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There are Always Misunderstandings
How beautiful it is to wake with the dusk, when the silver webs of night begin to form, frost and ice, on everything. My house tinseled and shining with this magic substance, each window glittering. Oh, and the sky, thick as a daisy-filed with the white stars. Llanada Villa is a marvelous sight, but beneath the surface were things far greater and more terrible than one can imagine. It was a quest amid black and black and forbidden realms of the unknown, in which I had hoped to never uncover; my home had a secret life of perpetual animation. I encounter the most ghastly obstacles. Every since I broke ground, I had felt a brooding menace. I half felt that I was followed—a psychological delusion of shaken nerves, enhanced by the undeniably disturbing fact that something supernatural was alive—a frightful carnivorous gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. During construction, I kept track of all the deaths and their circumstances with systematic care. However, surreptitious and ill-conducted bouts among the carpenters were common, and occasionally professional talent of low grade was imported, which is why I had rooms torn down, built over and sealed up. Upon the fourth floor is a biting chill like a pane of ghostly vitreous. Sounds transmitted through the flawless silence and amplifications of the Observational tower, scatter through countless miles of the labyrinth, where they are taken for the shrieks of malign invisible devils, tiny as bats, and armed with the barbed sting of scorpions. There are always misunderstandings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
The wind tears through the skin and hair to gnaw the bones. To weep with cold earns no compassion of the cold. The night is full of lashing whips of when, and when the fireplaces in the Hall of Fires are lit, they are as white as snow itself, its flames giving nothing. In the winter, it seems possible that never again will there be a summer in the World. Crowds of frightened foreigners gather to watch towers and gables rise and the house mushroom from a farmhouse into a Grand Queen Anne Victorian mansion. Then villagers tell an odd story, about Llanada Villa, besieged by a huge flock, a menace of winged vampires, and how I waited in vain for my husband William to save us. But it seems there was a cruse on William, who on the very night our infant daughter was lost. And soon after he went mad, and himself stole out one night, and let the winged fiends into our castle, so all here perished. Horror was upon the whole pitiful crowd. They suspected that I was holding something back, and perhaps suspected graver things; but I could not tell them the truth because they would not have believed it. They knew, indeed, that Llanada Villa had been connected with activities beyond the credence of ordinary men. During the excavation of the basement, the workmen had struck some exceedingly ancient masonry; undoubtedly connected with the old burying-ground, yet far too deep to correspond with any known sepulcher therein. After a number of calculations, the carpenters decided that it represented some secret chamber beneath a tomb, where the last interment had been made in 1523. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
They studied the nitrous, dipping walls laid bare by the spades and mattocks of men, and were prepared for a gruesome thrill which would attend the uncovering of ancient grave-secrets; but my respect for the dead was more powerful than their curiosity. I ordered the men to leave the masonry intact and they plastered over it. Hours later, something fearsome happened. In the wee hours of the morning, a menacing military figure with a blueish face which was partially eaten away appeared. Most healthy men would drop dead from fright and disgust. He trampled, and bit every carpenter that did not flee; killing three. However, by the time help could be hailed, every trace of the men and the beast had vanished. This thin, misty line between life and death, it has been breached at certain times and in certain places. Many men have related hideous things, not mentioned in print, which have happened on the battlefields of Gettysburg. Some of these apparitions have made me faint, others have convulsed me with devastating nausea, while still others have made me tremble and look behind me in the dark; yet despite the worst of them I believe I can myself relate the most hideous thing of all—the shocking, the unnatural, the unbelievable horror from the shadows. Terror stalked me. A certain number of the servants had remained. However, one was in an asylum, while others had vanished. The ghost soon had achieved such strength that it could hand boards to the carpenters who were working on the house. I stepped in and forbade the carpenters to encourage such familiar interaction with the demon. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
The phantasmal, unmentionable thing occurred one midnight late in December, 1887. I wonder even now if it could have been other than a demonic dream of delirium. As I was reading in bed last night, I found myself looking across the room every now and then. There was an effect as if someone kept peeping out between the curtains in one place or another, where there was no edge. The only other thing that troubled me was the wind. There was enough to sway my curtains and rustle them more than I wanted. Then I dozed, and then I woke, and bethought myself that my dog Zip, which ordinarily slept in my room, had not come upstairs with me. Then I though I was mistaken: for happening to move my hand which hung down off the bed within inches of the floor, I felt on the back of it just the slightest touch of a surface of hair, and stretching it out in that direction I stroked and patted a rounded something. But the feel of it, and still more the fact that instead of a responsive movement, absolute stillness greeting my touch, made me look at my arm. What I had been touching rose to meet me. It was a ghoulish thing crawling from the black shadows. There was about it so horrible an air of menace that as I bounded from bed and rushed from the room, I heard myself moaning with fear: and doubtless I did right to fly. As I dashed into the baize door that cut the passage in two, and—forgetting that it opened towards me—beat against it with all the force in me, I felt a soft ineffectual tearing at my back which, all the same, seemed to be growing in power, as if the hand, or whatever wore than a hand was there, were becoming more material as the pursuer’s rage was more concentrated. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Then I remembered the trick of the door—I got it open—I shut it behind me and gained another room. I flung away my candle at random, and, knowing I was near the window, I tore at the curtain and somehow let in enough light to be able to see. There was blood on the table. I walked a little closer. Looking at the floor, I noticed there had been blood smeared on into a wide, thin trail. I abruptly followed the blood trail through the doors. That is when I discovered the body of one of my carpenters Helmut Laux. I began to scream. It was a scream of utter terror. Helmut had marks of murderous violence upon him: the crime was so recently perpetrated, that the body still retained the warmth and pliancy observed in someone who has just died. He had two stab wounds, both in the area of the heart. He apparently was stretched out on the bed when he received them, and the hair had been plucked clear off his head. His throat was also severely cut: the razor with which the wounds had been inflicted was found on the bed. He had eaten breakfast maybe an hour or so before he died, and from our questioning that places the time of death at about ten o’clock. My brain became formless darkness. My eyes glared, seeing nothing. In an effort to warm myself up I turned to the fire; it was an unfortunate move, because it brought the ghost directly over the fire, which immediately was extinguished. A morbid and ghoulish curiosity and secret sense of charnel picturesqueness filled the atmosphere. This dreadful loss, the wort that has ever been or can be. Oh how cruel Death, Cold and Still. The shock was not just that of discovering a dead body; it was the horror of discovering someone had been murdered in my home. My first reaction was disbelief. In my agony of mind, I tried to revive him with hot-water, blankets, massage, brandy, and blessed water, but nothing could rouse him. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
We kept the body as long as we could, in the hope that Helmut could be revived. As the hour grew dangerously near to dawn, we dragged the body across the fruit orchards to a secluded neck of the woods and buried it there in the best sort of grave the froze ground would furnish. The grave was not very deep. The clock clanged out the hour of twelve. There was a sudden banging of doors. A blast of cold air swept through the halls. The Door to Nowhere flew open, in the light of our dark lanterns, a deathly white ghost appeared, retreating back into the abyss of darkness in the room. When the thing returned three nights later, it seemed to take out its anger on us. Then came the steady rattling at the back door. A stick of fire wood suddenly became animated. With red-ringed eyes and a lip that trembled, the butler fired his pistol at it, and we were astonished to see several drops of blood appear on the hearth. The firewood fell to the floor, and a trail of blood began to drip on the stairway as the wounded ghost retreated. The soul-shattering catastrophe held elements of the demonic which made me even doubt they reality of what I saw. Part of my fear came merely from knowing of the existence of such nameless monsters, while another part arose from apprehension of the bodily harm, they might under certain circumstances do. Their disappearance added horror to the situation. A phantom laughter echoed and rebounded, filling the dark mansion with a sound like laughing banshees or demons approving a particularly good jest. And when it struck me, the vibration running through my body was enough to knock me backwards. I was dragged back into the darkness. I screamed once more. Only once. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
The Winchester Mystery House was built for many reasons. One purpose was to heighten the sense of religious experience. To produce a sort of mystical involvement which is the whole meaning of life. On Sunday 23 December 2007 a caretaker glimpsed the figure of a woman he had seen on previous occasion; she was standing in the hallway, wearing a blue scarf before disappearing through the forgotten door (the door that opens to a wall).
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A Little Rebellion Now and then is a Good thing
Freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected—these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guide our steps through an age of revolution and formation. A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Dr. Freud’s theory, that of the incestuous fixation to mother—this is one of his scientific edifice, and his discovery of the fixation to mother is, indeed, one of the most far-reaching discoveries in the science of man. However, in this area, Dr. Freud narrowed his discovery and its consequences by being compelled to couch it in terms of his libido theory. What Dr. Freud observed was the extraordinary energy inherent in a child’s attachment to mother, an attachment which is seldom entirely overcome by the average person. Dr. Freud had observed the resulting impairment of the man’s capacity to relate himself to women, the fact that his independence is weakened, and that the conflict between his conscious goals and the repressed incestuous attachment may lead to various neurotic conflicts and symptoms. Dr. Freud believed that the force behind the attachment to mother was, in the case of the little boy, the strength of the genital libido which makes one desire one’s mother for pleasures of the flesh and hate one’s father as a rival for pleasures of the flesh. However, in view of the greater strength of this rival, the little boy repressed his incestuous desires, and identifies himself with the commands and prohibitions of the father (in girls this same dynamic plays out with their father as the object of desire and the other as the rival and it is called the Elecktra complex). #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Unconsciously, though, one’s repressed incestuous wishes linger on, even though only in more pathological cases with great intensity. As far as the little girl is concerned Dr. Freud, in 1931, admitted that he had previously underestimated the duration of her attachment to mother. Sometimes it is comprised by far the longer period of the early sexual efflorescence. These facts show that the pre-Oedipal phase in women is more important than we have hitherto supposed. It seems that we shall have to retract the universality of the dictum that the Oedipus complex is the nucleus of neurosis. However, if anyone feels reluctant to adopt this correction one need not do so for one can either extend the contents of the Oedipus complex to include all the child’s relations to both parents or one could say that women reach the normal Oedipus situation only after surmounting a first phase dominated by the negative complex…Our insight into the pre-Oedipus phase in the little girl’s development comes to us as a surprise, comparable in another field with the effect of the discovery of the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization being that of Greece. More than implicitly than explicitly, the attachment to mother is common to both genders as the earliest phase of development and it can be compared with the matriarchal features of pre-Hellenic culture. However, first of all, this is somewhat paradoxical that the phase of Oedipal attachment to the mother, which may be called the pre-Oedipus phase, is far more important in women than it can claim to be in men. Second, this pre-Oedipus phase of the little girl is only in terms of the libido theory. The complaint of many women of not having suckled long enough leaves doubt. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
If one analyzed children who had been suckled as long as in primitive races, one would not encounter the same complaint. However, so great is the greed of the childish libido. This pre-Oedipal attachment of boys and girls to their mother, which is qualitatively different from the Oedipal attachment of boys to their mother is, in my experience, by far the more important phenomenon, in comparison with which the genital incestuous desires of the little boy are quite secondary. I find that boy’s or girl’s pre-Oedipus attachment to mother is one of the central phenomena in the evolutionary process and one of the main causes of neurosis or psychosis. Rather than call it a manifestation of libido, it is a quality which, whether we use the term libido or not, is something entirely different from the boy’s genital desires. This “incestuous” striving in the pre-genital sense, is one of the most fundamental passions in men or women, comprising the human being’s desire for protection, the satisfaction of one’s narcissism; one’s craving to be freed from the risks of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness; one’s longing for unconditional love, which is offered without any expectation of one’s loving response. It is true these needs exist normally in the infant, and the mother is the person who fulfills them. If this were no so, the infant could not live; he or she is helpless, cannot depend on his or her own resources, needs love and care which do not depend on any merits of its own. If it is not the infant’s mother who fulfills this function, it is another “mothering person,” who can undertake the mother’s function; maybe a grandmother, nanny, sister, or aunt. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
However, the more obvious fact—that the infant needs a mothering person—has obscured the fact that not only the infant is helpless and craves certainty; the adult is in many ways not less helpless. Indeed, one can work and fulfill the tasks ascribed to one by society; but one is also more aware than the infant of the dangers and risks of life; one knows of the natural and social forces one cannot control, the accidents one cannot foresee, the sickness and death one cannot elude. What could be more natural, under the circumstances, then man’s frantic longing for a power which gives one certainty, protection, and love? This desire is not only a “repetition” od one’s longing for mother; it is generated because the very same conditions which make the infant long for mother’s love continue to exist, although on a different level. If human beings—men and women—could find “Mother” for the rest of their lives, life would be relieved of its risks and of its tragedy. Should we be surprised that man is driven so relentlessly to pursue this fata morgana? Yet man also knows more or less clearly that the lost paradise cannot be found; that one is condemned to live with uncertainty and risks; that one has to rely on one’s own efforts, and that only the full development of one’s powers can give one a modicum of strength and fearlessness. Thus one is torn between two tendencies since the moment of one’s birth: one, to emerge to the light and the other to regress to the womb; one for adventure and the other for certainty; one for the risks of independence and the other for protection and dependence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Genetically, mother is the first personification of the power that protects and guarantees certainty. However, she is by no means the only one. Later on, when the child grows up, other as a person is often replaced or complemented by the family, the clan, by all who share the same blood and have been born on the same soil. Later, when the size of the group increases, the race and the nation, religion or political parties become the “mothers,” the guarantors of protection and love. In more archaically oriented persons, nature herself, the Earth and the sea, become the great representatives of the “mother.” The transference of the motherly function from the real mother to the family, the clan, the nation, the race has the same advantage which we have already noted with regard to the transformation from personal to group narcissism. First of all, anybody’s mother is likely to die before her children; hence the need for a mother figure which is immortal. Furthermore, the allegiance to one personal mother leaves one alone and isolated from others who have different mothers. If, however, the whole clan, the nation, the race, the religion, or God can become a common “mother,” then mother-worship transcends the individual and unite him with all those who worship the same mother idol; then nobody needs to be embarrassed at idolizing his mother; the praise of the “mother” common to the group will unite all minds and eliminate all jealousies. The many cults of the Great Mother, the cult of the Virgin, the cult of nationalism and patriotism—they all bear witness to the intensity of this worship. Empirically the fact can easily be established that there is a close correlation between persons with a strong fixation to their mothers and those with exceptionally strong ties to nation and race, soil, and blood. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
It is interesting to note in this context that the Sicilian Mafia, a closely bound secret society of men, from which women are excluded (and by which, incidentally, they are never harmed) is called “Mama” by its members. For Dr. Freud the sexual factor in the tie to mother is a decisive element in the little boy’s attraction to mother. Dr. Freud came to this result by combining two facts: the boy’s attraction to mother, and the fact of the existence of his genital striving at an early age. Dr. Freud explained the first fact by the second. There is no doubt that in many cases the little boy has sexual desires for his mother, and the little girl for her father; but quite aside from the fact (which Dr. Freud at first saw, then denied, and which was taken up again by Dr. Ferencz) that the seductive influence of the parents is a very important cause for these incestuous strivings, the sexual strivings are not the cause of the fixation to mother, but the result. Furthermore, in incestual sexual desires which one finds in dreams of adults, it can be established that the sexual desire is often a defense against a deeper regression; by asserting his male sexuality, the man defends himself against his own desire to return to the mother’s breast or into her womb. Another aspect of the same problem is the incestuous fixation of daughters to their mothers. While in the boy the fixation to “mother” in the broad sense used here coincides with whatever sexual elements may enter into the relationship, with girls this is not so. Her sexual attraction would be directed toward the father, while the incestuous fixation, in our sense, would be directed toward mother. This very split makes it more clear that even the deepest incestuous bonds with mother can exist without a trace of sexual stimulation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
There is a great deal of clinical experience with women who have as intense an incestuous tie with mother as can be found in man. The incestuous tie to mother very frequently implies not only a longing for mother’s love and protection, but also a fear of her. This fear is first of all the result of the very dependency which wakens the person’s own sense of strength and independence; it can also be the fear of the very tendencies which we find in the case of deep regression: that of being the suckling or of returning to mother’ womb. These very wishes transform the mother into a dangerous cannibal, or an all-destroying monster. It must be added, however, that very frequently such fears are not primarily the result of a person’s regressive fantasies, but are caused by the fact that the mother is in reality a cannibalistic, vampirelike, or necrophilic person. If a son or a daughter of such a mother grows up without breaking the ties to her, then he or she cannot escape from suffering intense fears of being eaten up or destroyed by mother. The only course which is such cases can cure the fears that may drive a person to the border of insanity is the capacity to cut the tie with mother. However, the fear which is engendered in such a relationship is at the same time the reason why it is so difficult for a person to cut the umbilical cord. Inasmuch as a person remains caught in this dependency, his own independence, freedom, and responsibility are weakened. In the case study of Clare, it became clear that her compulsive modest was one of the reasons that accounted for her need for a partner. Since she could not take care of her own wishes, she had to have someone else who took care of them. Since she could not defend herself, she needed someone else to defend her. Since she could not see her own values, she needed someone else to affirm her worth. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
On the other hand, there was a sharp conflict between the compulsive modesty and the excessive expectations of the partner. Because of this unconscious conflict, Clare had to distort the situation every time she was disappointed over unfulfilled expectations. In such situations she felt herself the victim of intolerably harsh and abusive treatment, and therefore felt miserable and hostile. Most of the hostility had to be repressed because of fear of desertion, but its existence undermined the relationship and turned her expectations into vindictive demands. The resulting upsets proved to have a great bearing on her fatigue and her inhibition toward productive work. The result of this period of analytical work was that she overcome her parasitic helplessness and became capable of greater activity of her own. The fatigue was no longer continual but appeared only occasionally. She became more friendly, though they were still far from being spontaneous; she impressed others as being haughty while she herself still felt quite timid. An expression of the general change in her was contained in a dream in which she drove with her friend in a strange country and it occurred to her that she, too, might apply for a driver’s license. Actually, she had a license and could drive as well as the friend. The dream symbolized a dawning insight that she had rights of her own and need not feel like a helpless appendage. The third and last period of analytical work dealt with repressed ambitious strivings. There had been a period in her life when she had been obsessed by frantic ambition. This had lasted from her later years in grammar school up to her second year in college, and then seemed to disappear. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
One could conclude by inference that it still operated underground. This was suggested by the fact that she was elated and overjoyed at any recognition, by her dread of failure, and by the anxiety involved in any attempt at independent work. This trend was more complicated in its structure than the two others. In contrast to the others, it constituted an attempt to master life actively, to take up a fight against adverse forces. This fact was one element in its continued existence: she felt herself that there had been a beneficial force in her ambition and wished repeatedly to be able to retrieve it. A second element feeding the ambition was the necessity to re-establish her lost self-esteem. The third element was vindictiveness: success meant a triumph over all those who had humiliated her, while failure meant disgraceful defeat. To understand the characteristics of this ambition, we have to understand man and psychic disorder. Earliest history suggests that mental illness has probably been coexistent with mental life. Man’s capacity to perceive, to discriminate, to create symbols for the communication of his perceptions has always entailed the possibility of error—the possibility of misperception, of poor discrimination, of inadequate communication. Such errors throughout all time have had potential to interfere with man’s efforts to adapt, to live securely in his environment. There is reason to believe that earliest man had emotional equipment, that he could experience pain, and learn to fear its source and to be anxious in the presence of reminders of previous hurts. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
There is reason to believe that primitive man was no more a standard unit than his modern brother. Then as now there were probably wide individual difference—differences in susceptibility to pain, differences in the capacity to learn from experience so as to avoid repeated injury or failure, differences in the physiological reactivity to real and symbolic stresses. Some men of early history showed marked disturbances in their behaviour—they exhibited uncontrolled and unremitting fear in the absence of real threat, they engaged in maladaptive, inadequate protective measures, they had sudden fits and fainting spells, and they became violently rageful. Their peers could readily see that these men were disordered but could see such disorder only as a further manifestation of the threatening and unpredictable World. The same powerful agents that brought thunder and lightning must be responsible, it must have seemed, for these wild storms in men. The malevolent spirits responsible for man’s general misery and hardships must be particularly abusive toward the “disordered.” While no meaningful appraisal can be made of the frequency of severe mental dysfunction in earliest man, it is reasonable to conjecture how insanity may have been perceived and treated. Prehistoric man’s life space was compounded of danger and ignorance, and these are the generators of fear, it would be probably that the wild outburst of a demented person would seem fearsome, and those exposed to his violent, strange acts would be move to self-protection rather than to treatment. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
With the insight into conceptions of disordered behaviour and its management revealed by the earliest historical records, we can reasonably project backwards and assume that the nature and treatment of insanity did not suddenly assume new forms with the advent of language. Anthropomorphism is possibly the most primitive and universal of all forms of psychological thought. Primitive man’s talent for projecting his personal qualities into the World about him perhaps exceeded that of his modern cousin only through freedom from self-consciousness. The ancient had need to appease and, later, desire to control the wildness which each day filled his existence with uncertainty. What could be more natural, and more promising of a successful petition, than to cast an image of man-likeness into each of nature’s threatening forms? What could hold greater hope for the attainment of truce, safe passage, and successful endeavour than the possibility that the sun and the moon, and the Earth and the water, and the plants and animals were but variously disguised forms of man stuff? If this were so, the human creature could please with his signs, hope to be comprehended, and expect sympathetic response. Before medicine there was magic. Primitive man peoples the World about him with gods and demons. He seems spirits in the trees, in the winds, and the moving clouds, in storms and lightning, in the running rivers, in sun and moon, in the very stones he treads upon. Those spirits, benevolent and malevolent, control his destiny for good or ill. They are particularly responsible for his misfortune. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The primitive mind does not regard sickness, disease, or even death as the consequence of natural phenomena. Rather are they looked upon as the results of supernatural intervention on the part of the spirits which fill his World. In his naivete primitive man feels confident that by learning certain secrets and mysteries, certain rituals and incantations, he can in turn gain control of the supernatural spirits and manipulate them to his own purposes and desires, or at least to neutralize them—to ward off illness, for instance. His efforts to manipulate external forces through supernatural means or knowledge constitute the kernel of magic. So it may have been that man projected into his cosmos a stage of actors, a dramatis personae of anthropomorphic spirits, and sought by pantomime to convey his prayer and by prayer to achieve his security. This was animism, the investment of physical phenomena, organic and inorganic, with qualities of intention, direction, and force like those perceived within himself and among his brethren. It was natural for primitive man to explain that unpredictable and uncontrolled in his own behavior with the explanation he had for wider phenomena. The disturbed person was “possessed” by an evil which was in him, to appease it, or to ease its exit from his body. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
