
The city room is an outhouse. You can get black lung by working on the rewrite desk for a week. They should pass a law against vaping, cigarettes, and the joint. There is need of a different kind, rooted exclusively in the human situation—the need for the development of a character structure. This need has to do with the phenomenon that was dealt with before, the decreasing significance of instinctive equipment in humans Effective behaviour presupposed that one can act immediately—that is, without being delayed by too much doubt and in a relatively integrated manner. It seems plausible to speculate that human beings, being still less determined by instinct than other terrestrial beings, would have been a biological failure if one had not developed a substitute for the instincts one lacked. This substitute also had to have the function of instincts: enabling one to act as if one were motivated by instincts. This substitute is the human character. Character is the specific structure in which human energy is organized in the pursuit of human’s goals; it motivates behaviour according to its dominate goals: a person acts “instinctively,” we say, in accordance with one’s character. Character is a human’s fate. The miser does not ponder whether one should save or spend; one is driven to save and to hoard; the exploitative-sadistic character is driven by the passion to exploit. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The sadistic character is driven by the passion to control; the loving-productive character cannot help striving for love and sharing. These character-conditioned drives and strivings are so strong and unquestionable for the respective persons that they feel that theirs is simply a “natural” reaction, and find it difficult to really believe that there are other people whose nature is quite different. When they cannot help becoming aware of it, they prefer to think that these others suffer from some kind of deformation and are deviants from human nature. Anybody who has some sensitivity in judging other people (it is of course much more difficult with regard to oneself) sense whether a person has a sadistic or a destructive or a loving character; one sees enduring traits behind the overt behaviour and will be capable of sensing the insincerity of a destructive character who behaves as if one were a loving person. Sudden outburst of violence may be caused by brain disease, such as tumors, and such have, of course, nothing to do with depressive-bored states. Human groups from the very beginning have lived under very diverse environmental circumstances, regards different areas in the World and as regards fundamental changes of climate and vegetation within the same area. Since the emergence of Homo developed the less was a result of genetic changes, and the last forty thousand years such change is nil. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Yet these different environmental situations made is necessary for each group to adapt its behaviour to these respective situations, not only by learning but also by developing a “social character.” The concept of social character is based on the consideration that each form of society (or social class) needs to use human energy in the specific manner necessary for the functioning of that particular society. Its members want to do what they have to do if the society is to function properly. This process of transforming general psychic energy into specific psychosocial energy is mediated by the social character. The means by which social character is formed are essentially cultural. Through the agency of the parents, society transmits to the young its values, prescriptions, commands, et cetera. In more than a rudimentary sense, character is a human phenomenon; as far as we know human were able to create a substitute for their lost instinctive adaptation. The acquisition of character was a very important and necessary element in the process of human survival, but it has also many disadvantages and even dangers. Inasmuch as character is formed by traditions and motivates humans without appealing to one’s reason, it is often not adapted to or is sometimes even direct contradiction to new conditions. For example, concepts like the absolute sovereignty of the state are rooted in an older type of social character and are dangerous for the survival of humans in the atomic age. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The concept of character is crucial for the understanding of the manifestations of malignant aggression. The destructive and sadistic passions in a person are usually organized in one’s character system. In a sadistic person, for instance, the sadistic drive is a dominant part of one’s character structure and motivates ne to behave sadistically, limited only by one’s concern for self-preservation. In a person with a sadistic character, a sadistic impulse is constantly active, waiting only for a proper situation and a fitting renationalization to be acted out. Such a person corresponds almost completely to Lorenz’s hydraulic model inasmuch as character-rooted sadism is a spontaneously flowing impulse, seeking for occasions to be expressed and creating such occasions where they are not readily at hand by “appetitive behaviour.” The decisive difference is that the source of the sadistic passion lies in the character and not in a phylogenetically programmed neural area; hence it is not common to all humans, but only to those who share the same character. Human’s existential needs can be satisfied in different ways. The need for an object of devotion can be answered by devotion to God, love, and truth—or by idolatry of destructive idols. The need for relatedness can be answered by love and kindness—or by dependence, sadism, masochism, destructiveness, and narcissism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The need for unity and rootedness can be answered by the passions for solidarity, brotherliness, love, and mystical experience—or by drunkenness, addition to harmful and intoxicating substances, depersonalization. The need for