I did not know that I could live with such a decision, and I was certain that they could not mentally or spiritually survive such a denial. Yet I felt compelled to ponder. And ponder I did. Why does one become an alcoholic? Since no final answer to this question is available, since the subject is complex and the size of this paper limited, a relatively brief and rigid phrased description will follow. In accord with the two essentials for the development of the condition, it will be divided into two parts: one, the habitual use of alcohol; two, certain personality types or structures. There is not much evidence of a physiological or constitutional basis for alcoholism. Neither of these alone can bring on alcoholism. There are many individuals with personalities similar to those found in alcoholics who never become alcoholics, who may never touch alcohol; there are tends of millions of individuals who use alcohol who never become alcoholics. The combination of the two factors is essential for the appearance of alcoholism. Alcohol is a depressant, the direct opposite of a stimulant. Taken in sufficient quantities it produces sleep. Its depressant action is gradual, however; and as it depresses certain control functions of the brain it allows behavior and attitudes which are usually repressed. (It is this less controlled behavior which makes people believe that it is a stimulant.) #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Alcohol, even in small quantities, lowers sensitivity, relieves tension, allows the forgetting of difficult and unpleasant conceptions and memories. It reduces accuracy of judgment and discrimination, especially about the self. With alcohol, then, one can temporarily escape worries and anxieties, temporarily ease tensions, feel as if one were happy, clever, witty, graceful or, at least, less unhappy, less inept, less awkward. And one can gain this temporary feeling without utilizing the effort and ability which real achievement of such feeling would demand. Of the personality types significant for alcoholism only two will be mentioned. It should be recognized that there are psychotics and feebleminded persons who are also alcoholics, that there are persons, apparently quite normal, who under extraordinary stress may become compulsive drinkers. The great bulk of the alcoholics, however, fit into the two classes to be described, the primary and the secondary compulsive drinker types. The primary type may be likened to that category of persons labeled neurotic. This over-used and little understood word in the present instance at least serves to point out that primary compulsive drinkers were definitely maladjusted before they began drinking. Here, for example, is the individual whose personality was warped, whose emotional development was unhealthy from infancy or childhood on. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The maladjustment might be seen as an inability to compete with equals or superiors without feeling extreme anxiety or apprehension of undefined, future pain. Or it might be seen as an unusual fear of contact with those of the opposite gender, or as a general conception of the self as unworthy, inefficient, and socially awkward. These states of mind are fairly common though irregular occurrences among adolescents, but as continued attitudes in a young or middle-aged adult they are out of keeping with the demands of our society. In the early twenties and certainly by the age of thirty there is great pressure on adults to be socially and economically competitive and appropriately self-assertive, to be married, and to have attained a relatively mature independence of self-control. As individuals of poor or no adjustment along these lines grow older, the pressures upon them grow stronger and the maladjustment becomes increasingly harder to bear. No statement is presented to explain why or how these individuals comes to be “neurotics.” It is a matter of common observation that there are many such persons. If such persons are, like most Americans, introduced to the custom of drinking, and if anxieties about drinking are not too great and no other way out of their dilemma is found, then they are likely candidates to start out on the road to alcoholism. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Alcohol allows them to compete without anxiety, to mingle without or with less fear in mixed company, perhaps even to initiate courtship behavior, to forget their own interpretation of their personal inadequacies; it allows them relief from whatever their problem may be. Small wonder that they come to lean upon this crutch with increasing dependency. This development illustrates the conception that for the type of person described alcohol is an adjustment. However, the alcohol wears off while the neurotic characteristics remain as before. Furthermore, the memory of having acted aggressively or assertively, of having shown interest in the opposite gender because of alcohol creates new anxieties; the knowledge of having been “out-of-control” also adds guilt and remorse. However, in the long run the rewards of drinking for the incipient alcoholic are greater than these feelings. Later on, one may use alcohol to get rid of the post-alcoholic guilt and anxiety. Thus, a vicious circle comes into operation. The vicious circle is stimulated further by the inevitable extension and intensification of old problems and the rise of news one due to increasing periods of inebriety. Family and friends, employers and neighbors, customers and strangers, all will punish the person who often gets drunk. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

