CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
IN SEARCH OF OUR ORIGINAL FACE:
\\
THE CONTEMPORARY KOAN OF FREEDOM
A project submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in
Education, Educational Psychology,
Counseling and Guidance
by
John David Alexander Wayne
//
January, 1979
The Project of John David Alexander Wayne is approved:
California State University, Northridge
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is dedicated to my parents, who were
responsible for making me wear short pants in grade .school.
This experience, the children poking fun at me, and the
struggle not to succumb to social pressure, taught me what
it means to be an individual, even at such an early age.
It is dedicated to all those people who dare to live
honestly in an age where lies prevail.
I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Marvin
Chernoff, who not only assisted me in this project, but has
been a source of encouragement from the time we first met.
I thank Joe McNair for his valuable assistance and materials, and especially for the possibility of a great
friendship with a kindred soul.
Finally, I wish to express my love and appreciation to
my future wife, Raquel, who loves me for what I am.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
1
INTRODUCTION .
The Problemi Definitions
II.
6
SOME HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Plato; Christianity; Karl Marx; Sigmund
Freud
III.
20
EXISTENTIALISM AND FREEDOM . • . . .
Role-bound man; Cartesian Dualism; the
splitting of man
IV.
. .. . . . . . . . . . .
ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
29
The negative perspective of freedom;
mechanisms of escape; External vs.
Internal Authorities
v.
OBJECTIVITY VS. SUBJECTIVITY
43
The subjective nature of perception; The
arbitrary nature of social conventions
VI.
EDUCATION
e
•
•
•
e
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
B
•
e
•
51
Help or hindrance?
VII.
VIII.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPISTS: AN EXISTENTIAL
POINT OF VIEW . . . . . . . • • • . • . •
55
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS •
64
APPENDIX
66
Escape to Moriah: A Parable on Freedom
iv
ABSTRACT
IN SEARCH OF OUR ORIGINAL FACE:
THE CONTEMPORARY KOAN OF FREEDOM
by
John David Alexander Wayne
Master of Arts in Educational Psychology
The industrialized, modern western man has thrown off
the shackles of external oppression.
He has achieved free-
dom in the sense of an ostensible lack of external control
over the way he lives his life.
But, beneath this veneer
of freedom lurks a more sinister and pervasive source of
oppression.
Man internalizes the authority figure to the
extent that he remains in bondage.
This is a study of
man's view of himself, his view of freedom and non-freedom;
the role of education with regard to this problem; the connection between the existentialists and freedom; and, the
implications for an existential-based psychotherapy.
Pri-
marily, however, this paper is intended as a provocation;
hopefully, the reader will be incited to examine the condition of his own freedom or lack of it, and the way he impinges on the freedom of his fellow man.
v
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
As "civilized" men, we marvel at our cultural and
technical achievements, we revel in the fact that we no
longer break our backs for the feudal lord, nor kiss the
feet of kings; we see ourselves at the zenith of human
freedom.
But how free are we?
"Can human beings be persons today?
actual self with another man or woman?
such an optimistic question as,
Can a man be his
Before we can ask
'What is a personal rela-
tionship?,' we have to ask if a personal relationship is
possible, or, are persons possible in our present situation?
We are concerned with the possibility of man.
can be asked only through facets.
freedom possibleT"(l)
This question
'Is love possible?
Is
R. D. Laing poses these questions in
order to shake us free of the delusion that we are "free."
We find evidence of this concern, and even pessimism, in
the minds of more and more contemporary thinkers.
Fritz
Perls goes so far as to say, "There is a race on between
fascism and humanism.
At this moment it seems to me that
the race is about lost to the fascists."(2)
Implicit in these statements and questions is a
fundamental concern with the full meaning of the word
"freedom," and the extent to which we actually enjoy a
complete freedom.
In this paper I would like to consider
1
2
the problem of freedom.
The first section deals with the
view of man which underpins the theories of Socrates, Plato,
Marx, and Freud.
An analysis of the conflict of man's
needs versus the needs of civilization connects all these
men's works.
The second section takes up the issue of free-
dom as something which man dreads as much as he desires.
Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom will be the primary
source for this discussion.
I will briefly consider the
role of education in man's development; does it promote or
inhibit his capacity to be free?
The fourth section will
consider the analysis of the problem of freedom as provided by the existentialists, and the final section will
deal with the response of the existentialists to this problem, in its applied aspect of psychotherapy.
Some subversive bastards are spreading the rather
nasty rumor that men are free.
Most of my acquaintances
are able to dismiss the rumor as typical of arrogant
idealism, but I am uneasy since I heard the words.
A
remote part of me rumbles at their sound, and I fear the
world that I depend upon for my own security will be
toppled by an earthquake.
On the face of it, the problem of freedom seems rather
simple ... until we discover that man can feel condemned to
freedom, and that many men wish to escape it, seeking
refuge in bondage.
3
It seems appropriate, then, to first deal with the
meaning(s) of the word freedom, after which I would like
to consider those which are most relevant to the psychotherapeutic situation.
Included in the American College
Dictionary(3) definition of freedom are the following:
7. power of determining one's own action,
8. Philos. the condition of the will as the
volitional instigator of human actions;
relative self-determination.
9. absence or release from ties, obligations,
etc.
12. ease or facility of movement or action.
13. frankness of manner or speech.
14. absence of ceremony or reserve;
familiarity.
In addition to the above, I would like to consider freedom
as subjectivity made conscious, and explore its attendant
possibilities and perils.
For freedom to exist as more than an ideal, certain
conditions must be satisfied.
These prerequisites, as it
were, are inherent in the meaning of the word and must form
part of this investigation into the nature of freedom in
its subjective aspect.
Those people most consciously (if not ethically) concerned with this problem include, primarily, the existential philosophers and writers, politicians, psychologists,
and Madison Avenue men.
Thus, few of us are really aware.
My purpose here is to make the reader conscious of this
problem, the problem that is at the very center of his
being.
Fortunately, the language of the existential writers
and psychologists is compelling and provocative; I have
4
taken advantage of this by quoting many passages from
different examples of existential thought.
Finally, I would like to consider the implications
which this discussion has for the therapist in encounter
with his client; can he create an environment in which a
client is freed to live a life of greater spontaneity?
Would the therapist, indeed, wish to do this for his
client?
5
. REFERENCES
(1)
Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience.
Books, .New York, 1967, p. 23.
Ballantine
( 2)
Perls, Frederick s. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
Books, New York, 1969, p. 3.
(3)
Barnhart, C. L., Ed. The American College Dictionary.
Random House, New York, 1963, 1964.
Bantam
CHAPTER II
SOME HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
In attempting to enhance our grasp of the various
components of freedom, we do well to attend to the various
perspectives offered by diverse cultures and epochs.
At
the same time, it will be seen that underlying any value
judgment one makes about freedom is a basic philosophy
regarding man and his universe.
It will be further seen
that when these philosophies become the prevailing
"objective" reality for a group of people, the realization
of subjective freedom is greatly diminished.
Leslie Stevenson's book, Seven Theories of Human
Nature,(l) provides a good introduction to philosophies of
man which have had a telling impact on the way we see man
in the world.
The primary motivation for considering such
diverse viewpoints is borne out of the desire to know more
than the contemporary, limited approach to a human problem.
Jung, for example, was able to posit the existence of the
archetypes only when he discovered their presence in multiple cultures across the time span of human civilization.
We consider Plato first, keeping in mind that as a
student of Socrates, much of his teacher's philosophy is
present in Plato's writings.
Socrates expounded the view
that moral and political rules are nothing more than arbitrary conventions.
The sophists argued for the same view.
6
7
As the gods had not provided the rules by which they could
be guided, Socrates devoted his energy and ultimately his
life to the pursuit of the right way to live.
It is no
coincidence that Socrates was condemned to death.
His
thinking was too subversive, exposing the self-serving
nature of political institutions, inasmuch
as~_they,
promul-
gate a narrow world view which justified the perpetual continuation of the status quo.
In challenging the state view,
Socrates threatened it; thus, was he a condemned man.
Plato adopted much of Socrates' philosophy as his starting
point; the point of departure is where Plato claims to have
discovered universal truths.
that he did not know.
Socrates claimed only to know
Of the "truths" which Plato claimed
to discover, two are central to our discussion of subjective
freedom.
The first is his conception of man's soul as a
tri-partite entity.
The three components are: the Appetite
(desire); Reason; and Spirit (indignation).
Plato felt it best to be ruled by Reason.
Of these,
Nevertheless,
he maintained that harmony between the three elements was
vital to the good life.
A second, equally important aspect of his theory is
the view that man is basically social by nature.
He reasons
that no man can live independently of others without being
forced to devote all his time and energy to just staying
alive.
man.
Society is borne out of man's need for his fellow-
- -- - -
'-_
-
--
_.
8
Plato's stand can be considered anti-democratic in
that it objectifies man through its call for a stratified
society.
He claimed that only certain individuals have
the intellectual capacity to rule.
Assuming that the
statement is true, it is only true by virtue of the reigning objectivity of a society.
Only certain individuals
qualify for the education requisite to qualified rulership;
and there are, then, some among us whose vision includes
Nixon as a candidate for philosopher-king.
Plato displays
an obvious naivete when he suggests that these rulers, in
their love for truth, are rendered immune to the temptations of abuse of power.
When the powerless assume power,
a new powerless class is born.
Woody Allen's film,
Banana's, addresses itself perfectly to this issue.
In his criticism of Platonic theory, Stevenson asks
whether "Plato has given us any adequate reason to believe
that there are objective standards in morals or politics.
