When institutions fail to enforce their own rules, individuals are forced into roles they never chose, sustaining dysfunction through silence, avoidance, and fear. Such situations require a lot of emotional labor. Emotional labor is the psychological glue that holds dysfunctional systems together, especially when people are forced into roles that contradict who they are. Emotional labor is not just being nice at work. It is the management of feeling—the requirement to display emotions that you do not feel and suppress emotions that you do feel to manage a role, and keep a situation cohesive. This is the situation with a weakly “cathected” or inactive leader. In healthy systems, emotional labor is part of the job. People are capable of mobilizing energy because they are doing something rewarding, or can be charged up by an outside source. However, in dysfunctional systems, emotional labor becomes the job. This happens when you are expected to absorb conflict others refuse to address, forced to be the “calm one,” the “fixer,” the “bigger person,” pressured to maintain harmony while others create chaos, required to pretend incompetence around you is normal, and are punished for showing frustration at others’ negligence. This is role drift through emotional coercion. I had to study psychology and religion to understand this situation, and it took me far off my path. I never agreed to be the therapist, the parent, the moral compass, the scapegoat, or the shock absorber—but the system pushed those roles onto me, relying on my integrity to compensate for everyone else’s refusal to do their jobs. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

At first, I wore the role like a badge of honor. I could help people become more rational, more grounded. But as the years stretched into more than a decade, the role hardened into a career I never asked for. The same problems cycled endlessly, even with paid professionals sitting right there, unable to help anyone resolve anything. Eventually, I started hiding—running errands at dawn, slipping out late at night—because people would wait around to latch onto me. After twelve to fourteen years of this, I reached a breaking point. I did not want to be the one absorbing everyone’s chaos, especially when so many others were standing right there, untouched and unbothered. I honestly do not have fun anymore. Life has become nothing but work—endless bills, endless responsibilities, endless situations to manage. It feels like every part of my existence has turned into a job. And the drama never ends. Holidays, family gatherings, every day of the week—there is always someone ready to do something forbidden, disobey the law, or explode the moment they get an audience. In this frustrated and vulnerable state, an individual has no defense against people with problematic behavior, and other human relationships are neglected. Engagements are dropped at a moment’s notice when someone wants to use their position or situation to have a conniption fit or temper tantrum. The mismatch between the authentic self and the forced role produces burnout, moral injury, resentment, identity fatigue, emotional numbness, and a sense of being trapped in a role you never agreed to play. This is why people say, “I do not even recognize myself anymore.” To perform a role effectively, one must be and feel potent: not omnipotent, but potent enough to deal with these individuals. The individuals must believe that they are potent enough, so the individual forced into the leader role has protection against their dysfunction and wrath. Dysfunctional adults need permission or a license to give up, or be released from negative behavior. Dysfunctional institutions survive because the system runs on the emotional labor of the unwilling. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

To be a judge obviously involves a knowledge of the law and probably also knowledge of a much wider range of human affairs that are legally relevant. It also involves, however, “knowledge” of the values and attitudes deemed appropriate for a judge, extending as far as those proverbially deemed appropriate for a judge’s wife. The judge must also have appropriate “knowledge” in the domain of the emotions: He will have to know, for example, when to restrain his feelings of compassion, to mention a not unimportant psychological prerequisite for this role. In this way, each role opens an entrance into a specific sector of the society’s total stock of knowledge. To learn a role, it is not enough to acquire the routines immediately necessary for its “outward” performance. One must also be initiated into the various cognitive and even affective layers of the body of knowledge that is directly and indirectly appropriate to this role. This implies a social distribution of knowledge. A society’s stock of knowledge is structured in terms of what is generally relevant and what is relevant to specific roles. This is true of even very simple social situations. In social situations, for instance, one must have knowledge of the procedures necessary to keep this company economically afloat. The social distribution of knowledge entails a dichotomization in terms of general and role-specific relevance. Given the historical accumulation of knowledge in a society, we can assume that, because of the division of labor, role-specific knowledge will grow at a faster rate than generally relevant and accessible knowledge. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The multiplication of specific tasks brought about by the division of labor requires standardized solutions that can be readily learned and transmitted. These, in turn, require specialized knowledge of certain situations, and of the means/ends relationships in terms of which the situations are socially defined. In other words, specialists will arise, each of whom will have to know whatever is deemed necessary for the fulfillment of his particular task. To accumulate role-specific knowledge, a society must be so organized that certain individuals can concentrate on their specialties. If, in a hunting society, certain individuals are to become specialists as swordsmiths, there will have to be provisions to excuse them from the hunting activities that are incumbent on all other adult males. Specialized knowledge of a more elusive kind, such as the knowledge of mystagogues and other intellectuals, requires a similar social organization. In all these cases, the specialists become administrators of the sectors of the stock of knowledge that have been socially assigned to them. At the same time, an important part of generally relevant knowledge is the typology of specialists. While the specialists are defined as individuals who know their specialties, everyone must know who the specialists are in case their specialties are needed. The man on the street is not expected to know the intricacies of the magic, inducing fertility or casting evil spells. If the need for either service arises, what he must know, however, is which magicians to call upon. #RandolphHarris 4 of17