effectiveness can be answered by love, productive work—or by sadism and destructiveness. The need for stimulation and excitation can be answered by productive interest in humans, nature, art, ideas—or by a greedy pursuit of ever-changing pleasures. What are the conditions for the development of character—rooted passions? We consider first that these passions do not appear as single units but as syndromes. Love, solidarity, justice, reason are interrelated; they are all manifestations of the same productive orientation that I shall call the “life-furthering syndrome.” On the other hand, sadomasochism, destructiveness, greed, narcissism, incestuousness also belong together and are rooted in the same basic orientation: “life-thwarting syndrome.” Where one element of the syndrome is to be found, the other also exist in various degrees, but this does not mean that someone is ruled either by the one or by the other syndrome. In fact, people in whom this is the case are the exceptions: the average person is a blend of both syndromes; what matters for the behaviour of the person and the possibility of change is precisely the respective strength of each syndrome. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
As to the neurophysiological conditions for the development of the two respective kinds of passions, we must start out from the fact that humans are unfinished and “uncompleted.” Not only is the human brain not fully developed at birth, but the state of disequilibrium in which one finds oneself leaves one as an open-ended process to which there is no final solution. However, are humans—being deprived of the help of instincts and equipped only with the “weak reed” of reason by which one deceives oneself so easily—left without any help from one’s neurophysiological equipment? It seems that this assumption would miss an important point. One’s brain, so superior to that of the primate not only in size but also in the quality and structure of its neurons, has the capacity to recognize what kinds of goals are conducive to human’s health and growth, physically as well as psychically. It can set goals leading to the realization of human’s real, rational needs, and humans can organize one’s society in ways conducive to this realization. Humans are not only unfinished, incomplete, burdened by contradictions; one also can be defined as a being in active search of one’s optimal development, even though this search must often fail because external conditions are too unfavourable. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The assumption that humans are a being in active search of their optimal development is not without support from neurophysiological data. Human’s capacity for intelligently directed self-development confers upon one the ability to determine the pattern of one’s culture and so to shape the course of human evolution in directions of one’s own choice. This ability, which no other terrestrial beings that we know of have, is human’s most distinctive characteristic, and it is perhaps the most significant fact known to since. It is now established beyond peradventure of doubt that various levels of nervous system organization are interdependently interrelated with one another. Somehow, by means that are still mysterious, purposive behaviour organized at each of these different levels of integrative function becomes expressed by a linked sequence of over-all purposes representing some kind of final judicious reckoning among contending functions. The purpose of the whole organism are clearly manifested and continuously served according to some integrated internal point of view. Some goal-seeking systems at the molecular level can be identified by physical-chemical techniques. Other goal-seeking systems at the level of the brain circuitry can be identified by neurophysiological techniques. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
At each level, parts of these systems are concerned with the appetites and satisfactions that govern behaviour. All of these goal-seeking systems originate in and are intrinsic to protoplasmic materials. Many such systems are peculiarly specialized and are located in particular nervous and endocrine systems. Evolutionarily elaborate organisms possess appetites and satisfactions, not only to fulfill vegetative needs; not simply for the obligate cooperations required for unions in pleasures of the flesh, the rearing of young, and the safeguarding of food, family and territory; not just for the adaptive behaviours essential to meet successfully the vicissitudes of environmental change; but also for extra energies, strivings, and outreaching—the extravagance that go beyond mere survival. The brain is a product of evolution, just as are teeth and claws; but we can expect much more of the brain because of its capacities for constructive adaptation. Neuroscientists can take as their long-range objective the understanding of the fullest potentialities of humankind in order to help humanity become more fully self-aware and to illuminate human’s nobler options. Above all, it is the human brain, with its capacities for memory, learning, communication, imagination, creativity, and the powers of self-awareness, that distinguishes humanity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Cooperation, faith, mutual trust, and altruism are built into the fabric of the nervous system and propelled by internal satisfactions attached to them. Mammal and many other forms of life could not survive a single generation without built-in cooperative behaviour. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship. However complex the psychology of the sense of self and of the establishment of an identity eventually becomes as the baby grows, no sense of self emerges expect on the basis of this relation in the sense of BEING. This sense of being is something that antedates the idea of being-at-one with, because there has not yet been anything except identity. Two separate people can feel at one, but hereat the place that I am examining, the baby and the object are one. Many of my patients have suffered disturbances in the process of self-formation, and therapy can help them in specific ways to repair that early damage. I have become convinced that, to some extent at least, a properly conducted analysis of patients suffering from a disturbance in the formation of the self creates a psychological matrix that encourages the re-activation of the original development tendency. The nuclear self of the patient is consolidated, the talents and skills of the analysand that are correlated to the nuclear self are revitalized, while other aspects of the self are discarded or recede. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
