The milk can work a cure in humans. Research must be objective, but to be objective may be simply the worst thing in the World from the point of view of psychotherapy, or of any creative activity. The artist has a perfect right to say to the critic, “Go away and leave me alone,” for in fact whatever the artist does one must do alone. You have got to cross that lonesome valley. You have got to cross it by yourself. There is no one going to cross it for you. You have got to cross it by yourself. What has emerged most clearly from my own research on creativity is the fact that the creative person is able to find in the developmentally more primitive and less reasonably new insight, even though at first this may be only intuitively and dimly grasped. One is willing to pay heed to vague feelings and intimations which on the grounds of good sense are put aside hastily by most of us. Characteristically, the creative individual refuses to be content with the most easily established perceptual schemata or perceptual constancies, even such obviously adaptive ones as the discrimination between what is inside the self versus what is outside the self, or the conviction that there are things in the World that are absolutely unmoving, or the notion that all effects have causes, or that time passes moment by moment in succession of states rather than in an unstoppable flux. You will recognize these of course as the basis of what we usually call a sane mind, a clear sensorium, a sense of reality, and so on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

However, creative people sometimes do without these and without many other basic constancies, leading them at times, as you might imagine, to give an impression of psychological imbalance. There is reason to believe that many creative individuals deliberately induce in themselves an altered state of consciousness in which the ordinary structures of experience are broken down. The ordinary World may thus be transcended: in mystical states, in feelings of being possessed, in prolonged trances of deep reveries, and even at times in psychosis. These deviations from perceptual constancies my permit a more inclusive and more valid perception, once the stress involved in extending the boundaries is relieved. In brief, a kind of transcendence of apparently adaptive but in some sense crippling limits may thus be achieved. Something of this sort is necessary if neurosis is to be cured, for the constancies there are properly called compulsive and imprisoning. When exposed to insensitivity, it is inevitable that a child would feel rejected. And these feelings undermine whatever feelings of value the child may have had and gradually feelings of worthlessness develop. Perhaps the emotional logic of the child is something like this: “The most significant people in my life—that is, my parents—do not appear to consider me to be of personal worth, therefore I must be worthless.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

As the child becomes older, he or she may or may not be aware of feelings of worthlessness. Some people are quite aware of such feelings. There is probably no counselor who has spent time working with people who has not had individuals say something like this: “All of my life I have never felt I really mattered to anyone. And I have always felt there must be something wrong with me.” There are others who have been somewhat successful in keeping their feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness out of their conscious thoughts by the means of various kinds of psychological defenses. However, it is a universal experience. All of us have some of these feelings within us. When the child begins to have these feelings of worthlessness as a result of feeling that one has been rejected, the next step in one’s emotional development seems to take the form of self-hate, as follows: feelings of rejection lead to feelings of worthlessness which turn into feelings of self-hate. Again we can imagine the emotional logic that takes place within the child. Probably it is something like this: “I seem to be worthless. I appear inferior to my parents and other people around me. I cannot respect myself, since they do not seem to respect me. Since I am worthless, I hate myself.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

These feelings of self-hate may be maintained on a largely unconscious level. In fact there is every reason to think that the child would do everything possible to avoid bringing these feelings into awareness, no matter how strong they might be. To really hate oneself is a repelling, frightening idea, so much so that it is almost intolerable. Perhaps the best example of extreme self-hatred that is at least partly conscious is the person in a suicidal depression. The self-hate is so strong and so intolerable that the only out for the person appears to one to be the murder of one’s self, an act of extreme self-hate. Because hate of one’s self is so intolerable and is so threatening to the very roots of the person’s being, most persons react with psychological defenses of one kind or another. We find some kind of escape hatch by which to avoid the full force of this terrible feeling that we are worthless and the object of our own hatred. A strong case can be made for believing that it is this feeling of hatred toward one’s self that lies at the root of most, if not all, personality difficulties and family problems that are not caused by a brain injury or some other physical malfunction. For the things that people do and say that result in their being described as having personality problems and that causes them difficulty in relationships with others can be seen as ways of escaping from self-hatred. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Before some of these ways of escape are examined in detail, it is well to note the principle that now comes in focus. As we shall see as we examine these escape hatches, each of them seems to have built into it the tendency to set up a negative reaction in other people that will lead to further feelings of rejection and therefore increase the individual’s feelings of worthlessness and self-hate. This cyclical process might be illustrated: Feelings of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape hatch, further feelings of rejection, and feelings of worthlessness. This rancorous cycle continues. And this is how some people become bullies. Because they feel rejected, usually because they have done something deviant, they will try to escape from feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred by bullying someone they know. Or perhaps an individual will switch to some other ways of avoiding one’s feelings about oneself. One might attempt to escape by becoming a show-off or braggart. “See that you do not boast in your own wisdom,” reports Alma 38.11. Here, too, sooner or later, even though it may seem cute at first, people will get tired of the boasting, and one will feel further feelings of rejection. One has been caught in a cycle of rejection. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

The question might be asked here, “Is not the person who is a bully or a braggart the one who loves oneself or things too highly of oneself, rather than the one who hates oneself?” Further thought makes it clear, however, that is the child had genuine feelings of worth and value as a person, it would not be necessary for one to try to prove oneself more powerful than others or better than others by bullying or boasting. One is attempting to escape from the nagging, haunting feeling that one is worthless by attempting to prove to others—and most of all to oneself—that one is an individual or worth. Unfortunately, because of one’s own feelings about the unsatisfactory ways in which one trues to prove one’s worth, one sinks more deeply into feeling self-worthlessness. Feelings of rejection lead to feelings of worthlessness, which spawn self-hate, then the escape is to bully or bragging, that creates further rejection (“Nobody likes a bully or a braggart”). Lest the picture appears too much darkness, it should be emphasized that every child from time to time goes through these experiences. It is not single isolated incidents that cripple personalities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

