Believe me, our little consultation will not take long. We have strong obligations. We will call or come just as quickly as we can. As we turn to examine some major escape hatches, we see that some people escape from feelings of self-hate by developing physically illness. One patient, age 31, was a tall, athletically-built man of rather prepossessing appearance. He speaks in an intelligent, competent manner. He was obviously very tense, however, and seemed to be controlling himself only with some effort. He displayed a certain amount of hostility toward the testing procedure, but was overly cooperative and uncomplaining. The patient’s personality inventory is typical of the most clear-cut cases of psychopathy or impulse neurosis. Basic to the personality structure is a very deep and primitive oral fixation, with subsequent reaction formation against it. Direct satisfaction of libidinal impulses is sought, rather than repression or substitution. Conflicts tend to be acted out, and there is a constant flight from anxiety rather than an attempt to endure it. Associated with the underlying orality and passivity is considerable hostility which is also expressed orally (by such means as sarcasm, invective, and biting). What is most feared is the passivity, and dominance-submission is the characteristic conflict. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

There is a considerable tendency toward self-dramatization. The primitive oral longing may lead to alcoholism or drug addiction, and pleasures of the flesh in such cases are usually polymorphous perverse. Such anxiety as is not handled by character defenses may be expressed gastrointestinally. There is a poverty of inner resources, an inability to sublimate or obtain substitutive gratification. Impulses are responded to in an uncontrolled fashion. Depression and anxiety are evident, the depression being the more prominent of the two. There is a good deal of preoccupation with pleasures of the flesh, and judgment defect manifests itself chiefly in that area. Otherwise, contact with reality is good. The patient had been divorced once, and he was not married to the woman with whom he was presently living, although they had been living together for several years. He came into the clinic purely on an impulse, although he had occasionally entertained the idea in the past because of vague feelings of dissatisfaction with certain aspects of his own behavior, such as his promiscuity, his predilection for comfort women, and his tendency to look for unusual forms of excitement and entertainment when he was inebriated. His common-law wife was fairly tolerant of these failings, but he was worried that sooner or later he would get in trouble with law enforcement, which would interfere with his profession as a teacher. He appeared to have no particular anxiety or neurotic symptoms. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

The research that has been done into psychosomatic illness makes it evident that the body operates as a total organism and that most physical illness can either be caused or greatly modified by emotional factors. Two primary unconscious motivations appear to underlie such illness. In the first place, it seems evident that there is often a need to push one’s self. The person uses physical illness as an unconscious way of expressing one’s self-hate. Another motivation seems to be that of asking for help. It is almost as if the person were saying to the World, “Will not somebody please take care of me?” The therapist reported that the therapeutic interviews were generally “very man to man…the patient manipulated the situation so that we seemed to be sort jolly buddies rather than patient and doctor. He refused to admit of any professional distance between us.” The interviews were more like casual chats than therapeutic sessions. There was, nevertheless, a very strong transference. As the transference increased in intensity, and the patient’s passive desires got closer to the surface, his acting out of this conflict began to take a very hostile form. Therapists often report that they experience a great deal of trouble dealing effectively with physical illness caused by emotional difficulties. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

It can be hard to deal with probably because the individual, in being ill, usually does satisfy some of the needs that motivate the illness in the first place. On one occasion, the patient came in drunk, having been drinking all night. At this time, he gave vent to considerable hostility, its first objection being the psychological tests and the psychologist. When the therapist pointed out that this too might be displaced, the patient turned violently upon the therapist himself, and began to compare psychologists very favorably with psychiatrists. The patient’s hostility was evinced plainly in his expressive movement during this hour, as he began many aggressive gestures which he quickly inhibited. Finally, he broke down and cried. Afterward, he said he felt better, “like after sleeping with a woman.” Following this, a good deal of passive homosexual material emerged in his associations, and this was dealt with very effectively and in an anxiety reliving manner by the therapist. The patient does succeed in pushing himself, and he often gains attention and care as a result of the illness. Both of these psychological gains, of course, are not ultimately satisfying, for there is usually growing resentment on the part of those who care for the ill person. This resentment is likely to be expressed in some form or other. Thus the stage is set for further feelings of rejection, more self-hate, and more pronounced physical problems. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