People complain about the cost of welfare, but nothing drains resources like a bad manager. In any specialized field, you cannot afford to have someone with a poor attitude and no commitment running the show. A person who is just there for a paycheck can destroy a business from the inside. A typology of experts (what contemporary social workers call a referral guide) is thus part of the generally relevant and accessible stock of knowledge, while the knowledge that constitutes expertise is not. The practical difficulties that may arise in certain societies (for instance, when there are competing coteries of experts, or when specialization has become so complicated that the layman gets confused) need not concern us now. It is thus possible to analyze the relationship between roles and knowledge from two vantage points. Looked at from the perspective of the institutional order, the roles appear as institutional representations and mediations of the institutionally objectivated aggregates of knowledge. Looked at from the perspective of the several roles, each role carries with it a socially defined appendage of knowledge. Both perspectives, of course, point to the same global phenomenon, which is the essential dialectic of society. The first perspective can be summed up in the proposition that society exists only as individuals are conscious of it, the second in the proposition that individual consciousness is socially determined. Narrowing this to the matter of roles, we can say that, on the other hand, the institutional order is real only insofar as it is realized in performed roles and that, on the other hand, roles are representative of an institutional order that defines their character (including their appendages of knowledge) and from which they derive their objective sense. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The analysis of roles is of particular importance to the sociology of knowledge because it reveals the mediations between the macroscopic universes of meaning objectivated in a society and the ways by which these universes are subjectively real to individuals. Thus, it is possible, for example, to analyze the macroscopic social roots or a religious world view in certain collectives (classes, say, or ethnic groups, or intellectual coteries), and also to analyze the manner in which this world view is manifested in the consciousness of an individual. If one inquires into how the individual, in his total social activities, relates to the collectivity in question, the two analyses can be brought together. Such an inquiry will, of necessity, be an exercise in role analysis. Everybody knows that in Germany, the career of the young man who is dedicated to science normally begins with the position of Priivatdozent. After having conversed with and received the consent of the respective specialists, he takes up residence on the basis of a book and, usually, a rather formal examination before the faculty of the university. Then he gives a course of lectures without receiving any salary other than the lecture fees of his students. It is up to him to determine, within his venia legendi, the topics upon which he lectures. In the United States of America, the academic career usually begins in quite a different manner, namely, by employment as an “assistant.” This is similar to the great institutes of the natural sciences and medical faculties in Germany, where usually only a fraction of the assistants tries to habilitate themselves as Privatodozenten and often only later in their career. Particularly, this contrast means that the career of the academic man in Germany is generally based upon plutocratic prerequisites. For it is extremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself to the conditions of the academic career. He must be able to endure this condition for at least a number of years without knowing whether he will have the opportunity to move into a position which pays well enough for maintenance. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

In the United States of America, where the bureaucratic system exists, the young academic man is paid from the very beginning. To be sure, his salary is modest; usually, it is hardly as much as the wages of a semi-skilled laborer. Yet, he begins with a seemingly secure passion, for he draws a fixed salary. As a rule, however, notice may be given to him just as with German assistants, and frequently he definitely has to face this should he not come up to expectations. These expectations are such that the young academic in America must draw large crowds of students. This cannot happen to a German docent; once one has him, one cannot get rid of him. To be sure, he cannot raise any “claims.” However, he has the understandable notion that after years of work, he has a sort of moral right to expect some consideration. He also expects—and this is often quite important—that one have some regard for him when the question of the possible habilitation of other Privatdozenten comes up. Whether, in principle, one should habilitate every scholar who is qualified, or whether one should consider enrollments, and hence give the existing staff a monopoly to teach—that is an awkward dilemma. It is associated with the dual aspect of the academic profession. In general, one decides in favor of the second alternative. However, this increases the danger that the respective full professor, however conscientious he is, will prefer his own disciples. If I may speak of my personal attitude, I must say that I have followed the principle that a scholar promoted by me must legitimize and habilitate himself with somebody else at another university. However, the result has been that one of my best disciples had been turned down at another university because nobody there believed this to be the reason. A further difference between Germany and the United States of America is that in Germany, the Privatdozent generally teaches fewer courses than he wishes. According to his formal right, he can give any course in his field. However, to do so would be considered an improper lack of consideration for the older docent. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

As a rule, the full professor gives the “big” courses, and the docent confines himself to secondary one. The advantage of these arrangements is that during his youth, the academic man is free to do scientific work, although this restriction of the opportunity to teach is somewhat involuntary. In America, the arrangement is different in principle. Precisely during the early years of his career, the assistant is absolutely overburdened just because he is paid. In a department of German, for instance, the full professor will give a three-hour course on Goethe, and that is enough, whereas the young assistant is happy if, besides the drill in the German language, his twelve weekly teaching hours include assignments of, say, Uhland. The officials prescribe this curriculum, and in this, the assistant is just as dependent as the institute assistant in Germany. Of late, we can observe distinctly that the German universities in the broad fields of science develop in the direction of the American system. The large institutes of medicine or natural science are “state capitalist” enterprises, which cannot be managed without very considerable funds. Here, we encounter the same condition that is found wherever capitalist enterprise comes into operation: the “separation of the worker from his means of production.” The worker, that is, the assistant, is dependent upon the implements that the state puts at his disposal; hence, he is just as dependent upon the head of the institute as is the employee in a factory upon the management. For, subjectively and in good faith, the director believes that this institute is “his,” and he manages its affairs. Thus, the assistant’s position is often as precarious as that of any “quasi-proletarian” existence and just as precarious as the position of the assistant in the American university. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Those who fail in their once-bornness, we said, want to have another chance at being born. It often seems as though they want to be made over by the same mothers who give physical birth to them; but this, as we can now see, would be too literal an assumption. For that “first birth,” to which all of their symptoms are related, is the emergence of their consciousness as individuals, a consciousness born from the interplay of recognitions. Whoever is the maternal attendant to that early phase is man’s first “environment,” and whatever environment is then first experienced as such remains associated with “mother.” On the security of that first polarization of a self and a maternal matrix are built all subsequent securities. “Mother” is the person (or the persons) who knows how to convincingly offer provision and screening: the provisions of food, warmth, stimulation in answer to the infant’s searching mouth, skin, and senses; and the screening of the quality and quantity of his intake to avoid both over-and under-stimulation. The new human being, therefore, experiences his appetites and aversions together with the personal care (and care means provision and caution) he gets. They form his first world; but so do those moments when he feels uncared for, alone with his discomfort and his rage. For these, however, he has at his disposal signals with an immediate appeal to the mothers, which sooner or later bring more or less response from her: the regularity and predictability of her responses are the infant’s first world order, the original paradise of provision. During the first year of life, the reality of the provider thus gradually emerges from the original matrix as a coherent experience, a verified fact, a sound investment of love and trust—and the infant has matured enough to experience coherently, verify reasonably, and invest courageously. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

