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The Narcissistic Charge
In the development of the human race we find an ever increasing range of socialization; the original small group based on blood affinity gives way to ever larger groups based on a common language, a common social order, a common faith. The larger size of the group does not necessarily mean that the pathological qualities of narcissism are reduced. As was remarked earlier, the group narcissism of the “democrats” or the “fake news media” is as malignant as the extreme narcissism of a single person can be. Yet in general we find that in the process of socialization which leads to the formation of larger groups, the need for co-operation with many other and different people not connected among themselves by ties of blood, tends to counteract the narcissistic charge within the group. The same holds true in another respect, which we have in the past discussed in connection with benign individual narcissism: inasmuch as the large group (nation, state, or religion) makes it an object of its narcissistic pride to achieve something valuable in the fields of material, intellectual, or artistic production, the very process of work in such fields tends to lessen the narcissistic charge. The history of the Roman Catholic Church is one of many examples of the peculiar mixture of narcissism and the counteracting forces within a large group. The elements counteracting narcissism with the Catholic Church are, first of all, the concept of the universality of man and of a “catholic” religion which is no longer the religion of one particular tribe or nation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
Second, the idea of personal humility which follows from the idea of personal humility which follows from the idea of God and the denial of idols. The existence of God implies that no men can be God, that no individual can be omniscient or omnipotent. It thus sets a definite limit to man’s narcissistic self-idolatry. However, at the same time the Church has nourished an intense narcissism; believing that the Church is the only chance of salvation and that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, its members were able to develop an intense narcissism inasmuch as they were members of such an extraordinary institution. The same occurred in relation to God; while the omniscience and omnipotence of God should have led to man’s humility, often the individual identified himself with God and thus developed an extraordinary degree of narcissism in this process of identification. This same ambiguity between a narcissistic or an anti-narcissistic function has occurred in all the other great religions, for example, in Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Protestantism. I have mentioned the Catholic religion not only because it is a well-known example, but mainly because the Roman Catholic religion was the basis both for humanism and for violent and fanatical religious narcissism at one and the same historical period: the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The humanists with the Church and those outside spoke in the name of a humanism which was the fountainhead of Christianity. Nicholas of Cusa preached religious tolerance for all men (De pace fidei); Ficino taught that love is the fundamental force of all creation (De amore); Erasmus demanded mutual tolerance and a democratization of the Church. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Thomas More, the nonconformists, spoke and died for the principes of universalism and human solidarity; Postel, building on the foundations laid by Nichoals and Erasmus, spoke of global peace and World unity (De orbis terrae concordia); Siculo, following Pico della Mirandola, spoke enthusiastically of man’s dignity, of his reason and virtue, and of his capacity for self-perfection. These men, with many others growing from the soil of Christian humanism, spoke in the name of universality, brotherliness, dignity, and reason. They fought for tolerance and peace. Against them stood the forces of fanaticism on both sides; that of Luther and that of the Church. The humanists tried to avoid the catastrophe; eventually the fanatics on both sides won. Religious persecution and war, culminating in the disastrous Thirty Years’ War, were a blow to humanist development from which Europe has still not recovered (one cannot help thinking of the analogy of Stalinism, destroying socialist humanism three hundred years later). Looking back to the religious hatred of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its irrationalities are clear. If compared with the general principals, both sides spoke in the name of God, of Jesus as the Christ, of love, and they differed only in points which were of secondary importance. Yet they hated each other, and each was passionately convinced that humanity ended at the frontiers of one’s own religious faith. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
The essence of this overestimation of ones’ own position and the hate for all who differ from it I narcissism. “We” are admirable; “they” are despicable. “We” are good; “they” are evil. Any criticism of one’s own doctrine is a vicious and unbearable attack; criticism of the others’ position is a well-meant attempt to help them to return to the truth. From the Renaissance onward, the great contradictory forces, group narcissism and humanism, have each developed in its own way. Unfortunately the development of group narcissism has vastly outstripped that of humanism. While it seemed possible in the late Middle Ages and at the time of the Renaissance that Europe was prepare for the emergence of a political and religious humanism, this promise failed to materialize. New forms of group narcissism emerged, and dominated the following centuries. This group narcissism assumed manifold forms: religious, national, racial, political. Protestants against Catholics, French against Germans, White against Blacks, Aryans against non-Aryans, Communists against capitalists; different as the contents are, psychologically we deal with the same narcissistic phenomenon and its resulting fanaticism and destructiveness. There are other more harmless forms of group narcissism directed toward small groups like lodges, small religious sects, “the old school tie,” et cetera. While the degree of narcissism in these cases may not be less than in those of the larger groups, the narcissism is less dangerous simply because the groups involved have little power, and hence little capacity to cause harm. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
While group narcissism grew, its counterpart—humanism—also developed. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—from Spinoza, Leibniz, Rousseau, Herder, Kant, to Goethe and Marx—the thought developed that mankind is one, that each individual carries within oneself all of humanity, that there must be no privileged groups claiming that their privileges are based on their intrinsic superiority. The First World War was a severe blow to humanism, and gave rise to an increasing orgy of group narcissism: national hysteria in all the belligerent countries of the First World War, Hitler’s racialism, Stalin’s party idolization, Muslim and Hindu religious fanaticism, Western anti-Communist fanaticism. These various manifestations of group narcissism have brought the World to the abyss of total destruction. As reaction to this threat to humanity, a renaissance of humanism can be observed today in all countries and among the representatives of diverse ideologies; there are radical humanists among Catholic and Protestant theologians, among socialist and nonsocialist philosophers. Whether the danger of total destruction, the ideas of the neohumanists and the bonds created between all men by the new means of communication will be sufficient to stop the effects of group narcissism is a question which may determine the fate of mankind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
The growing intensity of group narcissism—only shifting from religious to national, racial, and party narcissism—is, indeed, a surprising phenomenon. First of all because of the development of the humanist forces since the Renaissance, which we discussed earlier. Furthermore, because of the evolution of scientific method requires objectivity and realism, it requires seeing the World as it is, and not distorted by one’s own desires and fears. It requires being humble toward the facts of reality, and renouncing all hopes of omnipotence and omniscience. The need for critical thought, experimentation, proof; the attitude of doubting—these are precisely the methods of thought which tend to counter act the narcissistic orientation. Undoubtedly the method of scientific thinking has had its effect on the development of contemporary neohumanism, and it is not accidental that most of the outstanding natural scientists of our day are humanists. However, the vast majority of men in the West, although they have “learned” the scientific method in school or at the university, never really have been touched by the method of scientific, critical thinking. Even most of the professionals in the field of the natural sciences have remained technicians, and have not acquired a scientific attitude. For the majority of the population, the scientific method they were taught has had even less significance. Although it may be said that higher education has tended to soften and to modify personal and group narcissism to some extent, it has not prevented most of the “educated” people from joining enthusiastically the national, racial, and political movements which are the expression of contemporary group narcissism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
It seems that, on the contrary, science has created a new object for narcissism—technique. Man’s narcissistic pride in being the creator of a formerly undreamed-of World of things, the discoverer of ratio, television, atomic power, space travel, and even in being the potential destroyer of the entire globe, ha given him a new object for narcissistic self-inflation. In studying this whole problem of the development of narcissism in modern history, one is reminded of Dr. Freud’s statement that Copernicus, Darwin, and he himself deeply wounded man’s narcissism by undermining his belief in his unique role in the universe and his consciousness as being an elementary and irreducible reality. However, while man’s narcissism has been wounded in this manner, it has not been as greatly reduced as would appear. He has reacted by transferring his narcissism to other objects: nation, race, political creed, technique. In view of these facts the question is bound to arise over and over again: why call these trends neurotic? What is really wrong with them? Granted that with some people certain trends are predominant, even have a measure of rigidity, while quite different trends determine the behaviour of others, are not these varieties of pursuits merely the expression of given differences among people of different sets of values, different ways of coping with life? It is not natural, for instance, that a tenderhearted person will put stock in affection and a stronger person in independence and leadership? To raise these questions is useful because it is not only of theoretical but eminently practical importance to recognize the difference between such basic human strivings and evaluations and their neurotic counterparts. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
The objectives of the two types of strivings are similar, but their basis and meaning are entirely different. The difference is almost as great as between +7 and -7: in both case we have number 7, just as we use the same words, affection, reason, perfection, but the prefix changes character and value. The contrasts underlying the apparent similarities have already been touched on in the comparison of the employee and the child Clare, but a few more generalized comparisons may illuminate further the difference between normal and neurotic trends. If there is affection for them, a wish for affection from other is only a feeling of having something in common with them. The emphasis then will be not only on the friendliness received but also on the positive feelings one is capable of having for others and of showing them. However, the neurotic need for affection is devoid of the value of reciprocity. For the neurotic person one’s own feelings of affection counts as little as if one were surrounded by strange and dangerous animals. To be accurate, one does not even really want the others’ affection, but is merely concerned, keenly and strenuously, that they make no aggressive move against one. The singular value lying in mutual understanding, tolerance, concern, sympathy has no place in the relationship. Similarly, if this striving were strong and alive in all of us, the striving to perfect our gifts and our human faculties is certainly worth our best efforts, so much so that no doubt the World would be a better place to live in. However, the neurotic need for perfection, while it may be expressed in identical term, has lost this special value, because it represents an attempt to be or appear perfect without change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
There is no possibility of improvement, because finding areas within the self that would need change is frightening and therefore avoided. The only real concern is to juggle away any deficiency lest one be exposed to attacks, and to preserve the secret feeling of superiority over others. As in the neurotic need for affection, the person’s own active participation is lacking or impaired. Instead of being an active striving, this trend is a static insistence upon an illusory status quo. A last comparison: if put into the service of pursuits that are themselves important, regarding it as a meaningful force, all of us have a high regard for will power. However, the neurotic faith in the omnipotence of will is illusory, because it completely disregards the limitations that many defy even the most determined efforts. No amount of will power gets us out of a Sunday-afternoon traffic jam. Furthermore, if the proving of its effectiveness becomes an aim in itself, the virtue of will power is nullified. Any obstacle standing in the way of momentary impulses will drive the person in the grip of this neurotic trend into blind and frantic action, regardless of whether one really want the particular object. The tables are actually reversed: it is not that one has will power, but that it has one. These examples may suffice to show that the neurotic pursuits are almost a caricature of the human values they resemble. They lack freedom, spontaneity, and meaning. All too often they involve illusory elements. Their value is only subjective, and lies in the fact that they hold the more or less desperate promise of safety and of a solution for all problems. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
And one further point should be emphasized: not only are the neurotic trends devoid of the human values that they mimic, but they do not even represent what the person wants. If one puts all one’s energies into the pursuit of social prestige or power, for example, one may believe that one really wants these goals; actually, as we have seen, one is merely driven to want them. It is as if one were flying in an airplane which one believes one is piloting, while actually the plane is directed by remote control. It remains to understand approximately how and to what extent the neurotic trends may determine the person’s character and influence one’s life. In the first place, these pursuits render it necessary for one to develop certain subsidiary attitudes, feelings, and types of behaviour. If one’s trend is toward unlimited independence, one will desire secrecy and seclusion, be wary of anything resembling an intrusion into one’s privacy, develop techniques for keeping others at a distance. If one’s trend is toward a constriction of life, one will be modest, undemanding, and ready to yield to anyone who is more aggressive than one. Also, the neurotic trends largely determine the image a person has of what one is or should be. All neurotic persons are markedly unstable in their self-evaluation, wavering between an inflated and a deflated image of themselves. When a neurotic trend is recognized it becomes possible to understand specifically the reasons why a particular person is aware of certain evaluations of oneself and represses others, why one is consciously or unconsciously exceedingly proud of certain attitudes or qualities and despises others for n discernible objective reason. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
For example, if A has built up a protective belief in reason and foresight one will not only overrate what can be accomplished by reason in general, but also take a special pride in one’s power of reasoning, one’s judgment, one’s predictions. One’s notions of one’s superiority over others will then derive primarily from a conviction that one’s is a superior intelligence. And if B feels one cannot possibly stand on one’s own, but must have a “partner” who gives content and direction to one’s life, one is bound to overrate not only the power of love but also one’s own ability to love. One will mistake one’s need to hang on to another person for a particularly great ability to love, and will take a special pride in this illusory capacity. Finally, if C’s neurotic trend is to master any situation by one’s own efforts, to be self-sufficient at any price, one will take an excessive pride in being capable and self-reliant and in never needing anybody. The maintenance of these beliefs—A’s belief in one’s superior power of reasoning, B’s in one’s living nature, C’s in one’s competence to handle one’s affairs quite by oneself—becomes as compulsive as the neurotic trends the produced them. However, the pride taken in these qualities is sensitive and vulnerable, and for good reasons. Its foundation is none too solid. It is built on too narrow a basis and contains too many illusory elements. It is actually a pride in the qualities that are required in the service of the neurotic trends rather than in qualities actually existing. In actual fact B has very little ability to love, but one’s belief in this quality is indispensable lest one recognize the falseness of one’s pursuits. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
If one harboured any doubt as to one’s loving nature one would have to recognize that in reality one searches not for someone to love but for someone who will devote one’s life exclusively to one, without one’s being able to give much in return. This would mean such a vital threat to one’s security that one would be bound to react to a criticism on this score with a mixture of panic and hostility one or the other prevailing. Similarly, A will react with extreme irritation to any doubt cast on one’s good judgment. C, on the other hand, whose pride lies in not needing anybody, must feel irritated at any suggestion that one cannot succeed without help or advice. The anxiety and hostility generated by such trespasses on the treasure image of self further impair a person’s relations to others, and thereby force one to adhere all the more strongly on one’s protective devices. We do not know about the psychology of primitive man in prehistoric time. Paleontology had reconstructed for us something of the physical circumstances of one’s existence. We know that he inhabited a harsh, uncertain and controllable World. We know that his puny physical capacities, unimplemented except for the crudest of tools and weapons, were arrayed against the violent powers of wind and water and against the brutish hostility of huge predators. Knowing these few, simple facts about prehistoric man and his environment, we can conjecture that he was totally occupied in a daily, all-engaging pursuit of security of limb and maintenance of life. In his earliest and certainly in any precommunal states, he had little time for introspection reverie and for the diagnostic question, “Am I unhappy?” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Many primitive men were certainly confronted by environments that demanded constant hard work and continued vigilance. Perhaps there is a psychological “zero point” at which a physically uncontrolled environment demands so much immediate and direct coping behaviour as to prohibit the development of a neurosis. And perhaps there are life situations in which the persistent threat of real danger to life militates against consideration of those possible and lesser fears which are the core of much neurotic anxiety. We know, for example, that during the period of the blitzkrieg assault upon London in World War II, and in the days of England’s greatest danger, there was a trend toward decreased frequency of visits to the neuropyychiatric clinics. To the degree that neuroses as we know them require some opportunity for self-sensitization it is unlikely that our prelinguistic ancestors had the time to develop them. It requires only the assumption of individual differences in stress tolerance and of extreme and frequent stress, however, to presume that primitive man was subject to sever mental breakdowns. These probably were disruptions of his adjustive integration that occurred in circumstances which repeatedly aroused violent fear or presented extreme deprivations. We have no basis on which to estimate with what frequency our most primitive forebears fell victim to mental illness. There are those who like to think that over the centuries there has been an increase in the incidence of personality disorder which is related to the growing complexity and speed of modern life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
There are those who like to think that over the centuries there has been an increase in the incidence of personality disorder which is related to the growing complexity and speed of modern life. These persons are inclined perhaps to think that primitive man was relatively free from psychic stress because one’s needs were simple and one’s problems few. However, his needs and problems were severe and recurrent, and permitted only temporary solution, and his resource were negligible. It may be that true neurosis (as distinguished from “total insanity”) requires the nourishment of introspection and self-consciousness. Perhaps it is only when man can both look within oneself and toward a future beyond the next moment, only when one can think of other people and how they perceive and evaluate him, that neurotic conflict can arise. Such weighing of self and others requires both time and the freedom from immediate task which are a common luxury of technologically advanced cultures. We may surmise that man’s thought has evolved from exclusive preoccupation with the immediate physical environment, from concern with food, clothing, shelter, and safety from the elements and from attack, then to concern with those extended environmental phenomena of sunrises and snowfalls, of moon and stars and seasons, and then finally to one’s relationship to the Universe and to one’s fellow man. The way to refuse, and what to refuse, is of primary importance in the hour of conflict. As we have seen, the believer needs to maintain an acute attitude, and, when necessary, the expression of refusal continually and persistently. This presupposes, of course, one’s standing in faith upon the foundation of one’s identification in death with Christ at Calvary. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
In the hour of conflict, lest there might have been new ground given to evil spirits unknowingly—by accepting something from them, or believing some lie they have suggested to the mind—the believer should refuse all the possible things whereby they may have gained a new footing. The believer oneself will know, from one’s past experience, most of the ways by which the deceiving spirits have hitherto gained advantage over one; and one will instinctively turn to the points of refusal which have been of the most service to one in ones fight to freedom. The refusing in this way takes ground from them in many directions. The wider the scope covered by the act and attitude of refusal, the more thoroughly is the believer separating oneself from the deceiving spirits—who can only hold their ground by the consent of one’s will. By refusing all one once accepted from them one can become comparatively clear of ground given to them, so far as one’s choice and attitude is concerned. Theonomy does not exit in the tranquility of a vacuum, but mut be fought for in the area of time and space. However, even the partial achievement of theonomy, ambiguous and fragmentary as it may be, serves, in turn, as a point of reference for gauging the rhythm of history: History comes from and moves toward periods of theonomy, id est, periods in which the conditioned is open to the unconditional without claiming to be unconditioned itself. Theonomy unites the absolute and the relative element in the interpretation of history, the demand that everything relative become the vehicle of the absolute and the insight that nothing relative can ever become absolute itself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
These partial victories of theonomy are the inner-historical side of the Kingdom of God. However, its transcendent side, total realization of theonomy, is beyond temporality. Theonomy is not utopia. By specifying the transcendent goal of history as essentialization, this is the most meaningful statement of the content of theonomy. Perfect theonomy is universal essentialization. In Eternal Life the potentialities of man’s creative spirit are fulfilled. Man’s essence, along with the essences of all creatures, becomes fully transparent to the eternal ground of being. God and man are reunited. There are assertions that are valid only under a certain condition; this condition is that they stem not from experience but from pure reason. Thus, the question is: What is the ground of our belief in the truth of such assertions? No, what cases it? But the source of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem; and it is often a very limited and narrow experience that bring about such a belief! It already presupposes that there are not only “data a posteriori” but also “data a priori”—“prior to experience.” Necessity and universal validity can never be given by experience: so, why should we think that they are present without experience at all? There are no individual judgments! An individual judgment is never “true,” never knowledge; only in connection, in relation to many judgments is there any guarantee. What distinguishes true from false beliefs? What is knowledge? He “knows” it, that is Heavenly! Necessity and universal validity can never be given by experience! Hence independently of experience, prior to all experience. Any insight that occurs a priori, hence independently of all experience, is from mere reason, a pure form of knowledge! #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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Will You Seek Only for Riches?
