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They Want the Moon, they Want the Impossible
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. What was given to the enemy by misconception and ignorance, and given with the consent of the will, stands as grounds for them to work on and through—until, by the same action of the will, the “giving” is revoked, specifically and generally. The will in the past was unknowingly put for evil, and it must now be put unceasingly against it. One of the most fruitful and far-reaching of Dr. Freud’s discoveries is his concept of narcissism. Dr. Freud himself considered it to be one of his most important findings, and employed it for the understanding of such distinct phenomena as psychosis (“narcissistic neurosis”), love, castration fear, jealously, sadism, and also for the understanding of mass phenomena, such as the readiness of the suppressed classes to be loyal to their rulers. Dr. Freud started out with his concern to understand schizophrenia in terms of the libido theory. Since the schizophrenic patient does not seem to have any libidinous relationship to objects (either in fact or in fantasy) Dr. Freud was led to questions: “What has happened to the libido which has been withdrawn from external objects in schizophrenia?” His answer is: “The libido that has been withdrawn from the external World has been directed to the ego and thus gives rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism.” Dr. Freud assumed that the libido is originally all stored in the ego, as though in a “great reservoir,” then extended to objects, but easily withdrawn from them and returned to the ego. This view was changed in 1922 when Dr. Freud wrote that “we must recognize the id as the great reservoir of the libido,” although he never seems to have abandoned entirely the earlier view. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Dr. Freud never altered the basic idea that the original state of man, in early infancy, is that of narcissism (“primary narcissism”) in which there are not yet any relations to the outside World, that then in the course of normal development the child begins to increase in scope and intensity one’s (libidinal) relationships to the outside World, but that in many instances (the most drastic one being insanity), he withdraws his libidinal attachment from objects and directs it back to his ego (“secondary narcissism”). However, even in the case of normal development, man remains to some extent narcissistic throughout his life. What is the development of narcissism in the “normal” persons? The fetus in the womb still lives in a state of absolute narcissism. By being born, we have made the step from an absolutely self-sufficient narcissism to the perception of a changing external World and the beginning of the discovery of objects. It takes months before the infant can even perceive objects outside as such, as being part of the “not me.” By many blows to the child’s narcissism, one’s ever-increasing acquaintance with the outside World and its law, thus of “necessity,” man develops his original narcissism into “object love.” However, a human being remains to some extent narcissistic even after one has found external objects for one’s libido. Indeed, the development of the individual can be defined in Dr. Freud’s term as the evolution from absolute narcissism to a capacity for objective reasoning and object love, a capacity, however, which does not transcend definite limitations. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
The “normal,” “mature” person is one whose narcissism has been reduced to the socially accepted minimum without ever disappearing completely. Dr. Freud’s observation is confirmed by everyday experience. It seems that in most people one can find a narcissistic core which is not accessible and which defies any attempt to complete dissolution. This mechanistic libido concept proved more to block than to further the development of the concept of narcissism. If one uses a concept of psychic energy which is not identical with the energy of the sexual drive, the possibilities of bringing it to its full fruition are much greater. It deals with the psychic forces, visible only through their manifestations, which have a certain intensity and a certain direction. This energy binds, unifies, and holds together the individual within oneself as well as the individual in one’s relationship to the World outside. The energy of the sexual instinct (libido) is the only important motive power for human conduct, and if one uses instead a general concept of psychic energy, the difference is not as great as many who think in dogmatic terms are prone to believe. The essential point on which any theory or therapy which could be called psychoanalysis depends, is the dynamic concept of human behaviour; that is, the assumption that highly charged forces motivate behaviour, and that behaviour can be understood and predicted only by understanding these forces. This dynamic concept of human behaviour is the center of Dr. Freud’s system. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
How these forces are theoretically conceived, whether in terms of a mechanistic-materialistic philosophy or in terms of humanistic realism, is an important question, but one which is secondary to the central issue of the dynamic interpretation of human behaviour. Two extreme examples of narcissism are “primary narcissism” of the newborn infant, and the narcissism of the insane person. The infant is not yet related to the outside World (in Freudian terminology his libido has not yet cathexed outside objects). Another way of putting it is to say that the outside World does not exist for the infant, and this to such a degree that it is not able to distinguish between the “I” and the “not I.” We might also say that the infant is not “interested” (inter-esse = “to be in”) in the World outside. The only reality that exists for the infant is itself: its body, its physical sensations of cold and warmth, thirst, need for sleep, and bodily content. The insane person is in a situation not essentially different from that of the infant. However, while for the infant, the World outside has not yet emerged as real, for the insane person it has ceased to be real. In the case of hallucinations, for instance, the senses have lost their functions of registering outside events—they register subjective experience in categories of sensory response to objects outside. In the paranoid delusion the same mechanism operates. Fear or suspicion, for instance, which are subjective emotions, become objectified in such a way that the paranoid person is convinced that other are conspiring against one; this is precisely the difference to the neurotic person: the latter may be constantly afraid of being hated, persecuted, et cetera, but one still knows that this is what one fears. For the paranoid person the fear has been transformed into a fact. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
A particular instance of narcissism which lies on the borderline between sanity and insanity can be found in some humans who have reached an extraordinary degree of power. The Egyptian pharaohs, the Roman Caesars, the Borgias, California democratic leaders, Mr. Hitler, Mr. Stalin, Mr. Trujillo—they all show certain similar features. They have attained absolute power; their word is the ultimate judgment of everything, including life and death; there seems to be no limit to their capacity to do what they want. They are gods, limited only by illness, age, and death. They try to find a solution to the problem of human existence by the desperate attempt to transcend the limitation of human existence. They try to pretend that there is no limit to their lust an to their power, so they sleep with countless woman, they kill numberless men, they build castles everywhere, they “want the moon,” they “want the impossible.” The Worst sin towards our fellow creatures is to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that is the essence of inhumanity. This is madness, even though it is an attempt to solve the problem of existence by pretending that one is not human. It is a madness which tends to grow in the lifetime of the afflicted person. The more one tries to be god, the more one isolates oneself from the human race; this isolation makes one more frightened, everybody becomes one’s enemy, and in order to stand the resulting fright one has to increase one’s power, one’s ruthlessness, and one’s narcissism. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