Since he (Plato) gives no direct argument for this conclusion, this must be one of the most fundamental points of
doubt about his theory ... ( 2 )
As the sage remarked, those
who know, do not say; those who say, do not know.
Stevenson further criticizes Plato on the following
grounds: "Plato seems more concerned with the harmony and
stability of the whole state than with the well-being of
the individuals in it."(3)
Plato says as much in the fol-
lowing passage from The Republic:
-
I.
9
The object of our legislation is not the
welfare of any particular class, but of the
whole community.
It uses persuasion or
force to unite all the citizens and make
them share together the benefits which each
individually can confer on the community;
and its purpose in fostering this attitude
is not to enable everyone to please himself,
but to make each man a link in the unity of
the whole.
On one level, the stated goals seem admirable enough, but
on another, there is something ominous concealed within
the formula for attaining those goals.
There is danger in
any system which values abstract constructions above the
human constituents that the construction is intended to
serve.
The mere mention of the words "the State" is enough
to evoke the image of the dreaded knock on the door at
night, and with good reason.
It seems that one hears the
virtues of the state most extolled where one finds the most
political and ideological repression.
We must ask ourselves
" •.• what is the point of a stable society unless it serves
4
the interests of the individuals in it?"( )
We turn now to Christianity as it addresses itself to
an understanding of man and his place in the world.
In
Christianity, the premise from which all else flows is the
existence of God.
An analysis of the opposing arguments on
this subject is not germane to the topic of this paper.
\\That is important to our discussion is the view of man which
hinges itself on God's presence.
The Christian tells us
that God put us here on earth to fulfill his purpose--we
__ /.__
10
owe our existence to God's creation of the universe and
its constituent elements.
Despite this pronouncement, and in spite of a history
of oppression and proscription, Christianity contends that
man is free.
evil deeds.
When man strays from God's plan, he commits
Sin comprises all those thoughts and behaviors
which don't jive with God's word.
Man's main purpose in
life should be the establishment of a harmonious relationship with God, ensuring us a place in Paradise when we
shuffle off the mortal coil.
Since this relationship has
been disrupted by man's transgressions, our only hope for
salvation is "for this salvation to be accepted and made
effective in each individual person •.. each person must
accept the redemption that God has effected for him in
Christ, and become a member of the
which God's grace is active."(S)
church~
the community in
Calvin and Luther took
the matter of salvation largely out of our hands and put it
as the mercy of God-given fate.
I do not see much freedom
here.
I remember an incident in my own life which made a
lasting impression on me in connection with the church.
As
a young Catholic about to have his first confession, I was
quite nervous.
An interesting fact about confession is
that, in its shame and guilt aspects, it usually starts
with a lie.
The repentant sinner must declare the time
elapsed since his last confession--no matter how long it
11
had been; it was always good to use a figure less than two
months lest one incur the wrath (and heavy penance sentence)
of the priest.
I got stuck with Father McGoldrick, a stern,
intimidating man.
The pivotal moment arrived when he asked
me who I loved most in the world.
at the time.
I was only about seven
When I responded, "my parents," there follow-
ed a suitable silence signifying that my response was "incorrect."
He corrected me, "You mean God, don't you?"
naive to lie, I repeated, "my parents."
matter.
Too
He dropped the
I still thank the seven-year-old boy who risked
the anger of Father McGoldrick by his honest responses.
I
had resisted the attempt to supplant the major source of
influence in my life.
The church has an obvious stake in
the propagation of the faith--its own survival.
influences are seen as inspirations of the Devil.
Competing
An ob-
jectivity is established which sustains itself on selfdeprecation and man's fear of eternal damnation.
Education
consists in the denial of the flesh and complacency in
ignorance.
The lesson of the fall from grace is clear;
Paradise is the condition of unconsciousness and dependence.
Eat the fruit of the Tree, become conscious, and Eden is
lost forever.
The Christian missionary archetype is inconsistent.
On the one hand, his concern is for the hungry and oppressed.
In his zeal to provide the saving knowledge to the
heathens, he sounds the death knell for the indigenous
12
Logos; but, his end draws near as the unenlightened ones
clamor for bread and cry that man does not live by promises
alone.
The withering spirit of the church is barely present
in its rituals.
Where they were once ecstatic experiential
events, they are now nothing more than somnambulistic
drills.
Limits are even placed on spiritual possibilities;
my feeling is that St. Theresa would have suffered a different prefix in our time--her vision would have earned her
a vacation at one of our fine state hospitals, her prefix,
"schizophrenic."
One man who reacted quite strongly against the hold of
religion was Karl Marx.
His intellectual probity notwith-
standing, Marx never grew too abstract (perhaps too naive),
speaking always in human terms, and always with passion.
In fact, he revolted against the ."rule of reason philosophy"
of Hegel.
He adapted Hegel's dialectical approach, inverted
it, and used it to expound his own theories.
In attacking
religion as a set of illusions which man seeks to believe
because he is alienated from his own life, Feurbach had a
great influence on Marx.
How much Marx there is in
Fuerbach's idea that, "Religion is the expression of
alienation, from which men must be freed by realizing
their purely human destiny in this world."( 6 )
Marx was
aware of the socio-political motives of the church; he
understood the derogation of this life, the fanfare about
--~
--------- --
13
the afterlife, and other assorted ploys aimed at maintaining the status quo.
Somoza would love the church as an
ally; sadly for him, the newly enlightened Catholic clergy
is fighting with the people and not with the state.
Marx saw man's alienation as an outgrowth of the
capitalist economies of his time.
He is determinist on
that score; yet, he wrote as a humanist and resisted
Hegel's notion that History (as the Divine Plan unfolding)
is responsible for the way things are.
Marx exclaimed that
it is not history which oppresses man, but man himself who
is responsible for his world; thus, he exhorts his fellowmen to shake off their delusions and get about the business
of creating a new classless society.
In condemning capitalism, Marx described its toll on
the psyche of man, and the fact that it is inherently inimical to a relatively harmonious social existence.
The
foremost consequence of capitalism is the eventual dehumanization of man, his transformation into "worker," and becoming divorced from any personal involvement in his work.
Unlike Plato, Marx argues for a classless society.
Yet, he betrays a similar naivete when he suggests that the
successful revolution ends in a provisional government,
which will gladly divest itself of all power at the propitious moment.
No doubt, the Soviet proletariat takes
solace in this promise.
-
-
l _ _ _ ._ _ _ _ ·
14
Marx remains an inspiration to me, regardless of any
flaws in his thinking.
After all is said and done regard-
ing the material causes of our suffering, he provokes us,
he encourages us to become conscious, free of the opiates
which keep us slaves, and to realize ourselves in action.
Sigmund Freud's ideas reverberate still.
After the
necessary and legitimate kudos are showered upon his name,
we must retain the flexibility to critically evaluate his
theory of man and its implications.
I, personally, feel
that Freud provided the most solid basis for the argument
in favor of greater personal freedom, though he didn't
necessarily draw the same conclusions from his findings.
As with everyone whose work we consider in these pages, we
must not lose sight of Freud's time and place, the milieu
as well as the man.
Freud did his research at a time when psychology was
still considered a semi-hocus pocus field.
Psychologists
had to mimic the physical and biological sciences in terms
of a limited range of theoretical possibility.
Freud was a
biologists and medical doctor, so it is not surprising that
his theory is a biological determinism.
Reminiscent of Plato, Freud postulated a tri-partite
psyche in man, consisting of the id, ego, and super-ego
properties, corresponding roughly to instincts (pure Eros),
cognition and reflexivity, and conscience.
He, too, said
man must work for the harmonious coexistence of the three
15
elements.
As we shall see, this harmony is difficult to
attain and virtually impossible to maintain as a static
condition.
The difficulty lies in the opposing functions of the
three components of the psyche.
The id seeks immediate
gratification of instinctual needs: sex, hunger, and thirst,
as well as hostile impulses.
It does no reality testing.
It is also very honest and direct; it is without pretense.
The ego is an espect of the self which emerges with time;
malleable, it can become more a reflection of the social
environment than of the self.
It tests reality in its cog-
nitive function and usually sides with the super-ego in its
nediating function.
The super-ego, or conscience, is the
internalized social values as interpreted by the parents.
The id says go, the super-ego says no, and the ego struggles
to satisfy the harsh master while conning the Eros into
quietude.
Very few people would argue for a purely instinctual
lifestyle; this condition would preclude any kind of enduring social life.
The profound question which we must face
is the extent to which it is really necessary to smother
Eros, that civilization may be preserved.
My fear is that
the life flame, the energy in Eros is dwindling, flickering
into oblivion, in the name of God, the good, and the normal.
How do we proceed to control these instinctual drives?
We drive them from our consciousness.
We divorce ourselves
16
from a part of ourselves, we perform the psychic castration,
or we project the whole mess onto the other.
What price do we pay for this repression, splitting,
denial, etc., etc., ad infinitum?
life.
We live the neurotic
Neurotic behaviors are those which serve to allay
the anxiety that rises with an impulse which is unacceptable to the super-ego.
neurotic behavior.
what
Two problems are inherent in
The first is that it never succeeds at
it tries to do, "for what is repressed does not
really disappear, but continues to exist in the unconscious
portion of the mind.
It retains all its instinctual
energy, and exerts its influence by sending into consciousness a disguised substitute for itself--a neurotic
symptom."(?)
More importantly, " ••. the person can find
himself behaving in ways which he will admit are irrational,
yet which he feels compelled to continue without knowing
why.
