lhpolin@gmail.com
_________________
Abstract
This is the remarkable story of an individual
who experienced severe stress starting in the womb. Growing up in
a highly dysfunctional family, he used intellectualization as a
defense against overwhelming emotional pain. A high academic
achiever, this young man was on the Dean’s List at Brown
University when he suffered a catastrophic neurological collapse.
Labeled as schizophrenic, he was on the verge of death as his
twentieth birthday approached.
Starting to jog, he avoided his demise. Four
years later, this individual found psychoanalyst Erich Fromm’s The
Sane Society while browsing in a bookstore. Unable to work
or communicate normally with people, he began a long intellectual
odyssey which ultimately involved the reading of thousands of
books about American society.
Miraculously transformed by a bodywork
technique developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, he continued to live
with severe stress due to his lack of social skills and the
crazy-making institutions of an aggressive society. Nine years
after relearning to use his body properly, this man discovered
psychoanalyst Alice Miller’s For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty
in Child-rearing and The Roots of Violence. Reading
many other books about child abuse and human development, he began
to understand the reasons which had caused his ordeal. This
engrossing story is a unique combination of memoir and academic
study. People interested in psychology, education, human
development, American culture, and social criticism will find much
to ponder in it.
__________________
No man and no force can abolish memory.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Quoted in
Unchained Memories
The past is the present, isn't it? It's the
future too. We all try to lie out of that, but life won't let us.
—Eugene O'Neill
Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.
—George Santayana, Quoted in Family
Secrets
Once we have gained knowledge of the past, the
present— no matter how confusing it may have seemed—will often
become easy to understand.
—Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware
Present knowledge that the child's metabolism
requires the intake of energy expressed as love, as well as the
energy derived from the intake of milk and bread, makes the body
the "nursery of the soul."
—Edith Cobb, The Ecology of Imagination in
Childhood
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another
Right now.
—Chet Powers, for The Youngbloods, Quoted in
The Greening of America
This Book is Dedicated to Josef Dellagrotte
Author's note --
The names of the authors mentioned are real.
All the other names except Feldenkrais practitioner Josef Dellagrotte, psychiatrist
Harry Kozol and Professor George Morgan have been changed. I
changed the names because at the time I wrote this book my mother
was still living.
Contents
3.
The Pursuit of
Loneliness Starts
5.
A Father and Early Memories
10.
A Little
Anatomy and Physiology Lesson
12.
I Encounter
Toxic Psychiatry
14.
My
Financial Status Improves
18.
I Become a
Reading Machine
19.
I Don’t Attend
Law School—and Other
Adventures Back
North
20.
I
Win a Tennis Championship
21.
I Experience
the Feldenkrais Technique
26.
I Return to
Fort Lauderdale
27.
Society:
The
Real Lunatic Asylum
28.
I Wasn’t a
Satisfactory Performer
30.
My First
Semester in Graduate School
31.
Hemingway and
Social Reconstruction
32.
I Research San
Antonio and Socialism
34.
I Try to Enter
the Teaching Profession
35.
I Become a
Client of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation
Commission
38.
I Find Alice
Miller and Slow My Temper
39.
Two
Extraordinary
Incidents
43.
A
Need for Progressive Health Practices
44.
Our
Dysfunctional Educational System
45.
Competition or
Cooperation?
46.
Defective
Parenting in an Unnatural
World
47.
Technology and
the Destruction of Life
50.
People in
Little
Boxes on a Lousy
Earth
At the age of seventeen, I was inducted into
the cum laude society of my private school. At the age of
eighteen, I reached the finals of a state schoolboy tennis
championship. A month later, I entered an Ivy League college. A
little more than a year after that, I was labelled a paranoid
schizophrenic.
I’m able to tell my story because in 1988,
while browsing in a bookstore, I found the former psychoanalyst
Alice Miller’s book For Your Own Good: Child-rearing and the
Roots of Violence. During the previous sixteen years, I had
read about twenty-five hundred books from such disciplines as
literature, history, sociology, social criticism, and political
science. Almost all of my reading dealt with American life. I
acquired wide-ranging, abstract knowledge about American society;
yet, I had no knowledge about human development or my own history.
Reading Miller’s book, I was stunned. It provided much information
about the origin of the severe problems that I had experienced
from the age of nineteen, twenty-three years ago. During the
subsequent four years, I gained much insight into dysfunctional
families while reading widely in the fields of psychology and
human development. My wall of silence has been broken down, allowing the
truth to emerge. I now understand that the severe stress illness I
developed was not caused by a genetic malfunction or biochemical
imbalance but by early trauma.
Miller observes, "The truth about childhood as
many of us have had to endure it, is inconceivable, scandalous,
painful. Not uncommonly, it is monstrous."(1) Yet, until recently,
our culture has not encouraged us to take our suffering seriously,
particularly our fate as a child.(2) This situation started to
change in the 1980s as a torrent of books were published about
dysfunctional families and child abuse. This trend is a positive
development; it is a start toward fundamental societal
reconstruction.
All our experiences need to be digested and
"cared for;" in fact, "memory comes from the Greek word for
’to care for’."(3) It is obvious that the facts of childhood can
never be changed. People can either stop repressing them and learn
to accept them, or they can deny them. Those that totally deny
their childhood suffering will make others suffer.
My mother, Florence Eisenberg, was the daughter
of a wealthy businessman, Isadore Eisenberg. She was born in a
medium-sized New England mill town, Fall River, Massachusetts, on
September 28, 1928 and attended the city’s public schools. She was
one of the top ten students at her large high school. A poor grade
in chemistry prevented her from being close to the top. Florence
was in her sophomore year at a Boston-area colllege majoring in
sociology when a classmate introduced her to Howard Goldstein.
Howard came from a poor Boston family; he had graduated from
Boston Latin and was attending a nearby university.
In 1943, Howard volunteered to serve in the
Naval Air Corp. He wrote to Florence almost every day from the
various campuses and bases at which he was undergoing his
training. In 1993, my mother gave me about fifty of his letters.
They show that he was very much in love with her. However, "in
love" is not love. Nature wants babies, so it evolved the feelings
found in courtship. Genuine love is the result of two mature
people working hard to develop interpersonal communication skills
and empathetic feelings toward their partner’s growth.
Howard was commissioned an Ensign in the United
States Naval Reserve on March 6, 1945. On March 10, he married
Florence in Boston; then, on March 26, he reported for duty at a
naval base in Florida. Having graduated from college in January,
his wife joined him for the summer. She lived with a friend in her
home near the base. The newlyweds were happy that they were living
close to each other. Near the end of June, Florence became
pregnant. Late in the summer, she returned to her parents’ home.
The atom bomb having been dropped on Japan in early August, the
end of the war was in sight. Florence eagerly awaited Howard’s
release from the service, which was expected within a few months.
His release date approached as October
progressed. He was just about to leave the base to return to
Boston when an officer came to inform some of the men that a plane
had to be ferried to a base in Oklahoma. Upon realizing that none
of the men would volunteer, the officer randomly chose a crew.
Howard was one of those chosen. The plane developed mechanical
trouble en route; the crew landed it in New Orleans to obtain the
needed repairs. Howard was stuck in a hotel for a few days with
almost no money. One day he wrote his wife three letters. In his
last, he asked whether she could feel the baby kicking yet. A
woman should feel fetal movements at approximately four months
into her pregnancy.(6) Florence had been carrying me for about
this time, so she would have answered affirmatively either
immediately or soon thereafter.
Having been fixed, the plane flew to Oklahoma
and landed. Florence wired her husband to wait for a friend and
fly back to their Florida base together. Howard ignored her advice
because he was eager to pick up his release papers in Florida and
return to his beautiful and adoring wife in New England. He
boarded an Army troop transport plane on the morning of October
31, 1945. All passengers perished when the aircraft crashed into a
mountain shortly after takeoff.
Isadore approached his daughter later that day
and told her that Howard was dead. Florence was unconsolable; she
couldn’t accept the fact that she would never again see alive the
man with whom she had expected to spend her life. She was one
month past her twenty-second birthday.
Recent research has shown that the most
critical determinant of psychological and physiological
development is that of important happenings in the womb. Trauma
experienced during this period affects the brain system, the
hormone balance, and the anatomy of the baby as well as its
psychological state. Events are impressed upon the delicate and
unsophisticated mind of the fetus with a force that can be matched
subsequently only under astounding circumstances.(7) The fact that
a mother’s experiences affect her unborn child has long been
known. Samuel Taylor Coleridge remarked in Miscellanies
Aesthetic and Literary that "the history of man for the nine
months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more
interesting, and contain certain events of greater moment, than
all the three-score and ten years that
follow it."(8) A thousand years ago, the Chinese organized
prenatal clinics because they felt that a woman’s emotions and
biology influenced the
personality and mental health of her child.(9)
In the 1980s, a new scientific discipline has
arisen: pre- and perinatal psychology, the neurological and
psychological study of babies before and during birth. A leader in
this field, psychiatrist Thomas Verny, is sure that the
foundations of human personality are formed by birth and prenatal
experiences.(10) Maternal thoughts and feelings need not
irrevocably shape the fetus’s future. They are, however, one very
important element in determining a person’s fate in life. Mothers
should experience pregnancy as the calm and happy beginning of a
new relationship. Unlike genetic inheritance, maternal thoughts
and feelings are under the mother’s influence.
After twelve weeks, "the fetal nervous system
is fully organized and can fully react to, code, and store
trauma."(11) The baby will increasingly be interested in the
outside world from the time around the beginning of the second
trimester.(12) Imagine the impact that Florence’s hysterical
reaction to Howard’s death had upon me.
Yet, her ongoing attitude toward me was much
more important than a single event, no matter how traumatic.
Pregnancy is a stressful time even without traumatic incidents or
heavy baggage from the past. Unconscious problems are greatly
magnified during stressful times.(13) My mother had repressed the
suffering that she had undergone when she had been severely
emotionally abused by her own mother and father. She fell victim
to the repetition compulsion. Santayana summed up this
psychological mechanism cogently when he remarked that people who
can’t remember the past will repeat it. Abused children often
identify with the aggressor; upon bearing a child of their own,
they are able to reverse roles. Having power now, they have their
child at their mercy. These previously abused people see their own
parent in the child; in other words, they pretend that the child
is their abusive parent and strike back. This contempt for
individuals who are smaller and weaker is the best defense against
allowing their own feelings of weakness to become conscious.(14) I
don’t know Florence’s feelings and thoughts about me while I was a
fetus. She was anxious, angry, and depressed; she was surely quite
cold and distant toward her unborn child. People who don’t know
the truth about their parents and caregivers as well as about
themselves are incapable of love.