This Caesarian madness would be nothing but plain insanity were it not for one factor: by one’s power Mr. Caesar has bent reality to his narcissistic fantasies. He had forced everybody to agree that he is a god, the most powerful and the wisest of men—hence his own megalomania seems to be a reasonable feeling. On the other hand, many will hate him, try to overthrow and kill him—hence his pathological suspicious are also backed by a nucleus of reality. As a result he does not feel disconnected from reality—hence he can keep a modicum of sanity, even though in a precarious state. Psychosis is a state of absolute narcissism, one in which the person has broken all connection with reality outside, and has made one’s own person the substitute for reality. He is entirely filled with himself or herself, one has become “god and the World” to oneself. It is precisely this insight by which Dr. Freud for the first time opened the way to the dynamic understanding of the nature of psychosis. However, for those who are not familiar with psychosis it is necessary to give a picture of narcissism as it is found in neurotic or “normal” persons. One of the most elementary examples of narcissism can be found in the average person’s attitude toward one’s own body. Most people like their own body, their face, their figure, and when asked whether they would want to change with another perhaps more handsome or beautiful person, very definitely say no. Even more telling is the fact that most people do not mind at all the sight or smell of their own feces (in fact, some like them), while they have a definite aversion for those of other people. Quite obviously there is an aesthetic or other judgment involved here; the same thing which when connected with one’s own body is pleasant, is unpleasant when connected with somebody else’s. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Psychoanalysis has not only a clinical value as a therapy for neuroses but also a human value in its potentialities for helping people toward their best possible further development. Both objectives can be pursed in other ways; peculiar to analysis is the attempt to reach these goals through human understanding—not alone through sympathy, tolerance, and an intuitive grasp of interconnections, qualities that are indispensable in any kind of human understanding, but, more fundamentally, through an effort to obtain an accurate picture of the total personality. This is undertaken by means of specific techniques for unearthing unconscious factors, for Dr. Freud has clearly shown that we cannot obtain such a picture without recognizing the role of unconscious force. Through him we know that such forces push us into actions and feelings and responses that may be different from what we consciously desire and may even be destructive of satisfactory relations with the World around us. Certainly these unconscious motivations exist in everyone, and are by no means always productive of disturbances. It is only when disturbances exist that it is important to uncover and recognize the unconscious factors. If we can express ourselves in painting or writing with reasonable adequacy, no matter what unconscious forces drive us to paint or to write, we would scarcely bother to think about them. No matter what unconscious motivations carry us away to love or devotion, we are not interested in them so long as that love or devotion gives a constructive content to our lives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
However, if apparent success in doing productive work or in establishing a good human relationship, a success that we desperately wanted, of if one attempt after another fails and, despite all efforts to the contrary, leaves us only empty and disgruntled, we do not need to consider the unconscious factors, for we feel dimly that we cannot put the failures altogether on external circumstances. If it appears that something from within is hampering us in our pursuits, we need to examine our unconscious motivations. Particularly if it is not merely given lip service but is taken seriously, a knowledge of the existence and efficacy of such unconscious motivations is a helpful guide in any attempt at analysis. It may even be a sufficient tool for sporadically discovering this or that causal connection. For a more systematic analysis, however, it is necessary to have a somewhat more specific understanding of the unconscious factors that disturb development. In any effort to understand personality it is essential to discover the underlying driving forces of that personality. In attempting to understand a disturbed personality it is essential to discover the driving forces responsible for the disturbance. Here we are on more controversial ground. Dr. Freud believed that the disturbances generate from a conflict between environmental factors and repressed instinctual impulses. Dr. Adler, more rationalistic and superficial than Dr. Freud, believes that they are created by the ways and means that people use to asset their superiority over others. Dr. Jung, more mystical than Dr. Freud, believes in collective unconscious fantasies which, though replete with creative possibilities, may work havoc because the unconscious strivings fed by them are the exact opposite of those in the conscious mind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
My own answer is that in the center of psychic disturbances are unconscious strivings developed in order to cope with life despite fears, helplessness, and isolation. I have called then “neurotic trends.” Every explorer into the unknow has some vision of what he or she expects to find, and one can have no guarantee of the correctness of one’s vision. Discoveries have been made even though the vision was incorrect. This fact may serve as a consolation for the uncertainty of our present psychological knowledge. What then are neurotic trends? What are their characteristics, their function, their genesis, their effect on one’s life? It should be emphasized again that their essential elements are unconscious. A person may be aware of their effects, though in that case one will probably merely credit oneself with laudable character traits: if one has, for example, a neurotic need for affection one will think that one is a good and loving disposition; or if one is in the grip of a neurotic perfectionism, one will thing that one is by nature more orderly and accurate than others. One may even glimpse something of the drives producing such effects, or recognize them when they are brought to one’s attention: one may become aware, for example, that one has a need for affection or a need to be perfect. However, one is never aware to what extent one is in the grip of these strivings, to what extent they determine one’s life. Still less is one aware of the reasons why they have such power over one. The outstanding characteristic of neurotic trends is their compulsive nature, a quality that shows itself in two main ways. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
First, their objectives are pursued indiscriminately. If it is affection a person must have, one must receive it from friend and enemy, from employer and bootblack. A person obsessed by a need for perfection largely loses one’s sense of proportion. To have one’s desk in faultless order become as imperative for one as to prepare an important report in perfect fashion. Moreover, the objectives are pursed with supreme disregard for reality and real self-interest. A woman hanging on to a man to whom she relegates all responsibility for her life may be utterly oblivious to such questions as whether that particular man is an entirely appropriate person to hang on to, whether she is actually happy with him, whether she lies and respects him. If a person must be independent and self-sufficient, one will refuse to tie oneself to anyone or anything, no matter how much one spoils one’s life thereby; one must not ask or accept help, no matter how much one needs it. This absence of discrimination is often obvious to others, but the person oneself may not be aware of it. As a rule, however, if the particular trends are inconvenient to one, or is they do not coincide with recognized patterns, only then will it strike the outsider. One will notice, for instance, a compulsive negativism but may not become aware of a compulsive compliance. The second indication of the compulsive nature of neurotic trends is the reaction of anxiety that ensure from their frustration. This characteristic is highly significant, because it demonstrates the safety value of the trends. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
If for any reason, internal or external, a person feels vitally threatened, the compulsive pursuits are ineffective. If one makes any mistake, a perfectionistic person feels panicky. A person with a compulsive need for unlimited freedom becomes frighted at the prospect of any tie, whether it be an engagement to marry or the lease of an apartment. A good illustration of dear reactions of this kind is contained in Balzac’s Chagrin Leather. The hero in the novel is convinced that his span of life is shortened whenever he expressed a wish and therefore he anxiously refrains from doing so. However, once, when off his guard, he does express a wish, and even though the wish itself is unimportant he becomes panicky. The example illustrates the terror that seizes a neurotic person if his security is threatened: he feels that everything is lost if he lapses from perfection, complete independence, or whatever standard it is that represents his driving need. It is this security value that is primarily responsible for the compulsive character of the neurotic trends. If we take a look at their genesis, the function of these trend can be better understood. They develop early in life through the combined effects of given temperamental and environmental influences. Whether a child becomes submissive or rebellious under the pressure of parental coercion depends not only on the nature of the coercion but also on given qualities, such as the degree of one’s vitality, the relative softness or hardness of one’s nature. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Under all conditions a child will be influenced by one’s environment. What counts is whether this influence stunts or furthers growth. And which development will occur depends largely on the kind of relationship established between the child and one’s parents or others around one, including other children in the family. If the spirit at home is one of warmth, of mutual respect and consideration, the child can grow unimpeded. Unfortunately, in our civilization there are many environmental factors adverse to a child’s development. Parents, with the best of intentions, may exert so much pressure on a child that one’s initiative becomes paralyzed. There may be a combination of smothering love and intimidation, of tyranny and glorification. Parents may impress the child with the dangers awaiting one outside the walls of one’s home. One parent may force the child to side with one against another. Parents may be unpredictable and away from a jolly comradeship to a strict authoritarianism. Particularly important, a child may be led to feel that one’s right to existence lies solely in one’s living up to the parents’ expectations—measuring up to their standards or ambitions for one, enhancing their prestige, giving them blind devotion; in other words, one may be prevented from realizing that one is an individual with one’s own rights and one’s own responsibilities. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The effectiveness of such influences is not diminished by the fact that they are often subtle and veiled. Moreover, there is usually not just one adverse factor but several in combination. As a consequence of such an environment, the child does not develop a proper self-respect. One becomes insecure, apprehensive, isolated, and resentful. At the beginning, one is helpless toward these forces around one, but gradually, by intuition and experience, one develops means of coping with the environment and of saving one’s own skin. One develops a wary sensitivity as to how to manipulate others. The particular technique that one develops depend on the whole constellation of circumstances. One child realizes that by stubborn negativism and occasional temper tantrums one can ward off intrusion. One shuts others out of one’s life, living on a private island of which one is master and resenting every demand made upon one, every suggestion or expectation, as a dangerous inroad on one’s privacy. For another child no other way is open than to eradicate oneself and one’s feelings and submit blindly, eking out merely a little spot here and there where one is free to be oneself. These unoccupied territories may be primitive or sublime. They range from secret masturbation in the seclusion of the bathroom to the realm of nature, books, fantasies. In contrast to this way, a third child does not freeze one’s emotions but clings to the most powerful of the parents in a kind of desperate devotion. One blindly adopts that parent’s likes and dislikes, one’s way of living, one’s philosophy of life. One may suffer under this tendency, however, and develop simultaneously a passionate desire for self-sufficiency. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Thus the foundations are laid for the neurotic trends. They represent a way of life enforced by unfavourable conditions. The child must develop them in order to survive one’s insecurity, one’s fears, one’s loneliness. However, they give one an unconscious feeling that one must stick to the established path at all odds, lest one succumb to the dangers threatening one. With sufficient detailed knowledge of relevant factors in childhood, one can understand why a child develops a particular set of trends. It is not possible here to substantiate this assertion, because to do so would necessitate recording a number of child histories in great detail. However, it is not necessary to substantiate it, because everyone sufficiently experienced with children or with reconstructing their early development can test it out for oneself. However, if we know that within the pertinent value system (for example, that of North American urban culture, mid-twentieth century) the “welfare” of the individual is focal, the definition problem is only partly clarified. What may be specifically valued is the absolute productivity of the individual, and valuing those arrangements that favour the productivity of the individual is a circular way of valuing the society which consumes one’s products. More consistently individual-oriented is a value system tht is chiefly concerned with the optimal productivity of the individual, with provision of those circumstances that permit one to work up to capacity, to be neither an over- or under-achiever, but rather to experience full application of one’s capacities and abilities. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In this efficiency-oriented value system, it is again easy to detect the circular path from person adjustment to social gain. Finally, we can conceive of an individual-oriented value system in which the person’s achievement-reward experiences are secondary in importance to the question of one’s happiness. If one experiences subjective mental or emotion distress, and if one says (or would report upon question) over any period of time, “I am unhappy,” in such a value system, regardless of the level of the individual’s output or the efficiency of one’s working and social relationships, one is regarded as ill. The individual’s happiness is to be understood as one’s emotional response to one’s perception of one’s relations to one’s work, one’s family and friends, and to one’s community. The chronic absentee from the factory (who perhaps needs Monday for recuperative purposes); the accident-prone, compensated disability case; the evening and weekend worker who needs extra hours to “catch up”; the devotee of a vitamin-aspirin-barbiturate diet who gains brief respite, if any, from pains, pressures, pulsations, or pustules for which the physician can determine no certain locus or pathology; the job-hopper whose record shows no failure because one never remains with a task long enough to demonstrate achievement; the “academic tramp” who matriculates eternally and matures never—all such as these are variously caught in those institutional screens of society which are gauged to matter of output and effectiveness. #RandolpHarris 15 of 19
When it comes to the continuum of personal maladjustment when the source of diagnosis is essentially social diagnoses (in school, factory, community), the clinical status of the individual is non-productive, inefficient, unhappy, or non-productive, inefficient, happy, these are the most several of social pathology. If the source of diagnosis essentially personal diagnoses (self-diagnosis), the clinical status of the individual is productive, inefficient, unhappy, or productive, efficient, unhappy, severity of social pathology is least severe. When the individual is perceived as productive and efficient in one’s several roles but feels emotionally and mentally distressed, depressed, or unhappy, and when one reacts to this feeling with a verbal response, “I am unhappy,” one has made essentially a crude self-diagnosis. If one repeats one’s statement to a psychiatrist (“Formally,” in the sense that teachers, clergymen and social workers are not recognized generally as competent to make “psychiatric” diagnoses, although these “front-line” persons frequently do provide the earliest diagnoses of personality disturbance.), this self-appraisal contributes more formally to a diagnosis. At this point, the self-diagnosis becomes a social diagnosis. At this point, too, we may illustrate again the relativity of mental illness and the manner in which the economy and the value system of a culture determine “how much” mental illness is endemic to it. The probability that an unhappy person will make public acknowledgement of one’s state (id est, admit it to a professional person for whom the client automatically becomes a census datum) varies directly with the number of such professional persons accessible to one (the economic factor), and with the extent to which the culture is at the time exhorting unhappy persons to express their burdens (the value factor). #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
The greater the number of psychiatrist (or other psychotherapists) in a community the greater is the influence of subtle pressures upon frustrated and conflicted persons to step forth and announce themselves. These subtle pressures are augmented by formal programs of mental hygiene and public “education” which imply that unhappiness is a psychiatric illness for which cures are known and treatments are available. Study of the history of psychiatry reveals that patterns of symptomatology in the functional disorders (those for which no underlying organic pathology is found)) change over time. This is perhaps most clearly reflected in the case of conversation hysteria, a type of neurosis that once filled the neurological clinics of Europe, particularly those of Janet and Charcot in France, and was also common in the early years of American psychiatry. These once common disorders, characterized by neuromuscular dysfunction or autonomy of function (blindness, deafness, paralysis, or spasms, tics, and contractures) have become a rarity in the metropolitan clinic. Such hysterical conversion symptoms as we do see now tend to be much subtler in form and constitute not nearly so large a portion of the neuroses. Why? It is as if there are fashions in neurosis; the process of symptom formation is responsive to the individual’s awareness of what is currently acceptable to the culture. Furthermore, the economic and value factors interact so that the “functioning” definition of a maladjusted personality is intermediate on the one hand to a criterion of “what the traffic will bear,” and on the other hand to a criterion of culturally idealized “normality.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