For by repressing something out of his consciousness
he has given up effective control over it."(8)
One of the
meanings of freedom mentioned earlier is the ease or facility of movement or action.
hand, in inflexible.
Neurotic behavior,on the other
Karen Horney( 9 ) says, "There are two
eharacteristics, however, which one may discern in all
neuroses without having an intimate knowledge of the personality structure: a certain rigidity in reaction and a discrepancy between potentialities and accomplishments."
17
Neurotic behavior indicates a surrender of a certain
amount of control.
selves!
And how soon we have to surrender our-
For Freud the initial repressions are crucial, and
they occur during infancy and childhood.
I do not share
Freud's emphasis on sexual -repression in the formation of
neurotic symptoms, but see it only as a focal behavior out
of the entire repertoire which exists in Eros and which is
subject to repression.
What of the outside world which imposes these restrictions on our behavior?
Are we still talking about the
demands of nature, or are we talking about a prevailing
cultural morality?
the latter.
someone
Quite obviously, we are talking about
Heaven forbid my body odor be detected by
else~
Just as Socrates, Plato, and Marx doubted
the wisdom or validity of cultural institutions, Freud
doubts the necessity of certain sanctions imposed by civilization on man.
Stevenson describes this doubt:
For the standards to which a person feels he
must conform are one of the crucial factors
in mental conflict, but these standards are
(in Freud's view) a product of the person's
social environment--primarily his parents,
but including anyone who has exerted influence and authority on the growing child. It
is the installation of such standards that
constitutes the essence of education and
makes a child into a member of civilized
soci~tYi for civilization requires a certain control of the instincts, a sacrifice
of instinctual satisfaction in order to make
cultural achievements possible. But the
standards instilled are not automatically
the 'best' or most rational or most conducive to individual happiness. (10)
18
Freud even considers the possibility that civilized life
is necessarily neurotic.
Laing, who speaks in much stronger
terms, says that civilization has gone quite mad, leaving
only a few souls relatively intact.
These souls are, of
course, those whom we have labelled psychotic.
Freud's practical response to the problems of neurosis
was the development of psychoanalysis as individual therapy;
he offered no presciption for social change (although many
should become obvious to a serious student of his works).
His goal is to widen the consciousness of his patients to
include what was formerly unconscious, i.e., repressed.
To
put it another way, the aim is to become aware of a greater
part of one's self.
This increased self-awareness leads to
a catharsis and ultimately to a diminution of the neurotic
symptom(s).
19
REFERENCES
(1)
Stevenson, Leslie. Seven Theories of Human Nature.
Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1974.
( 2)
Ibid. , p. 31.
(3)
Ibid., p. 33.
(From Plato, Republic (420) :519-20,
Penguin Books, London, 1955).
(4)
Ibid.
( 5)
Ibid. , p. 4 3 .
(6)
Ibid., p. 47.
( 7)
Ibid.
(8)
Ibid.
(9)
Horney, Karen. The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1937, p. 22.
(10)
I
I
p. 33.
p. 6 8.
Stevenson, Leslie. Seven Theories of Human Nature.
Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1974,
p.
69.
CHAPTER III
EXISTENTIALISM AND FREEDOM
Up to now the theories which I have discussed seem
universally deterministic, regardless of the value they
place on human freedom.
The existentialists, to whom we
turn now, argue against the idea that man's existence is
determined.
Starting with Kierkegaard, they maintain that
life is a series of free choices; when authentically decided
and acted upon they enable a person to fulfill his human
destiny.
Some of these terms will become clearer as this
discussion evolves.
I would like to clarify my under-
standing of what is meant by the term "existential."
In
grasping the meaning of existentialism, its relevance to
human freedom should become obvious.
Rollo May offers the
following meanings for the term: "Existentialism in short,
is the endeavor to understand man by cutting below the
cleavage between subject and object which has bedeviled
Western thought and science since shortly after the
Renaissance."(l); Existentialism is basically concerned
with ontology, that is, the science of being (ontos, from
Greek "being"). ( 2 )
May speaks of the trauma of culture in transition as
the starting point for this new philosophical movement.
The conditions which spawned the existential approach have
become more pronounced in our time.
20
To anyone still in
21
possession of a soul, it is quite obvious that these are
rather dismal if not ominous times regarding the health of
man's psyche and the prognosis for his survival.
One
existential slogan runs, "existence precedes essence"
meaning that a person exists in toto before and after any
essential definitions are placed upon him.
I am more than
just "a student," I am a violin player, a clown, a lover,
etc.
Yet, our times are synonymous with the role-bound man.
Not only are we defined by our various behavioral modes,
but we are wearing ritual masks concealing a void; we are
moving with clockwork precision (except for the more sensitive "cogs" which break_down).
We are mortally frightened
of the deafening roar of silence, that dark hole at our
core, so we fill the air with a cacophany of sterile
verbiage (\;;hat Perls called "bullshi t") , and are profound
for a millisecond.
This situation, and man's possibilities within it, is
the subject of existentialism.
Camus' excellent novel, The
Stranger, not only focuses on our alienation from our fellow man, but offers a condemning indictment of behaviorist
thinking and its inherent inability to deal with entire
situations (gestalts).
Kafka wove frightening short stories
populated by dehumanized beings, horrible to us because
they reflect our own sad metamorphosis.
Man as number is,
by now, the cliche par excellence; we are moving towards
man as cliche.
Man feels faceless and powerless in the face
l
--·------
22
of his world.
He is the stranger in a strange land.
Our
mortality hangs over our head, the sword of Damocles in its
incarnation as huge ugly steel birds, pregnant with our
death.
Such are the products of the modern alchemists.
What process leads to this absurd state of affairs?
Marx and Freud provide us with two views.
Another way of
looking at the process is as the surrender of our subjective existence to the objective world as provided to us by
the myopic high priests of today.
I spoke earlier of a
hole at the center of our being--what is this hole?
It is
the burning question of our significance in this universe,
the why of our being here, now, as opposed to then and
there; what is often referred to as "throwness.
an extraordinary need for
11
11
We have
The 11 solution to the puzzle, as
if there were no ground to stand upon without it.
Inten-
sive, lifelong brainwashing (a.k.a. education) convinces us
that we cannot ourselves discover this truth.
This is the
P!ecedent question and the process around it is proto-typiCi
we begin to look outside for the answers to more and more
questions until we finally plead, "Tell me what to feel!"
A crucial step in this process involves the growing split
between subject and object; this rift has been growing since
Rene Descartes' doubts left him with nothing but the ego
cog ito
that entity which perceives and performs all cogni-
tive functions on the world.
doubted.
All else in the world is
As a result of following Descartes down this blind
23
alley for the past three hundred odd years, we have become
estranged from the world, from our fellow man, from our
bodies, from our souls.
Rationalism required that the
intellect remain intact while the rest of what man is atrophies.
Our distance from other men makes possible our
objectification of them.
Statistics and facts become
synonymous with human beings.
"The insistence upon objec-
tivity in facts concerning human life is what gives rise to
the impersonal jargon of military strategy, where the tragic
is buried under the official phrase."(3)
The major Los
Angeles newspaper recently printed an article, the title
of which calmly stated that in the event of a Soviet
nuclear first-strike, up to half of all Americans could die.
Although found on the front page of the newspaper, it was
not the headline article, but appeared in the middle of the
page, unimposing.
Our reaction to this ostensibly earth-
shattering prognosis ranges from disbelief (just as we disbelieve our own death) to apathetic indifference.
Time, or
the sense of it, is important to us here, for the future no
longer exists except as a clone of the past; the now is that
thing which we see dimly through the fog.
The subject-object split forms the basis for an Us and
Them view of the world.
Some people were no doubt concerned
that it is a hundred and ten million Americans who stand to
perish, and not them "damn communists," those other human
beings.
24
As I mentioned earlier, the split between subject and
object includes the mind and body.
This split has exacted
a rather stiff fee, rendering our relationship to the body
rather flaccid.
I have always marvelled at the descriptions
of the rapturous and ecstatic nature of lovemaking found in
romantic novels, or at my own experience in that delightful
sphere.
I wonder then at the women who claim to sacrifice
their pure bodies in the name of duty, or the myriad Don
Juans for whom love is merely a perpetual exercise of the
insecure ego.
It was recently reported in the news that
two women were enraged at the post office for issuing
Christmas stamps which depict the naked Christ child.
They
demanded that the post office exchange these stamps for
other ones.
their own.
They would deny Christ his body, as they deny
Physical love must be outside the scope of their
vision; and the eliminative functions, how can they put up
with them?
Our amusement at this anecdote should last as
long as we deny our own tendencies in this direction.
What of our preoccupation with the intellect, to the
exclusion of our wishes and fantasies, our anguish, and our
playfulness?
If we are fortunate, we allow ourselves dim
and fleeting memories of these fugitive emotions.
deny even their dreams.
Others
Laing writes: "As adults, we have
forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but
its flavour, we hardly know of the existence of the inner
world."( 4 )
The ego cogito
denies itself and bows in
25
obeisance before the outer world.
Man feels more like a
spectator than a participant in the world.
What do we call such men as ourselves?
Neurotic.
In
speaking about neurosis Freud says, "It was discovered that
a person becomes neurotic because he cannot tolerate the
amount of frustration which society imposes on him in the
service of its cultural ideals ..... (S)
There is another name for neurotic: normal.
11
What we
call 'normal' is a produce of repression, denial, splitting,
projection, introjection, and other forms of destructive
action on experience.
It is radically estranged from the
structure of being."{G)
How is it possible for us to accept this inorganic
nightmare as our own?