Chronic stress causes secretion of stress
hormones; these hormones travel through the blooodstream to the
womb and induce stress in the fetus. The effect is powerful
because of the interconnection of the nervous, endocrine, and
immune systems. The brain is a gland too; it produces hormones,
has receptors for hormones and is bathed by hormones. Therefore,
the nervous system is everywhere in the body. Elizabeth Noble
declares, ’’High concentrations of hormones and/or
neurotransmitters during critical periods of brain development can
permanently affect metabolism, growth, reproduction, information
processing, behavior, and immunity."(15) Although going unnoticed,
these physical changes become an ongoing part of our psychological
makeup. (16)
Dr. Lester W. Sontag published a paper in late
1944 called War and the Maternal-Fetal Relationship. He
concentrated solely on threats to the pregnant woman's husband.
Scientifically ahead of his time, Dr. Sontag found that stresses
which increase maternal neuro-hormonal production increase the
fetus’s biological susceptibility to emotional distress. His body
machinery having been dramatically changed in utero, the child’s
ability to grow and change will be impeded. He will sometimes find
that it takes much more effort to function as well as people who
have not been damaged in the prenatal period.(17)
Researchers haven’t discovered exactly when the
fetal brain and nervous system is most susceptible to excessive
stress-related maternal neuro-hormones. Neither has the scientific
community found precisely what kinds of changes these
neuro-hormones cause in the fetus. However, if the mother becomes
upset and withdrawn due to the loss of
her spouse, she will likely cause her child to
greatly suffer.(18)
The fetal hypothalamus and its outposts in the
body may be most affected; in fact, a Finnish study supplies
direct evidence that stress affects hypothalamic development. Drs.
Matti 0. Huttunen and Pekka Niskanen wrote an article entitled Prenatal
Loss of Father and Psychiatric Disorders in the Archives
of General Psychiatry in April 1978. They wanted to find out
whether the death of a father would affect a child most before or
after birth. Studying their subjects’ histories, the doctors soon
discovered that the occurrence of psychiatric disorders,
particularly schizophrenia, was significantly higher among those
who had lost their fathers before they were born. The researchers
concluded that the hypothalamus, the body’s feeling center,
definitely had been affected by the mother’s agitation.(19)
Prenatal mother-infant bonding is more
important to their relationship than post-birth bonding. A complex
and subtle intrauterine bonding.(20) A complex and subtle
intrauterine bonding system causes the fetus to respond to his
mother’s deepest feelings and thoughts. The fetus reacts to the
emotional content of speech as well as to unspoken attitudes and
feelings.(21) Imprints, also known as engrams or
memory matrices, have an impact on the unconscious mind of
the baby.(22) Within a fraction of a second after his mother
becomes fearful, the fetus’s heart will begin pounding at double
its normal rate.(23)
Maternal thoughts which make the fetus happy or
calm can lay the foundation for a cheerful and serene disposition
in life.(24) A secure person is self-confident; he also will have
a predisposition to be friendly and extroverted.(25) He develops
these traits naturally when he has known from the prenatal period
that he is loved. On the other hand, if the womb environment has
been hostile, the child will be prepared to find this hostility in
the outside world. He will have tendencies toward suspiciousness,
distrust, and introversion; he will have difficulty in relating to
others and in asserting himself.(26)
The husband’s attitude toward his wife and
unborn child is one of the most important factors in securing a
favorable outcome for a pregnancy.(27) Leni Schwartz declares: "A
man’s awareness of his pregnant partner’s increased needs for
tenderness, affection and care can significantly reduce tensions
and avoid a retreat into resentful distance, and her sensitivity
to his needs is crucial as well.”(28) During the fourth month of
pregnancy, the woman should focus on her
relationship with her partner.(29)
Howard and Florence were geographically close
to each other for a few months in Florida. They were also
psychologically close, continuing their intimacy by mail when
Florence returned home. There is no question, however, that they
would, have experienced significant problems if Howard had lived.
His choice of Florence for a wife was based on dysfunctional
patterns in his own family background. Nevertheless, it is
undeniable that, in their own way, they truly cared for each other
during their short time together.
Stanley Coren in The Left-Hander Syndrome
furnishes additional evidence that my neurological problems
started in the womb. He explains that some left-handedness is the
result of damage sustained before birth or during the birth
process itself. According to my mother, as an infant I was
strongly left-handed. My nursery school teacher taught me to use
my right hand for eating and writing. However, I batted and threw
left-handed in baseball and bowled left-handed. The few times I
played golf, I did so left-handed. For some unknown reason, I used
my right hand in tennis when I started to play at ten years old.
It is difficult to switch a person from left to
right-handed; it is successful in only one out of every three or
four attempts. It works only if the attempt is made when the
individual is quite young and only for the specific actions on
which the teacher concentrates.(30)
90 percent of women and 86 percent of men are
right-handed. Most left-handedness is the result of "naturally
occurring genetic or physiological factors." However, a scientific
consensus has developed that a subset of left-handers use that
hand because of a neurological or psychological difficulty. The
pathology that changes a natural right-hander to a left-hander is
probably a neural injury to the left hemisphere of the brain; it
can range from minor to very severe.(31) Due to these neural
injuries, some individuals who would have developed as normal,
consistent right-handers "will get switched off of their
programmed main track and onto a side track that leads them
to left-handedness."(32) Coren prefers the term "side-track
left-hander" rather than "pathological left-hander" to describe
these people.
Left-handedness, being a rare trait, can be
viewed as a sign or a marker pointing to the
existence of other psychological and neurological difficulties.
The same type of damage or injury that caused the left-handedness
might also cause other difficulties that could influence the
individual’s physical or psychological well-being. Most
left-handers don’t experience major problems from the injury or
damage they have sustained.(33) Nevertheless, "the percentage of
left-handers seems to be much higher in groups with an assortment
of psychological and physical problems."(34) Samples of
schizophrenics contain two to five times more left-handers than
are found in non-schizophrenic
samples.(35) Left-handed schizophrenics often have more severe
symptoms than do right-handers. Generally, left-handers suffering
from psychopathology achieve lower scores on most
neuro-psychological tests.(36)
One reason that left-handedness can be used as
a sign of damage is that control of handedness is neurologically
complicated. As many as twenty-three brain centers and neural
pathways may take part in deciding handedness and in controlling
the hands. Coren notes:
"These include several different movement
control systems that originate in the cerebral cortex. Several
other centers of control are located in the older sections of the
brain (usually referred to as the midbrain), in addition to a set
of pathways through the spinal cord and lower brain centers and
some pathways between the two hemispheres."(37)
The natural development of handedness may be
changed due to injury or damage to any of these areas or
arrangements.
The percentage of left-handers in the
population declines dramatically as people age. Coren and
colleague Clare Porac had gathered information that shows that
older left-handers are rare. Among the group of 20-year-olds they
measured, about 13 percent were left-handed. But the group of
fifty-year-olds they measured contained only 5 percent
left-handers. Finally, in the group of people eighty and older,
less than one-half of one percent were left-handed. Many other researchers around the
world have confirmed this pattern.(38) The fact that left-handers
are more accident-prone may be more important than the
pathological factor in causing their early deaths.(39)
It is indeed miraculous that, as I write this,
I’m fifty-one years old and in reasonably good health.
I was born on March 29, 1946 in a hospital in
my mother’s hometown. A University of Cincinnati study has found
"that extreme habitual worries, a negative attitude toward
motherhood, and a poor relationship with one’s own mother
prolonged labor most."(1) My mother has told me that my birth was
an easy one. I must have been unusually eager to escape from the
womb because her labor was only one and one-half hours long. An
unborn child may blame himself for his mother’s unhappiness and
try to make her happy by being born easily.(2)
I was a participant in an assembly-line process
which functioned as a rite of passage introducing me into
technocratic society.(3) Actually, birth is a flexible natural
process. Whether it takes place in the hospital and with
substantial technological intervention or at home, it will usually
conclude satisfactorily.(4) Cultural anthropologist Robbie E.
Davis-Floyd finds that hospital birth definitely is not safer than
prearranged home birth with a mid-wife.(5)
My short and uncomplicated hospital birth was
traumatic. Obstetrician Frederick Leboyer, an advocate of natural
childbirth, poetically and vividly makes this clear in Birth
Without Violence. Babies definitely feel at birth;
therefore, after undergoing hospital-technological birth, I felt
horrendous pain.(6) Yet, I was handled roughly in the delivery
room. Leboyer describes "the tragic forehead, the screaming mouth,
these desperate, pleading, outstretched hands,
these desperate, pleading, outstretched hands,
these feet, furiously kicking, the legs curled up to protect the
tender stomach, this flesh which is nothing but a mass of spasms,
jolts...."(7) Leboyer concludes, "The scars are everywhere: in our
flesh, our bones, our backs, our nightmares, our madness, and all
the insanity, the folly of this world—its tortures, its wars, its
prisons."(8)
I should have stayed on my mother’s belly with
my umbilical cord intact.(1) The cord should be left intact while
it keeps beating, which is four or five minutes or even longer; my
body would then have been able to process physiological changes at
its natural rate. With the cord intact, I would have received
oxygen until I was ready to breathe on my own. Clamping the cord
before my lungs were completely working caused extreme stress. I
may still have cried a little when I started breathing on my own;
I would not, however, have yelled in f 2 fear.
Historically, the mother has put her infant
close to her left breast, where it will spend much time during the
initial several months of life. Fathers also instinctively place
newborns in this position. John Bowlby called this skin-to-skin
contact "attachment behavior," and John Kennell and Marshall Klaus
subsequently called it "bonding." Studies disagree on the length
of bonding. Some feel it takes place in the first hour or even
less time; others limit it to the first four or five hours.
Bonding pioneer Dr. Kennell and his team have determined that "its
uppermost limit is well under twelve hours." When I wasn’t placed
in this position, I developed adrenal overload and shock. This
shock severely impaired my maturation. At that time, however, it
was a gift from nature, similar to letting loose opiates in the
brain to ease psychological stress.
