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Hard Times on Economic ThinkingÂ
It is fashionable in certain circles to fix the blame for a manâs erring proclivities on his faculty upbringingâor lack of itâby parents, or on his companions, temptations, and surroundings. However, are they so much to blame as the man himself? And is he not the victim, the resultant, of his own prenatal past? And even this is not the ultimate cause of his sinning. He is misled by ignoranceâwithout understanding of his deepest self and without knowledge of lifeâs higher laws. There is some kind of correspondence between the outward situations of his life as they develop and the subconscious tendencies of his mind, between the nature of his environment and the conscious characteristics of his personality, between the effects as they happen to him and the causes that he previously started. When he realizes how long he has been unconsciously building it up for the worse, he can begin to change his life for the better. The same energy which has been directed into thoughts can then be directed into optimistic ones. Were it not for the stubbornness of habit, it would not be harder to do this than to do the opposite. The emotions felt inside the heart, the thoughts evoked inside the head, affect the environment and atmosphere outside us. Without dropping into the artificial attitude which pretends to give small value to outward circumstances, one can yet try to set himself free from his own mental dominion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Until one has attained that inner strength which can concentrate thoughts and dominate emotions, it would be foolish to say that environment does not count and that he can mingle with society as freely as he can desert it. Without this attainment, he will be weakened by most of them or strengthened by a few of them. Birth into a prosperous elegant and gracious circle is valued highly in this World: it gives a man dignity and assurance. Education, which nurtures intellect and bestows culture, is likewise well appraised. However, both measure as trivial things in the other World of spiritual attainment. Although not to the extent to which it is affected by thoughts and feelings, inner life is affected by physical conditions. The foundation of human society, said Sumner, is the man-land ratio. Ultimately men draw their living from the soil, and the kind of existence they achieve, their mode of getting it, and their mutual relations in the process are all determined by the proportion of population to the available soil. Where men are few and soil is abundant, the struggle for existence is less savage, and democratic institutions are likely to prevail. When population presses upon the land supply, Earth hunger arises, races of men move across the face of the World, militarism and imperialism flourish, conflict ragesâand in government aristocracy dominates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
As men struggle to adjust themselves to the land, they enter rivalry for leadership in the conquest of nature. In Sumnerâs popular essays he stressed the idea that the hardships of life are incidents of the struggle against nature, that âwe cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of these. My neighbor and I are both struggling to free ourselves from these ills. The fact that my neighbor has succeeded in this struggle better than I constitutes no grievance for me. Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital has a great advantage over the man who has no capital at all in the struggle for existence…This does not mean that one man has an advantage against the other, but that, when they are rivals in the effort to get the means of subsistence from Nature, the one who has capital has immeasurable advantages over the other. If it were not so capital would not be formed. Capital is only formed by self-denial, and if the possession of it did not secure advantages and superiorities of a high order men would never submit to what is necessary to get it.â Thus, the struggle is like a whippet race; the fact that one hound chases the mechanical hare of pecuniary success does not prevent the others from doing the same. Sumner was perhaps inspired to minimize the human conflicts in the struggle for existence by a desire to dull the resentment of the less affluent towards the affluent. He did not always, however, shrink from a direct analogy between animal struggle and human competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the Spencerian intellectual atmosphere of the 1870s and 1880âs, it was natural for conservatives to see the economic contest in competitive society as a reflection of the struggle in the animal World. It was easy to argue by analogy from natural selection of fitter organisms to social selection of fitter men, from organic forms with superior adaptability to citizens with a greater sore of economic virtues. The competitive order was now supplied with a cosmic rationale. The competition was glorious. Just as survival was the result of strength, success was the reward of virtue. Sumner had no patience with those who would lavish compensations upon the virtueless. Many economists, he declared (in a lecture given in 1879 on the effect of hard time on economic thinking), âseem to be terrified that distress and misery still remain on Earth and promise to remain as long as the vices of human nature remain. Many of them are frightened at liberty, especially under the form of competition, which they elevate into a bugbear. They think it bears harshly on the weak. They do not perceive that here âthe strongâ and âthe weakâ are terms which admit of no definition unless they are made equivalent to the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the extravagant. They do not perceive, furthermore, that if we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one possible alternative, and this is the survival of the unfitted. The former is the law of anti-civilization. We have our choice between the two, or we can go on, as in the past, vacillating between the two, but a third planâthe socialist desideratumâa plan for nourishing the unfitted and yet advancing in civilization, no man will ever find.â #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The progress of civilization, according to Sumner, depends upon the selection process; and that in turn depends upon the workings of unrestricted competition. Competition is a law of nature which âcan no more be done away with than gravitation,â and which men can ignore only to their sorrow. You may well ask, âBut why does a person who is seeking help find himself changing in a relationship which contains these elements? Why does this initiate a process of learning to be free, or becoming what he is, of choice and inner development?â The reactions of the client who experiences for a time the kind of therapeutic relationship which we have discussed are a reciprocal of the therapistâs attitudes. As he finds someone else listening acceptingly to his feelings, he little by little becomes able to listen to himself. He begins to receive communications from within himselfâto realize that he is angry, to recognize when he is frightened, even to realize when he is feeling courageous. As he becomes more open to what is going on within him, he becomes able to listen to feelings which have seemed to him so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so unique, or so personal, that he has never been able to recognize their existence in himself. While he is learning to listen to himself, he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expressed increasingly hidden aspects of himself, he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional beneficial regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, respecting and caring for himself as a person, being responsible for himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of being free. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
And finally, as he listens more accurately to the feelings within, and becomes less evaluative and more acceptant toward himself, he also moves toward being more real. He finds it possible to move out from behind the facade he had used, to drop his defensive behaviours, and more openly to be what he truly is. As these changes occur, as he becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, more self-expressive, less defensive, and more open, he finds that he is at last free to change and grow and move in directions natural to the human organism. He can make imperfect choicesâand then correct them. He recognizes that he can choose to be hurtful or constructive, self-aggrandizing, or committed to the welfare of the group, and when these choices can be freely made, he tends to move in the socially constructive direction. It is such experiences in individual and group psychotherapy which lead us to believe that we have here an important dynamic for modern education. We may have here the essential core of a process by which we might facilitate this production, through our educational system, of persons who will be adaptative and creative, able to make responsible decisions, open to the kaleidoscopic changes in their World, worthy citizens of a fantastically expanding Universe. It seems at least a possibility that in our schools and colleges, in our professional schools and universities, individuals could learn to be free. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When considering our case study of Clare, she had a self-observation and became concerned about her inability to be alone. She had not been aware of this inhibition before, because she had arranged her life in such a way as to avoid any periods of solitude. When she was by herself, she observed that she became restless or fatigued. When she tried to enjoy them alone, things she could relish otherwise lost their meaning. When others were around, she could work much better in the office than at home, though the work was of the same kind. During this time, she neither tried to understand these observations nor made any effort to follow up her latest finding. In view of the incisive importance of that finding, her failure to pursue it any further is certainly striking. If we consider it in connection with the reluctance, she had previously shown to scrutinize her relationship with Peter, we are justified in assuming that with her latest discovery Clare came closer to realizing her dependency than she could stand at the time and therefore stopped her analytical endeavours. The provocation to resume her work was a sudden sharp swing mood that occurred one evening with Peter. He had given her an unexpected present, a pretty scarf, and she was overjoyed. However, later she felt suddenly tired and became frigid. The depressed feeling occurred after she had embarked on the question of summer plans. She was enthusiastic about the plans, but Peter was listless. He explained his reaction by saying that he did not like to make plans anyhow. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The next morning, she remembered a dream fragment. She saw a large bird flying away, a bird of the most glorious colours and most beautiful movements. It became smaller and smaller until it vanished. The she awoke with anxiety and a sensation of falling. While she was still waking up a phrase occurred to her–âthe bird has flownâ–which she knew at once expressed a fear of losing Peter. Certain later associations confirmed this intuitive interpretation: someone had once called Peter a bird that never settled down; Peter was good-looking and a good dancer; the beauty of the bird had something unreal; a memory of Bruce, whom she had endowed with qualities he did not possess; a wonder whether she glorified Peter, too; a song from Sunday school, in which Jesus as the Christ asked to take His children under His wing. Thus, the fear of losing Peter was expressed in two ways: by the bird flying away, and by the idea of a bird that had taken her under its wings and dropped her. The latter thought was suggested not only by the song but also by the sensation of falling that she had on awakening. In the symbol of Jesus taking His children under His wing the theme of the need for protection is resumed. In view of later developments, it appears by no means accidental that the symbol is a religious one. Clare did not delve into the suggestion that she glorified Peter. However, the very fact that she saw this possibility is noteworthy. It may have paved the way for her daring to take a good look at him some time later. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The main theme of her interpretations, howeverâthe fear of losing Peterânot only was recognized as an inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the dream but was deeply felt as true and important. That it was an emotional experience as well as an intellectual recognition of a crucial factor was evident in the fact that several reactions hitherto not understood became suddenly transparent. First, she saw that on the previous night, she had not merely been disappointed in Peterâs reluctance to talk about a common vacation. His lack of zest had aroused a dread that he would desert her, and this dread had caused her fatigue and frigidity and had been the provocation for the dream. And many other comparable situations became similarly illuminated. All kinds of instances emerged in which she had felt hurt, disappointed, irritated, or in which, as on the preceding day, she had become tired or depressed for no good reason. She realized that all these reactions sprang from the same source, regardless of what other factors might have been involved. If Peter was late, if he did not telephone, if he was preoccupied with other matters than herself, if he was withdrawn, if he was tense or irritated, if he was not interested in having pleasures of the flesh with herâalways the dread of desertion was touched off. Furthermore, when she was with Peter, she understood that the explosions of irritation that sometimes occurred not from trivial dissensions or, as he usually accused her, from her desire to have her own way, but from this same dread. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The anger was attached to such trivial matters as different opinions about a movie, irritation at having to wait for him, and the like, but it was produced by her fear of losing him. And, conversely, when she received an unexpected present from him, she was overjoyed because it meant a sudden relief from this fear. Finally, she linked up the fear of desertion with the empty feeling that she when she was alone, but without arriving at any conclusive understanding of the connection. Was the fear of desertion so great because she dreaded to be alone? Or did solitude, for her, implicitly mean desertion? A person can be entirely unaware of a fear that is all consuming. That Clare now recognized her fear, and saw the disturbances it created in her relationship with Peter, meant a definite step ahead. There are two connections between this insight and her preceding one concerning her need for protection. Both findings show to what extent the whole relationship was pervaded with fears. And, more specifically, the fear of desertion was in part a consequence of the need for protection: if Peter were expected to protect her from life and its dangers, she could not afford to lose him. Clare was still far from understanding the nature of the fear of desertion. If anything, she was still unaware that what she regarded as deep love was nothing more than a neurotic dependency and therefore, she could not recognize that the fear was based on this dependency. Regarding her inability to be alone, the questions that occurred to her were more pertinent than she realized. However, since this whole problem was hazy because there were still too many unknown factors involved, she was not even capable of making accurate observations on this score. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Clareâs analysis of her elation at receiving the scarf was accurate as far as it went. Undoubtedly one essential element in her feeling overjoyed was that the act of friendliness allayed her fear for the time being. That she did not consider the other elements involved can scarcely be attributed to a resistance. She saw only the aspect that was related to the problem on which she was then working, her fear of destruction. Related to nongreedy desire for pleasures of the flesh but different from it is tenderness. Dr. Freud, whose whole psychology deals exclusively with âdrives,â necessarily had to explain tenderness as an outcome of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, as a goal-inhibited desire for pleasures of the flesh. It is an experience sui generis. Its first characteristic is that it is free from greed. In the experience of tenderness, one does not want anything from the other person, not even reciprocity. It has no aim and purpose, not even that which is present in the ungreedy form of sexuality, namely, of the final physical culmination. It is not restricted to any pleasures of the flesh or age. It is least of all expressible in words, except in a poem. It is most exquisitely expressed in the way in which a person may touch another, look at him or her, or in the tone of voice. One can say that it has roots in the tenderness which a mother feels toward her child, but even if this is so, human tenderness far transcends the motherâs tenderness to the child because it is free from the biological tie to the child and from the narcissistic element in motherly love. It is free not only from greed but from hurry and purpose. Among all the feelings which man has created in himself during his history, there is none which surpasses tenderness in the pure quality of simply being human. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Compassion and empathy are two other feelings clearly related to tenderness but not entirely identical to it. The essence of compassion is that one âsuffers withâ or, in a broader sense, âfeels withâ another person. This means that one does not look at the person from the outsideâthe person being the âobjectâ (never forget that âobjectâ and âobjectionâ have the same root) of my interest or concernâbut that one puts himself into the other person. This means I experience within myself what he experiences. This is a relatedness which is not from the âIâ to the âthouâ but one which is characterized by the phase: I am thou (Tat Twan Asi). Compassion or empathy implies that I experience in myself that which is experienced by the other person and hence that in this experience he and I are one. Only if it is based on my experiencing in myself that which he experiences, then all knowledge of another remains an object, I may know a lot about him, but I do not know him. In psychoanalysis or similar forms of depth psychotherapy, a knowledge of the patient rests upon the capacity of the analyst to know him and not on his ability to gather enough data to know much about him. The data of the development and experiences of the patient are often helpful for knowing him, but they are nothing but adjuncts to that knowledge which requires no âdata,â but rather, complete openness to the other and openness within oneself. It might occur in the first second after seeing a person, it might occur a long time later, but the act of this knowledge is a sudden, intuitive one and not the result of ever-increasing information about the life history of the person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Goethe has expressed this kind of knowledge very succinctly: âMan knows himself only within himself, and he is aware of himself within the World. Each new object truly recognized opens a new organ within us.â The possiblity of this kind of knowledge based on overcoming the split between the observing subject and the observed object requires, of course, the humanistic promise that every person carries within himself all of humanity; although in varying degrees, within us we are saints and criminals, and hence there is nothing in another person which we cannot feel as part of ourselves. This experience requires that we free ourselves from the narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same âcommon sense.â Knowing men in the sense of compassionate and empathetic knowledge requires that we get rid of the narrowing ties of a given society, race, or culture and penetrate to the depth of that human reality in which we are all nothing but human. True compassion and knowledge of man has been underrated as a revolutionary factor in the development of man, just as art has been. Tenderness, love, and compassion are exquisite feelings and experiences and recognized as such. For Dr. Freud, only primitive man could be called âhealthy.â He satisfies all his instinctual demands without need for repression, frustration, or sublimation. (That Dr. Freudâs picture of the primitive as having an unrestricted life filled with instinctual satisfaction is a romantic fiction has been made abundantly clear by contemporary anthropologists.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, when Dr. Freud turns from historical speculation to the clinical examination of contemporary man, this picture of primitive mental health hardly matters. Even if we could keep in mind that civilized man cannot be completely healthy (or happy, for that matter), Dr. Freud has nevertheless definite criteria for what constitutes mental health. These criteria are to be understood within the frame of reference of his evolutionary theory. This theory has two main aspects: the evolution of libido, and the evolution of manâs relations to others. In the theory of libido evolution Dr. Freud assumes that the libido, that is, energy of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, undergoes a development. It is at first centered around the oral activities of the childâsucking and bitingâand later around the anal activitiesâelimination. Around the age of five or six, the libido has for the first time centered around the private organs. However, this age of âadult behaviourâ is not fully developed, and between the first âphallic phaseâ near the age of six and the beginning of puberty there is a âlatency period,â during which development of pleasures of the flesh is at a standstill, as it were, and only at the beginning of puberty does the process of libido development come to fruition. This process of libido development, however, is by no means an uncomplicated one. Many events, especially oversatisfaction and overfrustration, can result in a child becoming âfixatedâ on the earlier level, and thus never arriving at a fully developed genital level, or regressing to an earlier one even after having arrived at the genital level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As a result, the adult may exhibit neurotic symptoms (like impotence), or neurotic character traits (as in the overdepednent, passive person). For Dr. Freud the âhealthyâ person is the one who has reached the âgential levelâ without regressing, and who lives an adult existence, that is, an existence in which he can work and have adequate satisfactions involving pleasures of the flesh or, in which he can produce things and reproduce the race. The other aspect of the âhealthyâ person lies in the sphere of his object relations. The newborn baby has not yet any object relations. It is in a state of âprimary narcissismâ in which the only realities are its own bodily and mental experiences, and the World outside does not yet exist conceptually, and even less, emotionally. The child then develops his strong attachment to mother. However, as the child ages, he shifts from the fixation to mother to the allegiance to father. At the same time, however, he also identifies with father by incorporating his commands and prohibitions. Through this process he achieves independence from father and from mother. The healthy person, for Dr. Freud, then, is the one who has reached the genital level, and who has become his own master, independent of father and mother, relying on his own reason and his own strength. However, even the key features of Dr. Freudâs concept remain vague and certainly lacks the precision and penetration is his concept of mental illness. It is the concept of a well-functioning member of the middle class at the beginning of the twentieth century, who is sexually and economically potent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the modern, technology-filled World, we are bombarded with options: watch this, read that, listen to this. Our society is saturated with media and entertainment, and the influence they have on our beliefs, thoughts, and actions is subtle but powerful. The things we allow to fill our minds end up shaping our beingâwe become what we think about. If we all just believed what anyone said, what would happen? It was once taken for granted that whatever was written in school textbooks was true. And whatever you read in the trade papers or saw on the TV news was also true. With the vast amount of information available to all of us now, we have found that not to be true. So, if we must second guess the news media now, should we not do the same for any other information we are given? Technology is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, the purposes accomplished with and through technology are the ultimate indicators of goodness or badness. Our responsibility is not to avoid media altogether or to merely reject negative media but to choose wholesome and uplifting media. We can use the power of media to our advantage, to better our thoughts and behaviours by acknowledging our susceptibility to media influence and recognizing how it influences us. Identifying educational and high-quality media options, and recognizing no one is immune to mediaâs influence. We cannot expect to indulge in media designed to affect us mentally and emotionally without its influence being sustained in our subconscious long after the source of media is over. Those who believe media does not affect them are often the people who are most affected because they deny the influence and are therefore not guarded against it. Just as water will continue to seep through a leak in a boat, whether we acknowledge the leak, so will the media continue to influence our thoughts whether we address its impact. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many firefighters have many ways of learning to fight fires. âIn the U.S.A. Forest Service, when I first started, the training was all done at the station level. The old-time captains and engineers teach you as you go along. Then, as you advance in the ranks, they begin to send you to specialized schools on fire behavior and safety and all kinds of things. Itâs an ongoing process. Then, when I switched to the California Department of Forestry, it was pretty much the same program, although as part of the probationary term you have to go to six-week academy for engineers. Driving, pumping, hydraulics, ladder, hose, fire behavior tactics, everything compacted into a six-week school. Then the same thing when you come back to your unit, itâs an ongoing training thing at the local level. Plus schools, they send guys to the more sophisticated schools with other agencies. And now, of course, like everyone else, weâre sending people to the National Fire Academy too. I was fortunate when I first came to work, we went to several rather small fires, and I was able to kind of gradually build up to the tough ones. That doesnât always happen. Iâve seen some guys come on the job, and right off the bat theyâre put on some monsters, some hairy deals. That tends to scare some of them off. They decide this is not what they really want, and they go back to being a bookkeeper or something. But in my case I was able to kind of wade into it and go from the little easy stuff into the big bad stuff. That way I gradually became aware of what was going on and conscious of the difficulties of the job and the safety problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