Numbers come to our rescuei since
most men are alike in their neurotic and inauthentic lifestyle, they are considered normal.
"The 'normally' alien-
ated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or
less like everyone else, is taken to be sane."{7)
This sad
fact casts some doubts on the current basis for labelling
individuals as sane or insane, and says something very sad
about our use of numbers.
a child's eyes--all right.
million adults.
"The Normal is the good smile in
It is also the dead stare in a
It both sustains and kills--like a God.
It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average
made lethal." (S)
Normal as numerical majority precludes
any ethics and conveniently forgets the relativity of
experience and meaning in human existence.
_1._
26
The void within us gnaws at our consciousness.
We
learn through education that we ourselves cannot fill that
void, but that others can.
Convinced of this, and most
anxious to dispel our gnawing ontological doubts--we
stretch out our hands in supplication to the teachers.
"I forfeit my world, this Camusian desert ..• Take it!
Give
me a world with all the answers, your answers, your world."
Thus do we sacrifice our freedom.
Tom Stoppard wrote a
brilliant play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
Its two principle characters stand as near perfect reflections of what we have become.
In denying our world for
the common, "objective," world, we have made the leap into
security cum conformity.
I spoke earlier of the facades
which we hide behind lest someone detect something out of
the ordinary about us.
Guildenstern wryly prays to God,
"Give us this day our daily masks." ( 9 )
The reader might
recall these two characters from Hamlet, unsure who was who
and which was which.
Ros:
Guil:
Claudius:
They speak with the king and queen:
Both your majesties
Might, by the sovere1gn power you
have of us,
Put your dread pleasures into command
Than to entreaty.
But we both obey,
And here give up ourselves in the full
bent
To lay our service freely at your feet,
To be commanded.
Thanks, Rosencrantz (turning to Ros
who is caught unprepared, while Guil
bows and gentle Gu1ldenstern (turning
to Guil who is bent double).
,_
27
Gertrude
(correcting) :
Thanks Guildenstern (turning to Ros
who bows as Guil checks upward movement
to bow too--both bent double, squinting
at each other) .•• and gentle Rosencrantz
(turning to Guil, both straightening up
--Guil checks again and bows again) .rnn
This seems a sad contradiction to the admonition of
Polonius to Laertes in the play Hamlet: "To thine own self
be true."
I think it is extreme to conclude that man always has
a choice, although that statement is a better reflection of
man's condition than one saying he has no choice at all.
Where there is choice between freedom and bondage, in an
ontological sense, how is it possible to us to choose
against freedom?
28
REFERENCES
(1)
May, Rollo; Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henri F.,
Eds. Existence. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958,
p. 11.
(2)
Ibid., p. 12.
(3)
Poole, Roger. Towards Deep Subjectivity.
Torchbooks, Nev1 York, 19 7 2, p. 4 6.
Harper
(4)
Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience.
Books, New York, 1967, p. 26.
Ballantine
(5)
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontents.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1961, p. 34.
(6)
Laing, The Politics of Experience, p. 27.
(7)
Ibid., p. 27.
(8)
Shaffer, Peter.
p. 7 4.
(9)
Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1967, p. 39.
(10)
Ibid., pp. 36-37.
Equus.
Avon Books, New York, 1974,
CHAPTER IV
ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
Perhaps it is in the nature of freedom itself that our
difficulty in living it arises.
Erich Fromm considers our
ambivalence towards freedom in his book,Escape from Freedom.
He asks:
Is there not also, perhaps besides an innate
desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for
submission? If there is not, how can we
account for the attraction which submission
to a leader has for so many today? Is submission always to an overt authority, or is
there also submission to internalized authorities, such as duty or conscience, to
inner compulsions or to anonymous authorities like public opinion? Is there a hidden
satisfaction in submitting, and what is its
essence?"(l)
Fromm approaches the problem from psychological and
sociological perspectives.
He begins by pointing out that
for the past few centuries, man believed that his animal
instincts, e.g. hostility and aggression, carnal lust, etc.,
all those irrational dirty undergarmets had been disinfected
or discarded.
The apotheosis of this evolved homo-sapiens
is the Victorian man.
Rollo May describes him:
The Victorian man saw himself as segmented
into reason, will, and emotions and found
the picture good. His reason was supposed
to tell him what to do, then voluntaristic
will was supposed to give him the means to
do it, and emotions, well emotions could
best be cahnneled into compulsive business
drive and rigidly structuralized in Victorian
mores; and the emotions which would really
have upset the formal segmentation, such as
sex and hostility were to be staunchly
29
30
repressed or let out only in orgies of
patriotism or on well-contained weekend
binges in Bohemia that one might, like a
steam engine which has let off surplus
pressure, work more effectively on returning to his desk Monday morning."(2)
Cramped up in subconscious hampers, those dirty
garmets had begin to stink.
Nietzsche smelled them .•. but
it took World War One to blow the lid off the hamper, and
the heads off a few million men.
The beast which had been
denied so completely, burst his psychic chains and forced
man to see himself from the inside out.
Literally.
Nietzsche had forseen it, knowing before the psychoanalysts,
that instincts suppressed from consciousness would fester
into hostility, self-hatred, and aggression.
search bears him out.
Freud's re-
We need only reflect for a moment
about our way of dealing with anger, to understand this
process.
We swallow our anger because it is bad, because
it is primal; but it tastes bad in our mouths and feels
worse in our stomachs.
Nausea.
The words could be con-
trolled, but the anger becomes a vomit which finally spews
out, enveloping everyone--including a lot of innocent
victims; or it methodically consumes us in the form of
some psychosomatic cancer.
Fromm's position is sociological in the sense that he
acknowledges the telling effect of the social process on
man's higher needs; e.g., power and prestige.
But, he
never loses sight of man's active participation in this
process and, therefore, posits an individual psychology.
31
Two factors are cited in our acceptance of the
prevailing cultural condition, the status quo.
One is the
dependency on his fellow man, which grows out of basic
(instinctual) needs.
He has to eat and so he has to work;
but he has to work under the particular conditions determined for him by the kind of society into which he is born.
The other factor is our need to feel related to the world,
to avoid isolation.
The kind of relatedness to the world may
be noble or trivial, but even being related
to the basest kind of pattern is immensely
preferable to being alone.
Religion and
nationalism, as well as any custom and any
belief however absurd and degrading, if it
only connects the individual with others,
are refuges from what man most dreads:
isolation. (3)
This fear of isolation is rooted in the total dependency
of infants on external help.
hermits."
There are no surviving "infant
Now, although we later grow increasingly inde-
pendent of others as our sensorimotor skills are expanded
and refined, nonetheless cooperation between individuals is
indispensable for social stability.
There are other reasons
for cooperation as well; certain individuals do not want the
apple cart upset.
relationship.
The pattern is initiated in the first
The infant learns what he must do to have
his needs met: perform in a certain way, stop crying, smile
for mommy's friend, etc.
Simultaneous with sensorimotor development is the
emergence of the ego.
It is the ego which distinguishes
--
-"
32
between the self, and the not-self; its advantages are
obvious--when one learns that he is not contiguous with
fire, he is less likely to get burned.
The problems related
to the ego are more difficult to discern because of their
sublety.
However, I have enumerated a rather lengthy list
of problems arising our of the dualistic view of the world
which results from ego process.
The degree to which we
feel separate from the world is of profound and vital concern to everybody, consciously or not.
I like Fromm's
description:
... by being aware of himself as distinct
from nature and other people, by being
aware--even very dimly--of death, sickness,
aging, he necessarily feels his insignificance and smallness in comparison with the
universe and all other who are not 'he.'
Unless he belonged somewhere, unless his
life had some meaning and direction, he
would feel like a particle of dust and be
overcome by his individual insignificance. (4)
Out of the individual's need to feel connected with the
world, he chooses either to look for union through spontaneous loving and working, or in "a kind of security by such
ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity
of the individual self.n(S)
The ironic thing about the dialectic of freedom and
security is that they are inversely proportionate to one
another.
Relationships of dependency are never self-
actualized, but nevertheless they give us that vital connect~on
to the world.
We prefer the furry mommy to the
wire mommy--but we will cling to the unyielding metal
33
rather than sit in a corner of the cage ... alone.
The
choice seems to be between freedom and security, a dichotomy which grows more acute with each successive stage of a
person's individualization process.
For Fromm this process
involves the emergency of an individual from his infantile
(primary) ties to the parents and other original object
relations.
The problem facing the individuating man is
awesome, particularly in today's world.
He must find
within himself, the roots which will connect him to the
world "in other ways than those which were characteristic
of his pre-individualistic existence."( 6 )
Fromm forgets himself for a moment when he suggests
that education furthers the process of individuation.
I
contend that quite to the contrary, education is an obstacle to real growth.
Knowledge of the self is the domain of
experimental colleges; the major universities turn out
their quotas of pedants.
I shall take up the issue of
education in greater detail in another section of this
paper.
The strength of Fromm's approach is that it not only
seeks to understand the individual, but that it studies the
effects of society on his possibilities for selfactualization.
It should be apparent from his lengthy
analysis of capitalism, that Fromm finds it inimical to
the fulfillment of the needs of the great majority of people
who practice it in its unbridled form.
The basic
34
consequence of the rise of capitalism has been the creation
of the working class, and the exploitation of the workers
by the business owners; this process involves the dehumanization of workers, and defining them as such.
Scientific discoveries are occurring at such a fast
pace that we no longer have a firm conceptual groundwork
on which to stand.
Security is difficult in a universe
which seems to change daily.
As one of my professors, Dr.
