The milk can work a cure in humans. Research must be objective, but to be objective may be simply the worst thing in the World from the point of view of psychotherapy, or of any creative activity. The artist has a perfect right to say to the critic, “Go away and leave me alone,” for in fact whatever the artist does one must do alone. You have got to cross that lonesome valley. You have got to cross it by yourself. There is no one going to cross it for you. You have got to cross it by yourself. What has emerged most clearly from my own research on creativity is the fact that the creative person is able to find in the developmentally more primitive and less reasonably new insight, even though at first this may be only intuitively and dimly grasped. One is willing to pay heed to vague feelings and intimations which on the grounds of good sense are put aside hastily by most of us. Characteristically, the creative individual refuses to be content with the most easily established perceptual schemata or perceptual constancies, even such obviously adaptive ones as the discrimination between what is inside the self versus what is outside the self, or the conviction that there are things in the World that are absolutely unmoving, or the notion that all effects have causes, or that time passes moment by moment in succession of states rather than in an unstoppable flux. You will recognize these of course as the basis of what we usually call a sane mind, a clear sensorium, a sense of reality, and so on. #RandolphHarris 1 of 12

However, creative people sometimes do without these and without many other basic constancies, leading them at times, as you might imagine, to give an impression of psychological imbalance. There is reason to believe that many creative individuals deliberately induce in themselves an altered state of consciousness in which the ordinary structures of experience are broken down. The ordinary World may thus be transcended: in mystical states, in feelings of being possessed, in prolonged trances of deep reveries, and even at times in psychosis. These deviations from perceptual constancies my permit a more inclusive and more valid perception, once the stress involved in extending the boundaries is relieved. In brief, a kind of transcendence of apparently adaptive but in some sense crippling limits may thus be achieved. Something of this sort is necessary if neurosis is to be cured, for the constancies there are properly called compulsive and imprisoning. When exposed to insensitivity, it is inevitable that a child would feel rejected. And these feelings undermine whatever feelings of value the child may have had and gradually feelings of worthlessness develop. Perhaps the emotional logic of the child is something like this: “The most significant people in my life—that is, my parents—do not appear to consider me to be of personal worth, therefore I must be worthless.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 12

As the child becomes older, he or she may or may not be aware of feelings of worthlessness. Some people are quite aware of such feelings. There is probably no counselor who has spent time working with people who has not had individuals say something like this: “All of my life I have never felt I really mattered to anyone. And I have always felt there must be something wrong with me.” There are others who have been somewhat successful in keeping their feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness out of their conscious thoughts by the means of various kinds of psychological defenses. However, it is a universal experience. All of us have some of these feelings within us. When the child begins to have these feelings of worthlessness as a result of feeling that one has been rejected, the next step in one’s emotional development seems to take the form of self-hate, as follows: feelings of rejection lead to feelings of worthlessness which turn into feelings of self-hate. Again we can imagine the emotional logic that takes place within the child. Probably it is something like this: “I seem to be worthless. I appear inferior to my parents and other people around me. I cannot respect myself, since they do not seem to respect me. Since I am worthless, I hate myself.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 12

These feelings of self-hate may be maintained on a largely unconscious level. In fact there is every reason to think that the child would do everything possible to avoid bringing these feelings into awareness, no matter how strong they might be. To really hate oneself is a repelling, frightening idea, so much so that it is almost intolerable. Perhaps the best example of extreme self-hatred that is at least partly conscious is the person in a suicidal depression. The self-hate is so strong and so intolerable that the only out for the person appears to one to be the murder of one’s self, an act of extreme self-hate. Because hate of one’s self is so intolerable and is so threatening to the very roots of the person’s being, most persons react with psychological defenses of one kind or another. We find some kind of escape hatch by which to avoid the full force of this terrible feeling that we are worthless and the object of our own hatred. A strong case can be made for believing that it is this feeling of hatred toward one’s self that lies at the root of most, if not all, personality difficulties and family problems that are not caused by a brain injury or some other physical malfunction. For the things that people do and say that result in their being described as having personality problems and that causes them difficulty in relationships with others can be seen as ways of escaping from self-hatred. #RandolphHarris 4 of 12

Before some of these ways of escape are examined in detail, it is well to note the principle that now comes in focus. As we shall see as we examine these escape hatches, each of them seems to have built into it the tendency to set up a negative reaction in other people that will lead to further feelings of rejection and therefore increase the individual’s feelings of worthlessness and self-hate. This cyclical process might be illustrated: Feelings of rejection, feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, escape hatch, further feelings of rejection, and feelings of worthlessness. This rancorous cycle continues. And this is how some people become bullies. Because they feel rejected, usually because they have done something deviant, they will try to escape from feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred by bullying someone they know. Or perhaps an individual will switch to some other ways of avoiding one’s feelings about oneself. One might attempt to escape by becoming a show-off or braggart. “See that you do not boast in your own wisdom,” reports Alma 38.11. Here, too, sooner or later, even though it may seem cute at first, people will get tired of the boasting, and one will feel further feelings of rejection. One has been caught in a cycle of rejection. #RandolphHarris 5 of 12

The question might be asked here, “Is not the person who is a bully or a braggart the one who loves oneself or things too highly of oneself, rather than the one who hates oneself?” Further thought makes it clear, however, that is the child had genuine feelings of worth and value as a person, it would not be necessary for one to try to prove oneself more powerful than others or better than others by bullying or boasting. One is attempting to escape from the nagging, haunting feeling that one is worthless by attempting to prove to others—and most of all to oneself—that one is an individual or worth. Unfortunately, because of one’s own feelings about the unsatisfactory ways in which one trues to prove one’s worth, one sinks more deeply into feeling self-worthlessness. Feelings of rejection lead to feelings of worthlessness, which spawn self-hate, then the escape is to bully or bragging, that creates further rejection (“Nobody likes a bully or a braggart”). Lest the picture appears too much darkness, it should be emphasized that every child from time to time goes through these experiences. It is not single isolated incidents that cripple personalities. #RandolphHarris 6 of 12

When trends are established in relationships with parents, and when there is little to mitigate these trends, then serious problems can develop. These situations are not unique to childhood nor children, we also see these same patterns in fully grown adults. It is important, however, to see that even minor incidents which cause feelings of rejection undermine to some degree a person’s feelings of self-worth. We are again reminded that we are all caught in this human dilemma. It is not a question of whether we have feelings of rejection. However, accepting a bully and allowing them to be part of the community without punishment for their bad behavior is a mistake because it is rewarding them for the bad things they have done and their deviant behavior will only get worse. The only question is, “How much self-hate do I have, and how much crippling effect does it have on my life?” Humans are generally ethical beings—ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. One’s capacity for ethical judgment—like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being—is based upon one’s consciousness of oneself. They form so-called revolutionary groups and expect to save the World by acts of terror and destruction, not seeing that they are only contributing to the general tendency to violence and inhumanity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 12

They have lost their capacity to love and have replaced it with the wish to sacrifice their lives. (Self-sacrifice is frequently the solution for individuals who ardently desire to love, but who have lost the capacity to love and see in the sacrifice of their own lives an experience of love in the highest degree). However, these self-sacrificing young people are very different from the loving martyrs, who want to live because they love life and who accept death only when they are forced to die in order not to betray themselves. Our present-day self-sacrificing young and mature people are the accused, but they are also the accusers, in demonstrating that in our social system some of the very best people become so isolated and hopeless that nothing but destruction and fanatism are left as a way out of their despair. The human desire to experience union with others is rooted in the specific conditions of existence that characterize the human species and is one of the strongest motivators of human behavior. By the combination of minimal instinctive determination and maximal development of the capacity for reason, we human beings have lost our original oneness with nature. In order not to feel utterly isolated—which would, in fact, condemn us to insanity—we need to find a new unity: with our fellow beings and with nature. #RandolphHarris 8 of 12

