Your innocence is so genuine. I am sorry. Forgive me. It is only the cycle of rejection and the need for escape from intolerable self-hatred is also the origin of our fear of love. Out of the experience of feeling rejected with subsequent feelings of worthlessness and self-hate, comes the individual’s feeling that love is risky. One probably never puts this feeling into words, even to oneself, but the individual’s emotional logic must run something like this: “Since I hate my real self and know it to be worthless, I dare not be myself with others. If I am open and direct with people, they will see me as I am and hate me. If I love, I will only be hurt in return. I have had enough of that already, so I will find some other way of dealing with people.” The escape hatches not only provide a way of avoiding full awareness of avoiding full awareness of self-hatred; they also help the person bypass the anticipated dangers of intimacy. And because one has feelings of worthlessness, the individual’s desire to avoid the risks of love are increased because one lacks confidence in one’s ability to cope with emotional hurt when one experiences it. When we look at other people’s ways of dealing with their feelings of inadequacy it is often not too difficult to see that the escape hatches they use are ultimately self-defeating and lead to increase feelings of worthlessness and self-hate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

However, when we ourselves are caught in cycles of behavior that we have spent most our lives developing it is not so easy to see our predicament or desirability, much less the possibility of breaking out of the cycle. One male therapist once suffered acute anxiety which seemed to stem from his basic doubt as to his own sex role, and a fear of the passive desires that he experienced. This not uncommon conflict, while its effect was pervasive and influenced many of his personal relations, became especially intense in interactions involving other men with similar problems. This therapist, a quite intelligent and sensitive individual, experienced specifically genital homosexual desires, and was in an acute state of conflict because of them. His very complex system of defenses was organized around his fear of such impulses, which he was firmly resolved not to indulge. His personality score indicated that he was experiencing considerable stress. The therapist found one of his male patients attractive, both physically and intellectually. The therapist thought the man used words very effectively and was bright. However, the patient displayed confusion with relation to his own social role, for instance, ambivalence toward the working class and attempted, but unsuccessful, identification with the upper class was very apparent and created a note of insincerity to which shone through. It is apparent in the tendency—just perceptible—to obsequiousness with higher status people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

The obsequiousness with higher status people may very well be an expression also of passivity toward the father, which probably has to do primarily with class identification for the patient. The therapist expressed some dynamic under-currents in remarking on the irregularity with which the patient kept appointments, he said, “Whenever I felt we were really getting close, then he would miss his appointment.” Again, “He was very obsequious to me at times, sort of putting me up there.” Other remarks of this sort were, “He just wants me to be a wedge for him,” and “He would like for me to be over him.” The interaction finally took on an extremely anxious and hostile character, and after a session in which for the first time there was considerable overt homosexual content, the therapist become openly angry and the patient dud not return for several weeks. When he finally did call to make another appointment, the therapist demanded to know why he had not called to break previous appointments if he did not intend to keep them. The therapist reported that he then asked, “Well, now have you decided whether you really want to come in?” The patient replied in an enraged tone, “Of course I do.” The therapist remarked to one of the staff psychologists later that this was the first expression of hostility toward him in the course of the therapy. He then added, “But the things that guy would say about me if he would only talk ought to be in print. I mean, would not be fit to print.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The uncertainty of both therapist and patient about the sex role of both himself and the other person finally generated so much anxiety that the situation became intolerable. The interaction simply could not go on. Eventually the patient was transferred to another therapist who reports that there has been considerable improvement and continuing progress. It should not be thought that the therapist was himself entirely unaware of these disturbing under-currents in the interaction. He sought consolation on the case with a number of skilled people, and during this period of time he also tried to make arrangements for a personal analysis. It was evident that the relationship was a significant as well as a disturbing one for him too, and perhaps ultimately it will prove to have been quite a beneficial one. He displayed a high degree of conscientiousness and personal integrity, and it is not to his discredit that his own needs and problems were at that particular moment in his life too pressing for him to carry out successfully his very difficult task. The cautious, the having persons enjoy security, yet by necessity they are very insecure. They depend on what they have: money, prestige, their ego—that is to say, on something outside themselves. However, what become of them if they lose what they have? For, indeed, whatever one has can be lost. Most obviously, one’s property can be lost—and with it usually one’s position, one’s friends—and at any moment one can, and sooner or later one is bound to lost one’s life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living. Because I can lose what I have, I am necessarily constantly worried that I shall lose what I have. I am afraid of thieves, of economic changes, of revolutions, of infirmary, of death, and I am afraid of love, of freedom, of growth, of change, of the unknow. Thus I am continuously worried, suffering from a chronic hypochondriasis, with regard not only to loss of health but to any other loss of what I have; I become defensive, hard, suspicious, lonely, driven by the need to have more in order to be better protected. The hero is filled only with oneself; in one’s extreme egoism one believes that one is oneself, because one is a bundle of desires. At the end of one’s life one recognizes that because of one’s property-structured existence, one has failed to be oneself, that one is like an onion without a kernel, an unfinished person, who was never oneself. The anxiety and insecurity engendered by the danger of losing what one has are absent in the being mode. If I am who I am not what I have, nobody can deprive me of or threaten my security and my sense of identity. My center is within myself; my capacity for being and for expressing my essential powers is part of my character structure and depends on me. This holds true for the normal process of living, not, of course, for such circumstances as incapacitating illness, torture, or other cases of external restrictions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