A newborn possesses a single ’’genetically
encoded visual circuit”: the skill to perceive and react to a
human face which is between six and twelve inches away. Under
normal circumstances, an infant will smile when he sees a face;
his reaction is crucial to bonding. Within this six to twelve inch
space, the baby acts serenely and energetically; outside of it, he
feels forsaken and becomes fearful and tense.(5)
97 percent of newborns for the past fifty years
haven’t seen a face but only masks and dazzling lights. After an
unpleasant and aggravating chemical was put in my eyes, I was
bathed,, covered, and sent away to a small sleeping compartment in
the nursery. Here, I became aware of two conditions which I didn’t
experience in the womb— silence and stillness. Not genetically
equipped to deal with this predicament, my adrenals persisted in
letting loose steroids. I cried briefly and then became silent.(6)
Various cultural childbirth practices had
reduced the potency of the natural bonding process for centuries.
However, this practice of taking the baby away from its mother at
birth is the overwhelming historical catastrophe. This sensation
of desertion is the most destructive happening in life; it
emotionally and psychologically incapacitates people.(7) The most
damaging kind of loneliness is imprinted in a person when he is
taken away from his mother during the crucial first few hours.(8)
Had I been placed close to my mother’s heartbeat, my stress
hormones should have stopped operating. In my case, due to my
mother’s unconscious hatred of me, this natural event would still
have been damaging.
A major portion of the brain relates to touch,
which is crucial in infancy.(9) The human mother is genetically
endowed with the desire to gently massage and stimulate her
newborn; she routinely does this in nontechnological
countries.(10) Holding her child close to her left breast arouses
very old mammalian nurturing intelligences and dormant intuitions
in the mother. She should then be able to react aptly to her baby,
starting "a great love affair.”(11) On the other hand, too little
touching can frequently weaken a person’s physiological and mental
health. Lack of touching in infancy and early childhood can lead
to adult difficulties with sociability, "including feelings of
alienation, estrangement, detachment, isolation, personal
inadequacy and lack of identity....”(12)
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have felt
secure when I sensed my mother’s rhythms, smell, touch, voice, and
breast.(13) However, if a caregiver communicates with an infant in
an indifferent, suppressive, or wrathful way, he is telling the
baby that he is being rejected and, perhaps, even is some
peril.(14) When my mother finally did start interacting with me,
she was indifferent if not immediately hostile; she continued to
radiate tense and anxious feelings during my childhood and
adolescence.
The four most important needs for bonding are:
"holding, with a body molding of the infant to one’s self;
prolonged and steady eye contact; smiling; and soothing sounds."
Breast-feeding supplies all of these behaviors at once; it is the
tactile event that is most important in instituting a feeling of
emotional stability in babies.(15) Body stimulus must be added to
it. Formula and bottle-feeding replaced breast-feeding in
industrialized nations after World War II; they were
recommended as being scientifically safer and
more advanced than breast-feeding. This generation was the first
to be nursed on rubber nipples fastened to glass, and then
plastic, bottles. Bottle-feeding is compatible with the philosophy
behind hospital-technological birth. It is excellent training for
life in an unnatural environment which is heavily dependent on
machines. Furthermore, the corporation and the marketplace have
commodified this personal maternal action. This takeover is in
accord with the general tendency toward commodification of all
components of the natural world.(16)
This type of feeding is not solely responsible
for subsequent behavior; the overall behavior of the mother is
crucial.Cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu notes:
"Overfeeding, underfeeding, scheduling, demand, pacing of rate of
baby’s intake, handling, arbitrary feedings, amount of physical
contact, mother’s acceptance of the baby, mother’s stability,
marital adjustment, and many other factors are involved in the
feeding situation.(17) The mother’s actions are so important
because her infant becomes a social human being during the first
six months of life.(18) He comes into the world with a basic
biological impulse to associate with other people and to encourage
others to associate with him.(19) The baby learns how to get his
mother to play with him; he becomes an expert at maintaining and
regulating the flow of a social exchange. In other words, he
learns to relate to someone by creating and sharing experiences.
Dr. Stern states:
"Besides the gratification of feeding and
warmth, these involve the mutual creation of shared pleasure, joy,
interest, curiosity, thrills, awe, fright, boredom, laughter,
surprise, delight, peaceful moments, silences, resolving distress,
and many other such elusive phenomenon and experience that make up
the stuff of friendship and love."(20)
Each mother develops her own style and usually
performs her actions in a natural, almost unconscious way. She
makes faces, uses baby talk, moves her head and body in unique
ways, and adopts certain positions and rhythms in her interaction
with her child.
The first two years feature the development of
attachment and separation behaviors. The infant smiles, gazes,
clings, and coos; he averts his gaze, stares, and develops
momentary inhibitions in the periods between interactions.
Although there is no exact timetable that shows when a baby may be
said to be in relationship, he displays a number of behaviors by
the end of the first year that point to the fact that a
relationship has begun.(21) His relationship with his mother
becomes the model for all his subsequent interpersonal
communications.(22) During the second year, separation behaviors
develop. Mobility, walking away, and becoming involved with
objects are the primary behaviors. Gazing back at mother and
periodic vocalizations fill the gaps.(23)
What are the qualities that a good mother
displays toward a one-year old child? D. Stayton and her
colleagues give these answers. She is sensitive to the baby’s
signals and communications. Capable of seeing situations from his
viewpoint, she responds quickly and properly. The mother accepts
almost everything about the baby’s behavior, and she accepts the
responsibility of taking care of him even if it restricts her
activities. She does not try to impose her will on the baby; when
control is necessary, she tries to make the child see that her
action is helping him.(24) Self-esteem, therefore, is initially
"an active organismic" matter rather than a symbolic one; it
evolves from the primal physical involvement of the baby with his
caregivers and his early environment.(25)
I lived with my mother in her parents' house
until I was approximately one and one half years old. I’m not sure
whether her younger brother Morris and her older sister Selma were
living there at this time. Colleen O'Leary, the live-in maid,
helped to take of me. In 1954, she married a retired twenty-year
Navy veteran and moved to a town about fifty miles away. As a
young adult, I visited her occasionally until she died of cancer
at the age of sixty. I told her that I loved her just before she
died.
My mother remarried when I was almost one and
one-half years old. The couple soon moved to their own apartment.
I was alone with her all day until I was approximately three years
old. Florence emotionally terrorized me to the point that she cut
off all feeling. Many children from disturbed families suppress
their emotions; the most damage is caused by blocking feelings
very early in life. They are routinely told that they'll soon have
something to weep about and are warned not to ever shout at their
caregivers or suffer drastic consequences.(1) My mother employed
these types of remarks frequently. The old saying that sticks and
stones can break a person's bones but words can't hurt him is
wrong. As the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse
declares, words can injure a person as badly as a fist.(2)
Florence projected her belligerent feelings
onto me and overreacted to any of my aggressive responses. She saw
to it that I became defenseless and emotionally controlled by her.
My mother had an unconscious wish to inhibit my emotional
responses because they would intrude on her own defenses. The
thicker the parent’s defenses, the more antagonism is shown toward
the child.(3) Any affectionate response by me would have
threatened to break up her emotionally
deadened state and put her in touch with her own distress and
unhappiness.(4) Hating herself, Florence proceeded to ruin my
spirit and stimulate heavy guilt feelings in me. Dr. Theodore
Rubin points out that self-hate is the most powerful
"antitherapeutic" force in the world. Its ability to cause
catastrophic outcomes is virtually unrestricted.(5)
Youngsters comprehend when they are being
ill-used. Had I continued to express my pain and angry feelings, I
would have given away the family secret that my parents—especially
my mother—were not capable of providing me with "love-food.(6)
Like a child described in The Drama of the Gifted Child, I
"became totally reserved, polite, and good, and no longer showed
any emotional reactions."(7) I formed a fantasy bond with her.
This bond starts in infancy and continues in childhood; it is "an
illusion of connection with the mother" that reduces nervous
tension and emotional distress when genuine love is lacking. (8)I
thought that by behaving perfectly I could win her love. This, of
course, was impossible, because of her own psychological
difficulties.(9) Bond in this usage really means bondage or
restriction of liberty. This reaction is similar to that of a
person lost in a desert who visualizes that the sand is actually
water. Taking a large quantity into his hands, he imagines that it
feels moist and cool and tastes invigorating.(10)
I was repeatedly made to feel guilty; I felt
vulnerable and powerless.(11) Clusters of these traumas may be
called "frozen governing scenes;" they are frozen because the
victim constructs defenses in order to block his mental
anguish.(12) These scenes were imprinted in my neurological
system.(13)
My most important right, the freedom to form my
own personality, had been stolen from me.(14) I found myself in a
situation similar to that of a prisoner of war or an inmate in a
concentration camp. I had to remove myself mentally in some way
from the sense of lacking protection from an antagonistic person;
through this tactic, I could retain hope and survive.(15)
Children’s feelings are powerful in ideal circumstances.(16) The
less competent the parents, the more pain a child will feel.
Completely numbing one’s feelings removes the pain from
consciousness; this strategem is usually employed by males.(17) I
split off my feelings of fear, sadness, and rage. Numb in body and
mentally mystified, I entered a deep trance. The more pain a
person suffers, the more likely that he will enter this type of
profound trance.(18) My mental fixation, known
as "cognitive closure" brought about inflexibility and a
tremendous loss of liberty.(19)
I had entered a Kafkaesque world. Alice Miller
in Thou Shalt Not Be Aware devotes a chapter to this
genius’s childhood suffering. She sees unmistakable indications of
this sensitive writer’s anguish on every page of his fiction.(20)
He dissociated his feelings from the parents who had emotionally
abandoned him. Characterized by his nursemaid as an "obedient" and
"good" child, Kafka "had a quiet disposition."(21)
Miller observes:
"How great, how irrepressible must have been
Kafka’s hunger for a sympathetic ear in his childhood, for someone
who would respond genuinely to his questions, fears, and doubts
without using threats or showing anxiety, who would share his
interests, sense his feelings and not mock them. How great must
have been his longing for a mother who showed interest in and
respect for his inner world. Such respect, however, can be given a
child only if one has learned to take oneself seriously as a
person as well."(22)
I must have had similar feelings.
My plight was analogous to that of the
condemned soldier in Kafka’s In the Penal Colony. In this story, a
soldier is about to be executed for insubordination and arrogance
to a superior. The officer in charge is using a machine that will
torture and then kill the condemned man. A Harrow will inscribe on
the prisoner's body the phrase: "HONOR THY SUPERIORS!”(23) The
Harrow will write deeper and deeper for twelve hours, with the
condemned man suffering great pain and growing progressively more
silent and weaker. He will begin to understand the sentence at
about the sixth hour. Finally, he is supposed to be tossed into a
pit and buried. The soldier doesn’t even realize that he has been
sentenced. He is assumed to be guilty and doesn’t have an
opportunity to mount a defense. He learns about the sentence as
the harrow’s needles implant their message in his body.