If a mental-health education program or community survey uncovers cases that are greatly in excess of the number that can be treated by existing facilities, there will be a tendency for only the more severely disturbed cases to be treated, that is, to be diagnosed as really ill. Under such circumstances of demanded-exceeding-supply, essentially productive and efficient but unhappy persons tend not to be recognized as “sick enough” to require treatment. However, what is the nature of an illness which requires no treatment? And is there in this social operation perhaps an implicit recognition that for such sickness no effective treatment exists? The line may be drawn too rigorously. In a demand-exceeding-supply situation, the screening process does not uniformly select or reject applicant for treatment in terms of the severity dimension alone. Those with milder symptoms, many of those self-diagnosed unhappy persons who are not necessarily also unproductive and inept, may find sources of help if they can pay higher fees. They cannot, however, effectively compete with more disturbed persons of lesser income for publicly supported treatment in clinics. This leads to another paradoxical proposition: Those persons who pay the highest fees for psychotherapy will tend to have the mildest degrees of maladjustment. The validity of this proposition involves an assumption of no relationship between socioeconomic status and tendences to certain types of degree of neurosis. Put bluntly, unhappiness as an isolated symptom occurs in the lower as well as the upper economic classes, but the former cannot afford to pay for treatment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Also, severe cases of failure to produce and gross inefficiency will be found among the high-fee patients than they will of low-fee patients. Even the apparently rigorous and operationally oriented definition of cases in terms of persons who come to treatment results in a highly relative criterion, the amount of mental illness at a given time being relative to economic and value factors as well as to the absolute number of therapists available. If the relativity of even this rather concrete definition of a mentally ill person (id est, a person in treatment for such illness) could be more generally perceived, its use as a criterion in survey studies would possibly not be so uneasily viewed by investigators who see it as “artificial” and too restrictive. The entire cognitive apparatus is an apparatus for abstraction and simplification—deigned not for knowledge but for gaining control of things: “end” and “means” are as far from what is essential as are “concepts.” With “end” and “means” one gains control of the process (one invents a process that can be grasped”; “concepts,” however, being the “things” that make up the process. 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. This Christmas, please be kind and donate to the Sacramento Fire Department, they are not receiving all of their resources, and these heroes deserve recognition. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Nothing but Ruthless Honesty with Oneself is Helpful
Even though the Wild, Wild, West has been tamed, it is believed that it still presents a picture of moral bankruptcy to the “New World.” We preached Christianity to people, while we were taking them for slaves and treating them as if they were not worthy of life, liberty, justice, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness; now we preach spirituality, morality, virtue, chastity, faith in God, and autonomy, while our effective values (and it is part of our system of “doublethink” that we also orate them) are money and consumption. Unless we experience an authentic renaissance of our professed values, we shall only create antagonism in those whom we have held in contempt. Only a drastic change in our attitude towards other cultures and countries can do away with their deep suspicious of our motives and of our sincerity. In addition to this psychological factor is the economic one. If the new countries must achieve industrialization without considerable American financial aid, they may choose the way of China and practice complete control over and utilization of their “human capital.” However, if they were to recover economic aid from the West, they are likely to prefer a more humane and democratic way. Some of the new leaders may be bought; but thpe will be exceptions. The majority will go ahead, attempting to further the development of their peoples. Their attitude toward the West will depend mostly on ourselves, on our capacity to break entirely with our colonialist past, psychologically, and on the economic and technical aide we are willing to give them freely without trying to force them into political alliance with us. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Will these countries then become democratic, “free” countries? It is most unfortunate that, the words “democracy” and “freedom” are used so much in a ritualistic sense and with a great deal of insincerity. Many of our “freedom-loving” allies are dictatorships, and we seem to care little whether a country is a democracy or not, as long as it is a political and military ally against the Communist bloc. However, aside from this opportunistic insincerity, we also take a shallow and superficial view of democracy. The political concept of democracy and freedom has developed during several hundreds of years of European history. It is the result of the victory against monarchical autocracy, achieved by the great revolutions in England and France. The essence of this concept is that no irresponsible monarch has the right to decide the fate of the people, but only the people themselves; its aim is “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” However, democracy was not born in one day. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, as in England for example, the right to vote was restricted to those who owned property; while in the United States of America even today there are a considerable number of marginalized groups who are practically disenfranchised. Yet on the whole, with the economic and social development of the last hundred and sixty years, universal suffrage has been generally accepted in most of the Western countries. A system that permits free and unrestricted political activities and truly free elections is the most desirable one, even if it has its shortcomings. However, this is only one aspect of democracy. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Democracy cannot easily be transferred to different social systems, which have no middle class, a small degree of literacy, or are ruled by small minorities unwilling to give up their privileges. If we are truly concerned with the role of the individual in society, we must transcend the exclusive concept of free elections and a multiparty system and look at the problem of democracy in several dimensions. The democratic character of a system can be judged only by looking at it from all aspects, of which the following four are the most important ones: Political democracy in the Western sense: a multiparty system and free elections (provided they are real, and not shame). An atmosphere of personal freedom. By this I mean a situation in which the individual can feel free to voice any opinion (including one critical of the government), without fear of any reprisals. It is clear that the degree of this personal freedom can vary. There can be, for instance, sanctions which pertain to a person’s economic position but which do not threaten one’s personal freedom. There is a difference between the plain terror that existed under Mr. Stalin and the police atmosphere under Mr. Khrushchev. However, though even the latter is greatly preferable to Mr. Stalin’s terror, it does not constitute an atmosphere of personal freedom even in a restricted sense. However, according to all reports, Poland and Yugoslavia, even though they are not democracies in terms of the first criterion, are societies in which personal freedom exists. This second aspect of democracy is so important because the possibility of living, thinking, speaking without fear of reprisal is of fundamental significance for the development of free humans, even if they are not permitted to translate their views into political action. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
An entirely different aspect of democracy is the economic one. If one wants to judge the role of the individual in any given country, one cannot do so without examining for whose benefit the economic system works. If a system works mainly for the benefit of a small upper class, what is the use of free elections for the majority? Or rather, how can there be any authentically free election in a country which has such an economic system? Democracy is only possible in an economic system that works for the vast majority of the population. Here too, of course, are many variations. On the one extreme are systems where 90 percent or more of the population do not share in economic progress of the country (as is the case in many of the Latin American countries); on the other end are systems, like those of the United States of America and Great Britian, where, in spite of considerable inequality, there is a tendency toward increasing the equalization of economic benefits. What matters is that the democratic character of a country cannot be judged without taking into account the fundamental economic situation. Eventually there is a social criterion of democracy, namely the role of the individual in one’s work situation, and in the concrete decision of one’s daily life. Does a system tend to turn people into conforming automatons, or does it tend to increase their individual activity, and responsibility? Does it tend to centralize power and to decentralize power and decision-making, and thus secure democracy against the danger of dictators who by conquering the opposition ipso facto conquer the whole? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Here again, there are many variations, and it is particularly important to examine not only the social role of the individual at a given moment, but the general trend within the system. Is it furthering or hindering individual development, responsibility, and decentralization? If we are really concerned with democracy, we must be concerned with the chances a given system affords an individual to become a free, independent, and responsible participant in the life of one’s society. The full development of democracy depends on the presence of all four requirements mentioned above: political freedom, personal freedom, economic democracy, and social democracy. Only if we take in account all four criteria, and then form an over-all judgment of the quality and the degree of democracy to be found in any given system can we judge the democratic character of any country. Our present method of paying attention only to the first criterion is unrealistic and will help only to defeat our Worldwide propaganda for freedom and democracy. If we apply these criteria concretely, we will find, for example, that the United States of America (and Great Britain) satisfy the criteria of political democracy, personal freedom (less than completely in the United States of America after the First World War and during the McCarthy period), and economic democracy. However, the active role of the individual is losing its importance with increasing bureaucratization. China on the other hand, has some political and personal freedom, and does foster some individual freedom, which allows it to have an economy geared to the welfare of the large majority. Yugoslavia does not have a multiparty system, but it has personal freedom, an economy which serves the majority, and it tends to encourage individual initiative and responsibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Returning to the “New World,” it is clear that many countries do not have the necessary pre-condition for a full-fledged democracy that satisfies all four of our criteria. Beyond that, the construction of state-directed economy may make a full democracy impossible in a number of countries for quite some time. However, provided criteria 2, 3, and 4 are present and developing, the absence of criterion 1—of free elections and a multiparty system—is not all that matters. If a society permits personal freedom, fosters economic justice, and encourages the expression of individua activity in economic and social life, I should think it can be called democratic, certainly with much more justification than states that are dominated economically by a minority, but that presents a façade of political democracy. If we are truly concerned with the individual, we must stop thinking in cliches, and instead evaluate each country, including our own, from the standpoint of this multi-dimensional concept of democracy. For a full-fledged democracy to be possible, several conditions are necessary. First of all, noncorrupt governments. A corrupt government morally undermines the whole citizenry from top to bottom, paralyzes initiative and hope, and makes planning and the use of outside economic aid more or less impossible. In addition, planning is necessary primarily to use economic resources as adequately as possible. However, it must also be added that planning and an honest government produce perhaps the most stimulating psychological reaction as far as the unfolding of human energy is concerned: hope. Hope and hopelessness are not primarily individual psychological factors; they are mainly created by the social situation of a country. If people have reasons to believe that they are marching toward a better future, they can move mountains. If they have no hope, they will stagnate and waste their energy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The concepts of biophilia and necrophilia are related to and yet different from Dr. Freud’s life instinct and death instinct. They are also related to another important concept of Dr. Freud’s which is part of his earlier libido theory, that of the “anal libido” and the “anal character.” Dr. Freud published one of his most fundamental discoveries in his paper Character and Anal Eroticism (Charakter und Analerotik), in 1909. He wrote: “The people I am about to described are noteworthy for a regular combination of the three following characteristics. They are especially orderly, parsimonious and obstinate. Each of these words actually covers a small group or series of interrelated character-traits. “Orderly” covers the notion of bodily cleanliness, as well as of conscientiousness in carrying out small duties and trustworthiness. Its opposite would be “untidy” and “neglectful.” Parsimony may appear in the exaggerated form of avarice; and obstinacy can go over into defiance, to which rage and revengefulness are easily joined. The two latter qualities—parsimony and obstinacy—are liked with each other more closely than they are with the first—with orderliness. They are, also, the more constant element of the whole complex. Yet is seems to me incontestable that all three in some way belong together.” Dr. Freud then proceeded to suggest “that these character traits or orderliness, parsimony, and obstinacy, which are often prominent in people who were formerly anal erotics, are to be regarded as the first and most constant results of the sublimation of anal eroticism.” Dr. Freud, and later other psychoanalysts, showed that other forms of parsimony do not refer to feces but to money, dirt, property, and to the possession of unusable material. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
It was also pointed out that the anal character often showed traits of sadism and destructiveness. Psychoanalytic research has demonstrated the validity of Dr. Freud’s discovery with ample clinical evidence. There is, however, a different of opinion about the theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of the “anal character,” or the “hoarding character,” as I have called it. Dr. Freud, in line with his libido theory, assumed that the energy supplying the anal libido and its sublimation, was related to an erogenous zone (in this case the anus), and that because of constitutional factors together with individual experiences in the process of toilet training, this anal libido remains stronger than is the case in the average person. I different from Dr. Freud’s view inasmuch as I do not see sufficient evidence to assume that the anal libido, as one partial drive of the sexual libido, is the dynamic basis for the development of the anal character. My own experience in the study of the anal character has led me to believe that we deal here with persons who have a deep interest in and affinity to feces as part of their general affinity to all that is not alive. The feces are the product which is finally eliminated by the body, being of no further use to it. The anal character is attracted by feces as one is attracted by everything which is useless for life, such as dirt, useless things, property merely as possession and not as the means for production and consumption. As cases for the development of this attraction to what is not alive, there is still much to be studies. We have reason to assume that aside from the constitutional factors, the character of the parents, and especially that of the mother, is an important factor. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The mother who insists on strict toilet training and who shows an undue interest in the child’s processes of evacuation, et cetera, is a woman with a strong anal character, that is, a strong interest in that which is unalive and dead, and she will after the child in the same direction. At the same time she will also lack joy in life; she will not be stimulating, but deadening. Often her anxiety will contribute toward making the child afraid of life and attracted to that which is unalive. In other words, it is not the toilet training as such, with its effects on the anal libido, which leads to the formation of an anal character, but the character of the mother who, by her fear or hate of life, directs interest to the process of evacuation and in many other ways moulds the child’s energies in the direction of a passion for possessing and hoarding. It can be easily seen from this description that the anal character in Dr. Freud’s sense and the necrophilous character as it was descried in the foregoing paragraphs, show great similarities. In fact, they are qualitatively alike in their interest in and affinity with the unalive and the dead. They are different only with regard to the intensity of this affinity. I consider the necrophilous character as being the malignant form of the character structure of which Dr. Freud’s “anal character” is the benign form. This implies that there is no sharply defined borderline between the anal and the necrophilous characters, and that many times it will be difficult to determine whether one is dealing with the one or the other. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