This human need for unity with others is experiences in many ways: in the symbiotic tie to mother, an idol, one’s tribe, one’s nation, one’s class, one’s religion, one’s fraternity, one’s professional organization. Often, of course, these ties overlap, and often they assume an ecstatic form, as among members of certain religious sects or of a political mob, or in the out bursts of national hysteria in the case of war. The outbreak of the First World War, for example, occasioned one of the most drastic of these ecstatic forms of union. Suddenly, from one day to the next, people gave up their lifelong convictions of pacifism, antimilitarism; scientist threw away their lifelong training in objectivity, critical thinking, and impartiality in order to join the big We. The desire to experience union with others manifests itself in the lowest kind of behavior, for instance, in acts of sadism and destruction, as well as in the highest: solidarity on the basis of an ideal or conviction. It is also the main cause of the need to adapt; human beings are more afraid of being outcasts than even of dying. Crucial to every society is the kind of union and solidarity it fosters and the kind it can further, under the given conditions of its socioeconomic structure. #RandolphHarris 9 of 12

These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings: the one, to have—to possess—that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be—to share, to give, to sacrifice—that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others. For these two contradictory strivings in every human being it follows that the social structure. These considerations seem to indicate that both tendencies are present in human beings: in one, to have—to possess—that owes its strength in the last analysis to the biological factor of the desire for survival; the other, to be—to share, to give, to sacrifice—that owes its strength to the specific conditions of human existence and the inherent need to overcome one’s isolation by oneness with others. From these two contradictory strivings in every human being it follows that the social structure, its values and norms, decides which of the two becomes dominant. Cultures that foster the greed for possession, and thus the having mode of existence, are rooted in one human potential; cultures that foster being and sharing are rooted in the other potential. We must decide which of these two potentials we want to cultivate, realizing, however, that out decision is largely determined by the socioeconomic structure of our given society that inclines us toward one of the other solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 12

From my observations in the field of group behavior my best guess is that the two extreme groups, respectively manifesting deeply ingrained and almost unalterable types of having and of being, form a small minority; that in the vast majority both possibilities are real, and which of the two becomes dominant and which is repressed depends on environmental factors. This assumption contradicts a widely held psychoanalytic rigid doctrine that environment produces essential changes in personality development in infancy and early childhood, but that after this period the character is fixed and hardly changed by external events. This psychoanalytic dogma has been able to gain acceptance because the basic conditions of their childhood continue into most people’s later life, since in general, the same social conditions continue to exist. However, numerous instances exist in which a drastic change in environment leads to a fundamental change in behavior, for instance, when the negative forces cease to be fed and the beneficial forces are nurtured and encouraged. The frequency of intensity of the desire to share, to give, and to sacrifice are not surprising if we consider the conditions of existence of the human species. What is surprising is that this need could be so repressed as to make acts of selfishness the rule in industrial (and many other) societies and acts of solidarity the exception. #RandolphHarris 11 of 12

However, paradoxically, this very phenomenon is caused by the need for union. A society whose principles are acquisition, profit, and property produces a social character oriented around having, and once the dominant pattern is established, nobody wants to be an outsider, or indeed an outcast; in order to avoid this risk everybody adapts to the majority, who have in common only their mutual antagonism. As a consequence of the dominant attitude of selfishness, the leaders of our society believe that people can be motivated only by the expectation of material advantages, for instance, by rewards, and that they will not react to appeals for solidarity and sacrifice. Hence, expect in times of war, these appears are rarely made, and the chances to observe the possible results of such appeals are lost. Only a radically different socioeconomic structure and a radically different picture of human nature could show that bribery is not the only way (or the best way) to influence people. Sometimes, like an immature person, we misbehave, act unwisely, and feel we cannot approach God with a problem. When we receive an impression in our heart, we can use our mind either to rationalize it away or to accomplish it. Be careful what you do with an impression from the Lord. Drink your spiritual milk and become cured. Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in faith with confidence in our holy Father. #RandolphHarris 12 of 12

There was this woman in Beethoven’s time who lost her child. She was bereft. Beethoven would come into her house, unannounced, and he would play the piano for her. She would be laying upstairs, distraught, and she would hear him playing down there in the drawing room, and the piano music was his gift to her, to comfort her. It was thought that he was parting the gates of Heaven with his music. Nothing is ever wasted in the Kingdom of God. Not one tear, not all our pain, not the unanswered question or the seemingly unanswered prayers. Nothing will be wasted if we give our lives to God. And if we are willing to be patient until the grace of God is made manifest, whether it takes nine years or ninety, it will be worth the wait. You may be in pain today. Maybe you have suffered a loss, been through a disappointment, but that is not the end. God still have a plan. Do not sit around nursing your wounds. Do not let bitterness and discouragement set the tone for your life. God wants you to arise, wipe away your tears and keep being a productive member of the community. When you become weary and feel like quitting, there is a way to have your strength renewed—wait on the Lord. God is going to make the rest of your life the best of your life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Freedom never occurs in a vacuum; it is not anarchy. The self-consciousness of the child is born in the structure of one’s relations with one’s parents. And the psychological freedom of the human being develops not as though one were a Robinson Crusoe on a desert island, but in a continual interaction with the other significant persons in one’s World. Freedom does not mean trying to live in isolation. It does mean that when one is able to confront one’s isolation, one is able consciously to choose to act, with some responsibility, in the structure of one’s relations with the World, especially the World of other persons around one. Personal soundness is taken to mean integrity, stability, and coherence of the individual personality, as those qualities show themselves socially. All-round soundness as a person refers to the soundness, balance, and degree of maturity which the individual shows in one’s relations with other persons. Integrity and stability of the of the home refers, first of all, to the continuing presence of father and mother with their children within the same four walls during most of the years of the subject’s childhood. The lows in the soundness tend to be the products of homes broken by death, divorce, or illness, or by frequent absence of the father. A part of the picture is the economic security of the family and the stability of the community itself. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

In addition to the tangible stability evidenced by the fact of continuing presence of both parents and the tendency of the family to live for long periods in one house, there were of course more subtle, and perhaps actually more determinative, emotional and qualitative evidences of family integrity. When there is absence of marked family friction, the children tend to be more stable. This adds up to, for the child, an outer certainty which provides the psychological basis for the creation of the most important inner certainty: that both the World and oneself are stable and worthy of trust. Imagery of the father as a respected, successful person tend to produce children who display a high level of soundness. These children almost always speak of their fathers as individuals whom they seek to emulate, and who are on the whole much respected in the community. A number of the lows either do not know their father or know him as a pronounced failure: the father was abandoned by the mother in favor of another man. Another factor to having children who are not well adjusted is if one of the parents suffers from psychosis. In highly sound individuals what seems to be important here is that they had throughout their childhood the continuing presence of a model on which they could base their own conception of potent masculinity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