This bipolarity of recognition is the basis of all social experience. Let nobody say that it is only the beginning, it passes, and it is, after all, childish. Man is not organized like an archaeological mound, in layers: as he grows, he makes the past part of all future, and every environment, as he once experienced it, part of the present environment. Dreams and dreamlike moments, when analyzed, always reveal the myriad past experiences which are waiting outside the gates of consciousness to mingle with present impressions. Man, at all times, wants to be sure that the original bipolarity is intact, especially when he feels tired, doubtful, unsure, alone—a fact which has been utilized by both theology and psychoanalysis. In that first relationship, man learns something which most individuals who survive and remain sane can take for granted most of the time. Only psychiatrists, priests, and born philosophers know how sorely that something can be missed. I have called this early treasure “basic trust”; it is the first psychosocial trait and the fundament of all others. Basic trust in mutuality is that original “optimism,” that assumption that “somebody is there,” without which we cannot live. In situations in which such basic trust cannot develop in early infancy, children die mentally. They do not respond nor learn; they do not assimilate their food and fail to defend themselves against infection, and often they die physically as well as mentally. One may well claim for that earliest meeting of a perceiving subject with a perceived object (which, in turn seems to “recognize” the subject) the beginning of all sense of identity; this meeting thus becomes the anchor-point for all the developments which culminate, at the end of adolescence, in the establishment of psychosocial identity. At that point, an ideological formula, intelligible both in terms of individual development and of significant tradition, must do for the young person what the mother did for the infant: provide nutriment for the soul as well as for the stomach, and screen the environment so that vigorous growth may meet what it can manage. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Of all the ideological systems, however, only religion restores the earliest sense of appeal to a Provider, a Providence. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, no prayer indicates this more clearly than “The Lord makes His Face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace”; and no prayerful attitude better than the uplifted face, hopeful of being recognized. The Lord’s countenance is apt to loom to sternly, and His son’s on the cross to show the enigmatic quality of total abandonment in sacrifice; but painters and sculptors fashion a faintly smiling face for the Madonna, graciously inclined toward the infant, who responds with peace and gaiety until, in the Renaissance, he stands up and, fully confident, motions away from her. We can see the search for the same smile of peace in the work of Eastern painters and sculptors, although their Buddhas seem closer to being the overall parent and child, all in one. It is art, the work of the visually gifted and the visually driven, in conjunction with religion, which puts such emphasis on the face; thought expresses the original symbiotic unity as a state of being firmly yet flexibly held, embedded in a Way. The deification of the irrational, of blood and instinct, of the beast of prey in man can be countered with the appeal of reason; arbitrary action can be countered with the written law; barbarity with the appeal to culture and humanity; the violent maltreatment of persons with the appeal to freedom, tolerance and the rights of man; the subordination of science, art and the rest to political purposes with the appeal to the autonomy of the various different fields of human activity. In each case, this is sufficient to awaken the consciousness of a kind of alliance and comradeship between the defenders of these endangered values and the Christians. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Reason, culture, humanity, tolerance, and self-determination, all these concepts which until very recently had served as battle slogans against the Church, against Christianity, against Jesus Christ Himself, have now, suddenly, and surprisingly, come very near indeed to the Christian standpoint. This takes place at a time when everything Christian is more closely hemmed in than ever before and when the cardinal principles of Christian belief are displayed in their hardest and most uncompromising form, in a form which could give the greatest offence to all reason, culture, humanity, and tolerance. And, indeed, it is precisely in inverse proportion to this oppression and to this narrowing of its field of action that Christian thought acquires the alliance of all these concepts and with it an entirely unexpected new wide field of activity. It is clear that it is not the Church that is seeking the protection and alliance of these concepts; but, on the contrary, it is the concepts that have somehow become homeless and now seek refuge in the Christian sphere, in the shadow of the Christian Church. IF we are to interpret this experience simply as a purely tactical move, as an alliance of expediency which will be dissolved as soon as the struggle is at an end, it will not correspond at all to the real. What is decisive is rather the fact that there took place a return to the origin. The children of the Church, who had become independent and gone their own ways, now, in the hour of danger, return to their mother. During the time of their estrangement, their appearance and their language have altered a great deal, and yet at the crucial moment, the mother and the children once again recognize one another. Reason, justice, culture, humanity, and all the kindred concepts seek and find a new purpose and a new power in their origin. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