âWhen I came back from the Army, the first thing they sent me to was a fire weather class. All I knew was that on a hot, dry day, things burn better, and when the wind blows they burn still better. I had never been taught the effect of weather on fire behavior. In the class, this guyâs going on about wind and dry weather, and humidity, and the causes and effects of all those things, and methods I had never heard of before. It was almost funny, because every once in a while all of us in the class would go, âOh, no wonder. Not I understand why the fire did that.â Earlier there had been a lightning-caused forest fire that kind of startled me. It was a small fireâthat fire would up taking 5,000 acres. We were there for over an hour before anybody else showed up. We didnât realize that there were a lot of other fires going on, and that was why backup troops werenât available. Anyway, we attacked the head end of the fire, the direction it was moving, and we made pretty good progress, only to realize that we were suddenly on the back side of the fireâthe front end of the fire was on the other side now, going the other way. It dashed around us, and finally it blew out at the canyon, and we couldnât stop it. I never did understand totally what had happened, until I went to this weather class and the guy explained it.â Please remember to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department so they have all the resources they need. The relativity of good and evil is no justification for the tolerance of wrong and evil. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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We Should Get Back to the HouseÂ
There was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. My eyes opened and uncertainty surfaced with the wakefulness. The rhythmic knocking of hammers and crisp slicing and the saws vanquished the lingering pleasantness of my reverie. My head ached dully. All I could recall was marvelous vista in its Victorian grandeur and splendor. I was flying over it, not at a height, my flying was not so assured, but a meter or two off the ground, flying at a joyful, terrifying velocity, as a glided hither and tither. However, with one false movement the magic would end in dreadful fall. I sighed with relief as I reached for my bed jacket and settled in a chair on the opposite side of the bureau. I looked in the mirror and saw my face breaking into a warm smile. Shuffling papers, I retrieved an appointment book which had been buried. There were two sitting scheduled for me this afternoon. A widow, freshly made, and a young couple who wanted their sonâs death confirmed. Would you believe he was reported missing at the Tournament of Roses during winter? The poor dearsâso many days of uncertainty. They wanted me to locate his spirit. As I pushed back my chair and summoned the chambermaid to bind my hair and prepare my state-of-the-art shower, I shivered as a frigid air breezed through my chamber. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
My attire for the day was simple: a long coat, slim fitting, curving in gently at the waist, hardly swelling at all over my bosom; the shoulder padding was squarish but by no means exaggerated, the collar was tight around my neck. The young couple greeted me in my blue seance room. I gestured for them to sit down. âMove closer. We must hold hands.â Matthias and Anneliese Hulsmann obliged. It was of course a dark seance. âAre we ready?â I asked, taking my place among the couple. They nodded and we all clasped hands. âBefore we contact the spirits, we must clear our heads of all pessimism,â I said. Taking a deep breath and with a soft voice, I began. I was influenced to offer up a brief petition that our assembling might enable us to receive a full measure of spiritual gifts; that I might thereby become more fitted to do the Lordâs work and shew forth His great Love to the World. In a brief time, I exclaimed, âOh! There is an angelâit is Uriel, and he will soon make his presence known.â We then heard the rustling of large wings, which ceased after a time. After which, there was a gentleman standing between Matthias and Anneliese. He was singing and accompanying himself on a harp. âHappy are those who find love in the Fatherâs breast. Like the wandering dove who found no repose on Earth around, they can to their Ark repair and enjoy it ever there. Enlarge not to my hunger, or Iâm caught in trammels of perverse deliciousness. No, on, that shall not be: thee will I bless, and bid a long adieu.â #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
After that, a deep rumbling shook the floor. I was able to describe Erich to the bereaved with great accuracy, and then I was told to by the angel to say, âCast thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee: His arm will uphold thee, so deep that the waters shall not cover thee.â With a deep sigh, the couple closed their eyes in an act of surrender. After Uriel spoke, Erich Hulsmann came through. âOh Erich. My dear Erich are you here?â I called out. âItâs I. Itâs Erich.â âYou parents are here, and they miss you dearly. You became lost at the Tournament of Roses. My dear child, have you passed through the veil?â âI am not dead. Iâm alive. I feel an effort is being made to raise me, but you must not speak to me, nor touch me.â The darkness being complete, we could not see how much he was raised, but he spoke occasionally, and his voice sounded very much above us. As he lowered to place, we could see his feet above the level of the table. Mrs. Hulsmannâs handkerchief with then drawn to her eyes. âSorry, so sorry,” Mr. Hulsmann cried. We were then desired to have light for the remainder of the seance. Mr. and Mrs. Hulsman saw a figure behind me whom they described very clearly. He had on a white linen suit with gold buttons. Mrs. Hulsmann then told me to ask Erich about his grandmother. âErich my dear,â I said, âis your grandmother, who loved you so, well?â âAs much as ever,â he replied. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then his father called his name. Erich nodded toward his father with a veined face, as he walked through the door into the halls of Llanada Villa. As we concluded the seance with the Lordâs prayer, the table rose from the floor, and slammed back down. Our chair fell backward, and the room went pitch black. Several Indians in white clothes became visible. The word âLightâ became visible on the ceiling. When again in darkness, a voice called out to us, âWe have crowned you all with blessing that you may do the Lordâs work on this Earth.â Mr. and Mrs. Hulsmann were struck with tears. They received the answer they were looking for, but could not understand why their son was angry and could not speak further with them. As they were leaving the room, Mrs. Hulsmann saw a spectral white dove fly through the door and a real feather fell into her hand. Mr. Hulsmann recalled that he made a promise that he had not fulfilled. In a very gentle voice, Mrs. Hulsmann said, âI will never forget you.â Some delicious perfume was sprinkled upon us. I bid them goodbye, as their carriage rode away. The house and grounds were exerting a terrific emotional pull, and I was falling under a spell from the past that I had never felt before. It was foreign to my usual manner of thinking that I could not even speak. I locked the front door and went into the library. As I looked up, a dark shape was looming over my head in the moonlight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then I made my way back upstairs to the Daisy Bedroom as fast as I safely could. It was then that I heard the door-to-nowhere open and perceived approaching footsteps. âWhoâs there?â I called out. There was no answer, and I was annoyed. Although my housemaids were in other wings of the houseâI was sure that one of them had come in and was playing a trick on me. I lit a candle. I could see no one. Yet the door-to-nowhere, I was so sure had been closed was now openâand beyond it only darkness. The candle flickered and died. Then I heard footsteps coming from the door, passing by me, and then going down the stairs. Hastily, I ran into the hallway, and turned on the light, but there was no one there. âAntonia,â I questioned tentatively. âHanne?â Silence. After a few tense seconds, I heard the footsteps start to mount the stairs and I knew then that there were not the footsteps of either woman. They were unmistakably, the footsteps of a child. I stepped forward and could have reached through the railings and grasped his ankle as he passed, but if my life depended on it, I could not have moved my hand to do so. The area in which I was standing was suddenly icy cold. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
âWho are you?â I yelled. At least I thought I was yelling, but no voice could be heard, as when one tries to scream in a nightmare. I was not too sure that I was not having one, either. I reached the newel post and felt the mahoganyâcold and solidâbeneath my hand. I had to be awake! I yelled again. My challenges went unanswered. There was not the slightest change in the rhythm of the footsteps as they continued their steady climb back up the stairs. I stood betwixt, as I heard them in the upper hall. They went on up to the third floor. I heard a door softly close, and all was silent. I finally moved…fast. I stumbled into a room. True, I had seen nothing by candlelight nor by gasolier in the dark hall, but a heavy concentrated beam most certainly would have shown a boy on the stairs. Was it Erich? Was he now a spirit coming to live in my house? This had been my impression. I walked upstairs and went into the room where the door had closed and found it empty. Then I inspected several miles of the house and tested all the doors leading to the outside. They were securely locked, and the housemaids were fast asleep. Upon descending upon the first floor, I found the butler in the servants’ quarters. âDid you notice anything unusual?â I asked Rainer. âDid you see anyone walking through the house?â âOf course not, Mrs. Winchester,â he replied a little impatiently. âBut I did hear some sort of disturbance. A volley of noises broke out throughout the entire house.â #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Rainer described the noises as âbanging, thumping, the whole place shaking.â Zip was shut up in the library, while Rainer took refuge in the breakroom. âZip whined in terror as the noises increased in volume and in violence. Then suddenly the noises ceased,â he said. Later that night, I was in the Crystal Bedroom with my precious Zip. For no reason, he began to bristle up his hair, and bark at something. I looked up and saw the boy in his white linen suit, with about half of his figure passing through the slightly opened door. I ran to the door. There was no one there. Rainer was going about his usual business and had seen nothing. Some weeks after this, my house became extremely haunted, especially above the stairs, so that I was forced to stay in the lower rooms, there was such a throwing of things up and down, of bats through the windows, and putting all in disorder. A little while after the, a window on the first floor flew open, and in came a bat which inflamed Rainer with a more eager desire to see what the matter was. The keen desire of discovering the cheat made him venture by himself into that room. Into which, when he came, he saw the bedding, chairs, tables, candlesticks, and bed-staves, and all the furniture, rudely scattered on the floor, but, upon search, found no mortal in the room. In the coming days, while at the market, curious people overheard him saying to the grocer, âThere is something more than ordinary in the business of the Winchester mansion. It is not womanish fear or superstition that so affrighted the mistress of the house. The house is haunted in all the rooms, upper and lower, that the staff does not stay for a long time.â #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
After years of working at The Winchester Mystery House, one of the caretakers reported that he was contacted by Mrs. Winchester. The dreams in which Mrs. Winchester appeared to him were getting increasingly lively, and he wanted to go on record with the information thus received. According to him, Mrs. Winchester poured his heart out to the young man, incredible though this seemed on the face of it. The gist of it was a request to go to âthe blue roomâ and find certain papers in a metal box. âThis will prove my innocence. I have not harmed a soul. There is written proof. Notarized sworn statements from my staff written October 5, 1922, or 1923.â The message was specific enough, but the papers of course were long since gone. The blue room would be the Blue Seance Room. The restless spirit of the late Mrs. Winchester had evidently decided to be heard once more. At the same time, he was approached by the Society for Psychical Research for an enquiry into his nocturnal impressions. Â
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Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencerâs, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumnerâs synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the âstrongâ of the âfittestâ in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his familyâs industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as âa hero of civilization.â The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.â The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumnerâs paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineauâs popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: âNothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capitalâ; and âcombinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demandâin which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.â There also he found fictional proof that âa self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,â and that âa sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.â Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish âpeculation, tyranny, and fraud.â Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of âcapital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.â Francis Waylandâs standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolseyâs successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, âIs the reading of fiction justifiable?â) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yaleâs history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumnerâs courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumnerâs dealings with a student dissenter: âProfessor, donât you believe in any government aid to industries?â âNo! It’s root, hog, or die.â âYes, but hasnât the hog got a right to root?â âThere are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.â âYo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?â âThatâs the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.â âWell, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldnât you be sore?â âAny other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.â The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumnerâs writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. âThe type of mind which he exhibited,â writes his biographer, âwas the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.â He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumerâs life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870âs, 1880âs and early 1890âs, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), âThe Forgotten Manâ (1883), and âThe Absurd Effort to Make the World Overâ (1894). In the early 1890âs, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of âEarth Hungerâ was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the egoâs existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not manâs own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirableâso few ever like to confess such a thingâbut they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arisesâwho does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happenâunder the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that momentâfear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from âinside,â as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. âI understand what is wrong with youâ; âI understand what makes you act that wayâ; or âI too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differentlyâ; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapistâs technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the âpsychology of everyday life,â would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personalityâfor the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only âloveâ but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a whileâher defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her âprivate religion.â The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clareâs dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural thatâaside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversionâthe merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and âfreeâ sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the fleshâalthough I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern manâs sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this âsicknessâ but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marxâs respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a âsocial neurosis.â âIf the evolution of civilization,â he writes âhad such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilizationâor epochs of itâpossibly even the whole of humanityâhave become âneuroticâ under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be ânormal.â No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freudâs interest in the âsocial neuroses,â one fundamental difference between Dr. Freudâs and Marxâs thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marxâ and Dr. Freudâs views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been âfixatedâ on, or who has âregressedâ to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who ârepeatsâ an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marxâs and Dr. Freudâs concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if oneâs faith is strong enough or if oneâs understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbrokerâs office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanismâbody, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. âFour months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, âWhat the (expletive) is going on here?â I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, âHey, I could have died up there.â I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didnât know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, thatâs where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, âOh, (expletive).â When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, âIf your toes turn blue, come back in.â Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
âI was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, âWhatâs going on here?â I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldnât have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if youâre sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didnât adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.â It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is oneâs faith is strong enough or if oneâs understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbrokerâs office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
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I Will Meet You Once Again Beyond the Grave
With its rapid expansion, its exploitative methods, its desperate competition, and its peremptory rejection of failure, post-bellum America was like a vast human caricature of the Darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. Successful business entrepreneurs accepted by instinct the Darwinian terminology which portrayed the conditions of their existence. Businesspeople are not commonly articulate social philosophers, but a rough reconstruction of their social outlook show how congenial to their thinking were the plausible analogies of social selection, and how welcome was the expansive evolutionary opportunism of the Spencerian system. In a nation permeated with the gospel of progress, the incentive of pecuniary success appealed even to many persons whose ethical horizons were broader than those of business enterprise. âI perceive clearly,â wrote Walt Whitman in Democratic Vistas, âthat the extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States of America, are parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting of riches…â No doubt there were many to applaud the assertion of the railroad executive Chauncey Depew that the guests at the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of the thousands who came there in search of fame, fortune, or power, and that it was âsuperior ability, foresight, and adaptabilityâ that brought them successfully through the fierce competitions of the metropolis. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
James J. Hill, another railroad magnate, in an essay defending business consolidation, argued that âthe fortunes of railroad companies are determined by the law of the survival of the fittest,â and implied that the absorption of smaller by larger roads represents the industrial analogy to the victory of the strong. And John D. Rockefeller, speaking from an intimate accquaintance with the methods of competition, declared in a Sunday-school address: âThe growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest…The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and the law of God.â The most prominent of the disciples of Spencer was Andrew Carnegie, who sought out the philosopher, became his intimate friend, and showered him with favours. In his autobiography, Mr. Carnegie told how troubled and perplexed he had been over the collapse of Christian theology, until he took the trouble to read Darwin and Spencer. âI remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.â #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Perhaps it was comforting, too, to discover that sociual laws were founded in the immutable principles of the natural order. In an article in the North American Review, which he ranked among the best of his writings, Mr. Carnegie emphasized the biological foundations of the law of competition. However much we may object to the seeming harshness of this law, he wrote, âIt is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may sometimes be hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.â Even if it might be desirable for civilization eventually to discard its individualistic foundation, such a charge is not practicable in our age; it would belong to another âlong succeeding sociological stratum,â whereas our duty is with the here and now. The reception accorded to Spencerâs social ideas cannot be disassociated from that accorded to the main body of his thought; however some part of his success probably came because he was telling the guardians of American society what they wanted to hear. Grangers, Greenbackers, Single Taxers, Knights of Labor, trade unionists, Populists, Socialists Utopian and Marxianâall presented challenges to the existing pattern of free enterprise, demanded reforms by state action, or insisted upon a thorough remodeling of the social order. Those who wished to continue in established ways were pressed for a theoretical answer to the rising voices of criticism. Said ironmaster Abram S. Hewitt: âThe problem presented to systems of religion and schemes of government is, to make men who are equal in libertyâthat is, in political rights and therefore entitled to the ownership of propertyâcontent with that inequality in its distribution which must inevitably result from the application of the law of justice.â #RandolphHarris 3 of 21Â
This problem the Spencerian system could solve. Conservatism and Spencerâs philosophy walked hand in hand. The doctrine of selection and the biological apology for laissez faire, preached in Spencerâs formal sociological writings and in a series of shorter essays, satisfied the desire of the select for a scientific rationale. Spencerâs plea for absolute freedom of individual enterprise was a large philosophical statement of the constitutional ban upon interference with liberty and property without due process of law. Spencer was advancing within a cosmic framework the same general political philosophy which under the Supreme Courtâs exegesis of the Fourteenth Amendment served so brilliantly to turn back the tide of state reform. It was this convergence of Spencerâs philosophy with the Courtâs interpretation of due process which finally inspired Mr. Justice Holmes (himself an admirer of Spencer) to protest that âthe fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencerâs Social Statics.â The social views of Spencerâs popularizers were likewise conservative. Youmans took time from his promotion of science to attack the eight-hour strikers in 1872. Labour, he urged in characteristic Spencerian vein, must âaccept the spirit of civilization, which is pacific, constructive, controlled by reason, and slowly ameliorating and progressive. Coercive and violent measures which aim at great and sudden advantages are sure to prove illusory.â #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
He suggested that, if people were taught the elements of political economy and social science during their education, such mistakes might be avoided. Youmans attacked the newly founded American Social Science Association for devoting itself to unscientific reform measure instead of a âstrict and passionless study of society from a scientific point of view.â Until the laws of social behaviour are known, he declared, reform is blind; the Association might do better to recognize a sphere of natural, self-adjusting activity, with which government intervention usually wreaks havoc. There was precious little scope for meliorist activities in the outlook of one who believed with Youmans that science shows âwe are born well, or born badly, and that whoever is ushered into existence at the bottom of the scale can never rise to the top because the weight of the universe upon him.â Acceptance of the Spencerian philosophy brought with it a paralysis of the will to reform. One day, some years after the publication of Progress and Poverty, Youmans in Henry Georgeâs presence denounced with great fervour the political corruption of New York and the selfishness of the rich in ignoring or promoting it when they found it profitable to do so. âWhat do you propose to do about it?â George asked. Youmans replied, âNothing! You and I can do nothing at all. Itâs a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps in four or five thousand years, evolution may have carried men beyond this state of things.â #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The peak of Spencerâs American popularity probably was reached in the fall of 1882, when he made a memorable visit to the United States of America. Despite his aversion to reporters, Spencer received much attention from the press, and hotel managers and railway agents competed for the privilege of serving him. Finally yielding one synthetic âinterviewâ with the gentlemen of the press, Spencer expressed (it was a slightly jarring note) his fear that the American character was not sufficiently developed to make the best use of its republican institutions. The prospect for the future, however, was encouraging; from âbiological truths,â he told the reporters, he inferred that the eventual mixture of the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the population would produce âa finer type of man than has hitherto existed.â Whatever difficulties the Americans might have to surmount, they might âreasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the World has known.â The climax of that visit was a hastily arranged banquet at Delmonicoâs, which gave American notables an opportunity to pay personal tribute. The dinner was attended by leaders in American letters, science, politics, theology, and business. Spencerâs message to this distinguished audience was somewhat disappointing. He had observed, he said, an excess of hurry and hard labour in the tempo of American life, too much of the gospel of work; his friends would ruin their constitutions with exertion. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
