We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. What was given to the enemy by misconception and ignorance, and given with the consent of the will, stands as grounds for them to work on and through—until, by the same action of the will, the “giving” is revoked, specifically and generally. The will in the past was unknowingly put for evil, and it must now be put unceasingly against it.  One of the most fruitful and far-reaching of Dr. Freud’s discoveries is his concept of narcissism. Dr. Freud himself considered it to be one of his most important findings, and employed it for the understanding of such distinct phenomena as psychosis (“narcissistic neurosis”), love, castration fear, jealously, sadism, and also for the understanding of mass phenomena, such as the readiness of the suppressed classes to be loyal to their rulers. Dr. Freud started out with his concern to understand schizophrenia in terms of the libido theory. Since the schizophrenic patient does not seem to have any libidinous relationship to objects (either in fact or in fantasy) Dr. Freud was led to questions: “What has happened to the libido which has been withdrawn from external objects in schizophrenia?” His answer is: “The libido that has been withdrawn from the external World has been directed to the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism.” Dr. Freud assumed that the libido is originally all stored in the ego, as though in a “great reservoir,” then extended to objects, but easily withdrawn from them and returned to the ego. This view was changed in 1922 when Dr. Freud wrote that “we must recognize the id as the great reservoir of the libido,” although he never seems to have abandoned entirely the earlier view. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Dr. Freud never altered the  basic idea that the original state of man, in early infancy, is that of narcissism (“primary narcissism”) in which there are not yet any relations to the outside World, that then in the course of normal development the child begins to increase in scope and intensity one’s (libidinal) relationships to the outside World, but that in many instances (the most drastic one being insanity), he withdraws his libidinal attachment from objects and directs it back to his ego (“secondary narcissism”). However, even in the case of normal development, man remains to some extent narcissistic throughout his life. What is the development of narcissism in the “normal” persons? The fetus in the womb still lives in a state of absolute narcissism. By being born, we have made the step from an absolutely self-sufficient narcissism to the perception of a changing external World and the beginning of the discovery of objects. It takes months before the infant can even perceive objects outside as such, as being part of the “not me.” By many blows to the child’s narcissism, one’s ever-increasing acquaintance with the outside World and its law, thus of “necessity,” man develops his original narcissism into “object love.” However, a human being remains to some extent narcissistic even after one has found external objects for one’s libido. Indeed, the development of the individual can be defined in Dr. Freud’s term as the evolution from absolute narcissism to a capacity for objective reasoning and object love, a capacity, however, which does not transcend definite limitations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The “normal,” “mature” person is one whose narcissism has been reduced to the socially accepted minimum without ever disappearing completely. Dr. Freud’s observation is confirmed by everyday experience. It seems that in most people one can find a narcissistic core which is not accessible and which defies any attempt to complete dissolution. This mechanistic libido concept proved more to block than to further the development of the concept of narcissism.  If one uses a concept of psychic energy which is not identical with the energy of the sexual drive, the possibilities of bringing it to its full fruition are much greater. It deals with the psychic forces, visible only through their manifestations, which have a certain intensity and a certain direction. This energy binds, unifies, and holds together the individual within oneself as well as the individual in one’s relationship to the World outside. The energy of the sexual instinct (libido) is the only important motive power for human conduct, and if one uses instead a general concept of psychic energy, the difference is not as great as many who think in dogmatic terms are prone to believe. The essential point on which any theory or therapy which could be called psychoanalysis depends, is the dynamic concept of human behaviour; that is, the assumption that highly charged forces motivate behaviour, and that behaviour can be understood and predicted only by understanding these forces. This dynamic concept of human behaviour is the center of Dr. Freud’s system. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