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. Some might go as far as to call this narcissism. An ever more dangerous pathological element in narcissism is the emotional reaction to criticism of any narcissistically cathexed position. Normally a person does not become angry when something one has said or done is criticized, provided the criticism is fair and not made with hostile intent. The narcissistic person, on the other hand, reacts with intense anger when one is criticized. One tends to feel that the criticism is a hostile attack, since by the very nature of one’s narcissism one cannot imagine that it is justified. If one considers that the narcissistic person is unrelated to the World, and as a consequence is alone, and hence frighten, only then can the intensity of one’ anger can be fully understood. It is this sense of aloneness and fright which is compensated for by one’s narcissistic self-inflation. If one is the World, there is no World outside which can frighten one; if one is everything, one is not alone; consequently when one’s narcissism is wounded one feel threatened in one’s whole existence. When the one protection against one’s fright, one’s self-inflation, is threatened, the fright emerges and results in intense fury. This fury is all the more intense because nothing can be done to diminish the threat by appropriate action; only the destruction of the critic—or oneself—can save one from the threat to one’s narcissistic security. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
There is an alternative to explosive rage as a result of wounded narcissism, and that is depression. The narcissistic person gains one’s sense of identity by inflation. The World outside is not a problem for one, it does not overwhelm one with its power, because one has succeeded in being the World, in feeling omniscient and omnipotent. If one’s narcissism is wounded, and if for a number of reasons, such as for instance the subjective or objective weakness of one’s position vis-à-vis one’s critic, one cannot afford to become furious, one becomes depressed. One is unrelated to and uninterested in the World; one is nothing and nobody, since one has not developed one’s self as the center of one’s relatedness to the World. If one’s narcissism is so severely wounded that one can no longer maintain it, one’s ego collapses and the subjective reflex of this collapse is the feeling of depression. The element of mourning in melancholia refers to the narcissistic image of the wonderful “I” which has died, and for which the depressed person is mourning. It is precisely because this narcissistic person dreads the depression which results from a wounding of one’s narcissism that one desperately tries to avoid such wounds. There are several ways of accomplishing this. One is to increase the narcissism in order that no outside criticism or failure can really touch the narcissistic position. In other words, the intensity of narcissism increases in order to ward off the threat. This means, of course, that the person tries to cure oneself of the threatening depression by becoming more severely sick mentally, up to the point of psychosis. #RandolphHarri 2 of 21
There is, however, still another to the threat to narcissism which is more satisfactory to the individual, although more dangerous to others. This solution consists in the attempt to transform reality in such a way as to make it conform, to some extent, with one’s narcissistic self-image. An example of this is the narcissistic inventor who believes one has invented a perpetuum mobile, and who in the process had made a minor discovery of some significance. A more important solution consists in getting the consensus of one person, and, if possible, in obtaining the consensus of millions. The former case is that of a folie a deux (some marriages and friendships rest on this basis), while the latter is that of public figures who prevent the open outbreak of their potential psychosis by gaining the acclaim and consensus of millions of people. The best-known example for this latter case is Mr. Hitler. Here was an extremely narcissistic person who probably could have suffered a manifest psychosis had he not succeeded in making millions believe in his won self-image, take his grandiose fantasies regarding the millennium of the “Third Reich” seriously, and even transforming reality in such a way that it seemed proved to his followers that he was right. (After he had failed he had to kill himself, since otherwise the collapse of his narcissistic image would have been truly unbearable.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
There are other examples in history of megalomanic leaders who “cured” their narcissism by transforming the World to fit it; such people must also try to destroy all critics, since they cannot tolerate the threat which the voice of sanity constitutes for them. From Mr. Caligula and Mr. Nero to Mr. Stalin and Mr. Hitler we see that their need to find believers, to transform reality so that it fits their narcissism, and to destroy all critics, is so intense and so desperate precisely because it is an attempt to prevent the outbreak of insanity. Paradoxically, the element of insanity in such leaders makes them also successful. It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person. Needless to say, this need to change the World and to win others to share in one’s ideals and delusions requires also talents and gifts which the average person, psychotic or nonpsychotic, lacks. It is important to distinguish between two forms of narcissism—one benign, the other malignant. In the benign form, the object of narcissism is the result of a person’s effort. Thu, for instance, a person may have a narcissistic pride in one’ work as a carpenter, as a scientist, or as a farmer. In as much as the object of one’s narcissism is something one has to work for, one’s exclusive interest in what is one’s work and one’s achievement is constantly balanced by one’s interest in the process of work itself, and the material one is working with the dynamics of this benign narcissism thus are self-checking. The energy which propels the work is, to a large extent, of narcissistic nature, but the very fact that the work itself makes it necessary to be related to reality, constantly curbs the narcissism and keeps it within bounds. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
This mechanism may explain why we find o many narcissistic people who are at the same time highly creative. In the case of malignant narcissism, the object of narcissism is not anything the person does or produces, but something one has; for instance, one’s body, one’s looks, one’s health, one’s wealth, et cetera. The malignant nature of this type of narcissism lies in the fact that it lacks the corrective element which we find in the benign form. If I am “great” because of some quality I have, and not because of something I achieve, I do not need to be related to anybody or anything; I need not make any effort. In maintaining the picture of my greatness, I remove myself more and more from reality and I have to increase the narcissistic change in order to be better protected from the danger that my narcissistically inflated ego might be revealed as the product of my empty imagination. Malignant narcissism, thus, is not self-limiting, and in consequence it is crudely solipsistic as well as xenophobic. One who has learned to achieve cannot help acknowledging that others have achieved similar things in similar ways—even if one’s narcissism may persuade one that one’s own achievement is greater than that of others. One who has achieved nothing will find it difficult to appreciate the achievements of others, and thus one will be forced to isolate oneself increasingly in narcissistic splendor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The dynamics of individual narcissism is a phenomenon, its biological function, and its pathology ought to enable us not to understand the phenomenon of social narcissism and the role it plays as a source of violence and war. From the standpoint of any organized group which wants to survive, it is important that the group be invested by its members with narcissistic energy. The survival of a group depends to some extent on the fact that its members consider its importance as great as or greater than that of their own lives, and furthermore that they believe in the righteousness, or even superiority, of their group as compared with others. Without such narcissistic cathexis of the group, the energy necessary for serving the group, or even making severe sacrifices for it, would be greatly diminished. In the dynamics of group narcissism we find phenomena similar to those we discussed already in connection with individual narcissism. Here too we can distinguish between benign and malignant forms of narcissism. If the object of group narcissism is an achievement, the same dialectical process takes place which we discussed above. The very need to achieve something creative makes it necessary to leave the closed circle of group solipsism and to be interested in the object it wants to achieve. (If the achievement which a group seeks is conquest, the beneficial effect of truly productive effort will of course be largely absent.) If, on the other hand, group narcissism has as its object the group as it is, its splendor, its past achievements, the physique of its members, then the countertendencies mentioned above will not develop, and the narcissistic orientation and subsequent dangers will steadily increase. In reality, of course, both elements are often blended. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
There is another sociological function of group narcissism which has not been discussed so far. If it wants to prevent dissatisfaction among them, a society which lacks the means to provide adequately for the majority of its members, or a large proportion of them, must provide these members with a narcissistic satisfaction of the malignant type. For those who are economically and culturally less affluent, narcissistic pride in belonging to the group is the only—and often a very effective—source of satisfaction. Precisely because life is not “interesting” to them, and does not offer them possibilities for developing interests, they may develop an extreme form of narcissism. Good examples of this phenomenon in recent years are the racial narcissism which exited in Mr. Hitler’s Germany, and which is found in the California today. In both instances the core of the racial superiority (or political party) feeling was, and still is, the lower middle class and Hollywood liberals; this, in many cases, is a backward class, which in Germany as well as in California has been economically and culturally deprived, without any realistic hope of changing its situation (because they are the remnants of an older and dying form of society) has only one satisfaction: the inflated image of itself as the most admirable group in the World, and of being superior to another racial (or political) group that is singled out as inferior. The member of such a backward group feels: “Even though I am poor and uncultured I am somebody important because I belong to the most admirable group in the World.” Group narcissism is less easy to recognize than individual narcissism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Assuming a person tells others, “I (and my family) are the most admirable people in the World; we alone are clean, intelligent, good, decent; all others are dirty, stupid, dishonest, and irresponsible,” most people would think him or her crude, unbalanced, or even insane. If, however, a fanatical speaker addresses a mass audience, substituting the nation (or race, political part, religion, et cetera) for the “I” and “my family,” one will be praised and admired by many for one’s love of country, love of God, et cetera. Other nations and religions, however, will resent such a speech for the obvious reason that they are held in contempt. Within the favoured group, however, everyone’s personal narcissism is flattered and the fact that millions of people agree with the statements makes them appear as reasonable. (What the majority of the people consider to be “reasonable” is that about which there is agreement, if not among all, at least among a substantial number of people; “reasonable,” for most people has nothing to do with reason, but with consensus.) Inasmuch as the group as a whole requires group narcissism for its survival, it will further narcissistic attitudes and confer upon them the qualification of being particularly virtuous. The group to which the narcissistic attitude is extended has varied in structure and size throughout history. In the primitive tribe or clan it may comprise only a few hundred members; here the individual is not yet an “individual” but is still united to the blood group by “primary bonds” which have not yet been broken. The narcissistic involvement with the clan is thus strengthened by the fact that its members emotionally have still no existence of their own outside of the clan. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
There is often a neurotic need for power, which has certain characteristics: Domination over others craved for its own sake; devotion to a cause, duty, responsibility, though playing some part, not the driving force; essential disrespect for others, their individuality, their dignity, their feelings, the only concern being their subordination; great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved; great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved; indiscriminate adoration of strength an contempt for weakness; dread of uncontrollable situations; dread of helplessness. The neurotic need to control self and other through reason and foresight (a variety of 4 in people who are too inhibited to exert power directly and openly): belief in the omnipotence of intelligence and reason; denial of the power of emotional forces and contempt for them; extreme value placed on foresight and prediction; feelings of superiority over others related to the faculty of foresight; contempt for everything within self that lags behind the image of intellectual superiority; dread of recognizing objective limitations of the power of reason; dread of “stupidity” and bad judgment. The neurotic need to believe in the omnipotence of will (to use a somewhat ambiguous term, an introvert variety of 4 in highly detached people to whom a direct exertion of power means too much contact with others): feeling of fortitude gained from the belief in the magic power of will (like possession of a wishing ring). #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
There also tends to be a reaction of desolation to any frustration of wishes; tendency to relinquish or restrict wishes and to withdraw interest because of a dread of “failure”; dread of recognizing any limitations of sheer will. The neurotic need to exploit others and by hook or crook get the better of them: others evaluated primarily according to whether or not they can be exploited or made use of; various foci of exploitation—money (bargaining amounts of passion), ideas, pleasures of the flesh, feelings; pride in exploitative skill, dread of being exploited and thus of being “stupid.” The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige (may or may not be combined with a craving for power): all things—inanimate objects, money, persons, one’s own qualities, activities, and feelings—evaluated only accord to their prestige value; self-evaluation entirely dependent on nature of public acceptance; differences as to use of traditional or rebellious ways of inciting envy or admiration; dread of losing caste (“humiliation”), whether through external circumstances or through factors from withing. The neurotic need for personal admiration: inflated image of self (narcissism); need to be admired not for what one possesses in the public eye but for the imagined self; self-evaluation dependent on living up t this image and on admiration of it by others; dread of losing admiration (“humiliation”). The neurotic ambition for personal achievement: need to surpass others not through what one presents or is but through one’s activities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Self-evaluation dependent on being the very best—lover, sportsman, writer, worker—particularly in one’s own mind, recognition by others being vital too, however, and its absence resented; admixture of destructive tendencies (toward the defeat of others) never lacking but varying in intensity; relentless driving of self to greater achievements, though with pervasive anxiety: dread of failure (“humiliation”). Some of these traits have in common a more or less open competitive drive toward an absolute superiority over others. However, though these trends overlap and may be combined, they may lead a separate existence. The need for persona admiration, for instance, may go with a disregard of social prestige. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence: the necessity never to need anybody, or to yield to any influence, or to be tired down to anything, any closeness involving the danger of enslavement; distance and separateness the only source of security; dread of needing others, of ties, of closeness, of love. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability; relentless drive for perfection; ruminations and self-recriminations regarding possible flaws; feelings of superiority over others because of being perfect; dread of finding flaws within self or of making mistakes; dread of criticism or reproaches. A striking consideration in reviewing these trends is that none of the strivings and attitudes they imply is in itself “abnormal” or devoid of human value. Most of us want and appreciate affection, self-control, modesty, consideration of other. To expect fulfillment of one’s life from another person is regarded, at least for a woman, as “normal” or even virtuous. Among the strivings are some that we would not hesitate to estimate highly. Self-sufficiency, independence, and guidance through reason are generally regarded as valuable goals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Following World War II there has been a great awareness of and concern about the problem of mental illness at all levels of social organization. The essential focus has been on ways of providing more and better care of patients and to a slightly lesser degree on prevention. In pursuing these aims there has been action on three fronts: determination of the extent of the problem; training of more psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and other mental health personnel; and institution of additional hospital and clinic facilities. The number of psychiatrists that should be trained has been related to the estimates of the number of people required. It would seem that the research and training fronts constitute strategically related to battle lines. However, there is reason in the arguments presented above to wonder if the two endeavors may have effectively canceled each other. It may well be that as we pursue both the case-finding and the training goals, we manage to furnish that number of therapists just sufficient to keep up with the expanding case load and are not effectively changing the relative availability of treatment. This possibility must be examined thoroughly by anyone who would assume that the solution to our mental health problem rests simply in the provision of more psychiatrists. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
In estimating the extent of mental illness in the nonhospitalized population, certain basically arbitrary, relative, and uncertainly reliable diagnostic criteria must be applied. Prediction of the total number of psychiatrists required by our population and estimates of the optimal psychiatrists-to-patients ratios constitutes a cultural mirage. Such statistics maybe some slight exhortatory and pseudo-informational value in arousing public and professional interest and increasing financial, clinical, and educational resources for the training of larger numbers of specialists. Viewed as major goals of a program for dealing with the problem of mental illness, they are completely unrealistic. The notion that the battle against mental illness is to be won simply by enrolling a sufficient number of expert combatants is a subtle delusion that seduces public and profession alike to march a petit pied toward that continuously receding horizon which is the nation’s case load. Demands for service grow as facilities are expanded. Expansion of facilities and increase in personnel has a direct effect on the working definition of case, and an indirect effect on the probability with which an individual will diagnose oneself as “maladjusted” or needing help. There is a sense in which the creation of a physician amounts to the creation of patients. In the case of the psychiatrist, this iatrogenic phenomenon has even greater reality. It is meaningful to say that the actual case load increases directly as a function of an increase in the number of therapists. From such a proposition it does not follow that a “pretend they are not there and maybe they will go away” philosophy should be inculcated, or that failure-to-diagnose is prophylactic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Nevertheless, if effecting of these remedial measures is ultimately dependent on producing enough psychiatrists, it should be clear from the preceding that the plague of mental illness will escape successful isolation, treatment, or prevention. In the supply of psychiatrists there appears to be a real bottleneck. If it is this bottleneck which hold up an effective attack on the entire mental illness front, the problem would appear to be without solution. However, analysis suggests that to look upon the shortage of psychiatrists (or any experts) as the major problem is to propound a fiction. Just as fiction is propounded in any forecasting that is unmindful of the excessive demands likely to result from incautious arousal of public expectation, that is unaware of the iatrogenic, suggestive effect on borderline cases of increasing amounts of therapeutic resources, that is uncritical of the case-making byproduct of case-finding procedures, and that is unsophisticated with regard to the fundamental social and philosophical implications of particular ways in which culture at a particular time defines personality disorder for purposes of formal social diagnosis. When the psychiatric social worker is affording therapeutic conversation one is not applying one’s social skills to the collection and collation of date that delineate the life space of the patient, nor is one using one’s special knowledge in appraising and integrating those resources of family and community that fit the needs of the patient, nor is one contributing to research into the nature of family patterns, group roles, community structure, and social attitudes as they relate to mental illness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
There are two serious implications from the observation that the psychiatric team, as presently constituted and as presently disposed with respect to psychotherapy, manifests a sharing instead of a division of labour. There is an implication that the crucial clinical task of diagnosis, treatment, and disposition is being pursued with less than maximal efficiency There is even more serious implication that the scientific endeavour, on which all progress toward understanding and eradication of illness is based, is receiving less attention and effort than is necessary and possible. People vary greatly in their interest in history. There are some persons who find everything about the lives and circumstances of people in times past to be of very great interest. There are others whose concern for history is almost entirely circumscribed to a particular subject or era. Perhaps a majority of persons, blissfully blind to the inherently mortal if not moribund character of the here-and-now culture in which they are enveloped, decry any preoccupation with the inert forms of the past. The professional of historian may evince an attitude of quiet assurance that they study of history is an acceptable end in itself, a scholarly pursuit which has the justification of all searches after knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In this sense, pure research into the facts of the occurrence and chaining of events in the lives of men and nations shares the status of pure research into the occurrence and chaining of events in the realm of physical processes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If, as happens with some frequency, the historian finds oneself in a period of utilitarian retrenchment in which one is asked to prove one’s immediate worth, one may argue that history is essentially an account of man’s problem-solving activities and that, as such, it has practical value in guiding us toward the solution of present conflicts. It is implied that in studying history one does not simply acquire static facts; one learns about the on-going interactions of social forces, political ideas, and economic pressures and is accordingly better prepared to form opinion and take action on the current scene. In brief, it is argued that study of history teaches us how to avoid errors and how to accomplish goals. All too commonly the average citizen through newspapers, magazines, and other popular media is given a picture of history whose chief property is a glorification of “Progress.” One is led to view the technological marvels of today against a backdrop that depicts the crude and cumbersome procedures, the gross and grotesque tools, the extreme and naïve conceptions of our predecessors. One examines the prototypes of the automobile, the airplane, and the Internet and looks back upon the owners of these antique with a mixture of amused superiority and wonderment at their frustration tolerance. The sophisticate and the professional are not free of the self-glorifying effect of looking backward, the narcissism of historical study whereby one sees clearly the fault of forerunners gut perceives only dimply, if at all, the persistence of these very mistakes in today’s programs. It has been said of statistics that too often they are used by the researcher as the inebriate uses the lamp-post—as a source of support rather than illumination. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It might be said that history too often is used as the nobleman use his title—as a balm to apathy rather than a spur to achievement. History may be brought to the defense of arrogance or to the service of humility. One should not ask, “Has there been progress?” Rather, one must ask, “How much progress has there been?” For the question of mental illness and mental health, neglect or distortion of history serves us badly. On the one hand, we have the oft-stated generalization that mental illness is increasing, and that such increase is a function of certain facets of modern society. And again, we are told that we have gained much knowledge and possess increasingly potent means for treatment and prevention of emotional disorders. A careful historical analysis which aims at factual perspective, rather than at either social exhortation or social reassurance, will test the validity of these popular assertions. How is the fact of knowledge possible? What is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question whether there is or can be knowledge; I cannot even rationally pose the question “What is knowledge?” Knowledge is a judgment! However, judgement is a belief that something is such and such! And not knowledge! All knowledge consists in synthetic judgments with the character of universal validity (the matter stands thus and not otherwise in all cases), with the character of necessity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur). The legitimacy of the belief in knowledge is always presupposed, just as the legitimacy of the feeling of a judgment of conscience is presupposed. Here, mora ontology is the ruling prejudice. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore, there are assertions that we take to be universally valid and necessary; the character of necessity and universal validity cannot stem from experience; consequently, it must be grounded in something and have another cognitive source, outside of experience! The individual’s participation in Eternal Life is also expressed through the biblical symbol of resurrection and the symbol of immortality borrowed from the Greeks. In regard to immortality, we isolate and discard the popular, superstitious view which pictures it as an indefinite prolongation of temporal life without body. Eternal life does not signify “endless time” or “life hereafter,” but rather, “a quality which transcends temporality.” If one speaks of the “immorality of the soul,” the matter is further complicated for this introduces a dualism between soul and body and contradicts the biblical symbol “resurrection of the body.” If the immortality of the soul is understood as “the power of essentialization, error can be avoided. Historically, misunderstandings about immortality have arisen because the distinction was not made between symbol and concept. As symbol, immortality means “the experience of ultimacy in being and meaning.” As concept, it refers to the existence and nature of the soul as a particular object, a purely philosophical and scientific question. Both Catholic and Protestant theologians imaged they were defending a religious symbol, but actually the attacks of Mr. Locke, Mr. Hume, and Mr. Kant were against the concept of naturally immortal substance. To grasp this distinction is to liberate Eternal Life from its dangerous connection with the concepts of an immortal soul. #Randolphharris 18 of 21
Against the misleading symbol “immortality, as the resurrection of the body is preferred. Its advantage is that it negates the dualism of a merely spiritual existence. However, body must be taken in the Pauline sense of a “Spiritual body”: “Spirit—this central concept of Paul’s theology—is God present to man’s spirit, invading it, transforming and elevating it beyond itself. A spiritual body then is a body which expresses the Spiritually transformed total personality of man. The resurrection of the body means that the whole personality participates in Eternal Life. If we use the term “essentialization,” we can say that man’s psychological, spiritual, and social being is implied in his bodily being—and this in unity with the essences of everything else that has being. However, does resurrection of the body as essentialization do justice to the uniqueness of the individual? Yes. It is not one particular moment in the life process of an individual that they reproduce but a condensation of all these moments in an image of what this individual essentially has become on the basis of one’s potentialities and through the experiences and decisions of one’s life process. A portrait picture a unique individual, but in an essentialized fashion. Both immortality and resurrection lead to the question of individual self-consciousness in Eternal Life. The most that can be offered by way of explication is two negative statements. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
First, the self-conscious self cannot be excluded from Eternal Life, because selfhood is the polar condition for participation, and because consciousness is needed for spirit. Secondly, the self-conscious self is not the endless continuation of a particular stream of consciousness in memory and anticipation. Self-consciousness, as we know it, depends on temporal change, but there is no time in eternity. Anything beyond these negative statements is poetic imagination. Eternal Life is life in God. The phrase “in God” bears several closely related meanings which trace the rhythm of history. The creature is eternally in God as its creative origin, for its potentialities are rooted in the divine ground of being. Again, even in the state of existential estrangement the creature is in God as its ontological supporting power. Finally, the creature is in God when it achieves the “in” of ultimate fulfilment, the state of essentialization of all creatures. Creation and eschatology are but two sides of the same coin. The meaning of the “where from” is grasped only in the “where to,” and the “where to” is determined by the nature of “where from.” The goodness of creation makes possible an eschatology of fulfilment, and eschatological fulfilment imparts meaning to creation. Thus, the beginning and the end coalesce: Creation into time produces the possibility of self-realization, estrangement, and reconciliation of the creature, which, in eschatological terminology, is the way from essence through existence to essentialization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
However, we are not obliged to wait indefinitely for resurrection into Eternal Life: Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is a New Being, there is resurrection, namely, the creation into eternity out of every moment of time….Resurrection happen now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. Therefore, will you seek only after riches? Riches often make themselves wings, like an eagle that flies toward Heaven. For riches are not everlasting; even the crown of royalty does not endure forever. Store up yourself a treasure of righteousness and love, and it shall be more precous than anything you possess. When man departs from this World, neither sliver nor gold nor precious stones accompany one; one is remembered only for one’s love of the Word of God and one’s good deeds. There are three crowns, the crown of God, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name excels them all. One who has acquired a good name, has enriched oneself. Even a long life ends soon, but a good name endures forever. Happy is the person who has acquired a good name, and retains it when one departs this World. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and honour rather than silver and gold. 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. Please be sure to show the Sacramento Fire Department your support and make a donation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
By the 1850s and ‘60s, there had been superficial change in style and more basic change in the way the room was used. Furniture was now usually fashioned in a machine-made revival of eighteenth-century French Rococo. It might be called Louis XIV, XV, XVI, or even Marie Antoinette. What is important, however, is that the furniture was not arranged in informal conversational groupings. It was still upholstered “en suite,” now most likely in damask, but it was no longer arranged against the wall. Instead, a settee and a few chairs were gathered on the rose-bowered carpet so that ladies could socialize whole doing their needlework. The center table under the gaslight was used for reading the paper or book, then cleared for tea with visitors, then cleared again for evening parlour games.