This origin is Jesus Christ. In Soloviev’s story of the Antichrist, in the last days before Christ’s return, the heads of the persecuted churches discuss the question of what is for each of them the most precious thing in Christianity; the decisive answer is that the most precious thing in Christianity is Jesus Christ Himself. That is to say, that in the face of the Antichrist, only one thing has force and permanence, and that is Christ Himself. Only he who shares in Him has the power to withstand and to overcome. He is the center and the strength of the Christian Bible, of the Church, and of theology, but also of humanity, of reason, of justice and of culture. Everything must return to Him; it is only under His protection that it can live. There seems to be a general unconscious knowledge, which, in the hour of ultimate peril, leads everything which desires not to fall victim to the Antichrist to take refuge with Christ. “He that is not against us is for us,” reports Mark 9.40. Christ defines the limits of membership in Himself more widely than His disciples wish Him to do or themselves do. The particular concrete instance to which this saying of Jesus refers is the case of a man who, without himself being a disciple or follower, nevertheless casts out devils in the name of Jesus. Jesus forbade the disciples to hinder him, for “there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me,” reports Mark 9.39. Wherever the name of Jesus is still spoken, even though it be in ignorance or in the knowledge only of its objective power but without personal obedience, and even though it be only with hesitation and embarrassment, wherever this name is spoken it creates for itself a space to which the revilement of Jesus has no access, a region which still belongs to the power of Christ, where one must not interfere and hinder but where one must allow the name of Jesus Christ to do its work. It is an experience of our days that the spoken name of Jesus alone exercises an unforeseen power; and the effort which it costs to speak this name is perhaps connected with some faint apprehension of the power which is inherent in it. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Wherever the name of Jesus Christ is spoken, it is a protection and a claim. This is the case with all those who, in their struggle for justice, truth, humanity, and freedom, have learnt once again to speak the name of Jesus Christ, even though it is often with hesitation, with genuine fear. This name gives protection to them and to the high values for which they stand; and it is at the same time the claim to these men and to these values. “He that not with me is against me,” reports Matthew 12.30. It is the same Jesus who speaks these words. For abstract analysis, these two sayings of Jesus are in irreconcilable contradiction; but in reality, they necessarily belong together. Here again, we have living experience to prove our case; under the pressure of anti-Christian forces, there came together groups of men who confessed the faith unequivocally and who were impelled to seek a clear decision for or against Christ in the strict discipline of doctrine and of life. In their struggle, these confessing congregations could not help but perceive that the greatest of all the dangers which threatened the Church with inner disintegration and disruption lay in the neutrality of large numbers of Christians; they saw in this the true hostility to Christ. The exclusive demand for a clear profession of allegiance to Christ caused the band of confessing Christians to become ever smaller; the saying, “he that is not with me is against me,” became an actual, concrete experience of the Christian Church; and then, precisely through this concentration on the essential, the Church acquired an inward freedom and breadth which preserved her against any timid impulse to draw narrow limits, and there gathered around her men who came from very far away, and men to whom she could not refuse her fellowship and her protection; injured justice, oppressed truth, vilified humanity and violated freedom all sought for her, or rather for her Master, Jesus Christ. So now she had the living experience of that other saying of Jesus: “He that is not against us is for us.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

These two sayings necessarily belong together as the two claims of Jesus Christ, the claim to exclusiveness, the greater the freedom. However, in isolation, the claim to exclusiveness leads to fanaticism and to slavery; and in isolation, the claim to totality leads to the secularization and self-abandonment of the Church. The more exclusively we acknowledge and confess Christ as our Lord, the more fully the wide range of His domination will be disclosed to us. However, the slave of sin is not yet free; nor has he cast off the chain, “because he scoffs at it.” He is in bonds, and therefore double-minded, and for once, he may not have his own way. There is a power that binds him. He cannot tear himself loose from it. Nay, he cannot even wholly will it. For this power, too, is denied him. If you, my listener, should see such a man, although it is unlikely, for without a doubt, weakness and mediocrity are the more common, if you should meet him in what he himself would call a weak moment, but which, alas, you would have to call a better moment; if you should meet him when he had found no rest in the desert, when the giddiness passes away for a moment, and he feels an agonizing longing for Good; if you should meet him when, shaken in his inner most being, and not without sadness, he was thinking of that man of single purpose who even in all his frailty still wills the Good: then you would discover that he had two wills, and you would discover his painful double-mindedness. Desperate as he was, he thought: Lost is lost. However, he could not help turning around once more in his longing for the Good. How terribly embittered he had become against this very longing, a longing that reveals that, just as a man in all his defiance has not power enough wholly to lose himself from the Good, because it is the stronger, so he has not even the power wholly to will it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Perhaps you may even have heard that desperate one say, “Some good went down with me.” When a man meets his death by drowning, as he sinks, without being quite dead, he comes to the surface again. At least a bubble comes out of his mouth. When this has happened, then he sinks dead. That bubble was the last breath, the last supply of air, that could make him lighter than the sea. So, with that remark. In that remark, the last hope of salvation expired. In that remark, he gave himself up. Was there still concealed in this thought a hope of salvation? Hidden in the soul, was there still in this thought a possible link with salvation? When a remark is pronounced in confidence to another man (oh, terrible misuse of confidence, even if the desperate one only misused it against himself!), when this word is heard, then he sinks forever. Alas, it is horrible to see a man rush toward his own destruction. It is horrible to see him dance on the rim of the abyss without any intimation of it. However, this clarity about himself and about his own destruction is even more horrible. It is horrible to see a man seek comfort by hurling himself into the whirlpool of despair. However, this coolness is still more horrible: that in the anxiety of death, a man should not cry out for help, “I am going under, save me”; but that he should quietly choose to be a witness to his own destruction! Oh, most extreme vanity, not to wish to draw man’s eyes to himself by beauty, by riches, by ability, by power, by honor, but to wish to get his attention by his own destruction, by choosing to say of himself what at most pity in all sadness may venture to say of such a person at his grace, “Yet, some good went down with him.” In moments of crisis, the doubleness of the human mind becomes painfully clear. We cling to illusions, hoping to extract some advantage from the very forces that are destroying us, unwilling to admit that the Good—the rational, the humane, the lawful—is the one thing we never fully willed. Yet in the instant of danger, even if only for a fleeting moment, the other will becomes visible: the part of us that recognizes what must be done. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

