Do not seek to understand me or the time from which I came. You cannot. We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the World, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully. If we hope to mitigate violence, we must deal with it on a level commensurate with the problem. Why do most proposals for alleviating violence strike us as superficial when compared with the problem itself? Take, for example, the common cry that TV is the culprit. The most vocal representative of this argument is the psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, who believes that violence is “socially conditioned and socially preventable.” He holds the mass media largely responsible for the spread of violence since they stimulate children to think violently, acclimatize people to violence, and create a generation of “hard” Americas who are competitive and insensitive and who accept violence as a way of life. However, this argument assumes that violence is a relatively recent arrival on the American scene, born fifty years ago with mass media, which is far from the truth. The problem of violence has been present in American all along. Would Dr. Wertham prefer that wars no longer be covered on TV? The evil is surely not TV, but the war itself. #RandolphHarris 1 of 13

 Mass communication holds a mirror up to ourselves, and would those who argue, like Dr. Wertham, break the mirror so that we can remain blissfully innocent of our own destructiveness? “The whole idea is that of ‘original innocence,’” writes Hedy Bookin, in criticizing Dr. Wertham’s view. “Humans would never be so evil if the serpent of the mass media had not tempted them with the forbidden fruit of violence.” Dr. Wertham’s argument would be stronger if it were made against the passive character of television, for a steady diet of TV cultivates not the participation but the spectator role of the viewer. In this way it may cultivate a real feeling of impotence, and this impotence may well contribute to violence. Other practical suggestions that have been offered often impress one as being good but failing to go deeply enough. Konrad Lorenz’s recommendation of holding more international sports contest in order to drain off international competition is sound in itself. However, it again deals mainly with a symptom. The ping-pong matches between the Untied States and China were more a result of a change in attitude between the two countries—they occurred after President Nixon had already planned his trip to China. #RandolphHarris 2 of 13

There is also merit in Anthony Storr’s proposals for greater effort toward birth control and in his acceptance of euthanasia, both aimed at lessening the pressure of the World’s burgeoning populations and the latter at permitting old people to pass out of life with some dignity. However, again, the problem is already upon us, and we must search for ways of dealing with the aggression and violence already present in the Western World. Violence is a symptom. The disease is variously powerlessness, insignificance, injustice—in short, a conviction that I am less than human and I am homeless in the World. For a convenient shorthand I have called the disease impotence, fully recognizing that violence also requires for its triggering some promise, a despair combined with the hope that conditions cannot but be bettered by one’s own pain or death. To strike the disease at its core requires that we deal with the impotence. Ideally, we must find ways of sharing and distributing power so that every person, in whatever realm of our bureaucratic society, can feel that one too counts, that one too makes a difference to one’s fellows and is not cast out on the dunghill of indifferences as a nonperson. Power is the birthright of every human being. It is the source of one’s self-esteem and the root of one’s conviction that one is interpersonally significant. #RandolphHarris 3 of 13

Regardless of a person’s unrepresented status, disposition, mental health, or state of the nation, overpopulation and pollution, the problem is roughly the same—to enable the individual to feel that one will be counted, that one has a valuable function, that “attention will be paid.” I do not speak of external opportunities for being to be individuals—the last two hundred years of inventions have steadily liberated human beings. I speak rather of the inward conviction of significance, the individual’s psychological and spiritual valuing by oneself and by one’s fellows. I wish to illustrate how this distribution of power is possible and how it alleviates violence. The University of Oklahoma was able to avoid riots—and in a creative rather than suppressive way—when most other universities were torn by violence. In September, 1967, under the newly appointed president, J. Herbert Holloman, there was instituted a plan to survey the whole educational project and reconstruct the university. To that end twenty-three committees were set up, comprising all groups affected by the university. This included faculty, students, administrators, private citizens, alumni, and legislators. For students this was no token representation. Their opinion was an essential part of the study. #RandolphHarris 4 of 13

When riots swept over the colleges and universities at the time of the Kent State shooting, Oklahoma had its uproar but no violence. Those in the best position to know at Oklahoma stated that it was this giving the students an integral part of the reconstruction that was responsible for their freedom from violence. It was power distributed—not paternalistically, but authentically. The students’ judgment was valued, desired, and utilized—as, indeed, it would have to be if such a reconstruction was to be effective. It was power with responsibility in accord with the level of development of the persons (for example, students) involved. Responsibility was commensurate with the power. When the threats did come, they did not escalate into violence. Why should the students become violent? They were not impotent; it had already been demonstrated that they have their voice in the direction of the university. An interesting event occurred which shows the changed mood at this university. In the days immediately following the Kent States shooting, a group of radical students carrying North Vietnamese flags rode motorcycles through the lines of parading ROTC. Then they picketed the ROTC building. Tension was high and dangerously near the boiling point. #RandolphHarris 5 of 13