When people have an idea of what good masculinity represents, they are able to form some image of successful manhood which they themselves can realize in their own persons in adulthood. The low subjects, on the other hand, are unable, simply for lack of the significant experience of it, to adopt in imagination the role of the respected man of the house. If it is true that  adult personality is largely a realization and synthesis of the possibilities that are given in childhood, then we shall have to say that the lows are unable to take over the adult masculine role largely because no image of it existed for them to emulate; in a sense, adult masculinity was never one of the potentialities which they expected themselves to realize. Highly sound subject were closely controlled at home; but the general picture was of a mother who was loving without being seductive, and solicitous without being demanding or overprotective. Parents may be too restrictive of a child’s freedom, betraying their only slightly disguised hostility. One mother, for no apparent reason, forbade her four-year-old from leaving his yard or playing with other children on the block. Such stern and unnecessary limitations on a child, sometime bordering on cruelty, tend to choke out the child’s ability to be spontaneous and open in one’s activities. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

These rather direct forms of rejection are hard for a child to handle. He or she is confused by all the hostility coming his way, for one does not know what he or she has done to deserve such treatment, since in fact one has not deserved it. These experiences are particularly damaging, of course, if they are not offset in part by genuine expressions of love by the parents. While these forms of rejection are very difficult for the child, there are others that are as emotionally unsettling. Perhaps they are even harder for children to cope with because they are subtle and are disguised as expressions of love. Often they involve some form of overprotection on the part of the parents, and tend to prevent the child from becoming an individual in his or her own right. Parents who place a great deal of emphasis on religion may be particularly prone to overprotective forms of rejection. Often they feel that the direct expression of anger is wrong; so they do not get angry at the children, but, without realizing it, they express their hostility in subtle ways such as overcontrolling the child’s life. These parents may also be frightened about the dangers they feel exist for the child if he or she is allowed unrestricted contact with other children and adults who are not part of the religious community. As a result, they may limit the child’s opportunities to learn and grow through encountering people of diverse backgrounds. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

These masquerades of love have sometimes been called smother love because they tend to smother the child in one’s attempts to become a person. This can lead to a child having a panicky feeling in crowds of people, feelings of being engulfed and smothered. Also, some people can grow into a low level of mental soundness when every wish as a child is answered. This is another subtle counterfeit of love that conceals underlying hostility. Instead of expressing hostile feelings directly, some parents feel so guilty about their feelings that they will go overboard in the other direction, lavishing gifts upon the child, giving him or her everything he or she asks for, and solving any problems for the child when their behavior gets them into trouble. As a result, a child may enter adult life immature in many ways and with reduced discernment, unable to assume responsibilities, since he or she has never been encouraged to assume any growing up. So there are many way in which children experience rejection, and all of us have had some taste of it. It is a matter of degree. The human personality appears to be very sensitive to feelings of rejection. This is particularly true for the child, for one has not learned to develop defenses foe warding off such feelings and is relatively helpless to fight back in any way. It is inevitable that when the child feels rejected the one will experience some emotional reaction to this rejection. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

It should be emphasized that it is difficult to describe an emotion experience in words, which are, of course, primarily intellectual. The young child has not developed the intellectual capacity to think in terms we must use to describe an experience. Whatever process the child uses, however, it seems undeniable that one experiences feelings of rejection and feelings of being loved at every early age. As a matter of fact, it is likely that the child can sense how one’s parents feel about him or her before the child can understand any of the words they say. Later, of course, the child encounters other experiences that are interpreted as rejection and that contribute to and reinforce these earlier feelings of rejection. The characteristic reaction of the child to these feelings is a growing sense of worthlessness. Children who are highly sound typically have some break from the house, such as being part of a sports team or a club and have good relations with the siblings. This factor seems psychologically important for somewhat the same reasons as the presence of a successful father: what is involved here is the presence in childhood of models for later adult experience and adult roles. The family is a community in microcosm, and fullest participation in the larger community in later life should be facilitated by richness of interpersonal experience and flexibility in role-taking, determined in large part by the roles available in the family circle. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

 Even in the groups who have a high mental soundness, it should be noted that on one was especially blessed; the luckiest of lives in the study had their full share of difficulty and private despair. Still, some individual were able to communicate a high seriousness of purpose and an ethical purity which was truly impressive, and which lead them to displaying a comprehensive picture of mental soundness. Psychopathology is always with us, and soundness is a way of reacting to problems, not an absence of them. Additional, within the population of subjects of ordinary physical and psychological integrity, soundness is by no means exclusively determined by circumstances but may be considered in the nature of an unintended—and perhaps largely unconscious—personal achievement. Our high soundness subjects are beset, like all other persons, by fears, unrealizable desires, self-condemned hates, and tensions difficult to resolve. They are sound largely because they bear with their anxieties, hew to a stable course, and maintain some sense of the ultimate worthwhileness of their lives. Thinking people all through the ages have sought to describe in different ways some structure: and every individual assumes, consciously or unconsciously, some structure in which one acts. Most people tend to assume certain rules which arise from the conscious conformity to what is expected by the society. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Self-affirmation and self-assertion, obvious aspects of will, are essential to love, and crucial to the personal lives of all of us, as well as specifically to psychotherapy. Both love and will are conjunctive forms of experience. That is, both describe a person reaching out, moving toward the other, seeking to affect him or her or it—and opening oneself so that one may be affected by the other. Both love and will are ways of molding, forming, relating to the World and trying to elicit a response from it through the persons whose interest or love we covet. Love and will are interpersonal experiences which bring to bear power to influence others significantly an to be influenced by them. The interrelation of love and will is shown, furthermore, by the fact that each loses it efficacy when it is not kept in right relation to the other; each can block the other. Will can block love. This can be seen particularly in the will power of the inner-directed type of mortal. These are typically people who are often the powerful captain of industry and finance. These are people who boast about the unconquerable soul, and proclaim they are the captain of their fate. However, if my soul is really unconquerable, I shall never fully love; for it is the nature of love to conquer all fortresses. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

And if I must cling to being the master of my fate, I shall never be able to let myself go in passion; for passionate love always has tragic possibilities. Love can break the limbs of strength and overpower the intelligence in all its shrewd planning. An example of will blocking love can be seen in the father of a young student-patient of mine, who was the treasure of a large corporation. He telephoned me to talk about maximizing the effectiveness of his son’s treatment exactly as though we were at his company board-meeting. When the son became sick with a minor illness in college the father immediately flew to the scene to take charge; the same father became furious when his son held hands and kissed his girl friend on the front lawn of their resort home. At dinner, the father told how he had entered into negotiation to buy the company of a friend of the son’s but, having become irritated over the slowness of the negotiations, had called up the would-be partners and told them to forget the whole thing. He showed no awareness that he was sending another company into bankruptcy with the snap of his fingers. This father was a public-spirited citizen, the chairman of several committees for civic betterment; and he could not understand why, when he had been treasurer of an international corporation, his subordinates secretly referred to him as the “hardest S.O.B. in Europe.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

The strong will power which the father thought solved all his problems, actually served at the same time to block his sensitivity, to cut off his capacity to hear other persons, even, or perhaps especially, his own son. It is not surprising that this exceedingly gifted son failed in his college work for several years, went through a beatnik period, and ultimately had a tortuous time permitting himself to succeed in his own profession.  Typical of the inner-directed genre, the father of my patient could always take care of others without caring for them, could give them his money but not his heart, could direct them but could not listen to them. This kind of will power was a transfer into interpersonal relationships of the same kind of power that had become so effective in manipulating railroad cars, stock transactions, coal mines, and other aspect of the industrial World. The human of will power, manipulate oneself, did not permit oneself to see why one could not manipulate others in the same way. This identifying of will with personal manipulation is the error that sets will in opposition to love. It is a sound hypothesis, based on a good deal of evidence in psychotherapeutic work, that the unconscious guilt which parents like this carry because they manipulate their children leads them to be overprotective and over permissive toward the same. These are the children who are given electric motor cars and paper straws but not moral values, who pick up sensuality but are not taught sensitivity in life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