While having is bases on some thing that is diminished by use, being grows by practice. (The burning bush that is not consumed is the biblical symbol for this paradox.) The power of reason, of love, of artistic and intellectual creation, all essential powers grow through the process of being expressed. What is spent is not lost. The only threat to my security in being lies in myself: in lack of faith in life and in my productive powers; in regressive tendencies; in inner laziness and in the willingness to have others take over my life. However, these dangers are not inherent in being, as the danger of losing is inherent in having. The experience of loving, liking, enjoying something without want to have it is not easy for many modern people to experience. It is hard for people to experience enjoyment separate from having. Having-centered person want to have the person they like or admire. This can be seen in relations between therapist and patient, parents and their children, between teachers and students, and between friends. Neither partner is satisfied simply to enjoy the other person; each wishes to have the other person for him—or herself. Hence, each is jealous of those who also want to have the other. Each partner seeks the other like a shipwrecked sailor seeks a plank or mermaid—for survival. Predominantly having relationships are heavy, burdened, filled with conflicts and jealousies. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

Speaking more generally, the fundamental elements in the relation between individual in the having mode of existence are competition, antagonism, and fear. The antagonistic element in the having relationship stems from its nature. If having is the basis of my sense of identity because I am what I have, the wish to have must lead to the desire to have much, to have more, to have most. In other words, greed is the natural outcome of the having orientation. It can be the greed of the miser or the greed of the profit hunter or the greed of the womanizer or the man chaser. Whatever constitutes their greed, the greedy can never have enough, can never be satisfied. In contrast to physiological needs, such as hunger, that have definite satiation points due to the physiology of the body, mental greed—and all greed is mental, even if it is satisfied via the body—has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome. In addition, since what one has can be taken away in one form or another, once must have more, in order to fortify one’s existence against such danger. If everyone wants to have more, everyone must fear one’s neighbor’s aggressive intention to take away what one has. To prevent such attack, one must become more powerful and preventively aggressive oneself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

Besides, since production, great as it may be, can never keep pace with unlimited desires, there must be competition and antagonism among individuals in the struggle for getting the most. And the strife would continue even if a state of absolute abundance could be reached; those who have less in physical health and in attractiveness, in gifts, in talents would bitterly envy those who have more. That the having mode and the resulting greed necessarily lead to impersonal antagonism and strife holds true for nations as it does for individuals. For as long as nations are composed of people whose main motivation is having and greed, they cannot help waging war. They necessarily covet what another nation has, and attempt to get what they want by war, economic pressure, or threats. They will use these procedures against weaker nations, first of all, and form alliances that are stronger than the nation that is to be attacked. Even if it has only a reasonable chance to win, a nation will wage war, not because it suffers economically, but because the desire to have more and to conquer is deeply ingrained in the social character. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