How these forces are theoretically conceived, whether in terms of a mechanistic-materialistic philosophy or in terms of humanistic realism, is an important question, but one which is secondary to the central issue of the dynamic interpretation of human behaviour. Two extreme examples of narcissism are “primary narcissism” of the newborn infant, and the narcissism of the insane person. The infant is not yet related to the outside World (in Freudian terminology his libido has not yet cathexed outside objects). Another way of putting it is to say that the outside World does not exist for the infant, and this to such a degree that it is not able to distinguish between the “I” and the “not I.” We might also say that the infant is not “interested” (inter-esse = “to be in”) in the World outside. The only reality that exists for the infant is itself: its body, its physical sensations of cold and warmth, thirst, need for sleep, and bodily content. The insane person is in a situation not essentially different from that of the infant. However, while for the infant, the World outside has not yet emerged as real, for the insane person it has ceased to be real. In the case of hallucinations, for instance, the senses have lost their functions of registering outside events—they register subjective experience in categories of sensory response to objects outside. In the paranoid delusion the same mechanism operates. Fear or suspicion, for instance, which are subjective emotions, become objectified in such a way that the paranoid person is convinced that other are conspiring against one; this is precisely the difference to the neurotic person: the latter may be constantly afraid of being hated, persecuted, et cetera, but one still knows that this is what one fears. For the paranoid person the fear has been transformed into a fact. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

A particular instance of narcissism which lies on the borderline between sanity and insanity can be found in some humans who have reached an extraordinary degree of power. The Egyptian pharaohs, the Roman Caesars, the Borgias, California democratic leaders, Mr. Hitler, Mr. Stalin, Mr. Trujillo—they all show certain similar features. They have attained absolute power; their word is the ultimate judgment of everything, including life and death; there seems to be no limit to their capacity to do what they want. They are gods, limited only by illness, age, and death. They try to find a solution to the problem of human existence by the desperate attempt to transcend the limitation of human existence. They try to pretend that there is no limit to their lust an to their power, so they sleep with countless woman, they kill numberless men, they build castles everywhere, they “want the moon,” they “want the impossible.” The Worst sin towards our fellow creatures is to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that is the essence of inhumanity. This is madness, even though it is an attempt to solve the problem of existence by pretending that one is not human. It is a madness which tends to grow in the lifetime of the afflicted person. The more one tries to be god, the more one isolates oneself from the human race; this isolation makes one more frightened, everybody becomes one’s enemy, and in order to stand the resulting fright one has to increase one’s power, one’s ruthlessness, and one’s narcissism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

This Caesarian madness would be nothing but plain insanity were it not for one factor: by one’s power Mr. Caesar has bent reality to his narcissistic fantasies. He had forced everybody to agree that he is a god, the most powerful and the wisest of men—hence his own megalomania seems to be a reasonable feeling. On the other hand, many will hate him, try to overthrow and kill him—hence his pathological suspicious are also backed by a nucleus of reality. As a result he does not feel disconnected from reality—hence he can keep a modicum of sanity, even though in a precarious state. Psychosis is a state of absolute narcissism, one in which the person has broken all connection with reality outside, and has made one’s own person the substitute for reality. He is entirely filled with himself or herself, one has become “god and the World” to oneself. It is precisely this insight by which Dr. Freud for the first time opened the way to the dynamic understanding of the nature of psychosis. However, for those who are not familiar with psychosis it is necessary to give a picture of narcissism as it is found in neurotic or “normal” persons. One of the most elementary examples of narcissism can be found in the average person’s attitude toward one’s own body. Most people like their own body, their face, their figure, and when asked whether they would want to change with another perhaps more handsome or beautiful person, very definitely say no. Even more telling is the fact that most people do not mind at all the sight or smell of their own feces (in fact, some like them), while they have a definite aversion for those of other people. Quite obviously there is an aesthetic or other judgment involved here; the same thing which when connected with one’s own body is pleasant, is unpleasant when connected with somebody else’s. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