Joseph McNair, recently observed, "man has put his foot on
the moon; only a few thousand years ago, a drop of time in
the evolution of man's psyche, we worshipped the moon as
a god."
about.
This is the future shock which Toffler spoke
At least religion offered a stable view of the
world (however dismal it was); science has made us too
sophisticated for religion, but failed to offer us any
security.
If anything, it has enhanced the chances for
our total annhilation.
The mysteries of the. universe seem
more obscure; the logos has been lost.
The individual person feels very little of his own
significance in the world.
Everything outside the self
looms ever larger, ever more powerful.
Anxiety becomes
man's constant companion and he seeks a way out of it.
Either we try to incorporate the world into ourselves, or
we attempt to submerge ourselves in the outside world.
Identification with external causes prevails in contemporary western society.
Man is faced with his emptiness, so
35
he turns his gaze outwards.
regression.
The name for this process is
We revert to the techniques of need satisfac-
tion that we employed as infants.
We hope to find that pre-
conscious Eden where God saw to our needs.
Freud's concept
of a death instinct in man, Thanatos, is, useful here.
I
prefer to expand the notion from one of biological determinism to one of psychological metaphor.
The desire re-
fleeted in thanatos is towards the breast, the womb, to
organic stasis.
we have confused ourselves about this need
and reconstituted ourselves as inorganic beings--an interesting but painful paradox.
This thanatos is a flight from
freedom; any regression serves to minimize the feelings of
responsibility which are part of the individuation process,
and as Fromm points out, "necessarily assumes the character
of submission."(?)
As with most inauthentic replies to a
problem, submission fails in its aim of diminished anxiety.
The relationship between the submitting person and his
authority figure begins to sour at the point that such a
relationship is established.
Consciously the child may feel secure and
satisfied, but unconsciously it realizes
that the price it pays is giving up strength
and the integrity of the self ... submission
increases the child's insecurity and at the
same time creates hostility and rebelliousness, which is the more frightening since
it is directed against the very persons on
whom the child has remained--or become-dependent. ( 8 )
I would suggest that we understand the word "child" as it
is used here, in an adverbial sense, and not as a noun,
36
i.e., we are considering a "childlike" person.
The result
of this process is a reinforced sense of one's own powerlessness, and an eradicated sense of self-worth.
wonder that we are fond of slapstick humor.
It is no
How satisfying
to know that other people can be so stupid or clumsy.
The
world is rendered less imposing and we feel better about
ourselves; this requirement that others shrink in stature
so that we may feel secure, in the basis for what is now
being called the "I, Me, Mine generation."
Masochism is a mechanism for relating to a person in
such a way that one may avoid responsibility for making
choices and decisions, attributing that obligation to the
present authority, external or internalized.
Sadism,
ironically enough, reveals the same escape, for here also
there is a perpetual dependency, albeit on a submissive
partner.
Sadism also provides a person with a feeling of
mastery over something other than the self.
Fromm cites
Gorer's biography of Marquis de Sade in which sadism is
defined as "the pleasure felt from the observed modification
on the external world produced by the observer."(9)
Of course, this sexual or social behavior pattern
precludes any possibility of person-to-person encounter,
both partners having been concealed within their mutual
objectification.
It is important to note that for Fromm,
the masochistic style is not only a sexual style but a
social one; a relationship with the world which provides
37
for the perpetual presence of an authority figure.
It is
easy to recognize the sadfstic component of masochism
(sadism projected inwards) when we remember that submission
leads to feelings of self-worthlessness.
Masochism may
serve to punish the self with such feelings, while at the
same time absolving oneself of responsibility.
There is no
doubt a connection between these dark forms of sexuality,
and the growing mind-body split, in which the body is
objectified and imbued with a progressively more negative
meaning.
A pattern emerges in which the theme of domination
coincides with the feeling of separation from everything
"not me."
This striving for domination, mastery, or control
is the behavioral c6ncomitant of the feeling of powerlessness and isolation.
We find this as a character type in
the authoritarian individual.
Such individuals are descri-
bed by Fromm as loving "those conditions that limit human
freedom; he loves being submitted to fate."(lO}
to the past is very strong for such people.
Attachment
That is why
military men have such a fondness for nostalgia.
I mentioned earlier that authorities can be external
or internalized.
Freud's concept of the super-ego was dis-
cussed in this connection.
Fromm describes how man has
shaken the yoke off his back, deposed the king, and created
democratic societies.
Still, man is not free in the sense
of subject existence, suggesting that the internalized
38
authorities have assumed greater power in our time.
We do
not give up our paternal (or maternal) gods very easily.
Scientists have donned the chief's mantle, and enjoyed
great influence among us tribe members.
What stronger
image of this is there, than a man nervously obeying
Stanley Milgram, (ll} as he is ordered to give dangerous,
and in some cases lethal doses of electric shock to a concealed victim (who happened to be a confederate of the
experimenter}.
Gods have been replaced by emperors who
were replaced by kings who were replaced by the church, the
scientists, the Hollywood icons, etc., etc.
Adolph Hitler
and the "reverend" Jim Jones provide the same false panacea.
At some point, their vision of the world replaces ours, and
the holocausts, My Lais,
Kent States, and Guyana tragedies
become a human tradition, the predictable anomaly.
Some individuals are so disturbed that they wish not
so much to escape responsibility as to escape this world.
They retreat to a miniscule, purely subjective terrain.
Most of us decide to participate in the world as
automatons.
The American College Dictionary offers the
following definition for automaton: a person who acts in a
monotonous routine manner, without active intelligence.
Another way to describe this type of man is to recall what
he looks like from a plane window at two thousand feet; is
this vision more than perspectival, perhaps metaphorical?
Fromm sees him as the man who becomes the way he thinks
39
others wish to see him, the cog fits itself into the
machinery.
What is alarming apart from the fate of these
"others," is the fact that we parade around as free individuals.
Fifty million true individuals proudly display
their blue jeans as the symbol of their non-conformity.
It is this pseudo-individualism which is so frightening,
for it renders us complacent about the issue of true subjective freedom.
Somewhat inevitably, repression always
leads to a shrinkage of the real self, and the takeover of
a pseudo self.
"The pseudo-self is only an agent who
actually represents the role a person is supposed to play
but who does so under the name of the self."(l2)
have to worry, this isn't our problem, is it?
We don't
Not yours
or mine?
From the lengthy, rather pessimistic lines above, one
might conclude that freedom gained, whether individually or
phylogenetically, always leads back to submission; that the
risks and responsibilities of being oneself appear to outweigh the benefits of freedom, which include spontaneity
and creativity in experience.
Laing asks if it is even
possible to be a person today.
Is it possible to find enough satisfaction in freedom
that one will no longer feel compelled to relinquish it, no
longer yiely to thanatos as I have defined it?
positive about the answer.
realizing and being himself.
Fromm feels
It lies in the act of man
But the knowledge must be
40
complete; we must rediscover our entire being, and open
ourselves to more than our sterilized intellect.
"Positive
freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total
integrated personality.n(l3)
Do such people still exist?
Yes, although we often fail to appreciate their value as
models for our own way of experiencing, artists remain as
individuals (of course there are those who sell out, producing nothing but "popular," immediately accessible
products).
"As a matter of fact, the artist can be defined
as an individual who can express himself spontaneously."(l4)
The struggle for subjective freedom was not won easily by
these artists; they were up against a pervasive academic
tradition which insisted on a universal approach to painting, music, etc.
The impressionists staked their very
livelihoods on the small change that their personal visions
would ultimately be
acc~pted.
They were iconoclasts who
found within themselves the basis on which to act.
How
wonderful that today they are recognized as some of the
truly great artists of all time; how sad that it requires
such a struggle to achieve this freedom.
There persists a
negative aura surrounding the artist; even today they are
often referred to as bohemian types or moody and unpredictable individuals.
They also happen to be one of the last
human repositories of Eros.
In closing this chapter I would like to note that the
prescription for freedom implies that "there is only one
41
meaning of life: the act of living itself,"(l5) and this
living is only possible where there is "full affirmation
of the uniqueness of the individual."(l6)
42
REFERENCES
(1)
Fromm, Erich. Escape From Freedom.
York, 1941, p. 21.
Avon Books, New
(2)
May, Rollo; Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henri F.,
Eds. Existence.
Simon and Schuster, New York, 1959,
p. 21.
( 3)
Fromm.
Escape From Freedom, pp. 35-36.
( 4)
Ibid., p. 36.
(5)
Ibid., p. 38.
( 6)
Ibid., p. 40.
(7)
Ibid., p. 45.
( 8)
Ibid., pp. 45-46.
(9)
Ibid., p. 179.
( 10)
Ibid., p. 192.
(11)
Milgram, Stanley. Taken from Journal of Abnormal
Psychology 69, 1964, pp. 137-43.
(12)
Fromm, Erich.
(13)
Ibid., p. 284.
(14)
Ibid., p. 285.
(15)
Ibid. , p. 289.
( 16)
Ibid., p. 290.
Escape from Freedom, p. 229.
CHAPTER V
OBJECTIVITY VS. SUBJECTIVITY
It has been seen that part of the process of the loss
of subjective freedom involves the creation and maintenance
of a prevailing "objective" world view·cum TRUTH.
I noted
also that certain individuals and movements have argued
against regarding any institutional truths as anything more
than arbitrary conventions.
This relativistic view of the
world not only has broad implications for the validity of
the conventional wisdom, but supports our earlier contention
that the unique individuality of every person must be
respected--each subjective vision has its validity.
We
have already seen that much of Greek philosophy supported
this view.
