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Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencer’s, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumner’s synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the “strong” of the “fittest” in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his family’s industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as “a hero of civilization.” The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.” The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumner’s paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: “Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capital”; and “combinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demand—in which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.” There also he found fictional proof that “a self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,” and that “a sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.” Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish “peculation, tyranny, and fraud.” Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of “capital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.” Francis Wayland’s standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolsey’s successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, “Is the reading of fiction justifiable?”) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yale’s history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumner’s courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumner’s dealings with a student dissenter: “Professor, don’t you believe in any government aid to industries?” “No! It’s root, hog, or die.” “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?” “There are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.” “Yo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?” “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.” “Well, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?” “Any other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.” The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumner’s writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. “The type of mind which he exhibited,” writes his biographer, “was the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.” He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumer’s life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870’s, 1880’s and early 1890’s, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), “The Forgotten Man” (1883), and “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894). In the early 1890’s, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of “Earth Hunger” was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the ego’s existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not man’s own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirable—so few ever like to confess such a thing—but they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arises—who does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happen—under the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the “psychology of everyday life,” would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personality—for the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only “love” but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a while—her defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her “private religion.” The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clare’s dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural that—aside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversion—the merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and “free” sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the flesh—although I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern man’s sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this “sickness” but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marx’s respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a “social neurosis.” “If the evolution of civilization,” he writes “had such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have become “neurotic” under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be “normal.” No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freud’s interest in the “social neuroses,” one fundamental difference between Dr. Freud’s and Marx’s thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marx’ and Dr. Freud’s views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been “fixated” on, or who has “regressed” to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who “repeats” an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanism—body, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. “Four months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, ‘Hey, I could have died up there.’ I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didn’t know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, that’s where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, ‘If your toes turn blue, come back in.’ Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“I was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldn’t have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if you’re sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didn’t adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.” It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
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Human Perfection is Not Only Possible but Inevitable
There is all the difference between a sturdy independence and an inflated self-esteem. An experience which is a blow to his ego ought to be received with humility and analysed with impartiality. However, too often the man receives it with resentment and analyses it with distortion. In the result he is doubly harmed: there is the suffering itself and there is the deterioration of character. We sin by wandering away from our true inner selves, by letting ourselves become immersed in the thoughts and desires which surround us, by losing our innermost identity and taking up an alien one. This is the psychology of sin as philosophy sees it. However, if it had not succeeded overcoming the bondage of flesh, feeling, and thought and penetrating by means of its flawless technique into the World of the divine spirit, which is the real man, it could not have gained the knowledge for such a view of man. He is to live for the praise and blame, not of other people, but of his own higher self. The distance from lip to heart is sometimes immense. Who has not known men who had God prominent in their heard speech but evil prominent in their silent desires? The philosophic way of living asks for more than most men possess, more command of the passions, more discipline of the thoughts, and more submissiveness to intuition. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
The moral injunctions which he finds in this teaching and must follow out in his life, are based on understanding the relation between his higher self and his lower self. They are not arbitrary commands but inevitable consequences of applying the adage, “Man, know thyself.” When anyone takes advantage of it to bloster his own ego at the expense of those under him, there is an abuse of authority. He will be virtuous not merely because so many others are–it is safer, it stops the prodding of conscience, etcetera—but much more because it is essential to put up no obstructions to the light flowing from the Overself. When applying evolution and social Darwinism to society, we are doing poetic justice to its origins. The “survival of the fittest” was a biological generalization of the cruel processes which reflective observers saw at work in early nineteenth century society, and Darwinism was a derivative of political economy. The miserable social conditions of the early industrial revolution had provided the data for Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, and Malthus’ observations had been the matrix of natural-selection theory. The stamp of its social origin was evident in Darwinian theory. “Over the whole of English Darwinism,” Nietzsche once observed, “there hovers something of the odor of humble people in need and in straits.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Darwin acknowledged his great indebtedness to Malthus: “In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement ‘Malthus on Population,’ and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.” Spener’s theory of social selection, also written under the stimulus of Malthus, arose out of his concern with population problems. In two famous articles that appeared in 1852, six years before Darwin and Wallace jointly published sketches of their theory, Spencer had set forth the view that the pressure of subsistence upon population must have a beneficent effect upon the human race. This pressure had been the immediate cause of progress from the earliest human times. By placing a premium upon skill, intelligence, self-control, and the power to adapt through technological innovation, it has stimulated human advancement and selected the best of each generation for survival. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Because he did not extend his generalization to the whole animal World, as Darwin did, Spencer failed to reap the full harvest of his insight, although he coined the expression “survival of the fittest.” He was more concerned with mental than physical evolution, and accepted Lamarck’s theory that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a means by which species can originate. This doctrine confirmed his evolutionary optimism. For if mental as well as physical charactersitics could be inherited, the intellectual powers of the race would become cumulatively greater, and over several generations the ideal man would finally be developed. Spencer never discarded his Lamarckism, even when scientific opinion turned overwhelmingly against it. Spencer called for a return to natural rights, setting up as an ethical standard the right of every man to do as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he does not infringe upon the equal rights of others. In such a scheme, the sole function of the state is negative—to insure that such freedom is not curbed. Fundamental to all ethical progress, Spence believed, is the adaptation of human character to the conditions of life. The root of all evil is the “non-adaptation of constitution to conditions.” Because the process of adaptation, founded in the very nature of the organism, is constantly at work, evil tends to disappear. While the moral constitution of the human race is still ridden with vestiges of man’s original predatory life which demanded brutal self-assertion, adaptation assures that he will ultimately develop a new moral constitution fitted to the needs of civilized life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Human perfection is not only possible but inevitable: “The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain—as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance that all men will die…Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.” Some young much, such as actor Ian Nelson, who is wise beyond his years, also believes in the idea of human perfection. He has helped other people gain more success in their careers by sharing with them opportunities that were meant for him. And he has a very optimistic attitude about helping others become successful and sharing in their joy, but I guess that is why he is so successful. However, Spencer was ultra-conservative. His categorical repudiation of the state interference with the “natural,” unimpeded growth of society led him to oppose all state aid to the poor. They were unfit, he said, and should be eliminated. “The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the World of them, and to make room for better.” Nature is as insistent upon fitness of mental character as she is upon physical character, “and radical defects are as much causes of death in the one case as in the other.” He who loses his life because of his stupidity, vice, or idleness is in the same class as the victims of weak viscera or malformed limbs. Under nature’s laws alike are put on trial. “If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
To some, it must seem strangely out of tune with the modern World to speak of learning to be free. The growing opinion today is that man is essentially unfree. He is unfree in a cultural sense. He is all too obviously a pawn of government. He is molded by mass propaganda into being a creature with certain opinions and beliefs, desired and pre-planned by the powers that be. He is the product of his class—lower, middle, or upper—and his values and his behaviour are shaped by the class to which he belongs. So, it seems increasingly clear from the study of social institutions and influences, that man is simply the creature of his culture and his circumstances, and most decidedly is not free. At a still deeper level the behavioural sciences have added to this conception of man as unfree. Man is determined in part by his heredity—in his intelligence, his personality type, perhaps even his tendency toward mental aberration. He is above all the product of his conditioning—the inevitable result of the fortuitous events which have “shaped up” his behaviour. Many of our most astute behavioural scientists agree that this process of conditioning, of “shaping up” the individual’s behaviour, will no longer be left to chance, but will be planned. Certainly, the behavioural sciences are developing a technology which will enable us to control the individual’s behaviour to a degree which now would seem fantastic. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
Along with the developlement of this technology has gone an underlying philosophy of rigid determinism in the psychological sciences which can perhaps best be illustrated by a brief exchange which I had with Professor B.F. Skinner of Harvard at a recent conference. A paper given by Dr. Skinner led me to direct these remarks to him. “From what I understood Dr. Skinner to say, it is his understanding that though he might have thought he chose to come to that meeting, might have thought he had a purpose in giving that speech, such thoughts are illusory. He made certain marks on paper and emitted certain sounds here simply because his genetic makeup and his past environment had operantly conditioned his behaviour in such a way that it was rewarding to make these sounds, and that he as a person does not enter this. In fact, if I get his thinking correctly, from his strictly scientific point of view, he, as a person, does not exist.” In his reply, Dr. Skinner said that he would not go into the question of whether he had any choice in the matter (presumably because the whole issue is illusory) but stated, “I do accept your characterization of my own presence here.” I do not need to labour the point that for Dr. Skinner the concept of “learning to be free” would be quite meaningless. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Thus, though there are opposing voices, the general thrust of the cultural trend throughout both the West and Communist World is to say that man is not free, that there is no such thing as a free man. We are formed and moved by forces—cultural forces without, and unconscious forces within—which we do not comprehend, and which are beyond our control. We will soon be formed more knowingly and more precisely by scientific technology which will replace the crude way in which we have been molded by practically fortuitous natural events. The age of information of our time prides itself on the fact that millions of people have a chance and, in fact, use the chance to listen to excellent live, recorded, or streamed music, to see art in the many museums in the country, and to read the masterworks of human literature from Plato to Anne Rice in easily available, inexpensive editions. No doubt for a small minority this encounters with art and literature is a genuine experience. For the vast majority, “culture” is another article of consumption and a status symbol since having seen the “right” pictures, knowing the “right” music, and having read the good books indicates college education and hence is useful for climbing the social ladder. The best of art has been transformed into an article of consumption, and it is reacted to an alienated fashion. The proof of this is that many of the very same people who go to concerts, listen to classical music, and buy a paperback Plato view tasteless and vulgar offerings on television without disgust. If their experience with art were genuine, they would turn off their television sets when they are offered artless, banal “drama.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
Yet man’s longing for the dramatic, that which touches upon the fundamental of human experience, is not dead. While most of the drama offered in theaters or on the screen is either a nonartistic commodity or is consumed in an alienated fashion, the modern “drama” is primitive and barbaric when it is genuine. In our day the longing for drama is manifested most genuinely in the attraction which real or fictionalized accidents, crimes, and violence have for most people. An automobile accident or fire will attract crowds of people who watch with great intensity. Why do they do so? Simply because the elemental confrontation with life and death breaks into the surface of conventional experience and fascinates people hungry for drama. For the same reason, nothing sells a newspaper better than reports of crime and violence. The fact is that whole on the surface the Greek drama or Rembrandt’s paintings are held in the highest esteem, their real substitutes are crime, murder, and violence, either directly visible on the television screen or reported in the newspapers. Some people suffer from an alienation of hope. One characteristic of the alienation of hope is the future becoming transformed into an idol. This idolatry of history can be clearly seen from Robespierre’s point of view. “O posterity, sweet and tender hope of humanity, thou art not a stranger to us; it is for thee that we brave all the blows of tyranny; it is thy happiness which is the price of our painful struggles: often discouraged by the obstacles that surround us, we feel the need of thy consolations; it is to thee that we confide the task of completing our labours, and the destiny of all the urban generations of me!… Make haste, O posterity, to bring to pass the hour of equality, of justice, of happiness!” #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
Similarly, a distorted version of Marx’ philosophy of history has often been used in the same sense by Communists. The logic of this argument is: whatever is in accord with the historical trend is necessary, hence good and vice versa. In this view, whether in the form of Robespierre’s or the communist argument, it is not man who makes history but history that makes man. It is not man who hopes and has faith in the future but the future that judges him and decides whether he had the right faith. Marx expressed very succinctly the opposite view of history to the alienated one I just quoted. “History,” he wrote in The Holy Family, “does nothing, it possesses no colossal riches, it fights no battles! It is rather man, actual and living man, who does all this; ‘history’ does not use man as a means for its purposes as though it were a person apart; it is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his ends.” Not only are all forms of depression, dependence and idol worship (including the “fanatic”) direct expressions of, or compensations for, alienation; the phenomenon of the failure to experience one’s identity which is a central phenomenon at the root of psychopathological phenomena is also a result of alienation. Precisely because the alienated person has transformed his own functions of feeling and thought to an object outside, he is not himself, he has no sense of “I,” of identity. This lack of a sense of identity has many consequences. The most fundamental and general one is that it prevents integration of the total personality, hence it leaves the person disunited within himself, lacking either capacity “to will one thing” or if he seems to will one thing his will lack authenticity. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
In the widest sense, every neurosis can be considered an outcome of alienation; this is so because neurosis is characterized by the fact that one passion (for instance, for money, power, women, etcetera) becomes dominant and separated from the total personality, thus becoming the ruler of the person. This passion is his idol to which he submits even though he may rationalize the nature of his idol and give it many different and often well-sounding names. He is ruled by a partial desire, he transfers all he has left to this desire, he is weaker the stronger “it” becomes. He has become alienated from himself precisely because “he” has become the slave of a part of himself. Now, in our case study, Clare was unable to let go of a man, for whatever reasons. The repression of her resentment is striking as she was fully aware of her disappointment at Peter, the man she was involved with, staying away. Moreover, on such an occasion resentment would certainly have been a natural reaction, and it was not in her character never to allow herself to be angry at anyone; she often was angry at people, though it was characteristic of her to shift anger from its real source to trivial matters. However, raising this question, while apparently only a routine matter, would have meant broaching the subject of why the relationship with Peter was so precarious that any disturbance of it had to be shut out of awareness. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
After Clare had thus managed to shake off the whole problem from her conscious mind, she fell asleep again and had a dream. She was in a foreign city; the people spoke a language that she did not understand; she lost her way, this feeling of being lost emerging very distinctly; she had left all her money and luggage deposited at the station. Then she was at a fair; there was something unreal about it, but she recognized gambling stands and a freak show; she was riding on a merry-go-round which turned around more and more quickly so she was drifting on waves, and she woke up with a mixed feeling of abandon and anxiety. The first part of the dream reminded her of an experience she had had in adolescence. She had been in a strange city; had forgotten the name of her hotel and had felt lost, as in the dream. Also, it came back to her that the night before, when returning home from the movie, she had felt similarly lost. The gambling stands and the freak show she associated with her earlier thoughts about Peter making promises and not keeping them. Such places, too, make fantastic promises and there, too, one is usually cheated. In addition, she regarded the freak show as an expression of her anger at Peter: he was a freak. What really startled her in the dream was the depth of the feeling of being lost. She immediately explained away her impressions, however, by telling herself that these expressions of anger and of feeling lost were but exaggerated reactions to her disappointment, and that dreams express feelings in a grotesque way anyhow. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
It is true that the dream translated Clare’s problems into grotesque terms, but it did not exaggerate the intensity of her feeling. And even if it had constituted an exaggeration, it would not have been sufficient merely to dismiss it on that score. If there is an exaggeration it must be examined. What is the tendency that prompts it? Is it not an exaggeration but an adequate response to an emotional experience, the meaning and intensity of which are beyond awareness? Did the experience mean something quite different on the conscious and unconscious level? Clare felt just as miserable, as lost, as resentful as the dream and the earlier associations indicated. However, since she still clung to the idea of a close love relationship this realization was unacceptable to her. For the same reason she ignored that part of the dream about having left all her money in the luggage at the station. This was probably a condensed expression of her feeling that she had invested all she had in Peter, the station symbolizing Peter and connoting something transitory and indifferent as opposed to the permanence and security of home. And Clare disregarded another striking emotional factor in the dream when she did not bother to account for its ending with anxiety. Nor did she make any attempts to understand the dream. She contended with the superficial explanation of this and that element, and thus learned from it no more than she knew anyhow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
If Clare had probed more deeply, she might have seen the main theme of the dream as this: I feel helpless and lost; Peter is a great disappointment; my life is like a merry-go-round, and I cannot jump off; there is no solution but drifting; but drifting is dangerous. We cannot discard emotional experiences, however, as easily as we can discard thoughts unconnected with our feelings. And it is quite possible that Clare’s emotion experience of anger and particularly of feeling lost, despite her blatant failure to understand them, lingered on in her mind and were instrumental in her pursuing the path of analysis she subsequently embarked upon. While the public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems, the mental health movement has inevitably created problems as it has offered solutions. The nature of neurosis as presently defined is such as to encourage overinterpretation of the significance of a host of idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. The mental health educator has understandably, in the first phase of the moment, operated within the pathological framework afforded by essentially gross medical definitions of emotional illness. Emphasis has been upon detection and prevention of illness, rather than upon modes of achieving and maintaining beneficial mental health. The meaning of neurosis, ambiguous to begin with, has been subtly extended to cover a variety of cultural delusions, perhaps the most prominent which is the Western myth that a state of happpiness is both a primary and achievable goal of life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
One effect of the mental health movement has been to encourage many people to see their unhappiness. Psychotherapist, both visible and “invisible,” are increasingly confronted by would-be patients who do not manifest any of the more objective hallmarks of a neurotic problem, who do not complain of failures of productivity or achievement, who do not suffer from serious interpersonal conflicts, who are free of functional somatic complaints, who are not incapacitated by anxiety, or tormented by obsessions, whose objective life circumstances they confess are close to optimal. These seekers of help suffer freedom from complaint. The absence of conflicts, frustrations, and symptoms brings a painful awareness: of absence—the absence of faith, of commitment, of meaning, of the need to search out personal, ultimate values, or of the need to live comfortably and meaningfully each day in the face of final uncertainty. For increasing numbers of rational, educated, and thoughtful men the central struggle becomes one of finding and keeping an emotional and psychological balance between the pain of doubt and the luxury of faith. A distaste for this struggle, or an insistence on its resolution as a necessary condition for continued existence is at the heart of the philosophical neuroses. In contrast to the psychoneuroses, we have no established knowledge or technique to bring to bear this form of dis-ease. We do not have a scientifically confirmable matrix of ideas concerning how or what to teach those who suffer philosophical neuroses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
The philosophical neurotic suffers in his struggle to be both reasonable and hopeful, and he can be helped in his skirmish by access to human wisdom and by encouragement to expose himself to it. However, in this seeking for counsel and for opportunity to test doubt against faith or faith against doubt, he must not be misled to think that any group of experts has a corner on some specialized wisdom about the meaning of life or how to live it. It is an unfortunate side-effect of the mental health movement that a large portion of the limited psychotherapeutic resources afforded by psychiatrists and psychologists is being consumed by persons who suffer a philosophical anomie for which neither psychiatrist nor psychologist can offer specific therapy. The person with a philosophical neurosis deserves care and can be helped; it would be in his own interests and in the interest of social economy for him to be encouraged to seek guidance from those who are most practiced and equipped to think with him in the domain of values, meaning, ethics, and eschatology. Recognition of the philosophical neurosis and the special problems its presents have been delayed on the part of psychotherapists because the well-bred, well-fed, well-read qualities typical of this patient appeal to the intellectual and social prejudices of the therapist and make for spontaneous rapport and empathy. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
In combating the general ignorance and superstition of the public about mental illness, the mental health movement has necessarily attacked the idea that emotional and mental problems should be a source of shame. The public has been taught that everyone has a basic susceptibility to psychological maladjustment and, furthermore, that a very large number of people in fact suffer from some degree of “nervousness.” All of this teaching is true and was most necessary in ending the shameful connotations that formerly prevailed. However, as an unfortunate consequence of these beneficial changes, neurosis has achieved respectability. In some sophisticated segments of our society it has become expected and accepted for the individual to acknowledge his “neurosis”–and to have all manner of immature, selfish, irresponsible behaviours explained by him (and accepted by his companions) as “symptoms” of his “sickness.” Among persons whose work demands some degree of creative imagination there is a popular stereotype which equates genius with neurosis. It becomes a tempting apology to substitute symptoms for effort; to manifest the temperament of an artist may be an easier road to achieving an artistic identity than to be truly creative. When individuals are volubly proud that they are “in therapy,” although they remain silent on the content and course of that self-discovering endeavour, with discussion of the causes and treatment reserved by socially sanctioned conspiracy of silence between therapist and client (or with normal social respect for the individual’s privacy), it may be wondered if the continuation of therapy is required at least in part because the patient is reluctant to lose the dramatic appeal of his status. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
And when the patient does speak freely of the content of his therapeutic conversations to all willing listeners, it may be wondered if he suffers from lack of any other mental content with which he would hope to hold an audience. To be proud of an illness or a defect is a separate illness, and perhaps needs to be treated first. Man’s capacity to feel shame is not pathological in itself; pathology arises from what he does or fails to do about shame. Shame can be hidden by repression and denial, but the massive effort required to hide one’s shame results in symptoms. Or, shame can yield a sense of responsibility, and this can power a search for self-understanding, for self-acceptance, and for better behaviour. The mental health movement has lifted the pathological shame previously associated with emotional illness. Now it must be attentive to combat the tendency for the unashamed to have pathological pride in their maladjustment. Liars have a dangerous maladjustment, which is why they often answer a question with one of their own. The tactic of answering a question with a question buys the liar time to come up with something plausible. They are not the type to let the silence go by, so they fill it with something that cannot be used against them. And the old, I swear on a stack of Bibles tactic is an oath to beware of. What people will say to try to get themselves off the hook is insane. When you are sure they are lying, how important is it to you that you get to the bottom of things and make someone tell you the truth? #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
