And I dreamed now too much. I dreamed too long, in the prison of this, in the prison of my body, attuned as it was to the rise of every Sun as no mortal body had ever been. And my heart beat faster for the mountains of eastern Europe, finally, beat faster for the one hope that somewhere we might find in that primitive countryside the answer to why under God this suffering was allowed to exist—why under God it was allowed to begin, and how under God it might be ended. Differentiates of our present malady from those of bygone days are terms of the void between hopes and reality. In the course of history alienation has undergone significant qualitative changes so that its meaning today is quite different from what it was in previous eras. In the present stage of history beings have means of self-realization at their command which were unknown to them in former periods. The immense advance of science and technology has helped them to understand the forces of nature to such a degree that one is not any longer at their mercy: one has become their master and has succeeded in subjecting them to one’s ends. With this tremendous progress toward the realization of the Promethean dream, new image has arisen of a being who shapes one’s life and is master of one’s destiny. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

Once this concept of the individual’s sovereignty has been awakened in the minds of beings, a new climate is prepared. The consciousness that being’s yearning for self-realization is thwarted becomes a crushing experience which could not have existed in previous stages. In such a situation the alienation of beings is not any longer accepted as an inevitable fate; more than ever before in history it is felt as a threat and at the same time a challenge. How should beings face this challenge? While some say that nothing can or should be done, others urge moderate action of various kinds, from inner characterological or personality changes to minor reforms which would leave intact the basic social and economic structure. The palliatives suggested by such commentators vary widely. Thus, more faith is called for, or more humor; more housing, more food, more material comforts, more education to improve being’s lot, but if that fails, more philosophy to endure and somehow find fragmentary enjoyment in pleasures more keen because they are fleeting. Among this group are those who call for a return to religion, some with profoundly sincerely conviction, others with sharp awareness of the possibly utilitarian value of prayer or a belief in the power of optimistic thinking to win both friends and a larger share of Worldly goods. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Still others believing in moderate action urge a revival of small community groups with neighborhood co-operation to combat such disorders as juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, vandalism, and other crimes. Then there are those who despair of making work more creative and fall back on the hope that people can somehow be trained more efficiently for the use of leisure. Their assumption is that even if work is meaningless, leisure pursuits may be enriching. However, when work and leisure are divorced, is it realistic to expect that leisure can ever be more than escape from the dreariness of work? And escape can hardly be creative. Similar considerations apply to the effort to plan residential neighborhoods for greater social cohesion. However, again how can this be achieved if in other areas of life—work and leisure—beings remain alienated? How plan for better neighborhoods if men and women have little to share expect their social status? The fact that some of these efforts turn out to be no more than halfway measure in no way reflects on the sincerity of their advocates. Beings will do many strange things to escape their sense of isolation. They may accept illusions as reality: religiousness without religion, “para-social” relations with mass media personalities, “human relation” between managers and their subordinates—in place of genuine integration. #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

However, an integrated community is one in which there is an intimate sharing of beliefs and practices. The more numerous and strong these beliefs and practices, the greater the integration of the group or community. To achieve this goal some perfectly sober critics have urged far-reaching change to social order. Thus Marx, who saw alienation chiefly in terms of work, felt that only when the working being regained control over the means of production could one escape one’s estrangement. However, it is worth noting that Marx envisaged more than transfer of ownership from private to public control. He was one of the first to observe that what beings craved—and rarely found—was variety and meaning in work. To Marx the unalienated being was the creative being, one who could do and be many things. What Marx could not foresee was the equally important need to reduce the size of industrial and bureaucratic enterprises and give individual workers a greater voice in the management of these enterprises. Today these goals seem harder than ever to achieve. Modern industrial society, with its demand for specialists at one extreme and its destruction of skill at the others, permits little variety in the work career—expect perhaps the variety of insecurity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Moreover, the production of goods and services is organized on a huge scale and the management of them is concentrated in the hands of a few; it is not shared. As we have seen, efforts to personalize and humanize large-scale and essentially impersonal industry and bureaucracy have failed. Neither big socialism (as practiced in Venezuela) nor big capitalism (as in the United States) has yet come to grips with these problems. Rejecting the total solutions offered on the one hand by communism and on the others by American monopoly capitalism, a number of social critics on the sides of the Atlantic urge education which would secure a more equitable distribution of wealth. As models for this effort they point to frankly utopian work-communities, a kind of co-operative movement. This movement would be largely self-governing and intimate in scale. The real importance is possessed in restoring the connection between work and other aspects of community life. Hence they offer not only variety and participation in the process of work, but a close sharing of the many other interests and activities that make up community life. While there is no doubt that such co-operative movements restore a sense of community and give individual members a greater sense of belongingness and relatedness. It remains to be seen whether they offer a real solution for societies like ours with established and massive structures of production and distribution. The fact is that they have never been tried. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Beings achieve solidarity not only because they plan for it. This is the important lesson of human behavior in the face of natural disasters, or in times of severe economic or military crisis. Studies of how people respond to such challenges reveal both a measurable drop in the personal disorders that we associate with alienated states and more beneficial feelings of individual participation and significance. When people feel keenly aware of a common danger, felt for the first time in their lives, they want to be able to count on something and feel that they are a part of a larger whole. To achieve this state is the goal of all who would re-order our society and overcome alienation. The question is how it can be done, how such solidarity can be created and sustained in normal times. Radical mass movements and authoritarian regimes on right and left have perhaps come close to achieving this goal. At any rate this has been the experience of belief parties, of radical youth movements, of agricultural and industrial collectives throughout the World. What they succeed in doing is to imbue their members with some sense of higher purpose. Our greatest error would be to assume that such solidarity is merely coerced, although the power to coerce is usually present. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