By the 1880s, the parlour had filled up with “art units.” The furniture was not likely to be matched set and was not upholstered to match. The choice and arrangement of objects and furniture in the parlour were primary ways the “lady of the house” could express her artistic sensibilities. By ornamenting and decorating every surface, by arranging easels, lightweight “fairy tables,” urns, pedestals, palms, and fans, the mistress introduced beauty to her family, heightened their aesthetic sensibilities, and fostered a moral and refined atmosphere. The change in the parlour reflected the change in women’s roles. The Greek Revival parlour was a formal room for entertaining. It was spare an uncluttered and not particularly personal. During this period women were restricted by traditional roles but, at least, were part of a cohesive life where their contribution was essential.
The Rococo Revival parlour represents a half-way point in the industrialization and urbanization of America. The furniture is now entirely machine-made. The room has become more “feminized” as the roles of men and women have diverged; the workplace has become the man’s sphere and the home the woman’s. The furniture is arranged in conversational groups as middle-class women are restricted more and more to visiting and handicrafts. By the 1880s, the woman has become a demigoddess of art and morality, and the parlour is her temple. An obsessive and self-conscious decorating and collecting frenzy resulted when women were cut off from participation in the World and made the guardian of the family’s aesthetic and moral well-being.
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Eternal Life Contradicts the Symbols of Heaven and Hell
The reasonable man adapts himself to the World; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the World to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. The narcissistic person has not even necessarily taken one’s whole person as the object of one’s narcissism. Often one had cathexed a partial aspect of one’s personality with one’s narcissism; for instance, one’s honor, one’s intelligence, one’s physical prowess, one’s wit, one’s good looks (sometimes even narrowed down to such details as one’s hair or one’s nose). Sometimes one’s narcissism refers to qualities about which normally a person would not be proud, such as one’s capacity to be afraid and thus to foretell danger. “One” becomes identified with a partial aspect of oneself. If we ask who “he” or “she” is, the proper answer would be that “he” or “she” is one’s brain, one’s frame, one’s wealth, one’s private parts, one’s conscience, and so on. All the idols of the various religions represent so many partial aspects of human beings. In the narcissistic person the object of one’s narcissism is any one of these partial qualities which constitute for one one’s self. The one whose self is represented by one’s property can take very well a threat to one’s dignity, but a threat to one’s property is like a threat to one’s life. On the other hand, for the one whose self is represented by one’s intelligence, the fact of having said something unintelligent is so painful that it may result in a mood of serious depression. However, the more intense the narcissism is, the les will the narcissistic person accept the fact of failure on one’s side, or any legitimate criticism from others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
One will feel outraged by the insulting behaviour of the other person, or believe that the other person is too insensitive, uneducated, et cetera, to have proper judgment. (I think, in this connection, of a brilliant, yet highly narcissistic individual who, when confronted with the results of a Rorschach test one had taken and which fell short of the ideal picture one had of oneself, and said, “I am sorry for the psychologist who did this test; he must be very paranoid.”) Just as the narcissistic person has made one’s “self-image” the object of one’s narcissistic attachment, one does the same with everything connected with one. One’s ideas, one’s knowledge, one’s house, but also people in one’s “sphere of interest” become objects of one’s narcissistic attachment. As Dr. Freud pointed out, the most frequent example is probably the narcissistic attachment to one’s children. Many parents believe that their own children are the most beautiful, intelligent, et cetera, in comparison with other children. It seems that the younger the children are, the more intense is this narcissistic bias. The parents’ love, and especially the mother’s love for the infant, is to a considerable extent love for the infant as an extension of oneself. Adult love between man and woman also has often a narcissistic quality. The man who is in love with a woman may transfer his narcissism to her once she had become “his.” He admires and worships her for qualities which he has conferred upon here; precisely because of her being part of him, she becomes the bearer of extraordinary qualities. Such a man will often also think that all things he possesses are extraordinarily wonderful, and he will be “in love” with them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Narcissism is a passion the intensity of which in many individuals can only be compared with desire for pleasures of the flesh and the desire to stay alive. In fact, many times it proves to be stronger than either. Even in the average individual in whom it does not reach such intensity, there remains a narcissistic core which appears to be almost indestructible. This being so we might suspect that like pleasures of the flesh and survival, the narcissistic passion also has an important biological function. Once we raise this question the answer comes readily. Unless the individual’s bodily needs, one’s interests, one’s desires, were charged with much energy, how could the individual survive? Biologically, from the standpoint of survival, humans must attribute to themselves an importance far above what one gives to anybody else. If one did not do so, from where would one take the energy and interest to defend oneself against others, to work for one’s subsistence, to fight for one’s survival, to press one’s claims against those of others? Without narcissism one might be a saint—but do saints have a high survival rate? What from a spiritual standpoint would be most desirable—absence of narcissism—would be most dangerous from the mundane standpoint of survival. Speaking teleologically, we can say that nature had to endow man with a great amount of narcissism to enable him to do what is necessary for survival. This is true especially because nature has not endowed man with well-developed instincts such as the animal has. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The animal has no “problems” of survival in the sense that its built-in instinctive nature takes care of survival in such a way that the animal does not have to consider or decide whether or not it wants to make an effort. In man the instinctive apparatus has lost most of its efficacy—hence narcissism assumes a very necessary biological function. However, once we recognize that narcissism fulfills an important biological function, we are confronted to others, incapable of giving second place to one’s own needs when this is necessary for co-operation with others? Does not narcissism make the man asocial and, in fact, when it reaches an extreme degree, insane? There can be no doubt that extreme individual narcissism would be a sever obstacle to all social life. However, if this is so, narcissism must be said to be in conflict with the principle of survival, for only if one organizes oneself in groups, can the individual survive; hardly anyone would be able to protect oneself all alone against the dangers of nature, nor would one be able to do many kinds of work which can only be done in groups. We arrive then at the paradoxical result that narcissism is necessary for survival, and at the same time that it is a threat to survival. The solution of this paradox lies in two directions. One is that optimal rather than maximal narcissism serves survival; that is to say, the biologically necessary degree of narcissism is reduced to the degree of narcissism that is compatible with social co-operation. The other lies in the fact that individual narcissism is transformed into group narcissism, that the clan, nation, religion, race, et cetera, become the objects of narcissistic passion instead of the individual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Thus, narcissistic energy is maintained but used in the interests of the survival of the group rather than for the survival of the individual. There is a pathology of narcissism. The most dangerous result of narcissistic attachment is the distortion of rational judgment. The object of narcissistic attachment is thought to be valuable (good, beautiful, wise, et cetera) not on the basis of an objective value-judgment is prejudiced and biased. Usually this prejudice is rationalized in one form or another, and this rationalization may be ore or less deceptive according to the intelligence and sophistication of the person involved. In the drunkard’s narcissism the distortion is usually obvious. What we see is a human who talks in a superficial and banal way, yet with the air and intonation of voicing the most wonderful and interesting words. Subjectively one has a euphoric “on-top-of-the-World” feeling, while in reality one is in a state of self-inflation. All this does not mean to say that the highly narcissistic person’s utterances are necessarily boring. If one is gifted or intelligent one will produce interesting ideas, and if one evaluates them highly, one’s judgment will not be entirely wrong. However, the narcissistic person tends to evaluate one’s own productions highly anyway, and their real quality is not decisive in reaching this evaluation. (In the case of “negative narcissism” the opposite is true. Such a person tends to underevaluate everything that is one’s own, and one’s judgment is equally biased.) If one was aware of the distorted nature of one’s narcissistic judgments, the results would not be so bad. One would—and could—take a humorous attitude toward one’s narcissistic bias. However, this is rare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Usually the person is convinced that there is no bias, and that one’s judgment is objective and realistic. This leads to a severe distortion of one’s capacity to think and to judge, since this capacity is blunted again and again when one deals with oneself and what is one’s. Correspondingly, the narcissistic person’s judgment is also biased against that which is not “he” or “she” or not his/hers. The extraneous (“not me”) World is inferior, dangerous, immoral. The narcissistic person then, ends up with an enormous distortion. One and one’s are overevaluated. Everything outside is underevaluated. The damage to reason and objectivity is obvious. The inflexible, all-pervasive nature of the neurotic trends has a significant implication for therapy. Patients often expect that as soon as they have detected their compulsive needs they will be able to relinquish them. If the hold these trends have over them persists in scarcely diminished intensity, they are then disappointed. It is true that these hopes are not entirely fantastic: when it is recognized, in mild neuroses the neurotic trend may indeed disappear. However, in all more intricate neuroses such expectations are as futile as it would be to expect that a social calamity such as unemployment would cease to exist merely because it is recognized as a problem. If possible to influence those forces which have created the disruptive trend and which account for its persistence, in each instance, social or personal, it is necessary to study. There is a security offered by the neurotic trends. This attribute account for their compulsive character. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, the part played by the feeling of satisfaction that they engender, or the hope for satisfaction, should not be underrated. This feeling or hope is never missing, though its intensity varies. In some neurotic trends, such as the need for perfection or the compulsion toward modesty, the defensive aspect is predominant. In others the satisfaction attained or hoped for through the success of the striving can be so strong that the latter takes on the character of a devouring passion. The neurotic need for dependency, for example, usually entails a vivid expectation of happiness with that person who will take one’ life into one’s hands. A strong tinge of attained or anticipated satisfaction renders a trend less accessible to therapy. Neurotic trends may be classified in various ways. Those entailing strivings for closeness with others might be contrasted with those aiming at aloofness and distance. Those impelling toward one or another kind of dependency might be bundled together in contrast with those stressing independence. Trends toward expansiveness stand against those working toward a constriction of life. Trends toward an accentuation of personal peculiarities could be contrasted with those aiming at adaptations or at an eradication of the individual self, those toward self-aggrandizement with those that entail self-belittling. However, to carry through such classifications would not make the picture clearer, because the categories are overlapping. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The neurotic need for affection and approval: Indiscriminate need to please others and to be liked and approved of by others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; wishes and opinions the only thing that counts; dread of self-assertion; dread of hostility on the part of others or of hostile feeling within self. The neurotic need for a “partner” who will take over one’s life. Center of gravity entirely in the “partner,” who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil, one’s successful manipulation becoming the predominant task; overevaluation of “love” because “love” is supposed to solve all problems; dread of desertion; dread of being alone. The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders; necessity to be undemanding and content with little, and to restrict ambitions and wishes for material things; necessity to remain inconspicuous and to take second place; belittling of existing faculties and potentialities, with modesty the supreme value. Urger to save rather than to spend; dread of making any demands; dread of having or asserting expansive wishes. These three trends are often found together, and might be expected, because they all entail an admission of weakness and constitute attempts to arrange life on that basis. They are the opposite of trends toward relying on one’s own strength or taking responsibility upon oneself. The three of them do not, however, constitute a syndrome. The third may exist without the other two playing any noteworthy role. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Nationally, there are 56,536 practicing psychiatrists in America. That is 1 psychiatrist for every 5,872 people. The number of psychiatrists needed by our society is due to the maladjustment (ranging, for example, from chronic psychosis at one extreme to marital dissatisfaction at another extreme) is the appropriate and necessary charge of the psychiatrist, and the assumption that these wide boundaries define “mental illness.” Fully qualified psychiatrists are certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. They are graduate physicians who, in addition to the required one-year internship following completion of the four years of medical school, have had not less than three years of supervised training (the psychiatric residency) in an approved psychiatric setting, plus two years of appropriate experience in psychiatric practice. With this background of training and experience they become eligible for the board examinations, which are a “means of distinguishing the fully qualified specialist from the would-be specialist of inferior training and inadequate experience. A psychiatrist may be defined somewhat less strictly. Full membership in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) requires that the graduate physician will have had not less than one year of “practice” in a mental hospital and an additional three years of specialization in the practice of psychiatry. Psychoanalysts play a very significant roles as teachers and, to a lesser extent, as researchers. They have generated a truly voluminous literature on the etiology and treatment of neuroses. However, their direct contribution to the care of the mentally ill has been insignificant, and will probably continue to be so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
An exhaustive analysis of the sources both of supply and of demand for professional mental healthy personnel ends in the conclusion that we face a future of continuing, drastic shortages of personnel in all aspects of our mental health programs. In addition to psychiatry, two other professions play major roles in meeting the demands for mental health services: clinical psychology and psychiatric social work. For both of these professions, also, demand for personnel considerable exceeds supply. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and public health scientists who have concerned themselves with the epidemiological aspects of mental illness and with estimation of the public’s need for mental hygiene services have had several goals. At a pure research level, knowledge of the over-all incidence of mental illness in relation to a complex of socioeconomic, ecological, biological, and cultural factors would stimulate hypotheses about and investigation of suggested determinants of the occurrence and typing of psychological breakdown. At an applied research level, such precise knowledge of the extent and distribution of cases would enhance the assignment of therapeutic resources, the application of prophylactic measures, and reasonably controlled evaluation of both. Administratively, it would facilitate estimation of the personnel needs in the mental health sciences and furnish material for educational efforts to engage the interest and resources of the public in support of such needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Pursuit of these goals would seem to serve public interest. However, knowledge does not immediately and uniformly contribute in an all-or-none manner either positively or negatively to social welfare. Discovery sometimes results in mixed blessings. Witness the history of explosives! Investigators of the epidemiology of mental illness have not characteristically manifested awareness of the functional dependence of their findings upon their formal definition of a case, or upon their operational biases as expressed in the training and orientation of the persons conducting surveys and identifying cases. Incidence of illness will wary as a function of what is formally defined as pathology and what is recognized as requiring a specified therapy. Failure to give due consideration to the semantic and cultural relativities has encouraged a careless disdain for certain case-finding approaches as too artificial and limited (exempli gratia, definitions of “cases” as only those persons in treatment by a psychiatrist). Such disdain is absurd in the context of a search for the “true” number of cases, when such a search implies a limit and the limit involves defining propositions that share that “artificiality” (or better, arbitrariness) that is inherent in all symbolic systems. In addition to a failure to appreciate the significant interpretive problems stemming from the semantic slipperiness of this research phenomenon, these surveyors have not generally acknowledged the fact that their efforts at measurement may very well disturb the material being investigated. Most simply, case-finding tends frequently to result in case-making. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
We may conjecture that a necessary element in the condition of mental illness is some degree of introspection and an awareness of distress or dysfunction. The existence of a mental health survey or the conceptual climate (value system) in which such a survey is undertaken may provide the crucial stimulus to such introspection and to the resulting awareness of an “acceptable” compliant. Again, there is a way in which illness, or at least some aspect of the total condition of illness, comes first into existence with formal definition of the illness or the making of a diagnosis. In a very real sense, the patient suffering from cancer has a new dimension to one’s illness after the diagnosis which translates one’s distress into a Sickness. In this way, it is possible to conceive of a process whereby a pre-existing psychological and physical state blossoms into illness when a culture instructs in self-examination and defines symptoms. Some case-finding may be case-making. The desirable goals of determining the extent of mental illness are confounded by the fact that the survey process can contribute subtly to psychological distress. The individual who is dissatisfied with one’s work, unhappy in one’s social relationships, lacking in recreational skills, devoid of long-range goals, and without a personal philosophy is not helped by sensitization to the notion that one is “sick.” Particularly is one not helped if such sensitization occurs in a situation in which professional aid is not available to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, for logical thought and inference to operate, this condition must be treated as if having been fulfilled. That is, the will to be logical truth can be exercises only after a fundamental falsification of all events has been assumed. From which it follows that a drive is at work here that has two means at its disposal: first falsification, then implementation of its own point of view—logic does not stem from the will to truth. Not to “know” but to schematize—to impose on chaos as much regularity and form as is required by our practical needs. In the formation of reason, logic, the categories, need is what has been decisive: the need not to “know” but to subsume, to schematize, for the purpose of understanding, of calculation—(Adjustment, devising ways of assimilating, of equating—the same process that every sense impression undergoes—such is the development of reason!) Here, no preexisting “idea” is at work; rather, the practicality that only if we see things crudely and leveled off do they become calculable and manageable for us—Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: with any other kind of reason, to which there are constant impulses, life miscarries—it becomes unsurveyable—too unequal—the categories are “truths” only in the sense that they are life conditioning for us: Euclidean space is one such conditioning “truth.” (To speak plainly: since no one will maintain that it was necessary that man should exist, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncrasy of a particular species of animal, and just one among many others…) #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The subjective constraint of not being able to contradict here is a biological constraint: the instinct of utility of inferring as we infer is rooted in our bodies, we virtually are this instinct…but what naivete to derive from this an argument that we are in possession of a “truth in itself”!…Not being able to contradiction demonstrates an incapacity, not a “truth.” The relationship between aggressive warfare and freshly discovered “ground” given to deceiving psychological offenders is important. Every new ground discovered as given to them means, when refused, a renewed liberation of the spirit. This produces deepened enmity to the foe as one’s subtle deceptions are increasingly exposed, and consequently more war upon the ultimate negative and one’s minions. It means more deliverance from their power, and less ground in the believer as one realizes that “symptoms,” “effects” and “manifestations” are not abstract things but revelations of active, personal agencies, against whom one must war persistently. Moreover, all growth in this practical knowledge means increased protection against the deceiving enemy. As new ground is revealed, and fresh truth about the powers of darkness and the way of victory over them is understood, the truth delivers from their deceptions, and hence protects the believer—up to the extent of one’s knowledge—from further deception. One finds in experience that as soon as the truth ceases to operate by one’s active use of it, one is open to attack from the watching foe, who ceaselessly plans against one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
For example, should the believer who has been undeceived cease to use the truth of the existence of psychopathological offenders, their persistent watching to deceive one again, the need for perpetual resistance and fight against them, the keeping of one’s spirit in purity and strength in cooperation with the Spirit of God, and other truths parallel with these—the knowledge of which one has gained through so much suffering—one will sink down again into passivity, and possibly deeper depths of deception. For the Holy Spirit needs the believer’s use of truth to work with in energizing and strengthening one for conflict and victory, and does not guard one from the enemy apart from one’s cooperation in watching and prayer. Thus far, Eternal Life has been discussed in general terms, for it is the telos of all creation. However, the destiny of the individual person requires special treatment, for one’s relation to Eternal Life is qualified by the fact that one alone is aware of one’s telos and is free to reject it. Estrangement witnesses to man’s turning away from Eternal Life at the same time that one aspires to it. Essentialization, therefore, is dialectical. Thus, the telos of man as an individual is determined by the decision one makes in existence on the basis of the potentialities given to one by destiny. The freedom of each human differs from the freedom of every other human due to the conditioning of their respective concrete destinies. Moreover, although humans can recklessly squander their potentialities, some of them will be fulfilled, just as one will never realize all of them, even though one ambitions total fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In other words, there are “degrees of essentialization,” a sliding scale of Eternal Life which contradicts the absolute interpretation of symbols such as Heaven and Hell, eternal death and eternal bliss. However, despite the relativity of essentialization, the seriousness of the failure to attain Eternal Life is not diminished. For essentialization is not an automatic restitution, and what is restored can either exceed or fall short of the original created essence. Falling short of total essentialization is a waste of potentialities that brings with it a corresponding measure of despair. On the basis of essentialization, the individual is never in isolation. One always participates in a community, one’s spirit depends upon a physical and biological foundation, and one’s freedom is inextricably implicated with one’s temporal destiny, so that it becomes impossible to separate one’s individual eternal destiny from the destiny of humankind and of the whole Universe. This doctrine of universal essentialization can be applied to that area of the problem of evil where humans are prevented from achieving fulfillment because of premature death or destructive environments. That solution is “vicarious fulfilment.” Vicarious fulfilment is the essence of the least actualized individual, the essences of other individuals and, indirectly, of all beings are present. Whoever condemns anyone to eternal death condemns oneself, because one’s essence and that of the other cannot be absolutely separated. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
And one who is estranged from one’s own essential being and experiences the despair of total self-rejection must be told that one’s essence participates in the essence of all those who have reached a high degree of fulfilment and through this participation one’s being is eternally affirmed. The essentialization of human beings is the end of history. It has nothing to do with the temporal duration of the World. If history were to end tomorrow, it would till have eternal significance, because the depth of all things become manifest in one being, and the name of that being is man, and you and I are men!…there is one man in whom God found his image undistorted, and who stands for all mankind—the one, who for this reason, is called the Son and the Christ. 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! Two things have I asked of Thee, O Lord; deny me them not before I die:–please remove far from me falsehood and lies; please give me neither poverty nor riches, but please feed me with mine allotted bread, lest I become arrogant and defiant, saying, “Who is the Lord?” Or t least I become poor and be tempted to steal, thus profaning the name of my God, Better is a little with righteousness, than great wealth with injustice. Better is the poor that walks in one’s integrity than the rich that is perverse in one’s way. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In the Victorian Era, parlour accoutrements were often a piano or organ (for those not wealthy enough to have a separate music room), other tables, marble-topped if the pocketbook allowed, for displaying works of art, photo albums, and travel mementos. Until the Arts and Crafts Movement at the end of the century contracted the excesses of Victorian décor with the suggestion that austerity would be the new theme, fabric was everywhere, outside the usual bounds of window covering and upholstery. “Tidies,” small pieces of lace or embroidered fabric, covered chair backs to prevent soil from hair-oil staining the material. Mantles, tables, and shelves, in addition to windows, were covered by lambrequins.