All that is best in the Christian virtues you will find in philosophic ones. Few are those who are psychologically ready for philosophy’s disciplines, which call, not merely for a reluctant control of the animal nature, but for an eager aspiration to rise above it altogether. Few are ready for its ethics, which all not merely for a willingness to abide by society’s protective laws, but for a generous disposition contently putting itself in someone else’s place. Firefighters with the Sacramento Fire Department certainly display the Christian virtues. One firefighter said, “I think just being around firefighters got me. It’s like being a sports fan, being there and watching you get to know more about it, and you have more admiration for the good ones. The firefighting process is like a well-oiled machine going to work. I for fascinated watching it and wanted to be a part of it. I was just so happy to go in there, and I always wanted to do the very best job I could, to keep it that way. When I was a kid, I thought the World of the Sacramento Fire Department. I want to hold up my end of it.” Today, I think the best way to get to know someone is by listening to their first-hand accounts about themselves. Many people are cowards and like to tear down people who shine, and do not get to know them personally. Instead, they choose to gossip about them, become jealous and form hate groups. I personally like talking to people and getting to know their story and about them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
Not everyone has a tragic story, nor is it unhappy. Recently, I found out a 29-year-old had been listening to classical music all week. And that really impressed me because it shows a rare level of maturity, and it gave me insight into his personality. It tells me that he is intelligent, cultured and probably very interesting. To make friends with someone, you have to know something about them and have something in common, and it is rare for people to disclose things about themselves to others. The Sacramento Fire Department has developed prestige in the community. People think, “boy, if you belong to that fire department, you’re really ‘in.’” People may say that they are a bunch of prima donnas, but they must be. If you belong to their fire department, you earn it. It is not easy to get in, but once you are in, you must produce, or you are out. Because you must get along with thirty other people or more, and if you do not pull your share, you will have a hard time. There is always a waiting list, people waiting to get in. And that is good. It may take two or three years before your number comes up. And there are sometimes some limiting factors. Sometimes residents are shown a preference. They pay attention to how long you have lived in the community and are you going to continue going to continue to live here. Once a team member is taken in, they want to keep them for at least twenty years. Please be sure to donate to the Sacrament Fire to ensure they are receiving all their resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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We Pay So Much Attention to Where We Live, So Little to When
The individual who wants the spiritual prizes of life must elevate one’s thoughts and ennoble one’s impulses. One will prudently look ahead not only to the consequences of one’s actions but also of one’s thoughts. One must be prepared to spend a whole lifetime in making this passage from aspiration to realization. Petal-by-petal the bud of one’s growing virtues will open as the years pass. One’s character will be transformed. The old Adam will become a new man. The progressing disciple who reaches an advanced state will find that one’s powers of mind and will develop accordingly. Where they are not accompanied by sufficient self-purification, they may become dangerous to oneself and hurtful to others. One’s vigilance over thought and feeling must become greater accordingly. To dwell upon thoughts which belong to a lower level out of which one has climbed may open up a pitfall in one’s path; to hold bitter feelings against another person may throw discord into that person’s life. One’s outer conduct should be brought into agreement with the soaring aspiration of one’s inner life. When the one is antithetical to the other, the result will be chaos. That individual has attained mastery whose body yields to the commands of reason and whose tongue obeys the orders of prudence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
When the body’s appetites and the intellect’s curiosity get an excessive grip on an individual, they throw an air of unreality on aspiration which soars beyond both. This makes intuitive feeling and metaphysical thinking seem irksome or trivial. Those who do not have the strength of will to translate into practice the ideals which they accept in thought need not despair. It can be got by degrees. Part of the purpose of ascetic exercises is to lead to its possession. There is knowledge available, based on ancient and modern ascetic experiences, which can be applied to liberate the moral nature from its weakness. One who puts one’s lower nature under control puts oneself in possession of forces, gifts, possibilities, and satisfactions that most other humans lack. If a person’s inner life is repeatedly wasted by passion, one will know no assured peace and attain no enduring goal. One must govern oneself, rule one’s passions, and discipline one’s emotions. One must strengthen one’s higher will at the expense of one’s lower one. For the first promotes one’s spiritual evolution whereas the second inflames one’s animal nature. Faith is needed to make the basic change in one’s thinking, the change which takes one out of the past’s grip. If one takes up new thoughts, a new life is possible. If one lets compromise with the World, or lapses from the right moral standard, slip beyond a certain mark, one will pay commensurately for it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Man’s drives inasmuch as they are trans-utilitarian, are an expression of a fundamental and specifically human need: the need to be related to man and nature and to confirm oneself in this relatedness. These two forms of human existence, that of food gathering for the purpose of survival in a narrow or broader sense and that of free and spontaneous activity expressing man’s faculties and seeking for meaning beyond utilitarian work, are inherent in man’s existence. Each society and each man has it own particular rhythm in which these two forms of living make their appearance. What matters is the relative strength which each of the two have and which one dominates the other. It is not only a matter of self-betterment but also of self-respect for an honourable man. The man whom he has looked upon as himself must be left behind; the New man, who he is to become, must be continually with him in thought, aspiration, will, and deed. This it is to be truly human for it brings man into a more perfect state. To sneer at the philosophic ideal as being inhuman is really to sneer at it for rejecting the evils and weaknesses and deformities of the Worldly ideal. The moment a negative idea appears, repudiate it automatically by the use of counter-affirmations and imagination, which is the gate to creative subconscious mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
Such negative thoughts as animosity and jealousy must be rooted out like weeds as fast as they spring up. This is both the easier and more effective way in the end. The man who has not learned to control himself is still only a fractional man, certainly not the true man that Nature is trying to produce. When he cannot live with his negative side any longer, illumination will come and stay. Character is tested by afflictions more than by prosperity. The first stage is to expunge the evil in his heart and to raise the good in it to the highest possible octave. If he holds these as ideals, a personal character which will be beautiful, a way of life which will be the best, a man is more likely to come by them. When allowing thoughts to enter his mind, as when allowing strangers to enter his home, he needs to be as fastidious. If a man lives in mental and emotional negativity, the removal of his physical residence to another place will in the end benefit him less than if he removes himself from the negativity. The building-up of character naturally brings a better sense of proportion in one’s dealings and outlook. Be seeing good in all persons, you become good, but if you see evil, the evil in you will augment. People seem not to see that their opinion of the World is also a confession of character. We can only see what we are. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
He must become thoroughly sick of his mistakes and sins before he will take the trouble to develop by self-training his discriminatory faculties and moral ideals. We can combat feat by remembering that the Overself is always with us. The power of such thinking is its rightness and its constructiveness. It is right bvecause the Overself is the real source of strength and courage so that recalling its ever-presence in us helps to tap that source. It is constructive because it uses up the energy that would otherwise have gone into the fear-thoughts. Both action and thought share in the double nature of this polarity. Activity on the level of survival is what one usually calls work. Activeness on the trans-survival level is what one calls play, or all those activities related to cult, ritual, and art. Thought also appears in two forms, one serving the function of survival and one serving the function of knowledge in the sense of understanding and intuiting. This distinction of survival and trans-survival thought is very important for the understanding of consciousness and the so-called unconscious. Our conscious thought is that type of thinking, linked with language, which follows the social categories of thought imprinted in our thinking from early childhood. Our consciousness is essentially the awareness of such phenomena which the social filter composed of language, logic, and taboos permits us to become aware of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Those phenomena which cannot pass the social filter remain unconscious or, more accurately speaking, we are unaware of everything that cannot penetrate to our consciousness because the social filter blocks its entry. This is the reason why consciosuness is determined by the structure of society. However, this statement is only descrptive. Inasmuch as man has to work within a given society, his need for survival tends to make him accept the social conceptualizations and hence to repress that which he would be aware of had his consciousness been imprinted with different schemata. If he studies other cultures, this is not difficult for the reader to find in his own example. The categories of thought in the industrial age are that of quantification, abstraction and comparison, of profit and loss, of efficiency and inefficiency. The member of a consumer society of the present day, for example, is encouraged, but not required to repress pleasures of the flesh because so many people are Worldly and pleasures of the flesh seems to be the number one past time for many by the schemata in the age of information. The member of the middle class of the nineteenth century who was busy accumulating capital and investing it rather than consuming it, had to repress pleasures of the flesh because they did not fit into the acquisitive and hoarding mood of his society, or, more correctly, of middle classes. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If we think of medieval or Greek society or of such cultures as the Pueblo Indians’ we can easily recognize that they were very conscious of different aspects of life to which their social filter granted entry into consciousness while others were tabooed. The most eminent case in which man does not have to accept the social categories of his society is when he is asleep. Sleep is that state of being in which man is free from the need to take care of his survival. While he is awake, he is largely determined by the survival function; while he is asleep, he is a free man. As a result, his thinking is not subject to the thought of categories of his society and shows that peculiar creativity which we find in dreams. In dreams, man creates symbols and has insights into the nature of life and of his own personality which he is incapable of having while he is the creature busy with food gathering and defense. Often, indeed, this lack of contact with social reality can cause him to have experiences and thoughts which are archaic, primitive, malignant, but even those are authentic and represent him rather than the thought patterns of his society. In dreams, the individual transcends the narrow boundaries of his society and becomes fully human. That is why Dr. Freud’s discovery of dream interpretation, even though he looked basically for the repressed instinct for pleasures of the flesh, has paved the way for the understanding of the uncensored humanity which is in all of us. (Sometimes children, before they have been sufficiently indoctrinated by the process of education, and psychotics who have served all relationships to the social World manifest insights and creative artistic possibilities which the adapted adult cannot recover.) #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
However, dreams are only a special case of that trans-survival life of man. Its main expression is in rituals, symbols, painting, poetry, drama, and music. Our utilitarian thinking has, quite logically, tried to interpret all these phenomena as serving the survival function (a vulgarized Marxism has sometimes allied itself in substance although not in form with this type of materialism). More profound observers like Lewis Mumford and others have emphasized the fact that the cave paintings in France and ornaments on primitive pottery, as well as more advanced forms of art, have no utilitarian purpose. One might say that their function is to help the survival of man’s spirit, but not that of man’s body. He has only to resolve that he will always be faithful to his higher self and the trick is done. However, alas! resolution is one thing, execution another. If he finds himself attacked by a strong temptation or about to be overcome by an old obsession, he should at once think of the master, of his name and picture, and call for his help. Whether you live as a labourer or a lord, it is your character that counts most in the end. It is the ego that gives way to moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember that on the outcome of your efforts to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions, much will depend for your Worldly and spiritual frame. He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
To yearn for something is to value. I have known this yearning “to be good” in all of us. No one is left out. I have known it in a British peer. I have known it in a man who hijacked a truck, got a Native American drunk and threw him off a moving truck, hit a burro and killed it, bashed in the radiator, and then drove the truck until the motor burned out and he landed in jail, while four small children were at home alone because their mother was in the hospital having a fifth one. I got him out of jail so that he could take care of his family, and he got me fired from my job. I also knew it in my best friend that killed himself. Before his suicide, I lived with knowing that he might kill my son and me, both of whom he loved, and that he might seriously injure other people, which he did not wish to do at all. It seemed to me that suicide might have seemed to him the only way to put an end to his hurting people, to doing what he did not want to do. Many people in America are hurting today. Everyone responds in terms of his own humanness, uncontaminated by all the phoney values with which we live. (The only exceptions were two very neurotic men and a few feeble-minded oldfolks who did not know what is going on.) In Hawaii during the week following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the military expected that the success of the attack would be followed by an invasion: they believed that when the Japanese planes reported to their carriers, then other ships would move in with troops like what was done to Mr. Hitler and Germany during World War II. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
However, fast forward to post 911 America. Currently in 2024, there is an invasion going on at our southern boarder, and as many as 20,000,000 unknown people have flooded into this country and have been committing major crimes. The leaders of industry have warned the government that this is a serious crisis and they suspected that these people who are invading America could be preparing for an attack larger than 911, but no one in a position of power is doing anything to track these people, nor stop them from invading the nation. The problem is not only a lack of God, but also a lack of love. Many people are cafeteria Americans. They fly the flag, pretend to be proud of the country, but all they care about is American money. They disrespect the land, disrespect the people, ignore the needs of America and bleed her dry. These posers forget that people have died and become severely disabled from serving their country, and are doing nothing to protect it, but supposedly are trying to instill democracy in other places, while America is becoming a hostile, communist nation. It is very difficult for me to go on writing this. Tears blur my vision, no matter how many times I wipe them away. I sob, and that shakes me so that I cannot use the typewriter very well. I feel, “Oh, what is the use? How can I possibly convey it?” Many of us are silent. Trying to show respect or trying to feel for someone else. When they are scared, people can do the most frightful things. People fear that they could be wiped out at any moment, and that there is onluy now to live. We pay so much attention to where we live, so little to when. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Alienation corrupts and perverts all human values. By making economic activities and the values inheret in them, like gain, work, thrift, and sobriety, the supreme value of life, man fails to develop the truly moral values of humanity, the riches of a good conscience, of virtue, etcetra, but how can I be virtuous if I am not aware of anything? In a state of alienation, each sphere of life, the economic and the moral, is independent from the other, “each is concentrated upon a specific area of alienated activity and is itself alienated from the other. The needs of man in an alienated society are preverted into true weakness. Every man speculates upon creating a new need in another in order to force him to sacrifice, to place him in a new dependence, and to entice him into a new kind of pleasure and thereby into economic ruin. Everyone tries to establish over others an alien power in order to find there the satisfaction of his own egoistic need. With the mass of objects, therefore, there also increases the realm of alien entities to which man is subjected. Every new product is a new potentiality of mutual deceit and robbery. Man becomes increasingly poor as a man; he has increasing need of money in order to take possession of the hostile being. The power of money diminishes directly with the growth of the quantity of production, id est, his need increases with the increasing power of money. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The need for money is therefore the real need created by the modern economy, and the only need which it creates. The quantity of money becomes increasingly its only important quality. Just as it reduces every entity to its abstraction, so it reduces itself in its own development to a quantitative entity. Excess and immoderation become its true standard. This is shown subjectively, partly in the fact that the expansion of production and of needs becomes an ingenious and always calculating subservience to inhuman, depraved, unnatural, and imaginary apopetities. Americans are blessed with private property, but they do not know how to change crude need into human need; their idealism is fantasy, caprice and fancy. No eunch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favour, than does the eunch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbour. Every produce is a bait by means of which the individual tries to entice the essence of the other person, his money. Every real or potential need is a weakness which will draw the bird into China’s pockets. As every imperfection of man is bound with Heaven, a point at which his heart is accessible to the priest, so every want is an opportunity for approaching one’s neighbour with the air of friendship, saying, “Dear Friend, I will give you what you need, but you know the conditio sine qua non. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
“You know what the ink you must use in sining yourself over to me. I shall swindle you while providing your enjoyment.” All this constitues a universal exploitation of human commual life. The entrepreneur accedes to the most depraved fancies of his neighbour, plays the role of pander between him and his needs, awakens unhealthy appetities in him, and watched for every weakness in order, later, to claim the remuneration of this labour of love. The man who has thus become subject to his alienated needs is a mentally and physically dehumanized being…the self-conscious and self-acting commodity. This commodity-man knows only one way of relating himself to the World outside, by having it and by consuming (using) it. The more alienated he is, the more the sense of having and using constitutes his relationship to the World. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being. You have to listen hard to spot a liar. Often they shift from past to present tense. Moving from the past tense to the present means the person is getting into their brain–reliving the story they have made up to cover up what they have done. People will often tell a story as if they see it because in their minds, they see the story they have made up. It take a keen ear to pick up on the change in tense and why a person would do such a thing. When people are telling the truth, especially a breach of national security, they tend to stick with the most important details and speak in the past tense, since it already happened. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Sometimes when it comes to self-analysis, the analytical work at oneself will recede into the background. One will still observe one or another striking reaction and try to understand it, thus continuing the process of self-recognition, but in distinctly diminished intensity. One may be absorbed in personal work or in group activities; one may be engaged in a battle with external hardships; one may be concentrated on establishing one or another relationship; one may simply feel less harassed by one’s psychic troubles. At this time the mere process of living is more important than analysis, and it contributes in its own way to one’s development. The method in self-analysis is no different from that in work with an analyst, the technique being free associations. Whereas in working with an analyst the patient reports whatever comes into his mind, in working alone he begins by merely taking note of his associations. Whether he only notes them mentally or write them down is a matter of individual preference. Some people can concentrate better when they write; others find their attention distracted by writing. There are undoubtedly certain advantages in writing down one’s associations. For one thing, if he makes it a rule to put down a short note, a catchword, of every association, almost everything one will find that his thoughts do not wander off on a tangent so easily. At any rate he will notice the wandering more quickly. It may be, too, when it is all down on paper that the temptation to skip a thought or feeling as irrelevant is lessened. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
However, the greatest advantage of writing is that it affords the possibility of going over the notes afterward. Frequently when he lets his mind dwell on his notes, a person will miss the significance of a connection at first sight, but will notice it later. Findings or unanswered questions that are not well entrenched are often forgotten, and a return to them may revive them. Or he may see the old findings in a different light. Or he may discover that he has made no noticeable headway, but is essentially still at the same point where he was several months ago. These two latter reasons make it advisable to jot down findings, and the main paths leading up to them, even though they may have been arrived at without taking notes. The main difficulty in writing, the fact that thoughts are quicker than the pen, can be remedied by putting own only catchwords. If most of the work is done in writing a comparison with diary-keeping is almost unavoidable, and an elaboration of this comparison may serve also to highlight certain characteristics of analytical work. If the latter is not a simple report of factual occurrences but is written with the further intention of truthfully recording one’s emotions experiences and motivations, the similarity with a diary suggests itself particularly. However, there are differences. A diary, at its very best, is an honest recording of conscious feelings, thoughts, and motivations. The revealing character it may have concerns emotional experiences unknown to the outside World rather than experiences unknown to the writer himself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
When Rousseau, in his Confessions, boasted of his honesty in exposing his masochistic experiences, he did not uncover any fact of which he himself was unaware; he merely reported something that is usually kept secret. Furthermore, in a diary, if there is any search for motivations, this does not reach beyond one or another loose surmise that carries little if any weight. Usually no attempt is made to penetrate beneath the conscious level. Culberston, for instance, in The Strange Lives of One Man, frankly reported his irritation and moodiness toward his wife but gave no hint as to possible reasons. These remarks do not implay a criticism of diaries or autobiographies. They have their value, but they are intrinsically different from an exploration of self. No one can produce a narrative about himself and at the same time let his mind run in free associations. There is still another difference which it is of practical importance to mention: a diary often glances with one eye toward a future reader, whether that reader be the writer at a future time or a wider audience. Any such side glance at posterity, however, inevitably detracts from pristine honesty. Deliberately or inadvertently the writer is bound, then, to do some retouching. He will omit certain factors entirely, minimize his shortcomings or blame them on others, protect other people from exposure. If he takes the least squint at admiring audience or at the idea of creating a master piece of unique value, when he writes down his associations, the same will happen. He will them commit all those sins that undermine the value of free associations. Whatever he sets down on paper should serve one purpose only, that of recognizing himself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
The mental hygiene movement has had a very significant beneficial impact on the problem of mental illness. There can be little doubt that it has contributed to an enhanced general level of mental health in our country. Certainly it has achieved marked improvement in public attitudes toward mental illness. As a perhaps unavoidable consequence of its educational effort it has created new and greater demands for psychotherapy and not all of the increased demand is fully appropriate. The pattern of psychotherapeutic practice in America is seriously unbalanced in that too many of the ablest, most experienced psychiatrists spend most of their time with patients who need them least. This has been unfortunate, though probably inevitable, consequence of the concept of mental illness as personal malfunctioning which in itself represents a gain in understanding. The trouble is that this view makes it impossible to draw the line, so that many persons who are showing essentially normal responses to the wear and tear of life or who are unhappy for reasons other than personal malfunctioning see themselves–and are seen by others–as proper candidates for psychotherapy. Philosophy is that disease for which it should be the cure. The mental hygiene movement has inadvertently added to the problem which it intended to reduce. It is time for the leaders of the mental health movement to put their minds to a touch philosophical analysis of problems which psychiatry and psychology have tended to neglect: to criteria of mental health, to delimitation of the meanings and forms of mental illness, to specification of precisely what are and what are not psychiatric problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
It would be a beneficial contribution for mental health educators to develop ways of communicating to the public on such questions as: “When not to go to the psychiatrist,” or “What to do before you see a psychiatrist”; “What psychotherapy cannot do for you”; “Ten sources of helpful conversation”; “Problems which do not make you a ‘Mental Case.'” He who controls the mind controls the body, for the one acts upon and through the other. It is not enough to overcome the jealousy which begrudges other people’s having advantages denied us: we must also take the next step and overcome the envy which feels discontented at not having those advantages and continues to desire them for itself. Jealousy would go out of its way to hurt those others by depriving them of their possessions, but envy would not fall so low. When they oppose emotion and passion, once he forms this resolve to follow the bidding of intuition and reason, he will find it both a safeguard and a test. If at any time he should temporarily weaken from this resolve, he may become uncertain as to the correct course to pursue when at the crossroads. A willing discipline of the character by one’s own self may often take the place of an unwanted and unwilling discipline by outer events. He is to become an exemplar to the aspiring, a pattern-setter for those who would ennoble themselves. He must establish, for and over himself, an emotional discipline and intellectual control. He cannot successfully do this all at once, of course. Emotional tendencies and mental habits engendered by years of materialism cannot be overturned and eliminate in a single night. However, the goal must be there and must be kept in view. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
A firefighter we will call Helmut share his experience about becoming a fireman. “When I got out of the military, I had the opportunity to get into the trucking industry. I was in it for ten years. I started out as an assistant to a dispatcher and worked up to operations manager. I trained people coming into the industry. I was doing pretty good, and I enjoyed it. The problem was that there was no real job security, and though the pay was good I was putting in too many hours. I was missing a lot of time with my family. I had to do it, though because I needed the job. Then I heard that the Sacramento Fire Department was giving a test. Up to that point, I’d actually thought about becoming a policeman. I was an MP in the military, and I thought maybe it would be a good field to get into. So I went down to City Hall and filled out the fire department application. I didn’t do it reluctantly, I just did it with a little bit of skepticism. I said to my wife, ‘Oh, I don’t really think anything is going to come of this, because I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I knew that the cutoff age was thirty-six years, and at the time I was thirty-five, and I thought I really had to get in on this first class, otherwise I’m not going to make it. So they scheduled the test, and I studied hard for it while I was still doing trucking. And I was fortunate to have the ten-point veteran’s preference, so that added ten points to whatever score I got on the test. But I was concerned because so many people had taken the test. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“My sister called and told me, ‘Twenty-six thousand people took the test, so your changes of getting on are small.’ That depressed me, but I felt I’d done good because I did study hard and the test wasn’t that difficult. So my brother called me the next day and said, ‘Six thousand people walked out halfway through the test.’ So that lowered the odds. I thought, well, twenty thousand, that’s starting to sound better all the time. I kept calling, and some months later I was notified that I had aced the test, I was number six on the list. I was ecstatic, I thought, now I’ve got to be in first class. As it turned out, I was. And from then on, everything has been running smoothly. Everything has been great.” To make sure the Sacramento Fire Department is receiving all of the required resources, please make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The ideal man that he wants to be should be evoked, pictured, and adored daily. If greater wisdom brings an immunity to other men’s negative thoughts, it also brings the responsibility to stifle one’s own. When all malice and all envy are resolutely cast out of his nature, not only will he be the gainer by it in improved character and pleasanter blessings, but also those others who would have suffered as victims of his barbed words or ugly thoughts. The past is beyond recall, but the present is at our command. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Farewell Week is here! The last day to experience our Walk With Spirits Tour is April 14, 2024!