Psychoanalysis has not only a clinical value as a therapy for neuroses but also a human value in its potentialities for helping people toward their best possible further development. Both objectives can be pursed in other ways; peculiar to analysis is the attempt to reach these goals through human understanding—not alone through sympathy, tolerance, and an intuitive grasp of interconnections, qualities that are indispensable in any kind of human understanding, but, more fundamentally, through an effort to obtain an accurate picture of the total personality. This is undertaken by means of specific techniques for unearthing unconscious factors, for Dr. Freud has clearly shown that we cannot obtain such a picture without recognizing the role of unconscious force. Through him we know that such forces push us into actions and feelings and responses that may be different from what we consciously desire and may even be destructive of satisfactory relations with the World around us. Certainly these unconscious motivations exist in everyone, and are by no means always productive of disturbances. It is only when disturbances exist that it is important to uncover and recognize the unconscious factors. If we can express ourselves in painting or writing with reasonable adequacy, no matter what unconscious forces drive us to paint or to write, we would scarcely bother to think about them. No matter what unconscious motivations carry us away to love or devotion, we are not interested in them so long as that love or devotion gives a constructive content to our lives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

However, if apparent success in doing productive work or in establishing a good human relationship, a success that we desperately wanted, of if one attempt after another fails and, despite all efforts to the contrary, leaves us only empty and disgruntled, we do not need to consider the unconscious factors, for we feel dimly that we cannot put the failures altogether on external circumstances. If it appears that something from within is hampering us in our pursuits, we need to examine our unconscious motivations. Particularly if it is not merely given lip service but is taken seriously, a knowledge of the existence and efficacy of such unconscious motivations is a helpful guide in any attempt at analysis. It may even be a sufficient tool for sporadically discovering this or that causal connection. For a more systematic analysis, however, it is necessary to have a somewhat more specific understanding of the unconscious factors that disturb development. In any effort to understand personality it is essential to discover the underlying driving forces of that personality. In attempting to understand a disturbed personality it is essential to discover the driving forces responsible for the disturbance. Here we are on more controversial ground. Dr. Freud believed that the disturbances generate from a conflict between environmental factors and repressed instinctual impulses. Dr. Adler, more rationalistic and superficial than Dr. Freud, believes that they are created by the ways and means that people use to asset their superiority over others. Dr. Jung, more mystical than Dr. Freud, believes in collective unconscious fantasies which, though replete with creative possibilities, may work havoc because the unconscious strivings fed by them are the exact opposite of those in the conscious mind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

My own answer is that in the center of psychic disturbances are unconscious strivings developed in order to cope with life despite fears, helplessness, and isolation. I have called then “neurotic trends.” Every explorer into the unknow has some vision of what he or she expects to find, and one can have no guarantee of the correctness of one’s vision. Discoveries have been made even though the vision was incorrect. This fact may serve as a consolation for the uncertainty of our present psychological knowledge. What then are neurotic trends? What are their characteristics, their function, their genesis, their effect on one’s life? It should be emphasized again that their essential elements are unconscious. A person may be aware of their effects, though in that case one will probably merely credit oneself with laudable character traits: if one has, for example, a neurotic need for affection one will think that one is a good and loving disposition; or if one is in the grip of a neurotic perfectionism, one will thing that one is by nature more orderly and accurate than others. One may even glimpse something of the drives producing such effects, or recognize them when they are brought to one’s attention: one may become aware, for example, that one has a need for affection or a need to be perfect. However, one is never aware to what extent one is in the grip of these strivings, to what extent they determine one’s life. Still less is one aware of the reasons why they have such power over one. The outstanding characteristic of neurotic trends is their compulsive nature, a quality that shows itself in two main ways. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