The parents seem vaguely aware that the values on which their will power was based are no longer efficacious. However, they can neither find new values nor give up the manipulative will. And the fathers often seem to act on the assumption that their will therefore has to do for the whole family. This overemphasis on will, which blocks love, leads sooner or later to a reaction to the opposite error, love which blocks will. This is typically seen in the generation made of the children of parents like the father we described above. The love proposed in our day by the hipster movement seems to be the clearest illustration of this error. Hipster love is indiscriminate, all you have to do is swipe a certain way on an application, which is connected to a mobile device, and this is a common principle within the movement. Hipster love emphasizes immediacy, spontaneity, and the emotional honesty of the temporary moment. These aspects of hipster love are not only entirely understandable reaction against the manipulative will of the previous generation, but are values in their own right. The immediacy, spontaneity, and honesty of the relationship experienced in the vital now are sound and telling criticisms of contemporary bourgeois love and pleasures of the flesh. The hipster revolt helps destroy the manipulative will power which undermines human personality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

However, love also requires enduringness. Love grows in depth by virtue of the lovers experiencing encounter with each other, conflict and growth, all over a period of time. These cannot be omitted from any lasting and viable experience of love. They involve choice and will under whatever names you use. Generalized love, to be sure, is adequate for generalized, group situations; but I am not honored by being loved simply because I belong to the genus “man.” The love which is separated from will, or the love which obviates will, is characterized by a passivity which does not incorporate and grow with its own passions; such love tends, therefore, toward dissociation. It ends in something which is not fully personal because it does not fully discriminate. Such distinctions involve willing and choosing, and to choose someone means not to choose someone else. This is overlooked among the hipsters; the immediacy of love in the hipster development seems to end in a love that is fugitive and ephemeral. We cannot content ourselves by painting the old building a new color; it is the foundations which are destroyed, and the resolutions, by whatever name we may call them, require new ones. What is necessary for resolutions is a new consciousness in which the depth and meaning of personal relationship will occupy a central place. Such an embracing consciousness is always required in an age of radical transition. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Lacking external guides, we shift our morality inward; there is a new demand upon the individual of personal responsibility. We are required to discover on a deeper level what it means to be human. If I appear to be kind while my kindness is only a mask to cover my exploitativeness—if I appear to be courageous while I am extremely vain or perhaps suicidal—if I appear to love my country while I am furthering my selfish interests, the appearance, for instance, my overt behavior, is in drastic contradiction to the reality of forces that motivate me. My behavior is different from my character. My character structure, the true motivation of my behavior, constitutes my real being. My behavior may partly reflect my being, but it is usually a mask that I have and that I wear for my own purposes. Behaviorism deals with this mask as if it were a reliable scientific datum; true insight is focused on the inner reality, which is usually neither conscious nor directly observable. This concept of being as unmasking is to understand the discrepancy between behavior and character, between my mas and the reality it hides. Often times what people repress are early and later traumatic desires and fears; the way to recovery from symptoms or from a more general malaise is possessed in uncovering this repressed material. In other words, what is repressed are the irrational, infantile, and individual elements of experience. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

On the other hand, the common-sense views of a normal, socially adapted, citizen were supposed to be rational and not in need of depth analysis. However, this is not at all true. Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking process attempts to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of logic and plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life. This false map is not repressed. What is repressed is the knowledge of reality, the knowledge of what is true. If we ask, then: What is unconscious? The answer must be: Aside from irrational passions, almost the whole knowledge of reality. The unconscious is basically determined by society, which produces irrational passions and provides its members with various kinds of fiction and thus forces the truth to become the prisoner of the alleged rationality. Stating that the truth is repressed is based, of course, on the premise that we know the truth and repress this knowledge; in other words, that there is unconscious knowledge. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

My experience in psychoanalysis—of others and of myself—is that it is indeed truth that there is an unconscious knowledge. We perceive reality, and we cannot help perceiving it. Just as our senses are organized to see, hear, smell, touch when we are brought together with reality, our reason is organized to recognize reality, for instance, to see things as they are, to perceive the truth. I am not of course referring to the part of reality that requires scientific tools or methods in order to be perceived. I am referring to what is recognizable by concentrated seeing, especially the reality in ourselves and in others. We know when we meet a dangerous person, when we meet somebody we can fully trust; we know when we are lied to, or exploited, or fooled, when we have sold ourselves a bill of goods. We know almost everything that is important to know about human behavior, just as our ancestors has a remarkable knowledge about the movements of the stars. However, while they were aware of their knowledge and used it, we repress our knowledge immediately, because if it were conscious it would make life too difficult and, as we persuade ourselves, too dangerous. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

The proof of this statement is easy to find. It exists in many dreams in which we exhibit a deep insight into the essence of other people, and of ourselves, which we completely lack in the daytime. It is evidenced in those frequent reactions in which we suddenly see somebody in an entirely different light, and then feel as if we had had this knowledge all the time before. It can be found in the phenomenon of resistance when the painful truth threatens to come to the surface: in slips of the tongue, in awkward expressions, in a state of trance (ASOT 900 XXL), or in instances when a person something, as in an aside, that is the very opposite of what he or she always claimed to believe, and then seems to forget this aside a minute later. Indeed, a great deal of our energy is used to hide from ourselves what we know, and the degree of such repressed knowledge can hardly be overestimated. A Talmudic legend has expressed this concept of the repression of the truth, in a poetic form: when a child is born, Angel touches its head, so that it forgets the knowledge of the truth that it has at the moment of birth. If the child did not forget, its life would become unbearable. Therefore, being refers to the real, in contrast to the falsified, illusionary picture. In this sense, any attempt to increase the sector of being means increased insight into the reality of oneself, of others, of the World around us. We have to overcome greed and hate and penetrate through the surface and insight into reality. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

We did not think they would simply disappear. We could not imagine it. Human vitality is as great as their intentionality: they are interdependent. This makes mortals the most vital of all beings. They can transcend any given situation in any direction and this possibility drive one to create beyond oneself. Freedom is the recognition of necessity. Humans are distinguished by their capacity to know that one is determined, and to choose one’s relationship to what determines him or her. One can and must, unless one abdicated one’s own consciousness, choose how one will relate to necessity, such as death, old age, limitations of intelligence, and the conditioning inescapable in one’s own background. Will one accept this necessity, deny it, fight it, affirm it, consent to it? All these words have an element of volition in them. And it should, by now, be clear that mortals do not simply stand outside in their subjectivity, like a critic at the theater, and look at necessity and decide what one thinks of it. We can face fate directly, know it, dare it, toy with it, challenge it, quarrel with it—and love it. And though it is arrogance to say we are the masters of our fate, we are saved from the need to e the victims of it. We are indeed co-creators of our fate. We are involved in these relationships of pleasure, love, beauty, trust. Therefore, anyone has the possibility of changing one’s own behavior to make them more possible. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