The guests rewarded this appeal against strenuosity with an onerous round of fulsome tributes, which painfully embarrassed even the vain Spencer. William Graham Sumner ascribed the foundations of sociological method to the guest of honour; if the South had been familiar with his Social Statics, Carl Schurz suggested that the Civil War might have been averted; John Fiske asserted that his service to religion were as great as his services to science; and Henry Ward Beecher struck a rather incongruous note at the end of a hearty testimonial by promising to meet him once again beyond the grave. However imperfect the appreciation of the guests for the niceties of Spencerâs thought, the banquet showed how popular he had become in the United States of America. When Spencer was on the dock, waiting for the ship to carry him back to England, he seized the hand of Carnegie and Youmans. âHere,â he cried to reporters âare my two best American friends.â For Spencer it was a rare gesture of personal warmth; but more than this, it symbolized the harmony of the new science with the outlook of a business civilization. The rise of critical reformism in economics and sociology, of pragmatism in philosophy, and of other tendencies that undermined Spencerâs vogue and displaced his ideasâthis remains to be treated elsewhere. It is enough to say that, surviving until 1903, he outlived by many years the popularity of his works. In his old age, he was aware that the current of the times was running against his preaching, and a visitor of this period reported finding him âgrievously disappointedâ at the neglect of his political doctrines, the decline of individualism, and the rise of socialist ideals. âHerbert Spencer was a name to conjure with twenty-five years ago,â taunted a religious observer in 1917. âBut how the mighty are fallen! How little interest is shown in Herbert Spencer at the present time!â #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
While it was true that for younger men Spencerâs name no longer carried its old ring of authority, the writer had forgotten that men who were then in their maturityâthe publicists, industrialists, teachers, and writers of the governing generationâhad spent their youth with Spencer. Whatever had become of Synthetic Philosophy, the mark of his evolutionary individualism was indelible. As late as late as 1915, the Forum had seen fit to reprint a collection of Spencerâs individualistic essays, âThe Man Versus the State,â âThe New Toryism,â âThe Coming Slavery,â âOver-Legislation,â âThe Sins of Legislators,â and others, along with commentaries by a galaxy of Republican Party luminaries brilliant enough to dispel all doubt of the vitality of Spencerâs influence among outstanding national leaders. Nicholas Murray Butler, Charles William Eliot, Representative Augustus P. Gardner, Elbert H. Gary, David Jayne Hill, Henery Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, and Harlan Fiske Stone responded to the editorâs request for contributions by âleaders of thought in America who know the tremendous value of Spencerâs work in our social system.â Hillâs remark that he saw at work in this country the same fatal and illogical procedure that Spencer had been fighting in England, ânamely, the gradual imposition of a new bondage in the name of freedom…the increasing subjection of the citizens to the growing tyranny of officialism,â made it clear that the essays were being republished as a manifesto against Wilsonâs New Freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Long after individualism had become a national tradition, Spencerâs doctrines were imported into the Republic. Yet in the expansive age of our industrial culture, he became the spokesman of that tradition, and his contribution materially swelled the stream of individualism if it did not change its course. If Spencerâs abiding impact on American thought seems impalpable to later generations, it is perhaps only because it has been so thoroughly absorbed. His language has become a standard feature of the folklore of individualism. âYou canât make the World all planned and soft,â says the businessman of Middletown. âThe strongest and best surviveâthatâs the law of nature after allâalways has been and always will be.â Man is not required to acquire a perfect character, a complete absence of all faults. In new surroundings or circumstances and under different pressures, new faults may appear. He is required to remove just sufficiently the obstructive conditions within himself. The herd of men are ruled by physical instincts and changing emotions. The aspirant for true individuality must set up higher standards of self-control, personal stability, and harmonious balance. Though man assigns little importance to his thoughts, contrasted with his deeds, their total effect is to dictate his policies which in turn dictate his deeds. If Universal obligations may have to be fulfilled, at least this will not be done in total ignorance. It will be with resignation rather than hatred, and with hope for higher attainment. The habit of always remembering that he is committed to the Quest and to the alteration of character which this involves should help him to refuse assent in temptation and reject despondency in tribulation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
We now have a considerable body of knowledge, both clinical and empirical, as to the conditions which, in psychotherapy, foster the process of learning to be free, of becoming oneself. We have found, this experience comes about in a close, warm, understanding relationship in which there is freedom from such things as threat, and freedom to choose and be. From the practical and research information currently available, it seems that a growth-facilitating of freedom-promoting relationship contains at least three significant qualities. When the psychotherapist is what he is, when in the relationship with his client he is genuine and without âfrontâ of facade, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are following in him, personal change is facilitated. Congruence describes this condition. If appropriate, congruence is the feelings the therapist is experiencing which are available to him, to his awareness, and he can live these feelings, be them, and able to communicate them. No one fully achieves this condition, yet the more the therapist can listen acceptantly to what is going on within himself, and the more he is able to be the complexity of his feelings, without fear the higher the degree of his congruence. Each of us senses this quality in people in many ways. One of the things that offends us about radio, Internet, TV News, and TV commercials is that it is evident from the tone of voice that the announcer is âputting on,â playing a role, saying something he or she does not feel. That is incongruence. Each of us knows individuals whom we somehow trust because we sense that they are being what they are, that we are dealing with the person, not with a polite or professional front. It is this quality of congruence which we sense that research has found to be associated with successful therapy. The more genuine and congruent the therapist has in the relationship, the more probability there that a change in personality in the client will occur. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In our case study with Clare something fascinating happened. In the morning paper, a notice about a shipwreck brought back to her that part of her dream in which she had drifted on waves. When she had time to think about this dream, four associations occurred to her. One was a fantasy of a fantasy of a shipwreck in which she was drifting on the water. When a strong man put his arms around her and saved her, she was in danger of drowning. With him she had a feeling of belonging, and of never-ending protection. He would always hold her in his arms and never leave her. The second association concerned a novel which ended in a similar tone. A girl who had gone through disastrous experiences with several men finally met the man she could love and upon whose devotion she could rely. Then she remembered a fragment of a dream that she had at the time she became familiar with Bruce, the older writer who had encouraged her and implicitly promised to be her mentor. In that dream, she and Bruce walked together hand in hand. He was a hero or a demigod, and she was overwhelmed by happiness. To be singled out by this man was like an indescribable grace and blessing. When recalling this dream Clare smiled, for she had blindly overrated Bruceâs brilliance and only later had seen his narrow and rigid inhibitions. This memory made her recall another fantasy, or rather a frequent daydream, which she had almost forgotten though it had played quite a role at college, before the time of her crush on Bruce. It circled around the figure of a great man, endowed with superior intelligence, wisdom, prominence, and wealth. And this great man made advances to her because beneath her inconspicuous exterior he had snesed her great potentialities. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If given a break, he knew that she could be beautiful and achieve great things. He devoted all his time and energy to her development. He did not merely spoil her by giving her beautiful garments and an attractive home. Under his guidance, not only at becoming a great writer but also at cultivating mind and body, she had to work hard. Thus, he made a beautiful swan out of someone who had great potential. It was a Pygmalion fantasy, created from the point of view of the girl to be developed. She also had to be devoted to her master exclusively. Clare believed associations expressed a wish for an everlasting love. She believed that every woman wanted this. Because Peter did not give her a feeling of security and permanent love, she recognized that this wish was enhanced. With these associations, without becoming aware of it, Clare touched rock bottom. The special characteristics of the âloveâ that she craved, she only saw later. Otherwise, the most significant part of the interpretation is the recognition that Peter did not give her what she wanted. As if she had already known it, it is made casually, but it was her first conscious realization of any deep dissatisfaction with the relationship. Therefore, only the conscious facing of problems counts, but also every step taken forward toward this goal. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Have you ever felt as if you were being pulled into someoneâs story? Maybe you have met someone in your life who could tell you things so vividly it made you see what they were saying in your mind. Their words might have ignited emotions with you. Maybe you could smell the things they were talking aboutâthe fresh bread they spoke of baking. If youy can recall a time like this, then you can safely say that you have been covertly hypnotized. without even knowing, you have been pulled into a place the speaker wanted you. You had not expected to be seeing things so vividly, you had not opened a book or turned on the television, yet there you were, seeing it all unfold. It felt as if you had experienced it with the person, even though you had never left where you stood. When you find yourselfd taking the word of what the speaker is saying, you are not using your own analytical mind. When this happens, your brain takes in what is being said as truth. This is dangerous. Greed can be motivated in two ways: By a physiological imbalance which produces the greedy desire for food, drink, etcetera. Once the physiological need is satisfied, greed ceases, unless the imbalance is chronic. By a psychological imbalance, especially the presence of increased anxiety, loneliness, insecurity, lack of identity, etcetera, which is alleviated by the satisfaction of certain desires like those for food, satisfaction with pleasures of the flesh, power, fame, property, etcetera. This type of greed is, in principle, insatiable, unless a personâs anxiety, etcetera, ceases or is greatly reduced. This first type of greed is reactive to circumstances; the second is inherent in the character structure. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The greedy feeling is highly egocentric. Whether it is hunger, thirst, or desire for pleasures of the flesh, the greedy person wants something for himself exclusively, and that by which he satisfies his desire is only a means for his own purposes. When we speak of arousal of pleasures of the flesh in its greedy form where the other person becomes primarily an object, this is obvious. In the nongreedy feeling, there is little egocentricity. Experience is not needed to preserve oneâs life, to allay anxiety, or to satisfy or enhance oneâs ego; it does not serve to still a powerful tension, but begins precisely where necessity in the sense of survival or still of anxiety ends. In the nongreedy feeling, the person can let go of himself, is not compulsively holding on to what he had and what he wants to have, but is open and responsive. The concept of alienation has its roots in an early phase of the Western tradition, in the thought of Old Testament prophets, more specifically in their concept of idolatry. The prophets of monotheism did not denounce heathen religions as idolatrous primarily because they worshiped several gods instead of one. The essential difference between monotheism and polytheism is not one of the numbers of gods, but lies in the fact of alienation. Man spends his energy, his artistic capacities on building an idol, and then he worships this idol, which is nothing but the result of his own human effort. His life forces have flowed into a âthing,â and this thing having become an idol, is not experienced because of his own productive effort, but as something apart from himself, over and against himself, which he worships and to which he submits. As the prophet Hosea says (XIV, 8): âAssur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say anymore to the work of our hands, you are our gods; for in thee the fatherless finds love.â Idolatrous man bows down to the work of his own hands. The idol represents his own life-forces in an alienated form. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The principle of monotheism, in contrast, is that man is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is infinite, that there is no partial quality in him which can be hypostatized into the whole. God, in the monotheistic concept, is unrecognizable and indefinable; God is not a âthing.â Man being created in the likeness of God is created as the bearer of infinite qualities. In idolatry man bows down and submits to the projection of one partial quality in himself. He does not experience himself as the center from which living acts of love and reason radiate. He becomes a thing, his neighbour becomes a thing, just as his gods are things. âThe idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of menâs hands. They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them are like them; so is everyone that trusts in them,â reports Psalm 135. In programs of education aimed at the prevention of mental illness, it would be well to recognize the secondary school as an institution providing an excellent opportunity to reach large numbers of students with instruction in the beneficial principles of mental hygiene. At the early school age, it is more important that they be given sound suggestions as to how to maintain healthy attitudes, how to manage conflicts, and how to deal with strong emotions than it is that they be informed about mental illness. However thoughtful, courses in mental hygiene are not enough. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Here is an interesting story from a firefighter we will call Hans Fallada. âWhen I got called for the firemanâs job, I was sent to the fire department training school to learn all the things you must know to be a professional firefighter. The training school confronts you with a lot of tough situations. They put you in heavy smoke without masks, so you get a sense of what itâs like to be in a terribly hostile environment, one thatâs claws around your neck, just squeezing and squeezing. You get an understanding of what itâs like to work in complete darkness, where youâre totally blind. This is what itâs like to be in a burning building, you learn. Youâre also taught many other things. You learn how to use the equipment, the fire trucks, the Halligan tool (itâs a pry bar with a form on one end and a point and adz on the other), the axes, the claw tools, and hooks. Youâre taught how to use hoses and nozzles, how to stretch hose, hump hose, pack hose. You learn the science of fire. You learn how fire travels. You learn the various kinds of building construction. You know what kind of windows to expect in different buildings, and you know how to deal with those windows and whether to break them or not. In a way, itâs like studying to be a lawyer or a doctor. In law school, the student studies law books, goes through mock trials, and says, âHey, I really know what Iâm doing.â Then he finds itâs a lot different when heâs in an actual courtroom. The medical student studies chemistry, physiology, anatomy, and how to use a scalpel. But once he gets into an actual operating room, itâs differentâsuddenly peopleâs lives are at stake. It’s no longer an academic confrontation. Itâs right now. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
âItâs the same thing with a firefighter. You learn all these things in training school so that when you are out in the field in an emergency situation, you know where to go and what to do, so that your actions will be effective. Here I was, a trained firefighter. I got assigned to a firehouse in Sacramento. The men I worked with there were great guys, what we call stand-up guys. They had fast lips, they could get around any situation with their mouths when they couldnât do it with their dukes. You meet all kinds of personalities in a firehouse. Theyâre all fundamentally good guys who care about other people. That, in my opinion, is what sets them apart. Thatâs not to say that you have a room full of Francis of Assisi types figuring out how theyâre going to help the poor. But in an emergency situation they care about what happens to people. I got to the firehouse, met these guys. Then, of course, the alarm started ringing. So I went through a few alarms. Mayve it was a false alarm, a garbage pail on fire, a car accident, maybe somebody went out to get a paper and left the soup on the stove. All kinds of things can happen. I remember the first fire. Not really a great fire, but there were a couple of things that happened that day that stick in my memory. The area outside the firehouse is called the apron. When the fire trucks are coming out, two firemen are out there stopping traffic. In those days two firemen rode on the back step of the fire engine. We donât do that anymore because itâs unsafe. I remember being on the back of the rig, itâs two in the afternoon and Iâm putting on my coat, with one arm in the D-ring hanging there like a subway strap. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
âThe truck is stopped momentarily, waiting for the traffic to halt. I look up, and who walks by but a priest from St. Maryâs parish up by 818 N street. He looks over, and he blesses me and the guy beside me on the back of the truck. Now, the other guy may be an atheist for all I know, but I have this priest blessing me, so I make the sign of the cross, a conditioned response like a dog salivating to a stimulus. We get going, and Iâm thinking, âWhatâs going on here? Iâm just doing my job, and this priest is blessing me on the sidewalks of the City of Sacramento.â I guess in his head heâs saying, these guys have a tremendously tough job and they might me in a bit of trouble, so Iâll bless them. But at that point I donât want anybody reminding me that I might be in trouble. All i know is that Iâve been blessed, and that we are going to this alarm. From blocks away I could smell the wood burning. It has a particular smell, not like a car fire, for instance, which has a heavy smell of plastic and rubber. This was a two-story frame building in a row of houses typical of that area of Sacramento, generally lived in by working-calls people. The first thing I thought of, what every firefighter thinks of, was: âis there anybody inside, how bad is the fire, and what is the immediate thing to do?â One of the saving things about being a trooper in a way is that there is leadership you can rely on, and in the fire department we have a lieutenant or a captain on every truck. I was probably with the captain, because I was a probationary firefighter, and they always put a probie with the captain so the captain can keep an eye on on him and assess his performance. The captain has to make reports and decide whether he wants to keep him or transfer him after six months. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
âI’m in an engine company, and the captain says, âOkay, stretch a two-and-a-half-inch line.â This tells us itâs a serious fire, because for a small fire you stretch a smaller line. This was the way we were trained. So we stretch the hose into the building, and Iâm still thinking that Iâm probably in better shape than the others because I was blessed. The ladder company arrives, and they immediately go in and do a search. I donât remember anybody being caught in the fire, maybe somebody was, but it didnât matter to me at the time. I had my job to do. Weâre on our stomachs, crawling into this fire, and Iâm humping, pulling, this gargantuan snake of a hose filled with water. Fifty feet of it weighs ninety pounds when itâs dry, so you can imagine how much it weighs when itâs filled with water. There is black, dense smoke, and we canât see an inch in front of us. Thereâs a red glow in the background, and weâre pushing toward it. Without masks. Making it a âsnottyâ fire, thatâs one where for every square inch of smoke you ingest a square inch of something else comes out through your eyes, nose, and mouth. The red glow is in the back of the building, and we learn later that the fire has gone out through the back windows and is shooting up to the afternoon sky. Weâre on our stomachs, the guy on the nozzle, myself, and the captain behind me, advancing slowly into the fire. Then all of a sudden, this big guy, another firefighter, comes in and jumps on top of the hose, he grabs it from the hands of our nozzle man, and he runs with it in a crouch toward the red glow. Apparently weâre not moving fast enough for him for some reason. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
âNone of us have smoke masks or SCBAs [self-contained breathing apparatus], so weâre all choking. Then we start cursing, âHey, what the (expletive) is this guy doing?â And our nozzle man goes running after the guy, following the string of hose thatâs dancing in front of him. This big guy pulls up maybe fifteen feet, throws himself on the floor, opens the nozzle, and hits the ceiling. The red glow darkens to blackness. He has stopped the fire. Itâs amazing, you can have a whole big room on fire, and a two-and-a-half inch hose will put it out in twelve seconds. My captain was really mad. He said, âWhat the (expletive) are you doing?â And the guy said, âListen, I got the job done, right?â Well, the captain let it go. I didnât say anything because I was new on the job. But I felt that this was our line and our hose, and our territory had been infringed on. Later I heard about the old-time firefighters in Sacramento back in the nineteenth century, when territory was the main thing and there was competition between one firehouse and another. When an alarm came, theyâd send one firefighter ahead with a barrel while they got the horses and everything else ready, and heâd slip the barrel over the fire hydrant. And if another gang tried to use it, heâd fight them off. Theyâd have big fistfights over this hydrant, because the first fire of mine I just knew that somehow we should have put out the fire, particularly, I suppose, in view of the fact that I was well protected by the blessing. What I learned is that it is your job to control the nozzle, and that every fire is a personal confrontation. This is your job, and you have to go in there and put the fire out, and a lot of people are watching you to be assured that the fire is being put out. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
âFirefighting is a highly coordinated job. You donât begin ventilating a building, for instance, opening windows or doors or breaking windows, until there is water in the hose and the water is shooting out of it. Then you operate in a mathematically correct way. What youâre doing is creating pressure inside the room, and the pressure has to have some way of being released, so you break some windows. This is called ventilation. Otherwise, you have the energy of the fire and the energy of the water shooting from the hose, and you have nowhere for all this energy to go. It will just blow back at you toward the door you came in, where thereâs oxygen. That is what creates flashovers fires, when the fire and heat search for oxygen and the fire flashes as it consumes the oxygen. I carried that lesson with me for the rest of my life. The hose is your job, and you have to do the job. If you donât do it and somebody else does, thatâs hard to live with.â Please be sure to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Forsake not wisdom, and wisdom will preserve you; cherish it, and it will keep you. Enter not the path of the wicked, and walk not in the way of evil men. Avoid evil, turn away from it and do good. Now, therefore, hearken unto wisdom, for happy are they that keep its ways. He who find wisdom finds true life, and obtains favour of the Lord. It is not the place that honours the man, but the man that honours the place. Do not consider yourself a gaint, and your neighbour, small as a locust. He who covets things that are not rightfully his, will not only be disappointed in his wish, but even lose the things that belong to him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
One afternoon in December of 1890, at about one o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Winchester was sitting with three of the servant’s children in the Venetian Dining Room. She was reading to them. She rang the annunciator for the parlour-maid, when the door opened, Mrs. Winchester looked up. “I saw the figure of a woman come in and walk up to the side of the table,” she recollected. “She stood there a second or two, and then turned to go out again, but before reaching the door she seemed to dissolve away.” Mrs. Winchester described her as a “blue, short-looking woman” dressed in a blue muslin. “I hardly saw the face,” she added, “which scarcely seemed to be defined at all.” It is interesting that none of the three children saw her, and Mrs. Winchester only mentioned the event to Mr. Hansen, one of the carpenters who lived on the estate.