The cycle generally goes this way: Feelings of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape into physical symptoms or illness, and further rejection (who likes somebody who is sick and complaining all the time?). When a person has been severely emotionally damaged as a child, the escape from self-hate may take the form of a severe mental illness, or psychosis. In this instance the feelings a person has about one’s self are so intolerable and life is so frightening that the person may escape into a fantasy World. One exchanges reality for unreality. All the gain that the therapist would claim for this patient after six months of psychotherapy was that the patient had been rendered more available for treatment. In view of the extreme difficulty of working with such psychopathic character disorders, this modest gain is indeed rather praiseworthy. Perhaps the escape from self-hate is seen most clearly in instance where the person becomes someone else in one’s imagination, someone who is powerful, good, or important in some way. One may acquire an unshakable belief that one is Jesus, Napoleon, the Virgin Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Beyonce, Brad Pitt, Aaliyah, Reese Witherspoon, Paris Hilton, The Weekend, Drake, Elvis, Olivia Newton John, or some the famous person. The immediate gain from the illness is obvious. The person is no longer the hated self who seemed worthless, hopeless, and a failure. Now one can look on one’s self as an individual of great important and significance. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

In spite of all our advances in the understanding and treatment of mental illness, however, the psychotic person is almost certain to experience further feelings of rejection. Society will almost surely deem it necessary to segregate one’s self from normal people, at least during the acute phases of the illness. When one does return to society, one is likely to be regarded with suspicion, prejudice, and fear, with little understanding or even tolerance of one’s emotional problems. Again the cycle rejection cycle might start. Feelings of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape into mental illness, further rejection (why can he not snap out of it and face life like everybody else does?). Alcoholism and other forms of addiction provide other ways of attempting to escape from feelings of self-hate. For a large majority of people, the use of alcohol is a pleasant way to become more like the person they long to be. With the glowing warmth of two or three drinks, many people are able to talk more freely and enjoy their friends more openly. Usually too frightened of their love to reveal it, they are able to express their care more openly and with more feeling. The potential alcoholic, on the other hand, begins to rely on drinking as a way to avoid facing feelings of inadequacy, failure, and worthlessness. The alcohol numbs one to these feelings and, at least in the initial stages, helps one to escape one’s feeling of mediocrity and self-hate. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

One is less aware of one’s fear of suffering further rejection and so one mixes more with people, somewhat mitigating the terrible loneliness experiences in sober hours. Feelings of rejection, lead to feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape to alcoholism, further rejection (he used to be funny when he was drinking, but it seems now like he is drunk all the time and everybody suffers”), then further feelings or worthlessness ensue. However, when one is sober again, feelings of self-hate come closer to the surface, fortified now by guilt feelings about the meaningless waste of one’s hours of drunkenness. The only answer to the resulting moodiness and sense of emptiness seems to be possessed in resorting to drinking. Eventually the alcohol provides a more or less permanent escape from self-hate. Thus the alcoholic become more and more addicted. Meanwhile, one encounters ever more frequent rejection and one after another of his or her friends, and finally one’s family find one’s drinking and one’s behavior while intoxicated increasingly unbearable and desert the individual. The only way of gaining relief from these further feelings of rejection, or so it seems to one, comes through further drinking. And so the cycle runs it course.  Homosexuality is another way of escaping feelings of self-hate. Sometimes have been cut off from both skills and the emotions of male existence. Yet, they also undoubtedly long for some kind of place in the male World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

With women, some of these men seem, superficially at least, very much at ease. They share many interests more typical of women in our culture. One may be artistic and creative. Yet, in relationships with girls that might have become intimate and meaningful at a deeper level, tend to become guarded and aloof. It is evident that one has a profound fear of being subtly manipulated and controlled by women, as one’s mother may have done (being made to do the household chores and care for the other kids, cook meals, becoming a pseudo mother, and without any male influence around). All women are seen by the male as threats to his individuality. It is not surprising that, when one is approached at college or work by men with similar problems, one falls quickly into homosexual practices. Though he later married, he seemed unable either to give up his homosexuality completely or to achieve genuine intimacy with his wife, although they were able to have pleasures of the flesh. After several years of attempting to make a satisfying married, she finally left him. With this individual, as with other homosexuals, his sexual relationship with men probably gave him some escape from his feelings of inability to satisfy his need for love and his feelings of worthlessness as a male. However, his escape into homosexuality led to further rejection by parents, other relatives, friends, and acquaintances who proved typically intolerant of problems with pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

As often is the case, even he and his homosexual partners tended to despise each other. Such rejection seemed to lead only to the search for the reassurance of new sexual partners in an unbroken cycle of rejection. Feelings of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape into homosexuality, further rejections (he is different from other men. He is repulsive to me) and more feelings of worthlessness. No attempt is being made here to explain fully why a person chooses one escape from self-hate rather than another, as, for example, why one person becomes an alcoholic and another becomes a braggart or develops symptoms of physical illness. There are many complex reasons for these differences. Some of them certainly have to do with the kind of rejection that is experienced. Chance occurrences may lead to the expression of one symptom rather than another. For example, it is possible that the man, the homosexual just described, might have become an alcoholic if her had not been approached by an experienced homosexual and if his rigid religious training had not discouraged any experimentation with drinking. The purpose here, however, is to show that feelings of rejection, worthlessness, and self-hate lie at the root of these problems, whatever the various nuances may be. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