Beginning today, all guests who participate will have the opportunity to sign a special guest book that will be preserved in our archives which will become a part of Winchester Mystery House history. And as a bonus, enjoy 13% off our upcoming Halfway to Halloween Flashlight Tours.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
If You Want the Prizes of Life, You Must Elevate Your Thoughts
If he who suffers from the hallucination—for usually it is nothing less—that an ideal existence can be found by emigrating to some distant spot turns, himself into a different man, then it may be turned into a reality. Our higher nature bids us aspire to inner growth, development, self-control, and ennoblement. It goes further and seeks freedom from enslavement by the passions, thus lifting the human nature above the animal. Animal ties to the World are given, mediated by his instincts. Man, set apart by his self-awareness and the capacity to feel lonely, would be a helpless bit of dust driven by the winds if he did not find emotional ties which satisfied his need to be related and unified with the World beyond his own person. However, in contrast to the animal, he has several alternative ways thus to be tied. As in the case of his mind, some possibilities are better than others; but what he needs most in order to his sanity is some tie to which he feels securely related. The one who has no such tie is, by definition, insane, incapable of any emotional connection with his fellow man. The discontent with a spiritually unfulfilled life has a twofold origin—from personal experiences of the World outside and from vaguely felt pressures by the Soul within for the man to surpass himself. There is thus a reciprocal working of negative and positive feelings. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The easiest and most frequent form of man’s relatedness is his “primary ties” to where he comes from—to blood, soil, clan, to mother and father, or, in a more complex society, to his nation, religion, or class. These ties are not primarily of pleasures of the flesh, but they fulfill the longing of a man who has not grown up to become himself, to overcome the sense of unbearable separateness by continuing what “primary ties”–which are natural and necessary for the infant in his relationship to his mother—is obvious when we study the primitive cults of worship of the soil, of lakes, of mountains, or of animals, often accompanied by the individual’s symbolic identification with these animals (totem animals). We see it in the matriarchal religions in which the Great Mother and the goddess of fertility and of the soil are worshipped. There seems to be an attempt to overcome these primary ties to mother and Earth in the patriarchal religions, in which the great father, the god, king, tribal chief, law, or state are objects of worship. However, although this step from the matriarchal to the patriarchal cult in society is a progressive one, the two forms have in common the fact that man finds his emotional ties to a superior authority, which he blindly obeys. By remaining bound to nature, to mother or father, man indeed succeeds in feeling at home in the World, but he pays a tremendous price for this security, that of submission, dependence, and a blockage to the full development of his reason and his capacity to love. When he should become an adult, he remains a child. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Today the many individual cases of “mother fixation” are explained by orthodox psychoanalysts as a result of an undissolved tie to the mother. This explanation ignores the fact that the tie to mother is only one of the possible answers to the predicament of human existence. The dependent individual of the twenty-first century, living in a culture which in its social aspects expects him to be independent, is confused and often neurotic because his society does not provide him—as do more primitive societies—with the social and religious patterns to satisfy need for dependency. This fixation to mother is a personal expression of one of the answers to human existence which some cultures have expressed in religious forms. It is an answer, though one which conflicts with the full development of the individual. If only man finds a higher form of feeling at home in the World, if not only his intellect develops, but also his capacity to feel related without submitting, at home without being imprisoned, intimate without being stifled, only then can the primitive forms of incestuous ties to mother, soil, etcetera, of benign and of malignant ecstasies disappear. On a social scale, this new vision was expressed from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the middle of the first millennium—one of the most remarkable periods in human history. The solution to human existence was no longer sought in the return to nature nor in blind obedience to the father figure, but in a new vision that man can again feel at home in the World and overcome his sense of frightening loneliness; that he can achieve this by the full development of his human powers, of his capacity to love, to use his reason, to create and enjoy beauty, to share his humanity with all his fellow men. Christianity proclaimed this new vision. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
The new bond which permits man to feel at one with all men is fundamentally different from that of the submission-bond to father and mother; it is the harmonious bond of brotherhood in which solidarity and human ties are not vitiated by restriction of freedom, either emotionally or intellectually. This is the reason why the solution of brotherliness is not one of subjective preference. It is the only one which satisfied the two needs of man: to be closely related and at the same time to be free, to be part of a whole and to be independence. It is a solution which has been experienced by many individuals and also by groups, religious or secular, which were and are able to develop the bonds of solidarity together with unrestricted individuality and independence. In order to understand fully the human predicament and the possible chocies man is confronted with, we must understand that there is another conflict inherent in human existence. Inasmuch as man has a body and bodily needs essentially the same as those of the animal, he has built-in striving for physical survival, even though the methods he uses do not have the instinctive, reflexlike character which are more developed in the animal. Man’s body makes him want to survive regardless of circumstance, even of happiness or unhappiness, slavery of freedom. As a consequence of the will to survive, man must work or force other to work for him. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
In the past history of man, most of man’s time was spent on food gathering. With the animal, it essentially means gathering the food in the quantity and quality his instinctive apparatus suggest to him. In man there is much greater flexibility in the kind of food he can choose; but more than this, man, once he begins the process of civilization, works not only to gather food but to make clothes, to build shelters, and, in the more advanced cultures, to produce the many things which are not strictly necesary for his physical survival but which have developed as real needs forming the material basis for a life which permits the development of culture. If man were satisfied to spend his life by making a living, there would be no problem. Although he does not have the instinct of ants, an antlike existence would nevertheless be perfectly tolerable. However, it is part of the human condition that man is not satisfied with being an ant, that aside from this sphere of biological or material survival, there is a sphere characteristic of man which one can all the trans-survival or trans-utilitarian sphere. What does this mean? Precisely because man has awareness and imagination, and because he has the potential of freedom, he had an inherent tendency not to be dice thrown out of the cup. He wants not only to know what is necesary in order to survive, but he wants to understand what human life is about. He is the only case of life being aware of itself. He wants to make use of those faculties which he has developed in the process of mere biological survival. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Hunger and pleasures of the flesh, as purely physiological phenomena, belong to the sphere of survival. (Dr. Freud’s psychological system suffers from the main error which was part of the mechanistic materialism of his time and which led him to build a psychology on those drivers which serve survival.) However, man has passions which are specifically human and transcend the function of survival. Nobody has expressed this more clearly than Marx: “Passion is man’s faculties striving to obtain their own object.” In this statement, passion is considered as a concept of relation or relatedness. The dynamism of human nature inasmuch as it is human is primarily rooted in this need of man to express his faculties in relation to the World rather than in his need to use the World as a means for the satisfaction of his physiological necessities. This means: because I have eyes, I have the need to see; because I have ears, I have the need to hear; because I have a mind, I have the need to think; and become I have a heart, I have the need to feel. In short, because I am a man, I am in need of man and the World. Marx makes very clear what he means by “human faculties” which relate to the World in a passionate way: “His human relationships to the World—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, observing, feeling, desiring, acting, loving—in which all the organs of his individuality are the…expression (Betaetigung) of human reality…In practice I can only relate myself in a human way to a thing when the thing is related in a human way to man.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Philosophy does not believe that any man is doomed to continue to sin, but that every man is capable of rising to a life higher than that which he has previously lived. It believes, too, in the forgiveness of sins and in the truth of hopefulness. It is not pessimistic but reasonably optimistic in its long-range views. Whatever within himself keeps a man from seeing the Real and knowing the True must be got rid of, or rectified. And whatever he lacks within himself and also keeps him away from them must be acquired. The struggle to attain these things may not interest most people, whose desire for self-improvement is not strong enough to move their will: but it is well worthwhile. There is a devilish cunning in the human ego, animalistic beastliness in the human body, angelic sublimity in the human soul. However, this is only the appearance of things. All three conditions are really mental conditions. They pertain, after all, to the mind. We must root out the evil or foster the good there and there alone. Occult power should not be sought until the battle for self-mastery has been largely won. The nobler part of his self may exist in a man even though he has not yet come to awakening. There are three activities which he needs to keep under frequent examination and constant discipline—his thoughts, his speech, and his action. The quester who wants to keep his integrity in a corrupt World may not be able to live up to his ideal but at least he need not abandon it. The direction in which he is moving does still count. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
It is not his business to reform others while he himself remains as he is. The attack on them will only provoke them to answering attack. Temptation is easiest cast out at first thought. As the number of thoughts grow, control grows harder too. A year ago at New Year’s I was talking with a Navajo man who had said “Happy New Year” to me. I asked him if he thought the New Year would be good for him or if it would be like my own life, “I think there is no end to being down—and then things change. They go alone well, and I think ‘now at last, everything is all right’–and then it isn’t.” He nodded, and said simply, “Just like us.” There was complete acceptance that life was the same for both of us, even though I had never been hungry as he had, had never been in jail as he had, and had never been forced to submit to the imposition of another culture as he had. That this is true, I know through listening to a woman talk for seventeen hours, in three days, about her life. Her life had been as “different” from mine as mine from the Navajo’s. We had very little. This woman had been born to Old Masters, a yacht with a crew of twenty-eight men, and everything that went with that. The more I listened, the more I mew that there had been no difference between the lives of the Princess and the Pauper. The innerness the same. Sometimes it is clearly the mainstream of a person’s life even though smaller streams confuse it. Other times, it has showed only briefly in a person when through stress or ease the barriers went down. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This used to be a puzzle to me: which was the person? Other people said that what a person was most of the time was what he was, and this confused me, because it seemed reasonable and yet—what the person was at times in privacy seemed so much more vibrant, living, real. Sometimes his pouring out of it was almost more than I could bear, the agony of man’s knowing his inability to be what he knew himself to be. Sometimes it was gentle and tender, this knowing and so sad. Which is the person? A woman told me that one day she was at a football game waving a pennant and cheering, when suddenly the hand holding the pennant fell to her lap, and with all the excited mob around her she thought, “Why am I doing this? I haven’t enjoyed it for fifteen years.” Which was real—the fifteen years or the moment? The knowing of the realness in another person—his desperate desire to be non-hurtful, loving, responsive, constructive (or creative), at one with others—seems to me to explain why one person sometimes stays with another against all reason, and not necessarily with good judgment. A very simple “ignorant” woman, who had every reason to hate her being to know this, “He wants to be good.” Mothers often know this in their children and defend them—not their behaviour—when they are destructive. Observations, and the associations and question they arose, are the raw material. However, work on them takes time, as does every analysis. In a professional analysis, a definite hour is set apart every day or every other day. This arrangment is expedient but it also has certain intrinsic values. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Patients wiith mild neurotic trends can, without disadvantage, see the analyst merely when they are in trouble and want to discuss their difficuties. However, if a patient in the clutches of a severe neurosis were advised to come only when he really wanted to, he would probably play hooky whenever he had strong subjective reasons for not going on, that is, whenever he developed a “resistance.” This means that he would stay away when actually he needed the most help and when the most constructive work could be done. Another reason for regularity is the necessity to preserve some measure of continuity, which is the very essence of any systematic work. Both reasons for regularity—the trickiness of resistances and the necessity to maintain continuity—apply, of course, to self-analysis as well. However, here I doubt whether the observance of a regular hour would serve these purposes. The differences between professional analysis and self-analysis should not be minimized. It is much easier for anyone to keep an appointment with an analyst than with himself, because in the former instance he has a greater interest in keeping it: he does not want to be impolite; he does not want to expose himself to the reproach that he stayed away because of a “resistance”; he does not want to lose the value that the hour might have for him; he does not want to pay for the time reserved for him without having utilized it. These pressures are lacking in self-analysis. Any number of things that apparently or actually permit of no delay would interfere with the time set apart for analysis. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
A regular, predetermined time for self-analysis is unfeasible also because of inner reasons—and these quite apart from the subject of resistances. A person might feel like thinking about himself during a spare half hour before dinner but resent it as a nuisance at a prearranged time before he leaves for his office. Or he may not find any time during the day but have the most illuminating associations while taking a walk at night or while falling asleep. In this respect, even if his zest to express himself is diminished, even the regular appointment with the analyst whenever he feels a particular urge or willingness to talk with him, but must appear at the analyst’s office at the arranged time. Because of external circumstances this disadvantage can scarcely be eliminated, but there is no good reason why it should be projected into self-analysis, where these circumstances are not present. Still another objection to rigid regularity in self-analysis lies in the fact that this process should not become a “duty.” The connotation of “have to” would rob it of its spontaneity, its most precious and most indispensable element. If a person forces himself to his daily exercises when he does not feel like taking them, there is no great harm done, but in analysis listlessness would make him lame and unproductive. Again, this danger may exist also in professional analysis, but there it can be overcome by the analyst’s interest in the patient and by the very fact of the common work. In self-analysis a listlessness produced by overstressed regularity is not so easily dealt with, and it may well cause the whole undertaking to peter out. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Thus in analysis regularity of work is not an end in itself but is rather a means that serves the two purposes of preserving continuity and combating resistances. The patient’s resistances are not removed because he always appears for his appointment at the analyst’s office; his coming merely enables the analyst to help him understand the factors at play. Nor is consistent punctuality any guarantee that he will not jump from one problem to another and gain only disconnected insights; it is an assurance of continuity only for the work in general. In self-analysis, too, these requirements are essential. Therefore, they do not demand a rigid schedule of appointments with oneself. If a certain irregularity in work should make a person shirk a problem, it will catch up with him. And even at the expense of time it is wiser to let it slide until he himself feels that he had better go after it. Self-analysis should remain a good friend to fall back upon rather than a shcoolmaster pushing us to make our daily good marks. Needless to say, this warning against compulsive regularity does not imply taking things easy. If we want it to be a meaningful factor in our life, just a friendship must be cultivated. If we take it seriously, only then can analytical work at ourselves can yield its benefits. Finally, no matter how genuinely a person regards self-analysis as a help toward self-development rather than as a quick panacea, there is no use in his determining to pursue this work consistently from now until the day he dies. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In pursuing its preventive and therapeutic aims, and especially in arousing the interest and support of the public, the mental hygiene movement (which has become the mental health movement) has of necessity communicated in overly simplified terms about mental illness and mental health. The ways of seeking mental health are not always clearly distinguished from the ways to avoid mental illness. Mental health is most readily (though not most helpfully) defined as the absence of mental illness. Mental illness is defined in terms of certain symptoms, and the specifications of those symptoms has been a primary responsibility of psychiatrists. As the mental health movement has gained momentum the psychiatrist has found himself increasingly on call to speak out to the public about mental health (rather than illness) and it is only human of him to react to his enhanced prestige by relinquishing the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the smaller role of expert pathologist-therapist for the larger role of arbiter of social values. In this role, the psychiatrist has frequently expanded the domain of mental illness to include all degrees and kinds of psychological distress, failing to appreciate that human suffers some pains not because he is sick but because he is human. Invitation to the role of “expert” in an area in which society has suddenly developed intense interest is always a seductive one. (Note the number of chemists and physicists who have become “social” scientists since World War II!) #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
If he occasionally failed to note that as an authority on values, the psychiatrist well may be forgiven; the meaning of existence, and how to live he is at best on par with other learned and thoughtful men. The psychologists and social workers have not been noticeably less susceptible to the sacerdotal appeal, but have been called less frequently to the altar than have the psychiatrists. The mental health movement together with psychiatry suffers from imprecision in the definition and delineation of psychopathology. The subjectivity of diagnosis, especially where neurotic behaviour is in question, coupled with expansive or inclusive trends in the diagnostician, creates particular problems when by broadcast methods the public is being encouraged to self-examination and to the seeking of “preventive” therapy. The insufficiency of therapeutic resources to meet the legitimate needs of truly neurotic patients is seriously exacerbated when uncritical enthusiasm encourage persons with the non-neurotic frustrations common to all inhabitants of a less-than-perfect World to seek expert therapy, and when ambiguous nosology encourages the therapist to a nondiscriminating investment of his expensively acquired skills. There is a historical parallel to this problem which has been noted in the earlier period of the mental hygiene movement: “Indeed, so great was the enthusiasm over mental hygiene, that it led for a long time to a dangerous overemphasis on the mental factors in problems of social work. The important sociological factors were lost sight of while psychological factors were given almost exclusive attention. Mental Hygiene was being ‘oversold’ by over-enthusiastic adherents.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest of man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. This crystallization of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up to now. In handicraft and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool; in the factory the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instruments of the machines that he must follow. In manufacture, the workmen are part of a living mechanism; in the workmen are part of a living appendage. Or (education of the future will) combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, on the penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippled by lifelong repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of man, by the fully developed individual…to whom the different social functions he performs are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers. Alienation is the sickness of man. Since it starts necessarily with the beginning of division of labour, that is, of civilization transcending primitive society, it is not a new sickness; it is most strongly developed in the working class, yet it is a sickness from which everybody suffers. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
When it has reached its peak, only then can the sickness be cured; only the totally alienated man can overcome the alienation—he is forced to overcome his alienation since he cannot live as a totally alienated man and remain sane. Man has to become the conscious subject of history, experience himself as the subject of his powers and thus emancipate himself from the bondage to things and circumstances. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied. The freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. But it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power, which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many people admire firefighters. It is a very normal thing for one to become a firefighter. A firefighter we will call “Dieter” shares with us his account. “I wanted to be one so bad, I just wished that I could be done with high school, with all of the crap, and have it over with. When you’re a fourteen-year-old and you’re going down and riding with squads, all the other things—high school football games, dances, and stuff like that—are anticlimactic. I was seeing what real men do. And when I got a little older, I was actually doing a man’s job. I was strong for a high school kid, and when I would go to the firehouse, they’d let me work as a firefighter. That was in a suburb. I see these jokers getting off the train. You ask a kid in a school, ‘What does your dad do for a living?’ They say, ‘I don’t know, he goes to some office.’ Well, I knew what my old man did for a living. I knew why we were eating and why we had a roof over our heads. It’s because my old man was busting his backside as a fireman, freezing in the wintertime and having rocks thrown at him in the summertime. I knew what he was doing. Other people, they take the train and they commute back and forth to the city, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s not for me. I want to do something that’s important, that’s vital. If these jokers did not go to work, nobody would miss them.’ Of course, now that I’m a little bit more mature, I realize everybody’s job is just as important. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“I don’t think firemen are supermen, by any means. At the time, I thought, ‘Hey, firemen are strong, and they’re doing an important job, and people’s lives depend upon them being here.’ Other jobs are not like that, and the police did not appeal to me. I didn’t want to be a doctor. Anyhow, I was working for this town in California, waiting to get called by the Sacramento Fire Department. I was still single, going with my future wife, and her dad was a big mucky, muck at construction company. I came down on vacation, and I took the fire test here. I didn’t even know if I wanted the job, and I didn’t think I could get it. Well, for the first time in something like six years, they took guys right off the top of the list. So as a result, we got a bunch of guys who were schoolteachers, guys with engineering degrees, and all kinds of real sharp guys in our class. Take the time to get to know the Sacramento Fire Department, and be sure them to thank them for keeping our community safe. Also, out of the kindness of your heart, please be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. If you are dissatisfied with yourself abandon yourself! You can make a start by abandoning its negative ideas, its animal passions, and its sharp critiques of others. You are responsible for them: it is you who must get rid of them. He must refuse to allow himself to become emotionally overwhelmed by an unthinking majority or intellectually subservient to an unworthy convention. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
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If Man Has Entered the Gates of Hell, He Has Left Behind His Own Humanity
Human nature comprises some deep characteristics which yearn to satisfy particular needs and impulses, such as aggression, the ego that drives him towards pleasurable experiences, the need for love, and avoidance of pain in all areas of life. When considering as an essential factor in the functioning of the social system, this undertaking goes beyond what is called “psychology.” It should more properly be called a “science of man,” a discipline which deals with the data of history, sociology, psychology, theology, mythology, physiology, economic, and art, as far as they are relevant to the understanding of man. Man was—and still is—easily seduced into accepting a particular form of being human as his essence. To the degree to which this happens, man defines his humanity in terms of the society with which he identifies himself. However, while this had been the rule, there have been exceptions. There were always men who looked beyond the dimensions of their own society—and while they may have been called fools or criminals in their time, they are the roster of great men as far as the record of human history is concerned—and visualized something which can be called universally human and which is not identical with what a particular society assumes human nature to be. There were always men who were bold and imaginative enough to see beyond the frontiers of their own social existence. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Man has been defined as Homo faber—the tool maker. Indeed, man is a tool maker, but our ancestors before they were fully human were tool makers too. Man has been defined as Homo sapiens, but in this definition all depends on what is meant by sapiens. To use thought for the purpose of finding better means for survival and ways to achieve what we want—this capacity animals also have, and there is at best a quantitative difference been men and animals as far as this kind of achievement is concerned. If, however, one means by sapiens knowledge in the sense of thought which tries to understand the core of phenomena, thought that penetrates from the deceptive surface to what is “really real,” thought the purpose of which is not to manipulate but to comprehend, then Homo sapiens would, indeed, be a correct definition of man. Man has been defined as Homo ludens—man the player, play meaning nonpurposeful activity transcending the immediate needs for survival. Indeed from the time of the creators of the cave paintings to the present day, man has indulged in nonpurposeful activities. There are two other definitions of man that we should add. One: Homo negans—man who say “no,” although most men say “yes” when their survival or their advantage requires it. From a statistical standpoint on human behaviour, man should be called, rather, the yes-man. However, from the standpoint of the human potential, man is distinguished from all other animals by his capacity to say “no,” by his affirmation of truth, love, integrity, even at the expense of physical survival. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Another definition of man would be Homo eperans—the hoping man. To hope is an essential condition of being human. If man has given up all hope, he has entered the gates of hell—whether he knows it or not—and he has left behind his own humanity. Perhaps the most significant definition of the species characteristic of man has been given by Marx, who defined it as “free, conscious activity.” Probably more such definitions could be added to the ones just mentioned, but they still do no justice to the question: What does it mean to be human? They emphasize only certain elements of being human without trying to give a more complete and systematic answer. Any attempt to give an answer will immediately meet with the objection that at the very best such an answer is no more than metaphysical speculation, perhaps poetic, but at any rate the expression of subjective preference rather than a statement of any definitely ascertainable reality. These last words call to mind the theoretical physicist who might speak of his own concepts in terms of an objective reality and yet disclaim any final statement he might make about the nature of matter. Indeed, even if human evolution were to far transcend the present point of history, in which man has hardly begun to be fully human, no final statement about what is means to be human can be made now: it is possible that it may never be made. However, a skeptical attitude toward the possibility of making final statements about the nature of man does not mean that a number of statements cannot be made which have a scientific character, that is to say, which draw conclusions from observing the facts, conclusions which are correct in spite of the fact that the motivation to find the answer was the wish for a happier life. On the contrary, the function of Reason is to promote the art of life. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
What knowledge can we draw on in order to answer the question, what does it mean to be human? The answer cannot lie in the direction which such answers have often taken: that man is good or bad, loving or destructive, gullible or independent, et cetera. Obviously, man can be all this just as he can be musical or tone-deaf, sensitive to painting or colour-blind, a saint or a rascal. All these and many other qualities are various possibilities of being human. In fact, they are all within each one of us. To be fully aware of one’s humanity means to be aware that, “Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto” (I am a man and nothing human is alien to me); that each one carries all of humanity within himself—the saint as well as the criminal: as Goethe put it, that there is no crime of which one cannot imagine oneself to be the author. All these manifestations of humanity are not the answer to what does it mean to be human. They are only answering the question, how different can we be and yet be human? If we want to know what it means to be human, we must be prepared to find answers not in terms of different human possibilities, but in terms of the very conditions of human existence from which all these possibilities spring as possible alternatives. These conditions can be recognized as a result not of metaphysical speculation but of the examination of the data of anthropology, history, child psychology, individual and social psychopathology. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
The hopeless pessimist who asserts that men cannot improve their inborn character, that they will be exactly the same faulty creatures at sixty that they were at twenty, may be right about some men but is certainly wrong about others. Every Quester who tries hard enough proves him wrong. Character may be bettered by bettering conduct, which is visible, just as it may by bettering feeling, which is not. If the check to a weakness, a shortcoming, an undesirable impulse, or a negative emotion is given instantly, if retreat from it is made before it has time to swell and strengthen, victory is very largely assured. He need not be too ashamed because he has felt these things, provided he pulls himself together. They are what he has inherited from past births, plus what he has picked up in the present one, and it is inevitable or “natural” that he should experience them. Even the saints have endured them repeatedly, but those who conquered in the end knew this trick instantly outwitting the enemy. He will undergo periods of purification, when the animal appetites such as lust and gluttony, and the animal passions such as wrath and hate, will have to be brought under better control. The discipline involved is both a kind of penance for past sins and a preparation for future enlightenment. It may be that these baser attributes need to be pushed up out of latency near the surface, in order to deal with them more effectually. If so, this will come about through some sort of crisis. He need not be distressed for it will be ultimately beneficent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
The ability to throw negative thoughts out of his mind is so valuable that a deliberate and daily effort to cultivate it is well worthwhile. This is as true of one’s self-originated thought as of those picked up from outside, whether unwittingly from other persons, or absorbed through susceptibility from environments. Anyone can go on living but not everyone can go on living worthily. We are all imperfect and the making of mistakes is to be expected. The mishandling of problems need not surprise us and the yielding to weaknesses is a common experience. Let us grant all this, but it does not excuse us from being bereft of the desire for self-improvement, of the aspiration for self-ennoblement, or of the search for self-enlightenment. Man has an animal body, shared certain instinctive reactions, desires, and passion with other animals. However, mentally and morally there are creative impulses, functions, ideas, and ideals which increasingly separate him from them as he develops and put him on a higher plane. The ethical standards of the disciple are, or should be, as far beyond those of conventional good men, as their standards are beyond those of evil men. He may have to pass successively through the three stages of intemperate idealism, disappointed idealism, and philosophic idealism. The last is as balanced and discerning as the first is not. The faults of character and defects in personality which bar advancement in the quest will also bar advancement in other spheres of human life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Being in him, these advancements will inevitably bring their results on the physical plane in the time of course. They will manifest themselves in his business or career, his home or social relations. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the self-improvement brought about by the quest’s discipline will be to his advantage in other ways. In persons who are moving toward greater openness to their experiencing, there is an organismic commonality of value directions. These common value directions are of such kinds as to enhance the development of the individual himself, of others in his community, and to make for the survival and evolution of his species. It has been a striking fact of my experiences that in therapy, where individuals are valued, where there is greater freedom to feel and to be, certain value directions seem to emerge. These are not chaotic directions but instead have a surprising commonality. This commonality is not dependent on the personality of the therapist, for I have seen these trends emerge in the clients of therapists sharply different in personality. This commonality does not seem to be due to the influences of any one culture, for I have found evidence of these directions in cultures as divergent as those of the United States of America, Holland, France, and Japan. I like to think that this commonality of value directions is due to the fact that we all belong to the same species—that just as a human infant tends, individually, to select a diet similar to that selected by other human infants, so a client in therapy tends, individually, to choose value directions similar to those chosen by other clients. If they were genuinely free to choose, as a species there may be certain elements of experience which tend to make for inner development and which would be chosen by all individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