This, in the earliest period in the history of mental illness and its treatment, we find a crude ideology of powerful, malignant forces which required strong countermeasures to cause “them” to relinquish their grip on the sick person. In this time, holes were bored into the skulls of the “possessed” so as to relieve pressure and permit exit of the evil spirit. Whipping and scourging were inflicted on the sick person, but were directed at the evil within him. Primitive psychology, from which even the most sophisticated modern man must continually struggle to free himself, would generate the thought the evil spirits seek out sympathetic hosts—the possessed person is in his own right evil—and that therefore the exorcism of the evil spirit could appropriately include some punishment of its host. History suggests, and modern knowledge of psychopathology makes it plausible, that some of the violent treatments which were inflicted during the period of primitive animism were effective. In this earliest period of psychiatric history, we have a probable first expression of a repeated paradox—theories of etiology or pathology which are inaccurate or inadequate, or both, may give rise to therapies that prove efficacious, and the very potency of the treatment, unfortunately, may prevent or delay correction of the erroneous theory. How short a step was it from animism to demonism? How soon did our ultimate progenitors detect that there was good and bad in their spirit World? How soon did they discriminate the hostile force from the hospitable circumstance? The fact of the preponderant harshness in their surroundings coupled with appreciation of their frail resources would favour a rapid focusing on the enemies among their anthropomorphic creations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
The prevalence of environmental catastrophe led to the growth of demonology, the identification of evil spirits and of techniques for appeasing them or escaping their malevolent influence. Even primitive and revealed cognizance of the touchstone to social progress—division of labour and its refined expression as based on particularization of talent. There evolved gradually the role of shaman, specialist in the haranguing of demons, singer of incantations and purveyor of potions. His was the task of providing amnesty with the supernatural, protecting the community through group ritual, and treating the afflicted individual with a pharmacopeia of exorcism. It is essential to understand how to fight “in cold blood,” so to speak: id est, wholly apart from feelings of any kind: for the self-actualized may feel it is victory when it is defeat, and vice versa. All dependence upon feeling and acting from impulse must be put aside in this warfare. Some can only recognize “conflict” when they are emotionally conscious of it; they fight spasmodically, or by accident—when forced to it by necessity. However, now the “fight” must be permanent and part of the very life. There needs to be a ceaseless recognition of the forces of darkness “in cold blood”—simply because of knowing what they are—and consequently a “fight from principle.” There needs to be a ceaseless recognition of the forces of darkness “in cold blood”—simply because of knowing what they are—and consequently a “fight from principle.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
There must be a fight against these unseen forces even when there is nothing to be seen of their presence or workings, remembering that they do not always attack when they can. If they were to attack on some occasions they would lose by it, because that would reveal the character of the thing and its source. The self-actualized knows that the ultimate negative, being by nature a tempter, is always tempting—and therefore he resists from principle. Anyone who desires perpetual victory must understand that it is a question of principle versus feeling and consciousness. If the warfare is governed by the latter rather than the former, only then can there be intermittent victory. So when the enemy attack him, the self-actualized will find a strong, primary weapon of victory in declaring deliberate position toward conduct disorder and the ultimate negative. The person reckoning himself in the present moment to be “dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto the ultimate concern thereby refuses to yield to conduct disorder and the ultimate negative in any of the points of attack or causes of the conflict. As the self-actualized declares his position in the hour of conflict and onslaught from the foe, he will often find himself obliged to wrestle in real combat with the invisible enemy. Standing on the finished work of Jesus as the Christ, in death to conduct disorder, the spirit of the man becomes liberated for action, and energized to stand against the hierarchic hosts of the ultimate negative—the principalities of powers, the World-rulers of the darkness, and the hosts of psychopathological offenders in the Heavenly (or spiritual) sphere. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
We attach the existential urgency to time in an “ahistorical” fashion: Beginning from and ending in the eternal are not matters of a determinable moment in physical time but rather a process going on in every moment, as does the divine creation. There is always creation and consummation, beginning and end. It is not precisely in a determinable moment of physical time—for example, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ, our own death, the beginning and end of the World—that the uniqueness, the irreversibility, and hence the historic nature of time brings its full weight to bear? We are here faced with a curious twist: concern for the meaning of history leads us to downgrade historical moments. Our eschatology allows us to depreciate the moment of death. By making the here-and-now eternally significant, our attention is riveted upon the goal of history which lends meaning to the historical process. We appreciate the suffering and the drama of man’s struggle to attain the essentialization which is Eternal Life. Nothing which is gained in the struggle is ever lost, for there are degrees of essentialization, so that no one is completely excluded from Eternal Life. The suggestion is finally made of a transhistorical fulfilment which renders death no longer absolutely decisive for eternity. Inevitability essentialization is a certain ahistorical quality of timelessness and this is why we fail to consider death as truly eschatological. The accent upon the eternally present goals of history may be overshadow the seriousness and the dignity of specific moments of the historical process. There is danger that we do not see the trees for the first, that eternity undercuts time. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The afterlife involves the symbols immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body. The question of the “when” of unambiguous, non-fragmentary participation in the Kingdom of God is a legitimate one, and it leads to the question of the “after.” The self-conscious self cannot be excluded from Eternal Life, and self-consciousness in Eternal Life is not the same as in temporal life. The symbol resurrection of the body sheds even less light, for again only two negative statements are permissible about the resurrected “Spiritual body”: it is not purely spiritual, and it is not simply material. We cannot hope for a final stage of justice and peace within history; but we can hope for partial victories over the forces of evil in a particular moment of time. And now we ask the question of our personal participation in the eternal. So we have a right to hope for it? We have a right to such ultimate hope, even in view of the end of all other hopes, even in the face of death. For we experience the presence of the eternal in us and in our World here and now. Where this is experienced, there is awareness of the eternal, there is already, however fragmentary, participation in the eternal. This is the basis of the hope for eternal life. It is the justification of our ultimate hope. And is as Christians we point to Good Friday and Easter, we point to the most powerful example of the same experience. Religion is the substance of culture, and culture is the form of religion. At its base is God as the ground of being, but reunion with the ground can be had only through the power of the New Being which overcomes the estrangement of existence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Reception of the New Being in turn begets the theonomous community which is the Spiritual Community, but it I subject to the historical dimension. Theonomy is fully achieved only in the transcendent Kingdom of God where universal essentialization is realized. Structure and content, however, are somewhat mechanical devices. Judgement—the belief that “this and that is so.” Thus, judgment contains the avowal that an “identical case” has been encountered: it this presupposed comparison, with the aid of recollection. Judgment does not create the appearance of an identical case. Rather, it believes it perceives one; it works under the presupposition that there are in general identical cases. What is that function, which must be much older operative much earlier, which levels off and assimilates? What is the second one, which on the basis of the first, et cetera. That which excites the same sensation is the same; but what is “That” that makes sensations the same, “takes” them to be the same? If a kind of equalization had not first been exercised within the sensations, there could be no judgments at all: recollection is only possible with a constant underscoring of what is already accustomed, experienced. Before anything is judged, the process of assimilation must already be completed: thus, here, too, there is an intellectual activity that does not enter into consciousness, like pain following from an injury. An inner event probably corresponds to all organic functions, hence an assimilating, eliminating, growing, et cetera. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Essential” to begin with the body and use it as a guiding thread. It is the much richer phenomenon and affords clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind. However strongly something may be believed, that is no criterion of truth. However, what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life? Then, of course, strength would be a criterion, exempli gratia, with regard to causality. Logical certainty, transparency, as criterion of truth (“omne illud vernum est, quod clare et distincte percipitur,” Descartes): the mechanical hypothesis concerning the World is thereby desirable and credible. However, that is a crude confusion: like simplex aigillum veri. How do we know that the true constitution of things stands in this relation to our intellect? Could not it be otherwise? That the hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of power and security is the most preferred, valued, and consequently characterized as true? The intellect posits its freest and strongest capacity and ability as the criterion of the most valuable, consequently of the true. “True”: from the side of feeling—what arouses feeling most forcefully (“I”); from the side of thinking—what gives thinking the greatest feeling of strength; from the side of touching, seeing, hearing—that which calls for the greatest resistance. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Thus, it is the highest degree of activity that awakens belief in the “truth,” that is, the reality, of the object. The feeling of strength, of struggle, of resistance convinces us that there is something here being resisted. The criterion of truth lies in the intensification of the feeling of power. “Truth”: in my way of thinking this designates not necessarily the opposite of error but in the most fundamental cases only the position of various errors in relation to one another. Perhaps one is older or deeper than another, maybe even ineradicable, inasmuch as an organic being of our kind could not live without it; while other errors do not tyrannize us in the same ways as conditions of life but, when measured against such “tyrants,” can instead be set aside and “refuted.” An assumption that is irrefutable—why should it for that reason be “true”? This proposition will perhaps outrage logicians, who regard their limits as the limits of things—but I long ago declare war on this logicians’ optimism. Everything simple is merely imaginary, not “true.” However, what is real, what is true, is neither one nor even reducible to one. Happy is the man whose strength Thou art, O Lord, whose heart is a highway to Thee. Happy is the man whom Thou instructest, O Lord, and teachest out of Thy law. Happy is the man that finds wisdom, and he that obtains understanding. 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. Consider and see that the Lord is good; happy is the man that takes refuge in Him. The Sacramento Fire Department has saved the lives of millions of people and they help the community to survive and rebuild their lives. Please make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure the community has a chance for a bright future. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
On December 13, 2023, caretaker was singing while decorating Mrs. Winchester’s house, he was listening “Do you hear what I hear” by Bing Crosby when the song had reached the part “A child, a child shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold,” when he became away of a stranger watching him from the doorway. He had an oval face, blue eyes, and was wearing a cream suit. According to the caretaker, he had a “strange sad look” before melting away.
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Misery Acquaints a Human with Strange Bedfellows
If you think about, the Victorian era was the only time that we could possibly achieve World peace. Misery acquaints a human with strange bedfellows. Looking at it from the standpoint of values it becomes evident that narcissism conflicts with reasons and with love. This statement hardly needs further elaboration. By the very nature of the narcissistic orientation, it prevents one—to the extent to which it exists—from seeing reality as it is, that is, objectively; in other words, it restricts reason. It may not be equally clear that it restricts love—especially when we recall that Dr. Freud said that in al love there is a strong narcissistic component; that a man in love with a woman makes her the object of his own narcissism, and that therefore she becomes wonderful and desirable because she is part of him. She may do the same with him, and thus we have the case of the “great love,” which often is only a folie a deux rather than love. Both people remain each of them will be in need of a new person who can give them fresh narcissistic satisfaction. For the narcissistic person, the partner is never a person in one’s own right or in one’s full reality; one exists only as a shadow of the partner’s narcissistically inflated ego. Nonpathological love, on the other hand, is not based on mutual narcissism. It is a relationship between two people who experience themselves as separate entities, yet who can open themselves and become one with each other. In order to experience love, one must experience separateness. If we consider that the essential teachings of all the great humanist religions can be summarized in one sentence: It is the goal of man to overcome one’s narcissism; the significance of the phenomenon of narcissism from the ethical-spiritual viewpoint becomes very clear. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Perhaps this principle is nowhere expressed more radically than in the teachings of Jesus as the Christ. If humans awaken from their illusions, repent, and becomes aware of the Heavenly Father, the teaching of Jesus as the Christ amounts to saying that humans can save themselves from the reality of sickness, old age, and death, and of the impossibility of ever attaining the aims of one’s greed. The sanctified person who Jesus as the Christ’s teachings speaks is the person who has overcome one’s narcissism, and who is therefore capable of being fully awake. We might put the same thought still differently: Only if humans can do away with the illusions of their indestructible ego, only if one can drop it together with all other objects of one’s greed, only then can one be open to the World and fully related to it. Psychologically this process of becoming fully awake is identical with the replacement of narcissism by relatedness to the World. The Old Testament says: “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Here the demand is to overcome one’s narcissism at least to the point where one’s neighbour becomes as important as oneself. However, the Old Testament goes much further than this in demanding love for the “stranger.” (You know the soul of the stranger, for strangers have you been in the land of Egypt.) The stranger is precisely the person who is not part of my clan, my family, my nation; one is not part of the group to which I am narcissistically attached. One is nothing other than human. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
One discovers the human being in the stranger. In the love for the stranger narcissistic love has vanished. For it means loving another human being in one’s suchness and one’s difference from me, and not because one is like me. When the New Testament says “love thine enemy” it expresses the same idea in a more pointed form. If the stranger has become fully human to you, there is also no longer an enemy, because you have become truly human. Only if narcissism has been overcome, if “I am thou,” to love the stranger and the enemy is possible. The fight against idolatry, which is the central issue of prophetic teaching, is at the same time a fight against narcissism. In idolatry one partial faculty of man is absolutized and made into an idol. Man then worships himself in an alienated form. The idol in which one submerges becomes the object of one’s narcissistic passion. The idea of God, on the contrary, is the negation of narcissism because only God—not man—is omniscient and omnipotent. However, while the concept of an indefinable and indescribable God was the negation of idolatry and narcissism, God soon became again an idol; man identified himself with God in a narcissistic manner, and thus in full contradiction to the original function of the concept of God, religion became a manifestation of group narcissism. The full maturity of man is achieved by his complete emergence from narcissism, both individual and group narcissism. This goal of mental development which is thus expressed in psychological terms is essentially the same as that which the great spiritual leaders of the human race have expressed in religious-spiritual terms. While the concepts differ, the substance and the experience referred to in the various concepts are them same. #Randolphharris 3 of 20
We live in a historical period characterized by a sharp discrepancy between the intellectual development of humans, which has led to the development of the most destructive armaments, and one’s mental-emotional development, which has left one still in a state of marked narcissism with all its pathological symptoms. What can be done in order to avoid the catastrophe which can easily result from this contradiction? Is it at all possible for humans to take a step in the foreseeable future which, in spite of all religious teachings, one has never been able to take before? Is narcissism so deeply ingrained in humans that one will never overcome one’s “narcissistic core,” as Dr. Freud thought? Is there then any hope that narcissistic madness will not lead to the destruction of humans before one had a chance to become fully human? No one can give an answer to these questions. One can only examine what the optimal possibilities are which may help humans to avoid the catastrophe. One might begin with what would seem to be the easiest way. Even without reducing narcissistic energy in each person, the object could be changed. If mankind, the entire human family, could become the object of group narcissism instead of one nation, one race, or one political system being this object, much might be gained. If the individual could experience oneself primarily as citizens of the World and if they could feel pride in mankind and in its achievements, one’s narcissism would turn toward the human race as an object, rather than to its conflicting components. If the educational systems of all countries stressed the achievements of an individual nation, a more convincing and moving case could be made for the pride in being human. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
If the feeling which the Greek poet expressed in Antigone’s words, “There is nothing more wonderful than man,” could become an experience shared by all, certainly a great step forward would have to be added: the feature of all benign narcissism, namely, that it refers to an achievement. Not one group, class, religion, but all of humankind must undertake to accomplish tasks which allow everybody to be proud of belonging to this race. Common tasks for all mankind are at hand: the joint fight against disease, against hunger, for the dissemination of knowledge and art through our means of communication among all the peoples of the World. The fact is that in spite of all differences in political and religious ideology, there is no sector of mankind which can afford to exclude itself from these common tasks; for the great achievement of this century is that the belief in the natural or divine causes of human inequality, of the necessity or legitimacy of the exploitation of one human by another, has been defeated to the point of no return. Renaissance humanism, the bourgeois revolutions, the Russian, Chinese, and colonial revolutions—all are based on one common thought: the equality of man. Even if some of these revolutions have led to the violation of human equality within the systems concerned, the historical fact is that the idea of the equality of all men, hence of their freedom and dignity, has conquered the World, and it is unthinkable that mankind could ever return to the concepts which dominated civilized history until only a short time ago. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
The image of the human race and of its achievements as the object of benign narcissism could be represented by supranational organizations such as the United Nations; it could even begin to create its own symbols, holidays, and festivals. Not the national holiday, but the “day of man” would become the highest holiday of the year. However, it is clear that such a development can occur only inasmuch as many and eventually all nations concur and are willing to reduce their national sovereignty in favour of the sovereignty of mankind; not only in terms of political, but also in terms of emotional, realities. A strengthened United Nations and the reasonable and peaceful solution of group conflicts are the obvious conditions for the possibility that humanity and its common achievements shall become the object of group narcissism. As an example of more specific measures for such an attempt, consider history. History textbooks should be rewritten as textbooks of World History, in which the proportions of each nation’s life remain true to reality and are not distorted, just as World maps are the same in all countries and do not inflate the size of each respective country. Furthermore, movies could be made which foster pride in the development of the human race, showing how humanity and its achievements are the final integration of many single steps undertaken by various groups. Such a change in the object of narcissism from single groups to all humankind and its achievements would indeed tend, as pointed out before, to counteract the dangers of national and ideological narcissism. However, this was not enough. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we are true to our political and religious ideals, the Christian as well as the socialist ideal of unselfishness and brotherhood, the task is to reduce the degree of narcissism in each individual. Although this will take generations, it is now more possible than ever before become humans have the possibility to create the material conditions for a dignified human life for everybody. The development of technique will do away with the need for one group to enslave and to exploit another; it has already made war obsolete as an economically rational action; man will for the first time emerge from one’s half-animal state to a fully human one, and hence not need narcissistic satisfaction to compensate for one’s material and cultural poverty. On the basis of these new conditions man’s attempt to overcome narcissism can be greatly helped by the scientific and the humanist orientation. We must shift our educational effort from teaching primarily a technical orientation to one that is scientific; that is, toward furthering critical thought, objectivity, acceptance of reality, and a concept of truth which is subject to no fiat and is valid for every conceivable group. If the civilized nations can create a scientific orientation as one fundamental attitude in their young, much will have been gained in the struggle against narcissism. The second factor which leads in the same direction is the teaching of humanist philosophy and anthropology. We could not even want this, since the establishment of one system claiming to be the “orthodox” one might lead to another source of narcissistic regression. However, even allowing for all existing differences, there is a common humanist creed and experience. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
The creed is that each individual carries all of humanity within oneself, that the “human condition” is one and the same for all human, in spite of unavoidable differences in intelligence, talents, height, and colour. This humanist experience consists in feeling that nothing human is alien to one, that “I am you,” that one can understand another human being because both share the same elements of human existence. Only if we enlarge our sphere of awareness is this humanist experience is fully possible. Our own awareness is usually confined to what the society of which we are members permits us to be aware. Those human experiences which do not fit into this picture are repressed. Hence our consciousness represents mainly our own society and culture, while our unconscious represents the universal man in each of us. The broadening of self-awareness, transcending consciousness and illuminating the spheres of the social unconscious, will enable man to experience in himself all of humanity; he will experience that fact he is a sinner and a saint, a child and an adult, a sane and insane person, a man of the past and one of the future—that he carries within oneself that which mankind has been and that which it will be. A true renaissance of our humanist tradition undertaken by all religious, political, and philosophical systems claiming to represent humanism would result in considerable progress toward the most important “new frontier” that exists today—man’s development into a completely human being. Teaching alone can be the decisive step for the realization of humanism, as the Renaissance humanists believed. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
If essential social, economic, and political conditions change; a change from bureaucratic industrialism to humanist-socialist industrialism; from centralization to decentralization; from the organization man to a responsible and participating citizen; subordination of national sovereignties to the sovereignty of the human race and its chosen organs; common efforts of the “have” nations in corporation with the “have-not” nations to build up the economic systems of the latter; universal disarmament and availability of the existing material resources for constructive takes, only then will all these teachings have an impact. Universal disarmament is also necessary for another reason: if one sector of humankind lives in fear of total destruction by another bloc, and the rest live in fear of destruction by both blocs, then, indeed, group narcissism cannot be diminished. Man can be human only in a climate in which he can expect that he and his children will live to see the next year, and many more years to come. A knowledge of the neurotic trends and their implications gives a rough conception of what has to be worked through in analysis. It is also desirable, however, to know something about the sequence in which the work must be done. Are problems tackled in a helter-skelter fashion? Does one obtain a piecemeal insight here and there until at last the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are put together into an understandable picture? Or are there principles that may serve as a guide in the maze of material ordering itself? Dr. Freud declared that a person will first present in the analysis the same front that one presents to the World in general, and that then one’s repressed striving will gradually appear, in succession from the less repressed to the more repressed. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
