Ahhhhh, gambling debts, millions, how does one do that, but it was only the tip of it, she had been in much deeper, flying back and forth to Europe, stashing the wealth for the wrong man. When she fired a gun, she emptied it. Making a living. Her partner had vanished. She knew she was next. Did not care anymore. All that money gone to waste. Lots of there there, but who cares? Sometimes dark dreams no doubt have many meanings, but certainly their chief mood and meaning are disillusion. Disillusions pass just as illusions do, and often both illusion and disillusion are necessary steps in our understanding of reality. The dream might tell sometimes one is feeling and that is reflected in an aspect of the current reality. Out of this feeling came a recognition of the urgent need for some research, with its own particular sort of siren song: “Let us get some facts to go on.” It has been discovered the people with a strong sense of pride in themselves and in their heritage, at the beginning of therapy, even thought obscured by the usual clinical overlay of anxiety and depression, are usually better off and are predicted to display improvement by the end of therapy. These same patients, however, even if they are just on the list and do not receive psychotherapy, will still show improvement. #RandolphHarris 1 of 15

The reason being is it is predicted that they have a favorable reaction to stress and challenge in many different situations. Many behaviors that appear to change as a result of psychotherapy are actually influenced little or not at all by the therapy, and the observed changes are produced by endogenous processes of a counteractive sort which are set in motion within the reasonably strong individual after some trauma has produced a temporary regression. To say this, however, is by no means to say, as some psychologists have said in interpreting these results and others like them, that “psychotherapy is no blessed good,” or words to that effect. Science by its method limits itself to appearances of a public or potentially public sort, and in the interests of verification insists upon objectification. This works quite so well, yet well enough for many purposes—even when the objects do have feelings. However, if the questions I am asking myself is “Why was I ever born?” or “Why live?” there are no objective answers that can be satisfying to me within the realm of science. The “question” is a feeling which cannot be “answered,” but which can only give way to another feeling, “How good it is to be alive!” And the human transaction that enables the one feeling to give way to the other is a transaction between subjects, the objective indices of which are extremely subtle and highly valuable at best. #RandolphHarris 2 of 15

One can make tape-recordings, take motion pictures, count heart beats, measure muscle potentials, note the number of minutes spent together, ask questions (True-False questions, open-ended questions, questions in disguise), get interpretations of inkblots, or do any number of those tricks of the trade with which we are all familiar. They avail little, for the vitalizing transaction is a matter of feeling, having an existence and known only in the subject, or, as I prefer to say, in the realm of my spirit. For instance, once, I told a therapist I want a really big house so I could spend all day cleaning it. She assumed my house was a mess. The actual reason is because have you notice how many miles you walk in a standard size 2,000 square foot house when you are cleaning it? Sometimes, by the time I was done cleaning I had walked between 3-7 miles inside the house. So, if I had a house three times that size, chances are I would get even more exercise in the safety of my home. And there is always something in a house that needs to be cleaned from the base boards, the walls, light switches, tile and wood floors, the carpets need to be vacuumed, laundry always needs to be done, closets and drawers need to be organized. In the cleanest houses in America, there is always work to do, but in a one bedroom apartment, most are so small there is not much room to walk around. #RandolphHarris 3 of 15

People you talk to and vent to cannot always understand what you are saying because they have filters, and even though the privacy laws prevent therapist from sharing or disclosing your information, can you really trust anyone with details of your lives when you know nothing about them, their record and the professional standards? And there is no telling what they are compiling in their notes about you after you leave their office, and I would just hate from the information to land up in a newsroom or a police station when it is someone’s interpretation anyway. We are not really living in the most ethical times and everyone is looking to make money anyway they can. People are willing to sacrifice their careers, families, freedom and homes to become famous, even if it is through illegal means because they figure the payoff is much more worth what they are enduring at the time, which makes one wonder….how much do people really love their families, God, and having a good reputation is the allure of money is more appealing? One of the troubles of the sometimes scientist who is also sometime psychotherapist is that one’s sentiments are mixed, and are especially mixed when one undertakes to do research on psychotherapy. #RandolphHarris 4 of 15