This same clarity appears in emergency situations. When lives are at stake—when rescue or the prevention of fire spread is involved—there is no room for hesitation, sentimentality, or the false comfort of appearances. Property damage becomes irrelevant. The only rational response is decisive action. The threat of collapsing walls is present at every structure fire, but when you combine an enormous blaze in a row of old buildings, a swelling crowd, and a fire department stretched thin trying to save an entire neighborhood, the danger multiplies. That was the situation one August afternoon when a fire broke out at the “lower works” of a glass plant at the west end of Broadway. The alarm came in around 5:20 p.m. As the firemen left the station, they could already see the towering black smoke and knew they were facing a battle. The fire had begun at the west end of a row of warehouses and was rapidly consuming the adjoining structures. By the time the department arrived, all three warehouses were burning, threatening nearby homes and the rest of the abandoned factory. Captain X positioned himself near the east wall, trying to save the old office building and prevent the fire from advancing into the neighborhood. Thousands of people had gathered, edging dangerously close to the flames. Working alone, Captain X had to stop his hose several times to push the crowd back. As he turned again toward the fire, the wall suddenly collapsed, showering him with bricks and debris. Partially burned and pinned beneath the rubble, he was dug out by many of the same people whose lives he had just saved. Witnesses said he had a moment of warning but used it not to save himself, but to shove several people out of harm’s way before the wall came down on him. He was treated for leg injuries and survived. Despite the scale of the fire, no one else was hurt, and the blaze was contained to the warehouses. By morning, only tottering brick walls remained. The buildings were never rebuilt. This story is not just about a fire. It is about what real responsibility looks like. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

The Winchester Mansion

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The cultural script of “Mother knows best” is powerful—so powerful that it can override a person’s own instincts, experiences, and even evidence of harm. However, that phrase was never meant to be a universal truth. It was meant for mothers who were actually acting in good faith, with wisdom, humility, and love. When a mother is not acting in your best interest, the old saying becomes a trap rather than a comfort. The myth says that mothers are always selfless, that mothers always want what is best for their children, and that mothers are incapable of envy, resentment, or sabotage. However, real human beings—mothers included—carry unresolved trauma, insecurity, jealousy, fear of losing control, resentment toward their children’s opportunities or independence. When those wounds go unexamined, they can distort maternal behavior in ways that are deeply damaging. Narcissistic parents envy and compete with their children’s attractiveness, athletic or intellectual abilities, and other sorts of favorable attention that their children attract. Narcissistic parents make negative comparisons to put their children down. They might compare a child to a sibling, friend, cousin, or even themselves—going on about how spoiled, inferior, or lucky their child is compared to them when they were young. Such behavior stems from the same jealousy and envy that motivates competition. Sadly, many children of narcissists struggle for years or for a lifetime with shame and low self-worth. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

It is important to pay attention to signs that mother is not acting in your best interest. These patterns often show up when a mother feels threatened by her child’s growth, success, or autonomy. One sign is subtle sabotage. When your mother is always undermining your confidence, planting seeds of doubt about your decisions, and discouraging opportunities that would help you grow, your mother may be manipulating you so she can control her child with guilt, threats, and belittling. Some mothers shame their children with name-calling, criticism, undermining, blame, and withholding love. Frequently, they project onto their children their feelings of unworthiness and negative traits, such as attention-seeking or selfishness; characteristics which they disown. At the same time, they ignore, deny, and criticize their children’s feelings and needs, sometimes punishing them for expressing normal emotions, claiming they are too sensitive or weak. Parents often punish by withholding love, creating constant insecurity of self and self-esteem, which can be traumatizing and physical. One of the most painful—and least acknowledged—forms of family betrayal is when a parent aligns with their children’s enemies. This form of betrayal cuts deeper than ordinary conflict because it violates the basic expectation that a parent should protect their child, not align with people who wish them harm. This is not “normal conflict.” It is a sign of a profound role reversal in which the parent’s emotional needs override their protective instincts. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Several psychological dynamics can push a parent into this kind of betrayal, such as envy and competition. If a parent feels threatened by their child’s independence, success, confidence, relationships, or reputation, they may gravitate toward people who confirm their negative narrative about the child. If a parent feels insecure or criticized, they may seek validation from anyone—even the child’s adversaries—because it temporarily soothes their ego. Some parents offload their own guilt, shame, or failures by projecting them onto the child. Aligning with the child’s enemies becomes a way to reinforce the projection. Like all narcissists, narcissistic parents are prone to brag about themselves, their achievements, their family, and their children. Do not expect narcissistic parents to be involved with their children’s hobbies, goals, or interests unless it is also their goal or interest. They will not take pleasure in their children’s accomplishments or attractiveness except to the extent that it reflects well upon them. If the child is becoming independent, the parent may: join forces with people who undermine the child, spread misinformation, create alliances that keep the child “in their place.” This is about control, not care. Parents who engage in this pattern often share private information with people who dislike their children. Gossip or exaggerate the child’s mistakes, encourage others to “teach the child a lesson,” validate outsiders’ hostility, participate in smear campaigns, use third parties to pressure, shame, or isolate the child. This is not concern. It is collusion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