A few of the values I see in my clients as they move in the direction of personal growth and maturity: They tend to move away from facades. Pretenses, defensiveness, putting up a front, tend to be negatively values. They tend to move away from “oughts”. The compelling feeling of “I ought to do or be thus and so” is negatively valued. The client moves away from being what he “ought to be,” no matter who has set that imperative. They tend to move away from meeting the expectations of others. Pleasing others, as a goal in itself, is negatively valued. Being real is positively valued. The client tends to move toward being himself, being his real feelings, being what he is. This seems to be a very deep preference. Self-direction is positively valued. The client discovers an increasing pride and confidence in making his own choices, guiding his own life. One’s self, one’s own feelings come to be positively valued. From desiring some fixed goal, clients come to prefer the excitement of being a process of potentialities being born. Perhaps more than all else, the client comes to vaule an openness to all of his inner and outer experience. To be open to and sensitive to his own inner reactions and feelings, the reactions and feelings of others, and the realities of the objective World—this is a direction which he clearly prefers. This openness becomes the client’s most valued resource. Sensitivity to others and acceptance of others is positively valued. The client comes to appreciate others for what they are as he has come to appreciate himself for what he is. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Finally, deep relationships are positively valued. To achieve a close, intimate, real, fully communicative relationship with another person seems to meet a deep need in every individual, and is vey highly valued. These then re some of the preferred directions which I have observed in individuals moving toward personality maturity. Though this list is inadequate and to some degree perhaps inaccurate, it holds exciting possibilities. I find it significant that when individuals are prized as persons, the values they select do not run the full gamut of possibilities. I do not find, in such a climate of freedom, that one person comes to value fraud and murder and thievery, while another values a life of self-sacrifice, and another values only money. Instead there seems to be a deep and underlying thread of commonality. I dare to believe that when the human being is inwardly free to choose whatever he deeply values, he tends to value those objective, experiences and goals which make for his own survival, growth, and development, and for the survival and development of others. I hypothesize that it is characteristic of the human organism to prefer such actualizing and socialized goals when he is exposed to a growth-promoting climate. In any culture, given a climate of respect and freedom in which he is valued as a person, the mature individual would tend to choose and prefer these same value directions. This is a highly significant hypothesis which could be tested. Though the individual of whim I am speaking would not have a consistent or even stable system of conceived values, the valuing process within him would lead to emerging value directions which would be constant across cultures and across time. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Another implication I see is that individuals who exhibit the fluid valuing process I have tried to describe, whose value directions are generally those I have listed, would be highly effective in the ongoing process of human evolution. If the human species is to survive at all on this globe, the human being must become more readily adaptive to new problems and situations, must be able to select that which is valuable for development and survival out of new and complex situations, and if he is to make such selections; he must be accurate in his appreciation of reality. The psychologically mature person, I have described has the qualities which would cause him to value those experiences which would make for the survival and enhancement of the human race. He would be a worthy participant and guide in the process of human evolution. Finally, it appears that we have returned to the issue of universality of values, but by a different route. Instead of universal values “out there,” or a universal value system imposed by some group—philosophers, rulers, or priests—we have the possibility of universal human value directions emerging from the experiencing of the human organism. Evidence from therapy indicates that both personal and social values emerge as natural, and experienced, when the individual is close to his own organismic valuing process. If he can learn again to be in touch with it, the suggestion is that though modern man no longer trusts religion or science or philosophy nor any system of beliefs to give him his values, he may fund an organismic valuing base within himself, and it will prove to be an organized, adaptive and social approach to the perplexing value issues which face all of us. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
With the existence of three apparently different kinds of psychotherapists, we may ask if the different processions provide a range of backgrounds in respect to social class origins sufficient to make possible “natural understanding” across the full range of cultural variables represented in the client population. A second, closely related question is: Does there appear to be evidence of a meaningful division of labour, or assortative mating, such that the differential backgrounds of clients show some degree of appropriate relationship to the differential backgrounds of therapists? With a view to the possibilities suggested by these questions, this we investigated the distribution of certain biographical and sociocultural factors in samples representative of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social workers. Mental illness is a cultural universal. Persons who show recognizable patterns of deviant behaviour are found in every culture. A pattern is recognized as a set of behaviours that are deviant with respect to the modal behaviours of the individual’s group and that are repeated in different members of the group. The level of complexity of social organization or the degree of civilization achieved may vary widely; the society may be urban or rural, industrial or agrarian, nomadic or settled—but in every carefully studied sociocultural group (defined as a collection of persons having functional membership in a community and out of that membership deriving common and interdependent responsibility and shared interests) the sometime occurrence of one or more patters of deviant behaviour has been noted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
The specific content and detailed form of the “insanity” reflects peculiarities of the particular culture in which it occurs. In respect to content, mental illness can be seen easily to have the quality of cultural relativity. It is in part this act of the cultural relativity of the content of emotional disorder that leads some authorities to claim that “mental illness” is not a scientific concept but rather a “convenient myth” which “has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had.” Cultural relativity in the definitions of what is conforming behaviour and what is sick (id est, non-conforming) behaviour does not negate the universality of the phenomenon of disordered behaviour; as a broad phenomenon which appears repeatedly within all cultures it is accessible to scientific inquiry. The amount of awareness of emotionally based disturbances in personality has varied over time and varies today from culture to culture. In earliest history apparently only the most deranged behaviours achieved sufficient attention to be recorded. As civilizations have prospered and as the arts of inquiry have become more sensitive, there has been growing recognition of more subtle expressions of psychological disorder. With the extension of the domain of mental illness there have been a parallel increase in the complexity and sophistication of explanations of emotional symptomatology. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
When considering neurosis, we look at a case study of a man called Tom. Tom was a medical assistant to a great clinician. He was deeply interested in his work and was favoured by his chief. A genuine friendship had developed between them, and they often lunched together. Once after such a luncheon Tom had a mild stomach upset which he ascribed to the food, without giving it further attention. After the next luncheon with the chief he felt nauseous and faint, considerably worse than the first time. He had his stomach examined but there was no pathological finding whatever. Then the disturbance occurred a third time, now with a painful sensitivity to smells. Only after the third luncheon did it strike him that all these upsets had occurred when he was eating with the director. As a matter of fact he had felt constrained with the director recently, sometimes not knowing what to talk about. And he knew the reason. His research work had led him in a direction which was opposite to the direction which was opposite to the director’s convictions. In recent week he had become more firmly convinced of his own findings. He had wanted to talk with the chief but somehow never got around to doing it. He was aware of procrastinating but the old man was rather rigid in scientific matters and did not easily tolerate dissension. Tom have showed aside his concern by telling himself that a good talk would solve everything. If the stomach upset had to do with fears, he reasoned, then his fears must be much greater than he had admitted to himself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
He sensed that this was so and simultaneously had two proofs of it. One was that while having these thoughts he suddenly started to feel ill, just as he had felt after the luncheons. The other was that he realized just as suddenly what had started his reaction. During the luncheon in which the illness had first developed the director had made derogatory remarks about the ingratitude of Tom’s predecessor. He had expressed his resentment against these young fellas, who learned much from him and then left and did not even bother to keep in touch with him on scientific matters. All that Tom felt consciously at that moment was sympathy for the chief. He had repressed his knowledge that actually what the director could not tolerate was that the predecessor had gone his own independent way. Thus Tom became aware that he has closed his eyes to an existing danger, and he also recognized the extent of his fears. His work was creating a real danger to his good relationship with the director, and thereby a danger to his career. The old man might really turn against him. He felt somewhat panicky at this thought and wondered if it might be better for him to check his findings once more—or even forget about them. It was only a brief thought, but it showed him a flash that this was a conflict between his scientific honesty and the immediate exigencies of his career. By repressing his fears he had pursued an ostrich policy, the purpose of which was to avoid having to make a decision. With that insight he felt free and relieved. He knew it was a hard decision but did not doubt that it would be in favour of his conviction. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
This story was not an example of self-analysis but merely an example of how great the temptation sometimes is not to be straight with oneself. Tom was a friend of mine, an unusually well-balanced fellow. Even though it is possible that he had certain hidden neurotic tendencies, such as a need to deny any fears, these did not make him a neurotic person. It might be objected that the very fact of his unconsciously shirking a decision was an expression of a deeper neurotic disturbance. However, there is certainly no sharp borderline between healthy and neurotic, and therefore it seems preferable to leave it as a matter of emphasis and regard Tom for all practical purposes as a healthy person. This episode would then represent a situational neurosis, that is, a neurotic upset caused primarily by the difficulties in a particular situation and lasting only so long as the conflict is not consciously faced and solved. Despite the fact that a critical estimate has been given of the results attained in each of these examples, they might, when regarded together, elicit an overoptimistic impression about the potentialities of occasional self-analysis, an impression that one can easily stumble over an insight and pick up something precious. A who feels helplessly caught in his neurotic entanglements tends to hope against hope for a miracle. It should be understood clearly that it is impossible to cure a severe neurosis, or any essential part of it, by occasional self-analysis. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The neurotic personality is not a piecemeal conglomeration—to use the expression of Gestalt psychologists—of disturbing factors, but has a structure in which each part is intricately interrelated to each other part. It is possible through occasional work at oneself to grasp an isolated connection here or there, to understand the factors immediately involved in an upheaval and to remove a peripheral symptom. However, to bring about essential changes it is necessary to work through the whole structure, that is, it requires a more systematic analysis. This occasional analysis, by its very nature, contributes but little to comprehensive self-recognition. Each problem that is clarified automatically introduces a new one. If these leads that offer themselves are not picked up the insights necessarily remain isolated. As a therapeutic method occasional self-analysis is entirely adequate for the situational neurosis. Also in mild neuroses it can yield very satisfactory results. However, in more intricate neuroses it is little more than a leap in the dark. At the very best it can do no more than release a tension here or there, or illuminate at random the meaning of one or another disturbance. Furthermore, while most people lie at least a few times each day, it is not those little white lies that hurt others. It is the big morbid ones that cause pain and destruction that we need to think about. Some deceptions occur to keep from hurting someone’s feelings. Other deceptions can change your life. We all also have lies that we tell to ourselves. Sometimes we tell lies to help us try harder at things in life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Now, historical materialism is not at all a psychological theory; its main postulate is that the way in which man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and political structure of his society. Economy in this context refers not to a psychic drive, but to the mode of production; not to a subjective psychological but to an objective socioeconomic factor. Marx’s idea that man is formed by his practice of life was not a new as such. However, in Marx’s system what was new is that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather, that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of the whole system of production which characterizes a given society. Various economic conditions can produce different psychological motivations. One economic system may lead to the formation of ascetic tendencies, as early capitalism did; another economic system to the preponderance of the desire to save and hoard, as nineteenth century capitalism did; still another, to the preponderance of the desire for spending and for ever-increasing consumption, as twenty-first capitalism does. There is only one quasi-psychological premise in Marx’s system: man must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before he can purse politics, science, art, religion, etcetera. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given society, form the foundation upon which social and political institutions, and even art and religion, have been evolved. Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his mode of production. All this does not mean, however, that the drive to produce or consume is man’s main motivation. On the contrary, Marx’s main criticism of capitalist society is precisely that this society makes the wish to “have” and to “use” into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is dominated by the desire to have and to use is a cripped man. His aim was a socialist society organized in such a way that not profit and private property, but the free unfolding of man’s human powers are man’s dominate aims. Not the man who has much, but the man who is much is the fully developed, truly human man. Where the Overself lives fully in man, he will not need to consider whether an act is righteous or not. Righteous acts will flow spontaneously from him and no other kind will be possible. However, for a beginner to practise prematurely such nonresistance to his impulses would be dangerous and foolish. Woman have a greater power in possessing the power of love. She can lift and redeem men, succor and save them, or degrade and destroy them. However, with this power comes great responsibility. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
Being a firefighter also comes with great responsibility. However, many people do not know much about the lives of firefighters. One firefighter says he lived in a small apartment with his parent growing up. The bathtub was in the kitchen, and the fire escape in the front, a small yard with a clothesline, no washing machines or dryers in those days. When he was twelve, he spotted a car on fire. He pulled the firebox and waited for the apparatus to come. When the fire was out, he talked with the firemen, and they invited him to the firehouse. As a result, he had been associating with the fire service since he was a pre-teen. He never got in trouble, never had a police record, no drugs. His mother and father both worked, and so hi grandfather took care of him. He really did not have much family life, and spent most of his time at the firehouse. The firefighters helped him with his homework, and would make sure he got home before curfew. After he grew up a little, the fire department would let him come with them to put fires out. During the summer, he would go to camp and run cross-county, and learn how to swim. He eventually became a lifeguard and joined the swim team, winning All-American for two consecutive years. Then he joined the Navy and became a Navy diver and even trained for the Olympics. Eventually he wound up going to the Military Olympics, but could not compete because he and three other guys came down with food poisoning. His father worked in a manufacturing plant where grain was processes and would have to carry hundred-pound sacks from the factor down to the river, over a ramp, and load them on the barges. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
The young man felt sorry for his father because he had to work so hard. His mother work at an electrical equipment factory wiring sockets and other things. She used to come home at night and tears and he could not understand why until he saw her hands. She had pin holes all over them from the wires that penetrated her fingers. The firefighters became so attached to the young man that they would let him sleep over at the firehouse on weekends. He started listening to fire calls on the radio, and one night they heard a third alarm on Broadway. He ran over to the firehouse as use used to do. It was raining and it was cold, and he helped the Engine pack some hose in the truck. The lieutenant would give him a ride home sometimes, and other firehouses would invite him to come and hang out with them. Although it was against rules and regulations, they stuck their neck out for the young man and did their best to look out for him and made sure he was safe and well cared for. He really enjoyed shining the brass on the old engine and would help out around the house. The men at the firehouse became like fathers to him, and treated him with respect. However, sometimes the guys would blow him off and his feelings would get hurt. When he grew up, he took care of two boys as well as the firefighters took care of him. He would take them home, contribute to their lives, and helped keep them out of trouble and away from drugs. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
As a result, the two boys are doing good. Other guys saw what he was doing and got involved with the same kids, taking them home, taking them to picnics, taking them to amusement parks. Times were different and there was a lot of compassion in the city, a lot of morale, a lot of unity. So, the young man the fire department took, not only mentored two boys, but he stayed out of trouble because he wanted to be a firefighter and figured a police record would disqualify him from the job. He did not have many friends his age, only a couple. One night, he did not go out with his friends, and went to the firehouse instead. A really good friend of his was killed that night by a hit-and-run car. He jumped off a crane into the street, and a car hit him and kept going. He reflected on how it might have been him. He attributes a lot of his staying out of trouble to hanging around the firehouse. The Sacramento Fire Department has been serving the community of Sacramento since the mid-1800, please be sure to make a donation to them. They really care about the community and the people in it. Honour a man not for his possession alone; honour him most for the use he makes of them. When a man departs this World, neither silver nor gold, nor precious stones accompany him; he is remembered only for his love of learning and his good need. Happy is the man who is rich in good deeds, for he shall be honoured in life, and be remembered along afterwards for his goodness. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it Stands, one Nation, Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for all. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
The Winchester Mystery House
In The Winchester Mystery House there are connecting stairs and a “secret rest room” once used by Mrs. Winchester, which had long been walled up in the many structural changes in the historical mansion. Only the window of the walled-up room is still visible from the outside. It is in this area that psychics feel that the restless spirit of Mrs. Winchester is trapped. They believe she sleeps during the day and close to the premises for roaming and night. In the spring of 1968, the ghost of Mrs. Winchester made her initial appearance in the mansion. It was a warm night, and the caretakers were leaving. Suddenly, they were shocked at the amount of light coming from the skylight, they judged the time to be about midnight. They had the uncanny feeling of not being alone in the room. As their eyes got used to the darkness, they clearly distinguished the figure of a petite woman, gliding across the floor. Behind her, there was a man staring at a cabinet. Then he opened the cupboard, looked in it, and closed it again. Getting hold of himself, one of the caretakers noticed that the woman wore a black dress of the kind worn in the last century, and the man a white shirt and dark cravat of the same period. It never occurred to him that they were anything but people; he thought they were actors dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Winchester.
The woman then turned to her companion as if to say something, but did not, and walked off toward the dark room at the other end of the hallway. Then man then went back to the cabinet and leaned on it, head in hand. By now, the caretakers regained their wits and thought the intruders must be burglars, although they could not figure out how they entered the mansion, since it had been locked from the inside! Making a fist, one of the caretakers struck at the stranger, yelling, “Put your hands up!” His voice could be heard clearly along the corridors. Nursing his injured wrist, he realized that his visitors had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the dark room. The door was securely locked. The skylight, on the third floor, could not very well have served as an escape route to anyone human. By now, the care takers knew Mr. Winchester and Mrs. Winchester had paid them a visit. Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Here We Ascend from Earth to Heaven
From time to time man’s higher self will show him his own moral face as in a glass. However, it will only show him that side of it which is the worst as well as the least-known one. He will have to look at what is thus exposed to him in all its stark fullness and hidden reality, only because he has to reeducate himself morally to a degree far beyond the ordinary. The experience may be painful, but it must be accepted. He has involved the Overself, now its light has suddenly been thrown upon him. He has invoked the Overself, now its light has suddenly been thrown upon him. He is now able to see his ego, his lower nature, as it has not hitherto shown itself to him. All its uglinesses are lit up and revealed for what they really are. By thus showing up its true nature and evil consequences, this experience is the first step to making the ego’s conquest possible. He should begin with the belief that his own character can be markedly improved and with the attitude that his own efforts can lessen the distance between its present condition and the ideal before him. It is a prime rule that quality of character and education of conscience are more important than nature of belief. And this is much more applicable to would-be philosophers than to would-be religionists. Many students are haunted by a bad idea of undesirable character, and should try five methods for expelling it: attend to an opposing good idea; face the danger of the consequences of letting the bad idea emerge in action; become inattentive to the bad idea; analyse its antecedents and so paralyze the sequent impulse; coerce the mind with the assistance of bodily tension. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, philosophy does not trust to developed reason alone to control emotion and subjugate passion. It trusts also to psychological knowledge and metaphysical truth, to developed will and creative meditation, to counter-emotions and the prayer for Grace. All these different elements are welded into one solid power working for him. Just as the writer turns his experiences of society to writing use and creates art out of the best and worst of them, so the disciple turns his experiences of life to spiritual use and creates wisdom or goodness out of them. And just as it is harder for the author to learn to live what he writes than learn to write what he lives, so it is harder for the disciple to convert his studies and meditations, his reflections and intuitions, into practical deeds and beneficial accomplishments than to receive these thoughts themselves and make them his own. The valuing process which seems to develop in this more mature person is in some ways very much like that in the infant, and in some ways quite different. It is fluid, flexible, based on this particular moment, and the degree to which this moment is experienced as enhancing and actualizing. Values are not held rigidly, but are continually changing. The painting which last year seemed meaningful now appears uninteresting, the way of working with individuals which was formerly experienced as good now seems inadequate, the belief which then seemed true is now experiences as only partly true, or perhaps false. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is not so much that we have to change ourselves as to give up ourselves. We are so imperfect and faulty, so selfish and weak, so sinful and ignorant, that giving up our own selves means being more than willing to part with what is not worth keeping. However, to what are we to give them up and how are we to do it? We are to invoke the higher self, request it daily to take possession of our hearts, minds, and wills, and to strive actively to purify them. Much of our striving will be in the form of surrendering egoistic thoughts, impulses, and feelings by crushing them at the moment of birth. In that way we slowly give up our inner selves and submit the conduct of our outer selves to a higher will. If he fails to pass a test, or if he succumbs to a temptation, he should realise that there must be a defect in character or mentality which made such a failure possible. Even though the test or temptation has been provided by the adverse powers, he ought not to lay the blame upon them but upon himself. For then he will seek out and destroy the defect upon which the blame really rests. After all, there must have been a corresponding inner weakness in him to have permitted him to become the victim of a temptation. Consequently it is often better not to ask for protection against the temptation. This simply hides and covers over the weakness and permits it to remain in his mental makeup. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
It is better to ask for the strengthening of his own willpower, to cultivate it through a creative meditation excecise special directed to the purpose: he should picture the arousal and hardening of this willpower during the very moments of temptation by seeing himself emerge victorious by his own forces. As my class of prospective teachers learned, general principles are not as useful as sensitive discriminating reactions. One says, “With this little boy, I just felt I should be very firm, and he seemed to welcome that, and I felt good that I had been. But I’m not that way at all with the other children most of the time.” She was relying on her experiencing of the relationship with each child to guide her behaviour. I have already indicated, in going through the examples, how much more differentiated are the individual’s reactions to what were previously rather solid monolithic introjected values. In another way the mature individual’s approach is like that of the infant. The locus of evaluation is again established firmly within the person. It is his own experience which provides the value information or feedback. This does not mean that he is not open to all the evidence he can obtain from other sources. However, it means that this is taken for what it is—outside evidence—and is not as significant as his own reactions. Thus he may be told by a friend that a new book is very disappointing. He reads two unfavourable reviews of the book. Thus his tentative hypothesis is that he will not value the book. Yet if he reads the book his valuing will be based upon the reactions it stirs in him, not on what he has been told by others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is also involved in this valuing process a letting oneself down into the immediacy of what one is experiencing, endeavouring to sense and to clarify all its complex meanings. I think of a client who, toward the close of therapy, when puzzled about an issue, would put his head in his hands and say, “Now what is it that I’m feeling? I want to get next to it. I want to learn what it is.” Then he would wait, quietly and patiently, trying to listen to get close to himself. In getting close to what is going on within himself, the process is much more complex than it is in the infant. In the mature person, it has much more scope and sweep, for there is involved in the present moment of experiencing the memory traces of all the relevant learnings from the past. This moment has not only its immediate sensory impact, but it has meaning growing out of similar experiences in the past. It has both the new and the old in it. So when I experience a painting or persons, as well as the new impact of this particular encounter. Likewise the moment of experience contains, for the mature adult, hypotheses about consequences. “I feel now that I would enjoy a drink, but past learnings indicate that I may regret it in the morning.” “It is not pleasant to express forthrightly my negative feelings to this person, but past experience indicates that in a continuing relationship it will be helpful in the long run.” Past and future are both in this moment and entering into the valuing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
I find that in the person I am speaking of (and her again we see a similarity to the infant) the criterion of the valuing process is the degree to which the object of the experience actualizes the individual himself. Does it make him a richer, more complete, more fully developed person? This may sound as though it were a selfish or unsocial criterion, but it does not prove to be so, since deep and helpful relationships with others are experienced as actualizing. Like the infant, too, the psychologically mature adult trusts and uses the wisdom of his organism, with the difference that he is able to do so knowingly. If he can trust all of himself, he realizes his feeling and his intuitions may be wiser than his mind, that as a total person he can be more sensitive and accurate than his thoughts alone. Hence he is not afraid to say—“I feel that this experience (or this thing, or this direction) is good. Later I will probably know why I feel it is good.” He trusts the totality of himself. It should be evidence from what I have been saying that this valuing process in the mature individual is not an easy or simple thing. The process is complex, the choices often very perplexing and difficult, and there is no guarantee that the choice which is made will in fact prove to be self-actualizing. However, because whatever evidence exists is available to the individual, and because he is open to his experiencing, errors are correctable. If a chosen course of action is not self-enhancing this will be sensed and he can make an adjustment or revision. He thrives on a maximum feedback interchange, and thus, like the gyroscopic compass on a ship, can continually correct his course toward becoming more of himself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
One example that first set me to considering the possibility of self-analysis was Erich. Erich was a physician who came to me for analysis because of attacks of panic, which he tried to allay by taking morphine and cocaine; also he had spells of exhibitionistic impulses. There was no doubt that he had a severe neurosis. After some months of treatment, he went away on a vacation, and during this time he analysed by himself an attack of anxiety. The beginning of this piece of self-analysis was accidental, as it was in the case of John, whom we discussed in the previous reports. The starting point for Erich was a severe attack of anxiety, apparently provoked by a real danger. Erich was climbing a mountain with his girl. It was strenuous climbing but not dangerous as long as they could see clearly. It became perilous, however, when a snowstorm arose and they were enveloped in a thick fog. Erich then became short of breath, his hear pounded, he became panicky and finally had to lie down to rest. He did not give the incident any thought but vaguely ascribed the attack to his exhaustion and to the actual danger. If we want to be, this is an example, by the way, of how easily we may be satisfied with wrong explanations, for Erich was physically strong and anything but a coward in the face of an emergency. The next day they went on a narrow path hewn into the steep, rocky wall of the mountain. The girl went ahead. The heart pounding started again when Erich caught himself at a thought or impulse to push her down the cliffs. That naturally startled him, and, besides, he was devoted to her. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Erich thought first of Dreiser’s American Tragedy, in which the boy drowns hi girl in order to get rid of her. Then he thought of the attack of the previous day and barely recaptured a similar impulse he had checked it as it as it arose. He remembered clearly, however, a mounting irritation against the girl before the attack, and a sudden wave of hot anger, which he had pushed aside. This, then, was the meaning of the attack of anxiety: an impulse of violence born out of a conflict between a sudden hatred on the one hand, and, on the other, his genuine fondness for the girl. He felt relieved, and also proud for having analysed the first attack and stopped the second. Erich, in contrast to John, went a step farther, because he felt alarmed by his recognition of hatred and a murderous impulse toward the girl he loved. While continuing to walk he raised the question why he should want to kill her. Immediately a talk they had had the previous morning recurred to him. The girl had praised one of his colleagues for his clever dealing with people and for being a charming host at a party. That was all. And that could not have aroused this much hostility. Yet when thinking about it, he felt a rising anger. Was he jealous? However, there was no danger of losing her. This colleague, though, was taller than he, and non-Jewish (on both points he was hypersensitive), and he did have a clever tongue. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