In the succeeding two months two servants saw the same figure in a blue dress in other rooms of the house; one saw her in the daylight, and one saw her in candlelight. Neither servant was aware of Mrs. Winchester’s own experience. The two young women had become accustomed to the “noises” within the house, but the experience of seeing the lady in blue prompted one of them to give her notice. Mrs. Winchester suffered from other manifestations. On one occasion she glimpsed a ball of brilliant light within an otherwise darkened room. She felt an icy wind in a closed room. Then the strange incidents seemed to subside, and from 1891 onwards, the strange events became more serious.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarahâs CafĂ©, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the Worldâs most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
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The Next One Will be BetterÂ
Whoever does a wrong to another man is not doing it to him alone. He does it also to himself. The nature of the means used will help to predetermine the nature of the end reached. Even though mixed with some good, an evil means cannot lead to a good end, but only to one of its own kind. When it is sought, the truth comes, but is found only when we are ready. This is why the aspirant must take himself in hand, must improve his character and discipline his emotions. There is to be nothing in himself to impede the intuitive power. Moral nobility is not the sole possession of either the rich or the poor, the education or the ignorant. Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state protection of the ignorant medical quacks. He likewise opposed tariffs, state banking, and governmental postal systems. Accused of brutality in his application of biological concepts to social principles, Spenser was compelled to insist repeatedly that he was not opposed to voluntary private charity to the unfit, since it had an elevating effect on the character of the donors and hastened the development of altruism; he opposed only compulsory poor laws and other state measures. Spencer traces the parallels between the growth, differentiation, and integration of society and of animal bodies. Although the purpose of a social organism is different from those of an animal organism, he maintained that there is no difference in their laws of organization. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Among socities as among organisms, there is a struggle for existence. Since it made possible successive consolidation of small groups into large ones and stimulated the earliest forms of social cooperation, this struggle was one indispensable to social evolution. It was assumed that in the future these intersocial struggles would lose their utility and die out. The conflict between lower and higher values, between the false and the true interpretation of life, goes on all the time within all men. However, he who brings it into the open and looks it in the face is the man who had gained more than a little wisdom from the impact of experience. The very process of social consolidation brought about by struggles and conquest eliminates the necessity for continued conflict. Society then passes from its barbarous or militant phase into an industrial phase. In the militant phase, society is organized chiefly for survival. It bristles with military weapons, trains its people for warfare, relies upon a despotic state, submerges the individual, and imposes a vast amount of compulsory cooperation. In contest among such societies those best exemplifying these militant traits will survive; and individuals best adapted to the militant community will be the dominating types. The creation of larger and larger social units through conquests by militant states widens the areas in which internal peace and application to the industrial arts become habitual. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
The militant type now reaches the evolutionary stage of equilibration. There emerges the industrial type of society, a regime of contract rather than status, which unlike the older form is pacific, respectful of the individual, more heterogeneous and plastic, more inclined to abandon economic autonomy in favour of industrial cooperation with other states. Natural selection now works to produce a completely different individual character. Unless there is honest effort to apply practically the knowledge got and the understanding gained from this teaching, unless there is real striving after personal betterment and individual discipline, the interest shown is mere dabbling, not study. Industrial society requires security for life, liberty, and property; the character type most consonant with this society is accordingly peaceful, independent, kindly, and honestly. The emergence of a new human nature hastens the trend from egoism to altruism which will solve all ethical problems. The first moral slip is also the worst one. For the effort to cover it up involves further lapses. Then the road runs downhill from slip to slip. Small mentalities cannot comprehend big truths. Greedy mentalities cannot comprehend generous truths. Bigotry keeps vital facts outside the door of knowledge. This is why philosophic discipline is needed. In the interest of survival, cooperation in industrial society must be voluntary, not compulsory. State regulation of production and distribution, as proposed by socialist, is more akin to the organization of militant society, and would be fatal to the survival of the industrial community; it would penalize superior citizens and their offspring in favour of the inferior, and a society adopting such practices would be outstripped by others. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Spencer was animated by the desire to foster a science of society that would puncture the illusions of legislative reformers who, he believed, generally operated on the assumption that social causes and effects are simple and easily calculable, and that project to relieve distress and remedy ills will always have the anticipated effect. A science of sociology, by teaching men to think of social causation scientifically, would awaken them to the enormous complexity of the social organism, and put an end to hasty legislative panaceas. Fortified by the Darwinian conception of gradual modification over long stretches of time, Spencer ridiculed schemes for quick social transformation. The great task of sociology is to chart the normal course of social evolution, to show how it will be affected by any given policy, and to condemn all types of behaviour that interfere with it. Social science is a practical instrument in a negative sense. Its purpose is not to guide the conscious control of societal evolution, but rather to show that such control is an absolute impossibility, and that the best that organized knowledge can do is to teach men to submit more readily to the dynamic factors in progress. This is the function of a true theory of society as a lubricant but not a motive power in progress: it can grease the wheels and prevent friction but cannot keep the engine moving. There cannot be better done than that of letting social progress go on unhindered; yet an immensity of mischief may be done in the way of disturbing, and distorting and repressing, by policies carried out in pursuit of erroneous conceptions. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Man is called upon to reconcile spiritual aspirations with lifeâs demands. Too many people are willing to make an assault upon the outward effects of evil while leaving untouched the inward causes of evil. Those who want only to gratify bodily appetites and have no use for spiritual satisfactions may regard ideals as quite futile. They may find the only rational purpose in human action is to cast out all aims except selfish ones, subordinating all moral restraints to the realization of those aims in the process. However stubborn and intransigent his character may seem, let him never despair of himself. Even if he keeps making mistakes, let him pick himself up and try again. However slow and laborious such a procedure seems, it will still be effectual in the end. He must purify the will by abandoning error. What he does in his personal relations with others or in the way he meets events is no less a part of his spiritual life than his formal exercises in meditation. If the goals of life are not redefined on a higher plane, the status of life remainsâhoversâbetween that of the animal and the human and does not become fully human. He needs to be war of his own animal self and its interfusion with his human self and its hostility to angelic self. A justly balanced picture would show every man to be good in some points, bad in other points. There is no exception to this. Therefore, there is necessity for the false pride of anyone who ignores his bad points. However, in the spiritual aspirant, such pride is not only unnecessary but also deathly to his progress. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The tyranny of negative thoughts and negative feelings can and must be broken. For this he can look for help from the best in him and the best in others. It is said that necessity shapes its own morality. This is often true. However, the exceptional man listens to a higher command. As if one were no longer identified with them, if repeated regularly, standing aside from oneâs thoughts, observing their nature and results quite critically, becomes a means of self-betterment. It is tremendously important to safeguard the fruits of oneâs studies by purification of character. On this Quest, the aspirantâs motives must necessarily be of the highest quality. Each should do what he or she can to prepare himself by learning how to recognize and eliminate weaknesses. It is equally essential to keep the thoughts, emotions, and actions on as high a level as possible. The discipline of self is a prerequisite to the enlightenment of self. It is true that most people realize that they do not yet come anywhere near such an ideal as philosophy proposes to them regarding their personal development. At least if they are aware of the ideal and if they accept it, they will find that practice can make quite a difference. When these first appear, the simple practice of holding back their own negative thoughts, holding back their own negative feelings and nipping them in the bud is the beginning of becoming their own master. If a man regrets his own conduct, be it a single action or a whole course of actions, he will feel some self-contempt and get depressed. This is a valuable moment, this turning of the ego against itself. If he takes advantage of it to ferret out the cause in his own character, in his own person as it got built up through its reincarnations in Jesus as the Christ, he may remold it in a more satisfactory way. This inner work is accomplished by a series of creative and optimistic prayers. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The experience I have had with my clients causes me profoundly to disagree with the notion that the individual is no more than a link between a series of complex causes and their inevitable and predetermined effects. When I think of the explanation in which Skinner concurs as to his presence at the conference, I cannot make it apply to human events as I know them. When I try to tell myself, for example, that a Freedom Rider did not choose to expose himself to danger, did not voluntarily risk his life for a right which he valued, and had, as a person, no part in his behaviour, my judgment rebels. When I try to tell myself that behaved in this way, went into a dangerous situation, accepted a brutal beating, served a jail sentence, simply because his genetic constitution and his individual and cultural conditioning caused him to move in certain geographical directions, emit certain sounds when beaten, and further vocalizations when arrested, and that all those behaviours were emitted because he had been conditioned to find them rewardingâthis seems to me a most inadequate and degrading view of man. He becomes a meaningless phenomenon in a World which has no sense. If I object to the concept of man as a meaningless molecule in an equation which he had no part in writing, I must be willing to define what I mean when I speak of freedom, when I say that I have observed in others, and have experienced in myself, the process of learning to be free. This may seem especially difficult since, as a behavioural scientist, I agree as much in the psychological as in the physical World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Freedom is essentially an inner thing, something which exists in the living person, quite aside from any of the outward choices of alternatives which we so often think of as constituting freedom. Freedom is a quality where everythingâpossessions, identity, choiceâis taken away from one. However, even months and years in a hostile environment will prove that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedomsâto choose oneâs own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose oneâs own way. It is this inner, subjective, existential freedom which I have observed. It is the realization that âI can live myself, here and now by my own choice. It is the quality of courage which enables a person to step into the uncertainty of the unknown as he chooses himself. It is the discovery of meaning from within oneself, meaning which comes from listening sensitively and openly to the complexities of what one is experiencing. It is the burden of being responsible for the self one chooses to be. It is the recognition by the person that he is an emerging process not a static product. The individual who is thus deeply and courageously thinking his own thoughts, becoming his own thoughts, becoming his own uniqueness, responsibly choosing himself, may be fortunate in having hundreds of objective outer alternatives from which to choose, or he may be unfortunate in having none, but his freedom exists regardless. So, we are speaking of something which exists within the individual, of something phenomenological rather than objective, but to be prized. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
In defining this experience of freedom is that it exists not as contradiction to the picture of the psychological universe as a sequence of cause and effect, but as a complement to such a universe. Freedom, rightly understood, is a fulfillment, by the person, of the ordered sequence of his life. The free man…believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. He moves out voluntarily, freely, repsonsibly, to play his significant part in the World whose determined events move through his spontaneous choice and will. He who forgets all that is caused and makes decisions out of the depths…is a free man, and destiny confronts him as the counterpart of his freedom. It is not his boundary but his fulfillment. This is the answer of the modern philosopher to the prevailing view that man is no more than the sum of his condition. Even more is no more than the sum of his conditioning. Even more convincing than the intellectual answer is the experience of one client after another, as he moves in therapy toward an acceptance of the realities of the World outside and inside himself, and moves toward becoming a responsible agent in this real World. We are speaking then, of a freedom which exist in the subjective person, a freedom which he courageously uses to live his potentialities. We are speaking of a freedom in which the individual chooses to fulfill herself by playing a responsible and voluntary part in brining about the destined events of his World. This experience of freedom is for my clinets a most meaningful development, one which assists them in becoming human, in relating to others, in being a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Contemporary industrial man has undergone an intellectual development to which we do not yet see any limits. Simultaneously he tends to emphasize those sensations and feeling experiences which he shares with the animal: desires for pleasures of the flesh, aggression, fright, hunger, and thirst. The decisive question is, Are there any emotional experiences which are specifically human and which do not correspond to what we know as being rooted in the lower brain? The view is often voiced that the tremendous development of the neocortex has made it possible for man to arrive at an ever-increasing intellectual capacity but that his lower brain is hardly different from that of his primate ancestors and hence that, emotionally speaking, he has not developed and can at best deal with his âdrivesâ only by repression or control. There are specifically human experiences which are neither of an intellectual character nor identical with those feeling experiences which by and large are like those of the animal. Not being competent in the field of neurophysiology, I can only guess that relations between the large neocortex and the old brain are the basis for these specifically human feelings. There are reasons to speculate that the specifically human affective experiences like love, tenderness, compassion, and all affects which do not serve the function of survival are based on the interaction between the new and the old brain; hence, that man is not distinguished from the animal only by his intellect, but by new affective qualities which result from the interaction between the neocortex and the base of animal emotionality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The student of human nature can observe these specifically human affects empirically and he cannot be deterred by the fact that neurophysiology has not yet demonstrated the demonstrated the neurophysiological basis for this sector of experiences. As with many other fundamental problems of human nature, the student of the science of man cannot be placed in the position of neglecting his observations because neurophysiology has not yet given the green light. Each science, neurophysiology as well as psychology, has its own method and necessarily will deal with such problems as it can handle at a given point in its scientific development. It is the task of the psychologist to challenge the neurophysiologist, urging him to confirm or deny his findings, just as it is his task to be aware of neurophysiological conclusions and to be stimulated and challenged by them. Both sciences, psychology and neurophysiology, are young and very much at their inception. They must develop relatively independently and yet remain in close touch with each other, mutually challenging and stimulating. As far as the âdrivesâ which function for the sake of survival are concerned, it does not sound implausible that a computer could be developed which would parallel this whole aspect of feeling sensations, but as far as the specifically human feeling aspect, which does not serve survival purposes, is concerned it seems difficult to imagine that a computer could be constructed with nonsurvivial functions. One might even say that the âhumane experienceâ could be negatively defined as one which cannot completely duplicated by a machine. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Seeing alienation as a pathological phenomenon must not obscure the fact that Hegel and Marx considered it a necessary phenomenon, on which is inherent in human evolution. This is true regarding the alienation of reason as well as of love. Only when I can distinguish between the World outside becomes an object, can I grasp it and make it my World, become one with it again. The infant, from whom the World is not yet conceived as âobject,â can also not grasp it with his reason and reunite himself with it. Man must become alienated to overcome this split in the activity of his reason. The same holds true for love. If the infant has not separated himself from the World outside, he is still part of it, and hence cannot love. To love, the âotherâ must become a stranger, and in the act of love, the stranger ceases to be a stranger and becomes me. Love presupposes alienationâand at the same time overcomes it. The same idea is to be found in the prophetic concept of the Messianic Time and Marxâs concept of socialism. In Paradise man still is one with nature, but not yet aware of himself as separate from nature and his fellowman. By his act of disobedience man acquires self-awarteness, the World becomes estranged from him. In the process of history, according to the prophetic concept, man develops his human powers so fully that eventually he will acquire a new harmony with men and nature. Socialism, in Marxâs sense, can only come, once man has become completely alienated and thus is able to reunite himself with men and nature without sacrificing his integrity and individuality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Returning to our case study of Clare, while she was going over her association of a memory, it occurred to her in connection with the âforeign cityâ of the dream she had. Once when she was in a foreign city, she had lost her way to the station; since she did not know the language, she could not ask directions and thus she missed her train. As she thought of this incident it occurred to her that she had behaved in a silly manner. She might have bought a dictionary, or she might have gone into any great hotel and asked the porter. However, apparently, she had been too timid and too helpless to ask. Then it suddenly struck her that this very timidity had played a part also in the disappointment with Peter. Instead of expressing her wish to have him back for the weekend she had encouraged him to see a friend in the country so that he could have some rest. An early memory emerged of her doll Emily, whom she loved most tenderly. Emily had only one flaw: she had only a cheap wig. Clare deeply wanted for her a wig of real hair, which could ne combed and braided. She often stood before a toy shop and looked at dollars with real hair. One day she was with her mother in the toy shop, and the mother, who was generous in giving presents, asked her whether she would like to have a wig with real hair. However, Clare declined. The wig was expensive, and she knew that the mother was short of money. And she never got it, a memory which even now moved her almost to tears. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
She was disappointed to realize that she had still not overcome her reluctance in expressing her wishes, despite the work on this problem during her analytical treatment, but at the same time she felt tremendously relieved. This remaining timidity appeared to be the solution to her distress of the previous days. She merely had to be franker with Peter and let him know her wishes. Clareâs interpretation illustrates how an only partially accurate analysis can miss the essential point and blur the issue involved. It also demonstrates that a feeling of relief does not in itself prove that the solution found is the real one. The relief resulted from the fact that by hitting upon a pseudo solution Clare succeeded, temporarily, in circumventing the crucial problem. If she had not been unconsciously determined to find an easy way out of her disturbance, she would probably have paid more attention to the association. The memory was not just one more example of her lack of assertiveness. It clearly indicated a compulsion to give first importance to her motherâs needs to avoid becoming the object of even vague resentment. The same tendency applied to the present situation. She had been too timid in expressing her wish, but this inhibition arose less from timidity than from unconscious design. Peter was an aloof person, hypersensitive to any demands upon him. At that time Clare was not fully aware, but she sensed it sufficiently to hold back any direct wishes concerning his time, just as she refrained from ever mentioning the possibility of marriage, though she often thought of it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
If she had asked him to be back for the weekend, he would have complied, but with resentment. Clare could not have recognized this fact, however, without a dawning realization of the limitations within Peter, and this was still impossible for her. She preferred to see primarily her own share in the matter, and to see that part of it which she felt confident of overcoming. It should be remembered, too, that it was an old pattern of Clareâs to preserve a difficult relationship by taking all the blame on herself. This was essentially the way in which she had dealt with her mother. The result of Clareâs attributing the whole distress to her own timidity was that she lostâat least consciouslyâher resentment toward Peter, and looked forward to seeing him again. This happened the next evening. However, a new disappointment was in store for her. Peter not only was late for the appointment but looked tired and did not express any spontaneous joy at seeing her. As a result, she became self-conscious. He was quick to notice her freezing up and, was apparently his habit, he took the offensive, asking her whether she had been angry at his not coming home for the weekend. She answered with a weak denial but on further pressure admitted that she had resented it. She could not tell him of the pathetic effort she had made not to resent it. He scolded her for being childish and for considering only her own wishes. Clare was miserable. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
While a person must be aware of the usual type of hypnosis, covert hypnosis is a thing done to you, and you are unaware of what is happening. If you have been covertly hypnotized or not, you may never know. Chances are though that you have experienced things then later wondered why in the World you participated in that thing or acted the way you did. Those who seek to use covert hypnosis on you to get you to do what they want, generally will not want to let you in on what they did to you. It is not like they must use a pocket watch to put you under their spell. Often, the reasons to hypnotize you are to get you to darker things than you normally would. Other times, it may be used to distract you from something so they can get away with what they have done. Whatever the reason is, you can bet it is never a good one. If it was, then the hypnotist would be happy to let you in on what they are doing to you. We live in the Age of Anxiety. Certainly, we have much to be anxious about and worried. Uncertainty is perhaps the greatest stimulus to anxiety, and at the present time we are confronted by a universal uncertainty as to the future of our World that has an urgency and immediacy surpassing that of any previous period of history. We are faced with the imminent possibility of cataclysmic destruction of the World through nuclear war. Insofar as all peoples of the World know this uncertainty, they share for the first time in a universal anxiety. However, the fact of a common and heavy anxiety does not mean obviously that ours is a more anxious World than ever before. Uncertainty is a condition of life; anxiety has been experienced by all men in all periods. Civilization is the process whereby men change what it is they fear. However, ultimate uncertainties have always been coupled with immediate dangers to make men anxious. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
If this is the Age of Anxiety, it is not so simply as a function of absolute increase in the things about which man is fearful. Rather it is so because we have taught man to be anxious about his anxiety. We have attributed to anxiety and to the efforts of escape anxiety all of manâs neurotic ills. We have sensitized ourselves to recognize the signs of anxiety, and we have been taught that the signs of anxiety are symptoms. We have been encouraged to the fallacious values of a total avoidance of anxiety as a goal of life; we have been led to believe that complete freedom from anxiety would be the distinguishing characteristic of an adjusted life. Many people are unaware that the psychopathology of a significant portion of psychiatric patients (the so-called psychopaths and character disorders) is attributed by some authorities to a pathological incapacity to experience anxiety. Much of what we have learned about psychopathology, and especially about the etiology of neuroses, has come through an understanding of the effects of severe anxiety and of the mechanisms by which the individual copes with anxiety. It is essential to the aims of mental health education that the importance and role of anxiety be understood by everyone. However, in this endeavour, there has been a failure to distinguish between normal and pathological anxiety. If a person were totally incapable of experiencing pain, his life would be seriously jeopardized. The experiencing of continual pain is abnormal and signals the need for efforts to correct that cause of the pain. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
However, it would be inimical to the welfare of a normal person to drug him so that this pain sensitivity was continuously reduced or absence. Medical literature contains fascinating accounts of injuries and illnesses (and abnormal complications thereof) of persons apparently suffering a congenital defect in their neurological system for the sensation of pain. The capacity to experience pain is normal, and the sensation of pain is normal under certain conditions. Likewise, anxiety is a normal experience when present to certain degrees in appropriate situations. When taking an examination, when applying for a job, when getting married, when being prepared for surgery, when making a speech, it is normal to be anxious. When facing any new situation or demand for which there is an uncertain outcome, it is normal to experience much anxiety. The signs of anxiety (such as increased heart rate, dry throat, perspiring hands) are indications that oneâs physiological apparatus is in a state of readiness for special effort. One could interpret these experiences as signs that one is keyed up and âready to go.â Or one can interpret these as symptoms of anxiety, and become anxious about themâand this may have a disrupting effect on performance. It is an unfortunate result of the massive attention which has been given to anxiety that people have been led to view all experiences of the signs of ânervousnessâ as symptoms of pathological anxiety. Once the arrive at this orientation they are potential candidates for psychotherapy, and in presenting their complaints of incapacitating anxiety, it may not be immediately clear to the therapist that their symptoms represent the circular, autocatalytic effects of being âanxious about anxiety.â #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
The limited resources for expert psychotherapy should not be dissipated upon individuals who have inappropriate attitudes and expectations. Mental health educators must make a concerted effort to teach the public about normal anxiety and its necessary role in adjustment. They must teach that physiological changes under stress are signs of normal functioning, not symptoms of pathology. The adult public must be helped to correct its currently predominant and unhealthy tendency to overinterpret and be fearful of normal anxiety. In the instruction and rearing of children we have the opportunity both to teach them the biological utility of anxiety and to assist them in the progressive development of tolerance for it. Being a firefighter is a job where one must deal with a lot of anxiety. âI can still remember the day the Sacramento Fire Department called me. I was so happy. That was the place I wanted to work. I had just taken the fire exam in San Francisco, where I had gone to high school and where my parents still lived. I really didnât want to go back there. I was back in San Francsico about a week, when somebody from the city personnel department called, saying, âIâve been trying to get hold of you for days. Where have you been? We want you to come in and talk to us.â The exam process consisted of an initial interview with a personnel staff member, covering general stuff like, âWhy do you want to be a firefighter? Why do you think youâre qualified for this work? Do you get along well with people?â Then there was an interview with one of the departmentâs chief officers that was a lot more specific. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