With the increase in problems the relieving, soothing, encouraging effects of alcohol become all the more desirable. So, although alcohol is an adjustment, it is a short-run, temporary adjustment and leads to further maladjustment. Before one’s drinking starts the secondary compulsive type appears on the surface as a fairly well-adjusted person. He or she has utilized social customs, attitudes, and organizations with considerable ability. Certainly the label “neurotic” would never have been applied. Some of this type may be more extroverted than those around them, tending to be the leader in the group, the excessive practical joker, the most aggressive salesman. The implication from this is sense of personal adequacy, of being a significant member of their group. Whatever the case, it is noticeable that they can differ markedly from the earlier mentioned “neurotic” type, that they have utilized customs, associations and attitudes which were socially acceptable; this plays an important role in the discussion of therapy. The prospective secondary type of compulsive drinker, when introduced to the drinking customs, appears to take it with great satisfaction. One already belongs to a group which usually drinks a good deal or one shortly joins such a group and become a regular drinker, later perhaps a heavy drinker, but one is not yet an alcoholic; one is in control of the drinking, not the drinking in control of one. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Many people can be so characterized, and they need not become alcoholics. For the individual in whom we are interested, however, a process sets in which has been called the pampering effect of alcohol. Alcohol lowers sensitivity, discrimination, control and efficiency. Unless counteracting forces arise, it allows the drinker to respond to stimuli less adequately and to follow personal inclinations in the face of contrary social demands with less notice and less care. As a result the fairly constant heavy drinker may become a more careless worker, a more thoughtless father and husband, or mother and wife, a more demanding friend, a more aggressive neighbor. Nor is this the only effect. On the negative side one may be seen as failing to exercise one’s social abilities and one’s intellectual techniques. Without practice the personality assets become dulled and more difficult to use. This process may take place by almost imperceptible steps. The result of this process is inevitable—occupational, familial, financial, and neighborly problems are going to arise. Unfortunately, the individual has learned a simple response to avoid such problems—drinking. Again, a vicious circle can be seen. A second result of this process, a result which may confuse the therapist, is that the personality of the drinker seems to change. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The personality change is not hard to explain. The individual finds oneself losing the affection and regard of one’s spouse, one’s boss, one’s friends; whereupon one loses affection and regard for them. One finds that one is less popular in one’s club, among fellow workers, or in community groups; whereupon one gives up these organizations. One can hardly help but realize that one’s work is not as good as it was; whereupon one talks it up, idealizes what one is going to do, what one has done; while realistic accomplishment continues downhill. One becomes increasingly isolated and consequently self-centered. As one loses friends and interests, one become cynical, self-conscious and suspicious of others. One rationalizes one’s situation, and as one’s rationalizations are not subject to the discipline of realistic give-and-take, one becomes overly idealistic or overly optimistic or pessimistic. Gradually one takes on more and more of the characteristics of the primary type. When one has achieved the full status of an alcoholic one may seem not a whit different from the primary type. From the point of view of rehabilitation, however, he or she is a decidedly different person; the changes of recover are far better than for those of the primary types. These descriptions of the two largest categories of compulsive drinkers, categories based on the developmental nature of the disease, are not a full answer to the question “Why does one become an alcoholic?” #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The answers we discussed may help, however, toward a better understanding of the sorts of processes, conditions and factors involved in the development of the alcoholic condition. The human character is a structure built up to avoid perception of the terror, perdition and annihilation that dwell next door to every being. The task of psychology is to discover the strategies that a person uses to avoid anxiety. What style does one use to function automatically and uncritically in the World, and how does this style cripple one’s true growth and freedom of action and choice? Basically, how is a person being enslaved by one’s characterological lie about oneself? Most people live in a half-obscurity about their own perceptions of reality. Understating the compulsive character, means recognizing the rigidity of the person who has had to build extra-thick defenses against anxiety, a heavy character armor. A partisan of the most orthodoxy knows it all, one bows before the holy, truth is for one an ensemble of ceremonies, one talks about presenting oneself before the throne of God, of how many times one must bow, one knows everything the same way as does the pupil who is able to demonstrate a mathematical proposition with the letters ABC, but not when they are changed to DEF. One is therefore in dread whenever one bears something not arranged in the same order. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

In society today there is a shut-upness which we refer to as repression; it is the closed personality, the one who had fenced oneself around in childhood, not tested one’s own powers in action, not been free to discover oneself and one’s World in a relaxed way. If the child is not burdened by too much parental blocking of one’s action, too much infection with the parents’ anxieties, one can develop one’s own defenses in a less monopolizing way, can remain somewhat fluid and open in character. One is prepared to test reality in terms of one’s own action and experimentation and less on the basis of delegated authority and prejudgment or preperception. It is of infinite importance that a child be brought up with a conception of the lofty shut-upness [reserve], and be saved from the mistake kind. In an external respect it is easy to perceive when the moment has arrived that one ought to let the child walk alone; the art is to be constantly present and yet not be present, to let the child be allowed to develop itself, while nevertheless one has constantly a survey clearly before one. The art is to leave the child to itself in the very highest measure and on the greatest possible scale, and to express this apparent abandonment in such a way that, unobserved, one at the same time knows everything. And the father who educates or does everything for the child entrusts to one, but had not prevented one from becoming shut-up, has incurred a great accountability. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The parent should let the child do one’s own exploration of the World and develop one’s own sure experimental powers. One knows that the child has to be protected against dangers and that watchfulness by the parent is of vital importance, but one does not want the parent to obtrude one’s own anxieties into the picture, to cut off the child’s action before it is absolutely necessary. Today we know that such an upbringing alone gives the child a self-confidence in the face of experience that one would not have if one were overly blocked: it gives one an inner sustainment. And it is precisely this inner sustainment that allows the child to develop a lofty shut-upness, or reverse: that is, an ego-controlled and self-confident appraisal of the World by a personality that can open up more easily to experience. Mistaken shut-upness, on the other hand, is the result of too much blockage, too much anxiety, too much effort to face up to experience by an organism that has been overburdened and weakened in its own controls: it means, therefore, more automatic repression by an essentially closed personality. The good is the opening toward new possibility and choice, the ability to face into anxiety; the closed is the evil, that which turns one away from newness and broader perceptions and experiences; the closed shut out revelation, obtrudes a veil between the person and one’s own situation in the World. Ideally these should be transparent, but for the closed person they are opaque. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