 Psychoanalysis requires that we should not rest with intentions, or conscious rationalizations, but must push on to intentionality. Our consciousness can never again be the simple one, based on the belief that because we think something consciously, it is necessarily true. Consciousness is an immediate experience, but its meaning must be mediated by language, science, poetry, religion, and all other aspects of the bridges of mortal’s symbolism. The huge World that girdles us about puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the questions we answer in articulately formulated words. However, the deepest question that ever asked admits of no reply but the dump turning of the will and tightening of our heartstrings as we say, “Yes, I will even have it so!” The World thus finds in the heroic mortal its worthy match and mate; and the effort which one is able to put forth to hold oneself erect and keep one’s heart unshaken is the direct measure of one’s worth and function in the journey of human life. One can stand this Universe. One can still find zest in it, not by ostrich-like forgetfulness but by pure inward willingness to face the World [despite all the] deterrent objects there. “Will you or will you not have it so?” we are asked it every hour of the day, and about the largest as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical things. We answer by consents or non-consents and not by words. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

What wonder that those dumb responses should seem our deepest organs of communication with the nature of things! What wonder if the amount which we accord of it be the one strictly underived and original contribution which we make to the World! In nonalienated activity, I experience myself as the subject of my activity. Nonalienated activity is a process of giving birth to something, of producing something and remaining related to something, of producing something and remaining related to what I produce. This also implies that my activity and the result of my activity are one. I call this nonalienated activity productive activity. Productiveness is a character orientation all human beings are capable of, to the extent that they are not emotionally crippled. Productive persons animate whatever they touch. They give birth to their own faculties and bring life to other persons and to things. Our minds acts at time and at times suffers: in so far as it has adequate ideas, it necessarily acts: and in so far as it has inadequate ideas, it necessarily suffers. Freedom is mortal’s capacity to take a hand in one’s own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves. Freedom is the other side of consciousness of self: if we were not able to be aware of ourselves, we would be pushed along by instinct or the automatic march of history, like bees or mastodons. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

However, by our power to be conscious of ourselves, we can call to mind how we acted yesterday or last month, and by learning from these actions we can influence, even if so little, how we act today. And we can picture in imagination some situation tomorrow—say a dinner date, or an appointment for a job, or a Board of Directors meeting—and by turning over in fantasy different alternative for acting, we can pick the one which will do best for us. Consciousness of self gives us the power to stand outside the rigid chain of stimulus and response, to pause, and by this pause to throw some weight on either side, to cast some decision about what the response will be. That consciousness of self and freedom go together is shown in the fact that the less self-awareness a person has, the more one is unfree. That is to say, the more one is controlled by inhibitions, repressions, childhood conditionings which one has consciously forgotten but which still drive one unconsciously, the more one is pushed by forces over which one has no control. When persons first come for psychotherapeutic help, for example, they generally complain that they are driven in any number of ways: they have sudden anxieties or fears or are blocked in studying or working without any appropriate reason. They are unfree—that is, bound and pushed by unconscious patterns. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

It may be after some months of psychotherapeutic work little changes begin to appear. The person begins to recall one’s dreams regularly; or in one session one takes the initiative in stating that one wants to change the subject on hand and get some help on a different problem; or one day ne can say that one felt angry when the therapist said such and such; or one is able to cry when previously one could never feel much of anything, or suddenly one laughs with spontaneity and wholeheartedness, or is able to state one does like Mary with whom he has been conventional friends for years but does like Carolyn. In such ways, slight as they may seem, one’s emerging self-awareness goes hand in hand with one’s enlarging power to direct one’s own life. As the person gains more consciousness of self, one’s range of choice and one’s freedom proportionately increase. Freedom is cumulative; one choice made with an element of freedom makes greater freedom possible for the next choice. Each exercise of freedom enlarges the circumference of the circle of oneself. We do not mean to imply that there are not an infinite number of deterministic influences in anyone’s life. If you wished to argue that we are determined by our bodies, by our economic situation, by the fact that we happened to be born into this twenty-first century in America, and so on, I would agree with you; and I would add many more ways in which we are psychologically determined, particularly by tendencies of which are unconscious. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

However, no matter how much one argues for the deterministic viewpoint, one still must grant that there is a margin in which the alive human being can be aware of what is determining one. And even if only in a very minute way to begin with, one can have some say in how one will react to the deterministic factors. Freedom is thus shown in how we relate to the deterministic realities of life. If you set out to write a sonnet, you run up against all kinds of recalcitrant realities in the laws of rhyme and scanning, and in the necessities of fitting words together; or if you build a house, you confront all kinds of determining elements in bricks and mortar and lumber. It is essential that you know your material and accept its limits. However, what you say in the sonnet is uniquely yours. The pattern and the style in which you build your house are products of how you, with an element of freedom, use the reality of the given materials. “For we know it is by the grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” reports 2 Nephi 25.23. Obedience leads to true freedom. The more we obey revealed truth, the more we become liberated. Obedience to the Word of Wisdom keeps us from addictions so we do not become slaves to alcohol, drugs, or tobacco. Our bodies will be healthy and our minds clear because the promises associated with this principle is that all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

An additional promise in the relation says we shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures. So by obedience we also gain knowledge. Obedience brings peace in decision making. If we have firmly made up our minds to follow the commandments, we will not have to redecide which path to take when temptation comes our way. That is how obedience brings spiritual safety. The arguments of freedom versus determinism are on a false basis, just as it is false to think of freedom as a kind of isolated electric button called free will. Freedom is shown in according one’s life with realities—realities as simple as the needs for rest and food, or as ultimate as death. When we are thwarted, it is our own attitude that is out of order. Freedom is involved when we accept the realities not by the blind necessity but by choice. Acting out is a transmuting of an impulse (or intent) into overt behavior in order to avoid insight. To see the full implications of a desire or intention, to get insight about its meaning, typically upsets one’s self-World relationship more and is, therefore, more anxiety-creating and painful than to act out the desire physically, even if one gets rebuffed or hurt in the latter process. At least, if one can keep the whole problem on the level of muscular behavior, one does not have to face the more difficult threat to one’s self-esteem. This is why acting out is rightly associated with infinite, psychopathic and sociopathic character types. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

Acting out occurs not on the level of consciousness, but on the level of awareness which, is the capacity that the human being shares with animals, the more primitive developmental level prior to consciousness. In adult patients, acting out is generally an endeavor to discharge the desire or intention without having to transmute it into consciousness. It is not easy to live with intentionality without acting it out; to live in a polarity of intent and act means to live with one’s anxiety. Hence, if patients cannot escape into the act, they try to avoid the tension by doing the opposite, be denying the whole intention itself. This means that the acceptance of limitations need not at all be a giving up, but can and should be a constructive act of freedom; and it may well be that such a choice will have more creative results for the person than if one had not had to struggle against any limitation whatever. The mortal who is devoted to freedom does not waste time fighting reality; instead, one extols reality. There is all the difference in the World in how persons relate to the reality of situations. Some people give up when they face a challenge. Others do what they are supposed to do, but they continually resent the fact that they are faced with such a situation and though they outwardly obey they inwardly rebel against the rules. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

Some people sink into consciousness through plentiful hours of contemplation as they reflect on how to progress in their lives and solve problems. They seek in their consciousness of self to understand what is wrong in their lives beforehand that they should have succumbed to a particular situation, and use this deterministic fact as an avenue to new self-knowledge. This allows individuals to affirm their elemental freedom to know and to mold deterministic events; they meet a severely deterministic fact with freedom. It is doubtful whether anyone really achieves freedom who does not responsibly choose to be free, and whoever does so choose becomes more integrated as a person by virtue of having faced a challenge. Through the power to survey one’s life, mortals can transcend the immediate events which determine them. Whether one has faced hardship, one can still in one’s freedom choose how one will relate to these facts. And how one related to a merciless realistic fact like death can be more important for one than the fact of death itself. Freedom is most dramatically illustrated in heroic actions rather than compromise; but even more significant is the undramatic, steady day-to-day exercise of freedom on the part of any person developing toward psychological and spiritual integration in a distraught society like our own. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