The officer is now the sole open defender of
this old procedure; however, he finally realizes that it is time
to discontinue it. Therefore, he frees the condemned man before he
dies. The officer switches places with the soldier. Defective now,
the machine murders the officer outright instead of slowly
torturing him.
My mother tortured me by means of emotional
battering, carrying out her sentence for what she deemed was
extreme disobedience to her. Her message, Honor THY SUPERIORS! was
deeply engraved in my unconscious. I had no real opportunity to
mount a defense.
Florence behaved in this manner because she had
been severely abused by both her parents. Her mother Majorie, a
homemaker, had severely emotionally abused her. Isadore, her
father, had physically assaulted her in addition to harshly
criticizing her. However, he was mostly preoccupied with his
business affairs. Isadore had wanted to to practice medicine but
lacked the money to attend college. He had worked at a series of
relatively menial jobs until he started an automobile finance
agency. My grandfather lost everything at the start of the
Depression; however, he rebuilt his business and was affluent by
the end of the 1930s. Isadore later invested in the stock market,
in which he enjoyed considerable success.
Although unable to consciously recall the
vulnerability of her earliest years, Florence saw it reflected in
me.(24) As a mother herself, she had the power to seek revenge;
she no longer had to be a victim but could make a weaker person
suffer by breaking his will.(25) That her retaliation was not
against the same person who originally made her suffer didn’t
bother her. She was willing to take revenge upon an innocent
child. As a perpetrator, she had persuaded herslef that I had to
be disciplined; she was using the tactic of blaming the
victim.(26) This coping mechanism, however, was not a genuine
solution to her difficulties. My mother could not even be certain
that her will was her own; she basically had assumed her own
mother’s identity.(27) Identification with the aggressor is a
strategem of the impotent, of those who are so overpowered by the
antagonistic force attacking them that only magic can prevent
obliteration.(28) Undoubtedly,
she unconsciously retained bad feelings about her actions because
she had to quash her natural tendency to empathize with
herchild.(29)
Schmookler declares, "The ancient biblical line
tells us: As ye sow, so shall ye reap. To this insight can be
added: As the world sows in us, so shall it reap from us."(30) My
mother parented her children in the same style in which she was
raised. Undoubtedly, my great-grandparents were also raised in
this abusive manner.(31) Subjected to this abuse, Florence
experienced traumatic "learning at the deepest level about how
relations among human beings are to be conducted, about how one
navigates between life and death.”(32)
The ability to feel anger is crucial in
producing an individual with a strong identity In fact, refusing
to allow a child to express his anger and suffering is the
greatest cruelty that can be inflicted upon him. Emotions are
kinds of bodily energy.
Fueling
an individual’s most basic powers, they communicate to him when
one of his needs is in danger. The greater the shame and rejection
that are heaped on the youngster’s true self, the weaker his sense
of self. I developed an irrational impulse to protect my mother,
bonding to her by my perfect behavior.(33) This behavior had a
weak foundation. Psychologists Michael Schulman and Eva Mekler
point out that "the opposite of an oppositional child is not an
obedient one. It is a respectful and cooperative one."(34) My
early anger was a healthy source of energy; I
had to employ a great deal of energy to repress
it.(35) Anger doesn’t mean acting out behavior like hitting,
cursing, screaming; these are judgmental behaviors rather than
emotions.(36)
My unconscious emotional life became heavily
laden with fear as my ostensibly innocent play was treated as
deserving of punishment. Sandor Ferenczi notes, "When the child
recovers from such an attack, he feels extremely confused, in fact
already split, innocent and guilty at the same time; indeed his
confidence in the testimony of his own senses has been
destroyed."(37) Psychiatrist Peter Breggin makes a useful
distinction between guilt and shame. Experiencing guilt, the
person is inclined to blame himself; he believes that he is
responsible for his own misbehavior. He has brought his punishment
on himself and merits it. Experiencing shame, the person usually
blames other people. They are insulting, ruling or excluding him;
they are making him feel like he is valueless, flawed, a
nonentity, an alien.(38) In my case, I introjected heavy guilt
feelings.
My fate was similar to that of the protagonist
in Kafka’s The Trial. Joseph K., who holds a relatively high
position in a bank is arrested in his apartment by two coarse
warders. K. is puzzled about the men’s identities and who they
represent. They represent the higher authorities, who are parental
introjects. The warders tell K. not to annoy them; they claim that
they are probably looking out for his good more than anybody else
on earth. Upon being offered identity papers by K., the warders
admonish him that he’s conducting himself "worse than a
child."(39) In fact, during his long trial, K. is treated like a
guilty child by both opponents and supporters.
The Court in which he is tried has never given
an outright acquittal to a defendent. K. doesn’t even know the
exact charges and is presumed guilty. He has entered a complicated
and treacherous maze from which it is impossible to emerge safely.
On the night preceding the accused man's
thirty-first birthday, two warders come to his residence. Going
into the street with them, he abruptly recognizes the uselessness
of opposition. The banker and the two men go to a quarry. One of
them takes out a butcher’s knife, which K. sees that he is
supposed to stab into his own breast. However, one warder clutches
K.'s throat while the other pushes the knife far into his heart
and rotates it there twice. The banker feels intense shame in
dying like a dog.
My mother assumed that I was bad, hence guilty,
just because I existed. Sometimes she was pleasant and bought me
nice clothes and toys and took me interesting places. Suddenly,
she would turn abusive and accuse me of all kinds of terrible
deeds. Florence had no proper comprehension of human relations,
either in dealing with me or with other people. She rationalized
that she was simply teaching me to behave properly. Her verbal
attacks were similar to the twisting of a knife into my heart. I
didn’t have a defense counsel. Finally, I sensed that it was
hopeless to fight this Court; I also sensed that I would have to
admit guilt and change my behavior.
Her criticisms damaged my body, whose
biochemistry had already been altered in utero. It has recently
been discovered that the intercommunication between the brain and
bodily systems is total. An onslaught by means of criticism,
rejection, or abuse affects the brain and body like a virus; the
muscular system, the visceral system, and the ideational system
are simultaneously affected.(40) Besides repressing my feelings, I
also started to tense my muscles to block anger.
We receive our knowledge of the world through
our five senses; yet, our senses have even more significance for
us. Dr. Deepak Chopra observes that "we literally metabolize
our environment through our senses." Every sensation I experienced
became the molecules of my body. Hormones were released which
triggered the release of other hormones—insulin, glucagon, growth
hormones—and caused many other bodily changes. A Vedic expression
points out: "If you want to know what your experiences were like
in the past, just examine your body now. And if you want to know
what your body will look like in the future, examine your
experiences now."(41)
My brain’s biochemistry was affected. A study
by the National Center for the Study of Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder found that a single calamitous occurrence when a person
lacks control changes brain chemistry. Upon being severely
threatened, my brain released "certain hormones called
catechalamines."(42) These hormones augment the body’s energy,
making it ready to struggle or flee. Catecholamines are the
essential substances which constitute anger and fear, emotions
which help the individual to survive.
Human beings possess three different principal
minds. The survival mind is concerned with physical operations
such as breathing and maintenance of regular blood pressure. The
feeling mind gives rise to and utilizes emotions or feelings.
Lastly, a verbal, logical, thinking mind utilizes language and
figures out problems. They are interconnected in the brain, yet
are segregated entities which have distinct uses. The minds
operate on three different tiers of
consciousness, with the gating system separating the
layers.(43)
Customarily, a feeling or way of thinking that
an individual has toward another person, thing, or action involves
the three levels of consciousness operating together. However,
when the feeling is overpowering, the changeable interrelations
among the levels is shattered. This happened to me when I
experienced the feeling that my mother didn’t like me at an early
age. At this point, "fragmentation and blocking" took place
between the levels.(44) Suffering a succession of psychological
traumas which my brain was unable to consolidate, I became
unconscious early in life.(45) In other words, as Harvey Jackins
observes, when an emotion associated with a painful occurrence is
obstructed, the mind can’t assess or fully understand the
occurrence. The obstruction of emotional energy is augmented each
time a comparable incident happens. This blocking prevented me
from entertaining thoughts about escaping from my home environment
or living in a home that was like Ozzie and Harriet’s on
television.
Gating is the main way that pain is repressed.
Our brain’s electrical system and a chemical analogue work in
association to gate pain. Gating stops the large number of
electrical impulses which create pain from arriving at the upper
tiers of the brain.(46) Additionally, a morphine-like chemical in
the upper brain stem called endomorphine or endorphin both gates
and deals with pain. There are many different types of endorphins,
each having a different use; endorphin reserves may be depleted by
recurrent stress. To deal with overwhelming pain, the receptor
sites in the brain may greatly increase in number. Finally, brain
hormones called neurotransmitters are formed in and released from
the gaps between nerve cells called synapses. These substances
also keep in check or increase the pain signals.(47)
The more pain the organism suffers, the great
the degree of gating. Gating can occur when one physical or
psychological stress produces severe pain or when a cumulative
effect overloads the brain.(48) It prevents feeling and sensation
from reaching the thinking level of the brain, and it stops ideas
and thoughts from influencing the emotional level. The thinking
brain tries to repress past responses and memories, especially
those ''deeply grooved imprints (neuronal pathways) created by
overwhelming stress and trauma.”(49) Signals of "restraint and
inhibition” are transmitted between the nerve cell pathways by the
endorphins; however, they do not eliminate pain from the
system.(50) The tension and pain stay in the limbic system and
cause an imbalance in the brain which waits for liberation and
unity.(51) Gating ensured my survival.(52) It helped me as a child
but eventually harmed me. In fact, this loss of contact with one’s
inner world can eventually lead to loss of contact with the outer
world.(53)
I’ve mentioned that at approximately one and
one-half years old I moved to an apartment with my mother and her
new husband. Florence had been introduced to James Rubin by the
son of one of her father’s business partners. James was working
locally for his uncles who owned a jewelry store. He had been born
in Tulsa, Oklahoma where his father Harold had owned a Goodyear
tire distributorship servicing that entire state. Harold had
become wealthy, but he had lost his wealth when the Depression
struck. Having extended too much credit, he lost the business when
his customers couldn’t pay him. James had a governess and
chauffeur; he was severely traumatized when he lost this life
style at about ten years old. Harold died soon afterward. James
started drinking at fifteen. During the twenty years he was
married to Florence, his mother never called him.