This shut-upness is precisely a lite of character. It eo ipso signifies a lie, or if you prefer, untruth. However, untruth is precisely unfreedom; the elasticity of freedom is consumed in the service of close reserve. Close reserve was the effect of the negating retrenchment of the ego in the individuality. And this is a perfectly contemporary psychoanalytic description of the costs of repression on the total personality, which could lead to things like alcoholism because the person becomes fragmented within oneself by the repression. Meanwhile, the real reality dwells under the surface, close at hand, ready to break through the repression, but the repression seemingly leaves the personality intact, seemingly functioning as a whole, in continuity—and that is how continuity is broken, how the personality is really at the mercy of the discontinuity expressed by the repression. The lie of character is built up because the individual needs to adjust to the World, to the parents, and to one’s own existential dilemmas. It is built up before the child has a chance to learn about oneself in an open or free way, and thus character defenses are automatic and unconscious. The problem is that the child becomes dependent on them and comes to be encased in one’s own character armor, unable to see freely beyond one’s own prison or into oneself, into the defenses on is using, the things that are determining one’s unfreedom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

The best thing that the child can hope is that one’s shut-upness will not be of the mistake or massive kind, in which one’s character is too fearful of the World to be able to open itself to the possibilities of experience. However, that depends largely on the parents who have incurred a great accountability, and so they are obliged to shut themselves off from possibility. Styles of denying possibility and lies of character are the same thing. It leads to what we call inauthentic beings, beings who avoid developing their own uniqueness; they follow out the styles of automatic and uncritical living in which they were conditioned as children. They are inauthentic in that they do not belong to themselves, are not their own person, do not act from their own center, do not see reality on its terms; they are the one-dimensional being totally immersed in the fictional games being played in their society, unable to transcend their social conditioning: the corporation men and women in the West, the bureaucrats in the East, the tribal beings locked up in tradition—beings everywhere who do not understand what it means to think for themselves, and who, if one did, would shrink back at the idea of such audacity and exposures. The immediate man or woman, one’s self or one oneself is something included along with the other in the compass of the temporal and the Worldly. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Thus, because these beings derive their identity from the collective, the self coheres immediately with the other, wishing, desiring, enjoy, and so forth, but passively; one manages to imitate other men or women, noting how they manage to live, and so one too lives after a sort. In Christendom one too is Christian, goes to church every Sunday, hears and understands the parson, yea, they understand one another; one dies; the parson introduces one into eternity for the price of $10—but a self one was not, and a self one did not become. For the immediate being does not recognize one’s self, one recognizes oneself only by one’s dress, one recognizes that one has a self only by externals. This is the automatic cultural human—human as confided by culture, a slave to it, who imagines that one has an identity if one pays one’s insurance premium, that one has control of one’s life if one guns one’s sports car or works one’s electric toothbrush. Today the inauthentic or immediate beings are familiar types, after decades of Marxist and existentialist analysis of being’s slavery to one’s social system. However, at some time, it must have been a shock to be a modern European city-dweller and be considered a Philistine at the same time. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Philistinism is triviality, beings lulled by the daily routines of one’s society, content with the satisfactions that it offers one: in today’s World the car, the shopping center, the two-week Summer vacation. Beings are protected by the secure and limited alternatives one’s society offers one, and if one does not look up from one’s path one can live out one’s life with a certain dull security. Devoid of imagination, as the Philistine always is, one lives in a certain trivial province of experience as to how things go, what is possible, what usually occurs….Philistinism tranquilizes itself in the trivial. Why do beings accept to live a trivial life? Because the danger of a full horizon of experience, of course. This is the deeper motivation of philistinism, that it celebrates the triumph over possibility, over freedom. Philistinism knows its real enemy: freedom is dangerous. If you follow it to willingly in threatens to pull you into the air; if you give it up to wholly, you become a prisoner of necessity. The safest thing is to tow the mark of what is socially possible. For philistinism thinks it is in control of possibility, it thinks that when it has decoyed this prodigious elasticity into the field of probability or into the madhouse it holds it a prisoner; it carries possibility around like a prisoner in the change of the probable, shows it off. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Consciousness itself is born out of the awareness of these limits. Human consciousness is the distinguishing feature of our existence; without limitations we would never have developed it. Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tensions between possibilities and limitations. Infants begin to be aware of limits when they experience the balls as different from themselves; mother is a limiting factor for them in that she does not feed them every time they cry for food. Though a multitude of such limiting experiences they learn to develop the capacity to differentiate themselves from others and from objects and to delay gratification. If there had been no limits, there would be no consciousness. Our discussion so far may seem, at first glance, to be discouraging, but not when we probe more deeply. It is not by accident that the Hebrew myth that marks the beginning of human consciousness, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is portrayed in the context of rebellion. Consciousness is born in the struggle against a limit, called there a prohibition. Going beyond the limit set by Yahweh is then punished by the acquiring of others limits which operate inwardly in the human being—anxiety, the feeling of alienation and guilt. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