âIf you passed the interview, you were given a physical agility examination, where you ran a dash of, Iâm not sure how many hundred yards, you had to walk a balance beam and climb a fifty-foot ladder up to the departmentâs drill tower. Once on top of the tower, you had to lift a hose bundle. That was 150 feet of inch-and-a-half hose tied into a bundle, with a rope tied to it that went up over a hose roll at the top of the grill tower. You had to pull that up, hand over hand, to the top, and then set it back down again. You wore a doughnut roll like a backpack for a couple of sessions and had to climb a ladder to the third floor and back down. You had to take a twenty-four-foot ladder off the side of a pumper, set it down, then put it back on. All this was timed. Then there was a mechanical aptitude test, where you had a series of nuts and bolts you had to assemble. That was the exam at the time. It was funny because the hose bundle pull was the thing I was most concerned about. I had been running for a long time and felt good about my heart, lungs, and legs, but having been a student, I wasnât pumping iron, and my arms werenât real strong. I had a summer job managing a gymnasium for San Francisco parks department. We had a rope that went up to the ceiling, and the test for the fire department then was a rope climb, so I spent the whole summer climbing the rope and did it with no problem. Then I returned to Sacramento, and my friends in the fire department said, âThey changed the test. Thereâs no longer a rope climb. Now youâve got to pull a bundle up, hand over hand.â Anyway, I wound up passing the test without any trouble, and came to work a few weeks after that. Please keep the Sacramento Fire Department in your heart and donate to ensure they receive all the resources they need. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Human Perfection is Not Only Possible but InevitableÂ
There is all the difference between a sturdy independence and an inflated self-esteem. An experience which is a blow to his ego ought to be received with humility and analysed with impartiality. However, too often the man receives it with resentment and analyses it with distortion. In the result he is doubly harmed: there is the suffering itself and there is the deterioration of character. We sin by wandering away from our true inner selves, by letting ourselves become immersed in the thoughts and desires which surround us, by losing our innermost identity and taking up an alien one. This is the psychology of sin as philosophy sees it. However, if it had not succeeded overcoming the bondage of flesh, feeling, and thought and penetrating by means of its flawless technique into the World of the divine spirit, which is the real man, it could not have gained the knowledge for such a view of man. He is to live for the praise and blame, not of other people, but of his own higher self. The distance from lip to heart is sometimes immense. Who has not known men who had God prominent in their heard speech but evil prominent in their silent desires? The philosophic way of living asks for more than most men possess, more command of the passions, more discipline of the thoughts, and more submissiveness to intuition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The moral injunctions which he finds in this teaching and must follow out in his life, are based on understanding the relation between his higher self and his lower self. They are not arbitrary commands but inevitable consequences of applying the adage, âMan, know thyself.â When anyone takes advantage of it to bloster his own ego at the expense of those under him, there is an abuse of authority. He will be virtuous not merely because so many others are–it is safer, it stops the prodding of conscience, etceteraâbut much more because it is essential to put up no obstructions to the light flowing from the Overself. When applying evolution and social Darwinism to society, we are doing poetic justice to its origins. The âsurvival of the fittestâ was a biological generalization of the cruel processes which reflective observers saw at work in early nineteenth century society, and Darwinism was a derivative of political economy. The miserable social conditions of the early industrial revolution had provided the data for Malthusâ Essay on the Principle of Population, and Malthusâ observations had been the matrix of natural-selection theory. The stamp of its social origin was evident in Darwinian theory. âOver the whole of English Darwinism,â Nietzsche once observed, âthere hovers something of the odor of humble people in need and in straits.â #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Darwin acknowledged his great indebtedness to Malthus: âIn October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement âMalthus on Population,â and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.â Spenerâs theory of social selection, also written under the stimulus of Malthus, arose out of his concern with population problems. In two famous articles that appeared in 1852, six years before Darwin and Wallace jointly published sketches of their theory, Spencer had set forth the view that the pressure of subsistence upon population must have a beneficent effect upon the human race. This pressure had been the immediate cause of progress from the earliest human times. By placing a premium upon skill, intelligence, self-control, and the power to adapt through technological innovation, it has stimulated human advancement and selected the best of each generation for survival. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Because he did not extend his generalization to the whole animal World, as Darwin did, Spencer failed to reap the full harvest of his insight, although he coined the expression âsurvival of the fittest.â He was more concerned with mental than physical evolution, and accepted Lamarckâs theory that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a means by which species can originate. This doctrine confirmed his evolutionary optimism. For if mental as well as physical charactersitics could be inherited, the intellectual powers of the race would become cumulatively greater, and over several generations the ideal man would finally be developed. Spencer never discarded his Lamarckism, even when scientific opinion turned overwhelmingly against it. Spencer called for a return to natural rights, setting up as an ethical standard the right of every man to do as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he does not infringe upon the equal rights of others. In such a scheme, the sole function of the state is negativeâto insure that such freedom is not curbed. Fundamental to all ethical progress, Spence believed, is the adaptation of human character to the conditions of life. The root of all evil is the ânon-adaptation of constitution to conditions.â Because the process of adaptation, founded in the very nature of the organism, is constantly at work, evil tends to disappear. While the moral constitution of the human race is still ridden with vestiges of manâs original predatory life which demanded brutal self-assertion, adaptation assures that he will ultimately develop a new moral constitution fitted to the needs of civilized life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Human perfection is not only possible but inevitable: âThe ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certainâas certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance that all men will die…Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.â Some young much, such as actor Ian Nelson, who is wise beyond his years, also believes in the idea of human perfection. He has helped other people gain more success in their careers by sharing with them opportunities that were meant for him. And he has a very optimistic attitude about helping others become successful and sharing in their joy, but I guess that is why he is so successful. However, Spencer was ultra-conservative. His categorical repudiation of the state interference with the ânatural,â unimpeded growth of society led him to oppose all state aid to the poor. They were unfit, he said, and should be eliminated. âThe whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the World of them, and to make room for better.â Nature is as insistent upon fitness of mental character as she is upon physical character, âand radical defects are as much causes of death in the one case as in the other.â He who loses his life because of his stupidity, vice, or idleness is in the same class as the victims of weak viscera or malformed limbs. Under natureâs laws alike are put on trial. âIf they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.â #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
To some, it must seem strangely out of tune with the modern World to speak of learning to be free. The growing opinion today is that man is essentially unfree. He is unfree in a cultural sense. He is all too obviously a pawn of government. He is molded by mass propaganda into being a creature with certain opinions and beliefs, desired and pre-planned by the powers that be. He is the product of his classâlower, middle, or upperâand his values and his behaviour are shaped by the class to which he belongs. So, it seems increasingly clear from the study of social institutions and influences, that man is simply the creature of his culture and his circumstances, and most decidedly is not free. At a still deeper level the behavioural sciences have added to this conception of man as unfree. Man is determined in part by his heredityâin his intelligence, his personality type, perhaps even his tendency toward mental aberration. He is above all the product of his conditioningâthe inevitable result of the fortuitous events which have âshaped upâ his behaviour. Many of our most astute behavioural scientists agree that this process of conditioning, of âshaping upâ the individualâs behaviour, will no longer be left to chance, but will be planned. Certainly, the behavioural sciences are developing a technology which will enable us to control the individualâs behaviour to a degree which now would seem fantastic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Along with the developlement of this technology has gone an underlying philosophy of rigid determinism in the psychological sciences which can perhaps best be illustrated by a brief exchange which I had with Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard at a recent conference. A paper given by Dr. Skinner led me to direct these remarks to him. âFrom what I understood Dr. Skinner to say, it is his understanding that though he might have thought he chose to come to that meeting, might have thought he had a purpose in giving that speech, such thoughts are illusory. He made certain marks on paper and emitted certain sounds here simply because his genetic makeup and his past environment had operantly conditioned his behaviour in such a way that it was rewarding to make these sounds, and that he as a person does not enter this. In fact, if I get his thinking correctly, from his strictly scientific point of view, he, as a person, does not exist.â In his reply, Dr. Skinner said that he would not go into the question of whether he had any choice in the matter (presumably because the whole issue is illusory) but stated, âI do accept your characterization of my own presence here.â I do not need to labour the point that for Dr. Skinner the concept of âlearning to be freeâ would be quite meaningless. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Thus, though there are opposing voices, the general thrust of the cultural trend throughout both the West and Communist World is to say that man is not free, that there is no such thing as a free man. We are formed and moved by forcesâcultural forces without, and unconscious forces withinâwhich we do not comprehend, and which are beyond our control. We will soon be formed more knowingly and more precisely by scientific technology which will replace the crude way in which we have been molded by practically fortuitous natural events. The age of information of our time prides itself on the fact that millions of people have a chance and, in fact, use the chance to listen to excellent live, recorded, or streamed music, to see art in the many museums in the country, and to read the masterworks of human literature from Plato to Anne Rice in easily available, inexpensive editions. No doubt for a small minority this encounters with art and literature is a genuine experience. For the vast majority, âcultureâ is another article of consumption and a status symbol since having seen the ârightâ pictures, knowing the ârightâ music, and having read the good books indicates college education and hence is useful for climbing the social ladder. The best of art has been transformed into an article of consumption, and it is reacted to an alienated fashion. The proof of this is that many of the very same people who go to concerts, listen to classical music, and buy a paperback Plato view tasteless and vulgar offerings on television without disgust. If their experience with art were genuine, they would turn off their television sets when they are offered artless, banal âdrama.â #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet manâs longing for the dramatic, that which touches upon the fundamental of human experience, is not dead. While most of the drama offered in theaters or on the screen is either a nonartistic commodity or is consumed in an alienated fashion, the modern âdramaâ is primitive and barbaric when it is genuine. In our day the longing for drama is manifested most genuinely in the attraction which real or fictionalized accidents, crimes, and violence have for most people. An automobile accident or fire will attract crowds of people who watch with great intensity. Why do they do so? Simply because the elemental confrontation with life and death breaks into the surface of conventional experience and fascinates people hungry for drama. For the same reason, nothing sells a newspaper better than reports of crime and violence. The fact is that whole on the surface the Greek drama or Rembrandtâs paintings are held in the highest esteem, their real substitutes are crime, murder, and violence, either directly visible on the television screen or reported in the newspapers. Some people suffer from an alienation of hope. One characteristic of the alienation of hope is the future becoming transformed into an idol. This idolatry of history can be clearly seen from Robespierreâs point of view. âO posterity, sweet and tender hope of humanity, thou art not a stranger to us; it is for thee that we brave all the blows of tyranny; it is thy happiness which is the price of our painful struggles: often discouraged by the obstacles that surround us, we feel the need of thy consolations; it is to thee that we confide the task of completing our labours, and the destiny of all the urban generations of me!… Make haste, O posterity, to bring to pass the hour of equality, of justice, of happiness!â #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Similarly, a distorted version of Marxâ philosophy of history has often been used in the same sense by Communists. The logic of this argument is: whatever is in accord with the historical trend is necessary, hence good and vice versa. In this view, whether in the form of Robespierreâs or the communist argument, it is not man who makes history but history that makes man. It is not man who hopes and has faith in the future but the future that judges him and decides whether he had the right faith. Marx expressed very succinctly the opposite view of history to the alienated one I just quoted. âHistory,â he wrote in The Holy Family, âdoes nothing, it possesses no colossal riches, it fights no battles! It is rather man, actual and living man, who does all this; âhistoryâ does not use man as a means for its purposes as though it were a person apart; it is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his ends.â Not only are all forms of depression, dependence and idol worship (including the âfanaticâ) direct expressions of, or compensations for, alienation; the phenomenon of the failure to experience oneâs identity which is a central phenomenon at the root of psychopathological phenomena is also a result of alienation. Precisely because the alienated person has transformed his own functions of feeling and thought to an object outside, he is not himself, he has no sense of âI,â of identity. This lack of a sense of identity has many consequences. The most fundamental and general one is that it prevents integration of the total personality, hence it leaves the person disunited within himself, lacking either capacity âto will one thingâ or if he seems to will one thing his will lack authenticity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In the widest sense, every neurosis can be considered an outcome of alienation; this is so because neurosis is characterized by the fact that one passion (for instance, for money, power, women, etcetera) becomes dominant and separated from the total personality, thus becoming the ruler of the person. This passion is his idol to which he submits even though he may rationalize the nature of his idol and give it many different and often well-sounding names. He is ruled by a partial desire, he transfers all he has left to this desire, he is weaker the stronger âitâ becomes. He has become alienated from himself precisely because âheâ has become the slave of a part of himself. Now, in our case study, Clare was unable to let go of a man, for whatever reasons. The repression of her resentment is striking as she was fully aware of her disappointment at Peter, the man she was involved with, staying away. Moreover, on such an occasion resentment would certainly have been a natural reaction, and it was not in her character never to allow herself to be angry at anyone; she often was angry at people, though it was characteristic of her to shift anger from its real source to trivial matters. However, raising this question, while apparently only a routine matter, would have meant broaching the subject of why the relationship with Peter was so precarious that any disturbance of it had to be shut out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
After Clare had thus managed to shake off the whole problem from her conscious mind, she fell asleep again and had a dream. She was in a foreign city; the people spoke a language that she did not understand; she lost her way, this feeling of being lost emerging very distinctly; she had left all her money and luggage deposited at the station. Then she was at a fair; there was something unreal about it, but she recognized gambling stands and a freak show; she was riding on a merry-go-round which turned around more and more quickly so she was drifting on waves, and she woke up with a mixed feeling of abandon and anxiety. The first part of the dream reminded her of an experience she had had in adolescence. She had been in a strange city; had forgotten the name of her hotel and had felt lost, as in the dream. Also, it came back to her that the night before, when returning home from the movie, she had felt similarly lost. The gambling stands and the freak show she associated with her earlier thoughts about Peter making promises and not keeping them. Such places, too, make fantastic promises and there, too, one is usually cheated. In addition, she regarded the freak show as an expression of her anger at Peter: he was a freak. What really startled her in the dream was the depth of the feeling of being lost. She immediately explained away her impressions, however, by telling herself that these expressions of anger and of feeling lost were but exaggerated reactions to her disappointment, and that dreams express feelings in a grotesque way anyhow. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
It is true that the dream translated Clareâs problems into grotesque terms, but it did not exaggerate the intensity of her feeling. And even if it had constituted an exaggeration, it would not have been sufficient merely to dismiss it on that score. If there is an exaggeration it must be examined. What is the tendency that prompts it? Is it not an exaggeration but an adequate response to an emotional experience, the meaning and intensity of which are beyond awareness? Did the experience mean something quite different on the conscious and unconscious level? Clare felt just as miserable, as lost, as resentful as the dream and the earlier associations indicated. However, since she still clung to the idea of a close love relationship this realization was unacceptable to her. For the same reason she ignored that part of the dream about having left all her money in the luggage at the station. This was probably a condensed expression of her feeling that she had invested all she had in Peter, the station symbolizing Peter and connoting something transitory and indifferent as opposed to the permanence and security of home. And Clare disregarded another striking emotional factor in the dream when she did not bother to account for its ending with anxiety. Nor did she make any attempts to understand the dream. She contended with the superficial explanation of this and that element, and thus learned from it no more than she knew anyhow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If Clare had probed more deeply, she might have seen the main theme of the dream as this: I feel helpless and lost; Peter is a great disappointment; my life is like a merry-go-round, and I cannot jump off; there is no solution but drifting; but drifting is dangerous. We cannot discard emotional experiences, however, as easily as we can discard thoughts unconnected with our feelings. And it is quite possible that Clareâs emotion experience of anger and particularly of feeling lost, despite her blatant failure to understand them, lingered on in her mind and were instrumental in her pursuing the path of analysis she subsequently embarked upon. While the public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems, the mental health movement has inevitably created problems as it has offered solutions. The nature of neurosis as presently defined is such as to encourage overinterpretation of the significance of a host of idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. The mental health educator has understandably, in the first phase of the moment, operated within the pathological framework afforded by essentially gross medical definitions of emotional illness. Emphasis has been upon detection and prevention of illness, rather than upon modes of achieving and maintaining beneficial mental health. The meaning of neurosis, ambiguous to begin with, has been subtly extended to cover a variety of cultural delusions, perhaps the most prominent which is the Western myth that a state of happpiness is both a primary and achievable goal of life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
One effect of the mental health movement has been to encourage many people to see their unhappiness. Psychotherapist, both visible and âinvisible,â are increasingly confronted by would-be patients who do not manifest any of the more objective hallmarks of a neurotic problem, who do not complain of failures of productivity or achievement, who do not suffer from serious interpersonal conflicts, who are free of functional somatic complaints, who are not incapacitated by anxiety, or tormented by obsessions, whose objective life circumstances they confess are close to optimal. These seekers of help suffer freedom from complaint. The absence of conflicts, frustrations, and symptoms brings a painful awareness: of absenceâthe absence of faith, of commitment, of meaning, of the need to search out personal, ultimate values, or of the need to live comfortably and meaningfully each day in the face of final uncertainty. For increasing numbers of rational, educated, and thoughtful men the central struggle becomes one of finding and keeping an emotional and psychological balance between the pain of doubt and the luxury of faith. A distaste for this struggle, or an insistence on its resolution as a necessary condition for continued existence is at the heart of the philosophical neuroses. In contrast to the psychoneuroses, we have no established knowledge or technique to bring to bear this form of dis-ease. We do not have a scientifically confirmable matrix of ideas concerning how or what to teach those who suffer philosophical neuroses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The philosophical neurotic suffers in his struggle to be both reasonable and hopeful, and he can be helped in his skirmish by access to human wisdom and by encouragement to expose himself to it. However, in this seeking for counsel and for opportunity to test doubt against faith or faith against doubt, he must not be misled to think that any group of experts has a corner on some specialized wisdom about the meaning of life or how to live it. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the mental health movement that a large portion of the limited psychotherapeutic resources afforded by psychiatrists and psychologists is being consumed by persons who suffer a philosophical anomie for which neither psychiatrist nor psychologist can offer specific therapy. The person with a philosophical neurosis deserves care and can be helped; it would be in his own interests and in the interest of social economy for him to be encouraged to seek guidance from those who are most practiced and equipped to think with him in the domain of values, meaning, ethics, and eschatology. Recognition of the philosophical neurosis and the special problems its presents have been delayed on the part of psychotherapists because the well-bred, well-fed, well-read qualities typical of this patient appeal to the intellectual and social prejudices of the therapist and make for spontaneous rapport and empathy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In combating the general ignorance and superstition of the public about mental illness, the mental health movement has necessarily attacked the idea that emotional and mental problems should be a source of shame. The public has been taught that everyone has a basic susceptibility to psychological maladjustment and, furthermore, that a very large number of people in fact suffer from some degree of ânervousness.â All of this teaching is true and was most necessary in ending the shameful connotations that formerly prevailed. However, as an unfortunate consequence of these beneficial changes, neurosis has achieved respectability. In some sophisticated segments of our society it has become expected and accepted for the individual to acknowledge his âneurosisâ–and to have all manner of immature, selfish, irresponsible behaviours explained by him (and accepted by his companions) as âsymptomsâ of his âsickness.â Among persons whose work demands some degree of creative imagination there is a popular stereotype which equates genius with neurosis. It becomes a tempting apology to substitute symptoms for effort; to manifest the temperament of an artist may be an easier road to achieving an artistic identity than to be truly creative. When individuals are volubly proud that they are âin therapy,â although they remain silent on the content and course of that self-discovering endeavour, with discussion of the causes and treatment reserved by socially sanctioned conspiracy of silence between therapist and client (or with normal social respect for the individualâs privacy), it may be wondered if the continuation of therapy is required at least in part because the patient is reluctant to lose the dramatic appeal of his status. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
And when the patient does speak freely of the content of his therapeutic conversations to all willing listeners, it may be wondered if he suffers from lack of any other mental content with which he would hope to hold an audience. To be proud of an illness or a defect is a separate illness, and perhaps needs to be treated first. Manâs capacity to feel shame is not pathological in itself; pathology arises from what he does or fails to do about shame. Shame can be hidden by repression and denial, but the massive effort required to hide oneâs shame results in symptoms. Or, shame can yield a sense of responsibility, and this can power a search for self-understanding, for self-acceptance, and for better behaviour. The mental health movement has lifted the pathological shame previously associated with emotional illness. Now it must be attentive to combat the tendency for the unashamed to have pathological pride in their maladjustment. Liars have a dangerous maladjustment, which is why they often answer a question with one of their own. The tactic of answering a question with a question buys the liar time to come up with something plausible. They are not the type to let the silence go by, so they fill it with something that cannot be used against them. And the old, I swear on a stack of Bibles tactic is an oath to beware of. What people will say to try to get themselves off the hook is insane. When you are sure they are lying, how important is it to you that you get to the bottom of things and make someone tell you the truth? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
All that is best in the Christian virtues you will find in philosophic ones. Few are those who are psychologically ready for philosophyâs disciplines, which call, not merely for a reluctant control of the animal nature, but for an eager aspiration to rise above it altogether. Few are ready for its ethics, which all not merely for a willingness to abide by societyâs protective laws, but for a generous disposition contently putting itself in someone elseâs place. Firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department certainly display the Christian virtues. One firefighter said, âI think just being around firefighters got me. Itâs like being a sports fan, being there and watching you get to know more about it, and you have more admiration for the good ones. The firefighting process is like a well-oiled machine going to work. I for fascinated watching it and wanted to be a part of it. I was just so happy to go in there, and I always wanted to do the very best job I could, to keep it that way. When I was a kid, I thought the World of the Sacramento Fire Department. I want to hold up my end of it.â Today, I think the best way to get to know someone is by listening to their first-hand accounts about themselves. Many people are cowards and like to tear down people who shine, and do not get to know them personally. Instead, they choose to gossip about them, become jealous and form hate groups. I personally like talking to people and getting to know their story and about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Not everyone has a tragic story, nor is it unhappy. Recently, I found out a 29-year-old had been listening to classical music all week. And that really impressed me because it shows a rare level of maturity, and it gave me insight into his personality. It tells me that he is intelligent, cultured and probably very interesting. To make friends with someone, you have to know something about them and have something in common, and it is rare for people to disclose things about themselves to others. The Sacramento Fire Department has developed prestige in the community. People think, âboy, if you belong to that fire department, youâre really âin.ââ People may say that they are a bunch of prima donnas, but they must be. If you belong to their fire department, you earn it. It is not easy to get in, but once you are in, you must produce, or you are out. Because you must get along with thirty other people or more, and if you do not pull your share, you will have a hard time. There is always a waiting list, people waiting to get in. And that is good. It may take two or three years before your number comes up. And there are sometimes some limiting factors. Sometimes residents are shown a preference. They pay attention to how long you have lived in the community and are you going to continue going to continue to live here. Once a team member is taken in, they want to keep them for at least twenty years. Please be sure to donate to the Sacrament Fire to ensure they are receiving all their resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
Asymmetry of facade is a characteristic of Victorian feature. Differing wall textures, such as the change from lap siding to fish scale shingles on the front-facing gable, is another distinguishing architectural trait. This inviting dwelling opens into a foyer sparking with light from the windows.