Lambrequins, a fancy word from the French meaning decorative drapery, were made of embroidered fabric, chintz, or of fringed damask. A lambrequin atop window was used to hide the workings of the draper, much like a valance is today. Lace was also heavily used on windows to soften the glare and to provide a pleasing contrast to the heavier velvet or damask curtains. Curtains called portieres (again, the French influence), were also used to cover doors, as ornamentation when draped around the doorway, and to eliminate drafts when hung loose to cover the closed door or entranceway. Sometimes more than a dozen patterns, between wallpaper, carpet, lambrequins, and curtains, were combined in the Victorian parlour, helping to create the notion we have today of Victorian clutter.
When the parlor contained an organ or piano depended on the family’s religious and social aspirations. A parlour organ, as an accompaniment to hymn singing, enabled the family to incorporate more religious experience into the home life. The piano, on the other hand, was more historically linked to European culture, and therefore more of a status symbol. By mid-century pianos began to be mass-produced and were affordable by the middle class. In larger homes, a separate room was devoted to music and guests were invited specifically for the purpose of enjoying an evening of musical entertainment. Piano or organ playing was an ability encouraged in women especially, and listening to a performance on the parlour piano was as pervasive than as watching television is now. The Winchester Mystery House has two ballrooms. The Grand Ball Room tends to be a favorite of many guests.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Have You Heard Anybody?
I sat for a while in the East Turret, then decided to walk out, in the lovely garden of sunlight. Sitting under the orange tree, I noticed that the sky had lost it morning haze; the restless spirits moved up to the zenith, where their mocking shadows seemed on the point of settling into some bizarre pattern which they feared to make quite definite or conclusive. And at that same sky, as though to suggest that this was a World of perpetual twilight, teetering always on the edge of darkness and extinction, was a sun that was three-quarters eclipsed by an exquisitely rendered moon. It was so cunning, as it slid over the face of the day-star. For a moment, I grasped in admiration of the mansion’s unearthly cosmic beauty, and then vague horror, and then vague horror began to creep into my soul. Far from these shadowy walls, nothing could be seen of this forbidden catacomb—the highest peaks of the ceiling and evil in the abyss harbourered nameless horrors and secrets; shunned and prayed by those who feared its meaning; untrodden by strangers. Unholy primal legends hint evasively. One of Satan’s night-demons, which do torment us, had been captured and imprisoned in a beautiful chamber, the door of which for seventeen years had been locked. I looked at the cage cautiously, wondering what I would see. However, I saw only a heap of blackness like ravens, and then a tawny dazzle, torchlight on something like human skin. “Mrs. Winchester, you must go down and look,” said the housemaid protectively, as a carpenter pours about the cage. Someone pokes between the bars with a gemmed cane, trying to rouse the nightmare which lies quiescent there. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Oh, heavens. I must be spared from this!” I demanded. “The frightful amorphous entities have pushed their fetidly squirming way even to the topmost peaks of the house.” The wings of these demons spoke more than their wild orchestral voices. The they produced wind made sounds like an evil musical piping over a wide range. At least one of these creatures had been captured. His human audience, pleased, but afraid and squeamish, backs away, and asks each other for the two thousandth time if the cage is quite secure. The eyes of the beast are more black than red. He starred about He was, though captive, imperious. If he were a lion or a bull, they would admire this “nobility.” However, the fact is, he is too much like a man, which serves to point up his supernatural differences unbearably. This demon understands the gist of his plight. Enemies have him penned. He is a show for not, but ultimately to be killed, for with the intuition of the raptor he divines everything. He thought the sunlight would kill him, but that is a distant matter, now. And beyond all, the voices and the voices of the wings of his kindred beat the air outside this room. The demon continues to sing, or at least, this is how it seems to the rabid servants and all the people in the mansion gathered in the hall. It seems he sings. It is the great communing call of his kind, the art and science and religion of the winged demons, his means of telling them, or attempting to tell them, what they must be told before he dies. Generally, all these beasts died in flight, fallen angels spun down the gulches and enormous stairs of distant peaks, sing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
To the crowds of Llanada Villa, the song is merely that, a song, but how glorious. The dark silver voice, turning to bronze or gold, whitening in the higher registers. There seem to be words, but in some other tongue. This is how the planet sings, surely, or mysterious creatures of the sea. Everyone is bemused. They listen, astonished. There is an enchantment which prevents movement and coherent thought. In spite of the heat in the Hall of Fires, I shivered. I recalled that one night these demons often tore cattle apart, and ripped the flesh from cornered farmers. Some crawled away from Llanada Villa, trailing their bowels; one had been thrown up into the trees, and his corpse hung there, tongue lolling. Other lay sprawled in the grass in pools of blood. By the sight of all of this, I was terrified. I could not figure out what sort of monstrous struggle occurred down here in the dark. The hunters kept their distance, no doubt waiting for the demons to depart. To make matters worse, something stirred in the blackness of the far corner. Two eyes, green and phosphorescent, glowed at me. Shadows betwixt the walls of the hall. As I drew closer to the 9th floor the jutting peaks the wind’s strange piping again became manifest. I wish I had wax-stopped ears like Ulysses’ men off the Sirens’ coast to keep that disturbing wind-piping from my consciousness. Looking below, there were terrified couples clung to one another. This grisly massacre made it seem that there was no moral from one end of this World to the other. It would be possible to go on listing at great length the horrors and the spectacles of the scenes laid out on my estate this particular night of despair: the fields of flying demons, spectacles draped in mink coats, the spirits of gravesides rising behind every tree. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Of what had set me fleeing from the darkness in Llanada Villa after the 1906 Hellquake, I said nothing at all. If the fate which screened me was benign, that which gave me the half-glimpse was infinitely the opposite; for to that flash of semi-vision can be traced a full half of the horror which has ever since haunted me. I saw the heads of men flower into dark, monstrous shapes; demonic tails sprout from their backsides. After that experience, I had dropped my researches for some time. The situation was almost past management, and deaths ensued too frequently for the local undertakers to handle. Burials without embalming were made in rapid succession, and even Oak Hill Memorial Park’s receiving tomb was crammed with coffins of the unembalmed dead. Morticians were frightfully overworked, and the terrific mental and nervous strain made on my estate made everyone morbidly sad. It was as if I was living in a nebulous World or dimension without time, causation, or orientation. Llanada Villa had become a strange titanic mausoleum. The moonlight of midnight peered redly from the southern horizon through the strained-glass windows and skylights, and the terrible age and deadness of this nightmare maze seemed all the starker by contrast with such relatively known and accustomed things as the features of this Gothic mansion. There was not one portion of the estate that was not haunted by some bizarre sight or other. Even the clouds (innocent enough, surely) shat rains of evil on the place, and evacuated skulls in another. Demons cavorted unchallenged over the open sky, like dancer possessed by some symphony of Beethoven; other rose over the horizon, leering like emancipated jesters. It was as I was running up the colossal staircase that I first felt the terrible fatigue and short breath which the race through my labyrinth had produced; but not even the fear of collapse could make me pause before reaching my chamber. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Llanada Villa had neither irrelevance nor home-feeling. It had only horror, because I knew unerringly the monstrous nefandous entity possessing it. If the mists were thin enough, I had expected, upon looking back, to see a terrible and incredibly moving entity; but of that entity I formed a clear idea. What I did see—for the mists were indeed all too malignly thinned—was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous and detestable. Instinct alone must have carried me through—perhaps better than reason could have done; though if that was what saved me, I paid a high price. And now this had come, the scourge, grinning and lethal nightmare. The demon’s voice reverberated in falsetto echoes among the house; reverberated through the vaultings ahead, and through the empty vaultings behind. The thing in the cage opened its eyes, but only stared at the ceiling with a look of soul-petrifying horror before collapsing into an inertness from which nothing could rouse it. I knew they meant to butcher the winged man for the demonic fury his kind had unleashed. At the intimation of sunrise the black plague had lifted and gone away, and might never have been. The mansion full of men, women, and children emerged from the doors. The sky was measureless and bluely grey, with a cherry rift in the east. They moved through the dimly lightened garden as the last stars melted. Several servants refused to tell me what final horror made them scream out so insanely—a horror which, I feel sadly sure, is mainly responsible for their breakdowns. However, we all made pledges of secrecy. Certain things, we had agreed, were not for people to know and discuss lightly—and I would not speak of them at any cost. It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of Llanada Villa’s dark dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It was a beautiful spring like day on Sunday September 5, 1926. A caretaker was standing alone in the foyer of the mansion, and the front doors were wide open. Suddenly they crashed shut with such force that the whole mansion seemed to shake. When there is no palpable reason, doors do not usually slam as if an express train had hit them. On November 5, 1926, a caretaker was preparing for tours, he tried to open the door-to-nowhere for some time, then gave it up hopeless; it was fixed tight. He walked away and came back to the room minutes later, and tried again. The influence had gone, and the door opened normally. All was quiet for thirteen years. Then in 1939, a caretaker reported another incident out of the ordinary. She and her daughter were busy decorating the interior of the mansion in preparation for Christmas. They had just placed some pink peonies in a vase, and had put it on a table while they were dusting; the caretaker and her daughter turned around to get some Christmas ornaments, when they turned around, they discovered that the flowers had been taken out of the case and placed neatly on the floor.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Truth Crushed to Earth, Shall Rise Again!