The colonel in charge of ROTC felt this tension, as did everyone else; it was the taut state that called either for action or explosion into violence. What to do! His eye lighted on a large coffee urn in his office. He got this out and with the assistance of a few helpers he served coffee to the picketers. This “blew my mind” said one of the nearby faculty members; and it so impressed the picketers that tension was greatly reduced without violence. This colonel, as I later talked to him, was not an especially imaginative man, and he disclaimed any intention of a nonviolent or altruistic strategy or even any conscious hope that his act would have any effect. He felt only that he had to do something, and the coffee urn was the one thing at hand. It is an interesting illustration of the build-up of energy almost to the breaking point and its rechanneling before its outbreak in a constructive rather than destructive direction. For many years I have been convinced that something occurs in the creative working of the imagination that is more fundamental—but more puzzling—than we have assumed in contemporary psychology. In our day of dedication to the facts and hard-headed objectivity, we have disparaged imagination: it gets us away from “reality”; it taints our work with “subjectivity”; and, worst of all, it is said to be unscientific. #RandolphHarris 6 of 13

As a result, art and imagination are often taken as the “frosting” to life rather than as the solid food. No wonder people think of “art” in terms of its cognate, “artificial,” or even consider it a luxury that slyly fools us, “artifice.” Throughout Western history our dilemma has been whether imagination shall turn out to be artifice or the source of being. What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms and are fundamentally dependent on them rather than art being merely a decoration for our work when science and logic have produced it? These are the hypotheses I propose here. This same problem is related to psychotherapy in ways that are much more profound than merely the play on words. In other words, is psychotherapy an artifice, a process that is characterized by artificiality, or is it a process that can give birth to new being? Pondering these hypotheses, I brought data to my assistance from the dreams of persons in therapy. By dreaming, persons in analysis, I saw, are doing something on a level quite below that of psychodynamics. They are struggling with their World—to make sense out of nonsense, meaning out of chaos, coherence out of conflict. They are doing it by imagination, by constructing new forms and relationships in their World, and by achieving through proportion and perspective a World in which they can survive and live with some meaning. #RandolphHarris 7 of 13

Here is a simple dream. It was related by an intelligent man who seems younger than his thirty years, coming from a culture where fathers have considerable authority. I was in the sea playing with some large porpoises. I like porpoises and wanted these to be like pets. Then I began to get afraid, thinking that the big porpoises would hurt me. I went out of the water, on the shore, and now I seem to be a cat hanging by its tail from a tree. The cat is curled up in a tear-drop form, but its eyes are big and seductive, one of them winking. A porpoise comes up, and, like a father cajoling a youngster out of bed with “get up and get going,” it hits the cat lightly. The cat then becomes afraid with a real panic and bounds off in a straight line into the higher rocks, away from the sea. Let us put aside such obvious symbols as the big porpoises being father and so on—symbols that are almost always confused with symptoms. I ask you to take the dream as an abstract painting, to look at it as pure form and motion. We see first a smallish form, namely the boy, playing with the larger forms, the porpoises. Imagine the former as a small circle, and the latter as large circles. The playing movement conveys a kind of love in the dream, which we could express by lines toward each other converging in the play. #RandolphHarris 8 of 13

In the second scene we see the smaller form (the boy in his fright) moving in a line out of the sea and away from the larger forms. The third scene shows the smaller form as a cat, now in an elliptical, tearlike, form, the coyness of the cat’s eyes being seductive. The big form now coming toward the cat moves into the cajoling act and the lines here, it seems to me, would be confused. This is a typical neurotic phase consisting of the dreamer trying to resolve one’s relationship with his father and the World. And, of course, it does not work. The fourth and last scene is the panic in which the smaller form, the cat, moves rapidly out of the scene. It dashes toward the higher rocks. The motion is in a straight line off the canvas. The whole dream can be seen as an endeavor through form and motion to resolve this young man’s relationship, in its love and its fear, to one’s father and father figures. The resolution is a vivid failure. However, the “painting” or play, Ionescolike though it be, shows like many a contemporary drama the vital tension in the irresolution of conflict. Therapeutically speaking, the patient is certainly facing his conflicts, albeit he can at the moment do nothing but flee. #RandolphHarris 9 of 13