There is also room for inborn differences within this general pattern. Perhaps, for example, it is possible that some people are chemically more susceptible to alcoholic addiction than others. This would not mean that alcoholism would be a certainty for such a person even if it were found that such potentials occur. Without the need to escape from severe feelings of inadequacy and self-hate, the individual would not likely become an alcoholic. “The male patient then stood up, heaved a sigh and headed for the door. I asked if he needed a ride back home and he murmured that his car had brought him down town.” There is something creative in psychotherapy thus carried on. To the old patterns of perception and action is added a force for change, so that they gradually become something quite different, though retaining many of their former elements. It is important for people to learn to accept things at face value, and there should be a willingness to let the other person be as he or she wished, combined with an insistence on yourself being as you wish. It may sound absurd because the aim of psychotherapy is to induce changes in the behavior of the patient. Do we not want one to have fewer symptoms, better relations with people, a constructive set of social values, a happier out look on life? While we may have all of these desires as secondary goals for the patient, we must wish for one, above all else, and is necessary even at the expense of those secondary goals, simply that one be free to choose what one wants. #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

 The patient may in the end choose to be much as one was in the beginning; the difference should be that one chooses freely and is not compelled by one’s own blind needs. It is, indeed, our faith that there are many things, to us undesirable, that free mortals would not choose for oneself; but we must be willing, in the final analysis and to state the case in its most extreme form, to grant the other’s right to choose destruction and evil, if one does so freely. If we accept this principle, we will not pity the patient, nor hold ourselves wise or good as compared to him or her, nor wish to impart on the individual our own virtues or visions. Rather, we will wish only to help one to understand who he or she is as a person, that one may be made more free to choose, and less the slave of one’s own history. Humans are generally ethical beings: but one’s achievement of ethical awareness is not easy. One does not grow into ethical judgment as simply as the California Golden Poppy (flower) grows toward the Sun. Indeed, like freedom and the other aspects of mortal’s consciousness of self, ethical awareness is gained only at a price of inner conflict and anxiety. With the loss of innocence and the rudimentary beginnings of ethical sensitivity, the person falls heir to the particular burdens of self-consciousness, anxiety and guilt feelings, but this awareness may not appear till later—that one is of dust. That is to say, when one realizes the one will some time die; one becomes conscious of one’s own finiteness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

The fall of man is seen as a fall upward because learning of right and wrong represent the birth of the psychological and spiritual person. The beginning of wisdom is the admission of one’s ignorance, and mortals can creatively use their powers, and to some extent transcend their limitations, only as one humbly and honestly admits these limitations to begin with so we do not become infected with false pride. Every society must have the influences which being ideas and ethical insight into birth, and the institutions which conserve that values of the past. No society would survive long without both new vitality and old forms, change and stability, the prophetic religion which attacks existing institutions and the priestly religion which protects the institutions. Many human beings are struggling toward enlarged self-awareness, maturity, freedom and responsibility, and some have the tendency to remain a child and cling to the protection of parents or parental substitutes. In capitalism, it is required for its functioning that there must be a strict obedience of the individuals to the laws, those that serve their true interests as well as those that do not. How oppressive or how liberal the laws and what the means for their enforcement are make little difference with regard to the central issue: the people must learn to fear authority, and not only in the person of the law enforcement officers because they carry weapons. This fear is not enough of a safeguard for the proper functioning of the state; the citizen must internalize this fear and transform obedience into a moral and religious category: sin. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

People respect the laws not only because they are afraid but also because they feel guilty for their disobedience. This feeling of guilt can be overcome by the forgiveness that only the authority itself can grant. The conditions for such forgiveness are: the sinners repents, is punished, and by accepting punishment submits again. The sequence: sin (disobedience), feelings of guilt, new submission (punishment), forgiveness is a brutal cycle, inasmuch as each act of disobedience leads to increased obedience. A knowledge of truth and the answers to our greatest questions come to us as we are obedient to the commandments of God. We learn obedience throughout our lives. Beginning when we are very young, those responsible for our care set forth guidelines and rules to ensure our safety. Life would be simpler for all of us if we would obey such rules completely. Many of us, however, learn through experience the wisdom of being obedient. There are rules and laws to help ensure our physical safety. Likewise, the Lord has provided guidelines and commandments to help ensure our spiritual safety so that we might successfully navigate this often-treacherous moral existence and return eventually to our Heavenly Fathers. The Savior demonstrated genuine love of God by living the perfect life, by honoring the sacred mission that was his. Never was he haughty. Never was he puffed up with pride. Never was he disloyal. Jesus as humble, sincere, and obedient. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13