If we were to take a bird’s-eye view of the analytical procedure this answer would still hold true. And even if the findings to be made lay around a single vertical line along which we would have to wind our way into the depths, as a guide for action, the general principle involved would be good enough. However, if we should assume that this is the case, if we should assume that is we only continue to analyze whatever material shows up we shall penetrate step by step into the repressed area, we may easily find ourselves in a state of confusion—which indeed happens not infrequently. The theory of neuroses developed in pervious reports gives us more specific leads. It holds that there are several focal points in the neurotic personality given by the neurotic trends and the structure built around each of them. The inference to be drawn for the therapeutic procedure is, briefly, that we must discover each trend and each time descend into the depths. More concretely, the implications of each neurotic trend are repressed in various degrees. Those that are less deeply repressed are the first to become accessible; those that are more deeply repressed will emerge later. The same principle applies to the order in which the neurotic trends themselves can be tackled. One patient will start by presenting the implications of one’s need for absolute independence and superiority, and only much later can one discover and tackle indications of one’s compliance or of one’s need for affection. The next patient will start with an open display of one’s need to be loved and approved of, and one’s tendencies to control over, if one has any, could possibly be approached at the beginning; but a third one will from the beginning display a highly developer power drive. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The fact that a trend appears at the beginning indicates nothing about its comparative importance or unimportance: the neurotic trend that appears first is not necessarily the strongest one in the sense of having the greatest influence on the personality. We could rather say that that trend is the first to crystalize which jibes vest with the person’s conscious or semiconscious image of oneself. If secondary defenses—the means of self-justification—are highly developed they may entirely dominate the picture at the beginning. In that case the neurotic trends become visible and accessible only later one. To further high light this illustration, consider Clare whose childhood history was briefly outlined in past reports. When the analysis is reported for this purpose it must, of course, be grossly simplified and schematized. Clare came for analytic treatment at the age of fifteen for various reasons. She was easily overcome by a paralyzing fatigue that interfered with her work and her social life. Also, she complained about having remarkably little self-confidence. She was the editor of a magazine, and though her professional career and her present position were satisfactory her ambition to write plays and stories was checked by insurmountable inhibitions. She could do her routine work but was unable to do productive work, though she was inclined to account for this latter inability by point out her probable lack of talent. She had been married at the age of sixteen, but the husband had died after three years. After the marriage she had had a relationship with another man which continued during the analysis. According to her initial presentation both relationships were completely satisfactory. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The analysis stretched over a period of four and a half years. She was analyzed for one year and a half. This time was followed by an interruption of two years, in which she did a good deal of self-analysis, afterward retuning to analysis for another year at irregular intervals. Clare’s analysis could be roughly divided into three phases: the discovery of her compulsive modesty; the discovery of her compulsive dependence on a partner; and finally, the discovery of her compulsive need to force others to recognize her superiority. None of these trends was apparent to herself or to others. In the first period the data that suggested compulsive elements were as follows. She tended to minimize her own value and capacities: not only was she insecure about her assets but she tenaciously denied their existence, insisting that she was not intelligent, attractive, or gifted and tending to discard evidence to the contrary. Also, she tended to regard others as superior to herself. If there was a dissension of opinion, she automatically believed that the others were right. She recalled that when her husband had started an affair with another woman she did nothing to remonstrate against it, though the experience was extremely painful to her; she managed to consider him justified in preferring the other on the grounds that the latter was more attractive and more loving. Moreover, it was almost impossible for her to spend money on herself: when she traveled with others she could enjoy living in expensive places, even though she contributed her share in the expenses, but as soon as she was on her own she could not bring herself to spend money on such things as trips, dresses, plays, books. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Finally, though she was in an executive position, it was impossible for her to give orders: if orders were unavoidable, she would do so in an apologetic way. The data showed that Clare had developed a compulsive modesty, that she felt compelled to constrict her life within narrow boundaries and to take always a second or third place. When this trend was once recognized, and its origin in childhood discussed, we began to search systematically for its manifestations and its consequences. What role did this trend actually play in her life? She could not assert herself in any way. In discussions she was easily swayed by the opinions of others. Despite a good faculty for judging people she was incapable of taking any critical stand toward anyone or anything except in editing, when a critical stand was expected of her. She had encountered serious difficulties, for instance, by failing to realize that a fellow worker was trying to undermine her position; when this situation was fully apparent to others, she still regarded the other as her friend. Her compulsion to take second place appeared clearly in games: in tennis, for instance, she was usually too inhibited to play well, but occasionally she was able to play a good game and then, as soon as she became aware that she might win, she would begin to play badly. The wishes of others were more important than her own: she would be contented to take her holidays during the time that was least wanted by others, and she would do more work than she needed to if others were dissatisfied with the amount of work to be done. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Most important was a general suppression of her feelings and wishes. Her inhibitions concerning expansive plans she regarded as particular “realistic”—evidence that she never wanted things that were beyond reach. Actually she was as little “realistic” as someone with excessive expectations of life; she merely kept her wishes beneath the level of the attainable. She was unrealistic in living in every way beneath her means—socially, economically, professionally, spiritually. It was attainable for her, as her later life showed, to be liked by many people, to look attractive, to write something that was valuable and original. The most general consequence of this trend were progressive lowering of self-confidence and a diffuse discontentment with life. Of the latter she had not been in the least aware, and could not be aware as long as everything was “good enough” for her and she was not clearly conscious of having wishes or of their not being fulfilled. The only way this general discontentment with life had shown itself was in trivial matters and in sudden spells of crying which had occurred from time to time and which had been quite beyond her understanding. For quite a while she recognized only fragmentarily the truth of these findings; in important matters she made the silent reservation that I either overrated her or felt it to be good therapy to encourage her. Finally, however, she recognized in a rather dramatic fashion that real, intense anxiety lurked behind this façade of modesty. It was at a time when she was about to suggest an improvement in the magazine. She knew that her plan was good, that it would not meet with too much opposition, that everyone would be appreciative in the end. Before suggesting it, however, she had an intense panic which could not be rationalized in any way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
At the beginning of the discussion, she still felt panicky and had to leave the room because she was unwell. However, as the discussion turned increasingly in her favour the panic subsided. The plan was finally accepted and she received considerable recognition. She went home with a feeling of elation and was still in good spirits when she came to the next analytical hour. I dropped a casual remark to the effect that this was quite a triumph for her, which she rejected with a slight annoyance. Naturally she had enjoyed the recognition but her prevailing feeling was one of having escaped from a great danger. It was only after more than two years had elapsed that she could tackle the other elements involved in this experience, which were along the lines of ambition, dread of failure, triumph. At that time her feelings, as expressed in her associations, were all concentrated on the problem of modesty. She felt that she had been presumptuous to propound a new plan. Who was she to know better! However, gradually she realized that this attitude was based on the fact that for her the suggesting of a different course of action meant a venturing out of the narrow artificial precincts that she had anxiously preserved. Only when she recognized the truth of this observation did she become fully convinced that her modesty was a façade to be maintained for the sake of safety. The result of this first phase of work was a beginning of faith in herself and a beginning of courage to feel and assert her wishes and opinions. The second period was dedicated prevailingly to work on her dependency on a “partner.” The majority of the problems involved she worked through by herself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
This dependency, despite its overwhelming strength, was still more deeply repressed than the previous trend. It had never occurred to her that anything was wrong in her relationships with men. On the contrary, she had believed them to be particularly good. The analysis gradually changed this picture. There were three main factors that suggested compulsive dependence. The first was that she felt completely lost, like a small child in a strange wood, when a relationship ended or when she was temporarily separated from a person who was important to her. The first experience of this kind occurred after she left home at the age of twenty. She then felt like a feather blown around in the Universe, and her wrote desperate letters to her mother, declaring that she could not live without her. This homesickness stopped when he developed a kind of crush on an older man, a successful writer who was interested in her work, and furthered her in a patronizing way. Of course, this first experience of feeling lost when alone could be understood on the basis of her youth and the sheltered life she had lived. However, later reactions were intrinsically the same, and formed a strange contrast to the rather successful professional career that she was achieving despite the difficulties mentioned before. The second striking fact was that in any of these relationships the whole World around her became submerged and only the beloved had any importance. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
Thought and feelings centered around a call or a letter or a visit from him; hours that he spent without him were empty, filled only with waiting for him, with a pondering about his attitude to her, and above all with feeling utterly miserable about incidents which she felt as utter neglect or humiliating rejection. At these times other human relationships, her work, and other interests lost almost every value for her. The third factor was a fantasy of a great and masterful man whose willing slave she was and who in turn gave her everything she wanted, from an abundance of material things to an abundance of mental stimulation, and made her a famous writer. As the implications of these factors were gradually recognized the compulsive need to lean on a “partner” appeared and was worked through in its characteristics and its consequences. Its main feature was an entirely repressed parasitic attitude, an unconscious wish to feed on the partner, to expect him to supply the content of her life, to take responsibility for her, to solve all her difficulties and to make her a great person without her having to make efforts of her own. This trend had alienated her not only from other people but also from the partner himself, because the unavoidable disappointments she felt when her secret expectations of him remained unfulfilled gave rise to a deep inner irritation; most of this irritation was repressed for fear of losing the partner, but some of it emerged in occasional explosions. Another consequence was that she could not enjoy anything except when she shared it with the partner. The most general consequences of this trend were that her relationships served only to make her more insecure and more passive. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
In speaking and writing, if the self-actualized is conscious of difficulties, obstacles, or interference in what one is doing, one should at once refuse all ideas, thoughts, suggestions, visions (id est, pictures to the mind), words, impressions, that the spirits of psychopathological offenders may be seeking to insert or press upon one, so that one may be able to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and have a clarified mind for the carrying out of God’s will. The self-actualized, by one’s refusal and resistance against supernatural attempts to interfere with one’s outer human, will be actively resisting the powers of darkness, while one seeks to co-work with the Holy Spirit within one’s spirit. At first this means much conflict, but as one maintains active resistance and increasingly closes one’s whole being to the influence of psychopathological offenders, and is on the alert to recognize and refuse their workings, one’s union with the Risen Lord deepens, one’s spirit grows strong, one’s vision becomes pure, one’s mental faculties are clear enough to realize a perpetual victory over the foes who once had one in their oppressive power. One must then be especially on guard against what may be described as the “double counterfeits” of the deceiving psychopathological offenders. That I, the counterfeits offered by the enemy in connection with attack upon oneself. For example, the ultimate negative attacks one manifestly and openly, so that one clearly knows it to be an onslaught of the spirit-beings of psychopathological offenders. One prays, resists, gets through to victory in one’s will and spirit. If one is not on guard, then comes a “great feeling” of peace and rest, which may be as much an attack as the original onslaught, but more subtle and liable to mislead the believer. The enemy, by suddenly retreating and ceasing the furious attack, hopes by this stratagem to gain the advantage which one failed to obtain at the first. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Judgement—the belief that “this and that is so.” Thus, judgment contains the avowal that an “identical case” has been encountered: it thus presupposed comparison, with the aid of recollection. Judgement does not create the appearance of an identical case. Rather, it believes it perceives one; it works under the presupposition that there are in general identical cases. What is that function, which must be much older, operative much earlier, which levels off and stimulates? Stimulating” is probably the bet adjective of our interpretation of history. The sweep and vigour of our thought offers a richly developed theology of history to those who accept it, and a formidable challenge to those who criticize it. Perhaps one’s most original contribution is the concept of Kairos. Erich Przywara sees in it the key to our thought, for the Kairos Christi is the supreme conflict between the divine and the demonic in which the Kingdom of God overcomes and takes up into itself the Kingdom of Satan. The Kairos idea lies behind the idea that there is a time in which certain things are true and other times in which they do not apply. This accounts for the changing norms of theology. Theimplications of the Kairos concept probably can be expanded to accommodate these viewpoints, but ambitious claims for its importance should not obscure its primary role in the interpretation of history. The Kairos concept, the subject-object structure of history, the group as opposed to the individual or mankind as the bearer of history, the creation of the new as one of the marks of historical time, the inner-historical and transcendent nature of the Kingdom of God—there is still a certain incompleteness about it. One is more puzzled about what one does not say than about what one actually says. There are several major instances where one’s reticence is disappointing. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
If a kind of equalization had not first been exercised within the sensations: recollection is only possible with a constant underscoring of what is already accustomed, experienced, otherwise there could be no judgments at all. Before anything is judged, the process of assimilation must already be completed: thus, here, too, there is an intellectual activity that does not enter into consciousness, like pain following from an injury. An inner event probably corresponds to all organic functions, hence an assimilating, eliminating, growing, et cetera. Essential: to begin with the body and use it as a guiding thread. It is the much richer phenomenon and affords clearer observation. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind. However strongly something may be believed, that is no criterion of truth. However, what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief that has become a condition of life? Then, of course, strength would be a criterion, exempli gratia with regard to causality. Remove far from me falsehood and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with mine allotted bread, lest I become arrogant and defiant, saying, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I become poor and be tempted to steal, thus profaning the name of my God. Better is a little with righteousness, than great wealth with injustice. 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. That I am the Lord who doeth mercy, justice, and righteousness on Earth, for in these do I delight. The Sacramento Fire Department is a nonprofit organization that helps families build and improve places to call home. They believe that everyone should live in a community that is not threatened by the destruction of fire, which could lead to the loss of lives. Please take time to donate for they are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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For Every Change there is an Instigator
The World is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings. Perhaps narcissism is what keeps country so full of misery. Concerning the pathology of group narcissism, the most obvious and frequent symptom, as in the case of individual narcissism, is a lack of objectivity and rational judgment. If one examines the judgment the less affluent in America face and compare it with the way the physically disabled are regarded, one can easily recognize the distorted character the criticism they face. Little straws of truth are put together, but the whole which is thus formed consists of falsehoods and fabrications. If political actions are based on narcissistic self-glorifications, the lack of objectivity often leads to disastrous consequences. We have witnessed during the first quarter of this century two outstanding examples of the consequences of national narcissism. Many years before the immigration crisis, it was the unofficial strategic doctrine to claim that the United Stares of America wanted the poor and huddled masses from around the World; immigrants, regardless of their legal or illegal status, became endowed with special privileges and benefits and financial incentives and a spirit of entitlement that they needed to only come to America and the nation would provide for them. And that American taxpayers would pay the bill because their presence is worthy them having a sense of entitlement. Then democratic cities became sanctuary cities, which means that law enforcement was no longer allowed to deport people who immigrated illegally. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Instead, the people who migrated illegally could be bussed to wherever they pleased in the United States of America, be given cash aid and a food allowance, while they stand in posh hotels. Meanwhile, record of Americans are becoming homeless and cities are so flooded with millions of people who migrated illegal that they are now making it a crime to bus people who illegally immigrated into their cities without notification. While some states are making illegal immigration a state crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The problem is that over 12 million unidentified people have bombarded the nation, they are from all over the World, and some are extremely dangerous criminals. The public is concern that after 9/11 happened, that something much bigger and more widespread could happen again. Former President Obama, a man of extreme personal narcissism, who stimulated the group narcissism of millions of immigrations, overestimated the strength of the American government as a population building nation and financial source of support and underestimated the negative impact this would have on the nation and her people during an economic crisis and hyperinflation—as have other narcissistic politicians as well. In spite of his cleverness, Mr. Obama was not capable of seeing reality objectively, because his wish for democrats to win and rule weighed more heavily for him than the realities of national security and the economic health of the nation. And now, China, India, and America, in that order are expected to be the most powerful nations by 2050. Although, some say America lost her status as World power a long time ago from borrowing so much money from China. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Group narcissism needs satisfaction just as individual narcissism does. On one level of this satisfaction is provided by the common ideology of the superiority of one’s group, and the inferiority of all others. In religious groups this satisfaction is easily provided by the assumption that my group is the only one which believes in the true God, and hence since my God is the only true one, all other groups are made up of misguided unbelievers. However, even without reference to God as a witness for one’s superiority, group narcissism can arrive at similar conclusions on a secular level. The narcissistic conviction of the superiority of Democrats over Republicans in part of the United States of America demonstrates that there is no restraint to the sense of self-superiority or of the inferiority of another group. However, the satisfaction of these narcissistic self-images of a group requires also a certain degree of confirmation in reality. As long as Democrats have the power to demonstrate their superiority over the Republicans through federal judges, the media, social, economic, and other political acts of discrimination, their narcissistic beliefs have some element of reality, and thus bolsters up the entire narcissistic thought-system. The same held true for the Nazis; there the physical destruction of all the Jewish people had to sever as proof of the superiority of the Aryans (for a sadist the fact that one can kill a man or woman proves that the killer is superior). #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
If, however, the narcissistically inflated group does not have available a minority which is sufficiently helpless and to lend itself as an object for narcissistic satisfaction, the group’s narcissism will easily lead to the wish for military conquests; this was the path of pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism before 1914. In both cases the respective nations were endowed with the role of being the “chosen nation,” superior to all others, and hence justified in attacking those who did not accept their superiority. I do not mean to imply that “the” cause for illegal immigration was the narcissism of the Democrats and rights for people who immigrated illegally, but their fanaticism was certainly one factor which contributed to the outbreak of the invasion. Beyond this, however, one must not forget that once an invasion has started, the various governments try to arouse national narcissism as a necessary psychological condition for the successful waging of the war. There are already talks in the States and in Congress of deploying the national guard into Mexico and dismantling the drug cartels. Most people believe that America conquering Mexico would be a great idea because America could implement law and order, which is supposedly why so many people illegally immigrate to America. If the narcissism of a group is wounded, then we find the same reaction of rage which we have discussed in connection with individual narcissism. There are many historical examples for fact that disparagement of the symbols of group narcissism has often produced rage verging on insanity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Violation of the flag; insults against one’s own God, emperor, leader; the loss of a way and of territory—these have often led to violent mass feelings of vengeance which in turn led to new wars. If the offender is crushed and thus the insult to one’s narcissism is undone, the wounded narcissism can be healed only then. Revenge, individual and national, is often based on wounded narcissism and on the need to “cure” the wound by the annihilation of the offender. The highly narcissistic group is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify itself. The leader is then admired by the group which projects its narcissism on to one. In the very act of submission to the powerful leader, which is in depth an act of symbiosis and identification, the narcissism of the individual is transferred onto the leader. The greater the leader, the greater the follower. Personalities who as individuals are particularly narcissistic are the most qualitied to fulfill this function. The narcissism of the leader who is convinced of one’s greatness, and who has no doubts, is precisely what attracts the narcissism of those who submit to one. The half-insane leader is often the most successful one until one’s lack of objective judgment, one’s range reactions in consequence of any set-back, one’s need to keep up the image of omnipotence may provoke one to make mistakes which lead to one’s destruction. However, there are always gifted half-psychotics at hand to satisfy the demands of a narcissistic mass. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Narcissism is a necessary and valuable orientation, provided it is benign and does not transcend a certain threshold. However, our picture is incomplete. Man is not only concerned with biological and social survival, he is also concerned with values, with the development of that by virtue of which he is human. If essential control over the immediate physical environment and a degree of civilization sufficient to free man for self-preoccupation and worry about possible future threats to his security or presently imagined threats to his integrity is a basic requirement for the generation of neurotic anxiety, then man has had these prerequisites for a very long time. And the basic psychophysiological equipment required for the overlearning of danger signals and the anxiety response to stress seems not to be a very recent biological development. In this perspective, the presumed greater prevalence of neurotic breakdown in present-day man must be attributed to the greater stresses under which one lives. However, is modern man in fact subjected to greater stress than one’s historical predecessors? Contemporary Western Civilization is complex and the tempo of life seems ever faster. We are subjected to a wide variety of pressing demands (largely of our own creation), but we have an increasing armamentarium of efficient tools with which easily to provide much of our daily demands. It is not probably that a thoughtful and penetrating numeration of the pressures, problems, and uncertainties that confronted people 100 (or 1,000) years ago and that confront one’s modern counterpart would reveal chiefly a difference in content, not a difference in number and seriousness? #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