While Erich’s thoughts were meandering along these lines, he forgot his anger against the girl and focused his attention on comparing himself with the colleague. Then a scene occurred to him. He was probably four or five years old, and had tried to climb a tree but could not. His older brother had climbed it with ease and teased him from above. Another scene came back vividly when his mother praised this brother and he was left out. The older brother was always ahead of him. It must have been the same thing that infuriated him yesterday: he still could not stand to have any man praised in his presence. With this insight he lost his tenseness, could climb easily, and again felt tender toward the girl. Compared with the first example, the second achieved in one way more and in another less. Despite the greater superficiality of John’ self-analysis, he did take one step that Erich did not take. When John had accounted for the only particular situation, he did not rest satisfied: he recognised the possibility that all his headaches might result from a repressed anger. Erich did not go beyond the analysis of the one situation. It did not occur to him to wonder whether his finding had a bearing on other attacks of anxiety. On the other hand, the insight that Erich arrived at was considerably deeper than John’s. The recognition of the murderous impulse was a real emotional experience; he found at least an inkling of the reason for his hostility; and he recognized the fact that he was caught in a conflict. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the second incident, too, one is astonished at the number of questions not touched upon. Granting that Erich became irritated at praise of another man, whence the intensity of the reaction? If that praise was the only source of his hostility, why was it such a threat to him as to arouse violence? Was he in the grip of an excessively great and excessively vulnerable vanity? If so, what were the deficiencies in him that needed so much covering up? The rivalry with the brother was certainly a significant historical factor, but insufficient as an explanation. The other side of the conflict, the nature of his devotion to the girl, is entirely untouched. Did he need her primarily for her admiration? How much dependency was involved in his love? Were there other sources of hostility toward her? What are the motivating forces which make man act in certain ways, the drives which propel him to strive in certain directions? It seems as if the answer to this question Marx and Dr. Freud find themselves furthest apart and that there is an insoluble contradiction between their two systems. Marx’s “materialistic” theory of history is usually understood to mean that man’s main motivation is his wish for material satisfaction, his desire to use and to have more and more. This greed for material things as man’s essential motivation is then contrasted with Dr. Freud’s concept according to which it is man’s appetite for pleasures of the flesh which constitutes his most potent motivation for action. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The desire for property on the one hand and the desire for satisfaction involving pleasures of the flesh on the other seem to be the two conflicting theories as far as much motivation is concerned. That this assumption is an oversimplifying distortion as far as Dr. Freud is concerned follows from what has been already said about this theory. Dr. Freud sees man as motivated by contradictions; by the contradiction between his striving for pleasures of the flesh and his striving for survival and mastery of his environment. When Dr. Freud later posited another factor which conflicted with the one’s already mentioned—the super-ego, the incorporated authority of the father and the norms he represented, this conflict became even more complicated. For Dr. Freud, then, man is motivated by forces conflicting with each other and by no means only by the desire for satisfactions of pleasures of the flesh. Dr. Freud again thought in terms of contradiction, that between the “life instinct” and the “death instinct” as the two forces battling constantly within man and motivating his actions. The cliché of Marx’s theory of motivation is even more drastic distortion of his thinking than the cliché of Dr. Freud’s. The distortion begins with the misunderstanding of the term “materialism.” This term and its counterpart, “idealism,” have two entirely different meanings, depending on the context in which they are applied. When applied to human attitudes, one refers to the “materialist” as one who is mainly concerned with the satisfaction of material strivings, and to the “idealist” as one who is motivated by an idea, that is, a spiritual or ethical motivation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, “materialism” and “idealism” have entirely different meanings in philosophical terminology, and “materialism” must he used in this meaning when one refers to Marx’s “historical materialism” (a term which, in fact, Marx himself never used). Philosophically, idealism means that one assumes ideas form the basic reality, and that the material Word which we perceive by means of our senses has no reality as such. For the materialism prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century matter was real, not ideas. Marx, in contrast to this mechanical materialism (which was also underlying Dr. Freud’s thinking), was not concerned with the causal relationship between matter and mind but with understanding all phenomena as results of the activity of real human beings. “In direct contrast to German philosophy,” Marx wrote, “which descends from the Heaven to Earth, here we ascend from Earth to Heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men imagine, conceive, in order to arrive at man in the flesh. We set out from real active men and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process.” Marx’s “materialism” implies that we begin our study of man with the real man as we find him, and not with his ideas about himself and the World by which he tries to explain himself. In order to understand how this confusion between personal and philosophical materialism could have arisen in the case of Marx, we must proceed further and consider Marx’s so-called “economic theory of history.” This term has been misunderstood to mean that, according to Marx, only economic motives determine man’s actions in the historical process; in other words, the “economic” factor has been understood to refer to a psychological, subjective motive, that of economic interests. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In government policy and strategy, the ideal is that foreign policy—and that means also military planning—are freed from the arbitrariness of the human will an entrusted to a computer system, which tells the “truth” since it is not fallible like men, nor has it any ax to grind. The ideal is that all foreign policy and military strategy are based on computer decision, and this implies that all the facts are known, considered, and made available to the computer. With this method, doubt becomes excluded, although disaster is by no means necessarily avoided. However, if disaster does happen after the decisions are made on the basis of unquestionably “facts,” it is like an act of God, which one must accept, since man cannot do more than make the best decision he knows how to make. It seems tome that these considerations are the only terms in which one can answer this puzzling question: How is it possible for our policy and strategy planners to tolerate the idea that at a certain point they may give orders the consequences of which will mean the destruction of their own families, most of America, and “at best” most of the industrialized World? If they rely on the decision the facts seem to have made for them, their conscience is cleared. However dreadful the consequences of their decisions may be, they need not have qualms about the rightness and legitimacy of the method by which they arrived at their decision. They act on faith, not essentially different from the faith on which the actions of the inquisitors of the Holy Office were based. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, some may even be tragic figures who cannot act differently, because they seen o other way of being certain that they do the best they can. The alleged rational character of our planners is basically not different from the religiously based decisions in a prescientific age. There is one qualification that must be made: both the religious decision, which is a blind surrender to God’s will and the computer decision, based on the faith in the logic of “facts,” are forms of alienated decisions in which man surrenders his own insight, knowledge, inquiry, and responsibility to an idol, be it God or the computer. The humanist religion of the prophets knew no such surrender; the decision was man’s. He had to understand his situation, see the alternatives, and then decide. True scientific rationality is not different. The computer can help man in visualizing several possibilities, but the decision is not made for him, not only in the sense that he can choose between the various models, but also in the sense that he must use his reason, relate to and respond to the reality with which he deals, and elicit from the computer those facts which are relevant from the standpoint of reason, and that means from the standpoint of sustaining and fulfilling man’s aliveness. The blind and irrational reliance on computer decision becomes dangerous in foreign policy as well as strategic planning when done by opponents, each of whom works with his own data-processing system. He anticipates the opponent’s moves, plans his own, and constructs scenarios for the X possibilities of moves on both sides. #RanolphHarris 14 of 20
He can construct his game in many ways: that of his side winning, a stalemate, or both losing. However, if either “wins” it is the end of both. While the purpose of the game is to achieve a stalemate, the rules of the game make a stalemate unlikely. Both players, by their methods and their need for certainty, give up the way which has been that of precomputer diplomacy and strategy: the dialogue—with its possibility of give and taken, open or veiled withdrawal, compromise, or even surrender when that is the only rational decision. With the present method, the dialogue, with all its possibilities for avoiding catastrophe, is ruled out. The action of the leaders is fanatical because it is pursued even to the point of self-destruction, although in a psychological sense they are not fanatics, because their actions are based on an emotion-free belief in the rationality (calculability) of the computer methods. There is a correlation with job of the psychologist. The clinical psychologist is exposed didactically (and casually, like any sentient person, through a myriad of cultural media) to the Freudian theory of psychopathology and to Freudian principles of psychoanalysis. If we focus too heavily on computer-based information and decision making, we risk alienating ourselves from our humanity and becoming psychopaths. This is why psychology focuses on the human relationships and communication. The goal is to help people become fully human. The psychologist, unlike the social worker and psychiatrist, is more likely to have his Freudian garden sprinkled from the watering cans of the dozen or so recognized variations on the theme, but the exfoliation does not serve to weaken his appreciation of Dr. Freud’s discoveries or his recognition of the fundamental principles of analytic therapy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
And, in the quiet of the consulting room, face-to-face with a candidate for therapeutic conversation, there are multiple reasons (ranging from the sheer pertinence and richness of the psychopathological concepts to the broadly social “prestige” of analytically oriented therapy) that cause the psychologist to tend to think and behave, in that moment of truth, more like a psychiatrist or social worker, and less like a psychologist. There are a few striking general consequences of the over-arching role of psychoanalytic doctrine in the preparation of current psychotherapists: a belief that psychoanalysis is the most powerful of all forms psychotherapy and that its primary limitation and restriction as the “therapy of choice” for psychoneurosis is a function of its cost and limited supply, not of its general appropriateness; a belief that distinctly psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy is the next best to psychoanalysis; a belief that truly effective psychotherapy must be intensive, id est, it must entail frequent therapeutic sessions (usually weekly) over a long period of time; a belief that the gaining of insight by the patient is a primary goal and result of therapy; a belief that the major mechanism of therapy is in the nature of the therapist-patient relationship; a belief that the prognosis for psychotherapy rests upon the suitability of the patient which is defined generally in the same term as the good candidate for psychoanalysis. These generally accepted orientations, stemming from a shared theoretical bias, lead to common administrative and therapeutic practices on the part of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
There is a common preference to do “intensive” psychotherapy and there are common predilections (leading possibly to subtle therapeutic attitudes and maneuvers of which the therapist may be aware) to keep the patient “in treatment.” A fascinating side-effect of this peculiar bias has been a cluster of studies by psychologists which aim to identify at the outset jut which patients will remain in treatment and which will break off. The purpose of such studies could be to identify the short-term client with a view to providing a specific therapeutic experience for him. Generally, however, the implicit assumption in these studies is that patients who break off after only a few sessions are “failures” and could not possibly have derived any benefit from their limited exposure. The goal appears to be to find ways of selecting “good” patients for therapy, id est, those who come back interminably. (Contrary to what many experts might predict, the sudden administrative termination of “interminable” psychotherapy cases does not appear to precipitate acute disintegration.) If such psychological studies should achieve a high level of predictive accuracy, it would become possible for an increasing portion of psychotherapeutic time to be devoted to a decreasing number of patients! (Perhaps this is a rare example of an instance in which we may be thankful that the accuracy of psychometric prediction is not greater.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Another result of the common theoretical bias is that all of these expert therapists have a marked preference to provide their services to the same sample (a very small portion of the total population of persons in need of psychological assistance). These “ideal” patients are not prominent among the clients of public clinics and hospitals. By contrast, the typical supplicant to a community psychiatric facility may present a set of attributes (such as level of education and verbal facility) that discourage the “depth-oriented” therapist from feeling that he can either effectively (or usefully?” establish a really therapeutic relationship. As a consequence, they are apt with such patients to effect the sort of brief and “incomplete” therapy of which they are disdainful. During therapy sessions, many patients often ask “How do I say no and mean it?” The basic rule here is to never go back on your answer of no. And the secret to this is not to allow anyone to continue to ask the same question you have already given the answer of no to. The way to enforce this is to add a consequence to asking the same question again. With a child, it is easy. “Ask again, you will not get any dessert after dinner.” An adult might be a little harder. If you put your mind to it, I am sure you can think of something they would not want to give up just so they could bug you about your answer. It has been said that ideas rule mankind. This is but a half-truth, but be as it may, it can be unhesitantly asserted that ideals rule the traveler on the quest. If they do not, then he is not embarked on the quest. However, an ideal is only an abstract conception. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Unselfishness, freedom, goodness, and justice are intangibles, and their practical application has altered from age to age according to the conditions prevailing in different times and places. An ideal must have a concrete shape or it becomes sterile. The Sacramento Fire Department has many ideals that are concrete. One person cannot rise in the ranks through the fire department without the support and respect of a large group of people. They do not let political opportunism interfere with the running of the fire department or the running of their lives. The Sacramento Fire Department has had a great line of chiefs of department. The chief of department is the highest uniform position, a competitive civil service position, and once an individual makes it, he or she is secure in the job and outside the authority of the mayor’s office. He or she represents safety of the city’s public. In critical situations the chief of the department is the person with responsibility. There is something that happens to a person when one becomes a firefighter. That something is that one begins to care about what one is doing, about the person one works with, and about the department’s reputation in ways that surprises, a depth of feeling that is entirely new. It is what feeling that enables people to enter burning buildings, and it is that feeling that will preserve the histories of fire departments throughout the land. It becomes a part of the human being, and part of every action. Any intelligent person can see that a firefighter is on the street to help people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
In a car accident, if you pull the alarm the fire engines usually come faster than the ambulance. The firefighter will pull somebody out of the car, it does not matter what kind of a mess the victim is in. One is well trained in emergency situations. The firefighter knows how to deal with people. One knows when to move an injured person and when not to, when to put on a splint and when not to. One is trained to make a fast assessment of an emergency situation. When a firefighter arrives at a fire and sees people on the fire escape in the front of the building, one automatically knows there will be people on the back fire escape and in trouble inside the building. One knows to think about what is not immediately seen. One is there only to help, and one is asked to help in all kinds of situations—not only fires but accidents, drug overdoses, shootings, knifings, injuries from whatever cause. So a young person coming out of high school sees all this, and asks oneself, “What is it that I really want to do?” And the fire department winds up getting the best people. Be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive the necessary resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Kaefer lived in upstate New York. In 2007 a friend showed him a brochure concerning The Winchester Mystery House, and the house intrigued him. Since he was traveling to the Silicon Vallery, he decided to pay The Winchester Mystery House a visit. With his family, he drove to the house and parked the car in the parking lot. At that moment he had an eerie feeling that something was not right. Mind you, Kaefer had not been to the house before, had no knowledge about it, nor any indication that anything unusual occurred in it. The group of visitors was quite small. In addition to him and his family, there were two young college boys and one other couple. Even though it was a sunny day, Kaefer felt cold. “I felt a presence before we entered the house and before we heard the story from the guide,” he explained. “If I were a host there, I wouldn’t stay there alone for two consecutive minutes.” Kaefer had been to so many old houses and restorations before but had never felt as he did at The Winchester Mystery House.
It is not surprising the Sarah L. Winchester should be the subject of a number of psychic accounts. Probably the best known (and most frequently misinterpreted) story concerns Mrs. Winchester’s vision which came to her during the late 1800s. Mrs. Winchester was in the habit of meditating in her Blue Séance Room at times and saying her prayer when she was quite alone. On one of those occasions, she returned to the Daisy Bedroom more worried than usual. As she busied herself with her papers, she had the feeling of a presence in the room. Looking up, she saw opposite her a singularly handsome man. Since she had given orders not to be disturbed, she could not understand how he had gotten into the room. Although she questioned him several times, the visitor would not reply. As she looked at the apparition for what it was, she noticed it was her late husband and became more and more entranced with him, unable to make any more. Finally, she heard a voice saying, “Sarah, I love you.” At the same time, William Winchester extended his arm toward the east, and Mrs. Winchester saw what to her appeared like a blue mist at some distance.
As the mist dissipated, she saw various new additions to her mansion, a wide veranda and generous use of expansive windows and French doors, which offered views in every direction. A raised foyer directly overlooking the formal dining room and the living area. Special features like fireplaces with mini bricks, built-in shelves, a morning room, a door that opened to a two story fall into the garden, a staircase leading to an option third-floor area. And an exterior that boasts delicately turned rails and decorated upside-down columns. A unique gazebo projection off the covered porch to the north of the plan. She then noticed a dark, shadowy angel standing in the room of the witches’ cap, taking gold flakes out of water and sprinkling them on the wall. Then a dark cloud rose from the ground and enveloped her home. Sharp flashes of lightening became visible at intervals in the cloud. At the same time, Mrs. Winchester heard the anguished cries of departed souls. Next, William showed her an Observational Tower and legions of legions of angels descended from the Heavens, and William faded away.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
You are Not the Problem!
Life on Earth did not happen by mistake. You are here as part of God’s plan of happiness for all of us. Little by little, in tranquil moments or in deliberate meditation, there will come to one the revelation of errors in conduct and thought which, until then, one did not know were errors. Values refer to the tendency of any living beings to show preference in their actions, for one kind of object or objective rather than another. This preferential behaviour is called “operative values.” It need not involve any cognitive or conceptual thinking. It is simply the value of choice which is indicated behaviourally when the organism select one object, rejects another. When the earthworm, placed in a simple Y maze, chooses the smooth arm of the Y, instead of the path which is paved with sandpaper, he is indicating an operative value. A second use of the term might be called “conceived values.” This is the preference of the individual for a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation of foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. Usually in such a preference there is anticipation or foresight of the outcome of behaviour directed toward such a symbolized object. A choice such as “Honesty is the best policy” is such a conceived value. A final use of the term might be called “objective value.” People use the word in this way when they wish to speak of what is objectively preferable, whether or not it is in fact sensed or conceived of as desirable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The living human being has, at the outset, a clear approach to values. He prefers some things and experiences, and rejects others. We can infer from studying his behaviour that he prefers those experiences which maintain, enhance, or actualize his organism, and rejects those which do not serve this end. What him for a bit: Hunger is negatively valued. His expression of this often comes through loud and clear. Food is positively valued. However, when he is satisfied, food is negatively valued, and the same milk he responded to so eagerly is now spit out, or the breast which seemed so satisfying to the infant is now rejected as he turns his head away from the nipple with an amusing facial expression of disgust and revulsion. He values security, and holding and caressing which seem to communicate security. He values new experience for its own sake, and we observe this in his obvious pleasure in discovering his toes, in his searching movements, in his endless curiosity. He shows a clear negative valuing of pain, bitter tastes, sudden loud sounds. All of this is commonplace, but let us look at these facts in terms of what they tell us about the infant’s approach to values. It is first of all a flexible, changing, valuing process, not a fixed system. He likes food and dislikes the same food. He values security and rest, and rejects it for new experience. What is going on seems best described as an organismic valuing process, in which each element, each moment of what he is experiencing is somehow weighed, and selected or rejected, depending on whether, at this moment, it tends to actualize the organism or not. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
This complicated weighing of experience is clearly an organismic, not a conscious or symbolic function. These are operative, not conceived values. However, this process can none the less deal with complex value problems. I would remind you of the experiment in which young infants had spread in front of them a score of more of dishes of natural (that is, unflavoured) foods. Over a period of time they clearly tended to value the foods which enhanced their own survival, growth, and development. If for a time a child gorged himself on starches, this would seen be balanced by a protein “binge.” If at times he chose a diet deficient in some vitamin, he would later seek out foods rich in this very vitamin. He was utilizing the wisdom of the body in his value choices, or perhaps more accurately, the physiological wisdom of his body guided his behavioural movements, resulting in what we might think of as objectively sound value choices. Another aspect of the infant’s approach to value is that the source of locus of the evaluating process is clearly within himself. Unlike many of us, he knows what he likes and dislikes, and the origin of these value choices lies strictly within himself. He is the center of the valuing process, the evidence for his choices being supplied by his own senses. He is not at this point influenced by what his parents think he should prefer, or by what the church says, or by the opinion of the latest “expert” in the field, or by the persuasive talents of an advertising firm. It is from within his own experiencing that his organism is saying in non-verbal terms, “This is good for me.” “That is bad for me.” “I like this.” “I strongly dislike that.” He would laugh at our concern over values, he could understand it. How could anyone fail to know what he liked and disliked, what was good for him an what was not? #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
What happens to this highly efficient, soundly based valuing process? By what sequence of events do we exchange for the more rigid, uncertain, inefficient approach to value which characterizes most of us as adults? The infant needs love, wants it, tends to behave in ways which will bring repetition of this wanted experience. By this brings complications. He pulls baby sister’s hair, and finds it satisfying to hear her wails and protests. He then hears that he is a “naughty, bad boy,” and this may be reinforced by a time out. He is cut off from affection. As this experience is repeated, and many, many others like it, he gradually learns that what “feels good” is often “bad” in the eyes of others. Then the next step occurs, in which he comes to take the same attitude toward himself which the others have taken. Now, as he pulls his sister’s hair, he solemnly intones, “Bad, bad boy.” He is introjecting the value judgment of another, taking it has his own. He has deserted the wisdom of his organism, giving up the locus of evaluation and is trying to behave in terms of values set by another, in order to hold love. Or take another example at an older level. A boy senses, though perhaps not consciously, that he is more loved and prized by his parents when he thinks of being a doctor than when he thinks of being an artist. Gradually he introjects the values attached to being a doctor. He comes to want, above all, to be a doctor. Then in college he is baffled by the fact that he repeatedly fails in chemistry, which is absolutely necessary to becoming a physician, in spite of the fact that the guidance counselor assure him he has the ability to pass the course. Only in counseling interviews does he begin to realize how completely he has lost touch with his organismic reactions, how out of touch he is with his own valuing process. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Let me give another instance from a class of mine, a group of prospective teachers. I asked them at the beginning of the course, “Please list for me the two or three values which you would most wish to pass on to the children with whom you will work.” They turned in many value goals, but I was inspired by some of the items. Several listed such things as “to speak correctly,” “to use good English, not to use work like ain’t.” Others mentioned neatness—“to do things according to instructions”; one explained her hope that “When I tell them to write their own names in the upper right-hand corner with the date under it, I want them to do it that way, not in some other form.” I confess I was somewhat appalled that for some of these girls the most important values to be passed on to pupils were to avoid bad grammar, or meticulously to follow teacher’s instructions. I felt baffled. Certainly these behaviours had not been experienced as the most satisfying and meaningful element in their own lives. The listings of such values could only be accounted for by the fact that these behaviours had gained approval—and thus had been introjected as deeply important. Perhaps these several illustrations will indicate that in an attempt to gain or hold love, approval, esteem, the individual relinquishes the locus of evaluation which was his in infancy, and places it in others. He learns to have a basic distrust for his own experiencing as a guide to his behaviour. He learns from others a large number of conceived values, and adopts them as his own, even though they may be widely discrepant from what he is experiencing. Because these concepts are not based on his own valuing, they tend to be fixed and rigid, rather than fluid and changing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
To analyze oneself occasionally comparatively easy and sometimes productive of immediate results. Essentially it is what every sincere person does when he tries to account for real motivations behind the way he feels or acts. If anything, without knowing much about psychoanalysis, a man who has fallen in love with a particularly attractive or wealth girl could raise with himself the question whether vanity or money plays a part in his feeling. A man who has ignored his better judgement and given in to his wife or his colleagues in an argument could question in his own mind whether he yielded because he was convinced of the comparative insignificance of the subject at stake or because he was afraid of an ensuing fight. I suppose people have always examined themselves in this way. And many people do so who otherwise tend to reject psychoanalysis entirely. The principal domain of occasional self-analysis is not the intricate involvements of the neurotic character structure, but the gross manifest symptoms, the concrete and usually acute disturbance which either strikes one’s curiosity or commands one’s immediate attention because of its distressing character. Thus the examples reported in this report concern a functional headache, an acute attack of anxiety, a lawyer’s fear of public performances, an acute functional stomach upset. However, a startling dream, the forgetting of an appointment, or an inordinate irritation at a taxidriver’s trivial cheating might just as well elicit a wish to understand oneself—or, more precisely, to discover the reasons responsible for that particular effect. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
This latter distinction may seem hairsplitting, but actually is expresses an important difference between occasional grappling with a problem and systematic work at oneself. The goal of occasional self-analysis is to recognize those factors that provoke a concrete disturbance, and remove them. The broader incentive, the wish to be better equipped to deal with life in general, may operate here too, but even if it plays some role it is restricted to the wish to be less handicapped by certain fears, headaches, or other inconveniences. This is in contrast to the much deeper and more beneficial desire to develop to the best of one’s capacities. One of the greatest factors of the importance for the understanding of man’s behaviour in present society: man’s need for certainty. Man is not equipped with a set of instincts that regulate his behaviour quasi-automatically. He is confronted with choices, and this means in all-important matters with grave risks to his life if his choices are wrong. The doubt that besets him when he must decide—often quickly—causes painful tension and can even seriously endanger his capacity for quick decisions. As a consequence, man has an intense need for certainty; he wants to believe that there is no need to doubt that the method by which he makes his decisions is right. In fact, he would rather make the “wrong” decision and be sure about it than the “right” decision and be tormented with doubt about its validity. This is one of the psychological reasons for man’s belief in idols and political leaders. They all take out doubt and risk from his decision making; this does not mean that there is not a risk for his life, freedom, etcetera, after the decision has been made, but that there is no risk that the method of his decision making was wrong. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
For many centuries certainty was guaranteed by the concept of God. God, omniscient and omnipotent, had not only created the World but also announced the principles of human action about what which there was no doubt. The church “interpreted” these principles in detail, and the individual, securing his place in the church by following its rules, was certain that, whatever happened, he was on the way to salvation and to eternal life in Heaven. In the Luteran-Calvinistic branch of Christian theology, man was taught not to be afraid of the risk of using false criteria for his decision making in a paradoxical way. Luther, belittling man’s freedom and the role of his good works, taught that they only decision man has to make is to surrender his will totally to God, and thus to be released of the risk of making decisions on the basis of his own knowledge and responsibility. In Calvin’s concept, everything is predestined, and man’s decision does not really matter; yet his success is a sign that he is one of then chosen. With the beginning of the scientific approach and the corrosion of religious certainty, man was forced into a new search for certainty. At first, science seemed to be capable of giving a new basis for certainty. This was so for the rational man of the last centuries. However, with the increasing complexities of life, which lost all human proportions, with the growing feeling of individual powerlessness and isolation, the science-oriented man ceased to be a rational and independent man. He lost the courage to think for himself and to make decisions on the basis of his full intellectual and emotional commitment to life. He wanted to exchange the “uncertain certainty” which rational thought can give for an “absolute certainty”: the alleged “scientific” certainty, based on predictability. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