Thus freedom is not just the matter of saying “Yes” or “No” to a specific decision: it is the power to mold and create ourselves. Freedom is the capacity, to become what we truly are. Freedom and liberty are precious gifts that come to us wen we are obedient to the laws of God and the whisperings of the Spirit. If we are to avoid destruction, fences or guardrails must be built beyond which we cannot go. The fences which we must stay within are the principles of revealed truth. Obedience to them makes us truly free to reach the potential and the glory which our Heavenly Father has in store for us. Belief in God is great, it lets us know that there is light, hope, love, progression, harmony, peace, and prosperity waiting for us, and that we are not just trapped in an everlasting game of darkness and stress. Freedom thus obtained—that is, by obedience to the law of Christ—is freedom of the soul, the highest form of liberty. And the most glorious thing about it is that is it within the reach of every one of us, regardless of what people about us, or even nations do. Beautify your gardens, your houses, your farms; beautify the city. This will make us happy, and produce plenty. There should be no doubt what our task is today. If we truly cherish the heritage we have received, we must maintain the same virtues and the same character of our stalwart forbears—faith in God, courage, industry, frugality, self-reliance, and integrity. Our opportunity and obligation for doing so is clearly upon us.  #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

If you think that I am going to explain to you how this was done, or anything about it, you are wrong. Psychologists have traditionally been much more interested in psychological illness than in psychological health. Many people focus heavily on mental illness, but few shed light on what a picture of mental health looks like. People do not seem to really be interested of dealing with mental health, but they tend to love to focus on mental illness more. Of course, this greater attention to disease and malfunction is not just an oddity of the psychological profession. Most of us pay little attention to our health when it is good, just as we pay little attention to our automobile as long as it is running well. It is when we are physically ill tat our body comes to our notice, and it is usually when we are a bit upset and anxious that we become self-conscious; wen we are just being our natural self we are in good health mentally. In brief, disease is more vivid and more noticeable than efficient functioning, and consequently has had more scientific attention paid to it. This natural tendency to give more notice to the pathological resulted in a relative neglect in psychological theory of the conditions and characteristics that define psychological health. However, we should also look at the more heroic human reactions to terrible stress and look at the beneficial sides of human nature and the unusual vitality of human beings rather than just focusing on disease. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Psychological health has always been defined so negatively, in terms of what is present when health is absent. Clearly ineffective persons usually possess traits which display confusion and uncertainty. However, people who are competent tend to be conscientious, well-behaved, and responsible. Effective subjects are also independent and fair-minded. However, we must avoid any implication that the healthy person psychologically must necessarily be a good person morally. For the most part it is probably a healthy thing to be well behaved, and as a rule we are in better health when we are cool and collected than when we are agitated. However, there are times when it is a sign of greater health to be unruly, and an implication of greater inner resources to be able to upset one’s own balance and to seek a new order of selfhood. The ability to permit oneself to become disorganized is in my judgment quite crucial to the development of a very high level of integration. Because we are capable of reflecting upon ourselves, we are committed, willy-nilly, to an artistic enterprise in the creation of our own personality. By our very nature as intelligent beings, we are compelled to make an image of ourselves which will be coherent and of enduring recognizability, to us and others. One judges the degree of success of this inevitable reflective act by precisely the criteria with which one judges a work of art, or a scientific theory at that level of generality where science and art alike are concerned with problems of universal validities. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

A person may be said to be most elegant, and most healthy, when one’s awareness includes the broadest possible aspects of human experience, and the deepest possible comprehension of them, while at the same time one is most simple and direct in one’s feelings, thoughts, and actions. Certain fact concerning temporary upset and agitation in especially healthy or potentially healthy persons can this be explained in terms of the creative act necessary in order to achieve integration at the most complex level. A certain amount of discord and disorder must be permitted into the perceptual system if a more complex synthesis is to result. Usually, of course, some discord is brought in by new experiences that are common to all of us. At some time in life there arises also what might he called the crisis in belief, in which it becomes necessary to re-examine the basis of one’s religious or philosophical beliefs, and to come to some sort of explanation for oneself of what the Universe is all about and what life itself signifies. The choice of a life work and the choice of a life mate are two other nearly Universal crises. The more energy a person has at one’s disposal, the more fully will one become committed to the most complex possible integration. In this connection I think it is important to remember that intelligence is a form of energy. The capacity to symbolize, to create a valid image of reality, is the peculiarly human energy, the triumphant form of energy in the living World. #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

The image of the self is a complicated pattern, an artistic endeavor, as I have suggested, to which we are committed whether we will or no. In psychological sickness our image of ourself blurs, the colors run, it is not integrated or beautiful.  We become conscious of its existence momentarily, and hence awkwardness ensures. However, in health there is no awkwardness, for the moment of health is the moment of conscious creative synthesis, when without thinking about it at all we know that we make sense to ourselves and to others. In the most elegant cases, this synthesis involves a tremendous interpenetration of symbols, drawn from pleasures of the flesh, our philosophy, and the meaning of our work, with complex overdetermination of actions and feelings which are themselves expressively simple. When such simplicity and complexity has been achieved, I think that two new and mist important affects come into existence in the individual’s experience. One of these is the feeling that one is free and that life and its outcome are in one’s own hands. The other is a new experience of the passage of time, and a deeper sense of relaxed participation in the present moment. All of experience is consequently permanent at the very moment of its occurrence, and life ceases to be a course between birth and death and becomes instead a fully realized experience of change in which every single state is as valid and as necessary as every other. #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

It is one of the more puzzling facets of human existence that we often avoid those experiences that we most desire. We long to give and receive expressions of love, but at the critical moment we frequently back away. And in a similar way we frustrate ourselves in many of our strongest desires, such as our wish to be free and spontaneous in our actions. Our avoidance of longed-for experiences is rooted in fear. We are, as we shall see, afraid of freedom, afraid of pleasures of the flesh, and afraid of being ourselves with other people. And the most basic of all these fears is our fear of emotional closeness with others; in a word, live. Most of us would like to find more satisfaction and less frustration in our personal and family lives. If we can become more aware of our fear of love, the role it plays in our loves, and where it came from, this awareness can help us begin to move in that direction where we find more satisfaction in life. If we can discover that our other fears are the handmaidens of our fear of love, adding and abetting our avoidance of the experience of intimacy, it will also help us to return to an equilibrium. At the first glance the idea that we are afraid to love does not seem to make sense. And while it may not be easy to understand it intellectually, it is even more difficult for many of us to become emotionally aware of this fear within us. Yet there seems to be no better explanation for the fact that moments of feeling very close to another person are rare and short-lived. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

Sometimes the previous warmth may be replaced by emotional distance, and could even appear to have been supplanted by coldness. Why do such experiences occur? The answer appears to be that the experience of love frightens us, even though we may not be aware of our fear. This fear of closeness is felt so intensely and is present in all of us, although some of us are less frightened than others. And if we can become aware of the fear of intimacy within ourselves, a good deal will have been accomplished, for awareness of ourselves and of our fear of love is a step in the direction of emotional health because it opens the door to the possibility of dealing creatively with the fear rather than being blindly enslaved to it. Why does emotion closeness to others frighten us? The explanation is possessed in the fact that caring always involves vulnerability. When we open ourselves and permit another person to know that we love him or her, we risk being hurt. And because we know how it feels to be hurt, this risk is frightening. Everyone has probably experienced feelings similar to those of someone in throes of marital difficulties who declares, “I do not ever want to care for anyone that much again! It just hurts too much.” The vulnerability of the lover is inescapable in every sphere of human relationships. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