This kind of betrayal can create deep mistrust, hypervigilance, confusion about loyalty and safety, difficulty forming secure relationships, a sense of being unprotected in the world, and emotional shock (“How could my own parent do this?”) It is not just hurtful—it is destabilizing. Why does it feel so unthinkable? Because it violates the core expectation of parenthood. A parent should never join forces with someone who wants to harm their child. The lack of unconditional love, acceptance, and emotional connection in childhood leaves a void. Until the children of narcissists accept their narcissistic parents’ limitations and begin to love themselves, they are never free of suffering. They relive the emotional abandonment of their childhood and seek self-worth, validation, and lovability in relationships with abusive and/or emotionally unavailable partners, including drug addicts and narcissists. They may contribute to the problem by reacting as they did as a child to their parents. They continually find fault with themselves because conditional love is all they have ever known. This can lead to lifelong misery because external validation never heals internal shame and emptiness. Healing requires recovery from the codependence and shame acquired in childhood to feel entitled to love and appreciation. Narcissists deny reality and live inside a fantasy world that protects their fragile ego. They distort, renationalize, twist facts, and delude themselves to avoid anything that may chip their armor, which can be so thick that no amount of evidence or argument can get through. Their memories are often faulty, and self-deception can convince them that their altered reality is true. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Abusers, addicts, and narcissists typically use these defense mechanisms to disown their unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or qualities and assign them to others, either mentally or verbally. The projector says, “It is not me, it is just you!” In doing so, you become the target of a narcissist’s projection: you are the one who is “selfish,” “weak,” and “worthless.” Coping strategies reflect emotional maturity, and projection is considered a primitive defense because it distorts or ignores reality in any attempt to preserve a weak ego. It is reactive without forethought and used by children. When employed by adults, it indicates arrested emotional development. Low self-esteem and shame impair narcissists’ ability to accept responsibility for mistakes and negative feelings. Projecting allows narcissists to accuse others of being the source of the pain and shame they bear make someone else feel the way they do inside. Rather than suffer self-judgment, projection provides a temporary respite from their negative impulses and traits, which they find too uncomfortable to acknowledge. It preserves feelings of innocence and esteem rather than guilt and shame, or at the very least, it preserves a narcissist’s sense of security in maintaining their façade of infallibility. Externalization is like projection in that it is blaming others for your problems rather than taking appropriate responsibility for them, like addicts who blame their drinking or drug use on their partners or job supervisor. Thus, externalizing also makes you feel like a victim.  #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

However, narcissists are not the only people who project and blame. You might think to yourself, “He hates me,” when you hate him or think he is being controlling or judgmental; in other words, you remain blind to your own similar shortcomings or uncomfortable feelings because you are projecting them onto someone else. When it comes to understanding projecting, it is essential to understand that shame has two faces: one with an inflated ego and one that is depressed. When the devalued self is feeling inferior, shame manifests by idealizing others. This is what partners do when they are attracted to and idealize a narcissist. When a person is feeling superior and defending against shame, the grandiose self devalues others by projecting its disowned flaws and negative self-concept. Both devaluation and idealization are commensurate with the severity of shame and associated depression. Shame can make people fluctuate between the superior and inferior positions, but grandiose and vulnerable narcissists are more-or-less static in their respective positions, regardless of reality. Projection can be crazy-making, especially if you experience it for a long time. When you are vulnerable or have impaired self-esteem and weak boundaries or are sensitive about a specific issue, such as your looks, parenting, or intelligence, there is no filter. You introject the projection. Because internally you agree, it sticks like a magnet. Then you react to the shaming and compound your relationship problems. Doing so validates and augments the abuser’s authority, control, and ideas about you. You are sending the message that your partner has power over your self-esteem and the right to approve you. When there is a prohibition against doing something, a dialogue will result whenever the person starts to do it. The inner parent becomes active and says, “No!” in a hard script, “Watch out!” in a threatening one, or “Why do you want that?” in a soft one—usually whatever an actual parent would say in real life. The energy that the inner child had mobilized to do it is then taken over by the inner parent and is used by him to restrain the immaturity. The more the inner child had mobilized to put into it, the more energetic the mature self can become by appropriating this energy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Envy is an unpleasant social emotion that arises when we compare ourselves with others in terms of their characteristic and belonging, and we perceive that they surpass us. This emotion of discomfort arises because the result of this upward comparison reveals our shortcomings. Envy is, therefore, a self-conscious emotion indicating a negative self-evaluation, or an inferior self-image with respect to others. The expansive type needs people for the confirmation of his power and of his spurious values. He also needs them as a safety valve for his own self-hate. However, since he has easier recourse to his own resources and greater support for his pride, his needs for others are neither as impelling nor as comprehensive as they are for the self-effacing type. The nature and magnitude of these needs account for basic characteristics in the latter’s expectations of others. While the arrogant-vindictive type primarily expects evil unless he has proof to the contrary, while the truly detached type expects neither good nor bad, the self-effacing type keeps expecting good. On the surface, it looks as though he had an unshakable faith in the essential goodness of humanity. And it is true that he is more open, more sensitive to likable qualities in others. However, the compulsiveness of his expectations makes it impossible for him to be discriminating. He cannot, as a rule, distinguish between genuine friendliness and its many counterfeits. He is too easily bribed by any show of warmth or interest. In addition, his inner dictates tell him that he should like everybody, that he should not be suspicious. Finally, his fear of antagonism and possible fights makes him overlook, discard, minimize, or explain away such traits as lying, crookedness, exploiting, cruelty, and treachery. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