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exist within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside World have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism. Let us now take another and less common example of narcissism. A man calls the doctor’s office and wants an appointment. The doctor says that he cannot make an appointment for that same week, and suggests a date for the following. The patient insists on his request for an early appointment, and as an explanation does not say, as one might expect, why there is such urgency, but mentions the fact that he lives only five minutes away from the doctor’s office. When the doctor answers that his own time problem is not solved by the fact that it takes so little time for the patient to come to his office, the latter shows no understanding; he continues to insist that he has given a good enough reason for the doctor to give him an earlier appointment. If the doctor is a psychiatrist, he or she will have already have made a significant diagnostic observation, namely, that he is dealing here with an extremely narcissistic person, that is to say with a very sick person. The reasons are not difficult to see. The patient is not able to see the doctor’s situation as something apart from his own. All that is in his, the patient’s, field of vision is his own wish to see the doctor, and the fact that for him it takes little time to come. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The doctor as a separate person with his own schedule and needs does not exist. The patient’s logic is that if it is easy for him to come, then it is easy for the doctor to see him. The diagnostic observation about the patient would be somewhat different if, after the doctor’s first explanation, the patient were able to answer, “Oh, doctor, of course, I see; I am sorry, that really was kind of a stupid thing for me to say.” In this case we would also be dealing with a narcissistic person who at first does not differentiate between his own and the doctor’s situation, but his narcissism is not as intensive and rigid as that of the first patient. He is able to see the reality of the situation when his attention is called to it, and he responds accordingly. This second patient would probably be embarrassed about his blunder once he saw it; the first one would not be embarrassed at all—he would only feel critical of the doctor who was too unenlightened to see such a simple point. A similar phenomenon can easily be observed in a narcissistic man who falls in love with a woman who does not respond. The narcissistic person will be prone not to believe that the women does not love him. He will reason: “It is impossible that she does not love me when I love her so much,” or “If she did not love me, too, I could not love her so much.” He then proceeds to rationalize the woman’s lack of response by supposition such as these: “She loves me unconsciously; she is afraid of the intensity of her own love; she wants to test me, to torture me”—and whatnot. The essential point here, as in the previous case, is that the narcissistic person cannot perceive the reality within another person as distinct from his own love. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Let us look at two phenomena which are apparently extremely different, and yet both of which are narcissistic. A woman spends many different hours every day before the mirror to fix her hair and face. It is not simply that she is vain. She is obsessed with her body and her beauty, and her body is the only important reality she knows. She comes perhaps nearest to the Greek legend which speaks of Narcissus, a beautiful lad who rejected the love of the nymph Echo, who died of a broke heart. Nemesis punished him by making him fall in love with the reflection of his own image in the water of the lake; in self-admiration he fell into the lake and died. The Greek legend indicates clearly that his kind of “self-love” is a curse, and that in its extreme form it ends in self-destruction. (True love for self is not different from love for others; “self-love” in the sense of egoistic, narcissistic love is to be found in those who can love neither others nor themselves.) Another woman (and it could well be the same one some years later) suffers from hypochondriasis. She is also constantly preoccupied with her body although not it the sense of making it beautiful, but in fearing illness. Why the positive, or the negative, image is chosen has, of course, its reasons; however, we need not deal with these here. What matters is that behind both phenomena lies the same narcissistic preoccupation with oneself, with little interest left for the outside World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Moral hypochondriasis is not essentially different. Here the person is not afraid of being sick and of dying, but of being guilty. Such a person is constantly preoccupied with one’s guilt about things one has done wrong, with sins one has committed, et cetera. While to the outsider—and to oneself—one may appear to be particularly conscientious, moral, and even concern with others, the fact is that such a person is concerned only with oneself, with one’s conscious, with what others might say about one, et cetera. The narcissism underlying physical or moral hypochondriasis is the same as the narcissism of the vain person, except that it is less apparent, as such, to the untrained eye. One finds this kind of narcissism, which has been classified by K. Abraham as negative narcissism, particularly in states of melancholia, characterized by feelings of inadequacy, unreality, and self-accusation. In still less drastic forms one can see the narcissistic orientation in daily life. A well-known joke expressed it nicely. A writer meets a friend and talks to him a long time about himself; he then says: “I have talked so long about myself. Let us now talk about you. How did you like my latest book?” This man is typical of many who are preoccupied with themselves and who pay little attention to others, except as echoes of themselves. Often even if they act helpfully and kind, they do so because they like to see themselves in this role; their energy is taken up with admiring themselves rather than with realizing things from the point of view of the person they are helping. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
How does one recognize the narcissistic person? There is one type which is easily recognized. That is the kind of person who shows all the signs of self-satisfaction; one can see that when one says some trivial words one feel as if one has said something of great importance. One usually does not listen to what others says, not is one really interested. (If one is clever, one will try to hide this fact by asking questions and making it a point to seem interested.) One can also recognize the narcissistic person by one’s sensitivity to any kind of criticism. This sensitivity can be expressed by denying the validity of any criticism, or by reacting with anger or depression. In many instance the narcissistic orientation may be hidden behind an attitude of modesty and humility; in fact, it is not rare for a person’s narcissistic orientation to take one’s humility as the object of one’s self-admiration. Whatever the different manifestations of narcissism are, a lack of genuine interest in the outside World is common to all forms of narcissism. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between the vain narcissistic person and one with a low self-evaluation; the latter often is in need of praise and admiration, not because he is not interested in anyone else, but because of one’s self-doubts and low self-evaluation. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
There is another important distinction which is also not always easy to make: that between narcissism and egotism. Intense narcissism implies an inability to experience reality in its fullness; intense egotism implies to have little concern, love, or sympathy for others but it does not necessarily imply the overevaluation of one’s subjective process. In other words, the extreme egotist is not necessarily extremely narcissistic; selfishness is not necessarily blindness to objective reality. Sometimes the narcissistic person can also be recognized by one’s facial expression. Often we find a kind of glow or smile, which gives the impression of smugness to some, of beatific, trusting, childlikeness to others. Often the narcissism, especially in its most extreme forms, manifests itself in a peculiar glitter in the eyes taken by some as a symptom of half-saintliness, by others of half-craziness. Many very narcissistic persons talk incessantly-often at a meal, where they forget to eat and thus make everyone else wait. Company or food are less important than their “ego.” If given circumstances have made a child compliant, defiant, diffident, must one necessarily remain so? Although one will not inevitably retain one’s defensive techniques there is a grave danger that one will. They can be eradicated by an early radical change of environment, or they can be modified, even after a considerable lapse of time, through any number of fortuitous happenings, such as finding an understanding teacher, a friend, lover, mate, an engrossing task suited to one’s personality and abilities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
However, in the absence of strong counteracting factors there is considerable danger that the trends acquired not only will persist but in time will obtain a stronger hold on the personality. To understand this persistence, one must fully realize that these trends are more than a mere strategy evolved as an effective defense against a difficult parent. They are, in view of all the factors developing within, the only possible way for the child to deal with life in general. To run away from attacks is the hare’s strategy in the face of dangers, and it is the only strategy one has; one could not possibly decide to fight instead, because one simply has not the means to do so. Similarly, a child growing up under difficult conditions develops a set of attitudes toward life which are fundamentally neurotic trends, and these one cannot change by free will but has to adhere to by necessity, The analogy with the hare is not entirely valid, however, because the hare, by constitution, has no other ways of coping with danger while the human being, if not mentally or physically defective by nature, has other potentialities. One’s necessity to cling to one’s special attitudes lies not in constitutional limitations but in the fact that the sum total of one’s fears, inhibitions, vulnerabilities, false goals, and illusory beliefs about the World confines one to certain ways and excludes others; in other words, it makes one rigid and does not permit basic alterations. One way of illustrating this point is to compare how a child and a mature adult may cope with persons presenting comparable difficulties. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
It must be born in mind that the following comparison has merely an illustrative value and is not intended to deal with all the factors involved in the two situations. The child, Clare—and here I am thinking of an actual patient to whose analysis I shall return later on—has a self-righteous mother who expects the child’s admiration and exclusive devotion. The adult is an employee, psychologically well integrated, who has a boss with qualities similar to those of the mother. If what they regard as due homage is not paid to them, or if they sense a critical attitude, both mother and boss are tend to become hostile for they are complacently self-admiring, are arbitrary, and favour others unfairly. If one has stringent reasons for holding on to one’s job, under these conditions the employee will more or les consciously evolve a technique for handling the boss. One will probably refrain from expressing criticism; make it a point to appreciate explicitly whatever good qualities there are; withhold praise of the boss’s competitors; agree with the boss’s plans, regardless of one’s own opinions; let suggestions of one’s own appear as if the boss had initiated them. And what influence will this strategy have on one’s personality? One will resent the discrimination and dislike the deceit it necessitates. However, since one is a self-respecting person one will feel that the situation reflects on the boss rather than on oneself, and the behaviour one adopts will not make one a compliant, bootlicking person. One’s strategy will exist only for that particular boss. If a change should take place, one would behave differently toward the next employer. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
For an understanding of neurotic trends much depends on recognizing their difference from such ad hoc strategy. Otherwise one could not appreciate their force and pervasiveness and would succumb to a mistake similar to Dr. Alder’s oversimplification and rationality. As a result one would also take too lightly the therapeutic work to be done. Clare’s situation is comparable to that of the employee, for the mother and the boss are similar in character, but for Clare it is worth while to go into more detail. She was an unwanted child. The marriage was unhappy. After having one child, a boy, the mother did not want any more children. Clare was born after several unsuccessful attempts at an abortion. She was not badly treated or neglected in any coarse sense: she was sent to schools as good as those the brother attended, she received as many gifts as he did, she had music lessons with the same teacher, and in all material ways was treated as well. However, in less tangible matters she received less than the brother, less tenderness, less interest in school marks and in the thousand little daily experiences of a child, less concern when she was ill, less solicitude to have her around, less willingness to treat her as a confidante, less admiration for looks and accomplishments. There was a strong, though for a child intangible, community between the mother and brother from which she was excluded. The father was no help. He was absent most of the time, being a country doctor. Clare made some pathetic attempts to get close to him but he was not interested in either of the children. His affection was entirely focused on the mother in a kind of helpless admiration. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Finally, he was no he because he was openly despised by the mother, who was sophisticated and attractive and beyond doubt the dominating spirit in the family. The undisguised hatred and contempt the mother felt for the father, including open death wishes against him, contributed much to Clare’s feeling that it was much safer to be on the powerful side. As a consequence of this situation Clare never had a good chance to develop self-confidence. There was not enough of open injustice to provoke sustained rebellion, but she became discontented and cross and complaining. As a result she was teased for always feeling herself a martyr. It never remotely occurred to either mother or brother that she might be right in feeling unfairly treated. They took it for granted that her attitude was a sign of an ugly disposition. And Clare, never having felt secure, easily yielded to the majority opinion about herself and began to feel that everything was her fault. Compared with the mother, whom everyone admired for her beauty and charm, and with the brother, who was cheerful and intelligent, she was an ugly duckling. She became deeply convinced that she was unlikable. This shift from essentially true and warranted accusations of others to essentially untrue and unwarranted self-accusations had far-reaching consequences. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
It meant also that she repressed all grievances against the mother. If everything was her own fault, the grounds for bearing a grudge against the mother were pulled away from under her. From such repression of hostility, it was merely a short step to join the group of those who admired the mother. In this further yielding to majority opinion she had a strong incentive in the mother’s antagonism toward everything in short of complete admiration: it was much safer to find shortcomings within herself than in the mother. If she, too, admired the mother she need no longer feel isolated and excluded but could hope to receive some affection, or at least be accepted. The hope for affection did not materialize, but she obtained instead a gift of doubtful value. The mother, like all those who thrive on the admiration of others, was generous in giving admiration in turn to those who adored her. Clare was no longer the disregarded ugly duckling, but became the wonderful daughter of a wonderful mother. Thus, in place of a badly shattered self-confidence, she built up the spurious pride that is founded on outside admiration. Through this shift from true rebellion to untrue admiration Clare lost the feeble vestiges of self-confidence she had. To use a somewhat vague term, she lost herself. By admiring what in reality she resented, she became alienated from her own feelings. She no longer knew what she herself liked or wished or feared or resented. She lost all capacity to assert her wishes for love, or even any wishes. Despite a superficial pride her conviction of being unlovable was actually deepened. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Hence later on, when one or another person was fond of her, she could not take the affection at its face value but discarded it in various ways. Sometimes she would think that such a person misjudged her for something she was not; sometimes she would attribute the affection to gratitude for having been useful or to expectations of her future usefulness. This distrust deeply disturbed every human relationship she entered into. She lost, too, her capacity for critical judgment, acting on the unconscious maxim that it is safer to admire others than to be critical. This attitude shackled her intelligence, which was actually of a high order, and greatly contributed to her feeling unwise. All of these factors three neurotic trends developed. One was a compulsive modesty as to her own wishes and demands. This entailed a compulsive tendency to put herself into second place, to think less of herself than of others, to think that others were right and she was wrong. However, even in this restricted scope she could not feel safe unless there was someone on whom she could depend, someone who would protect and defend her, advise her, stimulate her, approve of her, be responsible for her, give her everything she needed. She needed all this because she had lost the capacity to take her life into her own hands. Thus she developed the need for a “partner”—friend, lover, husband—on whom she could depend. She would subordinate herself to him as she had toward the mother. However, at the same time, by his undivided devotion to her, he would restore her crushed dignity. A third neurotic trend—a compulsive need to excel others and to triumph over them—likewise aimed at restoration of self-regard, but in addition absorbed all the vindictiveness accumulated through hurts and humiliations. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In comparison, what this illustrates: both the employee and the child develop strategies for dealing with the situation; for both the technique is to put the self into the background and adopt an admiring attitude toward the one in authority. Thus their reactions may appear roughly comparable, but in reality they are entirely different. The employee does not lose his self-regard, does not relinquish his critical judgment, does not repress his resentment. The child, however, loses her self-regard, represses her hostility, abandons her critical faculties and becomes self-effacing. However, the adult merely adjusts his behaviour while the child changes her personality. The choice of the will gives; the choice of the will withdraws or nullifies the previous giving. The value and purpose of refusing stands the same toward God and toward the ultimate negative. The one gives to God, or refuses to give one takes from God, or refuses to take. One gives to evil psychopathological offenders—unknowingly or not—and one refuses to give. One finds one has given to them unwittingly, and one nullifies it be an act of withdrawal and refusal. First images—to explain how images arise in the mind. Then words, applied to images. Finally concepts, possible only when there are words—subsuming of many images under something not intuitive but audible (a word). The small bit of emotion that arises with the “word,” hence with the intuition of similar images for which there is a single word—this weak emotion is the common element, the basis of the concept. The basis fact is that weak sensations are regarded as equal, sensed as the same. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Hence the confusion of two closely contiguous sensations in the ascertaining of those sensations—but who is doing the ascertaining? Believing is the primal beginning even in every sense impression; a kind of yea-saying the first intellectual activity! A “holding-true” in the beginning! Thus to explain how a “holding-true” arose! What sort of sensation lies behind “true”? The valuation “I believe that such and such is so” as the essence of “truth.” Conditions of preservation and growth are expressed in valuations. All our cognitive organs and senses are developed only with regard to conditions of preservation and growth. Trust in reason and its categories, in dialectic, hence the valuation of logic, proves only their usefulness for life, proved by experience—not their “truth.” That an abundance of belief must be present; that judgments may be made; that doubt with regard to all essential values be lacking—that is the presupposition of every living thing and its life. Hence that something must be held to be true, not that something is true. “The true and the apparent World”—I have traced this antithesis back to relations of values. We have projected our conditions of preservation as predicates of being generally. We must be firm in our beliefs in order to thrive; consequently, we have made the “true” World one not of change and becoming but of being. One of the participants in the conference referred to earlier resorted to some imaginative arithmetic to demonstrate the “artificial limit” imposed by the in-treatment definition of mental illness. Assume there are approximately 7,000 psychiatrists in the country; of these, approximately one half are “committed” to institutions for long-term custodial care of the severely disturbed; if the remaining 3,500 psychiatrists were in full-time, private practice for 40 hours per week, each could provide a total of 2,080 hours of patient care per year; the 3,500 could “treat” a total of 7,280,000 patients per year, with the completely non-hour of care; rejecting this condition, the upper limit on the number of mentally ill defined by the “treatment criterion” is something under 7,000,000 or approximately 4 percent of the total population. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
The author of this excursion properly labels this estimate as “artificial,” but he also implies that it is artificially low by calling the figure a limit rather than an estimate. Also by implication, a satisfactory criterion would be one which permitted a census greater than 7,000,000. How much greater. Suppose we ask how many mentally ill persons there are in a given year, defining such persons as all those who acknowledge that they would see and use the services of a psychiatrist if such services were available. Operationally, this would involve surveying all adults and asking each of them with respect to themselves and to all children for whom they were responsible, “Could you and would you utilize the services of a psychiatrist if one were available to you?” It might seem that this approach would satisfy the problem of minimizing the number of “false negatives,” of persons actually in need of a psychiatrist but who would not be detected by another approach; it would seem that this approach should come closet to satisfying those who wish an accurate estimate of the “absolute” number of psychiatric cases. But—the number of cases which would be identified by this “need” approach (in contrast to a “facility” approach) to enumeration would be determined heavily by what the interviewees understood to be the nature, function, and services of a psychiatrist, or what they understood to be the character of “needs” (symptoms or complaints) which one brings to such a specialist. Immediately it is clear that this approach to a non-artificially limiting case-finding criterion runs smack against the problem of definition, the philosophy of diagnosis, and the principle of indeterminacy (id est, the fact, first recognized in the physical sciences, that the procedures of measurement may directly influence the behaviour of the phenomena under study). #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This approached does not escape from limits, or for that matter from artificiality. It is only that the degree of artificiality may be less, which is to say that we value our more inclusive definition of mental illness as being relatively more useful or appropriate to our purpose than a more exclusive definition. Let us accept a diagnostic philosophy that values primarily the minimization of “false negative” cases and accepts the risks (costs) involved in relatively high “false positive” rates. Recognizing that the number of cases is relative to our definition of mental illness, suppose we define a case as a person who acknowledges need for and willingness to accept psychiatric help. Now, further, assume that we identify the psychiatrist as a person who acknowledged need for and willingness to accept psychiatric help. Now, further, assumes that we identify the psychiatrist as a person with special training and experience in the treatment of emotional difficulties. Suppose that we further identify this physician as a person who will listen sympathetically or objectively to one’s troubles, a person who will maintain the strictest confidence regarding anything revealed to one, and finally a person who commands processes of such a nature that those who leave one’s office generally feel better than when they entered. The level of this identification is about what would be (and is) offered in informational programs concerned with the psychiatrist as psychotherapist. It is a level appropriate to informing the public prior to an inclusive search for cases. Finally, it is probably parallel to the stereotype of the psychiatrist (psychotherapist) held by the average semi-sophisticated layman who has not had therapy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If we were to conduct our case-finding survey within this context, how large a number of maladjusted persons would we uncover? Put another way—is there any person who does not at least once in the course of a year experience a struggle with conflicts or feelings of such a nature that one feels one could be helped by talking out one’s perplexity with an understanding, confidence-maintaining, and wise friend? Now, if a person were under the influence of social taboos that prohibited such talk from the conversation of friendship, and if one were under the further influence of a social climate the encouraged members to speak of their conflicts only to specialist (or more precisely, to expect real help only from experts)—would not such a person, would not all persons under such circumstances, response with a vibrant “Yes!” to the query, “Could a psychiatrist help you?” We have by switching the focus of our definition of mental illness simply altered the nature of the artificiality of our count and the social implications of the limit at which we arrive. Instead of a fixed number of therapists, we have a fixed number of patients equal to the total population. Let us apply a little arithmetic to our new approach Assume a population of 190,000,000 persons (each an actual or potential patient). Assume that our psychiatrist works a 40-hour week and consequently offers 2,080 hours of patient care per year. How many psychiatrists will we need for our population? We would need 90,000! This roughly one psychiatrist for every 2,000 of the general population. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Several highly questionable and clearly indefensible assumptions are involved in this statistic: That all cases require an equal amount of psychiatric time, viz, one hour. That the same ratio of cases per psychiatrist which is effective in treatment or prevention of early developing or mild cases is adequate to the treatment or management of chronic, severe cases. That our psychiatrists take no vacation and further, that they need each other, that is, are included as potential patients in the total population! Absurd assumptions, asinine arithmetic, cockeyed conclusions—but only in matter of degree This illustration of one of the extreme of cases finding (case making?) simply points up the semantic seductions which peril the mental health surveyor who must steer a course that avoids both the “false positive” shoals and the becalming “false negative” sea. Part of the difficulty lies in a cultural bias that has led epidemiologist to contaminate screening criteria of “positive” mental health or absence of mental illness with questions of availability of or need for psychiatrists. There is generally unrecognized non sequitur in this. If a population is screened in terms of concepts of healthy personality and positive mental hygiene so that the mildest and earliest stages of maladjustment are detected, it is doubtful whether such cases should be blanketed under the category of “illness,” and it is even more doubtful whether such maladjustment is ipso facto of psychiatric dimensions, requiring treatment by psychiatrist. If our diagnostic philosophy and definitional net is structured to catch persons in whom the basis and possibly sole symptoms is a claim of unhappiness—a personal, subjective distress which may have varied, complex, and hidden origins, is it quite reasonable to classify such unhappiness as illness and, thus, to assign to it those extensive etiologic, pathologic, and therapeutic connotations identified with physical medicine? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
