I hope we have given you what you need. As for the files, I will see that they are all copied and delivered to you wherever you like. They will prove our efforts to track down ever lead. Poor prognosis in mental health is generally associated with subclinical psychotic trends, which refer to a more sever ego dysfunction than first clinical impression seems to indicate. Depression and anxiety are salient features of the clinical picture in almost all patients who seek psychotherapy in the outpatient clinic; but the patients who fail to improve are those in whom paranoid and schizoid features underlie the psychoneurotic symptoms. A reasonable guess would be that their personal difficulties are more chronic and characterologically based, in contrast to the more accurate and situation-linked problems of the patients who improve. In one study, the expectation was that above 70 percent of patients would improve. Actually, 75 to 80 patients showed improvement. What was noticed in the relationships is it seems that the patients who are most likely to get well are those who are not very sick in the first place. Another way of putting this is to say that patients who are more integrated to begin with are better able to use the psychotherapeutic relationship to solve whatever problems brought them into therapy. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

A corollary is that the potential gains from therapy should increase as therapy progresses, at least up to the point where the critical problem for the patient is to become genuinely independent of the therapist. By that time, of course, the therapeutic process has become internalized, and personality problems have been brought into the ego, to be dealt with rationally and objectively. Another escape hatch from feeling hatred toward one’s self is the attempt to win acceptance from others by pleasing them. It is important to examine this tendency closely because it is subtle and therefore often misunderstood. In the initial stages, at least, the children who are its victims are frequently mistake as healthy, well-adjusted children. When they are caught in the bind of increasing feelings of worthlessness and self-hate, some children will, in their effort to escape, make desperate attempts to win acceptance by attempting to meet what they perceive to be the requirements of their parents. They attempt to please and thereby win their parents’ love. One might tend to assume that such an individual would come out all right. After all, one would think that the child, by attempting to please, would win expressions of love and acceptance and no cycle of rejection would result. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Unfortunately, it usually does not work that way, for parents whose children take this approach to dealing with self-hate have probably created the youth’s feelings of rejection and worthlessness by making unrealistic demands on the individual and by encouraging the youth to feel that their acceptance of him or her is conditional upon one’s performance. It is as though the child feels the parents are saying to the individual, “We will love you if you and when you live up to our standards.” Under these circumstances the youth’s efforts to win acceptance and a feeling of self-worth by attempting to please his or her parents are almost certain to fail for two reasons. First of all, the child’s performance will probably never be quite good enough. It is clear that the parents have considerable doubt about their own adequacy as parents and are afraid of the open expression of love, otherwise they would not have needed to make their love seem to hinge on the child’s (even applies to adult children) behavior. These same qualities will make it difficult for the parents to respond with real enthusiasm even to excellent accomplishments. One woman, Jane, in an effort to gain her mother’s approval, got a job at a law firm. She dressed like them, spoke their jargon, and catered to the partners. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The young lady was excited to tell her mother that she was an associate at a law firm, and she was fairly successful at this. She could hardly wait until the next weekend to visit with her parents, because she was eager to tell them of her success. She walked into the house bubbling over with the exciting news. Her mother’s only reaction was, “Why couldn’t you have becoming a partner?” Since she was exposed to such attitudes of her parents all of her childhood, it is no wonder that now, fifteen years after that incident, she still tried to prove her worth to the World, her parents, and, most of all, to herself. The second reason why efforts to win acceptance through pleasing are doomed to failure is that the individual’s self-hate is increased, because one feels a loss of freedom to be a genuine individual in one’s own right. When a child grows up with a feeling that one must strive at all times to perform adequately and that love will be given and withdrawn on the basis of one’s performance, one never feels free to be one’s self. One resents others and one’s self because one is not becoming an independent person who is loved and respected because of is rather than because of what one does. Jane is in the predicament a lot of adults are in. Jane was reared in a strict, religious household in which great emphasis was put on her career success. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Jane became so involved in the need to please by being successful in her career at the law firm that she began overworking herself very early in her legal career. Whenever she took on another case, she knew she could not handle with the heavy load she already had, Jane would suffer a great deal of anxiety about the possibility of not having enough times. On several occasions—when she saw no way of successfully handling her case load in the time constraints—she went to the yoga studio and deliberately twisted and twirled in such a way that she became physically ill. It would then be necessary for her to all in sick at work and dump her case load on someone else, thus avoiding the necessity of admitting she took on too much. Jane went through terrifying torments of guilt and self-hate, since she lived in a household where lying and cheating would be considered a great sin. Jane felt that God condemned her. It is no surprise that she also believed no one could possibly love her for herself—and certainly could not love her as she had become—if they really knew her. Yet on the surface Jane managed somehow to appear to live a successful and happy life. She was able to conceal her self-torment from others. She appeared to win a good deal of acceptance, but all the time her self-loathing was being reinforced. It was not until she was in her forties and had a family of her own that she was able through psychotherapy to share these feelings. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