A semi-formal dining room and spacious great room provide ample space for holiday festivities. A master suite offers a handsome bath with separate vanities and a walk-in closet, which is as large as a bedroom. There also is a loft area, three other bedrooms, and three bathrooms and a powder room. This home offers a four bay car garage. One of the bays could be used as a gym or completed and used as another bedroom or a recreational area. https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/residence-4/
The House of Ghosts and Dreams
Ghosts, spirits, lost souls, did not, could not exist. And hopefully in a day or two, everyone will be convinced. A couple by the door, both approaching middle age, sat close enough together for their thighs to touch, and listened overattentively to whatever the other was saying in the manner of a man and woman each married to a different partner. By the fire was a group in tweeds and mufflers, the men mostly satisfied listening to the conversation of their womenfolk while they sipped their gin and tonics and pondered the virtues (or the boredom) of retirement. I turned my back to the group. After a time, the quality of darkness seemed to change. I frowned. I thought I could see the faintest glow of gathering light coalescing near the door-to-nowhere. The light was not strong enough to collect the attention of my guests yet, but it was certainly visible. After several moments, the light began to form an indistinct shape. Of course, everyone in the room was seeing it, too. The chatter suddenly stopped as they gasped for air. With wonder, we were witnessing a supernatural manifestation right before our eyes. Two children, a boy, and a girl, he, in a blue suit and tie, and she in a white communion dress with a blue sash tied around the waist, hovered just out of our reach. My heart leaped with surprise, as I became flushed with tears. My guests, conjuring their own horror, were at a loss for words. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
The children slowly rotated around the room before coming to rest. The girl cried out, âMommy!â And at that moment, the room was completely darkened. I screamed because the room had become extremely cold. I had a fragile hope, one that was beyond the tight and restricting bonds of sanity, that the faintest essence of my daughter was within the walls of my home. I listened for a moment, wishing that the peripheral voice would rouse my attention. However, there was no sound from the room and grief had exhausted our bodies as well as our spirits. I stared into the darkness, terribly afraid, even more terribly, compelled to ask my guests to leave. At the foot of the stairs I paused, glancing back over my shoulder as if seeking reassurance from the spirit World. There was still no sound from the apparitions. No sounds in the house at all. Not even the voice. From ahead, at the end of the corridor in which I hesitated, came a soft glow, a shimmer strip of amber. Slowly, each footstep measured, I went to the light. I stopped outside the closed door and now there was a sound, a quiet shifting, as though the house had signed. It could be no more than a breeze stealing through. The light was not constant; it flicked. My hands grasped the door handle. My grip was tenuous, slipping over the smooth surface before lodging and turning. A brief thought that there was someone clutching the other side, resisting my effort; then the handle catches and the door is open. I pushed open a heavy door and my face was flushed by the lambent glow. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The chill followed behind me in darkness. âIs any one there?â I called from the doorway. The room was a display of burning candles: their light bowed with the opening of the door and their waxy smell welcomed me. Shadows momentarily shyed away then rush forward in their own greeting as the myriad flames settled. Against the back wall and facing entrance was a large walk-in fireplace that could easily accommodate a six-foot log. âAt least the carpenters made sure I have heat,â I laughed. I started opening the other doors. One disclosed stairs to the servantsâ quarters above; another opened a stairway to the basement which contained thirteen rooms. A third door led to a stairwell in the backyard, and it was securely locked. Still another one opened into the butlerâs pantry and that was provided with its own exit under the broad stairway that faced the front door. I found myself in the entrance hall. Walking a bit further through a short hallway to the right with a great sliding door of heavy mahogany and leaded glass at its end. Pushing it open, I discovered a library at least twenty-five feet wide that extended to the back of the house, and it had its own exit into the backyard. Filled with bookshelves, at least seven feet tall, extended around three sides fo the room except where deep windows with built-in seats were set into the walls. The spirits had built my house to last. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
There was another immense fireplace in the library. Two 1879 Winchester Rifles were crossed above the mantel like medieval swords. A long antique davenport was placed in front of the fireplace. Behind it was an old-fashioned library table with a lamp for reading before the fire. Two crystal chandeliers gave an ornate touch to an elegant and charming room. However, nothing could prepare me for what I saw. At the furthermost point of the room, resting on lace-clothed tables, were two coffins. I stared. My steps were leaden as I approached the open caskets, and my eyes were wide. The moisture on my skin glistened under the light. I did not want to investigate those coffins. I did not want to see the figure lying there, not in such an alien state. However, there was really no choice. My mind had become open to unnatural possibilities. A voice whispered my name and I had responded; I had my own reasons for grasping the inconceivable possibilities. I drew closer. The forms inside the silklined caskets were gradually revealed. She was wearing a white communion gown, a pale blue sash tied at her waist. And the boyâwhy these were the same two children we had seen earlier. Their hands rested together on their chests as if in supplication. Dark hair framed their faces, and, in their death, they looked serene, sleeping, untroubled children. The light played upon the corners of their lips so that they suppressed smiles. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Despite my yearning to disbelieve, I knew there was no life within these pallid shells. I wished to speak to these children, but my throat was constricted by the wretchedness of my emotion. I blinked, dislodging a swell of tears. I leaned forward as if I might kiss the dead children. And their eyes snapped open. They grinned up at me, their young faces no longer innocent. And their hands stirred as if to reach out to me. I was frozen. My mouth was locked open, lips stretched taut and hard over bone, the scream beginning but only breaking loose a few moments later, a shrilling that cuts through the quietness of the house. My cry wanes, dissolves, and by eyes close as reason seeks sanctuary behind Llanada Villaâs walls. A warm mass of air carried the faint sound of music. Castigating myself in silence, I stepped with authority to the rear of the room, placing my hands on the wooden door. As I turned the handle and opened the door, I had a feeling there was something there, but I let it pass, thinking it was my imagination. However, there was something on the landing upstairs that seemed to stare down at me. Something within me made me say, âWhoever you are, you must be lonely!â On Saturday night, as I was sitting down for dinner, the servants had prepared roasted chickens, sausage pie, and Yorkshire pudding. The servant-girl threw some coal on the boiler fire, only to have it all thrown back again on the floor. No one can explain the cause of the occurrences, and it remained the only topic of conversation for days to come. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Tours had been going on in The Winchester Mystery House for 100 years, when by degrees caretakers decided that it had become rather ânoisy.â It began with the windows being violently shaken at night, and then they began to hear steps where no steps should be. They were perturbed still further when they began to hear deep, long sighs at all hours of day and night. There were other odd manifestations. There were occasions when caretakers would approach the door-to-nowhere, when the handle would turn, and the door would fly open. One caretaker wrote that âI have once seen this happen, and it is a curious thing to see, when on the other side of the door there is a two-story fall into the garden.â Then another caretaker heard the sounds of stitching of some hard material in the sewing room; and in the Witches Cap, they would often hear the noise of children playing and a heavy weight being dragged across the floor, when there was no object in sight, and most alarmingly of all there were times when they experienced the sensation of their hair being pulled.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarahâs CafĂ©, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the Worldâs most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
We Pay So Much Attention to Where We Live, So Little to When
The individual who wants the spiritual prizes of life must elevate one’s thoughts and ennoble one’s impulses. One will prudently look ahead not only to the consequences of one’s actions but also of one’s thoughts. One must be prepared to spend a whole lifetime in making this passage from aspiration to realization. Petal-by-petal the bud of one’s growing virtues will open as the years pass. One’s character will be transformed. The old Adam will become a new man. The progressing disciple who reaches an advanced state will find that one’s powers of mind and will develop accordingly. Where they are not accompanied by sufficient self-purification, they may become dangerous to oneself and hurtful to others. One’s vigilance over thought and feeling must become greater accordingly. To dwell upon thoughts which belong to a lower level out of which one has climbed may open up a pitfall in one’s path; to hold bitter feelings against another person may throw discord into that person’s life. One’s outer conduct should be brought into agreement with the soaring aspiration of one’s inner life. When the one is antithetical to the other, the result will be chaos. That individual has attained mastery whose body yields to the commands of reason and whose tongue obeys the orders of prudence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When the body’s appetites and the intellect’s curiosity get an excessive grip on an individual, they throw an air of unreality on aspiration which soars beyond both. This makes intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking seem irksome or trivial. Those who do not have the strength of will to translate into practice the ideals which they accept in thought need not despair. It can be got by degrees. Part of the purpose of ascetic exercises is to lead to its possession. There is knowledge available, based on ancient and modern ascetic experiences, which can be applied to liberate the moral nature from its weakness. One who puts one’s lower nature under control puts oneself in possession of forces, gifts, possibilities, and satisfactions that most other humans lack. If a person’s inner life is repeatedly wasted by passion, one will know no assured peace and attain no enduring goal. One must govern oneself, rule one’s passions, and discipline one’s emotions. One must strengthen one’s higher will at the expense of one’s lower one. For the first promotes one’s spiritual evolution whereas the second inflames one’s animal nature. Faith is needed to make the basic change in one’s thinking, the change which takes one out of the past’s grip. If one takes up new thoughts, a new life is possible. If one lets compromise with the World, or lapses from the right moral standard, slip beyond a certain mark, one will pay commensurately for it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Man’s drives inasmuch as they are trans-utilitarian, are an expression of a fundamental and specifically human need: the need to be related to man and nature and to confirm oneself in this relatedness. These two forms of human existence, that of food gathering for the purpose of survival in a narrow or broader sense and that of free and spontaneous activity expressing man’s faculties and seeking for meaning beyond utilitarian work, are inherent in man’s existence. Each society and each man has it own particular rhythm in which these two forms of living make their appearance. What matters is the relative strength which each of the two have and which one dominates the other. It is not only a matter of self-betterment but also of self-respect for an honourable man. The man whom he has looked upon as himself must be left behind; the New man, who he is to become, must be continually with him in thought, aspiration, will, and deed. This it is to be truly human for it brings man into a more perfect state. To sneer at the philosophic ideal as being inhuman is really to sneer at it for rejecting the evils and weaknesses and deformities of the Worldly ideal. The moment a negative idea appears, repudiate it automatically by the use of counter-affirmations and imagination, which is the gate to creative subconscious mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Such negative thoughts as animosity and jealousy must be rooted out like weeds as fast as they spring up. This is both the easier and more effective way in the end. The man who has not learned to control himself is still only a fractional man, certainly not the true man that Nature is trying to produce. When he cannot live with his negative side any longer, illumination will come and stay. Character is tested by afflictions more than by prosperity. The first stage is to expunge the evil in his heart and to raise the good in it to the highest possible octave. If he holds these as ideals, a personal character which will be beautiful, a way of life which will be the best, a man is more likely to come by them. When allowing thoughts to enter his mind, as when allowing strangers to enter his home, he needs to be as fastidious. If a man lives in mental and emotional negativity, the removal of his physical residence to another place will in the end benefit him less than if he removes himself from the negativity. The building-up of character naturally brings a better sense of proportion in one’s dealings and outlook. Be seeing good in all persons, you become good, but if you see evil, the evil in you will augment. People seem not to see that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
He must become thoroughly sick of his mistakes and sins before he will take the trouble to develop by self-training his discriminatory faculties and moral ideals. We can combat feat by remembering that the Overself is always with us. The power of such thinking is its rightness and its constructiveness. It is right bvecause the Overself is the real source of strength and courage so that recalling its ever-presence in us helps to tap that source. It is constructive because it uses up the energy that would otherwise have gone into the fear-thoughts. Both action and thought share in the double nature of this polarity. Activity on the level of survival is what one usually calls work. Activeness on the trans-survival level is what one calls play, or all those activities related to cult, ritual, and art. Thought also appears in two forms, one serving the function of survival and one serving the function of knowledge in the sense of understanding and intuiting. This distinction of survival and trans-survival thought is very important for the understanding of consciousness and the so-called unconscious. Our conscious thought is that type of thinking, linked with language, which follows the social categories of thought imprinted in our thinking from early childhood. Our consciousness is essentially the awareness of such phenomena which the social filter composed of language, logic, and taboos permits us to become aware of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those phenomena which cannot pass the social filter remain unconscious or, more accurately speaking, we are unaware of everything that cannot penetrate to our consciousness because the social filter blocks its entry. This is the reason why consciosuness is determined by the structure of society. However, this statement is only descrptive. Inasmuch as man has to work within a given society, his need for survival tends to make him accept the social conceptualizations and hence to repress that which he would be aware of had his consciousness been imprinted with different schemata. If he studies other cultures, this is not difficult for the reader to find in his own example. The categories of thought in the industrial age are that of quantification, abstraction and comparison, of profit and loss, of efficiency and inefficiency. The member of a consumer society of the present day, for example, is encouraged, but not required to repress pleasures of the flesh because so many people are Worldly and pleasures of the flesh seems to be the number one past time for many by the schemata in the age of information. The member of the middle class of the nineteenth century who was busy accumulating capital and investing it rather than consuming it, had to repress pleasures of the flesh because they did not fit into the acquisitive and hoarding mood of his society, or, more correctly, of middle classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we think of medieval or Greek society or of such cultures as the Pueblo Indians’ we can easily recognize that they were very conscious of different aspects of life to which their social filter granted entry into consciousness while others were tabooed. The most eminent case in which man does not have to accept the social categories of his society is when he is asleep. Sleep is that state of being in which man is free from the need to take care of his survival. While he is awake, he is largely determined by the survival function; while he is asleep, he is a free man. As a result, his thinking is not subject to the thought of categories of his society and shows that peculiar creativity which we find in dreams. In dreams, man creates symbols and has insights into the nature of life and of his own personality which he is incapable of having while he is the creature busy with food gathering and defense. Often, indeed, this lack of contact with social reality can cause him to have experiences and thoughts which are archaic, primitive, malignant, but even those are authentic and represent him rather than the thought patterns of his society. In dreams, the individual transcends the narrow boundaries of his society and becomes fully human. That is why Dr. Freud’s discovery of dream interpretation, even though he looked basically for the repressed instinct for pleasures of the flesh, has paved the way for the understanding of the uncensored humanity which is in all of us. (Sometimes children, before they have been sufficiently indoctrinated by the process of education, and psychotics who have served all relationships to the social World manifest insights and creative artistic possibilities which the adapted adult cannot recover.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, dreams are only a special case of that trans-survival life of man. Its main expression is in rituals, symbols, painting, poetry, drama, and music. Our utilitarian thinking has, quite logically, tried to interpret all these phenomena as serving the survival function (a vulgarized Marxism has sometimes allied itself in substance although not in form with this type of materialism). More profound observers like Lewis Mumford and others have emphasized the fact that the cave paintings in France and ornaments on primitive pottery, as well as more advanced forms of art, have no utilitarian purpose. One might say that their function is to help the survival of man’s spirit, but not that of man’s body. He has only to resolve that he will always be faithful to his higher self and the trick is done. However, alas! resolution is one thing, execution another. If he finds himself attacked by a strong temptation or about to be overcome by an old obsession, he should at once think of the master, of his name and picture, and call for his help. Whether you live as a labourer or a lord, it is your character that counts most in the end. It is the ego that gives way to moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember that on the outcome of your efforts to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions, much will depend for your Worldly and spiritual frame. He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To yearn for something is to value. I have known this yearning “to be good” in all of us. No one is left out. I have known it in a British peer. I have known it in a man who hijacked a truck, got a Native American drunk and threw him off a moving truck, hit a burro and killed it, bashed in the radiator, and then drove the truck until the motor burned out and he landed in jail, while four small children were at home alone because their mother was in the hospital having a fifth one. I got him out of jail so that he could take care of his family, and he got me fired from my job. I also knew it in my best friend that killed himself. Before his suicide, I lived with knowing that he might kill my son and me, both of whom he loved, and that he might seriously injure other people, which he did not wish to do at all. It seemed to me that suicide might have seemed to him the only way to put an end to his hurting people, to doing what he did not want to do. Many people in America are hurting today. Everyone responds in terms of his own humanness, uncontaminated by all the phoney values with which we live. (The only exceptions were two very neurotic men and a few feeble-minded oldfolks who did not know what is going on.) In Hawaii during the week following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the military expected that the success of the attack would be followed by an invasion: they believed that when the Japanese planes reported to their carriers, then other ships would move in with troops like what was done to Mr. Hitler and Germany during World War II. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, fast forward to post 911 America. Currently in 2024, there is an invasion going on at our southern boarder, and as many as 20,000,000 unknown people have flooded into this country and have been committing major crimes. The leaders of industry have warned the government that this is a serious crisis and they suspected that these people who are invading America could be preparing for an attack larger than 911, but no one in a position of power is doing anything to track these people, nor stop them from invading the nation. The problem is not only a lack of God, but also a lack of love. Many people are cafeteria Americans. They fly the flag, pretend to be proud of the country, but all they care about is American money. They disrespect the land, disrespect the people, ignore the needs of America and bleed her dry. These posers forget that people have died and become severely disabled from serving their country, and are doing nothing to protect it, but supposedly are trying to instill democracy in other places, while America is becoming a hostile, communist nation. It is very difficult for me to go on writing this. Tears blur my vision, no matter how many times I wipe them away. I sob, and that shakes me so that I cannot use the typewriter very well. I feel, “Oh, what is the use? How can I possibly convey it?” Many of us are silent. Trying to show respect or trying to feel for someone else. When they are scared, people can do the most frightful things. People fear that they could be wiped out at any moment, and that there is onluy now to live. We pay so much attention to where we live, so little to when. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Alienation corrupts and perverts all human values. By making economic activities and the values inheret in them, like gain, work, thrift, and sobriety, the supreme value of life, man fails to develop the truly moral values of humanity, the riches of a good conscience, of virtue, etcetra, but how can I be virtuous if I am not aware of anything? In a state of alienation, each sphere of life, the economic and the moral, is independent from the other, “each is concentrated upon a specific area of alienated activity and is itself alienated from the other. The needs of man in an alienated society are preverted into true weakness. Every man speculates upon creating a new need in another in order to force him to sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence, and to entice him into a new kind of pleasure and thereby into economic ruin. Everyone tries to establish over others an alien power in order to find there the satisfaction of his own egoistic need. With the mass of objects, therefore, there also increases the realm of alien entities to which man is subjected. Every new product is a new potentiality of mutual deceit and robbery. Man becomes increasingly poor as a man; he has increasing need of money in order to take possession of the hostile being. The power of money diminishes directly with the growth of the quantity of production, id est, his need increases with the increasing power of money. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The need for money is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates. The quantity of money becomes increasingly its only important quality. Just as it reduces every entity to its abstraction, so it reduces itself in its own development to a quantitative entity. Excess and immoderation become its true standard. This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary apopetities. Americans are blessed with private property, but they do not know how to change crude need into human need; their idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy. No eunch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favour, than does the eunch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbour. Every produce is a bait by means of which the individual tries to entice the essence of the other person, his money. Every real or potential need is a weakness which will draw the bird into China’s pockets. As every imperfection of man is bound with Heaven, a point at which his heart is accessible to the priest, so every want is an opportunity for approaching one’s neighbour with the air of friendship, saying, “Dear Friend, I will give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“You know what the ink you must use in sining yourself over to me. I shall swindle you while providing your enjoyment.” All this constitues a universal exploitation of human commual life. The entrepreneur accedes to the most depraved fancies of his neighbour, plays the role of pander between him and his needs, awakens unhealthy appetities in him, and watched for every weakness in order, later, to claim the remuneration of this labour of love. The man who has thus become subject to his alienated needs is a mentally and physically dehumanized beingâŠthe self-conscious and self-acting commodity. This commodity-man knows only one way of relating himself to the World outside, by having it and by consuming (using) it. The more alienated he is, the more the sense of having and using constitutes his relationship to the World. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. You have to listen hard to spot a liar. Often they shift from past to present tense. Moving from the past tense to the present means the person is getting into their brain–reliving the story they have made up to cover up what they have done. People will often tell a story as if they see it because in their minds, they see the story they have made up. It take a keen ear to pick up on the change in tense and why a person would do such a thing. When people are telling the truth, especially a breach of national security, they tend to stick with the most important details and speak in the past tense, since it already happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Sometimes when it comes to self-analysis, the analytical work at oneself will recede into the background. One will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. One may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; one may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; one may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; one may simply feel less harassed by one’s psychic troubles. At this time the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to one’s development. The method in self-analysis is no different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations. Whereas in working with an analyst the patient reports whatever comes into his mind, in working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or write them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing. There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association, almost everything one will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, when it is all down on paper that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently when he lets his mind dwell on his notes, a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting own only catchwords. If most of the work is done in writing a comparison with diary-keeping is almost unavoidable, and an elaboration of this comparison may serve also to highlight certain characteristics of analytical work. If the latter is not a simple report of factual occurrences but is written with the further intention of truthfully recording one’s emotions experiences and motivations, the similarity with a diary suggests itself particularly. However, there are differences. A diary, at its very best, is an honest recording of conscious feelings, thoughts, and motivations. The revealing character it may have concerns emotional experiences unknown to the outside World rather than experiences unknown to the writer himself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When Rousseau, in his Confessions, boasted of his honesty in exposing his masochistic experiences, he did not uncover any fact of which he himself was unaware; he merely reported something that is usually kept secret. Furthermore, in a diary, if there is any search for motivations, this does not reach beyond one or another loose surmise that carries little if any weight. Usually no attempt is made to penetrate beneath the conscious level. Culberston, for instance, in The Strange Lives of One Man, frankly reported his irritation and moodiness toward his wife but gave no hint as to possible reasons. These remarks do not implay a criticism of diaries or autobiographies. They have their value, but they are intrinsically different from an exploration of self. No one can produce a narrative about himself and at the same time let his mind run in free associations. There is still another difference which it is of practical importance to mention: a diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. If he takes the least squint at admiring audience or at the idea of creating a master piece of unique value, when he writes down his associations, the same will happen. He will them commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The mental hygiene movement has had a very significant beneficial impact on the problem of mental illness. There can be little doubt that it has contributed to an enhanced general level of mental health in our country. Certainly it has achieved marked improvement in public attitudes toward mental illness. As a perhaps unavoidable consequence of its educational effort it has created new and greater demands for psychotherapy and not all of the increased demand is fully appropriate. The pattern of psychotherapeutic practice in America is seriously unbalanced in that too many of the ablest, most experienced psychiatrists spend most of their time with patients who need them least. This has been unfortunate, though probably inevitable, consequence of the concept of mental illness as personal malfunctioning which in itself represents a gain in understanding. The trouble is that this view makes it impossible to draw the line, so that many persons who are showing essentially normal responses to the wear and tear of life or who are unhappy for reasons other than personal malfunctioning see themselves–and are seen by others–as proper candidates for psychotherapy. Philosophy is that disease for which it should be the cure. The mental hygiene movement has inadvertently added to the problem which it intended to reduce. It is time for the leaders of the mental health movement to put their minds to a touch philosophical analysis of problems which psychiatry and psychology have tended to neglect: to criteria of mental health, to delimitation of the meanings and forms of mental illness, to specification of precisely what are and what are not psychiatric problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It would be a beneficial contribution for mental health educators to develop ways of communicating to the public on such questions as: “When not to go to the psychiatrist,” or “What to do before you see a psychiatrist”; “What psychotherapy cannot do for you”; “Ten sources of helpful conversation”; “Problems which do not make you a ‘Mental Case.'” He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. It is not enough to overcome the jealousy which begrudges other people’s having advantages denied us: we must also take the next step and overcome the envy which feels discontented at not having those advantages and continues to desire them for itself. Jealousy would go out of its way to hurt those others by depriving them of their possessions, but envy would not fall so low. When they oppose emotion and passion, once he forms this resolve to follow the bidding of intuition and reason, he will find it both a safeguard and a test. If at any time he should temporarily weaken from this resolve, he may become uncertain as to the correct course to pursue when at the crossroads. A willing discipline of the character by one’s own self may often take the place of an unwanted and unwilling discipline by outer events. He is to become an exemplar to the aspiring, a pattern-setter for those who would ennoble themselves. He must establish, for and over himself, an emotional discipline and intellectual control. He cannot successfully do this all at once, of course. Emotional tendencies and mental habits engendered by years of materialism cannot be overturned and eliminate in a single night. However, the goal must be there and must be kept in view. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
A firefighter we will call Helmut share his experience about becoming a fireman. “When I got out of the military, I had the opportunity to get into the trucking industry. I was in it for ten years. I started out as an assistant to a dispatcher and worked up to operations manager. I trained people coming into the industry. I was doing pretty good, and I enjoyed it. The problem was that there was no real job security, and though the pay was good I was putting in too many hours. I was missing a lot of time with my family. I had to do it, though because I needed the job. Then I heard that the Sacramento Fire Department was giving a test. Up to that point, I’d actually thought about becoming a policeman. I was an MP in the military, and I thought maybe it would be a good field to get into. So I went down to City Hall and filled out the fire department application. I didn’t do it reluctantly, I just did it with a little bit of skepticism. I said to my wife, ‘Oh, I don’t really think anything is going to come of this, because I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I knew that the cutoff age was thirty-six years, and at the time I was thirty-five, and I thought I really had to get in on this first class, otherwise I’m not going to make it. So they scheduled the test, and I studied hard for it while I was still doing trucking. And I was fortunate to have the ten-point veteran’s preference, so that added ten points to whatever score I got on the test. But I was concerned because so many people had taken the test. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“My sister called and told me, ‘Twenty-six thousand people took the test, so your changes of getting on are small.’ That depressed me, but I felt I’d done good because I did study hard and the test wasn’t that difficult. So my brother called me the next day and said, ‘Six thousand people walked out halfway through the test.’ So that lowered the odds. I thought, well, twenty thousand, that’s starting to sound better all the time. I kept calling, and some months later I was notified that I had aced the test, I was number six on the list. I was ecstatic, I thought, now I’ve got to be in first class. As it turned out, I was. And from then on, everything has been running smoothly. Everything has been great.” To make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources, please make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The ideal man that he wants to be should be evoked, pictured, and adored daily. If greater wisdom brings an immunity to other men’s negative thoughts, it also brings the responsibility to stifle one’s own. When all malice and all envy are resolutely cast out of his nature, not only will he be the gainer by it in improved character and pleasanter blessings, but also those others who would have suffered as victims of his barbed words or ugly thoughts. The past is beyond recall, but the present is at our command. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Farewell Week is here! The last day to experience our Walk With Spirits Tour is April 14, 2024!
Beginning today, all guests who participate will have the opportunity to sign a special guest book that will be preserved in our archives which will become a part of Winchester Mystery House history. And as a bonus, enjoy 13% off our upcoming Halfway to Halloween Flashlight Tours.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarahâs CafĂ©, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the Worldâs most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
If You Want the Prizes of Life, You Must Elevate Your ThoughtsÂ
If he who suffers from the hallucinationâfor usually it is nothing lessâthat an ideal existence can be found by emigrating to some distant spot turns, himself into a different man, then it may be turned into a reality. Our higher nature bids us aspire to inner growth, development, self-control, and ennoblement. It goes further and seeks freedom from enslavement by the passions, thus lifting the human nature above the animal. Animal ties to the World are given, mediated by his instincts. Man, set apart by his self-awareness and the capacity to feel lonely, would be a helpless bit of dust driven by the winds if he did not find emotional ties which satisfied his need to be related and unified with the World beyond his own person. However, in contrast to the animal, he has several alternative ways thus to be tied. As in the case of his mind, some possibilities are better than others; but what he needs most in order to his sanity is some tie to which he feels securely related. The one who has no such tie is, by definition, insane, incapable of any emotional connection with his fellow man. The discontent with a spiritually unfulfilled life has a twofold originâfrom personal experiences of the World outside and from vaguely felt pressures by the Soul within for the man to surpass himself. There is thus a reciprocal working of negative and positive feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The easiest and most frequent form of manâs relatedness is his âprimary tiesâ to where he comes fromâto blood, soil, clan, to mother and father, or, in a more complex society, to his nation, religion, or class. These ties are not primarily of pleasures of the flesh, but they fulfill the longing of a man who has not grown up to become himself, to overcome the sense of unbearable separateness by continuing what âprimary tiesâ–which are natural and necessary for the infant in his relationship to his motherâis obvious when we study the primitive cults of worship of the soil, of lakes, of mountains, or of animals, often accompanied by the individualâs symbolic identification with these animals (totem animals). We see it in the matriarchal religions in which the Great Mother and the goddess of fertility and of the soil are worshipped. There seems to be an attempt to overcome these primary ties to mother and Earth in the patriarchal religions, in which the great father, the god, king, tribal chief, law, or state are objects of worship. However, although this step from the matriarchal to the patriarchal cult in society is a progressive one, the two forms have in common the fact that man finds his emotional ties to a superior authority, which he blindly obeys. By remaining bound to nature, to mother or father, man indeed succeeds in feeling at home in the World, but he pays a tremendous price for this security, that of submission, dependence, and a blockage to the full development of his reason and his capacity to love. When he should become an adult, he remains a child. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Today the many individual cases of âmother fixationâ are explained by orthodox psychoanalysts as a result of an undissolved tie to the mother. This explanation ignores the fact that the tie to mother is only one of the possible answers to the predicament of human existence. The dependent individual of the twenty-first century, living in a culture which in its social aspects expects him to be independent, is confused and often neurotic because his society does not provide himâas do more primitive societiesâwith the social and religious patterns to satisfy need for dependency. This fixation to mother is a personal expression of one of the answers to human existence which some cultures have expressed in religious forms. It is an answer, though one which conflicts with the full development of the individual. If only man finds a higher form of feeling at home in the World, if not only his intellect develops, but also his capacity to feel related without submitting, at home without being imprisoned, intimate without being stifled, only then can the primitive forms of incestuous ties to mother, soil, etcetera, of benign and of malignant ecstasies disappear. On a social scale, this new vision was expressed from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the middle of the first millenniumâone of the most remarkable periods in human history. The solution to human existence was no longer sought in the return to nature nor in blind obedience to the father figure, but in a new vision that man can again feel at home in the World and overcome his sense of frightening loneliness; that he can achieve this by the full development of his human powers, of his capacity to love, to use his reason, to create and enjoy beauty, to share his humanity with all his fellow men. Christianity proclaimed this new vision. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The new bond which permits man to feel at one with all men is fundamentally different from that of the submission-bond to father and mother; it is the harmonious bond of brotherhood in which solidarity and human ties are not vitiated by restriction of freedom, either emotionally or intellectually. This is the reason why the solution of brotherliness is not one of subjective preference. It is the only one which satisfied the two needs of man: to be closely related and at the same time to be free, to be part of a whole and to be independence. It is a solution which has been experienced by many individuals and also by groups, religious or secular, which were and are able to develop the bonds of solidarity together with unrestricted individuality and independence. In order to understand fully the human predicament and the possible chocies man is confronted with, we must understand that there is another conflict inherent in human existence. Inasmuch as man has a body and bodily needs essentially the same as those of the animal, he has built-in striving for physical survival, even though the methods he uses do not have the instinctive, reflexlike character which are more developed in the animal. Manâs body makes him want to survive regardless of circumstance, even of happiness or unhappiness, slavery of freedom. As a consequence of the will to survive, man must work or force other to work for him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the past history of man, most of manâs time was spent on food gathering. With the animal, it essentially means gathering the food in the quantity and quality his instinctive apparatus suggest to him. In man there is much greater flexibility in the kind of food he can choose; but more than this, man, once he begins the process of civilization, works not only to gather food but to make clothes, to build shelters, and, in the more advanced cultures, to produce the many things which are not strictly necesary for his physical survival but which have developed as real needs forming the material basis for a life which permits the development of culture. If man were satisfied to spend his life by making a living, there would be no problem. Although he does not have the instinct of ants, an antlike existence would nevertheless be perfectly tolerable. However, it is part of the human condition that man is not satisfied with being an ant, that aside from this sphere of biological or material survival, there is a sphere characteristic of man which one can all the trans-survival or trans-utilitarian sphere. What does this mean? Precisely because man has awareness and imagination, and because he has the potential of freedom, he had an inherent tendency not to be dice thrown out of the cup. He wants not only to know what is necesary in order to survive, but he wants to understand what human life is about. He is the only case of life being aware of itself. He wants to make use of those faculties which he has developed in the process of mere biological survival. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Hunger and pleasures of the flesh, as purely physiological phenomena, belong to the sphere of survival. (Dr. Freudâs psychological system suffers from the main error which was part of the mechanistic materialism of his time and which led him to build a psychology on those drivers which serve survival.) However, man has passions which are specifically human and transcend the function of survival. Nobody has expressed this more clearly than Marx: âPassion is manâs faculties striving to obtain their own object.â In this statement, passion is considered as a concept of relation or relatedness. The dynamism of human nature inasmuch as it is human is primarily rooted in this need of man to express his faculties in relation to the World rather than in his need to use the World as a means for the satisfaction of his physiological necessities. This means: because I have eyes, I have the need to see; because I have ears, I have the need to hear; because I have a mind, I have the need to think; and become I have a heart, I have the need to feel. In short, because I am a man, I am in need of man and the World. Marx makes very clear what he means by âhuman facultiesâ which relate to the World in a passionate way: âHis human relationships to the Worldâseeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, lovingâin which all the organs of his individuality are the…expression (Betaetigung) of human reality…In practice I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man.â #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Philosophy does not believe that any man is doomed to continue to sin, but that every man is capable of rising to a life higher than that which he has previously lived. It believes, too, in the forgiveness of sins and in the truth of hopefulness. It is not pessimistic but reasonably optimistic in its long-range views. Whatever within himself keeps a man from seeing the Real and knowing the True must be got rid of, or rectified. And whatever he lacks within himself and also keeps him away from them must be acquired. The struggle to attain these things may not interest most people, whose desire for self-improvement is not strong enough to move their will: but it is well worthwhile. There is a devilish cunning in the human ego, animalistic beastliness in the human body, angelic sublimity in the human soul. However, this is only the appearance of things. All three conditions are really mental conditions. They pertain, after all, to the mind. We must root out the evil or foster the good there and there alone. Occult power should not be sought until the battle for self-mastery has been largely won. The nobler part of his self may exist in a man even though he has not yet come to awakening. There are three activities which he needs to keep under frequent examination and constant disciplineâhis thoughts, his speech, and his action. The quester who wants to keep his integrity in a corrupt World may not be able to live up to his ideal but at least he need not abandon it. The direction in which he is moving does still count. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
