistic skills to keep it from happening. Also, mental healthy is not a game to rob someone of their credibility or a tool to tease people and prevent then from getting the help they need. Mental illness goes much deeper than these terms you hear and people throw around like biscuits at tea time. It is not funny, it is not a game. People who are depressed, for instance, feel dead, as if they are not even living. It is much more than being sad. Some people who truly suffer from anxiety are scared about what they might do, if they will commit crimes or even stop the World from spinning. Such concerns caused a young man to try to kill himself over 71 times. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

What is learned about human behavior and aggression and mental and physical health needs to be effectively shared with those who shape the international policies of nations. In the past, psychologist have often been drafted into devising new and more effective ways of demoralizing and punishing other humans. However, the seldom been asked to help nations promote peace and understanding instead. And that, in fact, could be their most effective use. Political corruption sometimes seems too big a problem for any individual or group to tackle. Graft, dirty politics, and dog-eat-dog business practices have been around for a long time. Fear of using our rights, as well as ignorance of the channels open to us, still keeps most ordinary citizens from acting to solve such problems. Each of us has a definite stake in ensuring that freedom of individual and social existence will spread and become the norm everywhere. However, it will not happen automatically. “learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God. Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yes, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever. Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou sliest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let they have be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day, reports Alma 37.35-37. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14