From the point of view of the subject, then, the essence of the beneficence that psychotherapy may bring is entirely of the spirit. The appearances that may accompany such spiritual beneficences are variable and elusive, and the superficies of adjustment to any given cultural norm may yield a rather bad fit to the behavior of the person who has benefited from psychotherapy. And to make matters even more difficult for thee research psychologist, the moment of genuine encounter, the vitalizing transaction, may pass almost unnoticed at the time. It is ephemeral, as frail as love or blessedness, as passing as the moment of grace or the beginning of creation, the fecundating act; it has its begin in the imagination and the spirit, while the dull machinery of routine thought chugs monotonously along and the inertia that makes us think the same thought in just the same way so many thousands of times over continues its hebetudinous reign. In almost all appearance we remain the same, even though we are different. To put the matter commonly, I have never known any case, no matter how successful, with treatment both thorough and inspired and with real movement felt by the patient and therapist, in which at the conclusion of the work the patient was not readily recognized by friends and neighbors, and in a million ways, some of them measured by the best psychological tests, just about the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 15

Freedom does not come automatically; it is achieved. And it is not gained at a single bound; it must be achieved each day. The basic step in achieving inward freedom is choosing one’s self. This is the stage of affirming one’s responsibility for oneself and one’s existence. It is the attitude which is opposite to blind momentum or routine existence: it is an attitude of aliveness and decisiveness; it means that one recognizes the one exists in one’s particular spot in the Universe, and one accepts the responsibility for this existence. This is what is mean by the will to live—not simply the instinct for self-preservation, but the will to accept the fact that one is oneself, and to accept responsibility for fulfilling one’s own destiny, which in turn implies accepting the fact that one must make one’s basic choices oneself. We can see more clearly what choosing oneself and one’s existence means by looking at the opposite—choosing not to exist, that is to commit suicide. The significance of suicide lies not in the fact that people actually experience death by suicide in any large numbers. It is indeed a very rare occurrence except among those who are usually extremely distressed. However, psychologically and spiritually the thought of suicide has a much wider meaning. There is an such thing as psychological suicide in which one does not take one’s own life by a given act, but dies because one has chosen—perhaps without being entirely aware of it—not to live. #RandolphHarris 6 of 15

There have been cases were people are going through so much hardship and they have been told that they are going to die and they make up their mind not to live and let go and shortly after they pass away. There have been other cases where the lives of persons who have dedicated themselves to certain tasks, such as taking care of a sick loved one or finishing an import film or work. They keep going under difficult circumstances as though they had determined they had to live; and then when the task is completed, when success is attained, they proceed to die as though by some inner decision. Soren Kierkegaard wrote twenty books in fourteen years, completed them at the early age of forty-two, and then—we almost say in conclusion—he took to his bed and died. Aaliyah did in interview at the age of 22, on MTV Diaries, talking about how she wanted to be remembered after she died, and a few months later her plane crashed and she died. These ways of choosing not to live show how crucial it can be to choose to live. I think that is why people do not like to think about death, talk about it, or speak ill of the dead. It makes them feel that they become more vulnerable and could be the next on the grim reaper’s list. It is doubtful whether anyone really begins to live, that is, to affirm and choose one’s own existence, until one has frankly confronted the terrifying fact that one could wipe out one’s existence but chooses not to. #RandolphHarris 7 of 15