If we do call unhappiness an illness, does it accordingly, without great forcing of our concepts of sickness and health and of psychology and biology, fall into the realm of medicine and specifically into the field of psychiatry? What is unique to the training and experience of the physician-specialist in psychiatry that makes one pre-eminently prepared to minister to the disenchanted and the doubtful? The exclusion of the negative does not suffice to explain the elevation of the temporal to the eternal. If Eternal Life is eternal memory, what is remembered? The core of the problem is how the positive in the Universe is the object of eternal memory? Through “essentialization,” which is a return to what a thing essentially is. It does not mean a simple return to essence or potentiality by sloughing off everything accrued in existence, for on this supposition history produces nothing new, and life is only a futile process of falling away from and returning to a static essence. The term “essentialization” can also mean that the new which has been actualized in time and space adds something to essential being, uniting it with the positive which is created within existence, thus producing the ultimately new, the “New Being,” not fragmentarily as in temporal life, but wholly as a contribution to the Kingdom of God in its fulfilment. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The return to essence is thus not a simple return after an interlude of meaningless existence but a return that is a fulfilment through the realization of potentialities within historical existence. Essentialization is the return of a being to an enriched essence, to New Being. Consequently, participation in the eternal life depends on a creative synthesis of a being’s essential nature with what it has made of it in its temporal existence. Essentialization applies to every being of the Universe; all things participate in Eternal Life according to their enriched essence. At nightfall and at dawn, search well into the nature of your dealings. Let your dealings bring no blush upon the cheek; commit no sin in the expectation of repentance. At first sin is an indifferent stranger; later a welcome guest; finally the master. Better to suffer the derision of man than to be a sinner in the eyes of God. 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. O God, Thou knowest my folly; and my trespasses are not hidden from Thee; for I do declare my iniquity; I am full of concern because of my sin. If Thous shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who would be without sin in Thy sight? Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Turn me unto Thee, O Lord, that I may forsake my sins; please make me mindful of Thy presence that I may mend my ways. Please teach me to forgive my neighbour the injury he and/or she did unto me, so that when I pray, my sins will be forgiven. And may the community come together and donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart for they are not receiving all of their resources. And let us return unto Thee, O Lord. That Thou mayest have compassion upon us, and in Thy lovingkindness Thou wilt graciously pardon. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
CRESLEIGH HAVENWOOD
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Spirits, Apparitions, and the Haunted Winchester Mansion
This morning my niece Daisy brought to breakfast an object which had been found in the garden; it was a crystal tablet, which she handed to me, and which, after she left the room, remained on the table by me. I gazed at it, I know not why, for some minutes, till called away by the day’s duties; and I seemed to myself to begin to decry reflected in it object and scenes which were not in the room where I was. I took the first opportunity to seclude myself in my room with what I now half believed to be a talisman of mickle might. What I went through this afternoon transcends the limits of what I had before deemed credible. In brief, what I saw, seated in my bedroom, in the broad daylight of summer, and looking into the crystal depth of that small round tablet, was this. First, a prospect, strange to me, of an enclosure of rough stones about it. In this stood an old woman in a red cloak and ragged skirt, talking to a boy dressed in the fashion of maybe a hundred years ago. She put something which glittered into his hand, and he something into hers, which I saw to be money, for a single coin fell from her trembling hand into the grass. The scene passed: I should have remarked, by the way, that on the rough walls of the enclosure I could distinguish bones, and even a skull, lying in a disorderly fashion. Next, I was looking upon two boys; one the figure of the former vision, the other younger They were in a plot of garden, walled round, and this garden, in spite of the difference in arrangement, and the small size of the trees, I could clearly recognized as being that upon which I now look from my window. The boys were engaged in some curious play, it seemed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Something was smouldering on the ground. The elder placed his hands upon it, and then raised them in what I took to be an attitude of prayer: and I saw, and started at seeing, that on them were deep stains of blood. The sky above was overcast. The same boy now turned his face towards the wall of the garden, and beckoned with both his raised hands, and as he did so I was conscious that some moving objects were becoming visible over the top of the wall—whether heads or other parts of some animal or human forms I could not tell. Upon the instant the elder boy turned sharply, seized the arm of the younger (who all this time had been poring over what lay on the ground), and both hurried on. I then saw blood upon the grass, a little pile of bricks, and what I thought were black feathers scattered about. That scene closed, and the next was so dark that perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me. However, what I seemed to see was a form, at first crouching low among trees or bushes that were being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a pursuer: and, indeed, pursuers were following hard after him. Their shapes were but dimly seen, their number—three or four, perhaps—only guessed. I suppose they were on the whole more like dogs than anything else, but dogs such as we have seen they assuredly were not. Could I have closed my eyes to this horror, I would have done so at once, but I was helpless. The last I saw was the victim darting beneath an arch and clutching at some object to which he clung: and those that were pursuing him overtook him, and I seemed to hear the echo of a cry of despair. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
It may be that I became unconscious: certainly I had the sensation of awaking to the light of day after an interval of darkness. Such, in literal truth. Was my vision—I can call it by no other name—of events to come. Have I not been the unwilling witness of some episode of a tragedy connected with my very house? Some hours later, I had been engaged upon my work for about half an hour, and was just beginning to think that my task was drawing to a close, when, as I was actually writing, I saw a large white hand within a foot of my elbow. Turning my head, there sat a figure of a somewhat large man, with his back to the fire, bending slightly over the table, and apparently examining the pile of books that I had been at work upon. The man’s face was turned away from me, but I saw his closely cut reddish-brown hair, his ear and shaved cheek, the eyebrow, the corner of the right eye, the side of the forehead, and the large high cheek-bone. He was dressed in what I can only describe as a kind of ecclesiastical habit of thick-coloured silk or some such material, close up to the throat, and a narrow rim or edging, of about an inch broad, of stain or velvet, serving as a stand-up collar, and fitting close to the chin. The right hand, which had first attracted my attention, was clasping, without any great pressure, the left hand; both hands were in perfect repose, and the large blue veins of the right hands were in perfect repose, and the large blue veins of the right hand were conspicuous. I remember thinking that the hand was like the hand of Velazquez’s magnificent Dead Knight in the national gallery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I looked at my visitor for some seconds, and was perfectly sure that he was not a reality. A thousand thoughts came crowding upon me, but not the least feeling of alarm, or even uneasiness; curiosity and a strong interest were uppermost. For an instant, I felt eager to make a sketch of my friend, and I looked at a tray on my right for a pencil; then I thoughts, “Upstairs I have a sketch-book—shall I fetch it?” There he sat, and I was fascinated; afraid not of his staying, but lest he should go. Stopping in my writing, I lifted my left hand from the paper, stretched it our to the pile of books, and moved the top one. I cannot explain why I did this—my arm passed in front of the figure, and it vanished. I was simply disappointed and nothing more. I went on with my writing as if nothing had happened, perhaps for another five minutes, and had actually got the last few words of what I had determined to extract, when the figure appeared again, exactly in the same place and attitude as before. I saw the hands close to my own; I turned my head again to examine him more closely, and I was framing a sentence to address him when I discovered that I dare not speak. I was afraid of the sound of my own voice. There he sat, and there sat I. I turned my head again to my work, and finished writing the two or three words I still had to write. The paper and my notes are at this moment before me, and exhibit not the slightest tremor or nervousness. I could point out the words I was writing when the phantom came, and when he disappeared. Having finished my task. I shut the book and threw it on the table; it made a slight noise as it fell—the figure vanished. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Throwing myself back in my chair, I sat for some seconds looking into the fire with a curious mixture of feeling, and I remember wondering whether my friend would come again, and if he did whether he would hide the fire from me. By this time, I had lost all sense of uneasiness. I blew out the four candles and marched off to bed, where I slept the sleep of the just or the guilty—I know not which—but I slept very soundly. Around midnight, I awoke and went to the balcony to gaze at the moon on this warm summer night. That is when I noticed several women who looked like the Maenads immortalized by Euripides in the garden; maddened souls. They raced through the trees with bloody hands, leaving pieces of male flesh scattered in the grass. And to the west, single-breasted Amazons strode, drawing their mighty bows back and letting fly storms of arrows. A man, a might king, holds fast. He sinks his teeth into one of Amazon’s shoulders, and in fierce rage and bliss beings to draw out the nourishment. The Amazon kicks and claws at him in turn. He feels the gouges like fire along his shoulders, thighs, and hugs the amazon more nearly as he throttled and drinks from her, loving it, jealous of her, killing her. Gradually the might Amazon body relaxes, still clinging to him, her teeth bedded in his arm, forgotten by both. In a welter of marks, stripped skin, spilled blook, the king and the Amazon lie in embrace on the lawn. The Amazon lifts her head, kisses the assassin, shudders, lets go. The king glides out from under the magnificent deadweight of the amazon. He stands. And pain assaults him. His lover has severely wounded him. The king, involuntarily, confused, he tries to levitate, but only raises a foot off the ground. He cries out, a beautiful singing note of despair and anger. He drops fainting onto the lawn. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
A caretaker who witnessed the battle does not wait for more. He runs away through the mansion, screaming invective and prayer, and reached the Grand Ball Room and makes the whole mansion listen. The king lies in the ocean of almost-death that is sleep or swoon, while the staff discusses him. And when he is raised, the king does not wake. Only his drooping bloody lips quiver and are still. Those who carry him away are more than every revolted and frighted, for it appears they have seldom seen blood. He struggles through unconsciousness and hurt, though the deepest most bladed waters, to awareness. I could feel ice forming in my bones. His people search for him, call and wheel and find nothing. The warning is clear enough: do not make war, brother upon brother, for devastation is all you will reap. And the message of hope may very well be that there is something of us that continues after death. As they are now, chained to the Earth for who-knows-how-long, so, someday, may we be also. A violent death, as well, will some how leave the spirit behind at the site where its mortal vessel was shattered. The living, mourning too long for the dead is another reason for a haunting. Sometimes the spirit remains to give a message of hope, or a warning to those left behind. One of the more ominous reasons accepted by experts as to why a human soul or spirit remains bound to the Earth is that the person’s fear of judgment. This theory is backed up by the religious ritual of confession of and forgiveness for sins, especially at the time of death. If one is to face the Final Judge of all we have done in life, it is essential we go there penitent, as the poet Emily Dickenson wrote, “Beggars for the door of God.” So, if a youthful, sudden, unexpected, or violent death are also reasons souls remain rooted to the Winchester Mansion, certainly the Winchester Rifle, qualifies as a cause for any spirits being trapped here. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
If the men of the Civil War were concerned about the fate of their mortal souls as they were, in the heat of combat, seeing the souls of their enemies free from their bodily prions, then certainly it explains why so many remain here. And if incessant mourning for the dead is a reason why sprits linger, and 2 million people visiting the Winchester Mystery House a year basically to remember and essentially mourn the Winchester family others who have been sacrificed, still another condition for a haunting is satisfied. And for good reason: Judgement Day and souls being chained to Earth for eternity is something we should all deeply ponder when we are thinking of the double-edged sword of revenge.
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They Want the Moon, they Want the Impossible
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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And the Angel of Death Shall Surely Pass Over
Whatever the truth is about the Winchester family, this much is certain: when I came to Santa Clara Valley and found my land, the air was so heavily laden with perfume that it was as if every wild lilac and wild rose and every white sage was borne into the hidden heart of Llanada Villa. There was no lack of invisible blossom. As I build my home, many of the plants and trees and flowers were brought in from the World outside. There were deer and coyote and raccoons that spread throughout my garden of this great dream palace. There also orchids and lotus flowers—nurtured by the gardeners. Areas of pure foliage were the handiwork of apprentices, working on their craft by filling in areas that their teachers had not the time to address. However, for some reason there was always a certain bitterness in my home here. None of this spoiled the power of the overall vision. Iin fact, it created a splendid energy. Portions of my home were in focus; other parts were barely visible. However, the hungry deer were driven from their traditional trails by the presence of the unknown. The deer no longer lingered on my estate for very long with the same curiosity they once had. They were no longer fond of the secret enclaves of the gardens and seldom chose to stay very long there. Perhaps it was just that the leaves and petals had become bitter. Conceivably there were too many whisperings in the air around the gazebos, and the precious animals were unnerved by what they heard, or maybe when they looked up, the same a fragment of light that caused them to take flight. I became aware that my home was host to souls which expressed their longing for something they dreamed of, something they had once possessed, or something they now dreamed of. At night, their voices were so tenuous that they were almost inaudible to the human ear. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Sometimes, the caretakers were curious to discover what lies off the prescribed corridors in my home. On occasion what they discovered would cause them to come to a vail of tears. Over the years, even trespassers were compelled to trespass in my home. However, these visitors would always leave hurriedly. Those without even a psychic bone in their body were made uneasy by something they had discovered along the corridors which ran in all directions. The Villagers made up malicious rumors about me and my home. They claimed that horrible things had been done here and the human blood was used in the mortar between the bricks of the foundation. They called me the Satan’s wife and claimed that I had sent my husband William away on a hunting trip and that he never came back. Oh, how these stories hurt my heart. On a bad day, I would just wish to die. Some said that William was a great hunter, but he did not always limit his quarry to animals. People also said that if guest who lived in my home got out of line that Satan would cut off their heads in their sleep and dispose of their bodies, which is the real reason no one stayed on staff for every long. There are such stories told by fools. Fools invented myths, but this is a loving home. It was something about my wealth that made them suspicious. People wanted to know what was I hiding in such a large mansion. Some figure there had to be something in my home that deserved a closer look. Caged and helpless, a fiend is at the mercy of the spirits. It is also weak from the battle with the noble lion, which gave its life for the mansion’s safety (and will be buried with honour in an ornamented grave at the foot of the mansion). Just before the dawn came, my advisers advised me, and the golden cage was wheeled away into the darkest area of the mansion, close by the dais where once the huge window was no more. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
I led the way down the passageway to another door, one that was much smaller than the mahogany door we have come through. We were presented with a flight of step that led us to landing, with the option to take another flight of stairs, taking us deeper into the mansion, or to walk up a different flight of steps to an even higher level of the house than we had originally descended from. This ingenious feature all us to quickly get to three levels of the house. I always notice that when I chose to climb to the higher level of the house that the air was noticeably more frigid. No matter what, there was always something to catch the eye, but with all these stairs and doors, I had forgotten that even I could get lost in my home. It was not my choice to build the home in this fashion. I did as I was told by the spirits. I had rooms built and tore down, furniture and tapestries moved. I followed their counsel. The leader of the architects was a spirit called Marbas. The bearer of that name was also winged. He was the fifth fallen angel, a great President and would appear in the form of a Great Lion, but at my request, he would put on a human shape. Marbas and his people are winged beings. They are more like a nest of dark eagles than anything, mounted high among the pilasters and pinnacles of the Observational Tower. Cruel and magnificent, like eagles, the somber sentries motionless as statuary on the ledge-edges of the mansion, their stable winds folded about them. They are very alike in appearance (less a race or a tribe, more a flock, an unkindness of ravens). Marbas and his Legion, also black-winged, black-haired, aquiline of feature, standing on the brink of star-dashed space. He has great wisdom and knowledge in the mechanical arts, and governed thirty-six legions of spirits. They have their own traditions of art and science. They do not make or read books, fashion garments, discuss God or metaphysics or men. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Marbas launches himself into the air, speeds down the sky on black ails of his wings, calling, a call like laughter or derision. This morning, in the tween-time before the light began and the sun-to-be drove him away to his shadowed eyrie in the Observational Tower. Marbas pays no heed. He does not need to reason, he merely knows, that noise make this—as he smashed a window or tears down a room. Its design he found fault with. It is, of course, more than that. The magic of Purpose has protected this fortress, and, as in all balances, there must be, or come to be, some balancing contradictions, some flaw…appropriated for the occasion. Bars, bars, all about him, and not to be got rid of, for he reaches to tear them away and cannot. Beyond the bars, the Crystal Bedroom, which is only a pointless cold glitter to in in the maze of pain and dying lights. Not an open place, in fact, but too open for his kind. Through the window-spaces of thick stained-glass, colourful sunglare must come in. To Marbas it will be like swords, acids, and burning fire—far off he hears wings beat and voices soaring. His people search for him, call and wheel find nothing. Marbas cries out, a gravel shriek now, and the persons in the hall rush back from him, calling on God. However, Marbas does not see. He has tried to answer his own. Now he sinks down again under the coverlet of his broken wings, and the wine-red of his eyes go out. The smashed window in the old turret above the menagerie tower has been sealed with mortar and brick. It is a terrible thing that it was so long overlooked. A miracle that only one of the creatures found and entered by it. God, the Protected, guarded the Cursed Heiress and her court. And the magic that surrounds the estate, that too held fast. From the possibility of disaster was born a bloom of great value Now one of the mosters is in their possession. A prize beyond price. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The switchback staircase had seven flights with forty-four steps, which only rises about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. This was to confuse intruders who were already undoubtedly scared by the many bizarre features in such a large maze. There are even two sets of stairs that lead to the ceiling. The miles of twisting hallways were made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. I traveled through my house in a roundabout fashion, to confuse any mischievous onlookers that might be following me. Eyes often burning through the night, depthless red as claret. And then other eyes, amber, green and gold, spring out like stars across the path. Their cries are mostly wordless and always mysterious, flung out like ribbons over the air as they wheel and swoop and hang in wicked cruciform, between the beams in the ceiling. The spirits sing, long hours, for whole nights at a time, music that has a language that only they know. All their wisdom and theosophy, and all their gras of beauty, truth or love, is in the singing. They look unloving enough, and so they are. Pitiless, fallen angels. They have accepted every bastion and wall as their prey. They have preyed on this mansion and tried to prey on it for years. In the beginning, their calls, their songs, could lure victims to the feast. In this way, the tribe or unkindness took William from a midnight balcony. However, my daughter was the first victim. They left both Annie and William to the sunrise, marble figures, the life drunk away. By night, the spirits fly like huge black moths round and round the carved turrets, the dull-lit leaded windows, their wings invoking a cloudy tindery wind, pushing thunder against thundery glass. They sense they are attributed to some sin, reckoned a punishing curse, a penance, and this amuses them at the level whereon they understand it. It gets hellishly cold. The staff would brew their own brandy from the plums we grew on my trees to stay warm. Glasses were filled and emptied, but they never achieved the warmth they intended to. Even though there were forty-seven fireplaces and lights that along the walls, often times they did nothing to warm the air. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I cautiously unlatched the door. Opened it a crack. The room was in darkness, but despite that fact there was a warmth in their air; at least in contrast to the bone chilling air of the hallway. Then I opened it wider. I starred into the darkness, enjoying the slight rise in temperate. When I pushed the light button, the room was empty. As I traversed through the corridor, familiar objects looked strange and shadows moved unexpectedly. Just then, the chandelier dimed, gave off a strange sizzing sound and blacked out. Zip jumped and clutched my leg. I gasped for a breath. A narrow stair led to the attic. The light there must have burned out long ago. A ghostly figure with waving arms rushed at us. There was a panic for a moment, then I laughed shakily. It was my wedding dress. The draft blows it around! The beauty of the demon affected me, making me wish to paint it, not as something wonderfully disgusting, but as a kind of superlative man, vital and innocent, or as Lucifer himself, stricken in the sorrow of his colossal Fall. And all that has caused me to pity the fallen one, mere artisan that I am, so I slunk away. I know, since the alchemist and the apothecary told me, what is to be done. Of course, most of the mansion knows Though scarcely anyone has slept or sought sleep, the whole place rings with excitement and vivacity. I have decreed, too, that everyone who wishes shall be a witness. So I have having a progress through the mansion, seeking every nook and cranny, while, let it be said, my carpenter, Mr. Hansen, takes the opportunity to check no other windowpane has cracked. From room to room my entourage pass, through corridors, along stairs, through attics and storerooms I have never seen, or if I have seen has forgotten. The ancient women in the mansion sigh and whisper. It is one of the dark staircases above the Devil’s kitchen that my gleaming entourage and I sweep round a bend and comes Marth the scullery maid, scrubbing. In these days, when there are so few children and young servants, labour is scarce, and the scullerers are not confined to the scullery. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Martha stands up, pale with shock, and for a wild instant thinks that, for some heinous crime she had committed in ignorance, I have come in person to behead her. “Here then, by Mrs. Winchester’s will,” cries Mr. Hasen, my carpenter. “One of the night-demons, which do torment us has been captured and lies penned in the Grand Ball Room. At sunrise tomorrow, this thing will be taken to that sacred spot where grows the bush of the Flower of the Fire, and here its foul blood shall be shed. Who then can doubt the bush of will blossom, and save us all, by the Grace of God.” When I got down stairs in the morning, Daisy was in the palour arranging a great bowl of roses from the garden. Sunlight streamed into the mellow room, a light breeze fluttered the curtains. No hint of ghosts on such a bright morning. “Aunt Sarah, let’s not worry about things this morning,” Daisy suggested. “It’s a wonderful day. Do you want to go into town with me? I see more dresses.” “I did,” I said “We’ll take the short cut back. It’ll save three hours.” The shortcut lay through several fields, a few pastures, and woodlands. “By the way Daisy, are you sure you like your bedroom? It is long off from anyone else, you know?” “Like it? To be sure I do; I have my own house within your home, Aunt Sarah. Here I taste a mingling of modern elegance and hoary antiquity, such as has never ere now graced for life. And this town, small as it is, affords us some reflection, pale indeed, but veritable, of the sweets of polite intercourse: the adjacent country numbers amid the occupants of its scattered mansion some whose polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour, and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by the way of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable.” “Nothing could be more enchanting.” For years, from sunset to rise, nothing would wake Daisy. Once, as a child, when she had been especially badly beaten for being related to a Winchester, the pain woke her and she heard a strange silken scratching, somewhere over her head. But she thought it a rat, or a bird. Yes, a bird, for later it seemed to her there were also winds. However, she has now forgot all of this. Now she sleeps deeply and dreams of being a princess. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mystery House
Mrs. Winchester was considered a child enchantress. Groups of would gather around this miracle with perfect rose-bud cheeks whose dark eyes, long wavy hair, and bright simile set here apart from any other child. They were transfixed by her uncanny ability to speak several languages, which she had never studied. They were amazed that she could play several instruments remarkably well. Others could not resist the alluring falsetto tone of the child siren. Her gaze was enthralling, and her voice was soft. Some were impressed by the sense of indifference Mrs. Winchester demonstrated when they met her. It was a real part of her nature; bred into her, perhaps, by a bloodline that had suffered so much loss and anguish over the generations. This is why nothing was allowed to impress her too greatly; she had no idea how remarkable she and her creations were because she suffered too severely from a broken heart. As an adult, Mrs. Winchester held her beauty in extreme reserve, providing only glimpses of her presence for public consumption. It was these glimpses that kept the audience coming to her home to sneak a view of her day after day. However, Mrs. Winchester was too good an actress to let people see how deeply she mourned for the deaths of her husband, parents, and infant daughter. And it is the same power which her Grand Queen Anne mansion unleashes to audiences today. Mrs. Winchester was an orphan of a great spiritual storm. There are some parts of the mansion not shared with the public, and with good reason. You see, there are people who should not see what it has to show. I do not know if it is mysterious or if it is sad. You see, the woman who built this mansion was a good soul. The truth is, we are all a little afraid of what happened here because none of us are certain of the truth. All we can do, is say our prayers, and put our souls into God’s care when we are on this beautiful but bizarre estate.