First, their objectives are pursued indiscriminately. If it is affection a person must have, one must receive it from friend and enemy, from employer and bootblack. A person obsessed by a need for perfection largely loses one’s sense of proportion. To have one’s desk in faultless order become as imperative for one as to prepare an important report in perfect fashion. Moreover, the objectives are pursed with supreme disregard for reality and real self-interest. A woman hanging on to a man to whom she relegates all responsibility for her life may be utterly oblivious to such questions as whether that particular man is an entirely appropriate person to hang on to, whether she is actually happy with him, whether she lies and respects him. If a person must be independent and self-sufficient, one will refuse to tie oneself to anyone or anything, no matter how much one spoils one’s life thereby; one must not ask or accept help, no matter how much one needs it. This absence of discrimination is often obvious to others, but the person oneself may not be aware of it. As a rule, however, if the particular trends are inconvenient to one, or is they do not coincide with recognized patterns, only then will it strike the outsider. One will notice, for instance, a compulsive negativism but may not become aware of a compulsive compliance. The second indication of the compulsive nature of neurotic trends is the reaction of anxiety that ensure from their frustration. This characteristic is highly significant, because it demonstrates the safety value of the trends. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

If for any reason, internal or external, a person feels vitally threatened, the compulsive pursuits are ineffective. If one makes any mistake, a perfectionistic person feels panicky. A person with a compulsive need for unlimited freedom becomes frighted at the prospect of any tie, whether it be an engagement to marry or the lease of an apartment. A good illustration of dear reactions of this kind is contained in Balzac’s Chagrin Leather. The hero in the novel is convinced that his span of life is shortened whenever he expressed a wish and therefore he anxiously refrains from doing so. However, once, when off his guard, he does express a wish, and even though the wish itself is unimportant he becomes panicky. The example illustrates the terror that seizes a neurotic person if his security is threatened: he feels that everything is lost if he lapses from perfection, complete independence, or whatever standard it is that represents his driving need. It is this security value that is primarily responsible for the compulsive character of the neurotic trends. If we take a look at their genesis, the function of these trend can be better understood. They develop early in life through the combined effects of given temperamental and environmental influences. Whether a child becomes submissive or rebellious under the pressure of parental coercion depends not only on the nature of the coercion but also on given qualities, such as the degree of one’s vitality, the relative softness or hardness of one’s nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Under all conditions a child will be influenced by one’s environment. What counts is whether this influence stunts or furthers growth. And which development will occur depends largely on the kind of relationship established between the child and one’s parents or others around one, including other children in the family. If the spirit at home is one of warmth, of mutual respect and consideration, the child can grow unimpeded. Unfortunately, in our civilization there are many environmental factors adverse to a child’s development. Parents, with the best of intentions, may exert so much pressure on a child that one’s initiative becomes paralyzed. There may be a combination of smothering love and intimidation, of tyranny and glorification. Parents may impress the child with the dangers awaiting one outside the walls of one’s home. One parent may force the child to side with one against another. Parents may be unpredictable and away from a jolly comradeship to a strict authoritarianism. Particularly important, a child may be led to feel that one’s right to existence lies solely in one’s living up to the parents’ expectations—measuring up to their standards or ambitions for one, enhancing their prestige, giving them blind devotion; in other words, one may be prevented from realizing that one is an individual with one’s own rights and one’s own responsibilities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