So striking is the relationship between love and vulnerability that it can be stated almost mathematically. The closer we are emotions to another human being and the more openly we express our caring, the more open we are to the possibility of being hurt by that person and the more intensely the hurt will be felt. And it is this possibility that frightens us and keeps us wary about establishing close relationships. The probabilities are that we will experience some of the hurt that we fear when we risk love. If we established significant and close relationships, we will sometimes be disappointed by those we life. If we share confidences, we will sometimes be betrayed. If we count on people, they will sometimes let us down. If we express warmth, others will sometimes seem indifferent or even cold. It works the other way, too, of course. It is inevitable that we will sometimes hurt those who love us, even though we also love them. Sometimes we will be fully aware of what we are doing and yet seem unable to stop ourselves. At other times we will not recognize, at the moment at least, the fact that we are inflicting hurt. What it comes down to is that all of us appear unable to enjoy very long periods of closeness. The vulnerability of it is so frightening that one or the other of us finds some way of interrupting it. At such times it is almost as though at some deep level of our beings we find it necessary to say, “Sooner or later I am going to be hurt by this one whom I love, therefore I must hurt first!” #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

We of course do not mean that hatred or resentment in themselves are good things, or that the mark of the healthy person is how much one hates. Nor do we mean that the goal of development is that everyone hates one’s parents or those in authority. Hatred and resentment are destructive emotions and the sign of maturity is to transform them into constructive emotions. However, the fact that the human being will destroy something—generally in the long run oneself—rather than surrender one’s freedom proves how important freedom is. Because hatred and resentment do not fit the ideal picture of the benign, self-controlled, ever-poised, well-adjusted bourgeois citizen, as a consequence, these emotions are generally repressed. Now it is a well-known psychological tendency that when we repress one attitude or emotion, we often counterbalance it by acting or assuming an attitude on the surface which is just the opposite. You may, for example, often find yourself acting especially politely toward the person you dislike. If you are relatively free from anxiety, you may be saying to yourself in this formal politeness, quoting from St. Paul, I treat my enemy well in order to heap coals of fire on one’s head.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

However, if you are a less secure person who has to confront more difficult problems in development, you may try to persuade yourself that you love this very person you hate. It is not unusual that a person who is excessively dependent upon a dominating person or authority figure, for example, will act toward the other as through one loved the individual to cover up one’s hatred. Like a boxer in a clinch, one clings to the very one who is the enemy. In real life one does not get rid of hatred and resentment this way; one generally displaces the emotions on other people, or turns them inward in self-hate. It is thus crucial that we be able to confront our hatred openly. And it is even more essential that we face our resentment, since that is the form hatred generally takes in polite and civilized life. Most people in our society, on looking into themselves, may not be aware of any particular hatred, but they no doubt will find a good deal of resentment. Perhaps the reason that resentment is such a common, chronic corrosive emotion in this age for information of individual competitiveness is that hatred has been so generally suppressed. Furthermore, if we do not confront our hatred and resentment openly, they will tend sooner or later to turn into the one affect which never does anyone any good, namely self-pity. Self-pity is the reserved form of hatred and resentment. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

One can then nurse one’s hatred, and retain one’s psychological balance by means of feeling sorry for oneself, confronting oneself with the thought of what a tough lot has been one’s, how much one has had to suffer—and refrain from doing anything about it. Many people rebel against the denial of freedom but never can get fully beyond the stage of rebellion. Middle classes are shot through with suppressed resentment, and it emerges indirectly in the form of morals. Resentment is at the core of our morals. Anyone in our day who wishes an illustration of so-called morality motivated by resentment need look no farther than gossip in small town. No one can arrive at real love or morality or freedom until one has frankly confronted and worked through one’s resentment. Hatred and resentment should be used as motivations to re-establish one’s genuine freedom: one will not transform those destructive emotions into constructive ones until one does this. And the first step is to know whom or what one hates. To take, for an example, people under dictatorial government, the first step in their revolt to regain freedom would be their shifting back their hatred to the dictatorial powers themselves. Hatred and resentment temporarily preserve the person’s inner freedom, but sooner or later one must use the hatred to establish one’s freedom and dignity in reality, else one’s hated will destroy oneself. The aim is to hate in order to win the new. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. We have seen that becoming a person means going through several stages of consciousness of oneself. The first is that of the innocence of the infant before consciousness of self is born. The second is the stage of rebellion, when the person is trying to become free to establish some inner strength in one’s own right. This stage is most clearly seen in the child of two of three or the adolescent, and may involve defiance and hostility. In greater or lesser degree rebellion is a necessary transition as one cuts old ties and seeks to make new ones. However, rebellion is not to be confused with freedom. The third stage we may call the ordinary consciousness of self. In this stage a person can to some extent see one’s errors, make some allowance for one’s prejudices, use one’s guilt feelings and anxiety as experiences to learn from, and make one’s decisions with some responsibility. This is what most people mean when they speak of a healthy state of personality. However, there is a fourth stage of consciousness which is extraordinary in the sense that most individuals experience it only rarely. This stage is most clearly illustrated when one gets a sudden insight into a problem—abruptly, seemingly from nowhere, pops up an answer for which one has struggles in vain for days. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

Sometimes insights we are struggling for come in dreams, or at moments of reverie when one is thinking about something else: in any case, we know that the answer emerges from what are called subconscious levels in the personality. Such consciousness may occur in scientific, religious or artistic activity alike; it is sometimes popularly called dawning of ideas or inspiration. As all students of creative activity make clear, this level of consciousness is present in all creative work. What shall this level be called? Objective self-consciousness because of the glimpses it affords into objective truth? Or self-surpassing consciousness? Or self-transcending consciousness in the ethical-religious tradition? All of these terms distort as well as clarify. I propose a term which is less dramatic but perhaps, for our day, more satisfactory, creative consciousness of self. The classical psychological term for this awareness is ecstasy. The word literally means to stand outside of oneself, that is, to catch a view of, or experience something, from a perspective outside one’s usual limited viewpoint. Ordinarily what a person sees in the objective World around one is always more or less distorted and clouded by the fact that one sees it subjectively. As human beings, what we see is always through personal eyes, and interpreted by each person through one’s own private World; we see a dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

This fourth level of consciousness cuts below the split between objectivity and subjectivity. Temporarily we can transcend the usual limits of conscious personality. Through what is called insight, or intuition, or the other only vaguely understood processes which are involved in creativity, we may get glimpses of objective truth as it exists in reality, or sense some new ethical possibility in, let us say, an experience of unselfish love. The immediate expression of love is action. Faith implies love and the expression of love is action. The mediating link between faith and works is love. Only God can reunite the estranged with oneself. However, love is an element of faith if faith is understood as ultimate concern. Faith implies love, loves lives in works: in this sense faith is actual in works. Where there is ultimate concern there is the passionate desire to actualize the content of one’s concern. Concern in its very definition includes the desire for action. The kind of action is, of course, dependent on the type of faith. Faith of the ontological type drives toward elevation about the separation of being from being. Faith of the ethical types drives toward transformation of the estranged reality. In both of them love is working. Mystical love united by negation of self. Ethical love is predominantly formative. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