In the state of primary narcissism, there is as yet no differentiation of self and object (usually an attachment figure like a parent, or may a house). Without this differentiation there can be no object-representation, and this makes it possible for the wonderful feelings of goodness, rightness, safety and omnipotence which belongs to that stage for the lucky ones. Yes, babies often feel like they are omnipotent because of a sense that is traced to what is called “oceanic feeling,” and it persists int adult life, or at least the longing for it persists. It is basically a narcissistic feeling of well-being, in conjunction with a feeling of union with some an all-powerful force—obviously the home-loving feelings. To my mind, narcissistic feelings come from the memory—traces of what it was like in the days of oceanic feelings and harmonious interpenetrating mix-up when the self and a beneficent and powerful (m)other were sill merged in the infant’s experience. This must have felt good. The baby’s self-esteem is determined by the gratification of its (instinctual) needs. The first supply of satisfaction from the external World is simultaneously the first regulator of self-esteem. When being gratified, the baby feels wonderful, indeed omnipotent. When the baby has a need which is not being satisfied, it fees irritated, frustrated, deprived, and it longs for what will remove the disturbing displeasure. The motivation comes from the wish to restore equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
The longing for the return of omnipotence and the longing for the removal of instinctual tension are not yet differentiated from each other. If one succeeds in getting rid of an unpleasant stimulus, one’s self-esteem is again restored. The individual’s experiences connected with omnipotence lead to a most significant need of the human mind. The longing for the oceanic feeling of primary narcissism can be called the “narcissistic need.” “Self-esteem” is awareness of how close the individual is to the original omnipotence. Its (instinctual) needs make the child dependent on the parent. However, the child actually renounces its own instinctual satisfaction. The tendency to participate in the parent’s omnipotence, after renunciation of one’s own, differentiates itself from the desire for instinctual satisfaction. Thereafter every token of love from the powerful adult has the same effect as the satisfaction of instinctual needs. The nature of the child’s dependence is thus changed. When the baby loses love, the small child loses self-esteem, and when one regains love the self-esteem also returns. This is what makes children so educable. They need supplies of affection so badly that they are ready to renounce other satisfactions if rewards of affection are promised or if withdrawal of affection is threatened. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The promise of necessary narcissistic supplies of affection under the condition of obedience and the threat of withdrawal of these supplies if the conditions are not fulfilled are the weapons of any authority. Some people behave as though any flaw, any difference of opinion, any lack in total harmony between them and an attachment figure or authority figure or even a peer is quite intolerable. When this occurs, they feel great distress and outrage, that their perhaps not yet even spoken thoughts and feeling had not been responded to by those people who are crafting their futures, and they require the full attention of these individuals so they can mirror their every move in an attempt to figure out what behaviours are proper decent. The individual is back in a development phase where one need a totally accurate and absolutely competent self-object. This way of relating is called “mirror-transference” and it is basically a revival of the “purified pleasure-ego,” in which the individual attempts to save the original all-embracing narcissism by concentrating perfection and power upon the self—here called the grandiose self—and by turning disdainfully aware from an outside to which all imperfections have been assigned. When children or mature people behave as though they are entitled to everyone’s deference and subservience, in ordinary life, we call them cheeky or demanding or pompous, and we respond by setting limits, through noncompliance, ridicule, scolding, or whatever. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The self-object state of mind exists exactly to the extent that the mother is prompt to bring to the baby what it needs precisely at the moment the baby needs it. This confirms the illusion, so necessary at that stage, of harmony, security, and invulnerable power. For the self-object is the baby’s experience of its own competence, of its own power to have whatever it needs. We can get a glimpse of what this experience may feel like, in a sentence such as “To get what you want makes you feel grand, wonderful.” This sentence can mean both “makes you feel grand, wonderfully satisfied” and “makes you feel you are a grand, wonderful person.” This distinction between “I feel grand” and “I feel that I am grand” is more sophisticated than infants (and many adults) are capable of making. So the parents or care givers who are to prompt to cater to one’s baby keeps the baby feeling grand and confirms that baby’s sense of goodness and well-being. This promptness and accuracy of response is called “mirroring”: there is a symmetry between the baby’s phantasy-image of what it needs and the care giver’s intelligent caring supply of that need. I will often call it confirming, because it also confirms the baby’s sense of its own rightness: its right to exist, to have these needs, to have these gratifications. The confirming/mirroring process has important implications for the development of the infant’s sense of self. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