When confronted with the unmistakable evidence of such trends, he is taken by surprise each time; but even so, he refuses to believe in any intent to deceive, humiliate, or exploit. Although he often is, and still more often feels, abused, this does not change his basic expectations. Even though by bitter personal experience he may know that nothing good could possibly come to him from a particular group or person, he still persists in expecting it—consciously or unconsciously. Particularly when such blindness occurs in someone who is otherwise psychologically astute, his friends or colleagues may be flabbergasted by it. However, it simply indicates that the emotional needs are so great that they override evidence. The more he expects of people, the more he tends to idealize them. He has not, therefore, a real faith in mankind but a Pollyanna attitude which inevitably brings with it many disappointments and makes him more insecure with people. What does he expect of others? In the first place, he must feel accepted by others. He needs such acceptance in whatever form it is available: attention, approval, gratitude, affection, sympathy, love, and pleasures of the flesh. To make it clear, just as in our civilization, many people feel worth as much as the money they are “making,” so the self-effacing type measures his values in the currency of love, using the word here as a comprehensive term for the various forms of acceptance. He is worth as much as he is liked, needed, wanted, or loved. Furthermore, he needs human contact and company because he cannot stand being alone for any length of time. As if he were cut off from life, he feels easily lost. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Painful as this feeling is, it can still be tolerable as long as his self-abuse keeps within limits. As soon, however, as self-accusations or self-contempt becomes acute, his feeling lost may grow into a nameless terror, and it is exactly at this point that the need for others becomes frantic. This need for company is all the greater since being alone means to him proof of being unwanted and unliked and is therefore a disgrace, to be kept secret. It is a disgrace to go alone to the movies or on vacation, and a disgrace to be alone over the weekend, even when others are sociable. This is an illustration of the extent to which his self-confidence is dependent upon somebody caring for him in some way. He also needs others to give meaning and zest to whatever he is doing. The self-effacing type needs someone for whom to sew, cook, or garden, a teacher for whom he can play the piano, patients or clients who rely on him. Besides all this emotional support, however, he needs help and plenty of it. In his own mind, the help he needs stays within most reasonable limits, partly because most of his needs for help are unconscious and partly because he focuses on certain requests for help as though they were isolated and unique: help in getting him a job, in speaking to his landlord, going shopping with or for him, lending him money. Moreover, any wish for help of which he is aware appears to him eminently reasonable because the need behind it is so great. However, when in analysis, we see the total picture, his need for help actually amounts to the expectation that everything will be done for him. Others should supply the initiative, do his work, take the responsibility, give meaning to his life, or take over his life so that he can live through them. When recognizing the whole scope of these needs and expectations, the power which the appeal of love has for the self-effacing type becomes perfectly clear. It is not only a means to allay anxiety; without love, he and his life are without value and without meaning. Love, therefore, is an intrinsic part of the self-effacing solution. In terms of the type’s personal feelings, love becomes as indispensable for him as oxygen is for breathing. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

Naturally, he carries these expectations also into the analytic relationship. In contrast to most expansive types, he is not at all ashamed to ask for help. On the contrary, he may dramatize the needs and his helplessness and plead for help. However, of course, he wants it his own way. He expects, at bottom, a cure through “love.” He may be quite willing to put effort into the analytic work, but, as it turns out later, he is prompted by his hungry expectation that salvation and redemption must and can come only from without (here from the analyst)—through being accepted. He expects the analyst to remove his feelings of guilt by love, which may mean by sexual love in the case of an analyst of the opposite gender. More often, it means in more general ways, signs of friendship, special attention, or interest. As always happens in neurosis, needs turn into claims, which means that he feels entitled to having all these goods come to him. The need for love, affection, understanding, sympathy, or help turns into: “I am entitled to love, affection, understanding, sympathy. I am entitled to have things done for me. I am entitled not to the pursuit of happiness but to have happiness fall into my lap.” It does almost without saying that these claims—as claims—remain more unconscious than in the expansive type. For the growth of autonomy, a firmly developed early trust is necessary. An individual must be sure that his faith in himself and in the world will not be jeopardized by the violent wish to have his choice, to appropriate demandingly, and to eliminate stubbornly. Only parental firmness can protect him against the consequences of his as yet untrained discrimination and circumspection. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

However, his environment must also back him up in his wish to “stand on his own feet,” while protecting him against the now newly emerging pair of estrangements, namely, that sense of having exposed himself prematurely and foolishly which we call shame or that secondary mistrust, that “double take,” which we call doubt—doubt in himself and doubt in the firmness and perspicacity of his trainers. Shame is an infantile emotion insufficiently studied because in our civilization, it is so early and easily absorbed by guilt. Shame supposes that one is completely exposed and conscious of being looked at—in a word, self-conscious. One is visible and not ready to be visible; that is why in dreams of shame, we are stared at in a condition of incomplete dress, in night attire, “with one’s pants down.” Shame is early expressed in an impulse to bury one’s face or to sink, right then and there, into the ground. This potentiality is abundantly utilized in the educational method of “shaming” used so exclusively by some primitive peoples, where it supplants the often more destructive sense of guilt. The destructiveness of shaming is balanced in some civilizations by devices for “saving face.” Shaming exploits the increased sense of being small, which paradoxically develops as the individual comes to understand his size and power. Too much shaming does not result in a sense of propriety but in a secret determination to try to get away with things when unseen, if, indeed, it does not result in deliberate shamelessness. There is an impressive American ballad in which a murderer, to be hanged on the gallows before the eyes of the community, instead of feeling mortally afraid or totally shamed, begins to berate the onlookers, ending every salvo of defiance with the words, “God damn your eyes.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Many people, when shamed beyond endurance, may be in a mood (although not in possession of either the courage or the words) to express defiance in similar terms. There is a limit to an individual’s endurance in the face of demands which force him to consider himself, his body, his needs, and his wishes as evil and dirty, and to believe in the infallibility of those who pass such judgment. Occasionally, he may turn things around, because secretly oblivious to the opinions of others, and consider as evil only the fact that they exist: this chance will come when they are gone or when he can leave them. The psychiatric danger of this stage is, as it is at all other stages, the potential aggravation of the normative estrangement to the point where it will cause neurotic or psychotic tendencies. The sensitive individual may turn all his urges to discriminate against himself and thus develop a precocious conscience. Instead of willfully appropriating things in order to test them by repetitive investigation, he will become obsessed by his own repetitiveness and will want to have everything “just so,” and only in a given sequence and tempo. By such an obsessiveness and procrastination, or by becoming a stickler for ritualistic repetitions, the individual then learns to gain power over his superiors in areas where he could not find large-scale mutual regulation with them. Such a hollow victory is how compulsion neurosis develops. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The most common sign of excessive defensiveness is frequent experiences of threat. If other people must be careful about what they say or do in your presence, it can signify that they sense the grasp of your identity is frail indeed. If you are easily upset by criticism or frightened by your anger or sensuality, it may signify that you are trying to live up to some glorified image. The time to grow—to begin to let go of one’s present self-concept—is evidenced by boredom, failure, and anxiety. These experiences signify that you and your real self have changed, but that your self-structure has not. You are impersonating an identity that, up to yesterday, may have been authentic and life-giving. Now, however, it is not. To start a growth episode is frightening, but it need not be terrifying. All it means is that you may have to suspend your usual activities and relationships in order to get a fresh perspective on your own possibilities and the possibilities of changing some aspects of your life. If you meditate or retreat to a quiet place from time to time, the chances are that you change aspects of your activity and your self-structure more or less frequently. If, however, you are “locked into” various roles, and a fixed way of being yourself, the experience of threat may be more acute when it happens, and the prospect of change more frightening. If your present identity is not sustaining a rewarding and health-engendering life, and you do not see ways to grow and change, then it might be valuable to find a personal counselor or psychotherapist. Conversations with a professional person can frequently lead to growth-producing changes that are neither drastic nor destructive. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, God’s revelation of His love, precedes all our love towards Him. Love has its origin not in us but in God. Love is not an attitude of men but an attitude of God. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4.10). Only in Jesus Christ do we know what love is, namely, in His deed for us. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us” (I John 3.16). And even here there is given no general definition of love, in the sense, for example, of its being the laying down of one’s life for the lives of others. What is here called love is not this general principle but the utterly unique event of the laying down of the life of Jesus Christ for us. Love is inseparably bound up with the name of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. The New Testament answers the question, “What is love?” quite unambiguously by pointing solely and entirely to Jesus Christ. He is the only definition of love. However, again, if we were to derive a general definition of love from our view of Jesus Christ and of His deed and His suffering, it would be a complete misunderstanding. Love is not what He suffers. Love is always He Himself. Love is always God Himself. Love is always the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. When all our ideas and principles relating to love are concentrated in the strictest possible manner upon the name of Jesus Christ, this must, above all, not be allowed to reduce this name to a mere abstract concept. This name must always be understood in the full concrete significance of the historical reality of a living man. And so, without in any way contradicting what has been said so far, it is only the concrete action and suffering of this man Jesus Christ which will make it possible to understand what love is. The name Jesus Christ, in which God reveals Himself, gives the explanation of itself in the life and words of Jesus Christ. For, after all, the New Testament does not consist in an endless repetition of the name of Jesus Christ, but that which this name comprises is displayed in events, concepts, and principles which are intelligible to use. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