Since one is free to die, one is also free to live. The mass patterns of routine are broken: one no longer exists as an accidental result of one’s parents having conceived one, of one’s growing up and living as an infinitesimal item on the treadmill of cause-and-effect, marrying, begetting new children, growing old and dying. Since one could have chosen to die but chose not to, every act thereafter has to some extent been made possible because of that choice. Every act then has its special element of freedom. People often actually go through the experience of experiencing death by psychological suicide in some sector of their lives. For instance, a woman believes she cannot live unless a certain man loves her. When he marries someone else, she contemplates suicide. In the course of her meditating on the idea for some days, she fantasies, “Well, assume I do it.” However, then, she suddenly thinks, “After I have done it, it would still be good to be alive in other ways—the Sun still shines, water is still cool to the body, one can still make things,” and the suggestion creeps in that there may still be other people to love. So she decides to live. Assuming the decision is made for beneficial reasons rater than just the fear of dying or inertia, the conflict may actually have given her some new freedom. It is as though the part of her which clung to the man did not experience death by suicide, and as a result she can begin life anew. #RandolphHarris 8 of 15

Or a young man feels he can never be happy unless he gains some fame. He begins to realize that he is competent and valuable, let us say as an assistant professor; but the higher he gets on the ladder the clearer he sees that there are always persons above him, that many are called but few are chosen, that very few  people gain fame anyway, and that he may end up just a good and competent teacher. He might then feel that he would be as insignificant as a grain of sand, his life meaningless, and he might as well not be alive. The idea of experiencing death by suicide creeps into his mind in his more despondent moods. Sooner or later he, too, thinks, “All right, assume I have done it—what then?” And it suddenly dawns on him that, if he came back after the death by suicide, there would be a lot left in life even if one were not famous. He then chooses to go on living, as it were, without the demand for fame. It is as though the part of him which could not live without fame does experience death by suicide. And in killing the demand for fame, he may also realize as a byproduct that the thing which yield lasting joy and inner security have very little to do with external and fickle standards of public opinion anyway. He may then appreciate the more then flippant wisdom of Ernest Hemingway’s remark, “Who the hell wants fame over the week-end? I want to write well.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 15

And finally, as a result of the partial suicide, he may clarify his own goals and arrive at more of a feeling for the joy which comes from fulfilling his own potentialities, from finding and teaching the truth as he sees it and adding his own unique contribution arising from his own integrity. In contemporary society the having mode of existing is assumed to be rooted in human nature and, hence, virtually unchangeable. The same idea is expressed in the dogma that people are basically lazy, passive by nature, and that they do not want to work or to do anything else, unless they are driven by the incentive of material gain, or hunger, or the fear of punishment. This rigid doctrine is doubted by hardly anybody, and it determines our methods of education and work. However, it is little more than an expression of the wish to prove the value of our social arrangements by imputing to them that they follow the needs of human nature. To the members of many different societies of both past and present, the concept of innate human selfishness and laziness would appear as fantastic as the reverse sound to us. The truth is that both the having and the being modes of existence are potentialities of human nature, that our biological urge for survival tends to further the having mode, but that selfishness and laziness are not the only propensities inhere in human beings. #RandolphHarris 10 of 15

We human beings have an inherent and deeply rooted desire to be: to express our faculties, to be active, to be related to others, to escape the prison cell of selfishness. The truth of this statement is proven by so much evidence. We would emphasize again that the actual process of these partial psychological studies is much more complex than these illustrations imply. Actually some people—perhaps most people—move in the opposite direction when they have to renounce a demand: they retreat, constrict their lives and become less free. However, we wish only to make clear that there is a beneficial aspect to partial suicide, and that the dying of one attitude or need may be the other side of the birth of something new (which is a law of growth in nature not at all limited to human beings). One can choose to terminate a neurotic strategy, a dependency, a clinging, and then find that one can choose to live as a freer self. The woman in our example would no doubt find with clearer insight that her so-called live for the man for whom she would have experienced death by suicide was really not love at all, but clinging parasitism balanced by desire to have power over the man. A dying to part of oneself is often followed by a heightened awareness of life, a heightened sense of possibility. #RandolphHarris 11 of 15