His mother Sadie took in boarders for awhile;
she then married wealthy Saul Sokoll. He descended from a family
of European tailors who had started a line of clothes in America.
Sadie and Saul moved to an apartment hotel in Chicago. They sent
James to a New England prep school, where he captained the
football team. He started college at the University of Texas and
transferred to Tulane University, from which he graduated.
Dorothy declined James’s marriage proposal to
her on their first date but married him several months later.
James soon adopted me. Our family lived in an apartment for about
one and one-half years. At three years old, I moved with my
parents into a new Cape Cod bungalow that Isadore bought our
family. It cost $13,500 and was located in a good middle-class
neighborhood.
My first memories begin around the age of five.
I remember playing with two children, Paul Smith and Linda Golden.
I remember a motorcycle stopping in front of our house. The driver
rang the bell and told my mother that he had run over and killed
our dog Ginger. In 1993, I went to offer condolences to Linda upon
her mother’s death. It was our first meeting in over thirty years.
She said, ’’You had a dog named Ginger. I couldn’t have a dog, so
she was my dog too.” Our family then got a small mongrel dog named
Blackie, who lived with us for thirteen years before dying of
cancer.
My mother had read to me and taught me to read
before I entered the first grade. She tried unsuccessfully to have
me skip the first grade because I was already such a good reader.
I then went to the second grade at the newly constructed King
School about five blocks from home; I stayed there until
graduating in the sixth grade.
School was in session from 8:30 to 11:30 A.M.
with a fifteen minute recess. In good weather, I walked the five
blocks to my house at 11:30; eating quickly, I returned to the
schoolyard to play. After school, I often returned to the field
behind the asphalt schoolyard in order to play baseball with the
real equipment. In the autumn, I played touch football on the
grass in front of the school. Easily learning to ride a bicycle, I
travelled all over the neighborhood on it. I still have a book of
snapshots of my classmates from the fourth grade. In front is a
section that says, ”1 like.”; the only line that is filled in has
the single word "sports.”
The King School was considered a good one in
the traditional educational paradigm. There were about thirty-five
children in each of my classes; approximately thirty of them were
Jewish. These middle-class Jewish families stressed education.
Most of the children had little difficulty learning in school;
many of them eventually graduated from prestigious universities
and pursued various professional careers. We studied basic math,
reading, geography, history, music, art, spelling, and penmanship.
We began to study Spanish in the sixth grade. I received mostly As
in the academic subjects but didn’t do well in music, art, and
penmanship. I never spoke to the other children in class or
participated in mischief; therefore, I got As in behavior.
Psychiatrist Breggin declares, ’’Psychiatry has no diagnoses for
children who are too conforming, too inhibited, and just plain too
good.”(1)
My encounter with books wasn’t limited to
public school. Through the first seven grades, I attended Hebrew
school twice a week from 4:30 P.M. to 6:00; I also attended Sunday
school. At night, I often did independent reading. I read almost
all the books in two series: the Bobsey Twins and the Hardy Boys.
I also enjoyed reading about historical events and biographies of
famous people. During my childhood and adolescence, I never
learned how to do anything else well except study academic
subjects.
My elementary school years weren’t totally
filled with scholastic endeavors. I collected stamps, played with
a Lionel train set in our basement, and listened to distant
stations on a short-wave radio. I had friends and sometimes slept
overnight at their homes.
The limited time that my father spent with me
during my childhood and adolescence revolved around sports. He
played catch and threw pitches to me with a rubber ball in our
driveway. We shot baskets together, using a basketball hoop
fastened to a board on top of the front of our garage. Indoors, we
played darts and a game in which we tried to throw or bounce
marbles into a box.
James and I were also avid spectators at
sporting events. We went to Fenway Park in Boston to see the Red
Sox play several times a summer. My father and I also saw the
Boston Celtics play two or three times a season. In addition, we
followed sports closely on television.
I also played sports at summer camp. I went to
a local day camp at the ages of five and six; I then went to an
overnight camp on Cape Cod for two summers. Finally, from the ages
of nine to seventeen, I spent the summer at Camp Indian Lake on
Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
I began to play tennis in New Hampshire. I
demonstrated excellent lateral movement; I also had excellent
eye-hand coordination. I didn’t, however, have any formal
instruction when I started playing and developed a weird style. I
hit my forehand and backhand with the same side of the strings and
bent my elbow when I hit my forehand.
Having little power, I was the type of player
who is called a retriever. My style of play was similar to my
tense and inhibited psychological mindset. As I got older, I
became one of the best players in the camp; I was also an
excellent table-tennis player. I didn’t learn the proper grips in
that sport either but eventually became the best player among the
campers. I was also able to beat all but a few counselors. Camp
Indian Lake was a general summer camp. Therefore, I also
participated in baseball, capture-the-flag, riflery, basketball,
and swimming. I excelled, however, only in racquet sports.
Overall, I was well provided with food,
clothing, shelter, physical activity, and entertainment.
Unfortunately, the emotional atmosphere of the Rubin household was
toxic. The effects of the early abuse that that my mother had
suffered continued to manifest themselves. Florence was the
primary stressor in our dysfunctional family. Bradshaw notes,
"Anyone who becomes controlling in the family to the point of
being experienced as a threat by the other members initiates the
dysfunction."(2) She fought constantly with her own mother. She
managed to insult and lose almost all her friends; she also spewed
forth a never-ending barrage of insults at my father. Often she
would berate her spouse for things that had happened weeks or even
years ago.
James reacted to the stressful situation at
home by withdrawing from it. He worked in a branch office of my
grandfather’s automobile financing agency with my uncle Morris.
Isadore paid my father a decent but not large salary. James was on
the road most of the time visiting automobile dealers and
repossessing cars while Morris ran the office. James started
coming home later and later most nights to escape from my mother’s
harangues; sometimes he didn’t come home until after midnight.
Florence would go to bed early and set her alarm for quarter to
twelve. She was waiting for him to open the door so that she could
deliver her tirade. James was generous in buying his spouse
material things such as jewelry and clothes; he also took her on
several substantial vacations. However, nothing that he ever did
for Florence or bought her satisfied her for long.
James felt that he deserved his wife’s abuse,
for he accepted it without really fighting back. They were both
half-people involved in an entrapment or enmeshment. Neither could
leave; as the years passed, their fear of surviving on their own
grew.(3) Periodically, she would throw James out of the house. He
would sleep in a motel for a week or two and then come home.
Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm notes that "man can
attempt to become one with the world by submission to a person, to
a group, to an institution, or god." He thus goes beyond his
personal life by becoming a part of something bigger than himself.
His identity is submerged into somebody or something to which he
has submitted. On the other hand, man can attempt to merge with
the world by having power, by dominating others and making them a
part of himself.(4)
Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker points
out that in romantic love a partner can become God to the other
partner. Therefore, he can also become the Devil. One becomes
dependent on the other partner for self-justification whether in
the masochistic sense of becoming a slave or the sadistic sense of
becoming a God. However, the attempt of one human being to act as
a god to another is doomed to fail because a spiritually potent
god must be an abstract object. This type of relationship "is too
narrow a fetishization of meaning"; therefore, the partners become
dissatisfied.(5)
My parents’ marriage was another fantasy bond;
it provided an illusion of connection which was as addictive as
alcohol or drugs.(6) James had severely repressed his pain and was
willing to relinquish self-determination and governance of his own
life. He was gripped by a strong emotional hunger caused by the
emotional malnutrition he suffered as a child.(7) The amount and
persistence of regression or reversion to childlike behavior in a
fantasy bond are the result of numerous changeable factors.
Regression functions to lessen anxiety and to nourish an imaginary
security. The most important element affecting regression is the
degree of emotional impoverishment and needless discomfiture
resulting from unsatisfactory or heartless mothering.(8)
The nature of the social intercourse between a
couple is a sign of whether or not a bond exists. A positive
relationship features candid dialogue and leads to friendship
based on genuine amicability and parity.(9) Feeling deficient,
James experienced the need for the scoldings that Florence was
only too willing to administer to him.(10) Having someone pay
attention to him, in however negative a way, provided him with
some assurance.(11) Their bond turned into a "death pact" which
narcotized them, dulling their pain and feelings of emotional
starvation. Additional feelings of self-reproach, dismay, and
compulsion drove them to sustain their defenses.(12) No matter how
turbulent their relationship became, they feared separating and
becoming independent people.
Under the best of conditions, being a good
parent is the toughest job in the world. In order to have been
good parents, Florence and James would have had to be mentally
healthy and been able to take care of their own needs. They would
have had to support each other wholeheartedly. Most important,
they would have had to make their own inner child healthy
again.(13) Bradshaw elaborates:
"The job of parents is to model. Modeling
includes how to be a man or woman; how to relate intimately to
another person; how to acknowledged and express emotions; how to
fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional, and intellectual
boundaries; how to communicate; how to cope and survive life’s
unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; how to love oneself
and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these. They
simply don’t know how."(14)
It's obvious that my mother was out of control
and unapproachable. However, my father was at least partly
physically unavailable and wholly emotionally unavailable. These
behaviors constitute covert/ emotional abuse.(15) This was
devastating to my development because to feel like a man a boy
must be loved by a man. In other words, I didn’t bond with James.
Bradshaw comments, "Bonding involves spending time together,
showing feelings, warmth, touching and displaying desire to be
with one another."(16) My father never told me anything about how
to be a man. He never told me anything about the, business world
or American society; he never advised me how to make my way in
these systems.
Nobody in our family ever talked openly about
any painful feelings, thoughts, or experiences that were causing
so much distress.(17) This was also catastrophic to my development
because a child builds a feeling of security through the dialogue
he carries on with his parents. I should have learned to handle
complicated internal difficulties. In order to develop
self-esteem, I would have had to experience parental warmth,
definite boundaries, and courteous usage.
Upon entering junior high school in the seventh
grade, I started my serious academic work. Neither of my parents
had fulfilled their career dreams. My father had wanted to go to
law school. My mother had been offered a chance to do graduate
work at Harvard University researching juevenile delinquency with
famous professors Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck. Instead, she had
married Howard Goldstein. I didn’t know that my parents wanted me
to be a lawyer, but I did sense that they wanted me to get high
grades. Taking advantage of me to support their desires was covert
abuse.(1) This usage of a child is called "dyadic enmeshment"; it
is the most injurious and crazy-making type of emotional abuse.(2)
Possessing disparate knowledge and power, I was
more than willing to become a superachiever to gain the
recognition and sense of being special that these pursuits brought
me. This is not surprising because a child normally "accepts to
predicate his whole being on the vocabulary of motives learned
from his parents."(3) Doing well in school was the only way I
could generate any feeling of self-esteem at all. My fear of
failure was so great because of the extraordinary difficulty I
faced in winning recognition of worth from my parents.