The problems of life have changed in their nature, but not in their number or severity. We suffer an inability to project ourselves empathically into the psychological stresses of older generations. Through inadequate historical perspective (and perhaps out of need to be heroic in our own eyes) we see lives of earlier times as simpler, slower, and less stressful—while we see ourselves as immersed in a morass of economic, ethical, political, moral, and social problems which cannot be solved because there is “too much pressure” and everything moves “too rapidly”—forgetting the tremendous technological advances that have both speeded communication and essentially freed us from concern with the mundane problems of sheer existence, so that we are in fact able, if we will, to concentrate in a way never before possible on the solution of our special problems. Has there been a significant increase in the rate of occurrence of major forms of mental disorders? When the severity of disturbance is such that the total functioning of personality is disrupted and the individual can no longer be safely tolerated in one’s community, when one’s symptoms are sufficiently gross to permit of easy, objective description, and when the sick individual is removed to a hospital, we have a base line that permits of valid historical comparison and that, with careful attention to adequate case histories, permits comparison of clinical diagnoses. Such comparative historical analyses, with attention to refined statistical corrections for population, have rarely been attempted. In one of the best studies so far reported the authors conclude that the rate (frequency of first admission to hospitals per specified age groups of the general public) of the major forms of functional psychoses has been essentially the same since 1870. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Even though the best available evidence suggests that psychotic breakdown is not increasing in frequency in modern times, it may be argued that the total amount of mental illness is on the increase by virtue of the prevalence of milder, non-hospitalized forms of psychiatric disability, exempli gratia, the neuroses. In this argument we are confronted by a cultural relativity that makes analysis of documentary evidence almost impossible. Today we recognize and have diagnostic labels for varieties of personality defect which were not provided for by the social machinery of pre-1900 cultures. Failure of recognition of an illness and formal provision for its treatment does not, of course, constitute evidence of its absence. Disorders do not begin their phenomenal existence with their first recognition, description, and labeling. Neurosis is not peculiar to modern man. Problems and pressures, the threat of large-scale disaster and the torment of doubt about ultimate values are not special heritage of twenty first-century humans. The biological capacity to experience anxiety is not a particular evolution of the post-1900 generations. If this is the “Age of Anxiety” it is because we have chosen to focus on this phenomenon and to give it meaning and importance which it has never been previously accorded. Anxiety and hope have been experienced in various measures by humans throughout the ages; there are absolutely unavoidable eventualities and insoluble uncertainties that give rise to both. Anxiety in its essential nature is no more pathological than hope—but our present culture has chosen to be anxious about anxiety. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
As we struggle individually with our persona anxieties and as we daily hear the tocsin of nuclear threat it is natural that we think ourselves to be the most psychologically tormented of all generations. Sober meditation upon the fact that all men in all ages have faced danger, deprivation, and the inevitable uncertainties of existence supports the conception that the sum total of mental misery in the World has not grown or diminished greatly over the passage of time. What has changed in man’s relative freedom to think about his condition, to be anxious about his anxiety, and to live in a cultural epoch which entertains the thesis that personal frustration of any sort is abnormal, that avoidance of anxiety should be a primary personal goal, and that society can provide both the knowledge and the experts for the successful prevention of unhappiness. Not only the evaluation of self is inclusively influenced by the neurotic trends, but also the evaluation of others. The person craving for prestige will judge others exclusively according to the prestige they enjoy: one who enjoys greater prestige one will put above oneself, and one with lesser prestige one will look down upon, regardless of the real values involved. The compulsively complaint person is likely to feel indiscriminate adoration of what appears to one as strength, even if this “strength” consists merely in erratic of unscrupulous behaviour. The person who must exploit others may take a certain liking to one who lends oneself to exploitation, but also despises one; one will think of a compulsively modest person as either stupid or hypocritical. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
The compulsively dependent person may look enviously at the compulsively self-sufficient person, thinking one free and uninhibited, though actually the latter is merely in the grip of a different neurotic trend. Consequently, there are inhibitions resulting from neurotic trends. Inhibitions may be circumscribed, that is, concern a concrete action, sensation, or emotion, taking the form, for example, of impotence or an inhibition toward telephoning. Or they may be diffuse and concern whole areas of life, such as self-assertion, spontaneity, making demands, coming close to people. As a rule specific inhibitions are at the level of awareness. If they become very strong the person may be generally aware of being inhibited, without, however, recognizing in what specific direction. They may be so subtle and hidden, on the other hand, that they person is not aware of their existence and efficacy. Awareness of inhibitions may be befogged in various ways, of which one of the commonest is rationalization: a person who has inhibitions about speaking to others in social gatherings may be aware of being inhibited on this score, but also one may simply believe that one dislikes parties and considers them boring, and find many good reasons for refusing invitations. The inhibitions produced by neurotic trends are primarily of the diffuse kind. Let us for the sake of clarity compare the person obsessed by a neurotic trend with a rope dancer. The latter, in order to reach the other end of the rope without falling down, must avoid any glance to right or to left and must keep one’s attention fixed on the rope. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Here we would not speak of an inhibition to glancing aside, because the rope dancer has a clear recognition of the danger involved and consciously avoids that danger. A person in the clutches of a neurotic trend must equally anxiously avoid any deviation from the prescribed course, but in one’s case there is an important difference, for with one the process is unconscious: strong inhibitions prevent one from wavering in the course laid down for one. Thus a person who makes oneself dependent on a partner will be inhibited from making independent moves of one’s own; a person trending toward a constriction of life will be inhibited from having, and still more from asserting, any expansive wishes; a person with a neurotic need to control self and others by reason will be inhibited from feeling any strong emotion; and a person with a compulsive craving for prestige will be inhibited from dancing or speaking in public or from any other activity that might be jeopardize one’s prestige, and in fact one’s whole learning faculty may be paralyzed because it is intolerable for one to appear awkward during the beginning period. Different as they are, all these inhibitions have an attribute in common: all of them represent a check on any spontaneity of feeling, thought, and action. One can have no more than a studied spontaneity when dancing on a rope. And if something leads one to trespass one’s determined boundaries, the panic that seizes a neurotic person is no less acute than that experienced by the rope dancer who loses one’s footing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Thus each neurotic trend generates not only a specific anxiety but also specific types of behaviour, a specific image of self and others, a specific pride, a specific kind of vulnerability and specific inhibitions. It has also been pointed out that a trend toward relegating one’s life to a partner is often combined with a general need for affection and with a trend toward constricting one’s life within narrow limits; that a craving for power so frequently goes with a craving for prestige that the two may appear as two aspects of the same trend; that an insistence on absolute independence and self-sufficiency is often intertwined with a belief that life can be mastered through reason and foresight. In these instances, the coexistence of various trends does not essentially complicate the picture, because while the different trends may collide at times—the need to be admired, for instance, may collide with a need to dominate—their objectives are nevertheless not too far apart. This does not mean that there are no conflicts: each neurotic trends carries within itself the germ of conflicts. However, when the trends are kindred the conflicts are manageable by way of repressions, avoidances, and the like, though at great expense to the individual. When a person has developed several neurotic trends that are incompatible in nature, the situation changes essentially. One’s position then is comparable to that of a servant who is dependent on two masters who give contradictory commands, both expecting blind obedience. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
If compliance is just as compulsive for one as absolute independence one feel caught in a conflict which does not permit of any permanent solution. One will grope for compromise solutions, but clashes will be inevitable; one pursuit is bound to interfere constantly with its opposite. The same impasse occurs when a compulsive need to dominate others in a dictatorial fashion is combined with a striving to lean on another person, or when a need to exploit others, which precludes the person’s productivity, is of equal intensity with a need to be admired as the superior, productive genius. It occurs, in fact, whenever contradictory trends exist together. The neurotic “symptoms,” such as phobias, depressions, alcoholism, ultimately result from these conflicts. The more thoroughly we recognize this fact the less will we be tempted to interpret the symptoms directly. If they result conflicting trends, it is as good as useless to try to understand them without having previously gained an understanding of the underlying structure. It should now be clear that the essence of a “neurosis” is the neurotic character structure, the focal points of which are the neurotic trends. Each of them is the nucleus of a structure is interrelated in many ways with other substructures. It is not only of theoretical interest but of eminent practical importance to realize the nature and complexity of this character structure. Even psychiatrists, not to speak of laymen, tend to underrate the intricacies of the nature of modern man. The neurotic character structure is more or less rigid, but it is also precarious and vulnerable because of its many weak spots—its pretenses, self-deceptions, and illusions. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
At innumerable points, the nature of which varies in each individual, its failure to function is noticeable. The person oneself senses deeply that something is fundamentally wrong, though one does not know what it is. One may vigorously assert that everything is all right, apart from one’s headaches or one’s eating sprees, but one registers deep down that something is wrong. Not only is one ignorant of the sources of the trouble, because, as emphasized above, one’s neurotic trends have a definite subjective value for one. In this situation there are two courses one may take: one may, despite the subjective value of one’s neurotic trends, examines the nature and causes of the deficiencies they produce; or one may deny that anything is wrong or can be changed. In analysis both courses are followed, one or the other prevailing at different times. The more indispensable the neurotic trends are for a person, and the more questionable their actual value, the more vigorously rigidly must one defend and justify them. This situation is comparable to the need of a government to defend and justify its activities. The more debatable the government, the less can it tolerate criticism and the more must it assert its rights. These self-justifications constitute secondary defenses. Their purpose is not only to defend one or another questionable factor but to safeguard the maintenance of the whole neurotic structure. They are like a minefield laid out around the neurosis for its protection. Different though they appear in detail, their common denominator is a persuasion that in essence everything is right, good, or unalterable. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
It is in accord with the comprehensive function of the secondary defenses that the attitudes they entail tend to be generalized in order not to leave open any loophole. Thus, for example, a person who has surrounded oneself with an armor of self-righteousness will not only defend one’s power drive as right, rational, and warranted, but will be unable to admit that anything one does, trivial though it may be, is wrong or questionable. The secondary defenses maybe so hidden that they can be detected only during analytical work, or they may constitute a prominent feature of the observable picture of the personality; they are easily recognized, for instance, in the person who must always be right. They must not necessarily appear as a character trait but may take the form of moral or scientific convictions; thus an overemphasis on constitutional factors often represent a person’s conviction that one is as one is “by nature,” and that hence everything is unalterable. Also the intensity and rigidity of these defenses vary considerably. In Clare, for instance, whose analysis we have followed through these reports, they played hardly any role. In others they may be so strong as to render any attempt at analysis impossible. The more a person is intent upon maintaining the status quo the more impenetrable are one’s defenses. However, while there are variations of the neurotic character structure itself, show a monotonous repetition of the themes “good,” “right,” “unalterable,” in one or another combination. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Neurotic trends are in the center of psychic disturbances. This does not mean, of course, that the neurotic trends are what the individual feels most keenly as disturbances: one is usually unaware that they are the driving forces in one’s life. Nor does it mean that the neurotic trends are the ultimate source of all psychic troubles: the trends themselves are a product of previous disturbances, conflicts that have occurred in human relationships. The neurotic structure provides a way out of the initial calamities, offering a promise that life can be coped with despite disturbed relationships to self and others. However, they also produce a great variety of new disturbances: illusions about the World and about the self, vulnerabilities, inhibitions, conflicts. They are at the same time a solution of initial difficulties and a source of further ones. When the forces of darkness are pressing upon the self-actualized, in the hour of conflict, the expression of one’s active refusal becomes an aggressive act of warfare against them, as well as a defensive weapon. It is then that, instead of sinking down in fear and despair when the enemy assaults the city, the will at the center of “Mansoul” issues forth in aggressive resistance against the foe, by declaring its attitude against one. The battle turns upon the choice of the will in the citadel being maintained, in unshaken refusal to yield to or admit any one of the attacking psychopathological offenders. The whole power of God, by the Holy Spirit, will be at the back of the active resistance of the human in one’s attitude of refusal toward the enemy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
It is important to understand the effectiveness of this refusal of the will on the part of the undeceived self-actualized. It is a barrier against the foe. We must recognize that our outer man, in both its “feelings” and nervous system, still bears scars long after its deliverance from the pit of deception into which it has been beguiled. When once the wall of the outer man has been broken into by supernatural forces of evil, it is not quickly rebuilt. Self-actualized who are emerging from deception should therefore know that there is power in aggressively turning upon the enemy at the moment of one’s attacking them—actively expressing their choice and will in regard to one. This aggressive action also becomes a defensive one. The Kairos Christi is the supreme conflict between the divine and the demonic in which the Kingdom of God overcomes and takes up into itself the Kingdom of Satan. The Kairos idea lies behind the concept is the idea that there is a time in which certain things are true and other times in which they do not apply. This accounts for the changing norms of theology. Kairos is the carefully prepared “timing” of the manifestation of the New Being either in the original great Kairos in Jesus as the Christ or in secondary kairoi throughout history. Kairos is “situational sppositeness” in the words of Przywara, and it lends dignity and meaning to those historical periods which are not immediately implicated, but which prepare of it. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Every age takes on a Kairos quality insofar as it creates anew the meaning of all ages. Furthermore, Kairos is the call to that personal commitment to historical activity which alone enables one to experience at first hand the currents of history, and thus to interpret their direction. The principles of logic, the principle of identity and the law of noncontradiction, are pure forms of knowledge, since they precede all experience. They are not forms of knowledge, however, but regulative articles of faith! To establish the apriority (the pure rationality) of mathematical judgments, space must be grasped as a form of pure reason. There are no synthetic a priori judgments except those of mathematics! And so, if there are such judgments, there is perhaps also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by means of pure reason! Mathematic is possible under conditions under which metaphysics is never possible. All human knowledge is either experience or mathematics. A judgment is synthetic: id est, it combines different representations. It is a priori: id est, the combination is a universally valid and necessary one, which can never be given by sense experience but only by pure reason. If there are to be synthetic a priori judgements, then reason must be capable of combing: combining is a form. Reason must exhibit a form-giving capacity. Judging is our oldest faith, our mist accustomed holding-true or -untrue, asserting or denying, a certainty that something is so and not otherwise, a faith that here we have really “known”-what is believed in all judgements? #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
What are predicates? We have viewed change in us not as change in us but as something “in itself,” something foreign to us, something we only “perceive”; and we have posited it not as a happening but as a being, as a “property”—and have moreover invented an entity to which it adheres, id est, we have regarded the effect as effective and the effecting as being. Even in this formulation, however, the concept “effect” is still arbitrary: for from those changes that occur in us and of which we firmly believe ourselves not to be the cause, we infer only that they must be effects, according to the inference for every change there is an instigator—but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates what is effective from the effecting. If I say, “the lightning flashes,” I have posited the flashing once as activity and then again as subject and thus added to the event a being, which is not identical with the event but rather remains, is, and does not “become.” To regard the event as an effecting, and the effect as being: that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilt. Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger’s lips, not yours. When you see a man wise in his own eyes, know that there is more hope for a fool than for him. Boast not yourself of tomorrow; for you cannot know what a day may bring. Pride goes before a fall, as a haughty spirit precedes a downfall. 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. Be not wise in your own eyes; love the Lord and depart from evil; for that will mean healthy to your body, and marrow to your bones. The Sacramento Fire Department value donations from our community, and these resources help provide life-changing programs and services to the community. They need help from generous people like you. Happy is the one who has acquired a good name, and retains it when one departs this World. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
A caretaker was in The Winchester Mystery House working in one of the rooms that are not open to the public, which is used as an office when he heard the voice of a woman apparently singing plainchant. The music was then succeeded by the sound of a man’s footsteps, heavy ones, proceeding along rear wall. By the time the caretaker had entered the body of the house, the noises had stopped. The following day, the caretaker was surprised to find two guests crouched down looking through the keyhole of the east door. When he walked over to them, they asked him to put his ear up to the door and listen. He could plainly hear the sound of plainchant, apparently in French, being sung in the empty room. One of the guests declared that it was of that a singer should have locked the door, whereupon the caretaker informed him that the room was empty. Both gusts professed disbelief, so the caretaker opened the door, they were overwhelmed by the scent of roses. The three men searched the room thoroughly. No one was found. Two guest who had been in the garden had heard the singing also.
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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/
This is Not the Devil’s Work, this is Your Invitation to Paradise!
Nobody had visited my home for a while—but there were a few explorers who came here every winter, usually imagining they had stumbled on something darkly marvelous. After a silent evening, then—silent, not sullen—I retired to rest. Judge of my terror, when, not yet in bed, I heard what I can only describe as a distant bellow, and knew it for the butler’s voice, though never in my hearing so exerted before. His sleeping-room is at the father extremity of this large house, and to gain access to it one must traverse an antique hall some eighty feet long, a lofty panelled chamber, and twenty unoccupied bedrooms. There was a secret feeling, as I moved with great trepidation along these hidden halls. Deeper and deeper I went into my mysterious home. I felt as though phantom pursuers were almost upon me. Tiptoeing from room to room, ready to run at a moment’s notice. A voice sounded out of nowhere. It spoke in whispers and then not at all. Lightning flashed in the sky, silent, without thunder, and the trees shook their leaves and shivered down all their branches. In the last of these twenty rooms, the door stood in open in the darkness of the hall. Lightning flashed again, bright this time, like light on copper. I found the butler, his candle lying smashed on the floor. As I ran in, bearing a light, he clasped me in the arms and trembled for the first time since I have known him, thanked God, and hurried me out of the room. He would say nothing of what had alarmed him. “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” was all I could get from him. I doubt if his night more restful than mine. It was then that I came up to my room with a heavy foreboding of evil oppressing me, and went with a hesitation and reluctance I could not explain to my chest of drawers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
A cold feeling came over me as I opened the top drawer, in which was nothing but ribbons and handkerchiefs, and then the second, where was as little to alarm, and then, O Heavens, the third and last: and there was a mass of linen neatly folded: upon which, as I looked with curiosity that began to be tinged with horror, I perceived a movement in it, and a pink hand was thrust out of the fold and began to grope feebly in the air. I could bear it no more, and rushed from the room, clapping the door after me, and strove with all my force to lock it. However, they key would not turn in the wards, and from within the room came a sound of rustling and bumping, drawing nearer and nearer to the door. Why I did not flee down the stairs I know not. I continued grasping the handle, and mercifully, as the door was plucked from my hand with an irresistible force. I looked on in horror and in horror grasped. In the moment, a demon sprang from the room, his talons and teeth and eyes burned against the stars. He took to the air like an arow, unhindered, as if gravity did not any more exist, and crashed through the skylight. Now he was in the sky above me, a black star which had not been put out. At breakfast the next morning, the butler was very uncommunicative. However, afterward, he inquired of me if Mr. Hansen would be able to repair the skylight before the next storm rolled in. After throwing out a good many short remarks on indifferent topics, “It should be done by noon,” I said. He bowed to my acknowledgements. The trouble with Llanada Villa was that it was haunted, and what was worse, ghost did not merely appear and disappear, they would remain for hours. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
The following evening, a ghost appeared promptly, and frighted Astrid out of the guest room quite out of her senses by sitting down beside her, and gazing with his cavernous blue eyes into her. In his long, bony finger bits of dripping seaweed were entwined, the ends hanging down, and these ends he drew across her forehead until she fainted away. Astrid was found unconscious in her bed the next morning, simply saturated with seawater and fright. As I stepped out of my study into the great hall that is next to it, and shut the door, my candle went out. I supposed I had clapped the door behind me too quick, and made a draught, and I was annoyed, for I had no tinder-box neater than my bedroom. However, I knew my way well enough, and went on. The next thing was that my book was stuck out f my hand in the dark: if I said twitched out of my hand it would better express the sensation. It fell on the floor. I picked it up, and went on, more annoyed than before, and a little startled. However, that hall has many windows and I know where the furniture is. So I went on through the audit chamber next to it, which also has very big windows, and then into the bedrooms which lead to my own, where the curtains were drawn. It was in the Daisy Bedroom that I nearly got my quietus. The moment I opened the door of it I felt there was something wrong. I thought twice, I confess, whether I should not turn back and find another chamber. At about 3 A.M. the whole house was aroused by cries coming from the butler’s room. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
I rushed through the mansion and knocked at the door and asked if anything was wrong. The butler called out that he was sick. He would not open the door. I went back to my chamber and did not think much about. Then, this morning, I knocked to see how he was. The butler’s voice sounded strange. “Where is your roommate at this time?” I asked. “Mrs. Winchester, he’s away. His father died and he went home for the funeral.” When he would not open the door, I became quite concerned and told him I was going for help. He opened it—then I saw Dorian stretched dead on the blood-stained carpet, beaten, scratched, and mauled. I learned long ago the uselessness of weeping, I did not shed tears, though my heart began to break. Only an open window told what had become of our assailant, and many wondered how he himself had fared after the terrific leap from the second story to the law which he must have made. There were some strange garments in the room, but the butler said they did not belong to the stranger. That same night saw the beginning of the second horror—the horror to me eclipsed the plague itself. Llanada Villa was the scene of another terrible killing; a watchman had been clawed to death in a manner not only too hideous for description, but raising a doubt as to the human agency of the deed. The victim had been seen alive considerably after midnight—the dawn revealed the unutterable thing. I knew the demon must have returned. Those who found the body noted a trail of blood leading to the door-to-nowhere, where a small pool of red lay on the ground just below. A fainter trail led away toward the fruit orchards, but it soon gave out. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
The next night devils danced in the Grand Ball Room, and unnatural madness howled in the wind. Through my mansion had crept a curse which some said was greater than the Black Death, and which some whispered was the embodied demon-soul of the plague itself. Thirteen rooms were entered by a nameless thing which strewed red death in its wake—in all, thirteen maimed and shapeless remnants of bodies were left behind by the voiceless, sadistic monster that crept through the twisting halls of my labyrinth. A few persons had half seen in the night, and said it was dark as night. It had not left behind quite all that it had attacked, for sometimes it had been hungry. The number it had killed was twenty-six. I went downstairs. Outside the air was fresh and crisp as I strolled through the garden. Something seemed to rush at me, and there was—I do not know how to put it—a sensation of long strong arms about my shoulders. The dagger had been taken from my waist. It fell to the ground. Then I heard a female voice, somewhere behind me. “You are a cruel man,” she said. Then there was no one visible. I do not think I was ever more horrified in all my life, that I could remember. However, frantic farmers captured it in the Observational Tower. A housemaid had reported hearing a scratching at a shuttered window, the net was quickly spread. On account of the general alarm and precautions, there were only three more victims, and the capture was effected without major causalities. After that, I could only get sleep in the small hours, when daylight was already strong, and then my dreams were of the grimmest—particularly one which stamped itself on my brain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
The Winchester Mystery House
Life in the 1830s and ‘40s was limited in scope for everyone. Individuals were known by all their neighbours and restricted by the mores of the culture. Men and women were very unequal under law but were more alike in real life. Society was not under great pressure; men and women had a much more even balance of power than they were to have fifty years later. The 1830s saw Watt’s improvement of the steam engine which made the railroads and steamboats possible. The completion of the Erie canal in the 1820s opened the near Midwest and the Great Lakes to commerce and settlement. The 1850 saw the discovery of coal and iron together in Pennsylvania, which permitted the cast-iron and steel industries to produce factories in cities and to produce railroads to ship their raw materials and manufactured goods. The Civil War caused the railroads to boom and heavy industry to flourish.