When one has consciously chosen to live, two other things happen. First, one’s responsibility for oneself takes on a new meaning. One accepts responsibility for one’s own life not as something with which one has been saddled, a burden forced upon one: but as a something one has chosen oneself. For this person, oneself, now exists as a result of a decision he or she, oneself, has made. To be sure, any thinking person realizes in theory that freedom and responsibility go together: if one is not free, one is an automaton and there is obviously no such thing as responsibility, and if one cannot be responsible for oneself, one cannot be trusted with freedom. However, when one has chosen oneself, this partnership of freedom and responsibility become more than a nice idea: one experiences it on one’s own pulse; in one’s choosing oneself, one becomes aware that one has chosen personal freedom and responsibility for oneself in the same breath. The other thing which happens is that discipline from the outside is changed into self-discipline. One accepts discipline not because it is commanded—for who can command someone who has been free to take one’s own life?—but because one has chosen with greater freedom what one wants to do with one’s own life, and discipline is necessary for the sake of the values one wishes to achieve. #RandolphHarris 12 of 15

This self-discipline can be given fancy names—it is loving one’s fate and obedience to the laws of life. However, whether bedecked by fancy terms or not, it is, I believe, a lesson everyone progressively learns in one’s struggle toward maturity. We cannot will potency; we cannot will to love. However, we can will to open ourselves, participate in the experience, allow the possibility to become a reality. The belief that people do not want to make sacrifices is notoriously wrong. When Churchill announced at the beginning of the Second World War that what he had to demand from the British was blood, sweat, and tears, he did not deter them, but on the contrary, he appealed to their deep-seated human desire to make sacrifices, to give of themselves. The reaction of the British—and of the Germans and the Russians as well—toward the indiscriminate bombing of population centers by the belligerents proves that common suffering did not weaken their spirit; it strengthened their resistance and proved wrong those who believed terror bombing could break the morale of the enemy and help finish the war. It is a sad commentary on our civilization, however, that war and suffering rather than peacetime living can mobilize human readiness to make sacrifices, and that the times of peace seem mainly to encourage selfishness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 15

Fortunately, there are situations in peacetime in which human striving for giving and solidarity manifest themselves in individual behavior. The workers’ strikes, especially up to the period of the First World War, are an example of such essentially nonviolent behavior. The workers sought higher wages, but at the same time, they risked and accepted severe hardships in order to fight for their own dignity and the satisfaction of experiencing human solidarity. The strike was as much a religious as an economic phenomenon. While such strikes still do occur even today, most present-day strikes are for economic reasons—although strikes for better working conditions have increased recently. The need to give and to share and the willingness to make sacrifices for others are still to be found among the members of certain professions, such as nurses, physicians, lawyers, fire fighters, law enforcement, ambulatory care. The goal of helping and sacrificing is given only lip service by many, if not most, of these professionals; yet the character of a goodly number corresponds to the values they profess. We find the same needs affirmed and expressed in many communities throughout the centuries, whether religious, capitalist, or humanist. #RandolphHarris 14 of 15

We find the wish to give in the people who volunteer their blood (without payment), in the many situations in which people risk their lives to save another’s. We find the manifestation of the will to give in people who genuinely love. False love, for instance, shared mutual selfishness make people more selfish (and this is the case often enough). Genuine love increases the capacity to love and to give to others. The true lovers live the whole World, in his or her live for a specific person. Conversely, we find that not a few people, especially younger ones, cannot stand the luxury and selfishness that surround them in their affluent families. Quite against the expectations of their elders, who think that their children have everything they wish, they rebel against the deadness and isolation of their lives. For the fact is, they do not have everything they wish and they wish for what they do not have. Some people can no longer stand the life of idleness and injustice they have been born into, these young people leave their families and join the poor, living with them, and helped to lay one of the foundations to help them establish communities. However, out of the backlash to their luxury lives, some of these idealistic and sensitivity young, lacking in tradition, maturity, experience, and political wisdom, become desperate, narcissistically overestimate their own capacities and possibilities, and try to achieve the impossible by the use of force. #RandolphHarris 15 of 15