This certainty is guaranteed not by man’s own unreliable knowledge and emotions but by the computers which permit prediction and become guarantors of certainty. Take as an example the planning of the big corporation. With the help of computers, it can plan ahead for many years (including the manipulation of man’s mind and taste); the manager does not have to rely any more on his individual judgment, but on the “truth” that is pronounced by the computers. The manager’s decision may be wrong in its results, but he need not be distrustful of the decision-making processes. He feels that he is free to accept or reject the result of computer prognostication, but for all practical purposes, he is as little free as a pious Christian was to act against God’s will. He could do it, but he would have to be out of his mind to take the risk, since there is not a greater source of certainty than God—or the computerized solution. This need for certainty creates the need of what amounts to blind belief in the efficacy of the method of computerized planning. The managers are relieved from doubt, and so are those who are employed in the organization. It is precisely the fact that man’s judgment and emotions allegedly do not interfere with the process of decision making that gives the computer-based planning its godlike quality. Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. However, they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet served the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellow man in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exit only when development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low state, and when, therefor, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man and between man and nature, are correspondingly narrow. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of Nature, and in the other elements of the popular religions. The religious reflex of the real World can, in any case, only then finally vanish when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature. The life-process of material production does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development. Man, as a race, slowly emancipates himself from mother nature through the process of work, and in this process of emancipation he develops his intellectual and emotional powers and grows up, becomes an independent and free man. When he will have brought nature under his full and rational control, and when society will have lost its antagonistic class character, “prehistory” will have ended, and a truly human history will begin in which free men plan and organize their exchange with nature, and in which the aim and end of all social life is not work and production, but the unfolding of man’s powers as an end in itself. This is the realm of freedom in which man will be fully united with his fellow men and with nature. The problem of human evolution is an essentially tragic one. Whatever man did, it ended in frustration; if he should return to become a primitive again, he would have pleasure, but no wisdom; if he goes on as a builder of ever more complicated civilizations, he becomes wiser, but also unhappier and sicker. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Clearly, evolution is an ambiguous blessing, and society does as much harm as good. History is a march toward man’s self-realization; society, whatever the evils produced by any given society may be, is the condition for man’s self-creation and unfolding. The “good society” becomes identical society of good men, that is, of fully developed, sane, and productive individuals. When it comes to psychologist, they even study the theory of theories and are provided at least with a modest ability to differentiate between “good” theories and “poorer” theories, qua theories. The impact of his exposure to methods for investigation of psychological phenomena, within the context of multiple theories that overlap only partially, should fit him with a generally critical orientation toward any univocal explanation of the mysteries of the human personality. And in seminars, in publications, in case conferences it is typically the psychologist, not the social worker or psychiatrist, who is dubious that an orthodox psychoanalytic formulation either truly accounts for the observed pathology or necessarily points to the optimal treatment. This is a generalization about psychologists as students of behaviour theory and personality. It must be recognized that there are some graduate departments of psychology in which the training of the clinical psychologist is as theoretically biased, id est, psychoanalytically oriented, as is that of the average psychiatrist or social worker. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Contrary to what the manipulator wants you to think, you are not the problem. You might be their problem as you will not conform to what they want you to, but you are not the problem. However, it is hard to deal with abusers and other types of manipulators because they are masters at blame-shifting. Somehow, in any argument, they are adamantly more capable of convincing victims that they are at fault, than victims are at realizing they are the victims of the entire debacle. Victim blaming is a manipulative tactic used by abusers to convince themselves and their victims that the problems lie with the other person, not with them. The ploy is very clever and effective. Beware of the tendency to play the game of “Find the bad guy,” in your intimate relationships. It is never healthy to use someone as a scapegoat for your problems. If you are in a relationship with someone needs to make you the “bad guy,” then be aware of what is going on and do not allow yourself to accept that mantle. The best way to understand victim blaming is to realize that two concepts are at play: Projection and judgmentalism. Projection occurs when one person displaces his or her own characteristics onto another person. An abusive person will “project” his or her own attributes on to the other person, particularly in a conflict. The main reason victims get in fights or arguments with abusers is because the abusers cause the problem in the first place by saying or doing something that engenders a negative emotional reaction in another person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
The abuser may be rude, hurtful, hostile, or act in some other relationship-destroying manner. It takes superhuman strength to keep from being triggered by the anger-provoking tactics of an abusive or manipulative person. Once you have been triggered by the abuser, you may make one small mistake in speaking, or you may even commit the heinous crime of yelling back and defending yourself! Heavens forbid you have a reaction to a hostile instigation! And once you do react supposedly inappropriately you have just given the abuser a gift. He can now capitalize on your reaction and use it as the evidence that the problem resides with you. Therefore, do not take the bait. The abuser is trying to flip the script. Reminder yourself that you do not need to defend yourself because you did not do anything wrong. The other concept, along with projection, that your abuser is using is judgmentalism. When people use judgmentalism as a strategy, they are trying to make you a subordinate. Abusers are incapable of healthy human connections. They suffer from attachment issues, and true to form, they must sabotage any semblance of healthy attachment. This is why the term “interpersonal violence” is sued to describe domestic violence. It is abuse of an interpersonal relationship. Victim blaming keeps the abuser emotionally safe by projecting his interpersonal problems on to the other person, preventing insight and potential growth (not to mention resolution of the problem at hand.) It also helps the abuser feel personally superior and smug as he believes that it is his role to judge the victim. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
Ideas influence their thinker himself; thoughts react on their generator if they are intensely held, deeply felt, and frequently born. Thus they help to form tendencies and shape character. The aspirant can take advantage of this truth. His moral thought and metaphysical ideation will be so deep and earnest that they will converge upon his emotional feeling, when that has been sufficiently purified, and coalesce with it. Thus they become part of his inner being. If he is to realize his higher purpose in life, each aspirant has to struggle with the demon inside himself. Nature seeks to achieve its own ends, which renders it indifferent to all personal ends. It considers no man’s feelings but only his level of development, that he might be raised to a higher one. The only greatness he may rightfully seek is a secret one. It is not power over others that he should strive for, but power over himself. He will have to grow into this higher consciousness. No other way exists for him. He has not only to be brave enough to accept the aloneness that comes with every serious advance in the quest, but also strong enough to endure it. If it is wrong in ethical theory, how can anything be right in Worldly practice? The value of such study is immense. It involves a re-education of the whole mind of man. It strikes at the root of his ethical ignorance and destroys the selfishness and greed which are its malignant growths. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Mentally, man can do what no animal can do. He can consider conduct from a purely ethical standpoint; he can struggle at heart between right and wrong, self and selflessness. Every man betrays himself for what he is. He can hide his thoughts and dissemble his feelings, but he cannot hide his face. Therein are letters and words which tell plainly what sort of a man he really is. However, few there be who can read in this strange language. Character can be changed. As if by magic, he who habitually contemplates such exalted themes finds in time that his whole outlook is altered and expanded. The new outlook will gradually strongly establish itself within him. As a man thinks in his hear so is he. As is one’s thoughts, so one becomes; this is the eternal secret. What is to be done where a weakness becomes abnormally strong, overpowering the will and forcing him to do what his better nature rejects? The cure in the end must be based on his willingness to regard it as something not really part of himself, something alien and parasitic. If there is to be any way out toward freedom from it, he must stop identifying himself with the weakness. The key to right conduct is to refuse to identify himself with the lower nature. The hypnotic illusion that it is really himself must be broken: the way to break it is to deny every suggestion that comes from it, to use the will in resisting it, to use the imagination in projecting it as something alien and outside, to use the feelings in aspiration towards the true self, and the mind in learning to understand what it is. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
The Sacramento firefighters like going to work, and there are few jobs at any level of pay about which this can be said with such certainty. They have to learn building laws, and the different types of building construction—frame, brick, steel, and the old cast-irons. Firefighters learn about the different kinds of windows—regular windows, casement windows, and the nonopening ones in skyscrapers—and the different locks people use to secure themselves from the harsh realities of the outside World—standard bolt locks, digital locks, police locks that lock on either side of the door, and fox locks, which have bars going down into the floor life flying buttresses. They have to learn the multitudinous knots used for moving equipment and people, and a whole communications system, the signals and alarms, the differences between “ten-four” and “ten-twenty-two.” They studied water hydraulics, the laws that govern the movement of water rushing through a two-and-a-half-inch hose and coming out of a one-inch nozzle. Outdoors, they learned about tools, everything from how to swing an ax to how to pull a hook and how to use your weight on a battering ram. They learned about the motorized tools, the power saw, the pneumatic tools and jacks used in collapse situations. Then there was the practical work of fighting the fire itself in controlled situations, where firefighters had to crawl into a room and pull out an inanimate 150-pound synthetic human being and carry it down six flights of stairs after taking a beating from the smoke. Later in the afternoon they had to carry ladders from one side of the street to the other. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
On one call, there was a fire on the third floor of a tenement building, going really goodly. It had evidently been cooking for a long time, because by the time the fire department got there the fire fully involved this apartment of five or six rooms. There was this long hallway, and the firefighters ran in crouching positions into the fire with an inch-and-a-half hose. They got to the end of the hallways, one of the firefighters opened up the hose and led the way into the room there. Immediately, a large part of the ceiling came down on one of them, knocking his helmet off. Embers went down his neck and back, and he was burned pretty severely. So, with the nozzle still in his hand, he shut it off, made a complete U-turn, and started back out of the room. When he got out into the hall, the embers had died out, and he had a lifetime three-inch burn down his neck from hairline to shoulder blade. The interesting thing is, he hardly mind getting hurt in the fire. A gash on his arm that took twelve stitches, a burn on his neck, a broken wrist, to him it was just a badge of courage that reinforced the things he believed about firefighting and reinforced his confidence in himself to do a tough, challenging, and dangerous job. Once this firefighter got hurt pulling a hose over a barbed wire fence. He had to tug so hard that he pulled a ganglion, or nerve center, in his back. It was one of the most painful things that he ever experienced. It was difficult to treat. He had to lie on his stomach in bed for three months, doing everything in that position, eating, reading, writing notes, watching television. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Finally a doctor shot a whole bunch of cortisone into his back, which completely relived the pain, and finally he was able to go back to work. The cortisone never disappeared, though, and still moves around. He still feels the pain from time to time, especially when he is tired. There is an overriding awareness of the possibility of getting badly hurt, because they see it around them all the time. Firefighters see people getting disabled permanently, and they learn not to take even the smallest fire for granted. Be sure to open your hearts to the Sacramento Fire Department and let them know the community is thankful by making a donation. Also, assembly member Kevin McCarty is running for mayor of Sacramento, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department, and two of his goals are creating more affordable housing and getting homeless people into homes. A vote for McCarty is a way of showing support for the City of Sacramento and the Sacramento Fire Department. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Be wise not only in words, but in deeds; mere knowledge is not the goal, but action. Know the God of your fathers, and serve Him by your deeds. Let not your wisdom exceed your deeds, least you be like a tree with many branches but few roots. If the thoughts of your heart be pure, it is likely that so will be the words of your hand. Accustom yourself to do good; before long it will become your chief delight. One good deed leads to another, as every evil deed leads to more wrong-doing. If others do good through you, their deeds will be accounted to you as your own. #RanolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
A caretaker was hire to work at The Winchester Mystery House. Although she had never been to the mansion before, she was recruited for her skills in architecture and historical preservation. As she entered the library and explained that the beautiful ask paneling had been taken from trees that once surrounded the estate, she became restless. She knew very well that it was the kind of feeling that forewarned her of some sort of psychic event. As she was looking over toward a fireplace, farmed by two candelabra, she suddenly saw a very tall, white-haired man in a long black frock coat standing next to it. One elbow rested on the mantel, and his head was in his hand, as if he were pondering something very important. The caretaker was not at all emotionally involved with the house. In fact, the guided tour bored her, and she would have preferred to be outside in the stables, since she had a great interest in horses and nature. Her imagination did not conjure up what she saw: she knew in an instant that she was looking at the spirit of William Wirt Winchester. Because of the restless feelings that came over her while working in the mansion almost induced her to go into a trance several times, she decided to quit her job in a hurry.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Divine at the Center but Slightly Devilish at the Circumference
If it requires great and constant effort to model his character will not interest man, but to the quester it is an obligation. And this is so without his having to believe in all the windy rhetoric about the perfectibility of man. The reformation and even transformation of character is as much a sector of philosophy as the practice of concentration and the study of mind. The virtue which develops from disciplining thoughts and controlling self removes obstacles and gives power to truth’s pursuit. The ethical ideals of philosophy are lofty but nobody is asked or expected to jump to their realization, only to understand their direction; the ret of this inner work must develop at its own pace according to hi individual possibilities. Is it entirely useless to point out an ethical height to which very few can soar? No—the usefulness lies in the sense of right direction which it gives, in the inspiring love of truth and hope of self-betterment which it arouses. If we persist in holding it before us in aspiration, however unrealizable the ideal may be in all its perfection, we shall certainly approach it more closely in action. And the effort will give us more faith in life, make us more sensitive to its finer rhythms. If the lower self disturbs you, silence it by invoking it intellectually through declarations of spiritual truth and emotionally through genuflection in humble prayer. Do not accept the suggestion which drags you down, but instead seek for the pressure which lifts you up. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
To the extent that he purifies and ennobles himself, he qualifies himself for the reception of superior insight. If the aspirant will take care to fill his mind with thoughts that are always elevating, always beneficial, and always constructive; if he will be vigilant to keep out all thoughts that are degrading and destructive, this simple technique will keep his mind so continuously filled with the right kind of thought and feeling that he will unconsciously and little by little completely overcome the wrong kind. Thus his character will change and approach his ideals. As if man were nothing else but a divine being, we must not talk about this as the mystics do. We are philosophical students and should not be so one sided. We must tell men the whole and not a half-truth, which means we must tell them that they are a mixed lot, divine at the center but slightly devilish at the circumference; altruistic in their potential nature but somewhat selfish in their actual one. Everything that strengthens his better nature is useful and acceptable. Everything that weakens it is not. So difficult is true self-mastery that nothing in the World’s literature about it can overrate the accomplishment. When the beast in man will bow in homage before the intelligence in man, when the ideal of perfected being set up for him by the serene figure of the Sphinx shall be recognized, accepted, and striven for, then indeed will he become a conscious collaborator with the universal Mind. Whoever knows how ad where to look can find in himself the assurance of this ultimate victory. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There should be no space in his mind for negative thoughts, no time in his heart for base feelings. It is not enough to repress a negative trait like jealousy or self-pity. One must also replace it by a positive trait. His spiritual progress will be measured not so much by his meditational progress as by his moral awakening. Not merely when he can understand it intellectually, but also when he can accept it emotionally, the truth will become truth for him, and still more when he can incorporate it into his behaviour patterns. He must look within himself for the impurities and falsities, the malice and envy, the prejudice and bitterness which belong to his lower nature. And he must work with all his willpower and thinking power to cast them out. He must walk towards the highest with every part of his being, with his whole psyche matured and balanced. He must not only seek to intuit what is real, but also to will what is good. It is when men come face-to-face with a real crisis, a real temptation, or a real hardship that they show their real character, not only their self-imagined or publicly reputed one. It must be remembered always that mere intellectual study is not so essential as the building of worthwhile character, which is far more important in preparing for the great battle with the ego. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The tendency to install technical progress as the highest value is linked up not only with our overemphasis on intellect but, most importantly, with a deep emotional attraction to the mechanical, to all that is not alive, to all that is man-made. This attraction to the non-alive, which is in its more extreme form an attraction to death and decay (necrophilia), leads even in its less drastic form to indifference toward life instead of “reverence for life.” Those who are attracted to the non-alive are the people who prefer “law and order” to living structure, bureaucratic to spontaneous methods, gadgets to living beings, repetition to originality, neatness to exuberance, hoarding to spending. They want to control life because they are afraid of its uncontrollable spontaneity; they would rather kill it than to expose themselves to it and merge with the World around them. They often gamble with death because they are not rooted in life; their courage is the courage to die and the symbol of their ultimate courage is the Russian roulette. The rate of our automobile accidents and preparation for thermonuclear war are a testimony to this readiness to gamble with death. And who would not eventually prefer this exciting gamble to the boring unaliveness of the organization man? One symptom of the attraction of the merely mechanical is the growing popularity, among some scientists and the public, of the idea that it will be possible to construct computers which are no different from man in thinking, feeling, or any other aspect of functioning. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
It is possible to manufacture computers synthetically which are completely undistinguishable from human beings produced in the usual manner. There is no reason to suppose machines have any limitations not shared by man. The main problems, it seems to me, is not whether such a computer-man can be constructed; it is rather why the idea is becoming so popular in a historical period when nothing seems to be more rational, harmonious, and peace-loving being. One cannot help being suspicious that often the attraction of the computer-man idea is the expression of a flight from life and from humane experience into the mechanical and purely cerebral. When the majority of men are like robots, then indeed there will be no problem in building robots who are like men. The idea of the manlike computer is a good example of the alternative between the human and the inhuman machines. The computer can sever the enhancement of life in many respects. However, the idea that it replaces man and life is the manifestation of the pathology of today. The fascination with the merely mechanical is supplemented by an increasing popularity of conceptions that stress the animal nature of man and the instinctive roots of his emotions or actions. Dr. Freud’s was such an instinctive psychology; but the importance of his concept of libido is secondary in comparison with his fundamental discovery of the unconscious process in waking life or in sleep. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Many experts stress instinctual animal heredity, and have not offered any new or valuable insights into the specific human problem as Dr. Freud has done; they satisfy the wish of many to look at themselves as determined by instincts and thus to camouflage their true bothersome human problems. The dream of many people seems to be to combine the emotions of a primate with a computerlike brain. If this dream could be fulfilled, the problem of human freedom and of responsibility would seem to disappear. Man’s feelings would be determined by his instincts, his reason by the computer; man would not have to give an answer to the question his existence asks him. Whether one like the dream or not, its realization is impossible; the naked ape with the computer brain would cease to be human, or rather “he” would not be. Among the technological society’s pathogenic effects upon man, two more must be mentioned: the disappearance of privacy and of personal human contact. “Privacy” is a complex concept. It was and is a privilege of the middle and upper classes, since its very basis, private space, is costly. This privilege, however, can become a common good with other economic privileges. Aside from this economic factor, it was also based on a hoarding tendency in which my private life was mine and nobody else’s, as was my house and any other property. It was also a concomitant of cant, of the discrepancy between moral appearances and reality. Yet when all these qualifications are made, privacy still seems to be an important condition. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
First of all, because privacy is necessary to collect oneself and to free oneself from the constant “noise” of people’s chatter and intrusion, which interferes with one’s own mental processes. If all private data are transformed into public data, experiences will tend to become more shallow and more alike. People will be afraid to feel the “wrong thing”; they will become more accessible to psychological manipulation which, through psychological testing, tries to establish norms for “desirable,” “normal,” “healthy” attitudes. Considering that these tests are applied in order to help the companies and government agencies to find the people with the “best” attitudes, the use of psychological tests, which is by now an almost general condition for getting a good job, constitutes a severe infringement on the citizen’s freedom. Unfortunately, a large number of psychologists devote whatever knowledge of man they have to this manipulation in the interest of what the big organization considers efficiency. Thus, psychologists become an important part of the industrial and governmental system while claiming that their activities serve the optimal development of man. This claim is based on the rationalization that what is best for the corporation is best for man. It is important that the managers understand that much of what they get from psychological testing is based on the very limited picture of man which, in fact, management requirements have transmitted to the psychologists, who in turn give it back to management, allegedly as a rest of an independent study of man. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It hardly needs to be said that the intrusion of privacy may lead to a control of the individual which is more total and could be more devastating that what totalitarian states have demonstrated thus far. It is of vital importance to distinguish between a psychology that understands and aims at the well-being of man and a psychology that studies man as an object, with the aim of making him more useful for the technological society. There are factors that make it easy for a person to see his peculiarities in the course of his relationship with the analyst than in his association with others. His disturbing character traits—his diffidence, dependency, arrogance, vindictiveness, his tendencies to withdraw and freeze up at the slightest hurts, or whatever they may be—are always contrary to his best self-interests, not only because they render his associations with others less satisfactory but also because they make him dissatisfied with himself. This fact is often blurred, however, in his customary relations with others. He feels that he will gain something by staying dependent, by taking revenge, by triumphing over others, and therefore he is less willing to recognize what he is doing. The same traits displayed in analysis work so blatantly against his self-interest that he can scarcely fail to see their injurious character, and hence the urge to blindfold himself against them is considerably lessened. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
However, while it is not easy it is entirely within the range of possibility for a person to overcome the emotional difficulties involved in studying his behaviour toward others. Our past case study of Clare, we analyzed the intricate problem of her morbid dependency by scrutinizing her relation with her lover. And she succeeded in spite of the fact that both the difficulties mentioned above were present to a high degree: the disturbances in the personality of her lover were at least as great as her own; and certainly she had a vital interest, from the viewpoint of her neurotic expectations and fears, not to recognize that her “love” was actually a need for dependency. The other aspect of the relationship with the analyst is the explicit and implicit human help he extended to the patient. Whereas the other assistance he gives is replaceable to a greater or lesser extent, the merely human help is, by definition, entirely lacking in self-analysis. If the person who is working by himself is fortunate enough to have an understanding friend with whom he can discuss his findings, of if he can check up on them with an analyst from time to time, he will feel less alone in his work. However, neither expedient could wholly substitute for all the intangible values of working out his problems in close co-operation with another human being. The absence of this help is one of the factors that makes self-analysis the harder road. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
There is a great deal of concern today with the problem of values. Youth, in almost every country, is deeply uncertain of its value orientation; the values associated with various religions have lost much of their influence; sophisticated individuals in every culture seem unsure and troubled as to the goals they hold in esteem. The reasons are not far to seek. The World culture, in all its aspects, seems increasingly scientific and relativistic, and the rigid, absolute views on values which come to us from the past appear anachronistic. Even more important perhaps, is the fact that the modern individual is assailed from every angle by divergent and contradictory values claims. It is no longer possible, as it was in the not too distant historical past, to settle comfortably into the value system of one’s forebears or one’s community and live out one’s life without ever examining the nature and the assumptions of that system. In this situation it is not surprising that value orientations from the past appear to be in a state of disintegration or collapse. Men question whether there are, or can be, any universal values. It is often felt that we may have lost, in our modern World, all possibility of any general or cross-cultural basis for values. One natural result of this uncertainty and confusion is that there is an increasing concern about, interest in, and a searching for, a sound or meaningful value approach which can hold its own in today’s World. I share this general concern. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
I have also experienced the more specific value issues which arise in my own field, psychotherapy. The client’s feelings and convictions about values frequently change during therapy. How can he or we know whether they have changed in a sound direction? Or does he simply, as some claim, take over the value system of his therapist? Is psychotherapy simply a device whereby the unacknowledged and unexamined values of the therapist are unknowingly transmitted to an unsuspecting client? Or should this transmission of values be the therapist’s openly held purpose? Should he become the modern priest, upholding and imparting a value system suitable for today? And what would such a value system be? There has been much discussion of such issues, ranging from thoughtful and empirically based presentations such as that of D. D. Glad, to more polemic statements. As is so often true, the general problem faced by the culture is painfully and specifically evident in the cultural microcosm which is called the therapeutic relationship. I have observed changes in the approach to values as the individual grows from infancy to adulthood. If he is fortunate, I have observed further changes when he continues to grow toward true psychological maturity. Many of these observations grow out of my experience as a therapist, where I have had the rich opportunity of seeing the way in which individuals move toward a richer life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
From these observations, I believe I see some directional threads emerging which might offer a new concept of the valuing process, more tenable in the modern World. I have made a beginning by presenting some of these ideas partially in previous writings; I am speaking from my experience of the functioning human being, as I have lived with him in the intimate experience of therapy, and in other situations of growth, change, and development. A decisive step from primitive to civilized history lies in the rebellion of sons against the father, and the murder of the hated father. The sons then create a system of society based on a covenant which excludes further murder among the rivals and provides for the establishment of morality. The evolution of the child follows a similar path. The little boy at the age of five or six is intensely jealous of his father and represses murderous wishes against him only under the pressure of the castration threat. In order to liberate himself from continuous fear, he internalizes the incest taboo, and builds the nucleus around which his “conscience” is to grow (superego). Later on, the prohibitions and commands voided by other authorities and by society are added to the original taboos voiced by father. History is determined in its course by continuous contradictions. The productive forces grow and thus conflict with the older economic, social, and political forms. This conflict (for instance, between the steam engine and the previous social organization of manufacturing) leads to social and economic changes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
The new stability, however, again is challenged by further development of the productive forces (for instance, from the steam engine to the use of gasoline, electricity, atomic energy), leading to new social forms which correspond better to the new productive forces. Together with the conflict between productive forces and sociopolitical structures goes the conflict between social classes. The feudal class based on older forms of production is in conflict with the new middle class of small manufacturers and businessmen; this middle class finds itself fighting, at some later point, against the working class as well as the leaders of big monopolistic enterprises which tend to strangle the earlies and smaller forms of enterprise. In the beginning of history, man is completely dependent on nature. In the process of evolution, he makes himself more and more independent of nature, begins to rule and transform nature in the process of work, and in transforming nature man transforms himself. Man’s dependence on nature limits his freedom and his capacity for thought; he is in many ways like a child. He slowly grows up, and only when he has fully mastered nature and thus become an independent being can he develop all his intellectual and emotional faculties. A socialist society is the one in which the grownup man begins to unfold all his powers. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The monolithic orientation of social work schools, and the particular use of psychiatrists or analysts to instruct in personality theory, has contributed to a generally stable entente cordiale between social workers and psychiatrists. Certainly the resulting facilitation of communication and coordination is apparently in the best interests of the patient. However, like the peace pacts between nations which successful avert war, there is no correlated impetus to make discoveries or achieve maximal efforts. At least one voice has expressed concern for the impact of this indoctrination on the specific contribution of the social worker: “Social problems are social problems, and you cannot psychoanalyze them out of existence. Psychiatric social service…is indispensable. However, psychiatric social service is increasingly becoming psychoanalytic social service, and more and more even the ‘social’ is being left out until only psychoanalytic service remains. That does not help people with real social family problems.” The psychologist in his formal training is exposed to a variety of truly psychological conceptualizations of the human mind, personality, and behaviour. He studies theories of learning, of perception, of motivation, of communication, of decision making, and so on. He studies scientifically accumulated information (as contrasted with retrospective clinical formulations based upon the pathology of adults) as to how the social, conceptual, and emotional equipment and behaviour dispositions of the human organism unfold, develop, integrate, and disintegrate from earliest infancy through adulthood to senility. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
We are bombarded with all sorts of persuasion daily. It is coming at us from all sides. The Internet, radio, television, your computer, your mobile phone, the people around you, it is all too much! In this day and age, we have much more persuasive action coming at us than ever before. That is because there are not only more ways to persuade people, but there are more things to persuade them about. The in-you-face persuasion is not so bad. You can take it or leave it, and at least you know what is happening. It is the dark persuasive tactics that you might not even be aware of that matter. First things first, your fundamental rights as a human being. This might seem like a thing that is understood by most people, but that is not always the case. So, we are going to go over what is unequivocally yours. Knowing what your rights are, gives you that line you can let people know you will not allow being crossed. We have to have lines—all of us do. As children, we learned to test our boundaries. If our parents had little to no boundaries, then we learned little until we became school age. Our peers and teachers would then set the boundaries our parents did not. Society will always let you know how far you can and cannot go. So, letting people know that you know what the socially accepted boundaries are is essential in your role as a citizen of the World. Another thing that needs to be pointed out about your rights is the fact that you do not have to answer questions anyone asks you about why you feel you have these rights. You have them, end of subject. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
If someone feels they have to ask you about your rights, they are only trying to get into your head to make you believe you do not actually have the right you are trying to uphold. Let us talk about your right to life. Not only do you have this right, but you have got the right to live your life in a way that is healthy and happy. If someone is infringing your life that is causing you to be or feel unhealth or unhappy, you have the unquestionable right to get away from them or make them get away from you—by force if necessary. What about respect? Do you have the right to be treated with respect by everyone? You are do. You should be treated with respect by anyone you first encounter. That is until you do something to lose that respect. The thing is that everyone is given respect in the first place. It is up to you if you can maintain that respect or not. And sometimes, you have got to try to earn it, once it has been lost. You also have the right to protect yourself from things that threaten to harm you in physical, mental, and emotional ways. This means that is a person is about to punch you in the face, you do not have to stand there and take it. You have got many possibilities for your recourse. You can hit back. You could dodge the punch. Or you can simply walk away—or run if you feel that threatened. And you can seek help if you feel like you cannot face a threat on your own. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