Only when Jane was able to finally share her feelings could she experience relief from the feeling of being a fraud and discover that people’s love for her was not based on the image of herself that she had so carefully constructed in order to win acceptance. Jane is an extreme example, to be sure, but there are many people who are caught in some form of the attempt to win acceptance through pleasing. Sometimes it is the quiet one in a classroom who never gives the teacher or anyone else any trouble, but who also never seems to be able to join in the fun in a spontaneous way and who is terribly afraid of making a mistake. Adults who have an obsession with keeping things organized or clean or who demand perfection of themselves in other ways likely developed the pattern trying to please parents. When these people became parents themselves they, too, because of their own fears and feelings of self-hate, may become subtly rejecting, giving the feeling to their children that they must perform at a certain standard if they are to win mother’s or dad’s love. The cycle ensues: Feelings of rejection, become feelings of worthlessness, then self-hate, and there is an escape through attempting to win acceptance, and there is further rejection (he or she never quite measures up to what I expect), and then there are more feelings of worthlessness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

It is appropriate here to speak of the harmful effects that a certain kind of religious training can have on children’s lives. Although they make speak of love as being of first importance in human affairs, churches often become preoccupied with rigid rules of conduct, betraying a deep mistrust of spontaneity in behavior. The church then tends to condemn any failure to measure up to its standards. Under these circumstances the churches create a community where the members do not experience of love for each other but rather in which they feel on guard and constantly in danger of condemnation. These attitudes, of course, extend into the family lives of members of the religious group. The result is that some religious families are among the most psychologically damaging to their children. Perhaps much of the damaging effect comes because of the confusing message that the judgments and the condemnation are a result of the love of the parents for the child. Such parents often say, “We only say these things to you because we love you so much and want you to be happy.” And the fact that the parents are sincere and do not recognize that their need to judge, condemn, and mistrust themselves, and resulting fears only makes the message that much more subtle and more difficult for the child to cope with. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Ashely is a young woman who grew up in this kind of religious family. Her father was an attorney, and he was also a perfectionist and a stanch religionist. Ashley was always made aware that it was very important to him that she succeed in her schooling. In fact she felt that her father’s love was dependent on her achievement. Although she was a very bright girl, Ashley did not respond favorably to these demands. She did not do well in school and dropped out of college, an action of which her father strongly disapproved. Not long thereafter, however, she—on her own initiative—became a skilled legal secretary as a result of her own initiative. She thoroughly enjoyed her work and made a good living for herself. Instead of being delighted about her success, her father continued to express his disappointment and criticize her for not having made full use of her talents by securing a college degree. Whatever she did, it was never quite good enough. It is not surprising that Ashley, having been exposed all her life in her religious home to such demands, has also tended to see God as demanding an impossible kind of perfection from her. She never thinks of God loving her just as she is. God is made into the image of her father. It is not unusual at all in such circumstances that we come to imagine that God embodies the criticism we feel of ourselves and that which we eel from our religious parents. We become paranoid about God. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