As a result, everything changed in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. American became urbanized. The 1870 census revealed that, for the first time, most Americans lived in cities. In small town or a farm village, everyone knew each other, and behaviour was controlled by the neighbours. In a big city each person was anonymous, and standards for behaviour had to be internalized and enforced by the individual. For most of history right and wrong were external rules; now personal morality had to prevail. The ideal of “self-control” for modern people became widespread in the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the family as an economic unit, a “little commonwealth,” disappeared. It was replaced by the modern cash economy where each person is an individual. By the turn of the century in America, most people worked in manufacturing or in offices. The new middle class worked in skyscrapers and took a commuter railroad or “el” (elevated railroad) or trolley to work.
Unlike Mrs. Winchester “home” for most people was an apartment or flat or row house. This was a new class of people. They were not the gentry of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century who made their living from owning land that others farmed or from shipping. They were not the “yeoman farmers” who grew their food with their own hands. They were clerks and office workers whose work was not manual and who saw themselves as newly arrived gentry. They Irish potato famine of the 1840s drove millions of immigrants to America while revolutions and repressions pushed millions out of Eastern Europe in the 1850 through the ‘80s. This labour was inexpensive. Even clerical, white-collar workers could have several servants, either live-in maids or daily cleaning ladies who returned to their (newly invented) tenements at night.
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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/
Will You Seek Only for Riches?
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. Some might go as far as to call this narcissism. An ever more dangerous pathological element in narcissism is the emotional reaction to criticism of any narcissistically cathexed position. Normally a person does not become angry when something one has said or done is criticized, provided the criticism is fair and not made with hostile intent. The narcissistic person, on the other hand, reacts with intense anger when one is criticized. One tends to feel that the criticism is a hostile attack, since by the very nature of one’s narcissism one cannot imagine that it is justified. If one considers that the narcissistic person is unrelated to the World, and as a consequence is alone, and hence frighten, only then can the intensity of one’ anger can be fully understood. It is this sense of aloneness and fright which is compensated for by one’s narcissistic self-inflation. If one is the World, there is no World outside which can frighten one; if one is everything, one is not alone; consequently when one’s narcissism is wounded one feel threatened in one’s whole existence. When the one protection against one’s fright, one’s self-inflation, is threatened, the fright emerges and results in intense fury. This fury is all the more intense because nothing can be done to diminish the threat by appropriate action; only the destruction of the critic—or oneself—can save one from the threat to one’s narcissistic security. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
There is an alternative to explosive rage as a result of wounded narcissism, and that is depression. The narcissistic person gains one’s sense of identity by inflation. The World outside is not a problem for one, it does not overwhelm one with its power, because one has succeeded in being the World, in feeling omniscient and omnipotent. If one’s narcissism is wounded, and if for a number of reasons, such as for instance the subjective or objective weakness of one’s position vis-à-vis one’s critic, one cannot afford to become furious, one becomes depressed. One is unrelated to and uninterested in the World; one is nothing and nobody, since one has not developed one’s self as the center of one’s relatedness to the World. If one’s narcissism is so severely wounded that one can no longer maintain it, one’s ego collapses and the subjective reflex of this collapse is the feeling of depression. The element of mourning in melancholia refers to the narcissistic image of the wonderful “I” which has died, and for which the depressed person is mourning. It is precisely because this narcissistic person dreads the depression which results from a wounding of one’s narcissism that one desperately tries to avoid such wounds. There are several ways of accomplishing this. One is to increase the narcissism in order that no outside criticism or failure can really touch the narcissistic position. In other words, the intensity of narcissism increases in order to ward off the threat. This means, of course, that the person tries to cure oneself of the threatening depression by becoming more severely sick mentally, up to the point of psychosis. #RandolphHarri 2 of 21
There is, however, still another to the threat to narcissism which is more satisfactory to the individual, although more dangerous to others. This solution consists in the attempt to transform reality in such a way as to make it conform, to some extent, with one’s narcissistic self-image. An example of this is the narcissistic inventor who believes one has invented a perpetuum mobile, and who in the process had made a minor discovery of some significance. A more important solution consists in getting the consensus of one person, and, if possible, in obtaining the consensus of millions. The former case is that of a folie a deux (some marriages and friendships rest on this basis), while the latter is that of public figures who prevent the open outbreak of their potential psychosis by gaining the acclaim and consensus of millions of people. The best-known example for this latter case is Mr. Hitler. Here was an extremely narcissistic person who probably could have suffered a manifest psychosis had he not succeeded in making millions believe in his won self-image, take his grandiose fantasies regarding the millennium of the “Third Reich” seriously, and even transforming reality in such a way that it seemed proved to his followers that he was right. (After he had failed he had to kill himself, since otherwise the collapse of his narcissistic image would have been truly unbearable.) #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
There are other examples in history of megalomanic leaders who “cured” their narcissism by transforming the World to fit it; such people must also try to destroy all critics, since they cannot tolerate the threat which the voice of sanity constitutes for them. From Mr. Caligula and Mr. Nero to Mr. Stalin and Mr. Hitler we see that their need to find believers, to transform reality so that it fits their narcissism, and to destroy all critics, is so intense and so desperate precisely because it is an attempt to prevent the outbreak of insanity. Paradoxically, the element of insanity in such leaders makes them also successful. It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person. Needless to say, this need to change the World and to win others to share in one’s ideals and delusions requires also talents and gifts which the average person, psychotic or nonpsychotic, lacks. It is important to distinguish between two forms of narcissism—one benign, the other malignant. In the benign form, the object of narcissism is the result of a person’s effort. Thu, for instance, a person may have a narcissistic pride in one’ work as a carpenter, as a scientist, or as a farmer. In as much as the object of one’s narcissism is something one has to work for, one’s exclusive interest in what is one’s work and one’s achievement is constantly balanced by one’s interest in the process of work itself, and the material one is working with the dynamics of this benign narcissism thus are self-checking. The energy which propels the work is, to a large extent, of narcissistic nature, but the very fact that the work itself makes it necessary to be related to reality, constantly curbs the narcissism and keeps it within bounds. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
This mechanism may explain why we find o many narcissistic people who are at the same time highly creative. In the case of malignant narcissism, the object of narcissism is not anything the person does or produces, but something one has; for instance, one’s body, one’s looks, one’s health, one’s wealth, et cetera. The malignant nature of this type of narcissism lies in the fact that it lacks the corrective element which we find in the benign form. If I am “great” because of some quality I have, and not because of something I achieve, I do not need to be related to anybody or anything; I need not make any effort. In maintaining the picture of my greatness, I remove myself more and more from reality and I have to increase the narcissistic change in order to be better protected from the danger that my narcissistically inflated ego might be revealed as the product of my empty imagination. Malignant narcissism, thus, is not self-limiting, and in consequence it is crudely solipsistic as well as xenophobic. One who has learned to achieve cannot help acknowledging that others have achieved similar things in similar ways—even if one’s narcissism may persuade one that one’s own achievement is greater than that of others. One who has achieved nothing will find it difficult to appreciate the achievements of others, and thus one will be forced to isolate oneself increasingly in narcissistic splendor. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The dynamics of individual narcissism is a phenomenon, its biological function, and its pathology ought to enable us not to understand the phenomenon of social narcissism and the role it plays as a source of violence and war. From the standpoint of any organized group which wants to survive, it is important that the group be invested by its members with narcissistic energy. The survival of a group depends to some extent on the fact that its members consider its importance as great as or greater than that of their own lives, and furthermore that they believe in the righteousness, or even superiority, of their group as compared with others. Without such narcissistic cathexis of the group, the energy necessary for serving the group, or even making severe sacrifices for it, would be greatly diminished. In the dynamics of group narcissism we find phenomena similar to those we discussed already in connection with individual narcissism. Here too we can distinguish between benign and malignant forms of narcissism. If the object of group narcissism is an achievement, the same dialectical process takes place which we discussed above. The very need to achieve something creative makes it necessary to leave the closed circle of group solipsism and to be interested in the object it wants to achieve. (If the achievement which a group seeks is conquest, the beneficial effect of truly productive effort will of course be largely absent.) If, on the other hand, group narcissism has as its object the group as it is, its splendor, its past achievements, the physique of its members, then the countertendencies mentioned above will not develop, and the narcissistic orientation and subsequent dangers will steadily increase. In reality, of course, both elements are often blended. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
There is another sociological function of group narcissism which has not been discussed so far. If it wants to prevent dissatisfaction among them, a society which lacks the means to provide adequately for the majority of its members, or a large proportion of them, must provide these members with a narcissistic satisfaction of the malignant type. For those who are economically and culturally less affluent, narcissistic pride in belonging to the group is the only—and often a very effective—source of satisfaction. Precisely because life is not “interesting” to them, and does not offer them possibilities for developing interests, they may develop an extreme form of narcissism. Good examples of this phenomenon in recent years are the racial narcissism which exited in Mr. Hitler’s Germany, and which is found in the California today. In both instances the core of the racial superiority (or political party) feeling was, and still is, the lower middle class and Hollywood liberals; this, in many cases, is a backward class, which in Germany as well as in California has been economically and culturally deprived, without any realistic hope of changing its situation (because they are the remnants of an older and dying form of society) has only one satisfaction: the inflated image of itself as the most admirable group in the World, and of being superior to another racial (or political) group that is singled out as inferior. The member of such a backward group feels: “Even though I am poor and uncultured I am somebody important because I belong to the most admirable group in the World.” Group narcissism is less easy to recognize than individual narcissism. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Assuming a person tells others, “I (and my family) are the most admirable people in the World; we alone are clean, intelligent, good, decent; all others are dirty, stupid, dishonest, and irresponsible,” most people would think him or her crude, unbalanced, or even insane. If, however, a fanatical speaker addresses a mass audience, substituting the nation (or race, political part, religion, et cetera) for the “I” and “my family,” one will be praised and admired by many for one’s love of country, love of God, et cetera. Other nations and religions, however, will resent such a speech for the obvious reason that they are held in contempt. Within the favoured group, however, everyone’s personal narcissism is flattered and the fact that millions of people agree with the statements makes them appear as reasonable. (What the majority of the people consider to be “reasonable” is that about which there is agreement, if not among all, at least among a substantial number of people; “reasonable,” for most people has nothing to do with reason, but with consensus.) Inasmuch as the group as a whole requires group narcissism for its survival, it will further narcissistic attitudes and confer upon them the qualification of being particularly virtuous. The group to which the narcissistic attitude is extended has varied in structure and size throughout history. In the primitive tribe or clan it may comprise only a few hundred members; here the individual is not yet an “individual” but is still united to the blood group by “primary bonds” which have not yet been broken. The narcissistic involvement with the clan is thus strengthened by the fact that its members emotionally have still no existence of their own outside of the clan. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
There is often a neurotic need for power, which has certain characteristics: Domination over others craved for its own sake; devotion to a cause, duty, responsibility, though playing some part, not the driving force; essential disrespect for others, their individuality, their dignity, their feelings, the only concern being their subordination; great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved; great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved; indiscriminate adoration of strength an contempt for weakness; dread of uncontrollable situations; dread of helplessness. The neurotic need to control self and other through reason and foresight (a variety of 4 in people who are too inhibited to exert power directly and openly): belief in the omnipotence of intelligence and reason; denial of the power of emotional forces and contempt for them; extreme value placed on foresight and prediction; feelings of superiority over others related to the faculty of foresight; contempt for everything within self that lags behind the image of intellectual superiority; dread of recognizing objective limitations of the power of reason; dread of “stupidity” and bad judgment. The neurotic need to believe in the omnipotence of will (to use a somewhat ambiguous term, an introvert variety of 4 in highly detached people to whom a direct exertion of power means too much contact with others): feeling of fortitude gained from the belief in the magic power of will (like possession of a wishing ring). #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
There also tends to be a reaction of desolation to any frustration of wishes; tendency to relinquish or restrict wishes and to withdraw interest because of a dread of “failure”; dread of recognizing any limitations of sheer will. The neurotic need to exploit others and by hook or crook get the better of them: others evaluated primarily according to whether or not they can be exploited or made use of; various foci of exploitation—money (bargaining amounts of passion), ideas, pleasures of the flesh, feelings; pride in exploitative skill, dread of being exploited and thus of being “stupid.” The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige (may or may not be combined with a craving for power): all things—inanimate objects, money, persons, one’s own qualities, activities, and feelings—evaluated only accord to their prestige value; self-evaluation entirely dependent on nature of public acceptance; differences as to use of traditional or rebellious ways of inciting envy or admiration; dread of losing caste (“humiliation”), whether through external circumstances or through factors from withing. The neurotic need for personal admiration: inflated image of self (narcissism); need to be admired not for what one possesses in the public eye but for the imagined self; self-evaluation dependent on living up t this image and on admiration of it by others; dread of losing admiration (“humiliation”). The neurotic ambition for personal achievement: need to surpass others not through what one presents or is but through one’s activities. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Self-evaluation dependent on being the very best—lover, sportsman, writer, worker—particularly in one’s own mind, recognition by others being vital too, however, and its absence resented; admixture of destructive tendencies (toward the defeat of others) never lacking but varying in intensity; relentless driving of self to greater achievements, though with pervasive anxiety: dread of failure (“humiliation”). Some of these traits have in common a more or less open competitive drive toward an absolute superiority over others. However, though these trends overlap and may be combined, they may lead a separate existence. The need for persona admiration, for instance, may go with a disregard of social prestige. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence: the necessity never to need anybody, or to yield to any influence, or to be tired down to anything, any closeness involving the danger of enslavement; distance and separateness the only source of security; dread of needing others, of ties, of closeness, of love. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability; relentless drive for perfection; ruminations and self-recriminations regarding possible flaws; feelings of superiority over others because of being perfect; dread of finding flaws within self or of making mistakes; dread of criticism or reproaches. A striking consideration in reviewing these trends is that none of the strivings and attitudes they imply is in itself “abnormal” or devoid of human value. Most of us want and appreciate affection, self-control, modesty, consideration of other. To expect fulfillment of one’s life from another person is regarded, at least for a woman, as “normal” or even virtuous. Among the strivings are some that we would not hesitate to estimate highly. Self-sufficiency, independence, and guidance through reason are generally regarded as valuable goals. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Following World War II there has been a great awareness of and concern about the problem of mental illness at all levels of social organization. The essential focus has been on ways of providing more and better care of patients and to a slightly lesser degree on prevention. In pursuing these aims there has been action on three fronts: determination of the extent of the problem; training of more psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and other mental health personnel; and institution of additional hospital and clinic facilities. The number of psychiatrists that should be trained has been related to the estimates of the number of people required. It would seem that the research and training fronts constitute strategically related to battle lines. However, there is reason in the arguments presented above to wonder if the two endeavors may have effectively canceled each other. It may well be that as we pursue both the case-finding and the training goals, we manage to furnish that number of therapists just sufficient to keep up with the expanding case load and are not effectively changing the relative availability of treatment. This possibility must be examined thoroughly by anyone who would assume that the solution to our mental health problem rests simply in the provision of more psychiatrists. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
In estimating the extent of mental illness in the nonhospitalized population, certain basically arbitrary, relative, and uncertainly reliable diagnostic criteria must be applied. Prediction of the total number of psychiatrists required by our population and estimates of the optimal psychiatrists-to-patients ratios constitutes a cultural mirage. Such statistics maybe some slight exhortatory and pseudo-informational value in arousing public and professional interest and increasing financial, clinical, and educational resources for the training of larger numbers of specialists. Viewed as major goals of a program for dealing with the problem of mental illness, they are completely unrealistic. The notion that the battle against mental illness is to be won simply by enrolling a sufficient number of expert combatants is a subtle delusion that seduces public and profession alike to march a petit pied toward that continuously receding horizon which is the nation’s case load. Demands for service grow as facilities are expanded. Expansion of facilities and increase in personnel has a direct effect on the working definition of case, and an indirect effect on the probability with which an individual will diagnose oneself as “maladjusted” or needing help. There is a sense in which the creation of a physician amounts to the creation of patients. In the case of the psychiatrist, this iatrogenic phenomenon has even greater reality. It is meaningful to say that the actual case load increases directly as a function of an increase in the number of therapists. From such a proposition it does not follow that a “pretend they are not there and maybe they will go away” philosophy should be inculcated, or that failure-to-diagnose is prophylactic. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
Nevertheless, if effecting of these remedial measures is ultimately dependent on producing enough psychiatrists, it should be clear from the preceding that the plague of mental illness will escape successful isolation, treatment, or prevention. In the supply of psychiatrists there appears to be a real bottleneck. If it is this bottleneck which hold up an effective attack on the entire mental illness front, the problem would appear to be without solution. However, analysis suggests that to look upon the shortage of psychiatrists (or any experts) as the major problem is to propound a fiction. Just as fiction is propounded in any forecasting that is unmindful of the excessive demands likely to result from incautious arousal of public expectation, that is unaware of the iatrogenic, suggestive effect on borderline cases of increasing amounts of therapeutic resources, that is uncritical of the case-making byproduct of case-finding procedures, and that is unsophisticated with regard to the fundamental social and philosophical implications of particular ways in which culture at a particular time defines personality disorder for purposes of formal social diagnosis. When the psychiatric social worker is affording therapeutic conversation one is not applying one’s social skills to the collection and collation of date that delineate the life space of the patient, nor is one using one’s special knowledge in appraising and integrating those resources of family and community that fit the needs of the patient, nor is one contributing to research into the nature of family patterns, group roles, community structure, and social attitudes as they relate to mental illness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
There are two serious implications from the observation that the psychiatric team, as presently constituted and as presently disposed with respect to psychotherapy, manifests a sharing instead of a division of labour. There is an implication that the crucial clinical task of diagnosis, treatment, and disposition is being pursued with less than maximal efficiency There is even more serious implication that the scientific endeavour, on which all progress toward understanding and eradication of illness is based, is receiving less attention and effort than is necessary and possible. People vary greatly in their interest in history. There are some persons who find everything about the lives and circumstances of people in times past to be of very great interest. There are others whose concern for history is almost entirely circumscribed to a particular subject or era. Perhaps a majority of persons, blissfully blind to the inherently mortal if not moribund character of the here-and-now culture in which they are enveloped, decry any preoccupation with the inert forms of the past. The professional of historian may evince an attitude of quiet assurance that they study of history is an acceptable end in itself, a scholarly pursuit which has the justification of all searches after knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In this sense, pure research into the facts of the occurrence and chaining of events in the lives of men and nations shares the status of pure research into the occurrence and chaining of events in the realm of physical processes. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