When trends are established in relationships with parents, and when there is little to mitigate these trends, then serious problems can develop. These situations are not unique to childhood nor children, we also see these same patterns in fully grown adults. It is important, however, to see that even minor incidents which cause feelings of rejection undermine to some degree a person’s feelings of self-worth. We are again reminded that we are all caught in this human dilemma. It is not a question of whether we have feelings of rejection. However, accepting a bully and allowing them to be part of the community without punishment for their bad behavior is a mistake because it is rewarding them for the bad things they have done and their deviant behavior will only get worse. The only question is, “How much self-hate do I have, and how much crippling effect does it have on my life?” Humans are generally ethical beings—ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. One’s capacity for ethical judgment—like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being—is based upon one’s consciousness of oneself. They form so-called revolutionary groups and expect to save the World by acts of terror and destruction, not seeing that they are only contributing to the general tendency to violence and inhumanity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

They have lost their capacity to love and have replaced it with the wish to sacrifice their lives. (Self-sacrifice is frequently the solution for individuals who ardently desire to love, but who have lost the capacity to love and see in the sacrifice of their own lives an experience of love in the highest degree). However, these self-sacrificing young people are very different from the loving martyrs, who want to live because they love life and who accept death only when they are forced to die in order not to betray themselves. Our present-day self-sacrificing young and mature people are the accused, but they are also the accusers, in demonstrating that in our social system some of the very best people become so isolated and hopeless that nothing but destruction and fanatism are left as a way out of their despair. The human desire to experience union with others is rooted in the specific conditions of existence that characterize the human species and is one of the strongest motivators of human behavior. By the combination of minimal instinctive determination and maximal development of the capacity for reason, we human beings have lost our original oneness with nature. In order not to feel utterly isolated—which would, in fact, condemn us to insanity—we need to find a new unity: with our fellow beings and with nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

This human need for unity with others is experiences in many ways: in the symbiotic tie to mother, an idol, one’s tribe, one’s nation, one’s class, one’s religion, one’s fraternity, one’s professional organization. Often, of course, these ties overlap, and often they assume an ecstatic form, as among members of certain religious sects or of a political mob, or in the out bursts of national hysteria in the case of war. The outbreak of the First World War, for example, occasioned one of the most drastic of these ecstatic forms of union. Suddenly, from one day to the next, people gave up their lifelong convictions of pacifism, antimilitarism; scientist threw away their lifelong training in objectivity, critical thinking, and impartiality in order to join the big We. The desire to experience union with others manifests itself in the lowest kind of behavior, for instance, in acts of sadism and destruction, as well as in the highest: solidarity on the basis of an ideal or conviction. It is also the main cause of the need to adapt; human beings are more afraid of being outcasts than even of dying. Crucial to every society is the kind of union and solidarity it fosters and the kind it can further, under the given conditions of its socioeconomic structure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings: the one, to have—to possess—that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be—to share, to give, to sacrifice—that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others. For these two contradictory strivings in every human being it follows that the social structure. These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings: in one, to have—to possess—that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be—to share, to give, to sacrifice—that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others. From these two contradictory strivings in every human being it follows that the social structure, its values and norms, decides which of the two becomes dominant. Cultures that foster the greed for possession, and thus the having mode of existence, are rooted in one human potential; cultures that foster being and sharing are rooted in the other potential. We must decide which of these two potentials we want to cultivate, realizing, however, that out decision is largely determined by the socioeconomic structure of our given society that inclines us toward one of the other solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

From my observations in the field of group behavior my best guess is that the two extreme groups, respectively manifesting deeply ingrained and almost unalterable types of having and of being, form a small minority; that in the vast majority both possibilities are real, and which of the two becomes dominant and which is repressed depends on environmental factors. This assumption contradicts a widely held psychoanalytic rigid doctrine that environment produces essential changes in personality development in infancy and early childhood, but that after this period the character is fixed and hardly changed by external events. This psychoanalytic dogma has been able to gain acceptance because the basic conditions of their childhood continue into most people’s later life, since in general, the same social conditions continue to exist. However, numerous instances exist in which a drastic change in environment leads to a fundamental change in behavior, for instance, when the negative forces cease to be fed and the beneficial forces are nurtured and encouraged. The frequency of intensity of the desire to share, to give, and to sacrifice are not surprising if we consider the conditions of existence of the human species. What is surprising is that this need could be so repressed as to make acts of selfishness the rule in industrial (and many other) societies and acts of solidarity the exception. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

However, paradoxically, this very phenomenon is caused by the need for union. A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism. As a consequence of the dominant attitude of selfishness, the leaders of our society believe that people can be motivated only by the expectation of material advantages, for instance, by rewards, and that they will not react to appeals for solidarity and sacrifice. Hence, expect in times of war, these appears are rarely made, and the chances to observe the possible results of such appeals are lost. Only a radically different socioeconomic structure and a radically different picture of human nature could show that bribery is not the only way (or the best way) to influence people. Sometimes, like an immature person, we misbehave, act unwisely, and feel we cannot approach God with a problem. When we receive an impression in our heart, we can use our mind either to rationalize it away or to accomplish it. Be careful what you do with an impression from the Lord. Drink your spiritual milk and become cured. Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in faith with confidence in our holy Father. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12