This feeling is illustrated by another woman who dreamed one night that Jesus was looking at her in a very stern and condemning manner. Gradually, in the dream, the face of Jesus changed into the face of her mother, who did indeed tend to be very critical of her, but subtly so an in the name of religion. In families like this the force of religion and the religious community often feed into and become an important part of the cycle of rejection. The child initially feels rejection from parents who themselves are full of self-hate and fears and therefore are unable to express their love as openly as they might. As the child grown old enough to be impressed with somewhat more sophisticated ideas, religious teaching, formal and informal, may enter in to fortify these feelings of rejection. The subtlety of the teaching varies a great deal according to the orientation and the sophistication of the religious group. However, the child is likely to receive the message that one is evil by nature and that one dare not trust one’s feelings or impulses. One is likely to feel, even though one may be assured that it is not true, that not only one’s parents but also God and the members of one’s religious community will not like the individual if one does not meet prescribed standards of behavior. These are ideal conditions for the flourishing of feelings of worthlessness of self-hate, which are often accompanied by strong feelings of guilt, often of a generalized unspecific nature. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Eventually the child seeks one or more ways of escape from the self-hatred in the form of some actual or fantasied, neurotic or delinquent behavior. However, there is no escape. If one’s feeling or behavior is detected, one feels condemned by parents and the religious community. If one is not found out, one is in the position—which may be even more psychologically dangerous—of feeling. “They’d sure condemn me if they really knew me.” In either case one feels condemned by a critical God who sees all and knows one’s innermost thoughts. And so the cycle is completed as these further feelings of rejection intensify one’s feelings of worthlessness. The cycle goes this way: Feelings of rejection by parents (increased by the feeling that one is evil by nature in God’s sight), giving way to feelings of worthlessness, then self-hate, leading an escape hatch (neurotic or delinquent behavior or fantasies), which become further feelings of rejection (my parents and my religious community condemn me or would if they really knew me. In any case God does know me and condemns me) and this opens to greater feelings of worthlessness. So our personality problems and difficulties with others have their origins in our childhood experiences. Our fear of love arises out of feelings of rejection and the subsequent feelings of worthlessness and self-hate that begin when we are children. #RandolphHarris 10 of  20

Because childhood experiences are recognizes as being crucial importance, the professions that offer psychological help are often accused, and perhaps with some justification, of teaching people to blame their parents for their problems. While there is no doubt that parents play an important role in child development, it is a waste of time to attempt to pin responsibility on them. It is much more helpful to see the problem in terms of the universality of the fear of love. As parents we are afraid of emotional closeness, even with our children. Perhaps this is not so surprising since no one matters more to us and, therefore, no one has greater power to hurt us. Consequently, we resist letting them see our genuine selves—how lonely, frightened, and capable of being hurt we are. Our children experience this withholding of ourselves and our genuine feelings of rejection. In any discussion of religion and personality integration, the question is not whether religion itself makes for health or neurosis, but what kind of religion and how is it used? Dr. Freud was in error when he held that religion is per se a compulsion neurosis. Some religion is and some is not. Any area in life may be used as a compulsive neurosis: philosophy may be a flight from reality into a harmonious system as a protection from the anxiety and disharmonies of day-to-day life or it may be a courageous endeavor to understand reality better. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Science may be used as a rigid, doctrine of faith by which one escapes emotional insecurity and doubt, or it may be an open minded search for new truth. Indeed, since faith in science has been more acceptable intelligent circles in our society and therefore is less apt to be questioned, it may well be that in our day this faith more frequently plays the role of a compulsive escape from uncertainties than does religion. Dr. Freud, however, was correct technically—as he so often was—in that he asked the right questions with respect to religion: does it increase dependency and keep the individual infantile? Nor are those on the other side correct who say glibly and with comfort to the masses that religion makes for mental health. Some religion certainly does and some decidedly does not. All of these blanket statements would relieve us of the much more difficult question of penetrating to the inner meaning of the religious attitudes, and assessing them not as theoretical beliefs but as functioning aspects of the person’s organic relation to one’s life. For example, a mother and daughter had agreed when the daughter was very young that her life was always to be directed by the will of God. And the will of God, it was further agreed, was to be revealed to the daughter through the mother’s prayers. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