After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the city of Santa Clara wanted to turn her home into a hospital, but a psychic said that the Devil had cursed the place. People’s hearts were filled with sorrow for the things they said about her, after learning how kind and charitable she had secretly been. No one has ever been able to estimate the true size or complexity of the Winchester Mystery House. Although it is only recognized as being 24,000, experts believe that it has to be at least 150,000 square feet. At one time, it was even larger than it is today and had as many as 600 rooms and nine stories. It is plain, even from a distance, that the home was elaborately designed. The estate was originally comprised of an estimated 740 acres of land, and had green trees from every part of the World, and more, sweeter hues in the growth between them. Beneath the canopy, there were exotic flowers and creature, and the branches of the trees skillfully lead the impression that light was falling through the foliage, which is now virtually simulated in the mysterious windows in the Grand Ball Room. It was rendered with remarkable expertise. People have always been exhilarated by what they see. Some people leave the estate wiping their cold and clammy hands, and wonder to themselves how is it that such a beautiful mansion could invoke such fear into their souls. Caretakers and business associates understood the coldness on the matters of the heart displayed by Mrs. Winchester, as she remained unmarried and celibate after the death of her husband. This coldness is what made her so strong; and it was her strength—visible in her eyes and in her every movement—that have endured her audiences for nearly two hundred years. Sometimes you find beauty in the strangest places. Mrs. Winchester’s thoughts are with the walls and the beautiful art-glass windows.
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The Awakening of Nations that Have Been Silent for Nearly Two Hundred Years
In Latin America, the United States of America is involved more directly than they are in other countries. There are heavy investments from the United States of America in many Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Guatemala, and Cuba. U.S.A. foreign direct investment (FDI) in Venezuela stock was $3.2 billion in 2022, a 5.1 percent increase from 2021. U.S.A. FDI in Argentia (stock) was $12.6 billion in 2022. More than 200 U.S.A. and other foreign firms have active investments in Guatemala, benefiting from the U.S.A. Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). FDI stock was $22.5 billion in 2022, a 5.3 percent increase over 2021. On June 16, 2017, the President issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) on Strengthening the Policy of the United States of America Toward Cuba. On November 8, 2017, the Departments of State, Commerce, and the Treasury announced certain changes to implement the President’s June 2017 NSPM. Cuba is facing a severe economic crisis and the cash-strapped government is unable to provide basic services. The investment of Cuban Americans in private businesses on the island could be a game changer, many observers have said. However, while the Cuban government has said in the past that they would welcome Cuban American investment on the island, they have yet to issue regulations to allow foreigners to own or invest in the small and medium-sized enterprises known as pymes that were first authorized in 2021. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The United States of America is Guatemala’s largest trading partner accounting for nearly 35 percent of Guatemala’s trade. Both nations enjoy a growing trade relationship, which became ever stronger after the implementation of the CAFTA-DR in 2007. As of January 1, 2015, most U.S.A. consumer and industrial goods enter Guatemala duty free (for goods that meet the country-of-origin requirements). In general, CAFTA-DR has benefitted all parties. Intra-regional trade among Central America countries and the Dominican Republic increased from $27.2 billion in 2021. U.S.A. goods exports to Central America and the Dominican Republic have reached $48.31 million in 2022 (this figure was $16.89 million in 2005). Nevertheless, CAFTA-DR has been unable to solve some of the region’s most serious problems—including insecurity and corruption. U.S.A. merchandise exports to Guatemala were $10.21 billion in 2022, an increase of $2.14 billion or 23 percent over 2021. Leadning U.S.A. exports to Guatemala include mineral fuel oil, machinery, electric machinery, plastics, and cereals (corn, wheat, and rice). U.S.A. imports from Guatemala totaled $5.31 billion in 2022, an increase of $640 million or 12.8 percent over 2021. U.S.A. imports include apparel; edible fruits, melons, and nuts; coffee; edible vegetables, roots, and tubers; sugars and confectioneries of sugar. U.S.A. products and services enjoy strong brand recognition in Guatemala, and U.S.A. companies have a good reputation in the Guatemalan marketplace. It is estimated that approximately 200 U.S.A. firms have a presence in the market. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The United States of America and Argentina maintain a bilateral relationship based on deep economic ties and shared interests, including, democracy and human rights, counterterrorism and rule of law, improving citizen security, science, energy and technology infrastructure, people-to-people ties, and education. A U.S.A. Presidential Delegation attended the December 2019 inauguration of the new president of Argentia, Alberto Fernandez. Members of the delegation met privately with President Fernandez to fortify the relationship between the United States of America and Argentia. The Fernandez administration has said it seeks a mature relationship with the United States of America based on shared interests. The Department of State allocated $3.1 million for Argentia for fiscal years (FY) 2020. This funding promotes regional security. The Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs partners with Argentia to deliver counter-narcotics and criminal justice capacity building, which has strengthened the ability of both governments to disrupt transitional crime in the Western Hemisphere. The United States of America enjoys a trade surplus with Argentina, and is Argentina’s number three goods and services trading partner behind Brazil and China.) U.S.A. goods and services trade with Argentia totaled $161 billion in 2020. There are more than 300 U.S.A. companies doing business in Argentia, employing more than 150,000 workers. The United States of America is the largest foreign investor in Argentina, with approximately $10.7 billion (stock) FDI in 2019. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Venezuela gained its independence from Spain by 1819 as part of the Republic of Columbia and separated from Columbia in 1830. The United States of America recognized and established diplomatic relations with Venezuela in 1835. The United States of America recognizes the 2015 democratically elected Venezuelan National Assembly as the only legitimate branch of the Government of Venezuela. The United States of America and the 2015 National Assembly collaborated closely to achieve the goal of a peaceful restoration of democracy via free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections. The United States of America supports the protection of human rights, the promotion of civil society, the strengthening of democratic institutions, and transparency and accountability in the country. Since 2017, the United States of America has provided nearly $2.8 billion in humanitarian, economic, development, and health assistance to support Venezuelans inside Venezuela and throughout the region. Since 2005, the President of the United States of America has determined annually that Venezuela has “failed demonstrably” to adhere to its drug control obligations under international counternarcotic agreements. Venezuela also does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking and is not making any efforts to do so, according to the Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons report. The President of the United States of America has issued a national interest wavier to enable certain assistance programs vital to the national interests of the United States of America, such as human rights and civil society programs, to continue. U.S.A. humanitarian assistance helps to meet critical life-saving needs, including for food and nutrition; water, sanitation, and hygiene; healthcare; protection and other goods and services. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The United States of America seeks a stable, prosperous, and free country for the Cuban people. The United States of America pursues limited engagement with Cuba that advances our national interests and empowers the Cuban people while restricting economic practices that disproportionately benefit the Cuban government or its military, intelligence, or security agencies at the expense of the Cuban people. The U.S.A. government seeks to promote human rights, religious freedom, and democracy, encourages the development of telecommunications and the internet in Cuba, supports the growth of Cuba’s nascent private sector and civil society, and engages in areas that advance the interests of the United States of America and the Cuban people. The United States of America is committed to supporting safe, orderly, and legal migration from Cuba through the effective implementation of the U.S.A.-Cuba Migration Accords. Due to injuries sustained by our diplomatic community in Havana, visa processing for most Cuban applicants is presently taking place in third countries. Although economic sanctions remain in place, the United States of America is the largest provider of food and agricultural products to Cuba, with exports of those goods valued at $220.5 million in 2018. The United States of America is also a significant supplier of humanitarian goods to Cuba, including medicines and medical products, with total value of all exports to Cuba $275.9 million in 2018. Remittances from the United States of America, estimated at $3.5 billion for 2017, play an important role in Cuba’s state-controlled economy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The situation in which humanity finds itself is exceedingly grave. The policy of deterrent will not ensure peace; it will most likely destroy civilization, and it will certainly destroy democracy even if it preserves peace. No one knows what the first steps in avoiding a nuclear cataclysm and preserving a democracy are. However, it is clear that more important than climate change and electric vehicles is dealing with the immediate danger of nuclear war. Another central issue of today is that of the future course of the underdeveloped nations, which comprise the majority of the human race. They insist not only on obtaining political independence but also on rapid economic development. These people will not wait two hundred years to achieve the economic level of Europe or the United States of America. The Communists have shown that by means of force and fanaticism it is possible to attain results; their method will become irresistibly attractive unless it can be demonstrated that similar results can be achieved without terror and without the destruction of individuality, through central planning along with economic and technical assistance from the industrialized countries. Such a policy requires the acceptance of a neutral bloc by both the East and the West and the strengthening of the United Nations as a supernational organization charged with the administration of disarmament and economic aid. The pursuit of the policy suggested here requires such drastic changes in the American attitude that one cannot avoid having serious doubts whether such a policy is possible; in fact, its acceptance would seem to be impossible unless there is a growing conviction that it constitutes the only alternative to war. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
The pursuit of the policy suggested here requires such drastic changes in the American attitude that one cannot avoid having serious doubts whether such a policy is possible; in fact, its acceptance would seem to be impossible unless there is a growing conviction that it constitutes the only alternative to war. First, such a policy would require that the President and Congress subordinate the special interests of the armed forces and of the big corporations (especially those with strong capital investments abroad) to the main goals of the United States of America’s policy, peace and survival as a democratic nation. Furthermore, this policy requires a material and spiritual reorientation in the West entailing the replacement of projective-paranoid attitudes toward communism by an objective and realistic appraisal of the facts. Such realism is only possible if we take a critical view of ourselves and recognize the discrepancy that exists between our professed ideals and our actions. We claim that our present system is characterized by a high degree of individualism, and of religious or secular humanism. In reality we are a managerial, industrial society with a diminishing amount of individualism. We like to produce more and to consumer more, but we have no goal—either as individuals or as a nation. We are developing into faceless organization humans, alienated from ourselves and lacking authentic feelings and convictions. This very fact lends us to put so much emphasis on the lack of freedom and individualism in other nations because we can then protest against features of their society which in reality we are approaching in our own. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
The people in Russia, China, India, Mexico and Africa are today in some resect where Americans were one hundred and sixty years ago; they are building a society, full of hope and enthusiasm to go ahead and to accomplish what they have set out to do. While in the United States of America, although there is still unnecessary poverty and unnecessary suffering, we are only filing out what has been left to do; we are only doing more of the same. We have no vision of something new, no aim that truly inspires us. If this continues, we and the West will not survive. We will lack the energy and vitality that are necessary for any nation or group of nations to live and to survive in a World that is witnessing the awakening of nations that have been silent for nearly two hundred years. Our weapons will not save us—at best they will drag our enemies into the holocaust thirty minutes after we have perished. What can save us and what can help humankind is a renaissance of the spirit of humanism, of individualism, and of America’s anti-colonialist tradition. By our hesitant and often ambiguous policy toward the underdeveloped peoples we have helped the Communists realize one of their most significant successes: to become the leaders in the historical movement of the “New World,” and to stamp us the “reactionary” forces trying to arrest the historical trend. We must, if not surpass, at least equal the Communists, by being wholly and unreservedly with the wave of history, rather than halfheartedly and hesitatingly. As has been said over and over again, the present struggle is a struggle for the minds of humans. Once can win it only if one has ideas to offer that are authentic because they are rooted in the realities of nation’s life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The West is old, but by no means exhausted. It has shown its vitality by achievements in scientific thought that are unparalleled in history. We are suffering not so much from exhaustion as from the absence of goals, and from the “doublethink” that paralyzes us. If we ask ourselves where are and where we are going, we shall have a chance to formulate new goals socially, economically, politically, and spiritually. The Russian, Chinese, and Indian systems challenge us to develop a system that can satisfy the needs of humans better than communism does. However, while we talk a great deal about freedom and the superiority of our system, we avoid that challenges of these other nations and prefer to describe communism as an international conspiracy out to conquer the World by force and subversion. The hope of these other nations is to see the victory of communism as the result of its superior performance. Are we afraid that we cannot mee the Communist competition, and is this the reason why we prefer to define the struggle as a military one rather than as a socioeconomic one? Are we unwilling to make the necessary changes within our own society, and do we, for this reason, declare that no essential changes are necessary? Are we afraid to curb the political influence of our corporate investors in Latin America, China, and the Middle East? By concentrating on the military threat against us and the resulting arms race we miss the one chance for victory: to demonstrate that it is possible to have at home—and in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—economic progress and individuality, economic and social planning and democracy. This is the answer to the Communist challenge—not the nuclear deterrent. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Our present thinking is a symptom of a deep-seated, though unconscious defeatism, of a lack of faith in the very values which we proclaim. We only cover up this defeatism by concentrating on the evils of communism and by promoting hate. If we continue with our policy of the deterrent and with our unholy alliances with dictatorial states in the name of freedom, we shall defeat the very values we hope to defend. We shall lose our freedom and probably also our lives. What matters today is preserving the World; but in order to preserve it, certain changes have to be made, and in order to make these changes, historical trends have to be understood and anticipated. All humans of good will or, rather all humans who love life must form a united front for survival, for the continuation of life and civilization. Withall the scientific and technical progress humans have made, they are bound to solve the problem of hunger, poverty, and overpopulation, and they can afford to try solutions in different directions. There is only one thing humans cannot afford—and that is to go on with preparations for war, which, this time, will lead to catastrophe. There is still time to anticipate the next historical development and to change our course. However, unless we act soon, we shall lose the initiative, and circumstances, institutions, and weapons, which we created, will take over and decide our fate. Another problem humans are facing is they are becoming Homo mechanicus. All the pleasures these beings enjoy are sought within the frame of reference of the mechanical and unalive. They expect that there must be a button which, if pushed, will bring happiness, love, pleasure. (Many go to a psychoanalyst under the illusion that one can teach them where to find the button.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Homo mechanicus men look at women as one would at an Ultimate Driving Machine: he knows the right button to push, he enjoys his power to make her “race” and he remains the cold, watching observer. Homo mechanicus becomes more and more interested in the manipulation of machines rather than in the participation in and response to life. Hence, they become indifferent to life, fascinated by the mechanical, and eventually attracted by death and total destruction. Consider the role that killing plays in our amusements. The movies, the comic strips, the YouTube videos, the newspapers, video games are full of excitement because they are full of reports and/or scenes of destruction, sadism, brutality. Millions of people live humdrum but comfortable existences—and nothing excites them more than to see or read of killings, whether it I murder or a fatal accident in an automobile race. Is this not an indication of how deep this fascination with death has already become? Or think of expressions such as being “thrilled to death” or “dying to” do this or that, or the expression “it kills me.” Consider the indifference to life which is manifested in our rate of automobile accidents. Briefly then, intellectualization, quantification, abstraction, bureaucratization, and reification—the very characteristics of modern industrial society, when applied to people rather than to things, are not the principles of life but those of mechanic. People living in such a system become indifferent to life and even attacked to death. They are not aware of this. They take the thrills of excitement for the joys of life and live under the illusion that they are very much alive when they have many things to own and to use. The lack of protest against nuclear war, the discussion of our “atomologists” of the balance sheet of total or half-total destruction, shows how far we have already gone into the “valley of the shadow of death.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
These features of a necrophilous orientation exist in all modern industrial societies, regardless of their respective political structure. What Russian state capitalism has in common in this respect with corporate capitalism is more important than the features in which they system differ. Both systems have in common the bureaucratic-mechanical approach, and both are preparing for total destruction. The affinity between the necrophilous contempt for life and the admiration for speed and all that is mechanical has become apparent only in the last decades. Yet as early as in 1909 it was seen and succinctly expressed by Marinetti in his Initial Manifesto of Futurism: “We shall sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and boldness. The essential elements of our poetry shall be courage, daring and rebellion. Literature has hitherto glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy and sleep; we shall extol aggressive movement, feverish insomnia, the double quick step, the somersault, the box on the car, the fisticuff. We declare that the World’s splendour has been enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed. A racing motor-car, its frame adorned with great pipes, like snakes with explosive breath…a roaring motor-car, which looks as though running on a shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. We shall sing of the man at the steering wheel, whose ideal steam transfixes the Earth, rushing over the circuit of her orbit. The poet must give oneself with frenzy, with splendour and with lavishness, in order to increase the enthusiastic fervour of the primordial elements. There is no more beauty except in strife. No masterpiece without aggressiveness. Poetry must be a violent onslaught upon the unknow forces, to command them to bow before humans. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
“We stand upon the extreme promontory of the centuries! Why should we look behind us, when we have to break in the mysterious portals of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. Already we live in the absolute, since we have already created speed, eternal and ever-present. We wish to glorify war—the only health giver of the World—militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the Anarchist, the beautiful Ideas that kill, the contempt for woman. We wish to destroy museums, the libraries, to fight against moralism, feminism and all opportunistic and utilitarian meanness. We shall sing of the great crowds in the excitement of labour, pleasure and rebellion; of the multi-coloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in moder capital cities; of the nocturnal vibration of arsenals and workshops beneath their violent electric moons; of the greedy stations swallowing smoking snakes; of factories suspended from the clouds by their strings of smoke; of bridges leaping like gymnast over the diabolical cutlery of sunbathed rivers; of adventurous liners scenting the horizon; of broad-chested locomotives prancing on the rails, like huge steel horses bridled with long tubes; and of the gliding flight of aeroplanes, the sound of whose screw is like the flapping of the flags and the applause of an enthusiastic crowd.” It is interesting to compare Mr. Marinetti’s necrophilous interpretation of technique and industry with the deeply biophilous interpretation to be found in Walt Whitman’s poems. At the end of his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” he says: “Thrive cities—bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers, expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual, keep you places, objects than which none else I more lasting. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
“You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers, we receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward, not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us, we use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us, we fathom you not—we love you—there I perfection in you also, you furnish your parts toward eternity, great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.” Or at the end of the “Song of the Open Road”: Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?” Mr. Whitman could not have expressed his opposition to necrophilia better in this line: “to pass on (on living, always living!) and leave the corpses behind.” If we compare Mr. Marinetti’s attitude toward industry with that of Walt Whitman, it becomes clear that industrial production as such is not necessarily contrary to the principles of life. The question is whether the principles of life are subordinated to those of mechanization, or whether the principles of life are the dominant ones. Obviously, so far the industrialized World has not found an answer to the question which is posed here: How is it possible to create a humanist industrialism as against the bureaucratic industrialism which rules our lives today? It is ofttimes the Prince of Death as a murderer—working through the ignorance of God’s children as to his power, the conditions by which they give him power, and the victory of prayer by which they can resist his power—who cuts off God’s soldiers from the battlefield. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
It is the ultimate negative as a murderer who give “visions of glory” and “longings to die” to workers of vale to the Church of God, so that they yield to death even in days of active service, and slowly fade away. Believers who would have victory over the ultimate negative at every point must resist its attack on the body, as well as on the sprit and mind. They should also know the place of the body in the spiritual life: its prominence, and yet its obscurity. Paul said, “I keep under my body”—I discipline it. They must understand that the more knowledge they have of the devices and power of the Adversary, and of the fullness of the Calvary victory within their reach for complete victory over him, the more he will plan to injure them. The whole of his schemes against God’s children may be summed up under three heads: To cause them to sin, and he tempted Jesus as the Christ in the wilderness; To slander them, as Jesus as the Christ was slain at Calvary, when, by the direct permission of God, the hour and the power of darkness gathered around Him, and He by the hands of the wicked men was crucified and slain (Acts 2.23). As the believer gains victories over the ultimate negative and his deceiving and lying spirits by thus recognizing, resisting and triumphing over them in their varied workings, his strength of spirit to conquer them grows stronger, and he will become more and more equipped to set forth the truth of the finished work of Calvary as sufficient for victory over sin and the ultimate negative. Done in the power and authority of Jesus as the Christ by the Holy Spirit, this will set others free from their power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