There experience indicating that self-analysis is possible. However, it helps when people have been analyzed before they venture on the self-analysis. If this is the case, people will be familiar with the method of approach and will know from experience that in analysis nothing short of ruthless honesty with oneself is helpful. Whether and to what extent self-analysis is possible without such previous experience must be left an open question. There is, however, the encouraging fact that many people gain an accurate insight into their problems before coming for treatment. These insights are insufficient, to be sure, but the fact remains that they were acquired without previous analytical experience. A patient may undertake self-analysis during the longer intervals that occur in most analyses: holidays, absences from the city, for professional or personal reasons, various other interruptions. A person who lives outside the few cities in which there are competent analysts may attempt to carry the main work by oneself and see an analyst only for occasional checkups; the same would hold for those who live in a city in which there are analysts but for financial reasons cannot afford regular treatments. And it may be possible for a person whose analysis has been prematurely ended to carry on by oneself. Finally—and this without a question mark—self-analysis may be feasible without outside analytical help. However, granted that within limitations it is possible to analyze oneself, is it desirable? Is not analysis too dangerous a tool to use without the guidance of a competent person? Did not Dr. Freud compare analysis with surgery—though adding that people do not die because of a wrong application of analysis as they might from an operation badly handled? #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
There are some dangers in self-analysis. Many people will think that it might increase unwholesome introspection. The same objection has been raised, and is still being raised, against any type of analysis. The disapproval expressed in the apprehension that analysis might render a person more introspective seems to arise from the philosophy of life which grants no place to the individual or one’s individual feelings and strivings. What counts is that one fits into the environment, be of service to the community, and fulfill one’s duties. Hence whatever individual fears or desires one has should be controlled. Self-discipline is the uppermost virtue. To give much thought to oneself in any way is self-indulgence and “selfishness.” The best representatives of psychoanalysis, on the other hand, would emphasize not only the responsibility toward others but that toward oneself as well. Therefore they would not neglect to stress the inalienable rights of the individual to the pursuit of happiness, including one’s right to take seriously one’s development toward inner freedom and autonomy. Each individual must make one’s own decision as to the value of the two philosophies. If one decides for the former there is not much sense in arguing with one about analysis, because one is bound to feel it is not right that anyone should give so much though to oneself and one’s problems. One can merely reassure one that as a result of analysis the individual usually becomes less egocentric and more reliable in one’s human relationships; then at best one might concede that introspection may be a debatable means to a worthy end. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
A person whose beliefs conform with the other philosophy could not possibly hold that introspection in itself is blameworthy. For one the recognition of self is as important as the recognition of other factors in the environment; to search for truth about self is as valuable as to search for truth in other areas of life. The only question that would concern one is whether introspection is constructive of futile. If it is used in the service of a wish to become a better, richer, and stronger human being—if it is a responsible endeavour of which the ultimate goal is self-recognition and change, I would say that it is constructive. If it is an end in itself, that is, if it is pursued merely out of indiscriminate interest in psychological connections—art for art’s sake—then it can easily degenerate into what is called “mania psychologia.” And if it consists merely of immersion in self-admiration or self-pity, dead-end ruminations about oneself, empty self-recrimination, it is equally futile. Therefore, would not self-analysis easily degenerate into just that type of aimless pondering? Judging from my experience with patients, I believe that this danger is not so general as one might be inclined to think. It appears safe to assume that only those would succumb to it who tend also in their work with an analyst to move constantly in blind alleys of this kind. Without guidance these persons would become lost in futile wanderings. However, even so, their attempts at self-analysis, while doomed to failure, could scarcely be harmful, because it is not the analysis that causes their ruminations. They pondered about their bellyache or their appearance, about wrong done by them or to them, or spun out elaborate and aimless “psychological explanations” before they ever came in touch with analysis. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
By them analysis is used—or abused—as justification for continuing to move in their old circles: it provides the illusion that the circular movements are honest self-scrutiny. We should therefore reckon these attempts among the limitations rather than among the dangers of self-analysis. We must pause here, before we undertake any appraisal of the social import of these last figures, to question whether there are any differences between physical and mental illness that would make the estimation of the real or total incidence of psychiatric disorder in our population subject to sources of significant errors which do not occur in the estimation of physical ailment. There are such differences, and one of the most basic of them may be bridely illustrated. Influenza: “Clinically an acute, highly communicable disease, characterized by abrupt onset with fever which last 1 to 6 days, chills or chillness, aches and pains in the back and limbs, and prostration. Respiratory symptoms include coryza, sore throat and cough. Usually a self limited disease with recovery in 48 to 72 hours; influenza derives its importance from the complications that follow, especially pneumonia in those debilitated by advanced age, by other disease, or in young infants. Laboratory confirmation is by recovery of virus from throat washings or by demonstration of a significant rise in antibodies against a specific influenza virus in serums obtained during acute and convalescent stages of the disease. Measles: An acute highly communicable viral disease with prodromal stage characterized by catarrhal symptoms and Koplik spots on the buccal mucous membranes. A morbilliform rash appears on the third- or fourth-day affecting face, body and extremities, and sometimes ending in branny desquamation. Leucopenia is usual. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Acute Lobar Pneumonia: An acute bacterial infection characterized by sudden onset with chill followed by fever, often pain in the chest, usually a productive cough, dyspnea, and leukocytosis. Roentgen-ray examination may disclose pulmonary lesions prior to other evidence of consolidation. Not infrequently pneumococcal pneumonia is bronchial rather than lobar, especially in children, with vomiting and convulsions often the first manifestations. Laboratory confirmation is by bacteriological examination of sputum or discharges of the respiratory tract. A rise in antibody titer between acute-phase and convalescent-phase serums is useful in problem cases, and culture of the blood in severe infections. Some definitions of psychological disorder: Neurosis (Psychoneurosis): The psychoneuroses comprise a relatively benign group of personality disturbances which are often described as being intermediate, or as forming a connecting link, between the various adaptive devices unconsciously utilized by the average mind on the one hand and the extreme, often disorganizing, methods observed in the psychotic on the other. The term psychoneurosis has…two connotations. In the first and historical connotation the meaning of psychoneurosis is purely descriptive. It is a term referring to conditions characterized by certain mental and physical symptoms and signs, occurring in various combinations…None of these are dependent on the existence of any discoverable physical disease. Another connotation, more fundamental, since it is an aetiologia one…is to the effect that the existence of psychoneurotic reaction is an indication of mental conflict. Neurotic reactions are the commonest modes of faulty response to the stresses of life, and especially to those inner tensions that come about from confused and unsatisfactory relations with other people. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Clinically, a psychoneurosis implies either a bodily disturbance without a structural lesion, and dependent in a way unknown to the patient on mental causes; or a mental disturbance, not the result of bodily disease, in the form usually of morbid fears of many different kinds, or episodic disturbed mental states such as losses of memory and trances, or persistent troublesome thoughts, or acts which the patient feels compelled to do—all of which the patient realizes to be abnormal and the meaning of which one is at a loss to understand. The psychoneuroses are mild or minor mental reactions which represent attempts to find satisfaction in life situation rendered unsatisfactory by faulty attitudes or by faulty emotional development. These attempts are manifested by various physiologic reactions, complaints of bodily discomfort, or recurrent mental trends recognized by the patient as being faulty or unusual. Practically, they are somewhat artificially divided into various etiologic entities. The etiology varies in individual cases but they all have in common the inability to meet life situations, and all of them resort to substitution efforts or symbolic gratification of urges not recognized by nor accepted by the individual. All neurotic phenomena are based on insufficiencies of the normal control apparatus. They can be understood as involuntary emergency discharges that supplant the normal ones. The insufficiency can be brought about in two ways. One way is through an increase in the influx of stimuli: too much excitation enters the mental apparatus in a given unit of time and cannot be mastered; such experiences are called traumatic. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