As if it has formed itself, the human environment reacts to even the smallest baby to confirm this idea. When, within the matrix of mutual empathy between the infant and its self-object, the baby’s innate potentialities and the self-object’s expectations converge, is it permissible to consider this juncture the point of origin of the infant’s primal rudimentary self? Accurate empathy is the first step in mirroring—knowing what the baby feels. Doing something about whatever is troubling the bay is the second step—but only the second. Except in extreme situations, the first is more important. The first requirement is not that something be done for the child; the first requirement is to understand and absorb what the child is experiencing and to communicate back some recognition and acceptance of its experience. In short, do not just shovel the silver spoon in, confirm the child’s right to hunger and satisfaction. When that happens in the right way, the child’s sense of itself is strengthened. The child then experiences hunger (or whatever), but not to such an extent that it becomes oppressed, humiliatingly dependent, or hurt—certainly not to the explosive extreme extent which would disrupt the emerging organization of self-structures. Gratifications also relate to beneficial satisfactions springing from buoyant health, vigorous and rested; delight accompanying both genetically endowed and socially acquired values; joys, solitary and shared feelings of pleasant excitement, engendered by exposure to novelty and during the quest for novelty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
If anyone has a clear intuition about a matter, it would be foolish of one to trust intellect alone in the same matter. Gratifications result from satisfaction of curiosity and the pleasure of inquiry, from the acquisition of widening degrees of individual and collective freedom. Beneficial features of satisfaction enable humans to sustain unbelievable privations and yet to cling to life and, beyond that, to attach importance to beliefs tat may surpass the values of life itself. We do not have to speculate on which special area of the brain generates higher strivings, such as those for solidarity, altruism, mutual trust, and truth, but we must look at the brain system as a whole from the standpoint of its evolution in the service of survival. Empathy and love are qualities inherent in the brain system. How is it possible for two people to communicate, since language presupposed shared experience? Since the environment does not exist for humans by themselves but in their relationship to the human observer, communication presupposed that we find the like representation of environment in the two elements whoa re separated by their skins, but alike in their structure. When they realize and utilize this insight then A knows what A knows, because A identifies oneself with A and we have the equality I-Thou. Clearly, identification is the strongest coalition—and its mist subtle manifestation is love. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The intellect is one medium of understanding, the intuition is another. The intuition should give orders which the intellect should carry out. The reasoning and particularity needed to do so and to attend to their details will then be provided by the intellect itself. However, the original function of giving direction and the authority of giving command will be vested in the intuition alone. Intuition reaches a conclusion directly, without the working of any process of reasoned thinking. What the thinking in one cannot receive, the mystical intuition can. The secret has yielded itself again and again, but not to human’s logical thinking; it has yielded itself only to human’s subtle intuition. After long thought and observation I became aware of a second brain or gland, locked in the region of the heart, which commanded with authority. I discovered that most of the difficulties of life were the result of the head-brain attempting to do the work of the heart-brain. It was like a skilled labourer trying to assume the place of a high-powered engineer. The point which appears in space is a point of light. It spreads and spreads and spreads and becomes the World-Mind. God has emerged out of Godhead. And out of the World-Mind the World itself emerges—not all at once, but in various stages. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
From that great light come all other and lesser lights, come the suns and the planets, the galaxies, the Universes, and all the mighty hosts of creatures small and great, of being just beginning to sense and other fully conscious, aware, wise. And the World appear the opposite, the dual principle which can be detected everywhere in Nature, the equilibrium. The Lord is just, and hath loved justice. There are two kinds of justice. The one consists in mutual giving and receiving, as in buying and selling, and other kinds of intercourse and exchange. This the Philosopher calls commutative justice, that directs exchange and intercourse in business. This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: “Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made one?” (Romans 11.35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what one’s rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in a ruling family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the Universe, which is seen both in effects of nature and in effects of will, shows forth the justice of God. Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nim. Viii, 4): “We must needs see that God is truly just, in seeing how He gives to all existing things what is proper to the condition of each; and preserves the nature of each in the order and with the power that properly belong to it.