Physical violence is easy to see how you have got the right to get away from a person who is threatening to harm you in that way. However, what about emotional and mental harm? Of course, you have the right to get away from anyone who is threatening or actually harming you in those ways. Again, you can do this on your own, or you might need help. Ask for help if you need it and stay away from the person who tried to or did cause you harm in any of these aspects. The things you want, the things you have opinions about, and how you feel are also rights that you have. Regardless if anyone else agrees with your or not, you also have the right to have all of these things. Your opinion might be yours alone. Others might have conflicting opinions. Just as you have a right to your opinion, they have the right to theirs as well. You also have a right to make your own priorities. What matters to you the most might not matter to someone else as much or at all. If someone thinks your priorities are not in line with what they want, that makes no difference. You need to believe in your priorities and stand by them. Do not allow anyone to influence what matters the most to you. A case in point for this is that your boss thinks you should focus more on your job instead of your family. He wants you to change your priorities. You know better than that now, do you not? It is your right to have your own priorities; no one can make you change them. Again, if you need help getting someone in authority over you to understand and accept this about you, then get the help you need to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
If you pay for something, do you feel that you have the right to have it? You sure do what that right. If you pay for gas before going back outside to pump it and there is no gas left to give you, you expect to get your money back, do you not? And if they refuse to give your money back, you know there are things you can do to get it back. And we are not talking about getting violent here. There are authorities to help you get what you paid for. If you need it, use that help. And here is a right that many of us do not know that we have. We all have the right to say no. That is all. We also have the right not to feel even an ounce of guilt for saying, no. Not even an ounce! That is right. You can say no, and you do not have to say another word after that. You do not have to explain a thing. As a matter of fact, if you want to shut the person bothering you up, simply tell that that it is your right to say no and you are exercising it. Smile, be happy about it. You said, no. And you do not feel bad about doing it either. When a negative reaction impulsively shows itself before you have been able to prevent it, make as your second thought a deliberate replacement or substitution of it, by the opposed beneficial one. For instance, a reaction of envy at someone’s good fortune should be substituted by the thought of appreciation of the good qualities or services which may have led it. When emotion is no longer able to cloud reason, when intellect is no longer able to dry up the feeling of conscience, a better judgment of affairs and a clearer perception of truth becomes possible. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
It takes a dedicated, committed, and courageous person to enter the blind, boiling darkness of a building on fire, to crawl through poisonous smoke, to confront the threat of the flames. The economic benefits of being a firefighter are not really great. The time off is fairly decent. Work schedules vary widely from place to place, but generally speaking firefighters have more time off in a consecutive way than most people. At the same time, many of them work forty-eight and sixty hours a week. When you go to work, you know you are going to sit in the firehouse kitchen with people who are interesting, funny, and worthy of your attention. Another benefit of being a firefighter is your sense of self-worth. You go out on a job, you eat some soke, you take a little heat, and you get the great satisfaction of confronting the flames and defeating them. You know you are doing a good job, and that is a very valuable benefit. There is not much money for the paid firefighters. Only the bosses get paid well. The fire commissioner of Sacramento gets paid more than many mayors. However, the ordinary firefighter is almost always paid less than a schoolteacher, generally on a parity with police officers—and he works more hours. The trouble is that seldom their time off is in sync with the rest of the World. When their kids are starring in the school play, they are working. If there is a rare family reunion at Thanksgiving, they are working. And when you should be celebrating the baby’s first Christmas, they are working. That is a minus. And that is the breaks. Please be sure to show love to the Sacramento Fire Department and make a donation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Witchcraft is treated as a curious by-lane of history, a superstition long since dead, having no existence among, nor bearing upon, the affairs of the present day. It is a field of folk-lore, where one may gather strange flower and noxious weeds. Again, we often recognize the romantic treatment of Witchcraft. ‘Tis the Eve of S. George, a dark wild night, the pale moon can but struggle thinly through the thick massing clouds. The witches are abroad, and hurtle swiftly aloft, a hideous covey, borne headlong on the skirling blast. In delirious tones they are yelling foul mysterious words as they go: “Har! Har! Har! Altri! Altri!” To some peak of the Broken or lonely Cevennes they haste, to the orgies of the Sabbat, the infernal Sacraments, the dance of Acheron, the sweet and fearful fantasy of evil, “Vers les stupres impurs et lest baisers immondes.” Hell seems to vomit its foulest dregs upon the shrinking Earth’ a loathsome shape of obscene horror squats huge and monstrous upon the ebon throne; the stifling air reeks with filth and blasphemy; faster and faster whirls the witches’ lewd lavolta; shriller and shriller the cornemuse screams; and then a wan gray light flickers in the Eastern sky; a moment more and there sounds the loud clarion of some village chantieleer; swift as thought the vile phantasmagoria vanishes and is sped, all is quite and still in the peaceful dawn.
However, both the antiquarian and romanticist reviews of Witchcraft may be deemed negligible and impertinent so far as the present research is concerned, however entertaining and picturesque such treatment proves to many readers affording not a few pleasant hours, whence they are able to draw highly dramatic and brilliantly coloured pictures of old time sorceries, not to be taken too seriously, for these things never were and never could have been. The rationalist historian and the sceptic, when inevitably confronted with the subject of Witchcraft, chose a charmingly easy way to deal with these intensely complex and intricate problems, a flat denial of all statements which did not fit, or could not by some means be squared with, their own narrow prejudice. What matter the most irrefragable evidence, which in the instance of any other accusation would unhesitatingly have been regarded as final. What matter the logical and reasoned belief of centuries, of the most cultured peoples, the highest intelligences of Europe? Any appeal to authority—save his own. Such thing could not be. We must argue from that axion, and therefore anything which is impossible to explain away by hallucination, or hysteria, or auto-suggestion, or any other vague catch-word which may chance to be fashionable at the moment, must be uncompromisingly rejected, and a note of superior pity, to candy the so suave yet crushingly decisive judgment, has proved of great service upon more occasion than one.
Why examine the evidence? It is really useless and a waste of time, because we know that the allegations are all idle and ridiculous; the “facts” sworn to by innumerable witnesses, which are repeated in changeless detail century after century in every country, in every town, simply did not take place. How so absolute and entire falsity of these facts can be demonstrated the sceptic omits to inform us, but we must unquestioningly accept his infallible authority in the face of reason, evidence, and truth. Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
I Could Use Some Peace and Quiet in My Life
It is only through free, independent, truth-seeking research that there is any hope of success in this Quest for ultimate truth. Naturally, each vested interest tries to limit the search to its own fold for obvious reasons, but he should refuse to limit his studies to any single school. By remaining open to truths from different sources, and fitting them together like mosaics, we get eventually some sort of a pattern. The technetronic society may be the system of the future, but it is not yet here; it can develop from what is already here, and it probably will, unless a sufficient number of people see the danger and redirect our course. In order to do so, it is necessary to understand in greater detail the operation of the present technological system and the effect it has on man. What are the guiding principles of this system as it is today? It is programed by two principles that direct the efforts and thoughts of everyone working in it: Th first principle is the maxim that something ought to bedone because it is technically possible to do it. If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built even if they might destroy us all. If it is possible to travel to another galaxy, it must be done, even if at the expense of many unfulfilled needs here on Earth. This principle means the negation of all values which the humanist tradition has developed. This tradition said that something should be done because it is needed for man, for his growth, joy and reason, because it is beautiful, good, or true. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Once the principle is accepted that something ought to be done because it is technically possible to do it, all other values are dethroned, and technological development becomes the foundation of ethics. The, feasibility, which is a strategic concept, becomes elevated into a normative concept, with the result that whatever technological reality indicates we can do is taken as implying we must do it. The second principle is that of maximal efficiency leads as a consequence to the requirement of minimal individuality. If individuals are cut down to purely quantifiable units whose personalities can be expressed on punched cards, the social machine works more efficiently, so it is believed. These units can be administered more easily by bureaucratic rules because they do not make trouble or creation friction. In order to reach this result, men must be de-individualized and taught to find their identity in the corporation rather than in themselves. The question of economic efficiency requires careful thought. The issue of being economically efficient, that is to say, using the smallest possible amount of resources to obtain maximal effect, should be placed in a historical and evolutionary context. The question is obviously more important in a society where real material scarcity is the prime fact of life, and its importance diminishes as the productive powers of a society advance. An ideal helps to hold a man back from his weakness, a standard gives him indirectly a kind of support as well as, directly, guidance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
A second line of investigation should be a full consideration of the fact that efficiency is only a known element in already existing activities. Since we do not know much about the efficiency or inefficiency of untired approaches, one must be careful in pleading for things as they are on the grounds of efficiency. Furthermore, one must be very careful to think through and specify the area and time period being examined. If the time and scope of the discussion are broadened, what may appear efficient by a narrow definition can be highly inefficient. In economics there is increasing awareness of what are called “neighbourhood effects”; that is, effects that go beyond the immediate activity and are often neglected in considering benefits and costs. One example would be evaluating the efficiency of a particular industrial project only in terms of the immediate effects on this enterprise—forgetting, for instance, that waste materials deposited in nearby streams and the air represent a costly and a serious inefficiency with regard to the community. We need to clearly develop standards of efficiency that take account of time and society’s interest as a whole. Eventually, the human element needs to be taken into account as a basic factor in the system whose efficiency we ty to examine. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Dehumanization in the name of efficiency is an all-too-common occurrence; exempli gratia, giant telephone systems employing Brave New World techniques of recording operators’ contacts with customers and asking customers to evaluate workers’ performance and attitudes, etcetera—all aimed at instilling “proper” employee attitude, standardizing services, and increasing efficiency. From the narrow perspective of immediate company purposes, this may yield docile, manageable workers, and thus enhance company efficiency. In terms of the employees, as human beings, the effect is to engender feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and frustration, which may lead to either indifference or hostility. In broader terms, even efficiency may not be served, since the company and society at large doubtless pay a heavy price for these practices. Another general practice in organizing work is to constantly remove elements of creativity (involving an element of risk or uncertainty) and group work by dividing and subdividing tasks to the point where no judgment or interpersonal contact remains or is required. Workers and technicians are by no means insensitive to this process. Their frustration is often perceptive and articulate, and comments such as “We are human” and “The work is not fit for human beings” are not uncommon. Again, efficiency in a narrow sense can be demoralizing and costly in any individual and social terms. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
If we are only concerned with input-output figures, a system may give the impression of efficiency. If we take into account what the given methods do to the human being in the system, we may discover that they are bored, anxious, depressed, tense, etcetera. The result would be a twofold one: (1) Their imagination would be hobbled by their psychic pathology, they would be uncreative, their thinking would be routinized and bureaucratic, and hence they would not come up with new ideas and solutions which would contribute to a more productive development of the system; altogether, their energy would be considerably lowered. (2) They would suffer from many physical ills, which are the result of stress and tension; this loss in health is also a loss for the system. Furthermore, if one examines what this tension and anxiety do to them in their relationship to their wives and children, and in the functioning as responsible citizens, it may turn out that for the system as a whole the seemingly efficient method is most inefficient, not only in human terms but also as measured by merely economic criteria. Efficiency is desirable in any kind of purposeful activity. However, it should be examined in terms of the larger systems, of which the system under study is only a part; it should take account of the human factor within the system. Eventually efficiency as such should not be a dominant norm in any kind of enterprise. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The other aspect of the same principle, that of maximum output, formulated very simply, maintains that the more we produce of whatever we produce, the better. The success of the economy of the country is measured by its rise of a total production. So is the success of a company. Ford may lose several hundred million dollars by the failure of a costly new model, like the Edsel, but this is only a minor mishap as long as the production curve rises. The growth of the economy is visualized in terms of ever-increasing production, and there is no vision of a limit yet where production may be stabilized. The comparison between countries rests upon the same principle. China is surpassing the United States of America by accomplishing a more rapid rise in economic growth. Not only industrial production is ruled by the principle of continuous and limitless acceleration. The educational system has the same criterion: the more college graduates, the better. The same in sports: every new record is looked upon as progress. Even the attitude toward the weather seems to be determined by the same principle. It is emphasized that this “the hottest day in the decade,” or the coldest, as the case may be, and I suppose some people are comforted for the inconvenience by the proud feeling that they are witnesses to the record temperature. One could go on endlessly giving examples of the concept that constant increase of quantity constitutes the goal of our life; in fact, that it is what is meant by “progress.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Few people raise the question of quality, or what all this increase in quantity is good for. This omission is evident in a society which is not centered around man any more, in which one aspect, that of quantity, has choked all others. It is easy to see that the predominance of this principle of “the more the better” leads to an imbalance in the whole system. If all efforts are bent on doing more, the quality of living loses importance and activities that once were means become ends. If we explore this idea of a larger and larger model of systems, we may be able to see in what sense completeness represents a challenge to reason. One model that seems to be a good candidate for completeness is called an allocation model; it views the World as a system of activities that use resources to “output” usable products. The process of reasoning in this model is very simple. One searches for a central quantitative measure of system performance, which has the characteristic: the more of this quantity the better. For example, the more profit a firm makes, the better. The more qualified students a university graduates, the better. The more food we produce, the better. It will turn out that the particular choice of the measure of system performance is not critical, so long as it is a measure of general concern. We take this desirable measure of performance, and relate it to the feasible activities of the system. The activities may be the operations of various manufacturing plants, of schools and universities, of farms, and so on. Each significant activity contributes to the desirable quantity in some recognizable way. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The contribution, in fact, can often be expressed in the amount of the desirable quantity. The more sales of a certain product, the higher the profit of a firm. The more we teach, the more graduates we have. The more fertilizer we use, the more food. If the overriding economic principle is that we produce more and more, the consumer must be prepared to want—that is, to consume—more and more. Industry does not rely on the consumer’s spontaneous desires for more and more commodities. By building in obsolescence it often forces him to buy new things when the old ones could last much longer. By changes in styling of products, dresses, durable goods, and even food, it forced him psychologically to buy more than he might need or want. However, industry, in its need for increased production, does not relay on the consumer’s needs and wants but to a considerable extent on advertising, which is the most important offensive against the consumers right to know what he wants. The spending of $364 billion dollars on direct advertising in 2023 (in newspapers, magazines, Internet, radio, TV) may sound like an irrational and wasteful use of human talents, of paper, and print. However, it is not irrational in a system that believes that increasing production and hence consumption is a vital feature of our economic system, without which it would collapse. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
If we add to the cost of advertising the considerable cost for restyling of durable goods, especially cars, and of packaging, which partly is another form of whetting the consumer’s appetite, it is clear that industry is willing to pay a high price for the guarantee of the upward production and sales curve. The anxiety of industry about what might happen to our economy if our style of life changed is expressed in this brief quote by a leading investment banker: “Clothing would be purchased for its utility; food would be bought on the basis of economy and nutritional value; automobiles would be stripped to essentials and held by the same owner for 10 to 15 years of their useful lives; homes would be built and maintained for their characteristics of shelter, without regard to style or neighbourhood. And what would happen to a market dependent upon new models, new styles, new ideas? The transformations effected by this inner work seem, when stabilized, to be a natural maturity. In dealing with resistance from a patient, an analysis may assume the lead. He may be struck by a realization that despite much work done, much insight gained, nothing changes in the patient. In such cases he must desert his role as interpreter and confront the patient openly with the discrepancy between insight and change, possibly raising the question as to unconscious reservations that the patient may have which prevent him from letting any insight really touch him. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Thus far the analyst’s work is of an intellectual character: he puts his knowledge into the service of the patient. However, even if he is not aware of offering more than hi technical skill, this helps extend beyond what he can give on the basis of his specific competence. In the first place, by his very presence, he gives the patient a unique opportunity to become aware of his behaviour toward people. In other relationships the patient is likely to focus his thinking primarily on the peculiarities of others, their injustice, their selfishness, their defiance, their unfairness, their unreliability, their hostility; even if he is aware of his own reactions he is inclined to regard them as provoked by the other. In analysis, however, this particular personal complication is almost entirely absent, not only because the analyst has been analyzed, and continues to analyze himself, but also because his life is not entangled with the patient’s life. This detachment isolates the patient’s peculiarities from the befogging circumstances that ordinarily surround them. And in the second place, by his friendly interest, the analyst gives the patient a good deal of what may be called general human help. To some extent this is inseparable from the intellectual help. Thus the simple fact that the analyst wants to understand the patient implies that he takes him seriously. This in itself is an emotional support of primary importance, especially at those times when the patient is harassed by emerging fears and doubts, when his frailties are exposed, his pride attacked, his illusions undermined, for the patient is often too alienated from himself to take himself seriously. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
That statement may sound implausible, because most neurotic persons have an inordinate sense of their own importance, either in regard to their unique potentialities or in regard to their unique needs. However, to think ourselves as all important is radically different from taking ourselves seriously. The former attitude derives from an inflated image of the self; the latter refers to the real self and its development. A neurotic person often rationalizes his lack of seriousness in terms of “unselfishness” or in a contention that it is ridiculous or presumptuous to give much thought to oneself. This fundamental disinterest in the self is one of the great difficulties in self-analysis, and, conversely, one of the great advantages of professional analysis is the fact that it means working with someone who through his own attitude inspires the courage to be on friendly terms with oneself. This human support is particularly valuable when the patient is in the grip of an emerging anxiety. In such situations the analyst will rarely reassure the patient directly. However, the fact that the anxiety is tackled as a concrete problem, which can be solved eventually, lessens the terror of the unknown, regardless of the content of the interpretation. Similarly, when the patient is discouraged and inclined to give up the struggle the analyst does more for him than merely interpreting: his very attempt to understand this attitude as the outcome of a conflict is a greater support to the patient than any patting on the back or any effort to encourage him in so many words. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
There are also the times when those fictitious foundations upon which the patient has built up his pride become shaky, and he starts to doubt himself. It is good to lose harmful illusions about oneself. However, we must not forget that in all neuroses solid self-confidence is greatly impaired. Fictitious notions of superiority substitute for it. However, the patient, in the midst of struggle, cannot distinguish between the two. To him an undermining of his inflated notions means a destruction of his faith in himself. He realizes that he is not as saintly, as loving, as powerful, as independent as he had believed, and he cannot accept himself bereft of glory. At that point he needs someone who does not lose faith in him, even though his own faith is gone. The human help that the analyst gives the patient is similar to what one friend might gives to another: emotional support, encouragement, interest in his happiness. This may constitute the patient’s first experience of the possibility of human understanding, the first time that another person has bothered to see that he is not simply a spiteful, suspicious, cynical, demanding, bluffing individual, but, with a clear recognition of such trends, still likes and respects him as a striving and struggling human being. And if the analyst has proved to be a reliable friend, this good experience may help the patient also to retrieve his faith in others. There is no doubt that the observations of a trained outsider will be more accurate than our observation of ourselves, particularly so since concerning ourselves we are far from impartial. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Against this disadvantage, however, stand the fact, already discussed, that we are more familiar with ourselves than any outsider can be. If they are bent on understanding their own problems, experience gained in psychoanalytic treatment shows beyond any doubt that patients can develop an amazing faculty of keen self-observation. There are obvious differences in patterns and some of the contents of the full professional training of the psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, and social worker. If we ask what specific knowledges or skills are unique to each of them, constituting a basis on which each is able to make a contribution to the psychiatric patient that cannot be duplicated by the others, these can be best appreciated. The psychiatrist’s unique competence is his medical knowledge and training—he alone is qualified to appraise the medical-physical status of the patient (although any physician can do this as well—possibly better), and he alone is qualified to prescript and administer medical (physiochemical) treatments; no one else can do this. An additional prerogative of the psychiatrist as a physician is a legal authority (existing by virtue of long historical precedent and beginning to show signs of appropriate impress of modern concepts and techniques) to be responsible for certain administrative operations (as contrasted with clearly medical procedures), for example, to hospitalize a patient, to discharge a patient, and so on. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The long-standing authority of the physician as the final and sole authority on “insanity” or mental disease within the law is beginning to show appropriate decay. The quality of a recent brief filed by the American Psychiatric Association speaks eloquently for the inevitable erosion of the physician’s role as ultimate arbiter in this area. The clear responsibility of the hospital psychiatrist for medical care of patients has historically extended to a quasi-legal responsibility (final authority) for such psychological procedures as prescribing changes in activity programs, giving or withholding passes, allowing or disallowing visitors. However, increasingly, partly as a function of the team approach and partly as a function of administrative leadership, such decisions are becoming a group responsibility (in many instances of the responsibility of the patient’s peers) or transferred to the psychologist. The clinical psychologist’s unique contribution to the individual patient comes in his competence to select, administer, score, interpret, and integrate the results of a variety of psychological tests and examination procedures that provide the only truly standardized and reliable source of data as to the patient’s mental ability and personality. He alone is a skilled diagnostician in the sense of having facility with a set of instruments specifically designed to overcome the errors and inadequacies of notoriously fallible clinical appraisal of complex phenomena. Beyond the application of his diagnostic tools to the individual patient, the psychologist alone has a thorough knowledge of the psychometric theory underlying these instruments and, accordingly, he can truly appreciate their limitations. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Aside from this contribution to the individual patient, the psychologist’s grounding in the methodology of behavioural research, especially measurement of personality and the behavioural correlates of personality types, affords him the capacity to design instruments for appraisal of changes, specifically of changes in major dimensions of personality. Measurement of such changes, and of related criterion variables, lies at the heart of the appraisal of the effectiveness of any psychotherapeutic or other psychiatric therapy. Skill in such personality research at the molar of behavioural level (as contrasted with study of physiological functions) is another capacity unique to the clinical psychologist. The social worker has knowledge of the network of city, county, and state welfare agencies, their personnel, equipment, and services and their administrative patterns and relationships, which is not shard by others member of the psychiatric team. She is sensitive to community structure and to the ways in which that structure can naturally facilitate or impede the recovery of a patient. She is experienced in the relevance of subculture memberships for pattens of psychopathology and for accessibility or resistance to personal intervention. She is skilled in the elicitation and correlation of life history data from relatives and other informants. She is cognizant of the economic problems of various family structures. She is expert in preparation of the patient to accept and profit from such referrals. These are among the skills of the case workers in the old-fashioned sense, and they are not shared by psychiatrist of psychologist. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
A few psychiatrists have also received full graduate training in psychology, some psychologists were previously social workers, and occasionally a social worker successfully pursues the study of medicine or psychology. Each of these professionals has some unique areas in the background of general education which he brings to his graduate training and differences in the core emphasis of his specialized graduate preparation. The professions of psychiatry, clinical psychology and social work are presently providing the great bulk of formal psychotherapy in this country. However, the members of no one of these three professions are selected and trained primarily to be skilled psychotherapists. The variation in the cost of training each of these experts and the time required for this training, in light of the proportional relevance of their respective programs as preparation for the specific conduct of psychotherapy, has obvious social implications. It must be recognized that psychotherapy is neither the primary not unique skill of any one of these professions. The psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker each does possess specialized and unique competence. Can our society afford a significant reduction in the application of these unique skills in a “shotgun” effort to meet the manpower shortage resulting from the increasing demand for therapeutic conversation? #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Man is conceived as a machine, driven by a relatively constant amount of sexual energy called “libido.” This libido causes painful tension, which is reduced only by the act of physical release; to this liberation from painful tension Dr. Freud gave the name of “pleasure.” After the reduction of tension, libidinal tension increases again due to the chemistry of the body, causing a new need for tension reduction, that is, pleasureful satisfaction. This dynamism, which leads from tension to release of tension to renewed tension, from pain to pleasure to pain, Dr. Freud called the “pleasure principle.” He contrasted it with the “reality principle,” which tells man what to seek for and what to avoid in the real World in which he lives, in order to secure his survival. This reality principle often conflicts with the pleasure principle, and a certain equilibrium between the two is the condition for mental health. On the other hand, if either one of these two principles is out of balance, neurotic or psychotic manifestations are the result. I, for one, am a fan of the silent treatment. The quieter it is, the more I like it. If you have someone who does this to you, then let them shut you out. Let them remain quiet because of something you did or said made them angry with you. Relish that silence. It is so much better than their ongoing griping and ridiculing. People use silence as a tactic to get to you, to make you feel bad. They want you to miss their presence, miss their acceptance of you. Do not give them what they want. And do not let it get to you. If they keep pulling themselves away and shutting people out, it is not your loss. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
If you look at what they are doing, they are shutting everyone out, removing themselves from the World. It is really a very self-sabotaging thing to do. When you do not allow yourself to get upset by their actions and really take a look at what they are doing to themselves in a vain attempt to hurt you, you will realize that. If a man cannot find in society or surroundings that standards which suit his character, then he must find his own. It is this that makes him a quester. To some people, it might seem foolhardy to charge into the flames to rescue someone you never saw before and may never see again. It is not that the Sacramento Fire Department does not think about the danger. They are human and do not want to die, just like everyone else. However, unlike most everyone else, they do what has to be done despite their fears. Firefighters have ignored pleas from their partners and low-crawled through a blazing apartment, risking death, while desperately groping in the dense smoke for a child who was assumed dead. Another firefighter leaped into a smoke-filled elevator shaft of a burning high-rose and shinnied down a cable to a red-hot elevator in a valiant rescue attempt. While another firefighter jumped fifteen feet down into a pit of fire without a plan of escape because to do nothing meant certain death for a trapped victim. Gripping acts of heroism can happen anywhere at any time in Sacramento. Please make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive adequate resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
One night while closing The Winchester Mystery House a caregiver had accidentally dropped his mobile phone, and began to read a text message after he picked it up; after when he looked at his watch to ascertain the time. In taking his eyes from his watch, they became riveted upon the door-to-nowhere which he distinctly saw open, and also saw the figure of a female attired in grayish garments, with the head inclined downwards, and one hand pressed upon the chest as if in pain, and the other—the right hand—extended towards the ground with the index finger pointing downwards. It advanced with an apparently cautious step across the floor towards him. Immediately as it approached another caregiver, who was relaxing, its right hand extended toward her. He then rushed at it, giving at the same time a most awful yell, but, instead of grasping it, he fell upon his friend. I recollected nothing distinctly for nearly three hours afterward. However, he learned that he was carried downstairs in agony of fear and terror. The female caregiver added to the account with the detail of “sounds” being heard from an adjacent room. “His horrible shouts. He seems to have fainted in her arms. She instantly laid him down and went into the room from whence the last sound was heard. However, nothing was there and the door-to-nowhere had not been opened. Other employees came quickly to their assistance, and found the young caregiver trembling in the most acute mental agony.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Where are We Headed?