However, valuable qualities also come out of this experience of rebellion—the sense of personal responsibility and ultimately the possibility, born out of loneliness, of human love. Confronting limits for the human personality actually turns out to be expansive. Limiting and expanding thus go further. Civilization arose out of out physical limitations, or what some called inferiority. Tooth for tooth and claw for claw, men and women were inferior to the wild animals. In the struggle against these limitations for their survival, human beings evolved their intelligence. Conflict is both king of all and father of all. Conflict presupposes limits, and the struggle with limits is actually the source of creative productions. The limits are as necessary as those provided by the banks of the river, without which the water would be dispersed on the Earth and there would be no river—that is, the river is constituted by the tension between the flowing water and the banks. Art in the same way requires limits as a necessary factor in its birth. Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem. Again listen, unwise people do not understand how that which differs with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

In a discussion of how he composed his music, Duke Ellington explained that since his trumpet play could reach certain notes beautifully but not other notes, and the same with his trombonist, he had to write his music within those limits. “It’s good to have limits,” he remarked. True, in our age there is occurring a new valuation of spontaneity and a strong reaction against rigidity. This goes along with a rediscovery of the values of the childlike capacity to play. In modern art, as we all know, there has evolved a new interest in children’s painting as well as in peasant and primitive art, and these kinds of spontaneity often are used as models for adult art work. This is especially true in psychotherapy. The great majority of patients experience themselves as stifled and inhibited by the excessive and rigid limits insisted on by their parents. One of their reasons for coming for therapy in the first place is this conviction that all of this needs to be thrown overboard. Even if it is simplistic, this urge toward spontaneity obviously should be valued by the therapist. If they are to become integrated in any effective sense, people must recover the lost aspects of their personalities, lost under a pile of inhibitions. However, we must not forget that these stages in therapy, like children’s art, are interim stages. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Children’s art is characterized by an unfinished quality. Despite the apparent similarity with nonobjective art, it still lacks the tension necessary for authentic mature art. It is a promise but not yet an achievement. Sooner or later the growing person’s art must relate itself to the dialectic tension that comes out confronting limits and is present in all forms of mature art. Michelangelo’s writhing slaves; van Gogh’s fiercely twisting cypress trees; Cezanne’s lovely yellow-green landscapes of southern France, reminding us of the freshness of eternal spring—these works have that spontaneity, but they also have the mature quality that comes from the absorption of tension. This makes them much more than interesting; it makes them great. The controlled and transcended tension present in the work of art is the result of the artists’ successful struggle with and against the limits. Remember, what is within you is everywhere. What is not, is nowhere. To start our quest for truth, we must start in the land where we are living, where destiny has put us. Look deeper into your own heart, for that is where what you really seek is. Enlightenment involves liberation from one’s ego, its captivity and deceitfulness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

It is not emotional exuberance which produces a high spiritual result, but the depth and concentration with which truth is seen. The vibrations it emits will now clear you of external influences of false Gods and help you to center within your divine self. Prepare for your journey into eternal light and abundance and its integration with your soul. Know that the comfort you will find is that which you have the strength to create and perceive. Find strength to create and perceive comfort and joy within you soul as you connected with our Heavenly Father. “We would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage if it were requisite with the justice of God, or if he should command us so to do. However, behold God doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in him, and he will deliver us. Therefore, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissension, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God,” reports Alma 61.12-14. Many an old fable is a perfect allegory of this quest. The temptations and perils, the toils and adventures of its hero are faithful references to what the aspirant has always encountered in the past and will encounter in our own day. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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