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Certain of the moral virtues are concerned with the passions, as temperance wit concupiscence, fortitude with fear and daring, meekness with anger. Such virtues as these can only metaphorically be attributed to God; since, as stated above, in God there are no passions; nr a sensitive appetite, which is, as the Philosopher says, the subject of those virtues. On the other hand, certain moral virtues are concerned with works of giving and expending; such as justice, liberality, and magnificence; and these reside not in the sensitive faculty, but in the will. Hence, there is nothing to prevent out attributing these virtues to God; although not in civil matters, but in such acts as are not unbecoming to Him. For, as the Philosopher says, it would be absurd to praise God for His political virtues. Since good as perceived by intellect is the object of the will, it is impossible for God to will anything but what His wisdom approves. This is, as it were, is law of justice, in accordance with which His will is right and just. Hence, what He does according to His will He does justly: as we do justly what we do according to the law. However, whereas law comes to us from some higher power, God is a law unto Himself. Now is the time to be children of the light. That is where we now stand in our World. That is the situation we now have to deal with. We are beyond the point where mere talk—no matter how sound—can make an impression. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Demonstration is required. We must live what we talk, even in places where we cannot talk what we live. We stand again in the World of the first century, when children of light first entered it. The test is reality. If the bewildering array of spiritualities and ideologies that throng our times really can do what apprenticeship to Christ can do, what more is there to say? There is no effectual response to our current situation expect for the children of light to be who and what they were called to be by Christ their head. Mere “reason” and “fact” cannot effectively respond, because they are now under that same sway of public spirit and institutions as are the arts and public life generally—and indeed as much of the “church visible” as well. Only when those who really do know that Jesus Christ is the light of the World take up their stand with him, and fulfill their calling from him to be children of light where they are, will there by any realistic hope of stemming the tide of evil and showing the way out of that tide for those who really want out. The call of Christ today is the same as it was when he left us here to serve him “even to the end of the age,” reports Matthew 28.20. We have not yet come to the “end of the age.” That call is to be his apprentices, alive in the power of God, learning to do all he said to do, leading others into apprenticeship to him, and also teaching them how to do everything he said. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
If we follow that call today in our Christian groups to become the children of the light, the morbid and difficult moments can be replaced by hope and light offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it did in past time. Also, the most important thing happening in our communities will be what is happening in our churches. “Let your light so shine before humans, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in Heaven,” reports Matthew 5.14-16. And now that we know, from our studies here, what it takes to become mature children of the light, how could we possibly be excused from not taking that open path and leading others to it. We will then, once again, see among us the presence of God who answers by fire. As Moses said to the Lord long ago: “Is it not by Thy going with us, that we, I and Thy people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the Earth?” (Exodus 33.16). As coins pouring from your lap, please rain down your gifts and blessings on me, Prosperous One. As plants turning green in the spring, please bring prosperity into my life, Lord of Fertility. As Ultimate Driving Machines being brought from the factory to the dealership, please send riches into my life, Great Ultimate Driving Machine. Please walk beside me, Lord of Strength, as I undergo trial. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Controller of the riches beneath the Earth, fertilizer of all life upon it, distributor of the wealth that arises from it: Lord of the Earth, Lord of Wealth, when sharing out your bounty, please do not forget me, who am faithful in your service. The breath of every living being shall bless Thy name, O Lord our God, and the spirit of all flesh shall ever glorify and extol Thee, O our King. From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. However, for Thee we have no King, Deliverer and Saviour to rescue, redeem and give sustenance and to show mercy in all times of trouble and distress; yea, we have no Sovereign but Thee. Thou wert God from the beginning even as Thou wilt be God until the end. Thou art God of all that lives, Lord of all generations, extolled in manifold praises. Thou guidest Thy World with loving kindness and Thy creatures with tender compassion. Thou dost not slumber nor sleep; Thou arousest those that sleep, and awakenest those that slumber. Thou causest the uneducated to speak, loosest the bound, supportest the falling and raisest up those that are bowed down. To Thee alone d we give thanks. Were our mouth filled with song as the sea, our tongues with joyful praise as the multitude of its waves, our lips with adoration as the spacious firmament. Father, please help me, I am calling to you! My need is great, but your power is greater. I know you will prevail over the troubles that beset me. You who created all things, please give birth to what I desire; bring it to pass. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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