It is not his business to reform others while he himself remains as he is. The attack on them will only provoke them to answering attack. Temptation is easiest cast out at first thought. As the number of thoughts grow, control grows harder too. A year ago at New Yearâs I was talking with a Navajo man who had said âHappy New Yearâ to me. I asked him if he thought the New Year would be good for him or if it would be like my own life, âI think there is no end to being downâand then things change. They go alone well, and I think ânow at last, everything is all rightâ–and then it isnât.â He nodded, and said simply, âJust like us.â There was complete acceptance that life was the same for both of us, even though I had never been hungry as he had, had never been in jail as he had, and had never been forced to submit to the imposition of another culture as he had. That this is true, I know through listening to a woman talk for seventeen hours, in three days, about her life. Her life had been as âdifferentâ from mine as mine from the Navajoâs. We had very little. This woman had been born to Old Masters, a yacht with a crew of twenty-eight men, and everything that went with that. The more I listened, the more I mew that there had been no difference between the lives of the Princess and the Pauper. The innerness the same. Sometimes it is clearly the mainstream of a personâs life even though smaller streams confuse it. Other times, it has showed only briefly in a person when through stress or ease the barriers went down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This used to be a puzzle to me: which was the person? Other people said that what a person was most of the time was what he was, and this confused me, because it seemed reasonable and yetâwhat the person was at times in privacy seemed so much more vibrant, living, real. Sometimes his pouring out of it was almost more than I could bear, the agony of manâs knowing his inability to be what he knew himself to be. Sometimes it was gentle and tender, this knowing and so sad. Which is the person? A woman told me that one day she was at a football game waving a pennant and cheering, when suddenly the hand holding the pennant fell to her lap, and with all the excited mob around her she thought, âWhy am I doing this? I havenât enjoyed it for fifteen years.â Which was realâthe fifteen years or the moment? The knowing of the realness in another personâhis desperate desire to be non-hurtful, loving, responsive, constructive (or creative), at one with othersâseems to me to explain why one person sometimes stays with another against all reason, and not necessarily with good judgment. A very simple âignorantâ woman, who had every reason to hate her being to know this, âHe wants to be good.â Mothers often know this in their children and defend themânot their behaviourâwhen they are destructive. Observations, and the associations and question they arose, are the raw material. However, work on them takes time, as does every analysis. In a professional analysis, a definite hour is set apart every day or every other day. This arrangment is expedient but it also has certain intrinsic values. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Patients wiith mild neurotic trends can, without disadvantage, see the analyst merely when they are in trouble and want to discuss their difficuties. However, if a patient in the clutches of a severe neurosis were advised to come only when he really wanted to, he would probably play hooky whenever he had strong subjective reasons for not going on, that is, whenever he developed a âresistance.â This means that he would stay away when actually he needed the most help and when the most constructive work could be done. Another reason for regularity is the necessity to preserve some measure of continuity, which is the very essence of any systematic work. Both reasons for regularityâthe trickiness of resistances and the necessity to maintain continuityâapply, of course, to self-analysis as well. However, here I doubt whether the observance of a regular hour would serve these purposes. The differences between professional analysis and self-analysis should not be minimized. It is much easier for anyone to keep an appointment with an analyst than with himself, because in the former instance he has a greater interest in keeping it: he does not want to be impolite; he does not want to expose himself to the reproach that he stayed away because of a âresistanceâ; he does not want to lose the value that the hour might have for him; he does not want to pay for the time reserved for him without having utilized it. These pressures are lacking in self-analysis. Any number of things that apparently or actually permit of no delay would interfere with the time set apart for analysis. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
A regular, predetermined time for self-analysis is unfeasible also because of inner reasonsâand these quite apart from the subject of resistances. A person might feel like thinking about himself during a spare half hour before dinner but resent it as a nuisance at a prearranged time before he leaves for his office. Or he may not find any time during the day but have the most illuminating associations while taking a walk at night or while falling asleep. In this respect, even if his zest to express himself is diminished, even the regular appointment with the analyst whenever he feels a particular urge or willingness to talk with him, but must appear at the analystâs office at the arranged time. Because of external circumstances this disadvantage can scarcely be eliminated, but there is no good reason why it should be projected into self-analysis, where these circumstances are not present. Still another objection to rigid regularity in self-analysis lies in the fact that this process should not become a âduty.â The connotation of âhave toâ would rob it of its spontaneity, its most precious and most indispensable element. If a person forces himself to his daily exercises when he does not feel like taking them, there is no great harm done, but in analysis listlessness would make him lame and unproductive. Again, this danger may exist also in professional analysis, but there it can be overcome by the analyst’s interest in the patient and by the very fact of the common work. In self-analysis a listlessness produced by overstressed regularity is not so easily dealt with, and it may well cause the whole undertaking to peter out. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Thus in analysis regularity of work is not an end in itself but is rather a means that serves the two purposes of preserving continuity and combating resistances. The patientâs resistances are not removed because he always appears for his appointment at the analystâs office; his coming merely enables the analyst to help him understand the factors at play. Nor is consistent punctuality any guarantee that he will not jump from one problem to another and gain only disconnected insights; it is an assurance of continuity only for the work in general. In self-analysis, too, these requirements are essential. Therefore, they do not demand a rigid schedule of appointments with oneself. If a certain irregularity in work should make a person shirk a problem, it will catch up with him. And even at the expense of time it is wiser to let it slide until he himself feels that he had better go after it. Self-analysis should remain a good friend to fall back upon rather than a shcoolmaster pushing us to make our daily good marks. Needless to say, this warning against compulsive regularity does not imply taking things easy. If we want it to be a meaningful factor in our life, just a friendship must be cultivated. If we take it seriously, only then can analytical work at ourselves can yield its benefits. Finally, no matter how genuinely a person regards self-analysis as a help toward self-development rather than as a quick panacea, there is no use in his determining to pursue this work consistently from now until the day he dies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In pursuing its preventive and therapeutic aims, and especially in arousing the interest and support of the public, the mental hygiene movement (which has become the mental health movement) has of necessity communicated in overly simplified terms about mental illness and mental health. The ways of seeking mental health are not always clearly distinguished from the ways to avoid mental illness. Mental health is most readily (though not most helpfully) defined as the absence of mental illness. Mental illness is defined in terms of certain symptoms, and the specifications of those symptoms has been a primary responsibility of psychiatrists. As the mental health movement has gained momentum the psychiatrist has found himself increasingly on call to speak out to the public about mental health (rather than illness) and it is only human of him to react to his enhanced prestige by relinquishing the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the larger role of arbiter of social values. In this role, the psychiatrist has frequently expanded the domain of mental illness to include all degrees and kinds of psychological distress, failing to appreciate that human suffers some pains not because he is sick but because he is human. Invitation to the role of âexpertâ in an area in which society has suddenly developed intense interest is always a seductive one. (Note the number of chemists and physicists who have become âsocialâ scientists since World War II!) #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
If he occasionally failed to note that as an authority on values, the psychiatrist well may be forgiven; the meaning of existence, and how to live he is at best on par with other learned and thoughtful men. The psychologists and social workers have not been noticeably less susceptible to the sacerdotal appeal, but have been called less frequently to the altar than have the psychiatrists. The mental health movement together with psychiatry suffers from imprecision in the definition and delineation of psychopathology. The subjectivity of diagnosis, especially where neurotic behaviour is in question, coupled with expansive or inclusive trends in the diagnostician, creates particular problems when by broadcast methods the public is being encouraged to self-examination and to the seeking of âpreventiveâ therapy. The insufficiency of therapeutic resources to meet the legitimate needs of truly neurotic patients is seriously exacerbated when uncritical enthusiasm encourage persons with the non-neurotic frustrations common to all inhabitants of a less-than-perfect World to seek expert therapy, and when ambiguous nosology encourages the therapist to a nondiscriminating investment of his expensively acquired skills. There is a historical parallel to this problem which has been noted in the earlier period of the mental hygiene movement: âIndeed, so great was the enthusiasm over mental hygiene, that it led for a long time to a dangerous overemphasis on the mental factors in problems of social work. The important sociological factors were lost sight of while psychological factors were given almost exclusive attention. Mental Hygiene was being âoversoldâ by over-enthusiastic adherents.â #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest of manâs own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. This crystallization of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up to now. In handicraft and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool; in the factory the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instruments of the machines that he must follow. In manufacture, the workmen are part of a living mechanism; in the workmen are part of a living appendage. Or (education of the future will) combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, on the penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippled by lifelong repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of man, by the fully developed individual…to whom the different social functions he performs are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers. Alienation is the sickness of man. Since it starts necessarily with the beginning of division of labour, that is, of civilization transcending primitive society, it is not a new sickness; it is most strongly developed in the working class, yet it is a sickness from which everybody suffers. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
When it has reached its peak, only then can the sickness be cured; only the totally alienated man can overcome the alienationâhe is forced to overcome his alienation since he cannot live as a totally alienated man and remain sane. Man has to become the conscious subject of history, experience himself as the subject of his powers and thus emancipate himself from the bondage to things and circumstances. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied. The freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. But it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many people admire firefighters. It is a very normal thing for one to become a firefighter. A firefighter we will call âDieterâ shares with us his account. âI wanted to be one so bad, I just wished that I could be done with high school, with all of the crap, and have it over with. When youâre a fourteen-year-old and youâre going down and riding with squads, all the other thingsâhigh school football games, dances, and stuff like thatâare anticlimactic. I was seeing what real men do. And when I got a little older, I was actually doing a manâs job. I was strong for a high school kid, and when I would go to the firehouse, theyâd let me work as a firefighter. That was in a suburb. I see these jokers getting off the train. You ask a kid in a school, âWhat does your dad do for a living?â They say, âI donât know, he goes to some office.â Well, I knew what my old man did for a living. I knew why we were eating and why we had a roof over our heads. Itâs because my old man was busting his backside as a fireman, freezing in the wintertime and having rocks thrown at him in the summertime. I knew what he was doing. Other people, they take the train and they commute back and forth to the city, and I thought to myself, âThatâs not for me. I want to do something thatâs important, thatâs vital. If these jokers did not go to work, nobody would miss them.â Of course, now that Iâm a little bit more mature, I realize everybodyâs job is just as important. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
âI donât think firemen are supermen, by any means. At the time, I thought, âHey, firemen are strong, and theyâre doing an important job, and peopleâs lives depend upon them being here.â Other jobs are not like that, and the police did not appeal to me. I didnât want to be a doctor. Anyhow, I was working for this town in California, waiting to get called by the Sacramento Fire Department. I was still single, going with my future wife, and her dad was a big mucky, muck at construction company. I came down on vacation, and I took the fire test here. I didnât even know if I wanted the job, and I didnât think I could get it. Well, for the first time in something like six years, they took guys right off the top of the list. So as a result, we got a bunch of guys who were schoolteachers, guys with engineering degrees, and all kinds of real sharp guys in our class. Take the time to get to know the Sacramento Fire Department, and be sure them to thank them for keeping our community safe. Also, out of the kindness of your heart, please be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. If you are dissatisfied with yourself abandon yourself! You can make a start by abandoning its negative ideas, its animal passions, and its sharp critiques of others. You are responsible for them: it is you who must get rid of them. He must refuse to allow himself to become emotionally overwhelmed by an unthinking majority or intellectually subservient to an unworthy convention. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
A testament to real Folk Victorian styling, this delightful home offers the best in thoughtful floor planning. From the covered front porch, the home opens to a well-executed entry foyer. To the left is the causal family room with fireplace and proximity to the laundry room and mud rooms. To the right is the open living room with a sliding glass door and optional fireplace. This room connects to the dining area, also with a large window. The kitchen/breakfast room combination features either a large window or sliding glass door to the rear covered porch, a huge center island, a large pantry and a butler’s pantry. Second floor bedrooms include a well-planned master suite and up to four family bedrooms, with an optional loft that dominates the upstairs lobby. There is also a powder room on the first floor and three bathrooms upstairs. https://cresleigh.com/havenwood/
Intrepid Delver into the ForbiddenÂ
Tuesday afternoon came and waned to the twilight. It was a peculiar time; something new was astir, something that was quite unlike the tranquility of the past, something that was very strange indeed, but was felt everywhere. The unknown things had begun to close in on me with a whole new degree of determination. I knew all too well of the things which must be lurking nearby. I began to fear that I might not sleep tonight, so certain was I that I was surrounded by the tortured spirits of those who had not yet been allowed to cross the veil to the other side. Here they remained, crying aloud, desperate to be heard, causing disarray and torment in my home as they longed to be released to the peace of eternal rest. I wore a pale expression. Staring at the floor beneath me, there were myriads of claw-prints in the hallway, with human prints among them. Clutching a bloody handkerchief, I was half afraid for myself. Sorcery from the Middle Ages has been violently unmaksed in Llanada Villa and the whole craft has been exposed in its darkest colours and most abominable manifestations. I had indeed been cursed, but it had been carefully hidden and scrupulously concealed. Trembling, I was terrified at the horror I knew was sure to come my way. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
I fell asleep quite soon after going to bed, but it was a fitful and unhappy sleep. My dreams were full of nightmares of dark debaucheries. There were foul and hideous mysteries of lust which neither human intercourse nor the employ of a mechanical property can explain. Howbeit, I am fully aware what unspeakable horror lurked in the blackness beyond. When I rose up and wandered along the gallery, I was hopeless. I tried to estimate how long I had been asleep, but all I knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for my candles were not gone yet. I was cruelly tired. I sat down and fastened my candle to the wall. I turned on the lights and walked toward the kitchen. Although my home was quite empty, I had an eerie sensation of not being alone. Hurriedly, I walked to the front door. Glancing backward into the dark recesses of my home, upon which I saw an apparition of a man, staring at me with piercing black eyes. He wore a wool shirt. He seemed to smile at me, and I called, âI beg your pardon, but who are you?â However, the figure never moved or reacted. âWhat are you doing here?â I demanded, all the while looking at him. There was no answer, and suddenly my courage left me, as the icy touch of an unseen hand caressed my cheek. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
I ran down the central hallway, until abruptly stopping at the end. Tenderly, my fingers ran over the brass trim on the heavy mahogany door. Nervously turning the handle, I reluctantly pushed open the door and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. As the door swung inward, there was a rush of bone chilling air. Stepping inside, I heard a crying baby. Immediately recognizing the cry of my own child. Standing alone in the pitch-black room, I turned toward where the sounds were coming from. Every step felt as if I was walking in cold tar. A sense of desperation took hold of me, as I struggled to find the child. However, the closer I seemed to get, the more distant the sound became. A sense of desperation overcame me, as the cries faded, and dark shadows began swiftly darting around the room. I found myself quietly walking back downstairs. To my right was the stair railing which went around the top of the stairs at a turn in the hallways which led to an interior-opening balcony space, overlooking the front door at the downstairs hall, with a view of the beautiful chandelier hanging over the foyer. As I walked down the stairs, I was fearful that something would happen. That is when I heard a terrible shriek. The bloodcurdling sound was that of a lunatic. The atmosphere within my home changed, the walls came alive. Its appetite whetted by the taste of human blood. The horror overcame me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
In stark loneliness of night, hurtling between somber, darkened rooms that quivered with unknown, invisible life. I could see some horror lurking in my mindâs eye. Perhaps my clairvoyant sense assisted me, but in these great halls, along the long corridors, in the gloomy cold there was an ancient and lingering pain. The wind whistled and shrieked and moaned, as if the dead had collected to fight the battle of their race. I was being pursued, the forced of hell were gathering against me. It was cold in the echoing corridors. I hurried along them, trying out doors on each side. The handles were covered in thick dust. Each one I tried seemed to be locked, so I made my way to another floor. There were hundreds more doors to try. After an hour, I sat down on the top step and closed my eyes. For some minutes I sat motionless, listening to my own heartbeat. With my head full of thoughts, I went through a doorway. Finding myself in a luxurious suite of rooms, with walls of dark mahogany panels, filled with exquisite antique furniture and paintings. Thick dust covered everything, and enormous cobwebs were suspended from every corner. The silence of centuries now hung in the air. I sat down on a soft, velvet-covered couch, and for some reason started feeling very sleepy. It was as if there were some curious force in the roomâa force which was impossible to resist. I lay back on the couch, and went into a sort of trance. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
When I came to, the room was darkened. Within its shadowy depths, I saw the white blur of a manâs face and hands; and in a moment I had crossed to greet the figure who had tried to speak. Dim though the light was, I perceived that this was a very sick man. There was a touch of the pitiful in the limp, lifeless way his lean hands rested in his lap. He had on a loose dressing-gown, and was swathed around the head and high around the neck with a vivid yellow scarf or hood. And then I saw that he was trying to talk in a hacking whisper. It was a hard whisper to catch at first, since the grey moustache concealed all movements and the lips, something in its timbre disturbed me greatly. I was also trying to ignore certain shadowy, indistinct shapes that might have been living creatures; I was trying to ignore my mounting fear. I realized that the man before me, what appeared to be a human figureâwas it? A man? A tall, stiff-poised man? Or was it an apparition? Along this desolate gallery. I felt a stab of fear as I made a swift decision to runânot to turn back but to increase my speed and pass the mysterious brooding figure. Even though I saw that this figure was acutely aware of me, I had dismissed him as a dream. Touched with horror, yet empowered by it, by a rush of adrenaline like a flame through my veins, I did not slacken my speed, and veered through hallways and rooms until I was safe. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding violently in my chest not in warning, not in caution but urging me on! And so, opening the door to the Celestial Bedroom, and so stepping breathless inside that room, I dared to switch on a light; a dim, yellow bulb in a bedside lamp; I stood beside my enormous, canopied bed. On my pillow there was the heavy imprint of a head, a concave shadow. I stared, not certain what I saw. My hand reached out; groping; I dared to touch the figureâpushing gently at the smooth, naked shoulder that, with the attached torso, fell away from the shadowed lower body, and from the neck and head; the head, a bald, blank head, rolled to one side on the pillow; one of the limbs, the shapely left leg, had fallen away from the body, as if its joints had become brittle with time, and lay at a grotesque angle perpendicular to the thigh. I saw clearly that the thing was not human and was not alive. Objects seemed to move across the room like conscious entities; the sounds of their footfalls having something about it like a loose, hard-surfaced clattering. Running to the drawing room, I summoned Zip. My precious darling was always here to comfort me. I decided that it may be a good idea to get some fresh air. Wagging his tail, he was more than happy to oblige. May was in its full beauty. The evenings were exquisite. The wild cherry was in flower. Zip and I walked every evening in the garden and we would sit till nightfall in the arbour, as I poured out my thoughts and feelings to him. We had poetic moments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House
A real nightmare occurs when you experience a frightening encounter with something strange and unknown, and you know without question that you are not asleep, that you are not dreaming. You know with every ounce of your being that the chilling encounter is real. The events that were described were actual experiences and encounters and were not legends and folklore. One must clearly understand and fully realize the shuddering horror and heart-sick dismay that exists when there is any sort of commerce between human beings and evil spirits, which is the very core and kernel of Witchcraft. All too often, nowadays, the orthodox doctrine of the Powers of Darkness are forgotten or ignored. In the first place, the name Devil is commonly given to the fallen angels, who are also called demons.
The chief of the demons is called the Devil. The Devil and other demons were created by God naturally good; but they themselves became evil. It is also remarkable that for an account of the Fall of the angels, which happened before the creation of the World, we must turn to the last book in the Bible, the Apocalypse of St. John. âAnd there was a great battle in Heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil, and Satan, who seduceth the whole World; and he was cast down unto the Earth, and his angels were thrown down with himâ (Apocalypse xxi. 7-9). Once you open the door to the unknown, it may be hard to close again.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarahâs CafĂ©, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the Worldâs most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 