One can well shudder to think how thoroughly this would open the girl to domination in every act and thought by the mother! How then could the girl’s own capacity to choose be anything but stifled—which the girl painfully discovered when, in her late twenties, she was caught in an insoluble dilemma because she could not make an autonomous marriage decision. This example may seem extreme, since the mother and daughter belonged to a conservative evangelical sect and the pattern is not covered over by sophisticated rationalizations. It illustrates that when a person sees one’s self as the mouthpiece or partner of God, as did the mother, there is no limit to the possibilities of arrogating to one’s self power over others. This use of religion comes out frequently and vividly when a person in therapeutic sessions is struggling to establish some freedom from parental control. The parents then often, with various degrees of subtlety, make their central stand on the argument that it is the younger person’s religious obligation to remain under the parents’ direction, that it is in effect God’s will that one continue under the parents’ control. In letters which persons in therapy often receive from parents at such times, the parent of course quotes such Biblical passages as “Honor thy father and thy mother,” rather than the later ethic of Jesus as shown in the New Testament passage we quoted above, “a person’s foes shall be those of one’s own household (Matthew 10.34-39).” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Most parents would insist verbally, of course, that they wish only to have the child fulfill his or her own potentialities. They are often quite unaware of the unconscious needs to hang on to the younger person. However, the fact that they so often behave as though the son’s or daughter’s fulfillment were to be achieved only by remaining under their control reveals something quite different from their conscious intentions. The son’s or daughter’s becoming free often stirs up some deep anxiety in the parent, an anxiety which shows how difficult it is for parents in our society really to be in the indigenous potentialities of the child (perhaps because it is so hard for them to believe in their own potentialities), and how strong is the tendency of all entrenched authority to keep its power even at the price of breaking the other person into submission. The conflicts are made more complex because the younger person struggling for autonomy has often been inculcated with a deep sense of doom if one does not obey parental percept. And one is already generally fighting considerable anxiety and guilt feelings within one’s self over one’s effort to be free. Often at this stage persons have dreams in which they are guilty yet not guilty—guilty, yet having to go ahead. One such person dreamed that he was being cited as guilty by Senator McCarthy in the Senate, though he knew within himself that he really was not guilty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The problem of being prey to someone else’s power is reinforced, of course, by one’s own infantile desires to be taken care of. Thus there are tendencies within one’s self to give one’s self over to the dominating person. About half my own psychotherapeutic work over the past ten years has been with persons from specifically religious backgrounds and in the religious professions, and about half with person of no specific religious background or interest. There are some illuminating psychological effects of religious training in our society. There is an attitude—the strong interest in doing something about one’s problems—it is a function of the person’s confidence in meaning and value in life, is one constructive contribution of a mature religion and, generally has an energizing influence of therapy. However, the attitude of the divine right to be taken care of is quite something else. It is one of the greatest blocks to the development of these persons toward maturity in therapy as well as in life in general. It is generally difficult for such people to see their demand to be taken care of as a problem to be analyzed and overcome, and they often react with hostility and a feeling of being ripped off when their right is not honored. Of course they have been told, “God will take care of you,” from the early says when they sang the song in Saturday or Sunday school to the present vulgarized from of the same idea in many movies. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

However, on a deeper level, the demand to be take care of—particularly since hostility arises so quickly when it is frustrated—is a function of something more profound. I believe it gets its dynamic from the fact that these persons had to give up so much. They have had to relinquish their power and their right to make moral judgments to their parents, and naturally the other half of the unwritten contract is that they then have a right to depend entirely on parental power and judgment, as a slave has a right to depend upon his or her master. So they are being ripped off of the parent—or more likely the parental substitutes such as the therapist of God—does not extend them special care. They have been taught that happiness and success would follow their being good, the latter generally interpreted as being obedient. However, being merely obedient, as we have shown above, undermines the development of an individual’s ethical awareness and inner strength. By being obedient to external requirements over a long period of time, one loses one’s real powers of ethical, responsible choice. Strange as it sounds, then, the powers of these people to achieve goodness and the joy which goes with it are diminished. And since happiness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself, the person who surrenders one’s ethical autonomy has relinquished to the same degree one’s power to attain virtue and happiness. No wonder one feels resentful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

