We have been told by well-meaning ministers of religion and counsellors in psychology to practice Jesus’s words, “Love thy neighbour.” Now there are two different ways in which we can do so, because there are two different interpretations of these words—the religious and the philosophic. According to the first, we have at least to be amiable toward our next-door neighbour, or at most to throw our arms around him and express our warm feeling for hum in a gushy, sentimental, hyper-emotional manner. According to the second and philosophic interpretation, we must understand that every person who crosses our path is our neighbour, everyone with whom we are thrown into momentary or continuous contact is our neighbour, whether at home or at work. It is in these immediate contacts that irritations are bred, differences are noted, and dislikes appear. It is much easier to love humanity as a whole or in the abstract than it is to love humanity in the individual and in the concrete. Despite the instinctive urge to manifest irritability, dislike, anger, resentment, or even hatred against those with whom you are thrown in contact, you can steel your will and resist the negative feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

If you can take all these negative feelings and sublimate them into understanding, tolerance, and goodwill based on the teachings of philosophy, you are loving your neighbour in the sense that Jesus meant it. You will then see that such philosophic love is far removed from and far superior to the hyper-emotionalism which slows hot and cold. How can I love my enemy, it is asked, or anyone who is outwardly or inwardly repugnant to me? We are not called on to love what is evil in our enemy nor what is ugly in anyone. We are called on, however, to remember that alongside of the evil there is the divine soul in him, alongside of the ugliness there is the divine beauty in him. His non-awareness of it does not alter the fact of its existence. And because he is a bearer of something grander than himself, unconscious of it though he be, we are to meet his hostility with our goodwill, his baseness with out nobility, and thus help him by our thought or our example to move onward—even if no more than one millimeter—towards the discovery and realization of his own divine soul. When we are enjoined to love others, we are really enjoined to sympathize with them as fellow living creatures and to have compassion for their sufferings or ignorance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

If the thought of our enemy arouses hatred, dislike, or fear, he will continue to haunt. The only way to free him is to arouse our compassion for him, to extend goodwill toward him. In the moment that we feel like this we exorcise his wrath and are liberated. “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” the dictum preached by Jesus and practiced by the self-actualized Christians, seems to offer a remote and unapproachable ideal. However, if we come to understand what Jesus meant and how the self-actualized Christian can realize it, it will not seem so. Every man does indeed love himself, but he does not love the whole of himself. There are defects and weaknesses in himself which he hates. He cannot therefore be expected to love them in his Neighbour. However, if he perceives that these faults eventually bring painful Karmic results, he can be expected to feel compassion for those who suffer from them. In the case of the self-actualized Christian, not only is such a consideration operative but also the perception of his neighbour’s existence within the one universal Mind in which he feels himself to be rooted. It is easy and natural for him, therefore, to practice loving kindness towards his neighbour. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

Here, at this final stage of knowledge, which is Christianity, the “I” in a man becomes inseparable from the “you.” Both exist simultaneously within him, whereas in the ordinary man they stand fundamentally opposed to each other. No longer is the personality the sole content of the mind: it is now but a partial content. In his inmost attitude he is conscious of unity with others and consequently emanates a perfect sympathy towards them. This is not the sentimental attitude which often goes with the superficial emotion called love. It is profoundly deeper. It can never change, whereas emotional love may turn to dislike or even hate. This inner sense of unity can in no wise alter it is always there. Nor can it even be impeded by physical or selfish considerations. There is nothing in another man’s face or body, fortune or misfortune, mind, or heart, which can obstruct the ceaseless flow of the blesser. “We two are rooted in the same Overself” is the remembrance which he cherishes in himself. He has understood the inner penetration of the many in the One and of the One with the many. What he feels for himself is not different from what he feels for others; but what he does for himself will be necessarily different, because wisdom demands recognition of the superior and hence more responsible role which has been allotted to him in his game of life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Many patients who come to a psychiatrist for the first time introduce themselves and shake hands when he invites them into his office. Some psychiatrists, indeed, offer their own hands first. I have a different policy about handshakes. If the patient proffers his hand in a hearty way, I will shake it to avoid being rude, but in a noncommittal fashion, because I am wondering why he is being so hearty. If he offers it in a way which merely suggests that he considers it good manners, I will return the compliment in such a way which indicates that he is desperate, then I will shake it firmly and reassuringly to let him know that I understand his need. However, my manner when I enter the waiting room, the expression on my face and the position of my arms, indicates clearly enough to most newcomers that this amenity will be omitted unless they insist upon it. This is intended to establish, and usually does establish, that we are both there for a more serious purpose than to prove that we are good fellows or to exchange courtesies. Mainly, I do not shake hands with them because I do not know them, and I do not expect them to shake hands with me, because they do not know me; also, some people who come to psychiatrist’s object to being touched, and it is a courtesy to them to refrain from doing so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The ending of the interview is a different matter. By that time, I know a great deal about the patient, and he knows something about me. Thus, when he leaves, I make a point of shaking hands with him, and I know enough about him to know how to do it properly. This handshake means something particularly important to him: that I am accepting him even after he has told me all the “bad” things about himself. (“Acceptance” is not used here in it ill-defined, sentimental sense; it means, specifically, that I am willing to spend more time with him. This involves a serious commitment which may, in some cases, mean one or more years of patience, effort, ups and downs, and getting up in the morning.” If he needs comforting, my handshake is such that it will comfort him; if he needs assertion of his masculinity, my handshake will evoke his masculinity This is not a carefully thought-out device to seduce the patient; it is a spontaneous and freely-given recognition of him as I now know him after talking for an hour with him about his most intimate concerns. On the other side, if he has lied to me out of malice rather than natural embarrassment, or tried to exploit or browbeat me, I will not shake hands with him, so that he knows he will have to behave differently if he wants me on his side. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