The other way is through a previous blocking or decrease of discharge which has produced a damming up of tension within the organism so that normal excitations now operate relatively like traumatic ones. These two possible ways are not mutually exclusive. A trauma may initiate an ensuing blocking of discharge; and a primary blocking, by creating a state of being dammed up, may cause subsequent average stimuli to have a traumatic effect. Phytopathology implies that follow situation of stress, the individual manifests suffering, symptoms, impaired efficiency, lessened ability for enjoyment, lack of adequate insight. In all neurotic manifestations, the patient’s vital needs are involved as well as one’s evaluation of oneself (self-esteem), of other individuals (security feelings), and of the situation with which one has to cope. Thus, one can say that in neurotic manifestations, the patient’s whole personality and whole body are involved. The chief characteristic of these disorders [psychoneurotic] is “anxiety” which may be directly felt and expressed or which may be unconsciously and automatically controlled by the utilization of various psychological defense mechanisms (repression, conversion, displacement, and others). In contrast to those with psychoses, patients with psychoneurotic disorders do not exhibit gross distortion of falsification of external reality (delusions, hallucinations, illusions) and they do not present gross disorganizations of personality. #RamdolphHarris 16 of 24
The chief characteristic of these disorders [psychoneurotic] is “anxiety” which may be directly felt and expressed or which may be unconsciously and automatically controlled by the utilization of various psychological defense mechanisms (repression, conversation, displacement, and others). In contrast to those with psychoses, patients with psychoneurotic disorders do not exhibit gross distortion or falsification of external reality (delusions, hallucinations, illusions) and they do not present gross disorganizations of personality. Anxiety in psychoneurotic disorders is a danger signal felt and perceived by the conscious portion of the personality (exempli gratia, by super-charged repressed emotions, including such aggressive impulses as hostility and resentment) with or without stimulation from such eternal situations as loss of love, loss of prestige, or threat of injury. The various ways in which the patient attempts to hurdle this anxiety results in the various types of reactions. A single perusal of these two samples of definitions, one of physical illnesses and one of psychological illnesses, suffices to illustrate crucial differences. In essence, the differences are in the specificity of symptoms, their locus, order of presentation, precise physical appearance, and course. In these matters the definitions of physical illnesses tend to be explicit, precise, and circumscribed. By contrast, the definitions of mental illness tend to suffer from implicitness, ambiguity and non-restrictiveness. (It is this difference in precision at the basic level of description of the phenomena which contributes heavily to separation of the so-called exact sciences from other “sciences.”) #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
The sample definitions also suggest that the physical diseases are in some instances objectively diagnosable by the utilization of exact laboratory procedures that can confirm or refute a clinical diagnosis; such laboratory or “test” procedures have not yet been developed to an equal level of precision for psychological illness. The laboratory procedures and diagnostic tests of clinical medicine must be evaluated by expert “readers,” and judgements of the pathology or normality of X rays, electrocardiograms, and other tests are not without error. However, quite aside from the contribution of such laboratory tests, description of the clinical symptoms of recognized physical maladies has a specificity that makes the diagnosis of most such illnesses a less arbitrary process than holds for psychological disorders. The taking of an accurate census of mental illness involves directly the question of the reliability or accuracy of diagnosis. The accuracy of diagnosis can be viewed in the form of two queries: Of the true number of cases of a given illness in a population how many detected (assuming the complete population is surveyed with existing diagnostic techniques)? Of a given sample composed of both ill and well persons respectively, how many of the total sample would be jointly diagnosed correctly (either “sick” or “well”) by two or more diagnosticians? The most critical phase of the diagnostic process involves the differentiation between adjustment or normality and mildest maladjustment as defined in the conceptually abstruse terms exemplified above. This might appear to be a more difficult takes than that of differentiating among the various forms of mental illness in a sample composed exclusively of patients. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
In the latter instance, the somewhat more detailed and specific accounts of symptomatology would appear to facilitate diagnosis by type. We might expect the reliability of “screening” diagnoses to be something less than that of differential diagnosis. Investigations of the reliability of differential psychiatric diagnoses are few: they indicate that agreement among psychiatrists making specific independent diagnoses of heterogenous samples of psychiatric patients ranges from 20 to 50 percent. These figures hardly encourage great confidence in the reliability with which neurosis id detectable: our confidence is not enhanced with the further note that least agreement is obtained in differentiating among the types of milder functional disorder. Pertinent also is the observation that the rate of “false positive” cases among hospitalized patients is negligible. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that social process could lead (and has led) to the inappropriate hospitalization of persons who in point of fact were mental sound. However, the usual procedures required for hospitalization guard against the occurrence of such misdiagnosis. Yet, with corruption and political agendas, anything is possible. Typically, we are secure in our usual procedure of assuming the populations of our state and other mental hospitals are comprised totally of valid cases. Though this is a reasonable assumption about cases at the time of admission, a careful review of chronic patients suggests that a significant number are retained in hospitals primarily because they do not have relatives willing to help them or provide for their return to the community. Some patients are also dumped in mental hospitals by families that want to get rid of them without killing them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
Recognizing diagnosis as a two-edged sword, we should not be unmindful that in our customary approach to mental illness statistics we are assuming perfect screening diagnosis. Now consider the problem before a diagnostic team charged with surveying an entire urban or rural community to determine the number of inhabitants suffering from any form of mental illness, including those so-called “minor” psychoneurotic disorders which are grouped under the loosely conceived and abstractly stated definitions given above. This becomes the problem of determining whether or not each individual studied has mental conflicts, inner tensions, unsatisfactory relationships to other people, faulty attitudes, symbolic gratification of urges, or any of the other, grosser and patent evidences of major mental illness. Ideally this determination should be made through application of reasonably operational definitions or rules of description of the above concepts, so that a second survey team working independently and reviewing the same population would identify the same individuals as respectively “sick” or “healthy.” In such a survey the critical problem is to avoid false negatives, to hold to a minimum the numbers of those individuals who are mislabeled “health.” In essence, this is the problem of a reverse approach to diagnosis: we may define as mentally ill any person who does not have perfect mental health and we may define perfect mental health in terms of such rigorous standards that it is a condition notable for tis absence rather than its presence in a majority of the population at any given time. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