Other cultures have argued against a prescribed
way of apprehending the truth; they believe that the perceptual process is relative according to one's intentions.*
The parable of the blind men describing an elephant is an
example of such
thinking; each man apprehends a limited,
personal experience of the total givenness of the event;
none is able to ascertain more than a portion of reality.
There is a very good Japanese film, Rashoman, which demonstrates this fact of life brilliantly.
An incident involv-
ing rape and robbery (tentative terms until one decides who
*Intention does not refer here to what one intends to do,
but to the meaning one confers upon a perceived phenomenom.
43
44
is viewed
or what to believe, and then, still tentative)
from the respective perspectives of the four principle
people involved.
Each of the resulting four stories pre-
sents us with an entirely different set of data and con"Neither A nor B
elusions about what "really" happened.
sees 'the reality' but both have their 'version' of the
reality, both thus confer 'antic' meanings and significances upon what is experienced, and thus the world of
total subjective reality is created."(l)
Experimental psychology has made similar findings
with regard to the relativity of perception.
Cantril and
Hastorf(2) conducted a study in which spectators at a
college football game were asked to describe what they had
seen.
Everyone reported that the officials favored the
other team.
Partisan sentiment required that one berate
the official any time a call went against the fan's favorite team.
What emerged was not so much a consensual report,
but the descriptions of as many games as there were fans to
report about it.
Who saw the game?
Everybody, and nobody.
Edmund Husserl constructed a philosophy around the
nature of perception and intentionality.
By intentionality
he is not referring to what one intends to do, but to what
meaning one confers upon the perceived phenomena.
He points
out (as do the examples above) that phenomena are never
perceived in their actual givenness, but given subjective
meaning at the moment of perception.
This theory is borne
45
out by recent physiological research which shows that the
subjective processing of information occurs as soon as the
retinal level of perception.
Thus we get a glimpse of a
part of reality; these limited viewpoints are called hori:_
zons.
We can apprehend more of the phenomena by regarding
it from different vantage points.
From the front we see a
tree, but when we walk around to the back of the phenomena
we may perceive that it is a stage prop.
Again, what is
suggested is that we all hold a piece of the puzzle--the
Pope or the President, or one's teacher don't possess all
the pieces.
Somewhere along the line, usually as children, we buy
the bill of goods wherein we attribute to certain individuals or groups some kind of hot line to God or whoever has
got all the answers.
When enough of us buy into it, the
piecemeal vision is regarded as the whole and final truth
about the world.
Propaganda is the name we give to such
"truths" which advance the cause of a State, or group of
people.
Another name is objectivity.
Both are antithetical
to subjective existence.
Roger Poole has written forcefully on this issue in his
book, Towards Deep Subiectivity.< 3 >
He begins at the point
where human subjectivity meets the worldly phenomena.
Taking his cue from Husserl, he asserts that "Meaning and
interpretation belong together inseparably.
Anything which
visibly has meaning is in that same instant invested with an
46
interpretation by each and every onlooker."(4)
He provides
an important formula for the true appreciation of an individual when he says that "to take account of what an act is
significant of is not enough; we need to advance to the
point of understanding what it signifies and what it is
intended to signify."(S)
The message to the behaviorists
is clear: if you wish to know or understand someone you
must pierce beneath the surface, below the behavioral level,
to the level of meaning.
The behaviorists enjoy the se-
curity of their scientific image; my belief is that the
extrapolations which they conjure from behavior to theory
constitute a preposterous simplification (reduction) of a
very complex subject.
Rather than facing our own subjective bases for
scientific investigation, we have decided that the way to
grasp the truth is to divorce ourselves from the discovery
process.
Rollo May condemns this narrow view and its
destructive impac-t on any enquiry, but specifically in
psychological enquiry.
He calls for freedom from "the
traditional doctrine, so limiting, self-contradictory, and
indeed often so destructive in psychology, that the less we
are involved in a given situation, the more clearly we can
observe the truth.n( 6 )
The implication of this dogmatic
approach is that "he will most successfully discover the
truth who is not the slightest bit interested in it!"(6) At
the very least we should be honest about the fact that
47
every scientific theory rests on at least one, more often,
multiple sets of assumptions.
Poole suggests that this last fact is obfuscated or
denied by those with a stake in maintaining either a political or ideological status quoi in order to promulgate and
preserve a domain of thought, it must be shown that: a)
only the objectified facts have been observedi and, b) that
everyone else acceptsthis truth--don't you?
Objectivity is
defined by Poole as "what is commonly received as objectively valid, all the attitudes, presuppositions, unquestioned assumptions typical of any society."(?)
His use of
the term is derogatory in the sense that he sees "objectivity" as precisely inadequate objectivity, objectivity
which reflects only "that impoverished fragment of human
reason with which we are only too familiar."(S)
The self-
serving nature of objectivity has already been mentioned.
"Objectivity in any society in fact gets defined as the
political and social statu~ quo."(9)
"Intellectual and
political objectivity are always clamped together within
the existing power structure."(lO)
"Hence anyone who does
not see the 'obvious' as the obvious will be taken to be
suffering from delusions of one kind or another ••. "(ll)
Jesus Christ and his disciples, and the hippies of the
sixties, provide extreme examples of the fate awaiting
those who cannot buy into this
11
objectivity."
48
In his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (l 2 ) Thomas Kuhn exposes the relationship of various
scientific discoveries with the milieu out of which they
were born.
Such a relationship demonstrates the tenuous
objectivity of such discoveries, their limited validity
constrained by time and place.
As one loses sight of the
fact that a theory has a somewhat arbitrary basis, he becomes blind to new ways of seeing--he works within the
limits of dogma, what Kuhn means by the term paradigm.
We must constantly remind ourselves that "an apparently
arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical
accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs
espoused by a given scientific community at a given
time."(l 3 )
In our awareness of this fact lies the freedom
to consider alternative approaches of enquiry.
As we have seen, however, there is an investment in
the scientific and sociopolitical status quo which requires
that alternative enquiries be branded subversive.
example
The
of Galileo illustrates this point quite well.
Other characteristics of "objectivity" have been outlined above.
Hopefully, it becomes clear that objectivity
in its limited sense is the most pervasive obstacle to
freedom as I have defined it.
The whole concept of "normal 11
derives its power from such objectivity.
The sterilization
of human experience, which literally transforms human beings
into statistics is made possible by this objectivity.
Yet,
49
as Fromm points out, it is precisely these characteristics
of objectivity which compel
us to succumb to it.
50
REFERENCES
(1)
Poole, Roger. Towards Deep Subjectivity.
Torchbooks, New York, 1972, p. 93.
Harper
(2)
Cantril, Hadley, and Hastorff Albert H.
"They saw a
game: A case study." Journal of Abnormal Psychology
29, 1954/ pp. 129-34.
(3)
Poole, Towards Deep Subjectivity.
( 4)
Ibid. , p. 6.
( 5)
Ibid.
(6)
May, Rollo; Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henri F.,
Eds. Existence. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958,
p. 27.
(7)
Poole, Towards Deep Subjectivity, p. 44.
(8)
Ibid.
(9)
Ibid., p. 45.
(10)
Ibid.
( 11)
Ibid.
(12)
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. Volume 2, Number 2. University of
Chicago Press, 1962.
(13)
Ibid., p. 4.
CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION
Education is largely a matter of indoctrination; the
prevailing world view is force-fed to us, concerned primarily with enabling people to fit into our marvelously
mechanized society.
It should come as no surprise that
the thinkers we have considered thus far take a rather dim
view of education as it is commonly practiced.
As a
master's candidate I am fondest of Helen Sargent's remark,
"Science offers more leeway than graduate students are
permitted to realize."(l)
Laing angrily denounces educa-
tion as an institutionalized process which teaches children
"to lose themselves, and to become absurd, and thus to be
normal." ( 2 )
"We are taught what to experience and what
not to experience, as we are taught what movements to make
and what sounds to emit ... ( 3 )
We do not have to search back
too far in our memories to recall the last time someone
said, "Ssh, someone will hear," or "Come on now, big boys
don't cry," etc., etc., ad nauseum.
In referring to educa-
tion (parental or otherwise) , Bernard Shaw observed that
"The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mold a child's
4
character."( )
We are educated towards product conscious-
ness and away from a concern with process.
The question is
never "What did you learn?," but "What grade did you get?"
51
l -
52
We do not produce thinkers and doers, but pedants and
consumers.
The tools we use are "the stick, and
hypnosis" in
th~
words of Fritz Perls.
Education based on freedom is very rare.
A. S. Neil's
Summerhill Project is one of the few examples of a school
wherein the student is free to learn, not compelled to do
so.
According to Neil, the approach works.
It works be-
cause the staff respects the integrity of each individual
student.
They regard education not so much as a means for
indoctrination or management, but as a forum where children
learn about themselves, as well as the traditional subjects
of education.
Since there is little, if any, authority
present, the children must learn to rely on their own
resources in order to get along with one another and to
achieve a thorough self-education.
Another result of the
lack of repressive agents is the relative
pauc~ty
sion between the children attending Summerhill.
of aggresAlthough
practical in a limited sense (such a system requires a very
small student body--the average enrollment at Summerhill
was about forty-five students at the time Neil wrote his
book)--Summerhill takes into account those psycho-social
considerations with which we have dealt in this paper, and
produces eager, flexible young men and women.
Unfortunately
the Summerhill concept is not likely to supplant the traditional concept of school as a management center or factory
for children.
53
It is also unfortunate that the stifling attitudes of
most schools are applied in the home as well.
"Father
knows best," "You wouldn't understand, you're only a
child."