The effectiveness of such influences is not diminished by the fact that they are often subtle and veiled. Moreover, there is usually not just one adverse factor but several in combination. As a consequence of such an environment, the child does not develop a proper self-respect. One becomes insecure, apprehensive, isolated, and resentful. At the beginning, one is helpless toward these forces around one, but gradually, by intuition and experience, one develops means of coping with the environment and of saving one’s own skin. One develops a wary sensitivity as to how to manipulate others. The particular technique that one develops depend on the whole constellation of circumstances. One child realizes that by stubborn negativism and occasional temper tantrums one can ward off intrusion. One shuts others out of one’s life, living on a private island of which one is master and resenting every demand made upon one, every suggestion or expectation, as a dangerous inroad on one’s privacy. For another child no other way is open than to eradicate oneself and one’s feelings and submit blindly, eking out merely a little spot here and there where one is free to be oneself. These unoccupied territories may be primitive or sublime. They range from secret masturbation in the seclusion of the bathroom to the realm of nature, books, fantasies. In contrast to this way, a third child does not freeze one’s emotions but clings to the most powerful of the parents in a kind of desperate devotion. One blindly adopts that parent’s likes and dislikes, one’s way of living, one’s philosophy of life. One may suffer under this tendency, however, and develop simultaneously a passionate desire for self-sufficiency. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Thus the foundations are laid for the neurotic trends. They represent a way of life enforced by unfavourable conditions. The child must develop them in order to survive one’s insecurity, one’s fears, one’s loneliness. However, they give one an unconscious feeling that one must stick to the established path at all odds, lest one succumb to the dangers threatening one. With sufficient detailed knowledge of relevant factors in childhood, one can understand why a child develops a particular set of trends. It is not possible here to substantiate this assertion, because to do so would necessitate recording a number of child histories in great detail. However, it is not necessary to substantiate it, because everyone sufficiently experienced with children or with reconstructing their early development can test it out for oneself. However, if we know that within the pertinent value system (for example, that of North American urban culture, mid-twentieth century) the “welfare” of the individual is focal, the definition problem is only partly clarified. What may be specifically valued is the absolute productivity of the individual, and valuing those arrangements that favour the productivity of the individual is a circular way of valuing the society which consumes one’s products. More consistently individual-oriented is a value system tht is chiefly concerned with the optimal productivity of the individual, with provision of those circumstances that permit one to work up to capacity, to be neither an over- or under-achiever, but rather to experience full application of one’s capacities and abilities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

In this efficiency-oriented value system, it is again easy to detect the circular path from person adjustment to social gain. Finally, we can conceive of an individual-oriented value system in which the person’s achievement-reward experiences are secondary in importance to the question of one’s happiness. If one experiences subjective mental or emotion distress, and if one says (or would report upon question) over any period of time, “I am unhappy,” in such a value system, regardless of the level of the individual’s output or the efficiency of one’s working and social relationships, one is regarded as ill. The individual’s happiness is to be understood as one’s emotional response to one’s perception of one’s relations to one’s work, one’s family and friends, and to one’s community. The chronic absentee from the factory (who perhaps needs Monday for recuperative purposes); the accident-prone, compensated disability case; the evening and weekend worker who needs extra hours to “catch up”; the devotee of a vitamin-aspirin-barbiturate diet who gains brief respite, if any, from pains, pressures, pulsations, or pustules for which the physician can determine no certain locus or pathology; the job-hopper whose record shows no failure because one never remains with a task long enough to demonstrate achievement; the “academic tramp” who matriculates eternally and matures never—all such as these are variously caught in those institutional screens of society which are gauged to matter of output and effectiveness. #RandolpHarris 15 of 19

When it comes to the continuum of personal maladjustment when the source of diagnosis is essentially social diagnoses (in school, factory, community), the clinical status of the individual is non-productive, inefficient, unhappy, or non-productive, inefficient, happy, these are the most several of social pathology. If the source of diagnosis essentially personal diagnoses (self-diagnosis), the clinical status of the individual is productive, inefficient, unhappy, or productive, efficient, unhappy, severity of social pathology is least severe. When the individual is perceived as productive and efficient in one’s several roles but feels emotionally and mentally distressed, depressed, or unhappy, and when one reacts to this feeling with a verbal response, “I am unhappy,” one has made essentially a crude self-diagnosis. If one repeats one’s statement to a psychiatrist (“Formally,” in the sense that teachers, clergymen and social workers are not recognized generally as competent to make “psychiatric” diagnoses, although these “front-line” persons frequently do provide the earliest diagnoses of personality disturbance.), this self-appraisal contributes more formally to a diagnosis. At this point, the self-diagnosis becomes a social diagnosis. At this point, too, we may illustrate again the relativity of mental illness and the manner in which the economy and the value system of a culture determine “how much” mental illness is endemic to it. The probability that an unhappy person will make public acknowledgement of one’s state (id est, admit it to a professional person for whom the client automatically becomes a census datum) varies directly with the number of such professional persons accessible to one (the economic factor), and with the extent to which the culture is at the time exhorting unhappy persons to express their burdens (the value factor). #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