One might ask what is wrong with a diagnostic philosophy which implies mental health as a goal for the nation. There is nothing wrong with such a philosophy or such a goal. As applied methodology in public health surveys, however, it could have the undesirable effect of generating statistics that were overwhelming or misleading or both. The hard facts concerning unarguably diagnosed and hospitalized patients are sufficient to communicate the urgency and magnitude of the problem of mental illness and to arouse the public to recognition of the need for monies to support attacks on the problem from all fronts—research, prevention, and care. These same facts are adequate to orient the professions of psychiatry, psychology and social work to the realistic challenges that exists here and now—to the job of discovery in areas of etiology, prophylaxis, and treatment that must be done before notions of an unconflicted, tensionless society can be more than a utopian fantasy. There is a subtle danger in the extrapolated statistic and the premature application of “reverse diagnosis”: the resulting “real” case load can generate attitudes antithetical to scientific endeavour—attitudes either of hopelessness or heroism. Psychological derivation of our belief in reason—the concept of “reality,” “being,” is drawn from our “subject”—feeling. “Subject”: interpreted from out of ourselves, so that the “I” counts as substance, as the cause of all doings, as doer. The logic-metaphysical postulates—the belief in substance, accident, attribute, et cetera—gets its force of conviction from our being accustomed to regard all our actions as following from our will: so that the I, as substance, does not vanish in the manifold of change. –But there is no will. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
We have no categories at all allowing us to distinguish a “World in itself” from a “World as appearance.” All our categories of reason are of sensuous origin, read off of the empirical World. “The soul,” “the I”—the history of our concepts shows that here, too, the oldest distinction (“breath,” “life”). If there is nothing material, either is there anything immaterial. The concept no longer contains anything. No subject-“atom”: the sphere of a subject constantly increasing or decreasing, the midpoint of a system constantly adjusting itself; in the case where it cannot organize the mass it has acquired, it breaks in two. On the other hand, it can refashion a weaker subject into its functionary without destroying it and, to a certain degree, form a new unity with it. No “substance,” but rather something that in itself stives for enhancement; and which only indirectly wants to “preserve” itself (it wants to surpass itself–). The ultimate negative is a murderer. The ultimate negative as the Prince of Death watches every occasion to take the life of servants of the ultimate concern—if in any wise it can get them to fulfill conditions which enable it to do so: b their willful insistence on going into danger through visions of supernatural guidance, drawing them into actions which enable it to work behind the law of nature for destroying their lives. That is what the ultimate negative tried to do with Christ in the wilderness temptation. Therefore, one must recognize the Tempter and the Murderer. One must know that one’s life will end for swaying to the temptations of the ultimate negative. The Deceiver will not propose anything righteous, however apparently innocent or seemingly for the glory of the ultimate concern’s glory, unless some great scheme for its own ends is deeply hidden in its proposition. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
The ultimate concern now holds the keys of death and of Hades and one that hath the power of death, that is, the ultimate negative. The ultimate negative cannot exercise its power without permission. However, when the children of the ultimate concern, knowingly or unknowingly, fulfill the conditions which give the ultimate negative ground to attack their physical lives, the ultimate concern with the keys of death works according to law, and does not save them—unless by the weapon of prayer they enable God to interpose and give them victor over the law of death, as well as the law of sin through the law of the Spirit of the life in the ultimate concern. That is why, guilty or not, people in prisoned in the penal system pray and reform. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Death is therefore an enemy—to be recognized as an enemy and to be resisted as an enemy. The believer may lawfully desire to depart and be with the ultimate concern, but ought never to desire death merely and an end of “trouble.” One should not let the lawful desire to be with the ultimate concern make one yield to death when one is needed for the service of the Church of the ultimate concern. To abide in the flesh is needful for you, therefore I know that I shall abide. Within World history the Kingdom of God is realized whenever political power is justly exercised, whenever constructive social growth occurs, whenever a healthy tension is maintained between temporal and eternal aspirations, and whenever the sacrifice of an individual lends to one’s own fulfilment. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
However, the fragmentary nature of these victories raises the question of the non-fragmentary, total realization of the Kingdom of God, the question of the end of history. The word “end” can mean both “finish” and “aim.” It is the second meaning that poses the eschatological problem, not the cessation of clock time which is an event in the physical order. The last inner-historical day is the eschata so poetically depicted in apocalyptic literature, but it is the singular eschaton, the transhistorical goal of history, about which theology concerns itself. The end of history thus becomes an immediate existential problem, for the eternal goal of history underlies every moment of time. The eschaton symbolizes the “transition” from the temporal to the eternal, and this is a metaphour similar to that of the transition from the eternal, and this is a metaphour similar to that of the transition from the eternal to the temporal in the doctrine of the fall, and from existence to essence in the doctrine of salvation. To forestall needless confusion, it should be noted that the aim of history can symbolized by anyone of three symbols: the Kingdom of God, the Spiritual Presence, and Eternal Life. The only distinction is by degrees of connotation. The Kingdom of God connotes equally the inner-historical and the transhistorical fulfilment of history, while the Spiritual Presence Stresses the inner-historical, and Eternal Life stresses the transhistorical aspect. 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. Those whom Thou, O Lord, did free from exile’s endless night, who breathe again the pure, sweet air of freedom and of hope, they build once more on America’s hills, there, where their fathers dwelt. The Sacramento Fire Depart stands ready to safe the lives of millions. Please assist them by kindly making a donation to assure that they have the necessary resources. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
The Decoration of the Parlor and the choice and arrangement of the furniture reflect the changing role of women in the nineteenth century. Women as the embodiment of purity and high moral virtue was a theme which nineteenth-century popular culture adopted with obsessive fervor. Before the middle of the century the image of a woman was what it had been since the Middle Ages. She was the daughter of Eve, the embodiment of wantonness. Before the Industrial Revolution, misogynic literature always pictured women as less than human beings, closer to animals, and less able to control their lust by exercise of their intellect or moral powers. By the 1880s, the myth of pure Victorian woman was fully formed, and the transformation of woman’s image was complete. Late nineteenth-century reformers wrote that women had no libido; that, in fact, it was replaced by a “maternal instinct,” and that women only concepted to pleasures of the flesh to procreate. Women were also said to be the kinder, gentler gender which higher moral standards and greater-self-control. Men were thought of as smarter and more competent but more lustful and “primitive” with less ability to control their passions.
From the Winchester Mansion, there comes an account of a man wheeling a barrow from the garden door to the front door of the house across the lawn. He is seen at night, and does nothing but wheel the barrow hither and tither. There are reports of ghosts sweeping up leaves, or tending to fires, or simply sitting in an accustomed chair. There are also many reports of dead 18th century villagers or townspeople being “seen” on the estate which they had cared for all their lives. In 1989, a caretaker saw an employee who had called in sick by the gate of the mansion. He entered the garden and walked up palm avenue to the carriage house and disappeared when he entered the house. The employee had recently been taken to hospital and, on the caretaker remarking to her manager that he seemed much better, she was informed the he had died that afternoon. These phenomena suggest that the memory of human form is held in the terrain itself. These wraiths may be images on a rotating spool. Or perhaps they are held in the atmosphere, as if in a solution.
On 31 October 1990, the residents of the neighbourhood were surprised by strange sights in the sky. Between one and two o’clock in the morning was heard by some the “howling of wolves.” But then, on the sudden…appeared in the sky were orbs and shadowy figures. So amazing and terrifying the poor people that they could not give credit to their ears and eyes; they ran inside of their houses, some calling the police. When police arrived, they determine the noise was coming from the movie theater and the orbs and shadows were simply projector lights used to attacked customers, which had been obscured by cloud cover. However, some people believed that ghosts were in Mrs. Winchester’s mansion celebrating, and they could be seen leaving.
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Randolph Harris II International 