We forget that at one time we were as alive as
our children.
Their Eros frightens us, so
the~process
of
civilizing them proceeds--and it proceeds to thwart Eros at
every turn.
I believe that the tendency to teach children
that they are helpless serves to prop up the meaning of our
existence as parents.
For some individuals whose identity,
whose whole meaning in life is to be the parent, it is too
much to accept that children grow up, and ideally become
more independent of the parent.
So they remain "momma's
little boy" or "daddy's little princess."
Thus far, these pages render a rather sorry portrait
of contemporary man.
He is fragmented to the point of los-
ing his identity with himself and with his species.
His
problem stems from the fact that he has suffered the "subject-object" split, and thus become divorced from his body,
his fellow man, and the world.
He feels compelled to merge
with any cause, for by so doing, he becomes a part of a
larger whole and no longer feels powerless or insignificant.
The Nazi movement was born in this way.
reverse this trend?
What can man do to
In the next chapter we shall consider
the possibilities as they present themselves in the tenets
of an existential-based psychotherapy.
54
REFERENCES .
(1)
May, RollOi Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henri F.,
Eds. Existence. Simon and Schuster 1 New York, 1958,
p. 9. (Quoted from: Sargent, Helen. Methodological
Problems in the Assessment of Intrapsychic Change in
Psychotherapy. Unpublished as of 1958)
(2)
Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience.
Books, New York, 1967, p. 28.
(3)
Ibid., p. 59.
(4)
Shaw, Bernard.
"The Revolutionist's Handbook," from
Four Plays by Bernard Shaw. Washington Square Press,
Inc., New York, 1965, p. 485.
Ballantine
CHAPTER VII
IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPISTS:
AN EXISTENTIAL POINT OF VIEW
Thank God for the therapists!
set this mess aright for everyone.
They are the ones who
.Aien-'l:t.lieyTConsider
the following passage from Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry:
Over the last century psychiatry, in
the view of an increasing number of presentday psychiatrists, has aligned inself far
too closely with the alienated needs of the
society within which it functions.
In doing
so it is perpetually in danger of committing
a well-intentioned act of betrayal of those
members of society who have been ejected
into the psychiatric situation as patients. (1)
Of course psychotherapists are in a unique position to
further the process of social invalidation; they are the
doctors of the mind.
As Cooper puts it, "There is no tech-
nique of invalidation more respectable, or even sacrosanct
than that which has the blessing of medical science."< 2 >
A good indicator of a therapist's potential efficacy
in helping a person to realize himself as more than a
reactionary automaton, may be found in the extent to which
he himself has lost the inner world to the outer.
Thera-
pists, after all, are subject to the same process of social
invalidation as everyone else, vulnerable to the same tendencies towards non-freedom.
There is a marvelous play
called Equus in which the role of the therapist is questioned.
Not coincidentally, the question emerges from the
55
56
subconscious of a psychiatrist, in the form of a dream:
DYSART: That night, I had this very
explicit dream.
In it I'm a chief priest
in Homeric Greece.
I'm wearing a wide
gold mask, all noble and bearded, like
the so-called Mask of Agamemnon found at
Mycenae.
I'm standing by a thick round
stone and holding a sharp knife.
In fact,
I'm officiating at some immensely important ritual sacrifice, on which depends
the fate of the crops or of a military
expedition. The sacrifice is a herd of
children: about five hundred boys and
girls.
I can see them stretching in a
long queue, right across the plain of
Argos.
I know it's Argos because of
the red soil. On either side of me
stand two assistant priests, wearing
masks as well: lumpy pop-eyed masks,
such as also were found at Mycenae.
They are enormously strong, these other
priests, and absolutely tireless. As
each child steps forward, they grab it
from behind and throw it over the stone.
Then, with a surgical skill which amazes
even me, I fit in the knife and slice
elegantly down to the navel, just like
a seamstress following a pattern.
I part
the flaps, sever the inner tubes, yank
them out and throw them hot and steaming
on to the floor.
The other two then study
the pattern they make, as if they were
reading hieroglyphics.
It's obvious to
me that I'm tops as chief priest.
It's
this unique talent for carving that has
got me where I am. The only thing is,
unknown to them, I've started to feel
distinctly nauseous. And with each victim it's getting worse. My face is going
green behind the mask. Of course, I redouble my efforts to look professional-cutting and snipping for all I'm worth:
mainly because I know that if ever those
two assistants so much as glimpse my distress--and the implied doubt that this
repetitive and smelly work is doing any
social good at all--I will be the next
across the stone. And then, of course-the damn mask begins to slip. The priests
both turn and look at it--it slips some
more--they see the green sweat running
'
'
57
down my face--their gold pop-eyes
suddenly fill up with blood--they
tear the knife out of my hand ...
and I wake up. (3}
The first question a therapist must ask himself is who
he serves: his client or society?
Presently, the choices
are polarized and mutually exclusive.
This tells us some-
thing about the nature of our modern society.
Implied in
the first question is a second question: namely, does the
therapist respect the existence of his client, and if so,
what does this mean in terms of a therapeutic approach?
I have listed a number of philosophers, writers,
psychiatrists, and psychologists who see the task of therapy as a rediscovery and harmonious integration of the
client's lost parts.
The list of "professionals'' espousing
this viewpoint is much longer than I can hope to cover.
What remains to be done is the re-education of the rest of
us: the therapeutic elements sketched below may be universally applied at home, at school, or anywhere people have
a relationship with other people.
The existential and phenomenological psychotherapists
base their approach on respect for the existence of the
client in his world.
One of the more difficult problems
facing the therapist is the inculcation of this respect in
the client, for himself.
The problem is rendered difficult
in view of the client's probable motivation for seeking
therapy in the first place.
More often than not, they come
to the therapist seeking a new pattern of behavior and
58
feelings which will enable them to conform to society; the
goal is to avoid conflict by adjusting to others.
Sadly,
therapists generally satisfy this request, returning a more
secure mannekin to the outside world.
Certain principles flow out of this respect for the
client and his world.
One is that the therapist must make
an attempt to enter that world, for it is only in the
client's world that his behavior finds logic, and his soul
finds meaning.
If the client is seen exclusively in the
terms of the therapist, there is no possibility of true
encounter.
As Rollo May argues:
The crucial question is always the
bridge between the system and the
patient--how can we be certain that
our system, admirable and beautifully
wrought as it may be in principle,
has anything to do with this specific
Mr. Jones, a living, immediate reality
sitting opposite us in the consulting
room?{4)
As has been noted numerous times thus far, it is
through our relations with others that we tend to develop
feelings of alienation; our subjective experience of
events is negated.
Laing sees this as the violence per-
petrated by humans on humans.
The only way to restore the
integrity of one's experience is to create a new relationship, based on mutual respect.
We all live on the hope that authentic
meeting between human beings can still
occur. Psychotherapy consists in the
paring away of all that stands between
us, the props, masks, roles, lies, defenses, anxieties, projections and
59
introjections, in short, all the
carryovers from the past, transference and counter-transference,
that we use by habit and collusion,
wittingly or unwittingly 1 as our
currency for relationships. (5)
This puts the greatest burden of all on the therapist: he
must be honest himself in relating to the client.
In other
words, the therapeutic moment occurs only if the therapist
can be whole.
For Carl Rogers, the possibility for relationship
exists in an atmosphere of unconditional positive regard
for the client, where the
11
0ther 11 really listens to the
client so that he feels understood, and where the therapist
resists the temptation to impose THE solution on the client
(who has most likely asked for it).
This relational envi-
ronment yields like mommy's breast, i t nourishes like her
milk--"I remember what I am!
11
Rogers reports that when forced to look inside for
direction, in the environment of receptivity, his clients
become more themselves, more autonomous, freer from
"oughts, .. abandon their facades, and move towards
11
being
process ...
Fritz Perls liked to frustrate his clients to break
the facade.
In.frustrating his clients, he made them angry
enough to be honest, angry enough to.cut out the
Underlying this approach is the belief that
11
11
bullshit.
11
the aim in
therapy, the growth aim is to lose more and more of your
'mind' and come more to your senses."(6)
Like Rogers, Perls
60
for two reasons, doesn't supply the "easy answers" to the
client.
First of
all~
to suggest that there are simple
solutions belies and belittles the problem of the client.
Secondly, these easy answers only postpone the moment of
freedom.
As he put it, "everytime you refuse to answer a
question, you help the other person to develop his own
resources."(?)
The process and its results are described
by Perls in this way:
on the therapist.
"Holes in the patient are projected
Then we frustrate the client to force
him to develop his own potential ... to discover that what
he expects from the therapist, he can do just as well
himself."(B)
This approach reveals a confidence in the
client, a confidence the behaviorists can't even imagine.
The result of successful therapy is authentic living
by the client.
theless.
Although an ideal, it is the goal never-
By authentic is meant conscious living, or having
emanated from the self, a self which acknowledges responsibility for itself.
It is a product of the whole person.
none's own felt direction is clearly different from some
notion of what one ought to do or be, which is felt with
tension and burdenedness."(9)
This means that only certain
steps imply growth, and not othersi "the direction of one's
next psychotherapeutic step is always implicit in one's
present experiencing, it isn't a matter of choosing goals,
as if the direction could be anything, and is added on from
the outside to present experiencing."(lO)
61
Not unexpectedly, this approach is strongly opposed
to the use of drugs or electric shock as an adjunct to
therapy.
There are times when a crisis situation becomes
dangerous to a client or others--only then should the use
of drugs be considered, but never as
itself.
a part of the therapy
The rationale is simple: drugs merely mask the
symptom of a person's problem, and are usually intended to
make life easier for the family, or staff at the state
hospital.