With women, it is slightly different. If one needs a palpable sign that I accept her, I will shape hands in a way suitable to her needs; if (as I know by this time) another shrinks from contact with men, I will say farewell in a correct way but let her pass without a handshake. This latter cause illustrates most clearly the reason for not shaking hands as a greeting: if I shake hands, I awaken her abhorrence. I have, in effect, intruded upon and insulted her before the interview, by forcing her, out of good manners, and against her inclination, to touch me and let me touch her, however courteously. In therapy groups, I follow a similar policy. I do not say Hello on entering, because I have not seen the members for a whole week, and I do not know to whim I am saying Hello. A light or cordial Hello might be quite out of place in the light of something that has happened to them in the interval. However, I do make an extraordinarily strong point of saying Good-by to each member at the end of the meeting, because then I know to whom I am saying Good-by, and how to say it in each case. For example, suppose one woman’s mother has died since the last meeting. A genial Hello from me would seem out of place to her. She might forgive me for it, but there is no need to put that strain on her. By the time the meeting is over, I know how to say Good-by to her in her bereavement. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Socially, it is different, since friends are for stroking. With them, Hello and Good-by range from an open handshake to a big hug, depending on what they are ready for or need; or sometimes it is josh and jive to keep from getting too involved, a “smile when you say that.” However, one thing in life is more certain than taxes and just as certain as death: the sooner you make new friends, the sooner you will have old ones. So much for Hello and Good-by. What happens in between falls into the framework of a specific theory of personality and group dynamics, which is also a therapeutic method, knows as transactional analysis. To appreciate what follows, it is first necessary to understand the principles of this approach. Plotinus’ belief that in all his lesser loves, man is seeking the divine, that it is the object he permanently wants much more than these temporary ones, is the truth to which he must come one day. And he will come by a double movement: the first, away from them by successive disenchantments, the second by progressive glimpses of the divine beauty. A life without love is a life emotionally starved and therefore stunted in growth. However, do not limit the meaning of the word love either to a selfish or animalistic definition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

How many unreflective and selfish persons have uttered the words “I love you” to someone else—wife, friend, or teacher when what they actually, if unconsciously meant was, “I love myself and use you to serve my interests or to satisfy my feelings.” A merely physical or purely emotional love will fade and die when events test if it really seeks the happiness of the beloved rather than the pleasure of the lover. Despite its fundamental conservatism, the eugenics craze had about it the air of a “reform,” for it emerged at a time when most Americans liked to think of themselves as reformers. Like the reform movements, eugenics accepted the principle of state action toward a common end and spoke in terms of the collective destiny of the group rather than of the individual success. This is significant of the general trend of thought in the Progressive era. A rising regard for the collective aspects of life was one of the outstanding characteristics of the shift in the dominant pattern of thought. The new collectivism was not socialistic, but was based upon an increasing recognition of the psychological and moral relatedness of men in society. It saw in the coexistence of baronial spledour and grinding poverty something more than the accidental dispensation of Providence. Refusing to depend upon individual self-assertion as an adequate remedy, men turned toward collective. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The change in the political outlook of the common man was responsible for a change in the fundamental mechanisms of thought among workers in the social sciences. The formalistic thought of the nineteenth century had been built upon an atomistic individualism. Society, men had believed, was a loose collection of individual agents; social advance depended upon improvements in the personal qualities of these individuals, their increased energy and frugality; among these individuals the strongest and best rose to the top and gave leadership to the rest; their heroic accomplishments were the ideal subject matter of history; the best laws were those that gave them the greatest scope for their activities; the best nations were those that produces most leaders of this type; the way of salvation was to leave unhindered the natural processes that produced these leaders and gave the affairs of the World into their hands. This pattern of thought was static; instead of inquiry it seemed to encourage deductive speculation; its essential function was the rationalization of existing institutions. Those who were satisfied with it had felt relatively little need for concrete investigation or even for significant novelty in their abstractions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Between the Spanish-American War and the outbreak of the First World War there was a great restlessness sin American society, which inevitably affected the patterns of speculative thought. The old scheme of thought was repeatedly assailed by critics who were in sympathy with the new spirit of the Progressive era. The intellectual friction engendered by this discontent fired the energies and released the critical talents of new minds in history, economics, sociology, anthropology, and law. The result was a minor renaissance in American social thought, a renaissance which saw in relatively short span of years the rise to prominence of Charles A. Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, John Dewey, Franz Boas, Louis D. Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. It is easier to enumerate the achievements of this renaissance than to characterize its intellectual assumptions, but certainly its leading figures did share a common consciousness of society as a collective whole rather than a congeries of individual atoms. They shared also an understanding of the need for empirical research and accurate description rather than theoretical speculation cast in some traditional mold. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