It is difficult to locate our exact position on the historical trajectory leading from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrialism to the future. It is easier to say where we are not. We are not on the way to free enterprise, but are moving rapidly away from it. We are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization. We are not on the way to the places toward which our ideological maps tell us we are moving. We are marching in an entirely different direction. Some see the direction quite clearly; among them are those who favour it and those who fear it. However, most of us look at maps which are as different from reality as was the map of the World in the year 500 B.C. It is not enough to know that our mas are false. If we are able to go in the direction we want to go, it is important to have correct maps. The most important feature of the new map is the indication that we have passed the stage of the first Industrial Revolution and have begun the period of the second Industrial Revolution. The first Industrial Revolution was characterized by the fact that man had learned to replace live energy (that of animals and men) by mechanical energy (that of steam, oil, electricity, and the atom). These new sources of energy were the basis for a fundamental change in industrial production. Related to this new industrial potential was a certain type of industrial organization, that of a great number of what we would call today small or medium-sized industrial enterprises, which were managed by their owners, which competed with each other, and which exploited their workers and fought with them about the share of the profits. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
The member of the middle and upper class was the master of his enterprise, as he was the master of his home, and he considered himself to be the master of his destiny. Ruthless exploitation of nonwhite populations went together with domestic reform, increasingly benevolent attitudes toward the poor, and eventually, in the first half of this century, the rise of the working class from abysmal poverty to a relatively comfortable life. The first Industrial Revolution is being followed by the second Industrial Revolution, the beginning of which we witness at the present time. It is characterized by the fact not only that living energy has been replaced by mechanical energy, but that human thought is being replaced by the thinking of machines. Cybernetics and automation (“cybernation”) make it possible to build machines that function much more precisely and much more quickly than the human brain for the purpose of answering important technical and organizational questions. Cybernation is creating the possibility of a new kind of economic and social organization. A relatively small number of mammoth enterprises has become the center of the economic machine and will rule it completely in the not-too-distant future. The enterprise, although legally the property of hundreds of thousands of stockholders, is managed (and for all practical purposes managed independently of the legal owners) by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. The alliance between private business and government is becoming so close that the two components of this alliance become ever less distinguishable. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
The majority of the population in America used to be well fed, well housed, and well amused, and the sector of “underdeveloped” Americans who live under substandard conditions will is increasing well into the foreseeable future. We continue to profess individualism, freedom, and faith in God, but our professions are wearing thin when compared with the reality of the organization man’s obsessional conformity guided by the principle of hedonistic materialism. If society could stand still—which it can do as little as an individual—things might not be s ominous as they are. However, we are headed in the direction of a new kind of society and a new kind of human life, of which we now see only the beginning and which is rapidly accelerating. Our individual thoughts are patterned after the ideas any given society develops, and these ideas are determined by the particular structure and mode of functioning of the society. A watchful, skeptical, doubting attitude toward all ideologies, ideas, and ideals, is characteristic for Marx. He always suspected them as veiling economic and social interests, and his skepticism was so strong that he could hardly ever use words like freedom truth, justice—precisely because of the fact that they lend themselves to so much misuse, and not because freedom, justice, truth, were not the supreme values for him. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Dr. Freud thought in the same “critical mood.” His whole psychoanalytic method could be described as “the art of doubting.” Having been impressed by certain hypnotic experiments which demonstrated to what extent a person in a trance can believe in the reality of what is obviously not real, he discovered that most of the ideas of persons, who are not in a trance also do not correspond to reality, and that on the other hand most of that which is real is not conscious. Marx thought the basic reality to be the socioeconomic structure of society, while Dr. Freud believed it to be the libidinal organization of the individual. Yet they both had the same implacable distrust of the clichés, ideas, rationalizations, and ideologies which fill people’s minds and which from the basis of what they mistake for reality. This skepticism toward “common thought” is insolubly connected with a belief in the liberating force of truth. Marx wanted to liberate man from the chains of dependency, from alienation, from slavery to the economy. What was his method? Not, as is widely believed, force. He wanted to win the minds of the majority of the people. While force, according to him, might he use if the minority were to resist b force the will of the majority, the main question for Marx was not the mechanism of how to attain power in the state, but how to win the minds of the people. In his “propaganda,” Marx and his legitimate successors used the opposite method from the one used by all other politicians, whether bourgeois, fascist, or communist. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
He wanted to influence not by demagogic persuasion, creating semi-hypnotic states supported by fear of terror, but by an appeal to the sense of reality, by truth. The assumption underlying Marx’s “weapon of truth” is the same as with Dr. Freud: that man lives with illusions because these illusions make the misery of real life bearable. If he can recognize the illusions for what they are, that is to say, if he can wake up from the half-dream state, then he can come to hi senses, become aware of his proper forces and powers, and change reality in such a way that illusions are no longer necessary. “False consciousness,” that is to say, the distorted picture of reality, weakens man. Being in touch with reality, having an adequate picture of it, makes him stronger. Hence Marx believed that his most important weapon was truth, the uncovering of the reality behind the illusions and ideologies which cover it. In this lies the reason for a unique feature of Marxist propaganda: it is an emotional appeal for certain political aims, blended with a scientific analysis of social and historical phenomena. The best-known example for this blend is, of course, the Communist Manifesto. This contains in a brief form a brilliant and lucid analysis of history, of influence of economical factors, of class relations. And at the same time, it is a political pamphlet ending with a fervently emotional appeal to the working class. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The fact that the political leader must be at the same time a social scientist and a writer was demonstrated not only by Marx. Engels, Bebel, Jaures, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and many other leaders of the socialist movement were writers and students of social science and politics. (Even Stalin was forced to write books or to have them written in his name in order to prove his legitimacy of Marx’s and Lenin’s successor.) In fact, however, under Mr. Stalin, this aspect of socialism completely changed. Since the Soviet system must not be the subject matter of scientific analysis, the Soviet social scientists have become apologists for their system and have a scientific function only in technical matters dealing with production, distribution, organization et cetera. While for Marx, truth was a weapon to induce social change, for Dr. Freud it was the weapon to induce individual change; awareness was the main agent in Dr. Freud’s therapy. If, so Dr. Freud found, the patient can gain insight into the fictitious character of his conscious idea, if he can grasp the reality behind these ideas, if he can make the unconscious conscious, he will attain the strength to rid himself of his irrationalities and to transform himself. Dr. Freud’s aim, “Where there is ID, there shall be Ego,” can be realized only through the effort of reason to penetrate fictions and to arrive at the awareness of reality. It is precisely this function of reason and truth which gives psychoanalytic therapy its unique feature among all forms of therapy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
Each analysis of a patient is a new and original venture of research. If it were applied, while it is true, of course, that there are general theories and principles which can be applied, there is no pattern, no “formula” which could be applied to the individual patient or be helpful to him. Just as for Marx, the political leader mut be a social scientist, so for Dr. Freud the therapist must be a scientist capable of doing research. For both, truth is the essential medium to transform, respectively, society and the individual; awareness is the key to social and individual therapy. Marx’s statement, “The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions,” also could have been made by Dr. Freud. Both wanted to free man from the chains of his illusions in order to enable him to wake up and to act as a free man. The third basic element common to both systems is their humanism. Humanism in the sense that each man represents all of humanity; hence, that there is nothing human which could be alien to him. Marx was rooted in this tradition, of which Voltaire, Lessing, Herder, Hegel, and Goethe are some of the most outstanding representatives. Dr. Freud expressed his humanism primarily in his concept of the unconscious. He assumed that all men share the same unconscious strivings, and hence that they can understand each other once they dare to delve into the underworld of the unconscious. He could examine the unconscious fantasies of his patient without feeling indignant, judgmental or even surprised. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The “stuff from which dreams are made” as well as the whole World of the unconscious became an object of investigation precisely because Dr. Freud recognized its profoundly human and universal qualities. Doubt and the power of truth and humanism are the guiding and propelling principles of Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s work. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, Hegelian philosophy has ben a dead issue for a long time so that the dynamic approach of Marx and Dr. Freud is not readily understood. Let us begin with a few examples, both from the realm of psychology and that of sociology. Let us assume a man who has been married three times. The pattern is always the same. He falls in love with a good-looking young lady, marries her, and is ecstatically happy for a short time. Then he begins to complain that his wife is domineering, that she curtails his freedom et cetera. After a period alternating between quarrels and reconciliation, he falls in love with another girl—in fact, one very similar to his wife. He gets a divorce and marries his second “great love.” However, with slight modifications the same cycle takes place, and again he falls in love with a similar type of girl, and again he gets divorced and married a third “great love.” Again, the same cycle occurs, and he fall in love with a fourth girl, being convinced that this time it is the true and real love (forgetting that he was convinced of that every time in the past), and wants to marry her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
If she asked us our opinion about the chances for a happy marriage with him, what would we say to the last girl? There are several approaches to the problem. The first one is a purely behaviouristic one; the method of this approach is to conclude from past behaviour, the future behaviour. This argument would run: since he already has left a wife three time, it is quite likely that he will do it a fourth time, hence it is much too risky to marry him. This approach, empirical and sober, has much to be said for it. However, the girl’s mother, when using this approach, might find it difficult to answer one argument of her daughter’s. This argument says that while it is perfectly true that he did act in the same way three time, it does not follow that he will do so again this time. Either, so this counter-argument will say, he has changed—and who can say that a person may not change? Or the other women were not really the kind he could love deeply, while she, the last one, is really congenial to him. There is no convincing argument the mother could use against this reasoning. In fact, once she sees the man and notices that he is very much enraptured with her daughter, and that he walks with great sincerity about his love, even the mother might change her mind and be won over to the daughter’s position. The mother’s and the daughter’s approaches are both undynamic. They either make a prediction based on past performance, or one based on present words and actions, yet they have no way of proving that their predictions are better than guesswork. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
What is, in contradiction, the dynamic approach? The essential point in this approach is to penetrate through the surface of past or present behaviour and to understand the forces which created the pattern of past behaviour. If these forces still exist, it is to be assumed that the fourth marriage will end not differently from the previous ones. If, on the other hand, there has been a change in the forces underlying his behaviour, one would have to admit the possibility or even the likelihood of a different outcome, in spite of the past behaviour. What are the forces we speak of here? They are nothing mysterious, nor figments of abstract speculation. If one studies the behaviour of the person in the proper way, they are recognizable empirically. We may assume, for instance, that the man had not cut the tie to his mother; that he is a very narcissistic person with a deep doubt of his own manliness; that he is an overgrown adolescent in constant need of admiration and affection, so that once he has found a woman who fulfills these needs, he get bored with her soon after the conquest is made; he needs new proofs of his attractiveness and hence must look for another woman who can reassure him. At the same time, he is really dependent on women, afraid of them; and hence any prolonged intimacy makes him feel imprisoned and chained. The forces at work here are his narcissism, his dependence, his self-doubt producing needs which lead to the kind of action we have been describing. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
These forces are by no means the result of abstract speculation. One can observe them in many ways: by examining dreams, free association, fantasies, by watching his facial expression, his gestures, his way of speaking, and so forth. Yet they are often not directly visible but must be inferred. Furthermore, they can be seen only within the theoretical frame of reference in which they have a place and meaning. Most importantly these forces are not only not conscious as such, but they are in contradiction to the conscious thought of the person involved. He is sincerely convinced that he will love the girl forever, that he is not dependent, that he is strong and self-assured. Thus, the average person thinks: if a man truly feels he loves a woman how can one predict that he will leave her after a short time, just by referring to such mythical entities as “fixation to mother,” “narcissism,” and so on? Are one’s eyes and ears not better judges than such deductions? Interpretations are suggestions as to possible meanings. They are by nature more or less tentative, and the patient’s reactions to them vary. If an interpretation is essentially right, it may strike home and stimulate associations showing its further implications. Or the patient may test it our and gradually qualify it. Even when it is only partly right, it may thus give rise to new trends of thought, provided the patient is co-operating. However, an interpretation may also provoke anxiety or defensive reactions. Whatever the reactions are, the analyst’s task is to understand them and learn from them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Psychoanalysis in its very essence is co-operative work, both patient and analyst bent on understanding the patient’s difficulties. The latter tries to lay himself open to the analyst and, as we have seen, the analyst observes, tries to understand, and, if appropriate, conveys his interpretation to the patient. He then makes suggestions as to possible meanings and both try to test out the validity of the suggestions. They try to recognize, for instance, whether an interpretation is right only for the present context or is of general importance, whether it has to be qualified or is valid only under certain conditions. And as long as such a co-operative spirit prevails, it is comparatively easy for the analyst to understand the patient and to convey to him his findings. The real difficulties arise when, in technical terms, the patient develops a “resistance.” Then, in tangible or intangible ways, he refuses to co-operate. He is late or forgets the appointment. He wants to take some days or weeks off. He loses interest in the common work and mainly wants the analyst’s love and friendship. His associations become shallow, unproductive, and evasive. Instead of examining suggestion made by the analyst, he resent them and feels attacked, hurt, misunderstood, humiliated. He may reject every attempt to help with a rigid feeling of hopelessness and futility. Fundamentally the reason for this impasse is that certain insights are not acceptable to the patient; they are too painful, too frightening, and they undermine illusions that he cherishes and is incapable of relinquishing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Therefore he fights them off in one way or another, though he does not know that he is attempting to ward off painful insights: all he knows, or thinks he knows, is that he is misunderstood or humiliated or that work is futile. I do not care how much anyone laughs, ugly things someone says about you hurts—and it sticks with you for a very long time. You will experience this, and you might even dish this kind of humour out at times. It does not make it right. As humans, we like to make people laugh. When everyone around you is in good spirits, because of something you said, even when that something might be hurting someone else’s feelings, it feels good to some people. However, being disrespected by a joke someone is making is not fun. Even when the individual being insulted is laughing, too, they are not immune to the condescending remarks and negative words. People who do these kinds of things, do not find it funny when someone roasts them. When older try to speaking to you in a condescending way, or make fun of your life, just tell them about the highlights that you deal with, and tell them that it may sound bad to them, but you enjoy your life. You can also tell them that you understand their situation may not be exactly the way they like it to be. That should get them to stop harassing you without seeming like a mental case or telling them off. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
The clinical psychologist holds the Ph.D. degree in psychology. This means that he had completed a minimum of three years of graduate instruction in psychology from a major university. Before admission to such graduate study, he had completed a four-year college degree in a liberal arts program with emphasis upon the humanities and the social sciences. His graduate work will encompass study of personality theory, abnormal psychology (psychopathology), methods of psychological measurement, and psychometric theory, statistical methods and research design. Clinical diagnostic tests and techniques, principles of interviewing, and theories and techniques of psychotherapy. These constitute his major program; he will probably also complete a program of minor didactic studies in an appropriate related field such as sociology, anthropology, or psychiatry. The psychologist’s graduate program includes both didactic instruction and supervised clinical practice in interviewing, testing, and the like. As a major requirement for the doctoral degree, he must design, carry out, and write up an original research investigation in an appropriate problem area. Finally, like the M.D., he must complete a full year’s internship in a psychiatric facility having a full complement of professional staff. This total program of instruction, supervised training, and research is completed by the average clinical psychologist in slightly over five years. (The range of years from matriculation to degree completion is from a minimum of four to an upper limit of nine or ten years, this variation being primarily a function of the amount of time required for completion of the doctoral dissertation.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Thus, typically, some nine to ten years following high-school graduation, at an average age of 27-plus years, the psychologist is qualified to begin his professional career as a clinician and, if he chooses (and an increasing number do), to specialize in psychotherapy with outpatient neurotics. Both psychiatry and clinical psychology have “specialty boards” which examine and aware “certification” in the respective specialty. To be eligible for such examination, the psychiatrist must have two years of appropriate experience after completion of his residency. The psychologist must have at least four years of suitable experience following receipt of the Ph.D. Mental health affect our thoughts, emotions, behaviour, and relationships. Those who develop mental health challenges or illness can be impaired in their ability to cope with the routines and demands of daily life. Such conditions are often emotionally draining and confusing for the individual as well as for loved ones and leaders attempting to minister to the afflicted person. Those who are not mental health professions are not expected or encouraged to diagnose or provide treatment to individuals struggling with mental health issues. When individuals do not seem to respond to normal attempts by leaders to be helpful, no one should be offended by their lack of response. Instead, leaders should seriously consider encouraging the individual to get a mental health assessment from a qualified provider. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
As you discuss mental health concerns, make sure to show love and empathy as the Saviour would. If the person has reached out for help, thank her or him for asking for help. Because every situation is different and each person’s circumstances vary, prayerfully consider asking the person questions like these and then listen to the Spirit to help you better understand his or her concerns and discern his or her needs: Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental health condition? If so, how long have you had the condition? How does it affect your employment and family relationships? What are your greatest concerns or worries right now? What (if any) care are you receiving from a mental health care provider? Are you following the instructions from your provider, and are you comfortable with the care you are receiving? Do you feel you mental health condition is improving, staying the same, or getting worse? How are you coping with your condition? How do your family member handle your condition? Have they suggested anything you are not currently doing that you think maybe helpful? Have you received insights from Heavenly Father about your condition? If so, what were those insights? With the individual’s permission, and being respectful of the individual’s feelings, consider contacting family members for further insight into the issue. As you help the individual understand how their challenges are affecting their lives, consider reassuring the person that Heavenly Father love her or him and that the Saviour understands his or her challenges. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Help the person understand that mental illness is not a punishment from God. Help the person realize that mental illness cannot be overcome by willpower alone. Mental illness does not indicate that a person lacks faith, character, or worthiness. Include the person in Church activities and appropriate service opportunities. Consult with the person, family members, and others who know the person well to be aware of the person’s strengths and limitations. Consider consulting with Family Services (where available) or local providers of mental health services to identify support and treatment options. Even with the best of care, be aware that some conditions can last a lifetime. Sometimes people who are deeply, deeply racist may act unpredictable around an individual from a group they hate. Therefore, it is a good idea to be aware of people who seem psychotic, and avoid them, especially when they are around sharp objects or other objects, they could use to harm you. Do not make any sudden moves, just be aware, and ease out of the situation. Those who are taking medication should not change or stop treatment without first consulting their health care provider. The person’s mental health challenges can also affect the lives of his or her family members and neighbours. Determine the impact on the person’s family, and show love and empathy as you work with family members. Encourage the family, extended family, and others involved to counsel together about the needs of the individual and potential resources available to help. And if you are feeling threatened, call the police immediately. Sometimes people seem okay, but then they go back to unpredictable and threatening behaviour and it may be dangerous to be around of them. Drug use can exacerbate mental illness and make a person violent. They may not be the same person you are used to, so be careful. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
The Sacramento Fire Department has to continuously fright for better equipment, portable radios, training, facilities, and apparatus for their troops. A lot of fire departments do not have the funding for people and are fighting just to keep what they have and not lose anything. And they are wonderful department. Keep in mind, there are plenty of good fire chiefs and some good politicians, and they do their best. The people who control the resources must understand that the fire department also wants to make the job safer for their troops. The Sacramento Fire Department’s mission is to provide the best protection possible for those they have a sworn due to serve and to provide service to them, and they also want to promote family values. The fire service is made up of special people who value family. The goal is to treat people like family. Many of these fire fighters and emergency medical service members have a love for their jo, and their brothers and sisters, and an honour for the profession. Some people became fire fighters because their parents were on the job and they admired them. It does take a special person for this kind of work. It takes the kind of person who loves to help people and lives to be challenged. Be sure to open up your heart to the Sacramento Fire Department and kindly make a donation, it will help them do their jobs with an unshakable passion. 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 sure to vote for Kevin McCarty in the Sacramento Mayoral race, he is endorsed by the Sacramento Fire Department. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
At the beginning of December, Mrs. Winchester heard “singing” in one of the chimneys in the Hall of Fires, and from time to time, lights were to be seen in various parts of the house. It was a curious fact that during these manifestations, Zip could not be persuaded to move. One night, something was heard coming up the stairs, as if it had been one without shoes. The Door to Nowhere was opened and closed frequently as if half a dozen people had entered together. There were thumps coming from the nine story Observational Tower. This was on the same night that Mrs. Winchester’s bed was violently shaken and the curtains around the bed were hoisted up and down. The next night, Mrs. Winchester saw a female emerge from the wall at the head of her bed and lean over her.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 