Many pedagogic psychologists measure
intellectual growth by a child’s success in handling and mastering
abstractions at an early age. However, the kind of effort and
skill necessary to succeed in this task is precisely the kind that
"blocks off those areas of children’s emotional life—joy, sorrow,
high spirits, and despair—which form the only basis for true
independence or autonomy.”(4) It is misguided to equate progress
in cognitive development with progress in personal development.
Regarding a child as a possession to be controlled and shaped
toward a particular goal will badly stunt his vital growth.(5)
In the seventh grade, I was placed in a special
class of about thirty-five high achievers. Allowing academic
achievement to dominate my life, I developed a neurotic style of
being over-intellectual. Addicted to abstractions, I fell into an
inflexible way of life. Called intellectualization by
psychologists, this defense provided me with a way to block out
what was happening in my home. My study time in the seventh and
eighth grades was substantial but not totally out of control. I
studied three or four hours each night of the week and five or six
hours on weekends.
I had reached puberty, a time when feelings are
supposed to be intense; however, I felt nothing at all. I was just
a little further removed from my feelings than many of my
classmates. Bradshaw states that most American families, schools,
and churches do not promote fun, spontaneity, and emotional
express. He declares:
"The schools I went to taught me to learn ’not
to talk’, to stand straight in line, not to ask too many
questions, to memorize great quantities of material, to learn a
number of things I’ve never used again (solid geometry, years of
Latin, diagramming sentences).(6)
This statement describes my experiences
perfectly.
I earned mostly As through the eighth grade at
my junior high school. My parents had tried to send me to an
excellent private day school in a nearby town. I was afraid to go
because I would have been behind the other students in certain
subjects. I would have soon caught up because I was highly
motivated; I wouldn’t, however, take a chance on receiving lower
grades for even a short time. My parents then inquired about
sending me to an elite private school about a half hour from home.
The admissions office informed them that the school didn’t accept
boarders until the tenth grade.
I finally went to a respectable but hardly
elite Episcopalian school in New Hampshire. My grandfather knew a
banker on the Board of Trustees who arranged for me to be
admitted. There were only two other Jewish students in my class.
This was the first time that I had gone to school with mostly
non-Jewish youngsters. It could have been a positive experience to
go to school with children of different faiths; however, I
remained socially isolated.
I studied between classes and every weekday
night; I also studied most of Saturday and Sunday. My academic
subjects were Algebra 1, English, Spanish, Latin, Biology, and
Religious Studies. I was particularly good at memorizing foreign
language grammatical rules and words. I finished the year as the
second or third ranked student in my grade. In the spring, the
headmaster called me to his office and told me that it wasn’t
necessary to spend so much time studying. However, I continued
studying in exactly the same way.
The fall sports were soccer and football. I was small and
thin; nevertheless, I chose football! I entered near the end of a
few games; I remember actually carrying the ball once. The winter
sports were skiing, hockey, and basketball. Hating the cold
weather and snow, I wasn’t interested in outdoor winter sports.
Therefore, I went out for basketball. I sometimes played in
practice sessions but never played on the team officially. During
the short spring season, I played tennis; I was the seventh or
eighth player on the team and didn’t play in matches. Of course, I
was only a freshman. Furthermore, I was totally out of shape.
I told my parents that I didn’t want to return
to this school for the tenth grade. As an excellent student, I was
quickly accepted by a good country day school about a fifteen
munute drive from my home. My father drove me to school in the
tenth grade on his way to work. I got a ride home with the mother
of another student who lived in my neighborhood. I obtained my
driver’s license soon after my sixteenth birthday. After receiving
a new Ford Mustang at the beginning of my junior year, I drove to
school for the next two years.
The tenth grade was the height of my formal
academic career. I received As in the five subjects I took:
English, Geometry, Latin, European History, and Spanish. I was,
like Bradshaw, "Rigid, obsessive, overly controlled and obedient,
people pleasing and ravished with shame and guilt."(7) Rigidity of
roles increases as family dysfunction increases.(8) Perfectionism
and accusation were the cardinal principles shaping the roles in
our family.(9) The principle of perfectionism probably does the
most harm and causes the most mystification. Trying for
perfection, I never believed that I had achieved enough. My
unconscious self-hatred and guilt increased along with my academic
achievement.
I was able to preserve my mental balance by
this emphasis on abstractions. Although temporarily escaping
dangerous tension, I was nevertheless quite ill psychologically. I
managed to relieve my apprehension, but my progressive path inward
crippled my adaptation to the realities of social intercourse.
Utilizing this extremely defensive lifestyle, I was rapidly
descending into an "autistic fantasy.(10)
My plight was similar to that of the trapeze
artist in Kafka’s short story A Hunger Artist. In the
first section of the story, entitled "First Sorrow," a trapeze
artist stays continually on his trapeze day and night as long as
he is in the same building. He is initially motivated to improve
his skill level, but subsequently he continues his isolation
because he has become accustomed to it. He finds the position on
the trapeze to be very good for his physical health; his
psychological health, however, is not as not as good. The artist
suffers anxieties that his manager fears will become increasingly
worse. Furthermore, his social life suffers.
The second section of the story is entitled A
Little Woman. This section is narrated in the first person.
The artist as narrator states that the woman is experiencing
emotional and physical suffering because she allows herself to be
annoyed by him. He insists that there is no love affair between
them. In fact, he declares that "she is a complete stranger to me"
and "shows not a trace of friendliness toward me....”(11) The
narrator realizes this and doesn’t allow himself to become as
disturbed by her violent emotional outbursts as he used to become.
He knows that the relationship will probably not reach a pivotal
crisis....
The third section of the story is called A
Hunger Artist. The artist is in a cage fasting. He doesn't
want to stop fasting after even the longest fixed term—forty days.
He wants to become famous by setting the all time record for
fasting. His accomplishment must be unimaginable.
The hunger artist lived this way for many
years, enjoying only slight periods of recovery. He was acclaimed
by the world but in spite of this he was emotionally disturbed.
Yet, nobody paid any attention to his problem. The artist tells an
overseer that he cat.'t help fasting. The performer feels that it
is hopeless to fight "against a whole world of
non-understanding...."(12) Fasting is imperative, he declares,
because he is unable to discover food that he enjoys. Had he found
it, he would have filled himself like anyone else would do. The
artist dies after uttering these words. However, his dimming eyes
show that he believes that he is still fasting.
I sensed rejection early in life. Miller asks,
"What is a newborn to do, however, whose mother experiences him as
threatening (perhaps because she sees one of her parents in him)
and passes along to him with her milk rejection, fear, and not
infrequently a need for revenge?"(13) I became silent and
progressively more distant from people. I became a "reading
artist." Unfortunately, this tactic didn't promote genuine
psychological health. My fear, rage, and anxieties were still
firmly lodged below awareness.
My relationship with my mother was similar to
that of the narrator and the little woman. Florence was greatly
annoyed by me. Totally remote from me, she didn’t demonstrate any
affection. My good behavior avoided a conclusive crisis but didn’t
change her negative attitude.
I didn’t want to stop studying even after ten
hours; I wanted to be the greatest student of all time. Only short
periods of summer vacation provided recuperation. Although
acclaimed by my family and teachers for my scholastic abilities, I
was sinking further and further into a schizoid existential state.
Nobody paid the slightest attention to the internal suffering that
impelled me to such feats of obsessive studying. Had I found the
food I liked, I wouldn’t have spent so much time on academics and
socialized more. As will become clear, I almost but didn’t die
from my compulsive activity.
Another way of viewing my plight is to say that
I had developed a false self and was playing a rigid role. I was
trying desperately to prove that the negative self-concept that I
had introjected from my mother was wrong. This constellation "of
negative traits, feelings, and attitudes" may be called "the
voice."(14) It is only partially conscious and speaks a deceitful
language of self-destruction. It contains the repressed fury that
the person has constantly felt toward himself.^ Self-evaluations
that are authentically negative but fair are quite different to
those delivered by the voice, which are filled with malice. The
voice impedes the display of emotion, weakens logical thought, and
undermines the attainment of genuine aims and happiness.
In the tenth grade, I continued my memorization
feats in Spanish and Latin. In geometry, I could work out the
problems and do well on exams. I didn’t, however, really
understand what I was learning or realize that I would never have
any use for it.
My European history class had an examination at
three week intervals. I spent so much time studying the textbook
that I almost memorized the chapter; I then was able to
regurgitate this material flawlessly during the test. Studying a
history textbook is a boring way to learn this inherently
interesting subject. A young student is much better off studying
original documents and reading genuine books on the subject.
Later, he can spend a short time reading a textbook to fill in the
gaps in his knowledge.(18) In the tenth grade, I didn’t know this,
and I wouldn’t have cared anyway. My eyes would have stayed
riveted to the textbook so that I could win a prize in the form of
an ”A”.
In English, in the tenth through twelfth
grades, we read plays by such classic authors as Shakespeare and
Ibsen as well as great novels by authors such as Dickens and
Melville. We also read classic short stories by authors such as
Twain and Hawthorne as well as essays by authors such as Emerson
and Thoreau. Dickinson, Whitman, and Frost were among the classic
poets we read. Additionally, each month we had to read a novel
outside of class and submit a review of it. I often read a four or
five hundred page novel.
I really didn’t appreciate great literature at
this time. Consuming the books as a school requirement, I was
reacting to them in an alienated way.(19) Overall, I was like the
protagonist of A Separate Peace by John Knowles. He
states:
"I became quite a student after that. I had
always been a good one although I wasn’t really interested and
excited by learning itself, the way Chet Douglas was. Now I became
not just good but exceptional, with Chet Douglass my only rival in
sight. But I began to see that Chet was weakened by the very
genuineness of his interest in learning. He got carried away by
things; for example, he was so fascinated by the tilting planes of
solid geometry that he did almost as badly in trigonometry as I
did myself. When we read Candide it opened up a new way of looking
at the world to Chet, and he continued hungrily reading Voltaire
in French while the class went on to other people. He was
vulnerable there because to me they were all pretty much alike—
Voltaire and Moliere and the laws of motion and the Magna Carta
and Pathetic Fallacy and Tess of the D’Urbervilles—and I
worked indiscriminately on all of them."(20)
Finally, English students had to write a theme
every week. I saved a notebook of my themes from the tenth grade
for about twenty-five years. Reading them in my early forties, I
saw that my ideas were conventional and didn’t demonstrate an
intellect that was sensitive or especially perceptive in any way.