A drastic departure from ancestor worship in history was marked by Charles Beard’s study of the origins of the Constitution by Frederick Jackson Turner’s quest for environmental and economic explanations of American development. Brandies opened new possibilities in law by drafting for the first time a factual sociological brief in defense of a state law regulating conditions in labour in private enterprise. Franz Boas led a generation of anthropologists away from unilinear evolutionary theory toward cultural history and took pioneer steps in the criticism of race theory. John Dewey made philosophy a working instrument in other disciplines, applying it fruitfully to psychology, sociology, education, and politics. Veblen exposed the intellectual sterility of prevailing economic theory, and pointed the way to an institutional analysis of the facts of economic life. In accordance with the spirit of the times, the most original thinkers in social science had ceased to make their main aim the justification and perpetuation of existing society in all its details. They were trying to describe it with accuracy, to understand it in new terms, and to improve it. Man’s development requires his capacity to transcend the narrow prison of his ego, his greed, his selfishness, his separation from his fellow man, and hence, his basic loneliness. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

This transcendence is the condition for being open and related to the World, vulnerable, and yet with an experience of identity and integrity; of man’s capacity to enjoy all that is alive, to pour out his faculties into the World around him, to be “interested”; to be rather than to have and to use are consequences of the step to overcome greed an egomania. From an entirely different standpoint, the principle shared by all racial humanists is that of negating and combating idolatry in every form and shape—idolatry, in the prophetic sense of worshiping the work of one’s own hands and hence making man subservient to things, and in this process becoming a thing himself. The idols against which the Old Testament prophets fought were idols in stone or wood, or trees or hills; the idols of our day are leaders, institutions, especially the State, the nation, production, law and order, and every man-made thing. Whether or not one believes in God is a question secondary to whether one denies idols. The concept of alienation is the same as the Christian Bible concept of idolatry. It is man’s submission to the things of his creation and to the circumstances of his doing. If they are true to their common tradition, whatever may divine believers and nonbelievers, there is something which unites them, and that is the common fight against idolatry and the deep conviction that no thing and no institution must ever take the place of God or, as a non-believer may prefer to say, of that empty place which is reserved for No-thing. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Dr. Freud was mainly concerned with the uncovering of the individual unconscious. While he assumed that society enforced repressions, these were the repression of instinctual forces, and not the social repression which really matter—the repressions of the awareness of social contradictions, socially produced suffering, of the failure of authority, of feelings of malaise and dissatisfaction, etcetera. Freudian analysis has shown that it is possible to some degree to make the individual unconscious conscious, without touching the social unconscious. However, it follows from the premises which were present thus far, that any attempt for de-repression which excludes the social sphere must remain limited. Only if it transcends the individual realm, and if the process includes the analysis of the social unconscious, is the full awareness of what had been repressed is possible. The reasons for this proposition follows from what has been said before. Unless a person can transcend his society and see how it furthers or hinders the development of human potentialities, he cannot be fully in touch with his own humanity. Socially conditioned taboos and restrictions must appear as “natural” to him, and human nature must appear in a distorted form, if he does not recognize the distortion of human nature by the society, he happens to live in. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