Repressed material is never brought to con-
sciousness via drug treatment, but is usually sedated into
submission; ergo drug treatment is an extension of repression, and antithetical to the emergence of the self.
Drugs and electric shock are the tools of the "technique lovers."
The objectification of man results in an
emphasis on technique in therapy.
Existential psychotherapy
"protests against the tendency to identify psychotherapy
with technical reason.
It stands for basing psychotherapy
on an understanding of what makes man the human being; it
stands for defining neurosis in terms of what destroy's
man's capacity to fulfill his own being."(ll)
Clearly, the medical model of ''mental illness" is
rejected, for it denies man's role in his behavior.
Neurosis is not something one has, but what one is.
The existential approach to psychotherapy utilizes
whichever personal resources fit the essential nature of
the client's present world.
The therapist should not be
62
ashamed to use intuition (if he has entered the world of
the client his intuitions stand a good chan9e of being
accurate), honest expression of emotions, etc.
Where there
are lacunae in our understanding, the tendency has been to
try and fit the problem into our procrustean conceptual
framework.
The accusation that these other resources are
mumbo jumbo is nothing more than an outgrowth of the persistent fear of being "unscientific;" security for these
types is found at the point of being bound in their rigid
"scientism."
One has to be honest about the limits of psychotherapy.
"Obviously all any therapy can do is help a person remove
the blocks which keep him from loving; it cannot love for
him, and it is doing him ultimate harm if it dulls his own
responsible awareness at this point."(l2}
The therapist
does not deny painful realities, or even that to live freely
involves risk and pain.
He does not deny the crisis of the
patient, or allow the patient to deny it either.
There is
a firm belief that crisis often provides the growing edge
in therapy.
The goal is to become, as Kierkegaard put it,
that which one truly is.
It is not within the scope of this paper to go into
more detail regarding existential analysis.
the reader to the
references
(I recommend
wherein are listed some
excellent introductions to the subject.)
$
63
REFERENCES
(1)
Cooper, David. Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry.
Paladin, 1967 1 p. 10.
(2)
Ibid., p. 11
(3)
Shaffer, Peter.
p. 29.
{4}
May, Rolloi Angel, Ernest; and Ellenberger, Henri F.,
Eds. Existence. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1958,
Equus.
Avon Books 1 New York, 1974,
p. 3.
(5}
Laing, R. D. The Politics o£ Experience.
Books, New York, 1967, p. 46.
(6)
Perls, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.
Books, New York, 1967, p. 53.
(7}
Ibid.
(8)
Ibid., p. 40.
(9)
Gendlin, Eugene T.
"Experiential Psychotherapy," from
Current Psychotherapies, ed. by Raymond Corsini. F. E.
Peacock, Itasca, Illinois, 1973, p. 327.
I
Ballantine
Bantam
p. 38.
(10)
Ibid., p. 326.
(11)
May, Existence, p. 35.
(12)
Ibid., p. 71.
'
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
As with any event, the value of time spent reading
this psycho-socio-political manifesto is directly proportionate to the extent to which the reader was able to
question and respond to it personally.
Recently in Guyana, about nine hundred people were
either murdered, or committed suicide in the name of a
demented guru.
At the other extreme, we have become a
society of selfish people who scream, "Me
first~"
These
are examples of the flight from freedom and responsibility
about which this paper has been concerned.
way.
Is there enough time?
There is another
The growing evidence that the
fabric of society is about to be torn apart takes the form
of the grim statistics of "mental" patients filling twothirds of our hospital beds, elderly men and women killed
for the few dollars in their pockets, and the spectre of
the final and ultimate holocaust.
Man has paid a terrible
price to become civilized; he has sacrificed the greater
part of himself towards this end.
The parents and teachers
have a great responsibility to themselves and to their
children; to adopt the same capacity for listening, acceptance and honesty that is required of the therapist with his
client.
The existential point of view offers no security
but does offer much in the way of viewing, and solving the
64
65
problem of individual freedom.
The Zen masters ask us to
solve the koan (riddle) or our original face, our original
nature.
The possibility for man's fulfillment, or his
destruction, hinges on the concern he shows for this most
meaningful of all human problems.
APPENDIX
"Escape to Moriah"
A Parable on Freedom
It was early morning when Abraham arose, kissed Sarah,
his wife of so many years, and prepared for the journey to
Mount Moriah.
He was silent as he and Isaac made their way
towards the decisive moment.
When the time came, Abraham
bound Isaac and placed the wood at his feet.
He gazed at
the unrevealing face of his son, and he drew the knife.
Who was this man who risked "the best he had" on faith
(in this case faith in God)?
For Soren Kierkegaard 1 he is
the man who has made the essential leap into the spiritual,
his springboard the blind indifference (absurdity) of this
world.
He is the man who "strives day and night against
the cunning of oblivion which would trick him out of his
hero."
How would Albert Camus regard ·such a man?
We must
first note that the predicament which gives rise to Abraham's
action is universal--it is our predicament.
When we compare
the portraits of this world as rendered by Kierkegaard and
Camus, we are struck not so much by a different choice of
color and tone or of stroke, but by the similarity of features.
Kierkegaard starts with the proposition that this
world is under the dominion of the law of imperfection,
where rain falls on both the good and the bad man, and the
66
67
sun, when it shines, does not discriminate amongst men, but
radiates its warmth on all.
For Camus the world is a
desert by virtue of its "irreduceability," i.e., the fact
that certain of its aspects appear incomprehensible to man.
Thus Abraham lives in the shared world of Camus and
Kierkegaard.
How can it be that he is held in adulation by
one and rejected as an escapist by the other?
If not from
his predicament, then perhaps to his response 1 the answer.
The solution to this seeming paradox lies partly in a
closer analysis of the respective worlds of the two men.
For as we have been engaged in this abstract discussion,
the fabric of Kierkegaard's painting has been stretching to
infinite limits so that the canvas now includes momentary
flashes of other worlds, moving about too fast for us to
really see.
There is still this outward world, the one in
which we draw our breath, touch and feel, see and taste,
the one who knows its master as imperfection.
But there,
filling up a greater portion of the portrait, is a very
bright star: this is the world of spirit where man's
nostal~yic
request for clarity and unity is satisfied.
Looking back now at Camus' painting we see that this
familiar world still assumes its same pre-eminence in the
frame.
In fact, no other worlds accompany it.
For Camus
there is this world in which we walk and which exists within
the scope of our knowledge (however limited).
To spend
one's time speculating or conjuring up other worlds is to
68
beg the question, i.e., waste one's time.
One gets the
feeling when reading Camus that .he senses an acute arrogance
in the demand for other worldsthat resolve all doubt.
If Abraham's journey had its first steps in the same
world for Camus and Kierkegaard, its ending surely takes
place in different worlds.
Does he heap to his destiny?
Or does he escape it?
Shall we praise the man who expects the impossible?
The man who strives against that which he cannot comprehend
except through his creation of it?
Or do we regard him as
absurd who would, sword in hand, attack an army of men
armed with machine guns?
We must turn once again to the
problem of the gulf which exists.between what is and what
we wish to be; it gives birth to God, it clears Abraham of
his ethical title: murderer.
the desert.
It gives rise to an oasis in
The only remaining problem is that the oasis
eludes the tread of our feet, its fragrance escapes us, and
though we gaze interminably about we cannot see Isaac.
Thus it is that this abyss has its proper place in our
world, we know its existence as the limit of that which we
know.
Thus it is that this gulf, this artifact par excel-
lence should be stared at from the precipice with no compulsion to leap, for this is the last outpost of this world
--shall we reject what we know as unsuitable?
defined this condition as arrogance.
Earlier, we
If we look carefully,
we see nothing beyond the great abyss; this fact renders
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the leap profound for Kierkegaard, pointless for Camus.
He would suggest that it is simply an abyss and not a bridge.
There is, in fact, no bridge between what we know and that
which we cannot know except by experience.
This ostensibly
condemning pronouncement does offer the formula for our
freedom.
It is simply to live in this world.
If we were to borrow Satre's terms we could say that
the man of faith stands on bad faith.
How does murder of
one's son transcend its definition in a way which we cannot
grasp?
Phenomena in the world must be appreciated in the
light of their facticity and in the glow of transcendence
which remains firmly anchored within the confines of that
which we know.
Dread does not ennoble murder.
I am not
paralyzed at the thought of who held up Abraham's right
hand--it was Abraham.
If it was God, then there is no freedom.
So, finally,
we must consider the freedom implied in Abraham's story.
His faith frees him from what he knows.
He turns his back
to the real, peering into the endless abyss for the ultimate
solution, facing it, disregarding the fact that he stares at
a phantom, a phantom who can absorb his guilt, and yet a
phantom.
we are continually brought back to the problem of
Abraham's character.
If he is great, he is judged to be so
in terms which hold no meaning in this world; he is thus
regarded by Hegel, or by Kierkegaard as a great man.
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However, when he turns his back on this world he defines
himself as the ultimate arrogant.
As he holds the knife up
to Isaac, so he holds the knife to the world; such is
Isaac's transcendence.
transcendence!
Yet Abraham would transcend this
Is that anything but arrogance?
It was twilight and Abraham sat by the fire with Sarah
his faithful wife, and Isaac his beloved son.
As he gazed
into the eyes of his loved ones, God's voice rang out:
"Take you your son Isaac up to Mount Moriah and there offer
him to me as a sacrifice."
Abraham could not hear the com-
mand, but heard only the voices of Sarah and Isaac.