The greater the number of psychiatrist (or other psychotherapists) in a community the greater is the influence of subtle pressures upon frustrated and conflicted persons to step forth and announce themselves. These subtle pressures are augmented by formal programs of mental hygiene and public “education” which imply that unhappiness is a psychiatric illness for which cures are known and treatments are available. Study of the history of psychiatry reveals that patterns of symptomatology in the functional disorders (those for which no underlying organic pathology is found)) change over time. This is perhaps most clearly reflected in the case of conversation hysteria, a type of neurosis that once filled the neurological clinics of Europe, particularly those of Janet and Charcot in France, and was also common in the early years of American psychiatry. These once common disorders, characterized by neuromuscular dysfunction or autonomy of function (blindness, deafness, paralysis, or spasms, tics, and contractures) have become a rarity in the metropolitan clinic. Such hysterical conversion symptoms as we do see now tend to be much subtler in form and constitute not nearly so large a portion of the neuroses. Why? It is as if there are fashions in neurosis; the process of symptom formation is responsive to the individual’s awareness of what is currently acceptable to the culture. Furthermore, the economic and value factors interact so that the “functioning” definition of a maladjusted personality is intermediate on the one hand to a criterion of “what the traffic will bear,” and on the other hand to a criterion of culturally idealized “normality.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

If a mental-health education program or community survey uncovers cases that are greatly in excess of the number that can be treated by existing facilities, there will be a tendency for only the more severely disturbed cases to be treated, that is, to be diagnosed as really ill. Under such circumstances of demanded-exceeding-supply, essentially productive and efficient but unhappy persons tend not to be recognized as “sick enough” to require treatment. However, what is the nature of an illness which requires no treatment? And is there in this social operation perhaps an implicit recognition that for such sickness no effective treatment exists? The line may be drawn too rigorously. In a demand-exceeding-supply situation, the screening process does not uniformly select or reject applicant for treatment in terms of the severity dimension alone. Those with milder symptoms, many of those self-diagnosed unhappy persons who are not necessarily also unproductive and inept, may find sources of help if they can pay higher fees. They cannot, however, effectively compete with more disturbed persons of lesser income for publicly supported treatment in clinics. This leads to another paradoxical proposition: Those persons who pay the highest fees for psychotherapy will tend to have the mildest degrees of maladjustment. The validity of this proposition involves an assumption of no relationship between socioeconomic status and tendences to certain types of degree of neurosis. Put bluntly, unhappiness as an isolated symptom occurs in the lower as well as the upper economic classes, but the former cannot afford to pay for treatment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Also, severe cases of failure to produce and gross inefficiency will be found among the high-fee patients than they will of low-fee patients. Even the apparently rigorous and operationally oriented definition of cases in terms of persons who come to treatment results in a highly relative criterion, the amount of mental illness at a given time being relative to economic and value factors as well as to the absolute number of therapists available. If the relativity of even this rather concrete definition of a mentally ill person (id est, a person in treatment for such illness) could be more generally perceived, its use as a criterion in survey studies would possibly not be so uneasily viewed by investigators who see it as “artificial” and too restrictive. The entire cognitive apparatus is an apparatus for abstraction and simplification—deigned not for knowledge but for gaining control of things: “end” and “means” are as far from what is essential as are “concepts.” With “end” and “means” one gains control of the process (one invents a process that can be grasped”; “concepts,” however, being the “things” that make up the process. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This Christmas, please be kind and donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources, and these heroes deserve recognition. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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