It must, of course, be clearly recognized that victory over the ultimate negative in these aspects will not be without great onslaughts from him and sharp conflict, which may well be called “the evil day,” Ephesians 6.13. We first consider the negative aspect of the transition from the temporal to the eternal, the exclusion of negativities and ambiguities. The Greek word for judgment, krinein, indicates the separation of the negative symbolized by the ultimate judgment. This judgement is not a temporal event, for time is only the form of the finite, and eternity is its inner aim, or telos. To explain this continuous process, we must consider it a bold metaphour. Eternal life is likened to “eternal memory” in which the positive is remembered and the negative forgotten. However, since forgetting implies a moment of remembering, the negative is forgotten in the sense that it is acknowledged and rejected for what it is, nothing. Since Eternal Life is identical with the Kingdom of God in its fulfilment, it is the non-fragmentary, total, and complete conquest of the ambiguities of life. The ambiguities that accompany the life processes of the self-integration, self-creativity, and self-transcendence are overcome by the perfect balancing of the ontological polar elements: individualization-participation, dynamics-form, and freedom-destiny. Consequently, in the fulfilled Kingdom of God morality, culture, and religion disappear as special functions. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
There is no morality because there is no ought-to-be which is not. There is no culture because the work of the human spirit becomes the work of the divine Spirit. And there is no religion because there is no estrangement, and God is everything in and to everything. Unambiguous, non-fragmentary fulfilment is the result of the purification of the last judgment. If the morality of “thou shalt not lie” is rejected, “the sense for truth” must legitimate itself before a different tribunal: as a means of the preservation of man, as will to power. The same goes for our love of the beautiful: it, too, is a will to shape. The two-sense stand side by side; the sense for the real is a means of acquiring the power to shape things as one pleases. The delight in shaping and reshaping—a primal delight! We can comprehend only a World we ourselves have made. On the multifariousness of knowledge. To trace one’s relation to many other things (or to a kind—how can that be “knowledge” of something other! This kind of knowing and recognizing is itself already among the conditions of existence—so that the conclusion that there could be no kind of intellect (even for us) other than the one the preserves us, is too hasty: this de facto condition of existence is perhaps only accidental, perhaps in no way necessary. Our cognitive apparatus is not designed for “knowledge.” The most firmly believed a priori “truths” are, for me—provisional assumption, exempli gratia, the law of causality, very well-rehearsed habits of believing, so deeply incorporated that not believing them would drive the race to extinction However, are they for that reason truths? What a conclusion! As if the truth could be proved by man’s continuing to exist! #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
In the cases of self-analysis which I have observed untoward consequences have never occurred. However, these observations are as yet too limited to produce any convincing statistical evidence; I could not say, for instance, that this unfortunate outcome has occurred in only one case out of a hundred. There are, however, good reasons to believe that the danger is so rare as to be negligible. Observation in every analysis shows that patients are well able to protect themselves from insights they are not yet able to receive. If they are given an interpretation that represent too great a threat to their security they may consciously reject it; of they may forget it, or invalidate its relevance for them, or ward it off with arguments, or simply resent it as unfair criticism. One may safely assume that these self-protective forces would operate also in self-analysis. A person attempting to analyze oneself would simply fail to make any self-observations that would lead to insights as yet intolerable. Or one would interpret them in such a way as to miss the essential point. Or one would merely try to correct quickly and superficially an attitude conceived by one as faulty, and thereby close the door to further investigation. Thus in self-analysis the actual danger would be less than in professional analysis, because the patient intuitively knows what to avoid while an analyst, even a sensitive one, may err and present to the patient a premature solution. Again the danger is one of futility through too much evasion of problems rather than of positive change. And if a person does work through to some insight deeply disturbing to one, I believe there are several considerations that we can rely on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
One of these considerations is that hitting upon some truth is not only disturbing but is also, and simultaneously, of a liberating quality. This liberating force inherent in any truth may supersede the disturbing effect from the beginning. If so, a feeling of relief will ensue immediately. However, even if the disturbing effect prevails, the discover of a truth about oneself still implies a dawning recognition of a way out; even if this is not seen clearly it will be felt intuitively and thus will engender strength to proceed further. A second factor to be considered is that even if a truth is deeply frightening there is something like a wholesome fright. If a person recognizes, for instance, that one has been secretly driving at self-destruction, one’s clear recognition of that drive is much less dangerous than letting it silently operate. The recognition is frightening, but it is bound to mobilize counteracting self-preserving energies, provided there is any will to live. And if there is no sufficient will to live, a person will go to pieces anyhow, analysis or no analysis. To express a similar thought in a more positive fashion: if a person has had sufficient courage to discover an unpleasant truth about oneself, one may safely trust one’s courage to be strong enough to carry one through. The mere fact that one has gone that far indicates that one’s will to come to grips with oneself is strong enough to prevent one from becoming crushed. However, the period between staring to grapple with a problem and solving and integrating it ma be prolonged in self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Finally, we must not forget that really alarming disturbances in analysis rarely occur only because an interpretation cannot be properly grasped at the time. More frequently the real source of disquieting developments lies in the fact that the interpretation, or the analytical situation as a whole, stirs up hatred that is directed against the analyst. This hatred, if barred from awareness and thereby from expression, can enhance existing self-destructive tendencies. To let oneself go to pieces may then become a means of revenge against the analyst. If a person is confronted with an upsetting insight quite by oneself, there is almost nothing left but to fight it through with oneself. Or, to be cautious, the temptation to ward off the insight by making others responsible is lessened. The caution is warranted because, if the tendency to make others responsible for one’s shortcomings is strong anyhow, it may flare up also in self-analysis as soon as one realized a shortcoming, if one has not yet accepted the necessity of taking responsibility for oneself. Self-analysis is within the range of possibility, and the danger of its resulting in positive damage is comparatively slight. Certainly it has various drawbacks that are more or less serious in nature, ranging, briefly, from failure to prolongation of the process; it may take a considerably longer time to get hold of a problem and to solve it. However, against these drawbacks there are many factors which beyond doubt make self-analysis desirable. There are, to begin with, obvious external factors of the kind mentioned before. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Self-analysts would be desirable for those who because of money, time, or location cannot undertake regular treatment. If in the intervals between analytical sessions, and also during the sessions, they were inspired with the courage to do active and independent work on themselves, and even for those who are having treatment, it might shorten the procedure considerably. However, even apart from such blatant reasons, certain gains are beckoning to those who are capable of self-analysis which are more spiritual in character, ess tangible but not less real. These gains are an increase of inner strength and therefore of self-confidence. Every successful analysis increases self-confidence, but there is a certain extra gain in having conquered territory entirely through one’s own initiative, courage, and perseverance. This effect is the same in analysis as in other areas of life. To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown, though the work put in is the same and the result is the same. Such achievement gives rise not only to a justifiable pride but also to a well-founded feeling of confidence in one’s capacity to meet predicaments and not to feel lost without guide. The existence of various values is implicit in the general criteria of mental illness or maladjustment. The difficulty in answering it (“What is a case?”) comes from the fact that inevitably at some place there is a value judgment involved. I think that mental health or mental sickness cannot be conceived of without reference to some basic value. We are all trained to exclude values from our thinking; and the way we try to exclude them is not to talk about them. A more appropriate manner of dealing with this basic difficulty is to spell out what the values are that underlie our particular concept of mental health or mental illness. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
How do value systems relate to the problem of defining mental illness? In answering this question, we are helped to see that the diagnostic problem which superficially appears to be concrete and practical has roots in issues of an highly philosophical nature. A value system may place major worth on the individual or on society—actions may be preferred that augment the states of the individual at the expense of the group, or choices may be made that enhance the strength of society to the relative disregard of the individual. Recognition of the right to “conscientious objection” during wartime is expressive of a value system in which the individual’s scruples are given priority over what conceivably could be the nation’s security. By contrast, laws such as the ill-fated Prohibition Act are expressive of a value orientation in which the presumed welfare of society is predominant over individual freedom. All those who toil ere, yet they pass from childhood’s years, who live in squalor, pale and gaunt, to every evil a prey;–to human greed these all are slaves, and we must set them free. Why then, with plenty everywhere, should humans still lack their bread? Justice hall we pp as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Manifest Destiny is the way to save the World. Humans shall do no evil and work no destruction, for the Earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. 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 holiday season, please open your hearts and make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. They are not receiving all of their resources and have proudly been risking their lives to save the community since 1851. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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The Cursed
I lay sleepless in bed. There were noises in the distance; the sound of footsteps coming somewhat hurriedly in the direction of my bedroom; by the resonance I could tell that they were traversing a much larger room. I rose from my bed as the door opened, and l looked expectant. The incomer was a lady—she had long dark beautiful eyes, a long white neck. Her long dark hair however hidden in a dusty scarf and she wore the palest pastel rose dress. She was a scullery maid. Mary-Jo DelVecchio was her name and he had an anxious, even sorely distracted, look. As she moved her lips to whisper out something, the solemn bell, high up in the belfry rang out the half-hour at this moment. Her mouth remained open as she started at the yellow telegraph form in her had. I found myself breathing a deep sigh of relief. “Dear, Mary-Jo,” I said. “Come in my dear.” “Mrs. Winchester, I have an urgent message for you,” she said. You know what?” I said smiling. “That is what I have been waiting for. Leave the telegraph on my bureau.” “Very well, Mrs. Winchester,” Mary-Jo replied. She sat the message down and quietly shut the door. As I picked up the telegraph, I noticed all it read was “The Cursed.” It reminded me that my own infant daughter was dead as was my husband dead, but these things, being to do with the cursing, were never spoken of. Except, sometimes, obliquely. I started prowling my chamber, high in the East Turret carved with daisies and swans. The room was lined with books, swords, lutes, scrolls, and two portraits, the larger which represented my husband, and the smaller my daughter. Both resembling each other with their pale, faces, polished eyes and delicate skin. However, there was something about the fleshtones, the shapes of their hands, the perpetually arched eyebrows, the sharp angle at which they held their heads, the irregular pink splotches on their cheeks. It gave me a little chill. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
There were no windows at all in the turret, they were long ago bricked up and covered with hangings. Candles burned steadily. It was always night in the turret. Save, of course, by night there are particular sounds all about it, to which I am accustomed, but which I did not care for. By night, like most of my court, I closed my ears with softened tallow. However, if I slept, I dreamed, and heard in the dream the beating of wings…Often, the court held loud revel all night long. Soon I descended from the turret and went down, by various and curving passages, into the large, walled garden on the east side of the mansion. It was a very pretty garden, mannered and manicured, which the gardeners kept in perfect order. Over the high walls, where delicate blooms bell the wines, it is just possible to glimpse the tip of tree-covered mountains. However, by the day the mountains were blue and spiritual to look at, and seemed scarcely real. They might only be inked on the sky. A portion of my court was wandering about in the garden, playing games or musical instruments, or admiring painted sculptures, or the flora. However, my cursed court seemed vitiated this non. Nights of revel had taken their toll. As I passed down the garden, my courtiers acknowledged me deferentially. I see them, old and young alike, all doomed as I am, and the weight of my burned steadily increases. At the further, most eastern end of the garden, there is another garden, sunken and rather curious, beyond a wall with an iron door. Only I possessed the key to this door. Now I unlocked it and went through. My courtiers laugh and play and pretend not to see. I shut the door behind me. Wind-chimes were tinkling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
The sunken garden, which no gardener ever tends, is maintained by other, spontaneous means. It is small and square, lacking the hedges and the paths of the others, the sundials and statues and little pools. All the sunken garden contains is a broad paved border, and at its center a small plot of humid Earth. Growing in the Earth is a slender bush in the shape of the number thirteen with slender velvet leaves. I stood out and looked at the bush only a short while. I visit it every day. I have visited it every day for years. I am waiting for the bush to flower. Everyone is waiting for this. Even Mary-Jo, the scullery maid, is waiting, though she does not, being only sixteen, born in the mansion and uneducated, properly understand why. The light of the little garden is dull and strange, for the whole of it is roofed over by a dome of think stained-glass. It makes the atmosphere somewhat enchanting, and the bush itself gives off a pleasant smell, rather resembling vanilla. Something was cut into the stone rim of the Earth-plot where the bush grows. I read it for perhaps the thousandth time. O, fleur de feu—When I returned from the little garden into the large garden into the large garden, locking the door behind me, no seemed truly to notice. However, their obeisances were now circumspect. The ladies bend to the bright fish in the pools, the farmers pluck for them blossoms, challenged each other to combat at chest. The pleasure garden was full of one long and wear sigh. In the hour before sunset, my mansion is lit by flamebeaux. In the high windows, the casements of stained glass and leaded glass are fastened tight. The huge window by the palm trees was long ago shut up, and a tapestry of gold and silver with rubies and emeralds covering it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
I always dined with care and attention, not with enjoyment. Only the very young of the mansion eat in that way, and there were not so many of those. The murky sun slides through the stained glass. The musicians struck up more widely. By the time the moon would come up, and the mansion rocks to its own cacophony, something strange would walk about, something that walked with a shuffling, steady thump—thump—thump! As I looked out of the windows, I watched the farmers and gardeners drift across the front lawn in twos and threes. Their movements were slow and languid like ancient fish in shallow, sun-drenched waters. I could hear yowling and screeching so loud that I could not make out any individual voice. It frightened me. When I was not in the library, I sat quietly in the parlour or dining room, or up in the Daisy Bedroom staring at the beautiful windows. Sitting in the dining room or parlous, however, was made almost unbearable by the presence of staff, arranged mummy-like around the rooms. Sometimes I would pick up a volume in the library, but invariably discovered it was some sort of laborious tome on treills and ornate gardening, Victorian architecture, museum catalogs. Or sometimes an old leather-bound novel that read no better. This growing climate of awkwardness and fear angered me so that my neck muscles were always stiff, my head always aching. It was worse because it was not entirely unexpected. The new butler seemed a little feral, with impossibly long teeth, and foul, blood-tainted breath. He had sandy red hair, which was boyishly frizzy at the sides. He might have been in his late thirties but hi face was prematurely lined and he stood with one shoulder slightly higher than the other, as if he was very tired. He began to apologize for disturbing he. “Not at all” I said. “I usually do not go to bed until well past midnight.” He had manners, promising a better life, and a cold excitement one need not work for. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Suddenly, the weird howl of a dog broke the silence. The noise came from far away and ended abruptly, as if hands had ended abruptly, as if hands had caught the beast by the throat. Then there was no sound except the monotonous spatter of rain on the ground. Puffs of visible vapour bespoke increasing contrasts in temperature between the parlour and dining room. The wind suddenly began to howl and shutters started banging. From the sound of things, there was a terrible storm. I then observed a woman, apparently young, dressed in white evening gown, walking before me, on my left hand, between the fireplace and the coffee table. She was dripping wet. Supposing the she had been a new housemaid, I turned to see if there were other person in her attendance, but there was no one. My curiosity, being now greater than before, to know who this genteel woman was, I followed her at the distance of four or five feet for about a mile as she traversed the twisting hallways of my labyrinth, and expecting that when I got to the bottom of the staircase of the second floor that I should meet her attempting to gain access to the Door-to-Nowhere; but to my great astonishment, when she approached the door, she vanished from my sight at the very time my eyes were fixed upon her. I related the strange affair to my chambermaid; and it was light, and I had not been previously thinking of apparitions, nor was I ever in the habit of speculating on such subjects, I am firmly persuaded that what I saw was one. The very next day, a young male servant of good character, of a bold active disposition, and who professed a disbelief in supernatural appearances requested to leave and go to San Francisco, and also to be accommodated with a horse, which was granted to him. Being desirous of making long holiday of it, he rose early in the morning and set off three hours before daybreak; however, to my great surprise, returned home early afternoon before it was dark. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
On being questioned if anything was the matter with him, he replied that he had been so much alarmed that he was resolved to travel in the dark if he could avoid it. “For,” he said, “as I was riding down the lane, in the morning, being forwards with my face downward, the horse suddenly bolted from the road to such a distance that I was nearly dismounted. On recovering, and looking about to see what had affrighted the horse, I saw a fine lady, dressed in white, with something like a black veil on her face, standing close by. How I got back to your mansion, I cannot tell, but was so frightened that I dared not go further, but walked up and down the road until it was light.” I thought that he must have contracted a chill from the wet of the grass, for that afternoon he was certainly feverish and disordered; and the disorder was of the mind as well as the body, for he seemed to have something more he wished to say, only a press of household affairs prevented me from listening any further to him; and when I went, later that evening to see that the light in his chamber had been taken away, and to bid him good-night, he seemed to be sleeping, though his face was unnaturally flushed, to my thinking: he was, however, pale and quiet, and smiling in his slumber. Next morning, it happened that I was occupied with business, and unable to looking on the boy. I therefore set tasks to be written and brought to him. Three times, if not oftener, the boy knocked at the study door, and each time the doctor chanced to be engaged with some visitor, and sent the boy off rather roughly, which he later regretted. Two housemaids were at dinner this day, and both remarked that the lad seemed sickening for a fever, in which they were too near the truth, and it had been better if he had been put to bed forthwith: for a couple of hours later in the afternoon he came running into the house, crying, out in a way that was really terrifying, and rushing to me, clinging about me, begging me to protect him, saying, “Keep them off! keep them off!” without intermission. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
And it was only evident that some sickness had taken strong hold of him. Here was therefore got to bed in another chamber from that in which he commonly lay, and the physician brought to him: whom pronounced the disorder to be grave and affecting the lad’s brain and prognosticated a fatal end to it if strict quiet were not observed, and those sedative remedies used which he should prescribe. I was naturally grieved. I felt the pathos of the early death: and besides, there was the growing suspicion that not all had been told by the lad, and that there was something here which was out of his beaten track. When he left the chamber of death, it was only to visit the Cupid Fountain. The month of January was near its end when I received another telegram that read, “The Cursed.” The message affected me horribly. And when I went to bid the lad good night, he was dead. The scene at his burial had been very distressing. The day was awful in morbidness and wind: the bearers, staggering blindly along under the flapping black pall, found it a hard job, when they emerged from my porch, to make their way to the grave. I was draped in a mourning clock of the time, and my face was white and fixed as that of one dead, except when I suddenly turned my head to the left and looked over my shoulder. It was then alive with a terrible expression of listening fear. No one saw me go away: and no one could find me that evening. All night the gale buffeted the high windows of Llanada Villa, and howled over the upland and roared through the woodland. It was useless to search in the open: no voice of shouting or cry for help could possibly be heard. I found myself in the Blue Séance Room, having a vision. In my vision the lad was clinging to the great ring of the door, his head sunk between his shoulders, his stockings in rags, his shoes gone, his legs torn and bloody. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mystery House
Mrs. Winchester had an antique etiquette, developed through practice and interaction with human beings of all eras and climes. To really appreciate the revolution in eating in the late nineteenth century, it would help to see a Victorian dining room with its pantry fully stocked and its food on the table. The nineteenth century saw the introduction and spread of brand-name foods, prepackaging, logos, and graphic labels. Before the Victorian ear, food was either raised or grown at home or bought in bulk. The local general store or grocer had large acks of sugar, beans, flours; barrels of molasses and pickles; as well as spices such as pepper, cloves, and allspices. The grocer measured and weighed his wares into the customer’s containers and kept a tab, billing his accounts once a month. Milk, eggs, and fowl were purchased from a country farmer who brough them to market or, more likely from a city dairyman who kept cows and chickens.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the quality of foods often got a lot worse. Railroads and urbanization supported the growth of the food business. Flour was milled closer to the source or closer to inexpensive transportation rather than closer to the consumer. It was commonly extended by unscrupulous companies with a measure of chalk dust or plaster. Teas was often stretched with iron filings, a profitable ingredient for a product sold by weight. Milk was often skimmed of valuable cream and sold as whole. Even when it was not, city cows often lived in multistory brick barns, were fed on rotten silage, and infected with tuberculosis. These consumptive Camilles of the cow World hardly gave the thick, white milk that Americans were used to. New York City’s milk was most often described as watery and bluish. By the late nineteenth century, there was strong reactions to the declining food quality.
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 