That there are dangers here is all too apparent. However, the greatest danger may not be coercion. Perhaps more important, togetherness may acquire a pathological character. Beings will no longer feel alienated, but will they have exchanged their earlier state of isolation for an imprisonment in fraternity? Authoritarian regimes are not alone in posing this problem. The social life of our organization being is not without its compulsive group forms. Some beings will sacrifice a meaningless freedom and accept the most terrible discipline in order to feel part of something greater than themselves. However, if the group pressures for conformity become irresistible, the cure may be fatal. Although they are not to be equated, neither in the Chinese mixed economy nor in American suburbia is there much opportunity for privacy. When one is too much a member of a group, one must lose part of oneself—and thus finds oneself exposed to another, perhaps more terrible, form of alienation. The ultimate problem, therefore, as yet nowhere solved is how to restore and preserve group solidarity without destroying the last remnants of individual autonomy. When then are the prospects? There is the possibility that in an increasingly bipolarized World the forces of alienation on both sides will gain power, becoming so intolerant and desperate that eventually there will be no choice but mutual destruction. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

Even if we escape nuclear annihilation there is the grim prospect of a Worldwide population explosion and the consequent need for social and economic controls on an unprecedented scale. The alternatives are not pleasant. On the one hand, a war which may end all life on Earth. On the other, increasing controls to ensure survival of the species. In the not too distant future, as beings multiply at a rapid rate, togetherness will very likely become more than a figure of speech. Possessed of extraordinary powers for good and evil, compelled to make room for new hordes of humanity—in short, caught between the machine and the mass—can beings lean to live with themselves and the rest of the population. These questions are not academic, for if they are not answered how is the Western Word to meet the direct challenge of a solidaristic community. This is not the place to draw a blueprint for change. Ours is a soft and wasteful society. If it ever needed a sense of national purpose now is the time. However, that purpose cannot be achieved or imposed by appointing committees to select goals for us—although this reflects, at least dimly, an awareness that collective purpose is missing from our lives. Can we arrive at that sense of purpose and retain the freedom we value so highly and use so poorly? Or will we drift into a garrison state that will give us our marching orders? #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Which shall we choose? The rest of the World may not wait long for us to decide. Indeed, underdeveloped countries—at the outer edge of the explosion of population and expectations—may learn from our experiences and, if they are wise, skip the difficult and painful periods of technological adjustment which we experienced. Perhaps they will reject a system like ours in which beings take from one another more than they share and thereby lose an irretrievable part of themselves. The integration of modern society is no simple task and at best it is imperfectly achieved, or at great cost. However, that society which fails to make the effort is not likely to survive. The phenomenological method attempts to grasp the fullness of a given human experience in as rich a language or mode of expression as possible. The phenomenological method combines the artistic approach of immersing oneself in and empathizing with a given experience with the scientific approach of systematically organizing and sharing an experience with a professional community. To illustrate the uniqueness of phenomenological approach to experience, we offer the following comparison. First, we present a phenomenological description of an agoraphobic patient who observes his neighborhood from his house. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