Of course there are times of peace. However, one must distinguish between lasting peace and peace that is a transitory phenomenon, a period of gathering strength, rebuilding one’s industry and army—in other words, between peace that is a permanent state of harmony and peace that is essentially only a truce. While the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries had periods of truce, they are characterized by a state of chronic war among the main actors on the historical stage. Peace as a state of lasting harmonious relations between nations is only possible when the having structure is replaced by the being structure. The idea that one can build peace while encouraging the striving for possession and profit is an illusion, and a dangerous one, because it deprives people of recognizing that they are confronted with a clear alternative: either a radical change of their character or the perpetuity of war. This is indeed an old alternative; the leaders have chosen war and the people followed them. Today and tomorrow, with the incredible increase in the destructiveness of the new weapons, the alternative is no longer war—but mutual suicide. What hold true of international wars is equally true for class war. The war between the classes, essentially the exploiting and the exploited, has always existed in societies that were based on the principle of greed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

There was no class war where there was neither a need for or a possibility of exploitation nor a greedy social character. However, there are bound to be classes in any society, even the richest, in which the having more is dominant. As already noted, given unlimited desires, even the greatest production cannot keep pace with everybody’s fantasy of having more than their neighbors. Necessarily, those who are stronger, more cleaver, or more favored by other circumstances will try to establish a favored position for themselves and try to take advantage of those who are less powerful, either by force and violence or by suggestion. Oppressed classes will overthrow their rulers, and so on; the class struggle might perhaps become less violent, but it cannot disappear as long as greed dominates the human heart. The idea of a classless society in a so-called socialists World filled with the spirit of greed is as illusory—and dangerous—as the idea of permanent peace among greedy nations. In the being mode, private having (private property) has little affective importance, because I do not need to own something in order to enjoy it, or even in order to use it, but private property is a blessing. In the being mode, more than one person—in fact millions of people—can share in the enjoyment of the same object, since none need—or want—to have it, as a condition of enjoying it. This not only avoids strife; it creates one of the deepest forms of human happiness: shared enjoyment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

Nothing unites people more (without restricting their individuality) than sharing their admiration and love for a person; sharing an idea, a piece of music, a painting, a symbol; sharing in a ritual—and sharing sorrow. The experience of sharing makes and keeps the relation between two individuals alive; it is the basis of all great religious, political, and philosophical movements. Of course, this holds true only as long as and to the extent that the individuals genuinely love or admire. When religious and political movements ossify, when bureaucracy manages the people by means of suggestions and threats, the sharing stops. While nature has devised, as it were, the prototype—or perhaps the symbol—of shared enjoyment in the pleasures of the flesh, empirically the pleasures of the flesh is not necessarily an enjoyment that is shared; the partners are frequently so narcissistic, self-involved, and possessive that one can speak only of simultaneous, but not of shared pleasure. In another respect, however, nature offers a less ambiguous symbol for the distinction between having and being. Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of the soul, the source of human tenderness. Care is given power by nature’s sense of pain; if we do not care for ourselves, we are hurt, burned, injured. This is the source identification: we can feel in our own bodies the pain of the child or the hurt of the adult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

However, our responsibility is to cease letting care be solely a matter of nerve endings. I do not deny the biological phenomena, but care must become a conscious psychological fact. Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about. Care is the source of will. For will is not an independent faculty, or a department of the self, and we always get into trouble when we try to make it a special faculty. It is a function of the whole person. When fully conceived, the care structure includes the phenomenon of Selfhood. When we do not care, we lose our being; and care is the way back to being. If I care about being, I will shepherd it with some attention paid to its welfare, whereas if I d not care, my being disintegrates. One patient appeared rather sad, lackadaisical, and passive. His peak score on the personality inventory was on depression, with a secondary peak on psychasthenia. The profile of a depressive character, chronically pessimistic about things, a bit worrisome, generally seeing the World through blue-colored glasses. At the time of the first testing session, this patient was quite obviously depressed, speaking slowly and in a low tone. When he was seen again in a couple of week later, he still did not seem very energetic, but he was not nearly so depressed. One of the staff psychologists asked him what had caused him to feel better, and he replied, “Oh, I do not know—guess it just sort of wore off.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