To be, rather, turned outward means to pierce in imagination beyond what one knows at the moment. Mortals in fulfilling themselves goes through a process of transcending oneself. This is simply one side of the basic characteristics of growing, healthy human being, that from moment to moment one is enlarging one’s awareness of oneself and one’s World. Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself, it is the ultimate power behind faith and love. If all life does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, and human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation. This creative self-consciousness is a stage that most of us achieve only at rare intervals; and none of us, except the satins, religious or secular, and the great creative figures, live very much of our lives on this level. However, it is the level which gives meaning to our actions and experiences on the lesser levels. Many people may have experienced this consciousness in some special moment, let us say, in listening to music, or in some new experience of love or friendship which temporarily takes them out of the usual walled-in routine of the lives. It is as though for a moment one stood on a mountain peak, and viewed one’s life from that wide and unlimited perspective. One gets one’s sense of direction from one’s view from the peak and sketches a mental map which guides one for weeks of a patient plodding up and down the lesser hills when effort is dull and inspiration is conspicuous by its absence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

For the fact that at some instant we have been able to see truth unclouded by our own prejudices, to love other persons without demand for ourselves, and to create in the ecstasy that occurs when we are totally absorbed in what we are doing—the fact that we have has these glimpses gives a basis of meaning and direction for all of our later actions. This fourth level is what is meant in such statements as those in the Bible about losing one’s life for the sake of the values one believes in. Thus it is true that there is a kind of self-forgetting on this level of consciousness. However, the word self-forgetting is a poor term; this consciousness in another sense is the most fulfilled state of human existence. One cannot demand the awareness we are discussing, and as we have said it often occurs in moments of receptivity and relaxation rather than action. Nonetheless the evidence in studies of creative people is that they get their important insights on those particular problems on which they have wrestled with perseverance and diligence, even though insight itself may come at a moment of lull. One cannot command one’s dreams, for example, but one gets fruitful insights from them to the extent that one is actively concerned with doing so, and can train oneself to be vigilant in one’s sensitivity to one’s dreams. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

The person who has creative self-consciousness are disciplined into wholeness, one has created oneself. Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that in the whole all is redeemed and affirmed—one does not negate any more. In the having mode, we have to keep in mind the object is not permanent: it can be destroyed, or it can be lost, or it can lose its value. Speaking of having something permanently rests upon the illusion of a permanent and indestructible substance. If I seem to have everything, I have—in reality—nothing, since my having, possessing, controlling an object is only a transitory moment in the process of living. There is no alive relationship between me and what I have. It and I have become things, and I have it, because I have the force to make it mine. However, there is also a reverse relationship: it has me, because my sense of identity, for instance, sanity, rests upon my having it (and as many things as possible). The having mode of existence is not established by an alive, productive process between subject and object; it makes things of both object and subject. The relationship is one of deadness, not aliveness. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

Victorian mortals used this will to push down and suppress what one called lower bodily desires. However, one surely cannot be a mortal of decision without taking bodily desires into considerations. Our discussion of which indicates that bodily wished must be brought into integration with will, or else the one will block the other. The body consists of the muscular, neurological, and glandular correlates of intentionality, such as increased adrenalin secretion when we are enraged and want to strike something, increased speed of heart beat when we are anxious and want to run, engorgement of the sexual organs when we are excited by pleasures of the flesh. In therapy, when a patient in a given hour is blocked off from one’s wishes and intentionality in general, a good place to start is for the therapist simply to help the patient become aware of one’s bodily feelings and one’s bodily state at that moment. Many people in the Victorian era were coming to terms with their body from which their culture has alienated them. Each dealt with the body as a tool, an instrument, unaware that this is an expression of the very alienation one sought to overcome. When people are sick, they find their inherited will power may be strangely ineffective. Many find that listening to their body is of critical importance in getting well. When one can be sensitive to their body, heat that is it fatigued and need to rest more, or sense that their body is strong enough to increase exercise, they are more likely to get well. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

 We find awareness of our body blocked off (a state similar to what patients have in analysis when they say they are not with it), several people get worse. This may seem like a poetic and mystical viewpoint for someone seriously ill to be indulged in, but actually it is a hard-rock, empirical issues of whether one will live or die. As far as I can judge, this is true for other patients as well. This bodily awareness sometimes comes spontaneously, but by no means necessarily so. Will is a listening, which brings to mind particularly the listening to the body. In our society, it often requires considerable effort to listen to the body—an effort of sustained openness to whatever cues may come from one’s body. In recent years, the work of the body re-educationalist, the teachers of exercise and of Yoga, have brought out the significant interrelation between the capacity to listen to the body and psychological well-being. The presence of volition is betrayed in the phrases we use, such as I “accept” fatigue, I “agree” to rest, I “consent” to follow my physician’s (or teacher’s) recommendation, I “adopt” a regimen. There is, therefore, a willing which is not merely against bodily desires but with the body, a willing from within; it is willing of participation rather than opposition. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

Will moves through desire. The fact that my desires are felt and experiences in my body, with all the glandular changes that go therewith—the fact that they are embodies desires—means that I cannot escape taking some stand in regard to them. That is to say, if I have a wish, I cannot avoid willing about it, even if only to deny that I have the wish. Pure detachment works only if we can disengage our bodies. Hence, the outright denial of awareness of wishes generally involves doing violence to one’s body. My body is an expression par excellence of the fact that I am an individual. Since I am a body, separate from others as an individual entity, I cannot escape putting myself on the line in some way or other—or refusing to put myself on the line, which is the same issue. One may try to conform to someone else psychologically, be an imprint of the other in ideas; but Siamese twins bodily are very rare. The patient who cannot experience oneself as bodily separate from another, say one’s mother, is generally representative of serious pathological illness, often of the schizophrenic kind. The fact that my body is an entity in space, has this motility and this particular relation to space which my movements give it, makes it a living symbol of the fact that I cannot escape in some way or other taking a stand. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

Will is embodied will. Thus, so many words having to do with will refer to our physical place—taking a position, accepting a viewpoint, choosing an orientation. Or we say, that someone is upright, straight, or the opposite, prone, cringing, ducking, all referring to will and decision as shown through the position of the body. One can never become an individual self so long as one follows the spirit of someone else and goes around, walking crooked; one can achieve some selfhood only when one walks straight through, in the stance of the mortal of single-minded will. Even more interesting is the body as a language of intentionality. It not only expresses intentionality; it communicates it. When a patient comes in the door of my consulting room, intentionality is expressed in one’s way of walking, one’s gestures; does one lean toward me or away? Does one talk with a half-closed mouth; and what does one’s voice say when I stop listening to the words and listen only to the tone? Not only in the therapeutic hour but in real life as well our communication has, much more than we are aware of it, the subtle character of the dance, the meaning communicated by virtue of the forms we continuously create by our bodily movements. You can tell a lot about a person by the flutter of their eyes at moments of fear, in the tremor of their mouth hovering in the verge of crying or smiling, in all these expressions, there is a language which can be more significant, and is surely more eloquent, than most spoken words. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

Obviously, body language communicates much more than the bright intellectualized talking of the sophisticated patient who chatters for months in order to avoid awareness of one’s own underlying feelings. There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. “O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make my path straight before me! Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way—but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the ways of mine enemy. O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is one that putteth one’s trust in a mortal or maketh flesh one’s arm. Yea, I know that God will give liberally to one that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss; therefore I will lift up my voice unto thee; yea, I will cry unto thee, my God, the rock of my righteousness. Behold my voice shall forever ascend unto thee, my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 4.33-35. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11