The houses gave the impression of being closed up, as if all the windows were shuttered, although he could see this was not so. He had an impression of closed citadels. And, looking up, he saw the houses leaning over toward the street, so that the strip of sky between the roofs was narrow than the street on which he walked. On the square, he was struck by an expanse that far exceeded the width of the square. He knew for certain that he would not be able to cross it. An attempt to do so would, he felt, end in so extensive a realization of emptiness, width, rareness and abandonment that his legs would fail him. He would collapse. It was the expanse, above all, that frightened him. Now let us consider an excerpt from the conventional description of agoraphobia (without panic disorder) given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association—Revised (1987). Agoraphobia: Fear of being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing) or in which help might not be available in the event of suddenly developing a symptom(s) that could be incapacitating or extremely embarrassing. As a result of this fear, the person either restricts travel or needs a companion when away from home, or else endures agoraphobic situations. Common agoraphobic situations include outside the home alone, being in a crowd or standing in a line. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

These excerpts, then, reveal divergent empirical considerations of the same phenomenon. While the latter emphasizes the exterior features of agoraphobia—those that can be observed, measured, and specified, the former stresses the interior features of the experience—those than can be felt, intuited, and symbolized. It is out of the personalist-phenomenological tradition, accordingly, that existential-integrative psychology arose. It is out of the desire to base theory on intimate, qualitative data that existential-integrative psychology evolves and exerts its influence. While existential-integrative psychologist vary to some degree with respect to their interpretations of data such as the above, a consensus has formed around three central themes. The first core finding is that human being (or consciousness) is suspended between two vast and primordial poles: freedom and limitation. The freedom polarity is characterized by will, creativity, and expressiveness; and the limitation polarity is typified by natural and social restraints, vulnerability, and death. While this thesis may appear commonsensical at first, we will see how complex and subtle it can be and how profoundly it can affect our understanding of psychosocial functioning. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

The freedom-limitation polarity, for example, forms the template for a revised theory of the psychodynamics of functional and dysfunctional behavior: the productive and unproductive dimensions of choice, self-direction, and desire on the one hand and discipline, order, and accommodation on the other. We will see how traditional psychological views have tended to dichotomize along the freedom-limitation continuum and how the existential-integrative tradition (through art and philosophy) has anticipated and attempted to counter such dichotomizations. The second core existential-integrative finding is that dread of either freedom or limitation (due generally to past trauma) promotes extreme or dysfunctional counteractions to either polarity. A boy who associates limit setting with abuse, for example, is likely to counteract those feelings with a willful, aggressive orientation. Conversely, a woman who associated freedom with unmanageable power and responsibility is likely to become reticent and withdrawn. Many stories from classic myth or literature illustrate this conception. In Goethe’s Faust, for example, Faust’s bargain with the devil for unlimited power is a reaction to the despair and boredom of his ascetic life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Conversely, Ivan Ilych (from the Tolstoy classic) is so petrified by the unpredictability, disarray, and isolation associated with his freedom that he becomes a prisoner of propriety in order to escape. The final core finding is that confrontation with or integration of freedom and limitation (across numerous spheres of functioning) is enlivening and health-promoting. This finding can be illustrated by the person who has learned to accept his or her contradictory nature and who is thus capable of engaging freedom and limitation more or less as the circumstance demands rather than because of intimidation or panic. Such a person is able to see the beauty of his or her paradoxical situation as well as its tragedy and is thereby inclined to be flexible rather than rigid about life’s predicaments. Finally, he or she acknowledges the power of both polarities and spurns efforts to defuse or minimize them. An example of this sort of person is the man or woman who can allow himself or herself to be both bold and tender, creative and disciplined, and exploratory and committed in key life areas. After Faust’s deflation, for example, he was able to appreciate the options of his ordinary existence, such as his love for the village girl, Gretchen. Following Ilych’s realization of the preciousness of life, he found the courage to expand and transform his social role. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

In summary, existential-integrative psychology aims to articulate that which is central and vital to human experience. These shared foundation structures are based on the subjective and intersubjective investigations of phenomenology. To repeat, the three core dimensions of the human psyche to emerge from such investigations are: Human being is suspended between freedom and limitation. Freedom is characterized by will, creativity, and expressiveness; limitation is signified by natural and social restraints, vulnerability, and death. Dread of freedom or limitation (usually due to past trauma) promoted dysfunctional or extreme counterreactions to either polarity (for instance, oppressiveness or impulsivity). Confrontation with or integration of the polarities promotes a more vibrant, invigorating life-design. This life-design is exemplified by increased sensitivity, flexibility, and choice. We may dwell in mystical inner fellowship with God but we may not become as God. Those who proclaim such false self-deification needlessly make a grotesquely exaggerated statement of what is already by itself a sufficiently tremendous truth. It would be a grave error to believe that when philosophy says that the divine dwells in everything, it dwells equally in everything. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14