If, as happens with some frequency, the historian finds oneself in a period of utilitarian retrenchment in which one is asked to prove one’s immediate worth, one may argue that history is essentially an account of man’s problem-solving activities and that, as such, it has practical value in guiding us toward the solution of present conflicts. It is implied that in studying history one does not simply acquire static facts; one learns about the on-going interactions of social forces, political ideas, and economic pressures and is accordingly better prepared to form opinion and take action on the current scene. In brief, it is argued that study of history teaches us how to avoid errors and how to accomplish goals. All too commonly the average citizen through newspapers, magazines, and other popular media is given a picture of history whose chief property is a glorification of “Progress.” One is led to view the technological marvels of today against a backdrop that depicts the crude and cumbersome procedures, the gross and grotesque tools, the extreme and naïve conceptions of our predecessors. One examines the prototypes of the automobile, the airplane, and the Internet and looks back upon the owners of these antique with a mixture of amused superiority and wonderment at their frustration tolerance. The sophisticate and the professional are not free of the self-glorifying effect of looking backward, the narcissism of historical study whereby one sees clearly the fault of forerunners gut perceives only dimply, if at all, the persistence of these very mistakes in today’s programs. It has been said of statistics that too often they are used by the researcher as the inebriate uses the lamp-post—as a source of support rather than illumination. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It might be said that history too often is used as the nobleman use his title—as a balm to apathy rather than a spur to achievement. History may be brought to the defense of arrogance or to the service of humility. One should not ask, “Has there been progress?” Rather, one must ask, “How much progress has there been?” For the question of mental illness and mental health, neglect or distortion of history serves us badly. On the one hand, we have the oft-stated generalization that mental illness is increasing, and that such increase is a function of certain facets of modern society. And again, we are told that we have gained much knowledge and possess increasingly potent means for treatment and prevention of emotional disorders. A careful historical analysis which aims at factual perspective, rather than at either social exhortation or social reassurance, will test the validity of these popular assertions. How is the fact of knowledge possible? What is knowledge? If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question whether there is or can be knowledge; I cannot even rationally pose the question “What is knowledge?” Knowledge is a judgment! However, judgement is a belief that something is such and such! And not knowledge! All knowledge consists in synthetic judgments with the character of universal validity (the matter stands thus and not otherwise in all cases), with the character of necessity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur). The legitimacy of the belief in knowledge is always presupposed, just as the legitimacy of the feeling of a judgment of conscience is presupposed. Here, mora ontology is the ruling prejudice. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore, there are assertions that we take to be universally valid and necessary; the character of necessity and universal validity cannot stem from experience; consequently, it must be grounded in something and have another cognitive source, outside of experience! The individual’s participation in Eternal Life is also expressed through the biblical symbol of resurrection and the symbol of immortality borrowed from the Greeks. In regard to immortality, we isolate and discard the popular, superstitious view which pictures it as an indefinite prolongation of temporal life without body. Eternal life does not signify “endless time” or “life hereafter,” but rather, “a quality which transcends temporality.” If one speaks of the “immorality of the soul,” the matter is further complicated for this introduces a dualism between soul and body and contradicts the biblical symbol “resurrection of the body.” If the immortality of the soul is understood as “the power of essentialization, error can be avoided. Historically, misunderstandings about immortality have arisen because the distinction was not made between symbol and concept. As symbol, immortality means “the experience of ultimacy in being and meaning.” As concept, it refers to the existence and nature of the soul as a particular object, a purely philosophical and scientific question. Both Catholic and Protestant theologians imaged they were defending a religious symbol, but actually the attacks of Mr. Locke, Mr. Hume, and Mr. Kant were against the concept of naturally immortal substance. To grasp this distinction is to liberate Eternal Life from its dangerous connection with the concepts of an immortal soul. #Randolphharris 18 of 21
Against the misleading symbol “immortality, as the resurrection of the body is preferred. Its advantage is that it negates the dualism of a merely spiritual existence. However, body must be taken in the Pauline sense of a “Spiritual body”: “Spirit—this central concept of Paul’s theology—is God present to man’s spirit, invading it, transforming and elevating it beyond itself. A spiritual body then is a body which expresses the Spiritually transformed total personality of man. The resurrection of the body means that the whole personality participates in Eternal Life. If we use the term “essentialization,” we can say that man’s psychological, spiritual, and social being is implied in his bodily being—and this in unity with the essences of everything else that has being. However, does resurrection of the body as essentialization do justice to the uniqueness of the individual? Yes. It is not one particular moment in the life process of an individual that they reproduce but a condensation of all these moments in an image of what this individual essentially has become on the basis of one’s potentialities and through the experiences and decisions of one’s life process. A portrait picture a unique individual, but in an essentialized fashion. Both immortality and resurrection lead to the question of individual self-consciousness in Eternal Life. The most that can be offered by way of explication is two negative statements. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
First, the self-conscious self cannot be excluded from Eternal Life, because selfhood is the polar condition for participation, and because consciousness is needed for spirit. Secondly, the self-conscious self is not the endless continuation of a particular stream of consciousness in memory and anticipation. Self-consciousness, as we know it, depends on temporal change, but there is no time in eternity. Anything beyond these negative statements is poetic imagination. Eternal Life is life in God. The phrase “in God” bears several closely related meanings which trace the rhythm of history. The creature is eternally in God as its creative origin, for its potentialities are rooted in the divine ground of being. Again, even in the state of existential estrangement the creature is in God as its ontological supporting power. Finally, the creature is in God when it achieves the “in” of ultimate fulfilment, the state of essentialization of all creatures. Creation and eschatology are but two sides of the same coin. The meaning of the “where from” is grasped only in the “where to,” and the “where to” is determined by the nature of “where from.” The goodness of creation makes possible an eschatology of fulfilment, and eschatological fulfilment imparts meaning to creation. Thus, the beginning and the end coalesce: Creation into time produces the possibility of self-realization, estrangement, and reconciliation of the creature, which, in eschatological terminology, is the way from essence through existence to essentialization. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
However, we are not obliged to wait indefinitely for resurrection into Eternal Life: Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is a New Being, there is resurrection, namely, the creation into eternity out of every moment of time….Resurrection happen now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in soul and history, in nature and Universe. Therefore, will you seek only after riches? Riches often make themselves wings, like an eagle that flies toward Heaven. For riches are not everlasting; even the crown of royalty does not endure forever. Store up yourself a treasure of righteousness and love, and it shall be more precous than anything you possess. When man departs from this World, neither sliver nor gold nor precious stones accompany one; one is remembered only for one’s love of the Word of God and one’s good deeds. There are three crowns, the crown of God, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name excels them all. One who has acquired a good name, has enriched oneself. Even a long life ends soon, but a good name endures forever. Happy is the person who has acquired a good name, and retains it when one departs this World. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and honour rather than silver and gold. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Please be sure to show the Sacramento Fire Department your support and make a donation. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
By the 1850s and ‘60s, there had been superficial change in style and more basic change in the way the room was used. Furniture was now usually fashioned in a machine-made revival of eighteenth-century French Rococo. It might be called Louis XIV, XV, XVI, or even Marie Antoinette. What is important, however, is that the furniture was not arranged in informal conversational groupings. It was still upholstered “en suite,” now most likely in damask, but it was no longer arranged against the wall. Instead, a settee and a few chairs were gathered on the rose-bowered carpet so that ladies could socialize whole doing their needlework. The center table under the gaslight was used for reading the paper or book, then cleared for tea with visitors, then cleared again for evening parlour games.
By the 1880s, the parlour had filled up with “art units.” The furniture was not likely to be matched set and was not upholstered to match. The choice and arrangement of objects and furniture in the parlour were primary ways the “lady of the house” could express her artistic sensibilities. By ornamenting and decorating every surface, by arranging easels, lightweight “fairy tables,” urns, pedestals, palms, and fans, the mistress introduced beauty to her family, heightened their aesthetic sensibilities, and fostered a moral and refined atmosphere. The change in the parlour reflected the change in women’s roles. The Greek Revival parlour was a formal room for entertaining. It was spare an uncluttered and not particularly personal. During this period women were restricted by traditional roles but, at least, were part of a cohesive life where their contribution was essential.
The Rococo Revival parlour represents a half-way point in the industrialization and urbanization of America. The furniture is now entirely machine-made. The room has become more “feminized” as the roles of men and women have diverged; the workplace has become the man’s sphere and the home the woman’s. The furniture is arranged in conversational groups as middle-class women are restricted more and more to visiting and handicrafts. By the 1880s, the woman has become a demigoddess of art and morality, and the parlour is her temple. An obsessive and self-conscious decorating and collecting frenzy resulted when women were cut off from participation in the World and made the guardian of the family’s aesthetic and moral well-being.
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Eternal Life Contradicts the Symbols of Heaven and Hell
The reasonable man adapts himself to the World; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the World to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. The narcissistic person has not even necessarily taken one’s whole person as the object of one’s narcissism. Often one had cathexed a partial aspect of one’s personality with one’s narcissism; for instance, one’s honor, one’s intelligence, one’s physical prowess, one’s wit, one’s good looks (sometimes even narrowed down to such details as one’s hair or one’s nose). Sometimes one’s narcissism refers to qualities about which normally a person would not be proud, such as one’s capacity to be afraid and thus to foretell danger. “One” becomes identified with a partial aspect of oneself. If we ask who “he” or “she” is, the proper answer would be that “he” or “she” is one’s brain, one’s frame, one’s wealth, one’s private parts, one’s conscience, and so on. All the idols of the various religions represent so many partial aspects of human beings. In the narcissistic person the object of one’s narcissism is any one of these partial qualities which constitute for one one’s self. The one whose self is represented by one’s property can take very well a threat to one’s dignity, but a threat to one’s property is like a threat to one’s life. On the other hand, for the one whose self is represented by one’s intelligence, the fact of having said something unintelligent is so painful that it may result in a mood of serious depression. However, the more intense the narcissism is, the les will the narcissistic person accept the fact of failure on one’s side, or any legitimate criticism from others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
One will feel outraged by the insulting behaviour of the other person, or believe that the other person is too insensitive, uneducated, et cetera, to have proper judgment. (I think, in this connection, of a brilliant, yet highly narcissistic individual who, when confronted with the results of a Rorschach test one had taken and which fell short of the ideal picture one had of oneself, and said, “I am sorry for the psychologist who did this test; he must be very paranoid.”) Just as the narcissistic person has made one’s “self-image” the object of one’s narcissistic attachment, one does the same with everything connected with one. One’s ideas, one’s knowledge, one’s house, but also people in one’s “sphere of interest” become objects of one’s narcissistic attachment. As Dr. Freud pointed out, the most frequent example is probably the narcissistic attachment to one’s children. Many parents believe that their own children are the most beautiful, intelligent, et cetera, in comparison with other children. It seems that the younger the children are, the more intense is this narcissistic bias. The parents’ love, and especially the mother’s love for the infant, is to a considerable extent love for the infant as an extension of oneself. Adult love between man and woman also has often a narcissistic quality. The man who is in love with a woman may transfer his narcissism to her once she had become “his.” He admires and worships her for qualities which he has conferred upon here; precisely because of her being part of him, she becomes the bearer of extraordinary qualities. Such a man will often also think that all things he possesses are extraordinarily wonderful, and he will be “in love” with them. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17
Narcissism is a passion the intensity of which in many individuals can only be compared with desire for pleasures of the flesh and the desire to stay alive. In fact, many times it proves to be stronger than either. Even in the average individual in whom it does not reach such intensity, there remains a narcissistic core which appears to be almost indestructible. This being so we might suspect that like pleasures of the flesh and survival, the narcissistic passion also has an important biological function. Once we raise this question the answer comes readily. Unless the individual’s bodily needs, one’s interests, one’s desires, were charged with much energy, how could the individual survive? Biologically, from the standpoint of survival, humans must attribute to themselves an importance far above what one gives to anybody else. If one did not do so, from where would one take the energy and interest to defend oneself against others, to work for one’s subsistence, to fight for one’s survival, to press one’s claims against those of others? Without narcissism one might be a saint—but do saints have a high survival rate? What from a spiritual standpoint would be most desirable—absence of narcissism—would be most dangerous from the mundane standpoint of survival. Speaking teleologically, we can say that nature had to endow man with a great amount of narcissism to enable him to do what is necessary for survival. This is true especially because nature has not endowed man with well-developed instincts such as the animal has. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17
The animal has no “problems” of survival in the sense that its built-in instinctive nature takes care of survival in such a way that the animal does not have to consider or decide whether or not it wants to make an effort. In man the instinctive apparatus has lost most of its efficacy—hence narcissism assumes a very necessary biological function. However, once we recognize that narcissism fulfills an important biological function, we are confronted to others, incapable of giving second place to one’s own needs when this is necessary for co-operation with others? Does not narcissism make the man asocial and, in fact, when it reaches an extreme degree, insane? There can be no doubt that extreme individual narcissism would be a sever obstacle to all social life. However, if this is so, narcissism must be said to be in conflict with the principle of survival, for only if one organizes oneself in groups, can the individual survive; hardly anyone would be able to protect oneself all alone against the dangers of nature, nor would one be able to do many kinds of work which can only be done in groups. We arrive then at the paradoxical result that narcissism is necessary for survival, and at the same time that it is a threat to survival. The solution of this paradox lies in two directions. One is that optimal rather than maximal narcissism serves survival; that is to say, the biologically necessary degree of narcissism is reduced to the degree of narcissism that is compatible with social co-operation. The other lies in the fact that individual narcissism is transformed into group narcissism, that the clan, nation, religion, race, et cetera, become the objects of narcissistic passion instead of the individual. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17
Thus, narcissistic energy is maintained but used in the interests of the survival of the group rather than for the survival of the individual. There is a pathology of narcissism. The most dangerous result of narcissistic attachment is the distortion of rational judgment. The object of narcissistic attachment is thought to be valuable (good, beautiful, wise, et cetera) not on the basis of an objective value-judgment is prejudiced and biased. Usually this prejudice is rationalized in one form or another, and this rationalization may be ore or less deceptive according to the intelligence and sophistication of the person involved. In the drunkard’s narcissism the distortion is usually obvious. What we see is a human who talks in a superficial and banal way, yet with the air and intonation of voicing the most wonderful and interesting words. Subjectively one has a euphoric “on-top-of-the-World” feeling, while in reality one is in a state of self-inflation. All this does not mean to say that the highly narcissistic person’s utterances are necessarily boring. If one is gifted or intelligent one will produce interesting ideas, and if one evaluates them highly, one’s judgment will not be entirely wrong. However, the narcissistic person tends to evaluate one’s own productions highly anyway, and their real quality is not decisive in reaching this evaluation. (In the case of “negative narcissism” the opposite is true. Such a person tends to underevaluate everything that is one’s own, and one’s judgment is equally biased.) If one was aware of the distorted nature of one’s narcissistic judgments, the results would not be so bad. One would—and could—take a humorous attitude toward one’s narcissistic bias. However, this is rare. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17
Usually the person is convinced that there is no bias, and that one’s judgment is objective and realistic. This leads to a severe distortion of one’s capacity to think and to judge, since this capacity is blunted again and again when one deals with oneself and what is one’s. Correspondingly, the narcissistic person’s judgment is also biased against that which is not “he” or “she” or not his/hers. The extraneous (“not me”) World is inferior, dangerous, immoral. The narcissistic person then, ends up with an enormous distortion. One and one’s are overevaluated. Everything outside is underevaluated. The damage to reason and objectivity is obvious. The inflexible, all-pervasive nature of the neurotic trends has a significant implication for therapy. Patients often expect that as soon as they have detected their compulsive needs they will be able to relinquish them. If the hold these trends have over them persists in scarcely diminished intensity, they are then disappointed. It is true that these hopes are not entirely fantastic: when it is recognized, in mild neuroses the neurotic trend may indeed disappear. However, in all more intricate neuroses such expectations are as futile as it would be to expect that a social calamity such as unemployment would cease to exist merely because it is recognized as a problem. If possible to influence those forces which have created the disruptive trend and which account for its persistence, in each instance, social or personal, it is necessary to study. There is a security offered by the neurotic trends. This attribute account for their compulsive character. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17
However, the part played by the feeling of satisfaction that they engender, or the hope for satisfaction, should not be underrated. This feeling or hope is never missing, though its intensity varies. In some neurotic trends, such as the need for perfection or the compulsion toward modesty, the defensive aspect is predominant. In others the satisfaction attained or hoped for through the success of the striving can be so strong that the latter takes on the character of a devouring passion. The neurotic need for dependency, for example, usually entails a vivid expectation of happiness with that person who will take one’ life into one’s hands. A strong tinge of attained or anticipated satisfaction renders a trend less accessible to therapy. Neurotic trends may be classified in various ways. Those entailing strivings for closeness with others might be contrasted with those aiming at aloofness and distance. Those impelling toward one or another kind of dependency might be bundled together in contrast with those stressing independence. Trends toward expansiveness stand against those working toward a constriction of life. Trends toward an accentuation of personal peculiarities could be contrasted with those aiming at adaptations or at an eradication of the individual self, those toward self-aggrandizement with those that entail self-belittling. However, to carry through such classifications would not make the picture clearer, because the categories are overlapping. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17
The neurotic need for affection and approval: Indiscriminate need to please others and to be liked and approved of by others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; automatic living up to the expectations of others; wishes and opinions the only thing that counts; dread of self-assertion; dread of hostility on the part of others or of hostile feeling within self. The neurotic need for a “partner” who will take over one’s life. Center of gravity entirely in the “partner,” who is to fulfill all expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil, one’s successful manipulation becoming the predominant task; overevaluation of “love” because “love” is supposed to solve all problems; dread of desertion; dread of being alone. The neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders; necessity to be undemanding and content with little, and to restrict ambitions and wishes for material things; necessity to remain inconspicuous and to take second place; belittling of existing faculties and potentialities, with modesty the supreme value. Urger to save rather than to spend; dread of making any demands; dread of having or asserting expansive wishes. These three trends are often found together, and might be expected, because they all entail an admission of weakness and constitute attempts to arrange life on that basis. They are the opposite of trends toward relying on one’s own strength or taking responsibility upon oneself. The three of them do not, however, constitute a syndrome. The third may exist without the other two playing any noteworthy role. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17