We also can see in these scenes a progression of planes: first, the plane of the sea; second, the higher plane of the land with the tree; and third, the highest plane of all, namely the rocks on the mountain to which the cat leaps. These may be conceived as higher levels of consciousness to which the dreamer climbs. This expansion of consciousness may represent an important gain for the patient even though in a dream the actual resolution of the problem is a failure. When we turn such a dream into an abstract painting, we are on a deeper level than psychodynamics. I do not mean so we should leave out the contents of the dreams of our patients. I mean we should go beyond contents to the ground forms. We shall then be dealing with basic forms that only later, and derivatively, become formulations. From the most obvious viewpoint, the son is trying to work out a better relationship with his father, to be accepted as a comrade, let us say. However, on a deeper level he is trying to construct a World that makes sense, that has space and motion and keeps these in some proportion, a World that one can live in. You can live without a father who accepts you, but you cannot live without a World that makes some sense to you. Symbol in this sense no longer means symptoms. Symbol returns to its original and root meanings of “drawing together” (sym-ballein). The problem—the neurosis and its elements—is described by the antonym of symbolic, namely diabolic (dia-ballein), “pulling apart.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 13

Dreams are par excellence the realm of symbols and myths. I use the term myth not in the pejorative sense of “falsehood,” but in the sense of a form of universal truth revealed in some partial way to the dreamer. These are ways human consciousness makes sense of the World. Persons in therapy, like all of us, are trying to make sense out of nonsense, trying to put the World into some perspective, trying to form out of the chaos they are suffering some order and harmony. After having studied a series of dreams of persons in therapy, I am convinced that there is one quality that is always present, a quality I call passion for form. The patient constructs in his “unconscious” a drama; it has a beginning, something happens and is “flashed one the stage,” and then it comes to some kind of denouement. I have noted the forms in the dreams being repeated, revised, remolded, and then, like a motif in a symphony, returning triumphantly to be drawn together to make a meaningful whole of the series. There is a formula covering three progressive stages of the quest: Hearing, Reflection, Enlightenment. It means: Receiving instruction, Thinking constantly over the teachings until they are thoroughly assimilated, Experiencing glimpses of a mystical nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 13

With the end of this third phase, the aspirant has not only repeat and prolong the glimpses until one’s whole life is permeated by the wisdom and peace which is their fruit, but also to receive and apply the highest and final philosophic doctrine. With this, one’s enlightenment becomes natural, effortless, unbroken. It is unified with one’s activity, established whether one is busy in the World or seated in prayer. Beings pass through three stages of development from the Inert through the Passional to the Harmonious. In the course of one’s life the student will pass from one phase of development to another, thus gradually enriching and expanding one’s whole character. To start on the quest is the first step. To continue on it is the second, and possibly harder. Thoroughly to finish the quest is the hardest step of all. It is true that one is only at the beginning of one’s quest for truth, that its fulfillment may be far far away, but everything must have a beginning. It is a progressive training which continues throughout one’s lifetime. There are times to intensify the quest, to hasten its tempo and stiffen its disciplines. With growth of outlook, development of mind, correct instruction from text or teacher, correct interpretation of one’s own and others’ experiences, one moves out of narrow sectarianism into a new Universal level. The attitude of faith in another person is undoubtedly helpful to beginners, provided the faith is justified. #RandolphHarris 12 of 13

However, it is a stage necessarily inferior to the attitude of faith in one’s own soul. To turn inwards rather than outwards, to overcome the tendency towards externality, is to ascend to a higher stage. Judge the sage if you must by the profound impress one makes on the soul of one’s age or by the service which one incessantly renders to the utmost limit of one’s strength. Jesus was moved unweariedly and incessantly trying to awaken the hearts of beings to their true goal and giving to those who approached him with faith the benediction of grace. Death caught him in the midst of so much of this activity that it aroused the hostility of professional religionists whose vested interests were in danger and who to save their own purses put Jesus on the cross. One alone may rightly be called a sage who not only has attained the highest spiritual stage but has also found a new meaning in the finite World and the finite human life. One does not need to run away from the familiar World, for one sees it by a diviner light. One experiences not only its obvious transiency and multiplicity but also its hidden eternality and unity. “And also the Lord will remember the prayers of the righteous, which have been put up unto him for them,” Mormon 5.21. Negative transference, positive transference, balanced orientation, all are staged of external adjustment and deserve no high evaluation than that. On the internal level alone is the surest equilibrium, attainable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 13

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