And so, too, the choice of the concept of “love,” is not simply arbitrary; this concept acquires an entirely new connotation in the New Testament message, yet it is not entirely without connection with what we understand by “love” in our own language. Certainly, it is not true to say that the biblical concept of love is a particular form of what we have already, in general, understood by this word. Precisely the opposite turns out to be the case, namely, that the biblical concept of love, and it alone is, the foundation, truth and the reality of love, in the sense that any natural thought about love contains truth and reality only in so far as it participates in this its origin, that is to say, in the love which is God Himself in Jesus Christ. Therefore, love is the reconciliation of man with God in Jesus Christ. The disunion of men with God, with other men, with the world and with themselves, is at an end. Man’s origin is given back to him. Love is the name for what God does to man in overcoming the disunion in which man lives. This deed of God is Jesus Christ, is reconciliation. And so love is something which happens to man, something passive, something over which he does not himself dispose, simply because it lies beyond his existence in disunion. Love means the undergoing of the transformation of one’s entire existence by God; it means being drawn in into the world as it lives and must live before God and in God. Love, therefore, is not man’s choice, but it is the election of man by God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Only too soon personal experience and the experience of others teaches how far most men’s lives are from being what a man’s life ought to be. All have great moments. They see themselves in the magic mirror of possibility which hope holds before them while the wish flatters them. However, they swiftly forget this sight in the daily round of things. Or perhaps, they talk enthusiastic words, “for the tongue is a little member and boasteth great things.” However, talk takes the name of enthusiasm in vain by proclaiming loudly from the housetop what it should work out in silence. And in the midst of the trivial details of life, these enthusiastic words are quickly forgotten. It is forgotten that such a thing was said of this man. It is forgotten that it was he himself who said it. Now and then, perhaps, memory wakens with horror, and remorse seems to promise new strength. However, alas, this, too, lasts only for a good-sized moment. All of them have intentions, plans, resolutions for life, yes, for eternity. However, the intention soon loses its youthful strength and fades away. The resolution is not firmly grounded and is unable to withstand opposition. It totters before circumstances and is altered by them. Memory, too, has a way of failing, until by common practice and habit, they learn to draw sympathy from one another. If someone proclaims the slender comfort that excuses yield, instead of realizing how treacherous is such sympathy, they finally come to regard it as edifying, because it encourages and strengthens indolence. Now, there are men who find it edifying that the demand to will one thing be asserted in all its sublimity, in all its severity, so that it may press its claim into the innermost fastness of the soul. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Others find it edifying that a wretched compromise should be made between God, the claim, and the language used. There are men who find it edifying ig only someone will challenge them. However, there are also the sleepy souls who regard it as not only pleasing, but even edifying, to be lulled to sleep. This is indeed a lamentable fact; but there is a wisdom which is not from above, but is earthly and fleshly and devilish. It has discovered this common human weakness and indolence; it wants to be helpful. It perceives that all depends upon the will, and so it proclaims loudly, “Unless it wills one thing, a man’s life is sure to become one of wretched mediocrity, of pitiful misery. He must will one thing regardless of whether it be good or bad. He must will one thing for therein lies a man’s greatness.” Yet it is not difficult to see through this powerful error. As to the working out of salvation, the holy Scripture teaches that sin is the corruption of man. Salvation, therefore, lies only in the purity with which a man wills the Good. That very earthly and devilish cleverness distorts this into a temptation to perdition; weakness is a man’s misfortune; strength the sole salvation: “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry and empty places but finds no rest. Then he turns back again and now he brings with him” that unclean cleverness, the wisdom of the desert and the empty places, that unclean cleverness—that now drives out the spirit of indolence and of mediocrity “so that the last stage become worse than the first.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 17