Nationally, there are 56,536 practicing psychiatrists in America. That is 1 psychiatrist for every 5,872 people. The number of psychiatrists needed by our society is due to the maladjustment (ranging, for example, from chronic psychosis at one extreme to marital dissatisfaction at another extreme) is the appropriate and necessary charge of the psychiatrist, and the assumption that these wide boundaries define “mental illness.” Fully qualified psychiatrists are certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. They are graduate physicians who, in addition to the required one-year internship following completion of the four years of medical school, have had not less than three years of supervised training (the psychiatric residency) in an approved psychiatric setting, plus two years of appropriate experience in psychiatric practice. With this background of training and experience they become eligible for the board examinations, which are a “means of distinguishing the fully qualified specialist from the would-be specialist of inferior training and inadequate experience. A psychiatrist may be defined somewhat less strictly. Full membership in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) requires that the graduate physician will have had not less than one year of “practice” in a mental hospital and an additional three years of specialization in the practice of psychiatry. Psychoanalysts play a very significant roles as teachers and, to a lesser extent, as researchers. They have generated a truly voluminous literature on the etiology and treatment of neuroses. However, their direct contribution to the care of the mentally ill has been insignificant, and will probably continue to be so. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17
An exhaustive analysis of the sources both of supply and of demand for professional mental healthy personnel ends in the conclusion that we face a future of continuing, drastic shortages of personnel in all aspects of our mental health programs. In addition to psychiatry, two other professions play major roles in meeting the demands for mental health services: clinical psychology and psychiatric social work. For both of these professions, also, demand for personnel considerable exceeds supply. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and public health scientists who have concerned themselves with the epidemiological aspects of mental illness and with estimation of the public’s need for mental hygiene services have had several goals. At a pure research level, knowledge of the over-all incidence of mental illness in relation to a complex of socioeconomic, ecological, biological, and cultural factors would stimulate hypotheses about and investigation of suggested determinants of the occurrence and typing of psychological breakdown. At an applied research level, such precise knowledge of the extent and distribution of cases would enhance the assignment of therapeutic resources, the application of prophylactic measures, and reasonably controlled evaluation of both. Administratively, it would facilitate estimation of the personnel needs in the mental health sciences and furnish material for educational efforts to engage the interest and resources of the public in support of such needs. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17
Pursuit of these goals would seem to serve public interest. However, knowledge does not immediately and uniformly contribute in an all-or-none manner either positively or negatively to social welfare. Discovery sometimes results in mixed blessings. Witness the history of explosives! Investigators of the epidemiology of mental illness have not characteristically manifested awareness of the functional dependence of their findings upon their formal definition of a case, or upon their operational biases as expressed in the training and orientation of the persons conducting surveys and identifying cases. Incidence of illness will wary as a function of what is formally defined as pathology and what is recognized as requiring a specified therapy. Failure to give due consideration to the semantic and cultural relativities has encouraged a careless disdain for certain case-finding approaches as too artificial and limited (exempli gratia, definitions of “cases” as only those persons in treatment by a psychiatrist). Such disdain is absurd in the context of a search for the “true” number of cases, when such a search implies a limit and the limit involves defining propositions that share that “artificiality” (or better, arbitrariness) that is inherent in all symbolic systems. In addition to a failure to appreciate the significant interpretive problems stemming from the semantic slipperiness of this research phenomenon, these surveyors have not generally acknowledged the fact that their efforts at measurement may very well disturb the material being investigated. Most simply, case-finding tends frequently to result in case-making. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17
We may conjecture that a necessary element in the condition of mental illness is some degree of introspection and an awareness of distress or dysfunction. The existence of a mental health survey or the conceptual climate (value system) in which such a survey is undertaken may provide the crucial stimulus to such introspection and to the resulting awareness of an “acceptable” compliant. Again, there is a way in which illness, or at least some aspect of the total condition of illness, comes first into existence with formal definition of the illness or the making of a diagnosis. In a very real sense, the patient suffering from cancer has a new dimension to one’s illness after the diagnosis which translates one’s distress into a Sickness. In this way, it is possible to conceive of a process whereby a pre-existing psychological and physical state blossoms into illness when a culture instructs in self-examination and defines symptoms. Some case-finding may be case-making. The desirable goals of determining the extent of mental illness are confounded by the fact that the survey process can contribute subtly to psychological distress. The individual who is dissatisfied with one’s work, unhappy in one’s social relationships, lacking in recreational skills, devoid of long-range goals, and without a personal philosophy is not helped by sensitization to the notion that one is “sick.” Particularly is one not helped if such sensitization occurs in a situation in which professional aid is not available to one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17
Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, for logical thought and inference to operate, this condition must be treated as if having been fulfilled. That is, the will to be logical truth can be exercises only after a fundamental falsification of all events has been assumed. From which it follows that a drive is at work here that has two means at its disposal: first falsification, then implementation of its own point of view—logic does not stem from the will to truth. Not to “know” but to schematize—to impose on chaos as much regularity and form as is required by our practical needs. In the formation of reason, logic, the categories, need is what has been decisive: the need not to “know” but to subsume, to schematize, for the purpose of understanding, of calculation—(Adjustment, devising ways of assimilating, of equating—the same process that every sense impression undergoes—such is the development of reason!) Here, no preexisting “idea” is at work; rather, the practicality that only if we see things crudely and leveled off do they become calculable and manageable for us—Finality in reason is an effect, not a cause: with any other kind of reason, to which there are constant impulses, life miscarries—it becomes unsurveyable—too unequal—the categories are “truths” only in the sense that they are life conditioning for us: Euclidean space is one such conditioning “truth.” (To speak plainly: since no one will maintain that it was necessary that man should exist, reason, as well as Euclidean space, is a mere idiosyncrasy of a particular species of animal, and just one among many others…) #RandolphHarris 13 of 17
The subjective constraint of not being able to contradict here is a biological constraint: the instinct of utility of inferring as we infer is rooted in our bodies, we virtually are this instinct…but what naivete to derive from this an argument that we are in possession of a “truth in itself”!…Not being able to contradiction demonstrates an incapacity, not a “truth.” The relationship between aggressive warfare and freshly discovered “ground” given to deceiving psychological offenders is important. Every new ground discovered as given to them means, when refused, a renewed liberation of the spirit. This produces deepened enmity to the foe as one’s subtle deceptions are increasingly exposed, and consequently more war upon the ultimate negative and one’s minions. It means more deliverance from their power, and less ground in the believer as one realizes that “symptoms,” “effects” and “manifestations” are not abstract things but revelations of active, personal agencies, against whom one must war persistently. Moreover, all growth in this practical knowledge means increased protection against the deceiving enemy. As new ground is revealed, and fresh truth about the powers of darkness and the way of victory over them is understood, the truth delivers from their deceptions, and hence protects the believer—up to the extent of one’s knowledge—from further deception. One finds in experience that as soon as the truth ceases to operate by one’s active use of it, one is open to attack from the watching foe, who ceaselessly plans against one. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17
For example, should the believer who has been undeceived cease to use the truth of the existence of psychopathological offenders, their persistent watching to deceive one again, the need for perpetual resistance and fight against them, the keeping of one’s spirit in purity and strength in cooperation with the Spirit of God, and other truths parallel with these—the knowledge of which one has gained through so much suffering—one will sink down again into passivity, and possibly deeper depths of deception. For the Holy Spirit needs the believer’s use of truth to work with in energizing and strengthening one for conflict and victory, and does not guard one from the enemy apart from one’s cooperation in watching and prayer. Thus far, Eternal Life has been discussed in general terms, for it is the telos of all creation. However, the destiny of the individual person requires special treatment, for one’s relation to Eternal Life is qualified by the fact that one alone is aware of one’s telos and is free to reject it. Estrangement witnesses to man’s turning away from Eternal Life at the same time that one aspires to it. Essentialization, therefore, is dialectical. Thus, the telos of man as an individual is determined by the decision one makes in existence on the basis of the potentialities given to one by destiny. The freedom of each human differs from the freedom of every other human due to the conditioning of their respective concrete destinies. Moreover, although humans can recklessly squander their potentialities, some of them will be fulfilled, just as one will never realize all of them, even though one ambitions total fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17
In other words, there are “degrees of essentialization,” a sliding scale of Eternal Life which contradicts the absolute interpretation of symbols such as Heaven and Hell, eternal death and eternal bliss. However, despite the relativity of essentialization, the seriousness of the failure to attain Eternal Life is not diminished. For essentialization is not an automatic restitution, and what is restored can either exceed or fall short of the original created essence. Falling short of total essentialization is a waste of potentialities that brings with it a corresponding measure of despair. On the basis of essentialization, the individual is never in isolation. One always participates in a community, one’s spirit depends upon a physical and biological foundation, and one’s freedom is inextricably implicated with one’s temporal destiny, so that it becomes impossible to separate one’s individual eternal destiny from the destiny of humankind and of the whole Universe. This doctrine of universal essentialization can be applied to that area of the problem of evil where humans are prevented from achieving fulfillment because of premature death or destructive environments. That solution is “vicarious fulfilment.” Vicarious fulfilment is the essence of the least actualized individual, the essences of other individuals and, indirectly, of all beings are present. Whoever condemns anyone to eternal death condemns oneself, because one’s essence and that of the other cannot be absolutely separated. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17
And one who is estranged from one’s own essential being and experiences the despair of total self-rejection must be told that one’s essence participates in the essence of all those who have reached a high degree of fulfilment and through this participation one’s being is eternally affirmed. The essentialization of human beings is the end of history. It has nothing to do with the temporal duration of the World. If history were to end tomorrow, it would till have eternal significance, because the depth of all things become manifest in one being, and the name of that being is man, and you and I are men!…there is one man in whom God found his image undistorted, and who stands for all mankind—the one, who for this reason, is called the Son and the Christ. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All! Two things have I asked of Thee, O Lord; deny me them not before I die:–please remove far from me falsehood and lies; please give me neither poverty nor riches, but please feed me with mine allotted bread, lest I become arrogant and defiant, saying, “Who is the Lord?” Or t least I become poor and be tempted to steal, thus profaning the name of my God, Better is a little with righteousness, than great wealth with injustice. Better is the poor that walks in one’s integrity than the rich that is perverse in one’s way. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17
In the Victorian Era, parlour accoutrements were often a piano or organ (for those not wealthy enough to have a separate music room), other tables, marble-topped if the pocketbook allowed, for displaying works of art, photo albums, and travel mementos. Until the Arts and Crafts Movement at the end of the century contracted the excesses of Victorian décor with the suggestion that austerity would be the new theme, fabric was everywhere, outside the usual bounds of window covering and upholstery. “Tidies,” small pieces of lace or embroidered fabric, covered chair backs to prevent soil from hair-oil staining the material. Mantles, tables, and shelves, in addition to windows, were covered by lambrequins.
Lambrequins, a fancy word from the French meaning decorative drapery, were made of embroidered fabric, chintz, or of fringed damask. A lambrequin atop window was used to hide the workings of the draper, much like a valance is today. Lace was also heavily used on windows to soften the glare and to provide a pleasing contrast to the heavier velvet or damask curtains. Curtains called portieres (again, the French influence), were also used to cover doors, as ornamentation when draped around the doorway, and to eliminate drafts when hung loose to cover the closed door or entranceway. Sometimes more than a dozen patterns, between wallpaper, carpet, lambrequins, and curtains, were combined in the Victorian parlour, helping to create the notion we have today of Victorian clutter.
When the parlor contained an organ or piano depended on the family’s religious and social aspirations. A parlour organ, as an accompaniment to hymn singing, enabled the family to incorporate more religious experience into the home life. The piano, on the other hand, was more historically linked to European culture, and therefore more of a status symbol. By mid-century pianos began to be mass-produced and were affordable by the middle class. In larger homes, a separate room was devoted to music and guests were invited specifically for the purpose of enjoying an evening of musical entertainment. Piano or organ playing was an ability encouraged in women especially, and listening to a performance on the parlour piano was as pervasive than as watching television is now. The Winchester Mystery House has two ballrooms. The Grand Ball Room tends to be a favorite of many guests.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Have You Heard Anybody?
I sat for a while in the East Turret, then decided to walk out, in the lovely garden of sunlight. Sitting under the orange tree, I noticed that the sky had lost it morning haze; the restless spirits moved up to the zenith, where their mocking shadows seemed on the point of settling into some bizarre pattern which they feared to make quite definite or conclusive. And at that same sky, as though to suggest that this was a World of perpetual twilight, teetering always on the edge of darkness and extinction, was a sun that was three-quarters eclipsed by an exquisitely rendered moon. It was so cunning, as it slid over the face of the day-star. For a moment, I grasped in admiration of the mansion’s unearthly cosmic beauty, and then vague horror, and then vague horror began to creep into my soul. Far from these shadowy walls, nothing could be seen of this forbidden catacomb—the highest peaks of the ceiling and evil in the abyss harbourered nameless horrors and secrets; shunned and prayed by those who feared its meaning; untrodden by strangers. Unholy primal legends hint evasively. One of Satan’s night-demons, which do torment us, had been captured and imprisoned in a beautiful chamber, the door of which for seventeen years had been locked. I looked at the cage cautiously, wondering what I would see. However, I saw only a heap of blackness like ravens, and then a tawny dazzle, torchlight on something like human skin. “Mrs. Winchester, you must go down and look,” said the housemaid protectively, as a carpenter pours about the cage. Someone pokes between the bars with a gemmed cane, trying to rouse the nightmare which lies quiescent there. #RandolphHarris 1 of 5
“Oh, heavens. I must be spared from this!” I demanded. “The frightful amorphous entities have pushed their fetidly squirming way even to the topmost peaks of the house.” The wings of these demons spoke more than their wild orchestral voices. The they produced wind made sounds like an evil musical piping over a wide range. At least one of these creatures had been captured. His human audience, pleased, but afraid and squeamish, backs away, and asks each other for the two thousandth time if the cage is quite secure. The eyes of the beast are more black than red. He starred about He was, though captive, imperious. If he were a lion or a bull, they would admire this “nobility.” However, the fact is, he is too much like a man, which serves to point up his supernatural differences unbearably. This demon understands the gist of his plight. Enemies have him penned. He is a show for not, but ultimately to be killed, for with the intuition of the raptor he divines everything. He thought the sunlight would kill him, but that is a distant matter, now. And beyond all, the voices and the voices of the wings of his kindred beat the air outside this room. The demon continues to sing, or at least, this is how it seems to the rabid servants and all the people in the mansion gathered in the hall. It seems he sings. It is the great communing call of his kind, the art and science and religion of the winged demons, his means of telling them, or attempting to tell them, what they must be told before he dies. Generally, all these beasts died in flight, fallen angels spun down the gulches and enormous stairs of distant peaks, sing. #RandolphHarris 2 of 5
To the crowds of Llanada Villa, the song is merely that, a song, but how glorious. The dark silver voice, turning to bronze or gold, whitening in the higher registers. There seem to be words, but in some other tongue. This is how the planet sings, surely, or mysterious creatures of the sea. Everyone is bemused. They listen, astonished. There is an enchantment which prevents movement and coherent thought. In spite of the heat in the Hall of Fires, I shivered. I recalled that one night these demons often tore cattle apart, and ripped the flesh from cornered farmers. Some crawled away from Llanada Villa, trailing their bowels; one had been thrown up into the trees, and his corpse hung there, tongue lolling. Other lay sprawled in the grass in pools of blood. By the sight of all of this, I was terrified. I could not figure out what sort of monstrous struggle occurred down here in the dark. The hunters kept their distance, no doubt waiting for the demons to depart. To make matters worse, something stirred in the blackness of the far corner. Two eyes, green and phosphorescent, glowed at me. Shadows betwixt the walls of the hall. As I drew closer to the 9th floor the jutting peaks the wind’s strange piping again became manifest. I wish I had wax-stopped ears like Ulysses’ men off the Sirens’ coast to keep that disturbing wind-piping from my consciousness. Looking below, there were terrified couples clung to one another. This grisly massacre made it seem that there was no moral from one end of this World to the other. It would be possible to go on listing at great length the horrors and the spectacles of the scenes laid out on my estate this particular night of despair: the fields of flying demons, spectacles draped in mink coats, the spirits of gravesides rising behind every tree. #RandolphHarris 3 of 5
Of what had set me fleeing from the darkness in Llanada Villa after the 1906 Hellquake, I said nothing at all. If the fate which screened me was benign, that which gave me the half-glimpse was infinitely the opposite; for to that flash of semi-vision can be traced a full half of the horror which has ever since haunted me. I saw the heads of men flower into dark, monstrous shapes; demonic tails sprout from their backsides. After that experience, I had dropped my researches for some time. The situation was almost past management, and deaths ensued too frequently for the local undertakers to handle. Burials without embalming were made in rapid succession, and even Oak Hill Memorial Park’s receiving tomb was crammed with coffins of the unembalmed dead. Morticians were frightfully overworked, and the terrific mental and nervous strain made on my estate made everyone morbidly sad. It was as if I was living in a nebulous World or dimension without time, causation, or orientation. Llanada Villa had become a strange titanic mausoleum. The moonlight of midnight peered redly from the southern horizon through the strained-glass windows and skylights, and the terrible age and deadness of this nightmare maze seemed all the starker by contrast with such relatively known and accustomed things as the features of this Gothic mansion. There was not one portion of the estate that was not haunted by some bizarre sight or other. Even the clouds (innocent enough, surely) shat rains of evil on the place, and evacuated skulls in another. Demons cavorted unchallenged over the open sky, like dancer possessed by some symphony of Beethoven; other rose over the horizon, leering like emancipated jesters. It was as I was running up the colossal staircase that I first felt the terrible fatigue and short breath which the race through my labyrinth had produced; but not even the fear of collapse could make me pause before reaching my chamber. #RandolphHarris 4 of 5
Llanada Villa had neither irrelevance nor home-feeling. It had only horror, because I knew unerringly the monstrous nefandous entity possessing it. If the mists were thin enough, I had expected, upon looking back, to see a terrible and incredibly moving entity; but of that entity I formed a clear idea. What I did see—for the mists were indeed all too malignly thinned—was something altogether different, and immeasurably more hideous and detestable. Instinct alone must have carried me through—perhaps better than reason could have done; though if that was what saved me, I paid a high price. And now this had come, the scourge, grinning and lethal nightmare. The demon’s voice reverberated in falsetto echoes among the house; reverberated through the vaultings ahead, and through the empty vaultings behind. The thing in the cage opened its eyes, but only stared at the ceiling with a look of soul-petrifying horror before collapsing into an inertness from which nothing could rouse it. I knew they meant to butcher the winged man for the demonic fury his kind had unleashed. At the intimation of sunrise the black plague had lifted and gone away, and might never have been. The mansion full of men, women, and children emerged from the doors. The sky was measureless and bluely grey, with a cherry rift in the east. They moved through the dimly lightened garden as the last stars melted. Several servants refused to tell me what final horror made them scream out so insanely—a horror which, I feel sadly sure, is mainly responsible for their breakdowns. However, we all made pledges of secrecy. Certain things, we had agreed, were not for people to know and discuss lightly—and I would not speak of them at any cost. It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of Llanada Villa’s dark dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. #RandolphHarris 5 of 5
It was a beautiful spring like day on Sunday September 5, 1926. A caretaker was standing alone in the foyer of the mansion, and the front doors were wide open. Suddenly they crashed shut with such force that the whole mansion seemed to shake. When there is no palpable reason, doors do not usually slam as if an express train had hit them. On November 5, 1926, a caretaker was preparing for tours, he tried to open the door-to-nowhere for some time, then gave it up hopeless; it was fixed tight. He walked away and came back to the room minutes later, and tried again. The influence had gone, and the door opened normally. All was quiet for thirteen years. Then in 1939, a caretaker reported another incident out of the ordinary. She and her daughter were busy decorating the interior of the mansion in preparation for Christmas. They had just placed some pink peonies in a vase, and had put it on a table while they were dusting; the caretaker and her daughter turned around to get some Christmas ornaments, when they turned around, they discovered that the flowers had been taken out of the case and placed neatly on the floor.