This is hardly surprising. The content of my classes through
secondary school never included social or philosophical issues. I
was totally isolated from my peers and from the adult community.
Furthermore, my parents never discussed serious issues with me. I
didn’t even know that it would be much easier to use index cards.
I would write a page and then rewrite it until the sentences were
in a suitable order. My themes would be returned with a few
comments about a month after I had submitted them. I developed
basic writing skills but progressed no further.
In the eleventh grade, I took English, Spanish,
Latin, Algebra 11, and Biology. Grade inflation wasn’t a factor in
this era; an "A" wasn’t easy to achieve. Nevertheless, I earned
four As and a B in biology. I got As on the biology examinations
but received a B when I refused to dissect a pig. This was my only
rebellion against the system, for which I was duly penalized. I
didn’t like studying science and had refused to take chemistry.
The school didn’t protest since I was such a good student. It
wasn't until thirty years later that I found out that my mother's
nemesis in high school had been chemistry.
I scored a 601 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test
verbal section and a 554 on the math section. These scores were
not spectacular, considering all the studying I had done. Of
course, much of it had involved rote memorization, which was
heavily rewarded by the testing system. Moreover, the amount of
useful instruction I had received in the "good" schools I had
attended was miniscule. As I've noted, the atmosphere at home also
was not conducive to my intellectual development. It seems
reasonable to assume that I would have developed a sharper
intellect if I hadn't been subjected to so much emotional stress.
Understandably, I did much better on the two achievement tests I
took in my senior year. I scored a 679 in English and 721 in
Latin.
My parents wanted me to matriculate at Harvard.
My school’s guidance counselor told James and Florence that I was
an "overachiever." Actually, my parents and schools were
underachievers, both in teaching me academics and in helping me
develop personally. I soon had an interview with a representative
from Harvard and received a "B" rating.
Employing much time and energy, I had developed
a moderate intellect. My ultimate rewards were being inducted into
the cum laude society at the end of my junior year and gaining
early admission to Brown University. However, childhood holistic
researcher and educator Joseph Chilton Pearce makes a useful
distinction between intellect and intelligence. Our schools and
universities, despite their flaws, have produced a great many
moderately and very strong intellects. But, intelligence is a
different attribute. It is the force that works for the genuine
benefit of the person himself, his society, and the environment.
Intelligence remains in much shorter supply in our country.
In my senior year, I took English, Advanced
Math (Calculus and Trigonometry), Spanish, Latin, American
History, and Physics. I earned As in Spanish, Latin, and American
History. I got Bs in English and Advanced Math. Finally, I
received a C- in Physics. Neither I nor many of my classmates
could understand the physics material at all. Later, the course
was found to be unsuitable for beginning physics students.
My country day school had three hard tennis
courts. I played on them informally from the opening of school
during the last week of September until the middle of October.
Then, I just tossed a football around with some other students
until thanksgiving vacation. I didn’t participate in either of the
two winter sports, wrestling or basketball. However, I was the
scorekeeper for basketball games during my senior year. In the
spring, I played on the tennis team during my three years at the
school. I was the number two player during my junior year and the
number one player and captain during my senior year. I didn’t win
many matches because by the time I got into shape the season was
over. I did reach the finals of the state 16 and 18 and under
championships which were held in September on clay.
Meanwhile, life in the Rubin household was
chaotic during my puberty and adolescence. After three
miscarriages, Florence had given birth to another son, Alan, on
January 26, 1957. She emotionally abused him from an early age.
Florence would scream insults at him, calling him a no-good
bastard, ’’baby it," and other choice epithets. In the preface to
the 2nd edition of Touching, Montagu states: "This book is
about human beings, not objects, and no baby is an ’it’ to its
mother, nor should it be to anyone else."^(1) Obviously, Montagu,
possibly the most knowledgeable person in the world about early
human experience, hadn’t taken my mother into account before
making that statement. Florence also grabbed him and shook him as
well as slapped him occasionally. Completely undisciplined
herself, she administered this ’’discipline" to him.(2) My
mother’s punishment was inconsistent and not related, at least
initially, to Alan’s behavior. During these scenes, James was
absent or remained silent. Alan screamed and cried; he battled
back furiously and never became silent as I had.
I also continually declined to acknowledge the
truth of these occurrences. Completely numb, I had started this
denial of the unloving atmosphere of my home at a much earlier
age. Enduring repression of early trauma demanded that I
misapprehend reality; in other words, my natural capability to
react to experience had been harmed. Social worker Jean Jenson
points out, "Another definition of denial is: telling yourself a
lie and believing it.”(3_ Soren Kierkegaard puts it this way:
"There are two ways to be fooled:
One is to believe what isn’t so;
The other is to refuse to believe what is
so."(4)
Having become insensitive to myself, I became
insensitive to other people; I didn’t see their pain or feel for
them.(5) Employing this strategy, I was temporarily able to keep
from becoming involved in difficult situations. However, by using
it continuously, I was sure to lose in the long run. Kafka points
out:
"You can hold yourself back from the sufferings
of the world; this is something you are free to do and is in
accord with your nature, but perhaps precisely this holding back
is the only suffering that you might be able to avoid."(6)
Not processing experience correctly, I
forfeited my chance to lead a rational, enjoyable life. I should
have seen clearly what was happening and understood what a
particular occurrence meant. I should have emotionally responded
to the situation and correctly recognized my response. Having
determined what action I wanted to pursue, I then should have
judged the likely consequence. Finally, I should have chosen a way
of proceeding which would benefit me?(7)
The primary reason that I didn’t react to the
turmoil around me was the fact that a tactic of remaining silent
had been coded in my unconscious at an early age. My heavy
involvement with symbolic abstractions facilitated this response.
Abstractions functioned for me like drugs and alcohol functioned
for characters in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into
Night. Mary, the mother, utilizes morphine to artificially
fog her mind. She tells the servant girl Cathleen that she loves
the fog that surrounds the Tyrone family’s seafront cottage. She
declares, "it hides you from the world and the world from you. You
feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to
be. No one can find or touch you any more."(8) She wishes that the
thick fog constantly be present. Then, innumerable people could
travel past the cottage, and she wouldn’t see them.
Edmund, her son, has artificially fogged his
mind with alcohol. At the beginning of the final act, a foghorn is
heard as the curtain rises. The fog is thicker than ever. Edmund
tells Tyrone, his father, that he took a long walk to the beach
and stopped at the Inn before and after reaching his destination.
He states that he needed the fog; in fact, he loved it. He
couldn’t see any of the houses and didn’t meet any people. Edmund
observes, "Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what
it is. That’s what I wanted— to be alone with myself in another
world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself."(9)
Meanwhile, Florence and James were perpetrating
extraordinary violence on their children, although leaving no
apparent physical scars. Alan and I were emotionally abandoned.
Physical brutality was perpetrated on or in front of us. Our
parents exploited us to assuage their own discontent and
unhappiness. Finally, they declined to clear up their own past
traumatic experiences.(10)
Florence’s behavior became increasingly
turbulent during my teenage years. She would yell for growing
lengths of time. Sometimes she would take plates out of the
kitchen cabinet and smash them on the floor; then, she would make
her spouse clean up the mess. Occasionally, she would dance madly
around the house shouting, ’’Welcome to the Rubin nut house!" At
sixteen or seventeen years old, I finally would ask her once in a
while to keep quiet. She would shout at the top of her lungs,
’’You keep quiet. I have a delicate nervous system!"
Adolescents normally have emotional upheavals
and mood swings. They are often completely surprised by the
intensity of their true feelings after suppressing them during the
latency period. Now, these feelings (rage, anger, rebelliousness,
falling in love, sexual desire, enthusiasm, joy, enchantment,
sadness) clamor for expression; however, frequently their
expression would upset their parents’ psychic equilibrium. Miller
asserts, "If adolescents were to show their true feelings openly,
they would run the risk of being sent to prison as dangerous
terrorists or put in mental institutions as insane."(11) I didn’t
have any emotional upheavals in adolescence; my emotions were
totally frozen. I barely noticed my parents or anyone else; I
related solely to my books.
I was bar mitzvahed on Saturday, March 29,
1959; I read and sang the whole service in Hebrew. During that
school year, I attended bar and bas mitzvah parties every Saturday
night at a hotel in the center of Fall River. Regrettably, I
hadn’t developed any social skills. I ded, however, dance with
various girls at each party. That was the beginning and end of my
teenage social life.
Neither my parents nor teachers ever mentioned
a word about sex. Adolescents naturally explore their sexuality;
their self-consciousness is magnified by newly emerging and
powerful sexual feelings. They feel awkward because of bodily
changes.(12) Since I didn’t feel anything, I wasn’t self-conscious
or embarassed at all. I didn’t even masturbate. The root cause of
my abnormal behavior was inadequate mothering. Cutaneous
stimulation of the infant activates its tactile response systems
and paves the way for subsequent adequate functioning in all areas
involving tactility. It is most important in the sphere of sexual
activity. Not having received adequate stimulation, I did not
develop properly as a human being; I had not experienced enough
love.(13) My inward lifestyle and lack of sexual responsiveness
were related. A person’s fundamental beliefs, thoughts, and
emotions concerning sex heavily influence his dependence on
interior and defensive strategies.(14)
It is particularly foreboding when a youngster
becomes too good at a young age, and his parents are proud of his
behavior. Early in life, I had split off my fear of my mother and
also my hatred; I became my mother’s puppet. My false-self system
had ”a relatively low ’coefficient’ of realness”(15) This false
self was originally erected as a wall to prohibit people, whom I
unconsciously viewed as dangerous, from disturbing the integrity
of my private sphere. I feared that I would be overwhelmed in any
association with people that was more than superficial, as I had
been with my mother.
Adolescents achieve distancing through joining
a peer group. In effect, the peer group becomes a new parent; it
requires a member to rigidly follow its rules. I had lost contact
completely with my few friends when I left Fall River’s public
schools. I never socialized with the other students in my private
schools. Both were all male schools; therefore, I didn’t even have
contact with girls in class.