If uncovering the unconscious means arriving at the experience of one’s own humanity, then, indeed, it cannot stop with the individual but must proceed to the uncovering of the social unconscious. This implies the understanding of social dynamics and the critical appraisal of one’s own society from the standpoint of universal human values. The very insight into society which Marx has given us is a condition for becoming aware of the social unconscious, and hence for the full awakening (“depression”) of an individual. If the “should be Ego where there was Id,” humanistic social criticism is a necessary precondition. Otherwise, the person will become aware only of certain aspects of his individual unconscious, yet in other aspects hardly more awake as a total person than the rest. It must be added, however, that not only is critical understanding of society important for the analytic understanding of oneself, but that the analytic understanding of the individual unconscious is also a significant contribution to the understanding of society. Only if one has experienced the dimension of the unconscious in one’s personal life can one fully appreciate how it is possible that social life is determined by ideologies which are neither truths nor lies or, to put it differently, which are both truths and lies in the sense that they are rationalizations which have the function of hiding the real motivation of social and political actions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

Recently, I had occasion to listen to some recorded interviews by a young counselor of elementary school children. She was very warm and optimistic in her attitude toward her clients, yet she was ineffective. She seemed to be responding warmly only to the superficial aspects of each child and so the contacts were charry, social, and friendly, but it was clear she was not reaching the real person of the child. Yet in a few ways, she rated reasonably high on each of the conditions I have described. So perhaps there are still elements missing which I have not captured in my formulation. I am also aware of the possibility that different kinds of helping relationships may be effective with different kinds of people Some of our therapists working with schizophrenics are effective when they appear to be highly conditional, when they do not accept some of the bizarre behaviour of the psychotic. This can be interpreted in two ways. Perhaps a conditional set is more helpful with these individuals. Or perhaps—and this seems to me to fit the facts better—these psychotic individuals perceive a conditional attitude as meaning that the therapist really cares, where an unconditional attitude may be interpreted as apathetic noncaring. In any event, I do want to make it clear that what I have given are beginning formulations which surely will be modified and corrected from further learnings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

In the major part of analytical literature it is an implicit or explicit axiom that we are helpless toward our resistances, that is, that we cannot overcome them without expert help. This conviction will be held as the strongest argument against the idea of self-analysis. And it is an argument that will carrying heavy weight, not only with analysts but also with every patient who has been analyzed, because both analyst and patient know the tenacious and devious struggles that arise when precarious territory is approached. However, an appeal to experience can never be a conclusive argument, because experience itself is determined by the whole complex of ruling concepts and customs, and by our mentality. More specifically, analytical experience is determined by the fact that the patient is not given a chance to cope alone with his resistances. The stronger consideration is the theoretical premise that underlies the analyst’s conviction, which is no more and no less than Dr. Freud’s whole philosophy of the nature of man. This subject is too intricate to delve into here. Only this much: if man is driven by instincts and if among them a destruction instinct plays a prominent role—as was the contention of Dr. Freud—not much, if any, space is left in human nature for constructive forces that might strive toward growth and development. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

And it is these constructive forces that constitute the dynamic counterpole to the forces producing the resistances. A denial of them by necessity lead to a defeatists attitude toward the possibility of overcoming our resistances through our own efforts. I do not share this part of the Freudian philosophy, but I do not deny that the question of resistance remains a serious consideration. The outcome of self-analysis, as of every analysis, depends by and large on the strength of the resisting forces and the strength of the self to deal with them. No two persons can occupy the same space, and so each has a different place from which to view the World. It follows that, if there are eight billion human beings in the World, there are 8 billion ways for this World to be experienced, none more real or valid than another. If each person embodies a unique perspective, then it is a momentous thing indeed to invalidate or destroy it. This is one cruel feature of colonial exploitation, which destroyed the perspectives of black Africans, Australian aborigines, and Native American Indians. Women and African Americas around the World have complained, legitimately, that their perspectives are often ignored or invalidated by the dominate European male populations. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

With the advent of the various liberation movements, the neglected perspective are revealed to the World, and an enriched existence accrues to all concerned. The growing interest of young people in the religion and the lifestyles of traditional peoples such as the American Indians and Africans, and Mormons, is a quest for perspectives upon self and World that are experienced as more life giving then the perspective of White, male, middle-class American. The human race is a myriad of refractive surfaces staining the White radiance of eternity. Each surface refracts the refractions of refractions of refractions. Each self refracts the refractions of others’ refractions of self’s refractions of others’ refractions…Here is glory and wonder and mystery, yet too often we wish to ignore or destroy those points of view that refract the light differently from out own. 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. Unto the hills I life mine eyes, whence comes my help that lies in God, who is enthroned above the skies, who made the Heavens and Earth to be. He guides thy foot over mountains steeps, he slumbers not, they soul He keeps; behold, He slumbers not nor sleeps, of American the guardian He. He is thy rock, thy shield, and stay, on thy right hand a shade always; the sun never smiteth thee by day, the moon at night never troubles thee. The Lord will guard thy soul from sin, thy life from harm without, within, thy going out and coming in, from this time forth eternally. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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