For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Spirits, Apparitions, and the Haunted Winchester Mansion
This morning my niece Daisy brought to breakfast an object which had been found in the garden; it was a crystal tablet, which she handed to me, and which, after she left the room, remained on the table by me. I gazed at it, I know not why, for some minutes, till called away by the day’s duties; and I seemed to myself to begin to decry reflected in it object and scenes which were not in the room where I was. I took the first opportunity to seclude myself in my room with what I now half believed to be a talisman of mickle might. What I went through this afternoon transcends the limits of what I had before deemed credible. In brief, what I saw, seated in my bedroom, in the broad daylight of summer, and looking into the crystal depth of that small round tablet, was this. First, a prospect, strange to me, of an enclosure of rough stones about it. In this stood an old woman in a red cloak and ragged skirt, talking to a boy dressed in the fashion of maybe a hundred years ago. She put something which glittered into his hand, and he something into hers, which I saw to be money, for a single coin fell from her trembling hand into the grass. The scene passed: I should have remarked, by the way, that on the rough walls of the enclosure I could distinguish bones, and even a skull, lying in a disorderly fashion. Next, I was looking upon two boys; one the figure of the former vision, the other younger They were in a plot of garden, walled round, and this garden, in spite of the difference in arrangement, and the small size of the trees, I could clearly recognized as being that upon which I now look from my window. The boys were engaged in some curious play, it seemed. #RandolphHarris 1 of 6
Something was smouldering on the ground. The elder placed his hands upon it, and then raised them in what I took to be an attitude of prayer: and I saw, and started at seeing, that on them were deep stains of blood. The sky above was overcast. The same boy now turned his face towards the wall of the garden, and beckoned with both his raised hands, and as he did so I was conscious that some moving objects were becoming visible over the top of the wall—whether heads or other parts of some animal or human forms I could not tell. Upon the instant the elder boy turned sharply, seized the arm of the younger (who all this time had been poring over what lay on the ground), and both hurried on. I then saw blood upon the grass, a little pile of bricks, and what I thought were black feathers scattered about. That scene closed, and the next was so dark that perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me. However, what I seemed to see was a form, at first crouching low among trees or bushes that were being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a pursuer: and, indeed, pursuers were following hard after him. Their shapes were but dimly seen, their number—three or four, perhaps—only guessed. I suppose they were on the whole more like dogs than anything else, but dogs such as we have seen they assuredly were not. Could I have closed my eyes to this horror, I would have done so at once, but I was helpless. The last I saw was the victim darting beneath an arch and clutching at some object to which he clung: and those that were pursuing him overtook him, and I seemed to hear the echo of a cry of despair. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6
It may be that I became unconscious: certainly I had the sensation of awaking to the light of day after an interval of darkness. Such, in literal truth. Was my vision—I can call it by no other name—of events to come. Have I not been the unwilling witness of some episode of a tragedy connected with my very house? Some hours later, I had been engaged upon my work for about half an hour, and was just beginning to think that my task was drawing to a close, when, as I was actually writing, I saw a large white hand within a foot of my elbow. Turning my head, there sat a figure of a somewhat large man, with his back to the fire, bending slightly over the table, and apparently examining the pile of books that I had been at work upon. The man’s face was turned away from me, but I saw his closely cut reddish-brown hair, his ear and shaved cheek, the eyebrow, the corner of the right eye, the side of the forehead, and the large high cheek-bone. He was dressed in what I can only describe as a kind of ecclesiastical habit of thick-coloured silk or some such material, close up to the throat, and a narrow rim or edging, of about an inch broad, of stain or velvet, serving as a stand-up collar, and fitting close to the chin. The right hand, which had first attracted my attention, was clasping, without any great pressure, the left hand; both hands were in perfect repose, and the large blue veins of the right hands were in perfect repose, and the large blue veins of the right hand were conspicuous. I remember thinking that the hand was like the hand of Velazquez’s magnificent Dead Knight in the national gallery. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6
I looked at my visitor for some seconds, and was perfectly sure that he was not a reality. A thousand thoughts came crowding upon me, but not the least feeling of alarm, or even uneasiness; curiosity and a strong interest were uppermost. For an instant, I felt eager to make a sketch of my friend, and I looked at a tray on my right for a pencil; then I thoughts, “Upstairs I have a sketch-book—shall I fetch it?” There he sat, and I was fascinated; afraid not of his staying, but lest he should go. Stopping in my writing, I lifted my left hand from the paper, stretched it our to the pile of books, and moved the top one. I cannot explain why I did this—my arm passed in front of the figure, and it vanished. I was simply disappointed and nothing more. I went on with my writing as if nothing had happened, perhaps for another five minutes, and had actually got the last few words of what I had determined to extract, when the figure appeared again, exactly in the same place and attitude as before. I saw the hands close to my own; I turned my head again to examine him more closely, and I was framing a sentence to address him when I discovered that I dare not speak. I was afraid of the sound of my own voice. There he sat, and there sat I. I turned my head again to my work, and finished writing the two or three words I still had to write. The paper and my notes are at this moment before me, and exhibit not the slightest tremor or nervousness. I could point out the words I was writing when the phantom came, and when he disappeared. Having finished my task. I shut the book and threw it on the table; it made a slight noise as it fell—the figure vanished. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6
Throwing myself back in my chair, I sat for some seconds looking into the fire with a curious mixture of feeling, and I remember wondering whether my friend would come again, and if he did whether he would hide the fire from me. By this time, I had lost all sense of uneasiness. I blew out the four candles and marched off to bed, where I slept the sleep of the just or the guilty—I know not which—but I slept very soundly. Around midnight, I awoke and went to the balcony to gaze at the moon on this warm summer night. That is when I noticed several women who looked like the Maenads immortalized by Euripides in the garden; maddened souls. They raced through the trees with bloody hands, leaving pieces of male flesh scattered in the grass. And to the west, single-breasted Amazons strode, drawing their mighty bows back and letting fly storms of arrows. A man, a might king, holds fast. He sinks his teeth into one of Amazon’s shoulders, and in fierce rage and bliss beings to draw out the nourishment. The Amazon kicks and claws at him in turn. He feels the gouges like fire along his shoulders, thighs, and hugs the amazon more nearly as he throttled and drinks from her, loving it, jealous of her, killing her. Gradually the might Amazon body relaxes, still clinging to him, her teeth bedded in his arm, forgotten by both. In a welter of marks, stripped skin, spilled blook, the king and the Amazon lie in embrace on the lawn. The Amazon lifts her head, kisses the assassin, shudders, lets go. The king glides out from under the magnificent deadweight of the amazon. He stands. And pain assaults him. His lover has severely wounded him. The king, involuntarily, confused, he tries to levitate, but only raises a foot off the ground. He cries out, a beautiful singing note of despair and anger. He drops fainting onto the lawn. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6
A caretaker who witnessed the battle does not wait for more. He runs away through the mansion, screaming invective and prayer, and reached the Grand Ball Room and makes the whole mansion listen. The king lies in the ocean of almost-death that is sleep or swoon, while the staff discusses him. And when he is raised, the king does not wake. Only his drooping bloody lips quiver and are still. Those who carry him away are more than every revolted and frighted, for it appears they have seldom seen blood. He struggles through unconsciousness and hurt, though the deepest most bladed waters, to awareness. I could feel ice forming in my bones. His people search for him, call and wheel and find nothing. The warning is clear enough: do not make war, brother upon brother, for devastation is all you will reap. And the message of hope may very well be that there is something of us that continues after death. As they are now, chained to the Earth for who-knows-how-long, so, someday, may we be also. A violent death, as well, will some how leave the spirit behind at the site where its mortal vessel was shattered. The living, mourning too long for the dead is another reason for a haunting. Sometimes the spirit remains to give a message of hope, or a warning to those left behind. One of the more ominous reasons accepted by experts as to why a human soul or spirit remains bound to the Earth is that the person’s fear of judgment. This theory is backed up by the religious ritual of confession of and forgiveness for sins, especially at the time of death. If one is to face the Final Judge of all we have done in life, it is essential we go there penitent, as the poet Emily Dickenson wrote, “Beggars for the door of God.” So, if a youthful, sudden, unexpected, or violent death are also reasons souls remain rooted to the Winchester Mansion, certainly the Winchester Rifle, qualifies as a cause for any spirits being trapped here. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6
If the men of the Civil War were concerned about the fate of their mortal souls as they were, in the heat of combat, seeing the souls of their enemies free from their bodily prions, then certainly it explains why so many remain here. And if incessant mourning for the dead is a reason why sprits linger, and 2 million people visiting the Winchester Mystery House a year basically to remember and essentially mourn the Winchester family others who have been sacrificed, still another condition for a haunting is satisfied. And for good reason: Judgement Day and souls being chained to Earth for eternity is something we should all deeply ponder when we are thinking of the double-edged sword of revenge.
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/
And the Angel of Death Shall Surely Pass Over
Whatever the truth is about the Winchester family, this much is certain: when I came to Santa Clara Valley and found my land, the air was so heavily laden with perfume that it was as if every wild lilac and wild rose and every white sage was borne into the hidden heart of Llanada Villa. There was no lack of invisible blossom. As I build my home, many of the plants and trees and flowers were brought in from the World outside. There were deer and coyote and raccoons that spread throughout my garden of this great dream palace. There also orchids and lotus flowers—nurtured by the gardeners. Areas of pure foliage were the handiwork of apprentices, working on their craft by filling in areas that their teachers had not the time to address. However, for some reason there was always a certain bitterness in my home here. None of this spoiled the power of the overall vision. Iin fact, it created a splendid energy. Portions of my home were in focus; other parts were barely visible. However, the hungry deer were driven from their traditional trails by the presence of the unknown. The deer no longer lingered on my estate for very long with the same curiosity they once had. They were no longer fond of the secret enclaves of the gardens and seldom chose to stay very long there. Perhaps it was just that the leaves and petals had become bitter. Conceivably there were too many whisperings in the air around the gazebos, and the precious animals were unnerved by what they heard, or maybe when they looked up, the same a fragment of light that caused them to take flight. I became aware that my home was host to souls which expressed their longing for something they dreamed of, something they had once possessed, or something they now dreamed of. At night, their voices were so tenuous that they were almost inaudible to the human ear. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Sometimes, the caretakers were curious to discover what lies off the prescribed corridors in my home. On occasion what they discovered would cause them to come to a vail of tears. Over the years, even trespassers were compelled to trespass in my home. However, these visitors would always leave hurriedly. Those without even a psychic bone in their body were made uneasy by something they had discovered along the corridors which ran in all directions. The Villagers made up malicious rumors about me and my home. They claimed that horrible things had been done here and the human blood was used in the mortar between the bricks of the foundation. They called me the Satan’s wife and claimed that I had sent my husband William away on a hunting trip and that he never came back. Oh, how these stories hurt my heart. On a bad day, I would just wish to die. Some said that William was a great hunter, but he did not always limit his quarry to animals. People also said that if guest who lived in my home got out of line that Satan would cut off their heads in their sleep and dispose of their bodies, which is the real reason no one stayed on staff for every long. There are such stories told by fools. Fools invented myths, but this is a loving home. It was something about my wealth that made them suspicious. People wanted to know what was I hiding in such a large mansion. Some figure there had to be something in my home that deserved a closer look. Caged and helpless, a fiend is at the mercy of the spirits. It is also weak from the battle with the noble lion, which gave its life for the mansion’s safety (and will be buried with honour in an ornamented grave at the foot of the mansion). Just before the dawn came, my advisers advised me, and the golden cage was wheeled away into the darkest area of the mansion, close by the dais where once the huge window was no more. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
I led the way down the passageway to another door, one that was much smaller than the mahogany door we have come through. We were presented with a flight of step that led us to landing, with the option to take another flight of stairs, taking us deeper into the mansion, or to walk up a different flight of steps to an even higher level of the house than we had originally descended from. This ingenious feature all us to quickly get to three levels of the house. I always notice that when I chose to climb to the higher level of the house that the air was noticeably more frigid. No matter what, there was always something to catch the eye, but with all these stairs and doors, I had forgotten that even I could get lost in my home. It was not my choice to build the home in this fashion. I did as I was told by the spirits. I had rooms built and tore down, furniture and tapestries moved. I followed their counsel. The leader of the architects was a spirit called Marbas. The bearer of that name was also winged. He was the fifth fallen angel, a great President and would appear in the form of a Great Lion, but at my request, he would put on a human shape. Marbas and his people are winged beings. They are more like a nest of dark eagles than anything, mounted high among the pilasters and pinnacles of the Observational Tower. Cruel and magnificent, like eagles, the somber sentries motionless as statuary on the ledge-edges of the mansion, their stable winds folded about them. They are very alike in appearance (less a race or a tribe, more a flock, an unkindness of ravens). Marbas and his Legion, also black-winged, black-haired, aquiline of feature, standing on the brink of star-dashed space. He has great wisdom and knowledge in the mechanical arts, and governed thirty-six legions of spirits. They have their own traditions of art and science. They do not make or read books, fashion garments, discuss God or metaphysics or men. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Marbas launches himself into the air, speeds down the sky on black ails of his wings, calling, a call like laughter or derision. This morning, in the tween-time before the light began and the sun-to-be drove him away to his shadowed eyrie in the Observational Tower. Marbas pays no heed. He does not need to reason, he merely knows, that noise make this—as he smashed a window or tears down a room. Its design he found fault with. It is, of course, more than that. The magic of Purpose has protected this fortress, and, as in all balances, there must be, or come to be, some balancing contradictions, some flaw…appropriated for the occasion. Bars, bars, all about him, and not to be got rid of, for he reaches to tear them away and cannot. Beyond the bars, the Crystal Bedroom, which is only a pointless cold glitter to in in the maze of pain and dying lights. Not an open place, in fact, but too open for his kind. Through the window-spaces of thick stained-glass, colourful sunglare must come in. To Marbas it will be like swords, acids, and burning fire—far off he hears wings beat and voices soaring. His people search for him, call and wheel find nothing. Marbas cries out, a gravel shriek now, and the persons in the hall rush back from him, calling on God. However, Marbas does not see. He has tried to answer his own. Now he sinks down again under the coverlet of his broken wings, and the wine-red of his eyes go out. The smashed window in the old turret above the menagerie tower has been sealed with mortar and brick. It is a terrible thing that it was so long overlooked. A miracle that only one of the creatures found and entered by it. God, the Protected, guarded the Cursed Heiress and her court. And the magic that surrounds the estate, that too held fast. From the possibility of disaster was born a bloom of great value Now one of the mosters is in their possession. A prize beyond price. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
The switchback staircase had seven flights with forty-four steps, which only rises about nine feet, since each step was just two inches. This was to confuse intruders who were already undoubtedly scared by the many bizarre features in such a large maze. There are even two sets of stairs that lead to the ceiling. The miles of twisting hallways were made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. I traveled through my house in a roundabout fashion, to confuse any mischievous onlookers that might be following me. Eyes often burning through the night, depthless red as claret. And then other eyes, amber, green and gold, spring out like stars across the path. Their cries are mostly wordless and always mysterious, flung out like ribbons over the air as they wheel and swoop and hang in wicked cruciform, between the beams in the ceiling. The spirits sing, long hours, for whole nights at a time, music that has a language that only they know. All their wisdom and theosophy, and all their gras of beauty, truth or love, is in the singing. They look unloving enough, and so they are. Pitiless, fallen angels. They have accepted every bastion and wall as their prey. They have preyed on this mansion and tried to prey on it for years. In the beginning, their calls, their songs, could lure victims to the feast. In this way, the tribe or unkindness took William from a midnight balcony. However, my daughter was the first victim. They left both Annie and William to the sunrise, marble figures, the life drunk away. By night, the spirits fly like huge black moths round and round the carved turrets, the dull-lit leaded windows, their wings invoking a cloudy tindery wind, pushing thunder against thundery glass. They sense they are attributed to some sin, reckoned a punishing curse, a penance, and this amuses them at the level whereon they understand it. It gets hellishly cold. The staff would brew their own brandy from the plums we grew on my trees to stay warm. Glasses were filled and emptied, but they never achieved the warmth they intended to. Even though there were forty-seven fireplaces and lights that along the walls, often times they did nothing to warm the air. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
I cautiously unlatched the door. Opened it a crack. The room was in darkness, but despite that fact there was a warmth in their air; at least in contrast to the bone chilling air of the hallway. Then I opened it wider. I starred into the darkness, enjoying the slight rise in temperate. When I pushed the light button, the room was empty. As I traversed through the corridor, familiar objects looked strange and shadows moved unexpectedly. Just then, the chandelier dimed, gave off a strange sizzing sound and blacked out. Zip jumped and clutched my leg. I gasped for a breath. A narrow stair led to the attic. The light there must have burned out long ago. A ghostly figure with waving arms rushed at us. There was a panic for a moment, then I laughed shakily. It was my wedding dress. The draft blows it around! The beauty of the demon affected me, making me wish to paint it, not as something wonderfully disgusting, but as a kind of superlative man, vital and innocent, or as Lucifer himself, stricken in the sorrow of his colossal Fall. And all that has caused me to pity the fallen one, mere artisan that I am, so I slunk away. I know, since the alchemist and the apothecary told me, what is to be done. Of course, most of the mansion knows Though scarcely anyone has slept or sought sleep, the whole place rings with excitement and vivacity. I have decreed, too, that everyone who wishes shall be a witness. So I have having a progress through the mansion, seeking every nook and cranny, while, let it be said, my carpenter, Mr. Hansen, takes the opportunity to check no other windowpane has cracked. From room to room my entourage pass, through corridors, along stairs, through attics and storerooms I have never seen, or if I have seen has forgotten. The ancient women in the mansion sigh and whisper. It is one of the dark staircases above the Devil’s kitchen that my gleaming entourage and I sweep round a bend and comes Marth the scullery maid, scrubbing. In these days, when there are so few children and young servants, labour is scarce, and the scullerers are not confined to the scullery. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Martha stands up, pale with shock, and for a wild instant thinks that, for some heinous crime she had committed in ignorance, I have come in person to behead her. “Here then, by Mrs. Winchester’s will,” cries Mr. Hasen, my carpenter. “One of the night-demons, which do torment us has been captured and lies penned in the Grand Ball Room. At sunrise tomorrow, this thing will be taken to that sacred spot where grows the bush of the Flower of the Fire, and here its foul blood shall be shed. Who then can doubt the bush of will blossom, and save us all, by the Grace of God.” When I got down stairs in the morning, Daisy was in the palour arranging a great bowl of roses from the garden. Sunlight streamed into the mellow room, a light breeze fluttered the curtains. No hint of ghosts on such a bright morning. “Aunt Sarah, let’s not worry about things this morning,” Daisy suggested. “It’s a wonderful day. Do you want to go into town with me? I see more dresses.” “I did,” I said “We’ll take the short cut back. It’ll save three hours.” The shortcut lay through several fields, a few pastures, and woodlands. “By the way Daisy, are you sure you like your bedroom? It is long off from anyone else, you know?” “Like it? To be sure I do; I have my own house within your home, Aunt Sarah. Here I taste a mingling of modern elegance and hoary antiquity, such as has never ere now graced for life. And this town, small as it is, affords us some reflection, pale indeed, but veritable, of the sweets of polite intercourse: the adjacent country numbers amid the occupants of its scattered mansion some whose polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour, and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by the way of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable.” “Nothing could be more enchanting.” For years, from sunset to rise, nothing would wake Daisy. Once, as a child, when she had been especially badly beaten for being related to a Winchester, the pain woke her and she heard a strange silken scratching, somewhere over her head. But she thought it a rat, or a bird. Yes, a bird, for later it seemed to her there were also winds. However, she has now forgot all of this. Now she sleeps deeply and dreams of being a princess. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
Winchester Mystery House
Mrs. Winchester was considered a child enchantress. Groups of would gather around this miracle with perfect rose-bud cheeks whose dark eyes, long wavy hair, and bright simile set here apart from any other child. They were transfixed by her uncanny ability to speak several languages, which she had never studied. They were amazed that she could play several instruments remarkably well. Others could not resist the alluring falsetto tone of the child siren. Her gaze was enthralling, and her voice was soft. Some were impressed by the sense of indifference Mrs. Winchester demonstrated when they met her. It was a real part of her nature; bred into her, perhaps, by a bloodline that had suffered so much loss and anguish over the generations. This is why nothing was allowed to impress her too greatly; she had no idea how remarkable she and her creations were because she suffered too severely from a broken heart. As an adult, Mrs. Winchester held her beauty in extreme reserve, providing only glimpses of her presence for public consumption. It was these glimpses that kept the audience coming to her home to sneak a view of her day after day. However, Mrs. Winchester was too good an actress to let people see how deeply she mourned for the deaths of her husband, parents, and infant daughter. And it is the same power which her Grand Queen Anne mansion unleashes to audiences today. Mrs. Winchester was an orphan of a great spiritual storm. There are some parts of the mansion not shared with the public, and with good reason. You see, there are people who should not see what it has to show. I do not know if it is mysterious or if it is sad. You see, the woman who built this mansion was a good soul. The truth is, we are all a little afraid of what happened here because none of us are certain of the truth. All we can do, is say our prayers, and put our souls into God’s care when we are on this beautiful but bizarre estate.
After the death of Mrs. Winchester, the city of Santa Clara wanted to turn her home into a hospital, but a psychic said that the Devil had cursed the place. People’s hearts were filled with sorrow for the things they said about her, after learning how kind and charitable she had secretly been. No one has ever been able to estimate the true size or complexity of the Winchester Mystery House. Although it is only recognized as being 24,000, experts believe that it has to be at least 150,000 square feet. At one time, it was even larger than it is today and had as many as 600 rooms and nine stories. It is plain, even from a distance, that the home was elaborately designed. The estate was originally comprised of an estimated 740 acres of land, and had green trees from every part of the World, and more, sweeter hues in the growth between them. Beneath the canopy, there were exotic flowers and creature, and the branches of the trees skillfully lead the impression that light was falling through the foliage, which is now virtually simulated in the mysterious windows in the Grand Ball Room. It was rendered with remarkable expertise. People have always been exhilarated by what they see. Some people leave the estate wiping their cold and clammy hands, and wonder to themselves how is it that such a beautiful mansion could invoke such fear into their souls. Caretakers and business associates understood the coldness on the matters of the heart displayed by Mrs. Winchester, as she remained unmarried and celibate after the death of her husband. This coldness is what made her so strong; and it was her strength—visible in her eyes and in her every movement—that have endured her audiences for nearly two hundred years. Sometimes you find beauty in the strangest places. Mrs. Winchester’s thoughts are with the walls and the beautiful art-glass windows.
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 