 The patient was very passive rather castrate individual who was afraid of expressing hostility, or, for that matter, of feeling it. He is otherwise in excellent contact with reality and he responds well emotionally. He should be able to relate easily to people and to form normal emotional bonds with others. He has adequate inner resources. His chief problems seem to be in the area of dependency and great sensitivity to rejection, especially by father figures. The patient’s symptomatology seems to be expressed chiefly as a way of life, although some of his anxiety is probably somatized gastrointestinally. It is to be expected that successful psychotherapy with him would have to be a long process, and that it would continue only with a very accepting and tolerant therapist how would not arouse the patient’s strong castration anxiety. Ultimately it might be possible for the patient to assume a more phallic role, but the change could be expected to be very slow and gradual. Care is the basic constitutive phenomenon of human existence. It is thus ontological in that is constitutes human as human. Will and wish cannot be the basis for care, but rather vice versa: they are founded on care. If we did not care to begin with, we could not will or wish; and if we do not authentically care, we cannot help wishing or willing. Willing is caring made free, and made active. The constancy of the self is guaranteed by care. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

The therapist characterized the patient as, “Congenial—pleasant—not digging or probing. Accepts life—wants general happiness and security.” Care is the basic constitutive phenomenon of human existence. It is thus ontological in that is constitutes human as human. Will and wish cannot be the basis for care, but rather vice versa: they are founded on care. If we did not care to begin with, we could not will or wish; and if we do not authentically care, we cannot help wishing or willing. Willing is caring made free, and made active. The constancy of the self is guaranteed by care. A few weeks later, the therapist found that the patient was taking such god care of himself that, “I can take it easy with him compared with most of the people around here.” Essentially what happened in the therapy was that the therapist made it clear that the patent had noting to fear from him. One of the patient’s chief symptoms was a “frightened feeling in my stomach when I am around the boss” at work. This seemed to be a repetition of his childhood fear of his very stern step-father, who in his drunken rages often threatened to cause great bodily hard and/or injury which would result in the loss of life to the wife’s children. The patient recalled that the step-father had a gun to do it with, too. The therapist, however, apparently did not have a gun and was anything but threatening. He was more encouraging than anything else. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Temporality is what makes care possible. The patient accepted the encouragement, and decided that maybe he would be better off if he were not working for any boss at all, but working for himself instead (a view in which the therapist heartily concurred). He finally decided to try to start his own doughnut business, and shortly thereafter brought in a dozen doughnuts for the therapist, who found them delicious. Will is the comprehensive, matured form of wish, matured form of wish, and is rooted with ontological necessity in care. In an individual’s conscious act, will and care go together, are in that sense identical. Care is always caring about something. We are caught up in our experience of the objective thing or event we care about. In care one must, by involvement with the objective fact, do something about the situation; one must make some decisions. This is where care brings love and will together. Compassion may connote to many a more sophistical form of care. It is an attribute of high intelligence, honesty of purpose, and a conceptual scheme of sufficient scope and subtlety to enable people to cognize their roles clearly as well as to feel them and be emotionally committed to them. Care tends to manifest itself both generally, toward all the people in one’s environment. This is important in the struggle for the existence of the human being in a World in which everything seems increasingly mechanical and computerized. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

When we care, it is the refusal to accept emptiness though it faces one on every side; the dogged insistence on human dignity, though it be violated on every side; and the stubborn assertion of the self to give content to our activities, routine as these activities may be. Care is a particular type of intentionality shown especially in psychotherapy. It means to wish someone well; and if the therapist does not experience this within oneself, or does not have the belief that what happens to the patient matters, woe unto the therapy. In addition to therapy, it is a great idea to understand that we are required to confide in God, to exercise faith, and to act so that we can receive help, step by step. Sometimes answers to prayer are not recognized because we are too intent on wanting confirmation of our own desires. We fail to see that the Lord would have us do something else. Be care to seek God’s will. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And blessed are all the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And blessed are all the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. And blessed are all they who are persecuted for my name’s sake (God), for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven,” 3 Nephi 12.7-10. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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