When we look at how the obedience morality, the emphasis on being good by subordinating one’s self, got its power in modern culture, we can see more concretely what these people have had to give up. It takes its modern form largely from patterns copied from the development of industrialism and capitalism in the last four centuries. Now the subordination of the person to mechanical uniformity, the arranging of one’s life to fit the requirements of work and parsimony, did bring financial and, as a result, social success during the major part of the modern period. One could argue persuasively that salvation follows obedience, for if one was obedient to the demands of work in an industrial society, one tended to accumulate money. Anyone who has read of the business acumen of the Early Quakers and Puritans, for example, knows how well these economic and moral attitudes worked together. The Quaker dollar was a concrete solace for the great resentment engendered in the middle class because of the emotional privations they suffered in this obedience system. However, time change, as we have indicated, and in our day early to bed and early to rise may make a mortal healthy, but there is no guarantee that it will make one wealthy and wise. Ben Franklin’s precepts, tithing and daily fidelity to routine work, no longer ensure success, and this is why some are trying to Make America Great Again so people have an opportunity at the American Dream, which is a product of capitalism and freedom. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

The religious person, furthermore, particularly if one is a minister or otherwise engaged in professional religious work, has had to give up a realistic attitude toward money. One is not supposed to require that one be paid such and such a salary. In many religious circles it is considered undignified to talk about money, as if being paid, like toilet activities, is a necessary part of life but the ideal is to act as though it does not really occur. Labor groups, adapting to the changing economic times of mass industry, have recognized that God does not send the pay check by raven’s mouth as food was sent to Elijah of old, and they have learned though their unions to bring pressure to bear to get adequate wages. However, people in religious professions cannot strike for higher wages. Instead the church is supposed to take care of the minister financially and otherwise; one is given discounts on the railroad and in department stores; tuition in seminaries is lower than in other graduate schools—all of which is not calculated to increase the minister’s self-respect or others’ respect for one in our particular society. The fact that the religious person is not supposed to take active steps to ensure one’s financial security is another evidence of the underlying assumption in our society that material security will somehow come automatically if one is good, an assumption closely connected with the belief that God will take care of you. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Thus it is easy to see why the person in our society who is taught to be good by subordinating oneself, and only discovers sooner or later that one does not even get economic rewards for doing so, let alone happiness, should have so much resentment and anger. It is this buried resentment which gives the dynamic to the demand to be take care of. It is as though the person were silently saying, “I was promised I would be taken care of if I was obedient: look how obedient I have been, so why am I not taken care of? The belief in the divine right to be take care of often brings with it the feeling that one has a right to exercise power over others. That is to say, if one believes that persons should be under the power of others, one will not only submit one’s self to some more powerful persons for the purpose of getting care, but one will feel it is one’s duty to take care of—and to exercise power over—some person subordinate to one on the scale. This tendency is illustrated in its more sadistic form in the statement of one man, when questioned about his practice of controlling the younger man, when questioned about his practice of controlling the younger man with whom he lived even to the extent of taking the latter’s pay check every Saturday and putting him on an allowance, “Am I not my brother’s keeper?” #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

We should not abuse the soul of other individuals. Freedom and light have never been easy to attain or maintain. Since the War in Heaven, the forces of evil have used every means possible to destroy agency and extinguish light. The assault on moral principle and religious freedom have never been stronger. Our primary purpose must be to seek truth and light. My personal experience of living and interacting with people all over the World has caused me to be optimistic. I believe that light and truth will be preserved in our time. In all nations there are large numbers who worship God and feel accountable to God for their conduct. Some people accept the proof that there is no Hell in the hereafter and no demons to burn them or in other ways give them eternal punishment, so they do not fear death, and this is why they abuse the scriptures. Other people are concerned with being good and death because of their own deep human feelings and their own active sympathy for human kind, including themselves. Most people are still also respectful of basic moral values. It is a symbol of them trying to hang on to their loved ones—the most powerful symbol that mortal’s life transcends all the natural explanations. The majority of people, even some who have different beliefs than us, aspire to be good and honorable. The Light of Christ, which is distinct from the Holy Ghost, is vivid proof that the meaning of life is informing our conscious with love and a message of inevitable salvation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20