Adolescents develop a personal fable. The fable
revolves around the idea that their particular experience is
unique. They think that their suffering has been unsurpassed, that
no one comprehends them, and that their parents have treated them
worse than any other parents.
Having established an intimate relationship,
they begin to see that their experience has been quite ordinary. I
didn’t engage in this type of adolescent self-talk, nor did I have
an intimate relationship. I just kept on studying.
Normally, teenagers attempt to distance
themselves from their parents; they try to make their caregivers
unattractive. They try out many different types of thoughts,
fashions, roles, and ways of conducting themselves.(16) These
experiments often clash with their parents’ lifestyles or values.
Yet, abused children often are more powerfully bonded to their
parents’ rules than unabused children. Their feeling of self-worth
is low, and their choices are limited.(16) Completely committed to
my parents’ dream that I would be close to the top in the
scholastic competition, I was involved in symbolic acting out with a vengeance.(18)
Several studies have shown that teenagers’
foremost worry is what career they will pursue.(19) I didn’t think
about this matter at all; my major purpose in studying was to
obtain high grades. Rendered unconscious by the conformity trance
induced by school, I was thereby soul-murdered.(20)
By constructing a false self, I found myself
entombed within the walls of an inescapable prison. This false
self had to fail eventually. Radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing
points out, "It is not possible to go on living indefinitely in a
sane way if one tries to be a man disconnected from all others and
uncoupled even from a large part of one’s being.” A human being
must have a true self in order to verify reality.(21)
My routine involved excessive hours and poor
body mechanics. Otherwise, it was quite normal for an adolescent
in our society who is striving to attain success in a prestigious
career. Modern bourgeois people live in their heads. For a long
time, they have been obsessed "with thoughts of double-entry
bookkeeping, inventory accounts, statistics, mathematical
equations, and market shares."(22) They methodically suppress
attention to their bodily sensations in order to develop the
unemotional, scheming, machine-like psyche which is considered
appropriate for the industrial age.
I entered Brown University in September, 1964.
I was put in a room with two other freshmen in the area called
’’the West Quad." Within a month, they had decided to room
together; their decision wasn’t surprising since I didn’t relate
at all to people.
At Brown, I continued spending most of my time
studying. The first semester, I took English, Intermediate
Spanish, Intermediate Latin, and Introduction to Political
Philosophy. I earned a B in English, As in Spanish and Latin, and
a C in Political Science. The political science course involved
the study of classic political theorists such as Hobbes,
Machiavelli and Mill; it was later moved to a more advanced level.
Furthermore, this was a subject I hadn’t studied in secondary
school. I couldn’t memorize the large quantity of material in the
course, and I wasn't adept at interpreting what I read. Overall, a
3.0 average was good for a first-semester freshman at Brown in the
1960s.
In the second semester, I took an English
course focussing on great essays and Intermediate Spanish 2.
Certain subjects were required until the introduction of the New
Curriculum at the university in the late 1960s. I believe that I
also took a Religious Studies course on Judaism and Introduction
to Philosophy. I either received two As and two Bs or one A and
3Bs. I was named to the Dean’s List, putting me among the academic
elite in the United States. My parents suggested that I should
plan on law school and work for a great corporation.
On a superficial level, I had remained healthy
as a child and adolescent. I had colic as an infant; it
disappeared when plain milk was substituted for my rich formula. I
had the mumps and measles as a child. My tonsils were
unnecessarily removed at about the age of six. Through the twelfth
grade, I suffered from a moderate number of colds and flus. In the
fifth grade, I had to urinate frequently and received permission
to go to the boy’s room without asking the teacher’s permission.
Elizabeth Noble states, "Emotional trauma (and sexual guilt) can
be converted into a bladder complaint, the bladder being a
substitute for the womb. I have long called urine-control problems
’urinary tears’.(1)
I had started tensing my muscles excessively in
school and while doing homework. As an anxious individual, I moved
rigidly and excessively raised my shoulders.(1) Pallor and dryness
of the skin are often associated with this type of tenseness.
While at the country day school, I developed a severe case of
dandruff.
The human being’s motor cortical patterns are
set by his experience in his environment; in other animals, these
patterns are heavily preset
and existing from birth.(3) My earliest interaction with the outer
world was totally physical; therefore, my earliest emotional
movements were connected to muscular and postural patterns.(4) So,
the workings of the human mind are affected more by the history of
its body than is found in other creatures.(5) The adults in my
environment promoted or rejected particular paths and patterns of
actions in my nervous system. As a result, I—as most people— ended
up using only a small part of my potential ability.(6)
The origin of arrested learning is most often
one incident involving intense emotion. However, unless this event
causes irremediable harm, the person’s normal development will
begin again at some point. Arrested learning will continue
indefinitely when many situations similar to the initial incident
occur.(7) When I sensed the beginning of fright, I tried to find a
unique way of controlling my incipient bodily reactions to
anxiety. I found a way to hold my breath
and tense my abdominal walls.(8)
Through my school years, I had gradually
learned to stoop, although not yet to an extreme degree. Pain, of
either emotional or physical origin, can undermine confidence in
the body and self; it is the principal reason for postural
distortion.(9) When I was frightened or anticipated a difficult
action, I drew my body together for protection. This action led to
unnecessary effort and hindered my body from developing he proper
organization. I used my body in this
way because I lacked self-confidence.
I could reach my goal, but I eventually
would pay a high price.(10) I didn’t sense the way I was gradually becoming more and
more tense and was straining muscles needlessly.(11) This neurotic
tension protected me from experiencing catastrophic feelings.(12)
Nature, however, intended any strain to be a temporary, not a chronic condition. One must
differentiate between stress and strain. Stress involves change;
it is neither bad nor good. Stress is actually excessive stress;
it can be hazardous and should be avoided.(13)
The emotional strain stemming from my family
environment was compounded by the cultural environment, which
emphasizes straining oneself as a sign of great willpower. The
educational establishment has long promoted compulsive behavior as
a mark of success in learning; it teaches docile students to
strain themselves from early childhood. When it was apparent that
I could easily master the academic work in elementary school, I
was placed in an advanced class. Here, I was supposed to learn the
meaning of life.(14)
My compulsive need for approval from the school
system and my parents had resulted in my self-assertive urges
severely and incessantly overtaxing my biological system. I wasted
enormous amounts of energy trying to succeed, acting too fast and
too intently. Humanity in general has used crippling methods to
gain what it considers security. A person only needs willpower
when he lacks the proper technique for accomplishing his goal.(15)
When an individual engages in correct coordinated action, his
movements will appear and feel effortless.(16)
Human beings have ’’multiple synergistic and
overriding controls for self-regulation"; yet, they can become
disordered through an improper use of self.(17) My habits were bad
because they didn’t relieve the tension that developed during my
actions.(18) I continued this pattern until I was utterly
exhausted. Of course, I wasn’t deliberately acting against myself;
I was doing the best I could at a particular time with the
techniques of which I was aware.(19) Unfortunately, as a neurotic
person, I was pulling myself to pieces rather than pulling myself
together.(20)
In my junior and senior years, I had started to
experience persistent fatigue. Dark circles were a constant
presence under my eyes. During my junior year, I had been studying
every weeknight until midnight and waking up at 6:00 A.M. During
my senior year, I experienced a great deal of trouble waking up on
school days. This isn’t surprising because "the biological need
for sleep is greater between the ages of 17 and 25 than at any
time since infancy."(21) Yet, I remained oblivious to warning
signals of impending exhaustion.
In September 1965, I returned to Brown for the
start of my sophomore year. A week after school began, my
neuromuscular system became highly disordered; many of my muscles
became permanently contracted. Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich
discovered that a person’s attitudes and emotional experiences are
capable of forming particular muscular patterns which hinder his
energy from moving smoothly and and easily. These muscular blocks
are called "character armor."(22) Mine now was extraordinarily
thick.
I was almost totally imprisoned by my inner
thought processes. A thought would enter my mind and stay there
for quite awhile. The same thought came faster and faster, as if
my mind was a record player with the needle stuck. I called my
mother and told her that I was sick, although I didn’t describe my
symptoms. I entered a prestigious hospital in Boston. The doctors
ran a series of tests and announced that they couldn't find
anything wrong; they suggested that I see a psychiatrist. However,
I didn't see one for a month.
I was having what is commonly called "a nervous
breakdown." Yet, as Janov points out, "Nerves don't break down.
Defenses do."(23) My defense of being a superachiever immersed in
abstract thought was collapsing. I started to see that my
obsessive studying had caused my physical problem and that my
parents had encouraged it.
Over the next few weeks, the muscles of my eye,
mouth, jaw, stomach, and chest entered a state of permanent
contraction. My speech slowed, and my breathing became rapid and
shallow. This pattern of breathing, called hyperventilation, is
often found in conjunction with chest pains, heart palpitations,
and the arterial narrowing of
ischemia. Employing it habitually, I was at
increased risk of developing coronary heart disease.(24)
The effects of my past trauma had started to
manifest themselves in a devastating way. The repression of the
trauma, not the trauma itself, caused my illness.(25) Miller
asserts:
"The truth about our childhood is stored up in
our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it.
Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our
perceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But
someday the body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible
as a child who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromise
or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop
evading the truth."(26)
I returned to school after my short stay in the
Boston hospital. A month later, I went to see psychiatrist Harold
Jacobs, whose office was several blocks from the university. Dr.
Jacobs saw me for a few sessions, during which we talked. I asked
him if he thought there was something wrong with me. The doctor
replied affirmatively, although he never specified what it was. At
one point, I was labelled a paranoid schizophrenic and later a
borderline schizophrenic. I didn’t find out that I was considered
a schizophrenic for another twelve years.,
I actually had a stress syndrome which is
technically called the general adaptation syndrome. This syndrome
has "three stages: (1) the alarm reaction; (2) the stage of
resistance; (3) the stage of exhaustion."(1) The stressor agents
were my contracted muscles, which produced extraordinary nervous
tension. When my muscles became contracted, I entered stage one.
When no action was taken to reverse the muscle
contractions, I entered the stage of resistance. My nervous system
sent chemical alarm signals to my endocrine glands, principally
the pituitary and the adrenals. These glands
secreted adaptive hormones which fought against the damage
to my body caused by the contracted muscles.(2) Hormones are
dissolvable chemicals discharged by the glands into the blood;
they move to all areas of the body. These stress hormones were
sent throughout my body, causing significant chemical changes in
the physical makeup of my body
fluids and tissues.(3) The overall stress response involved
interrelated reactions among my "brain and nerves, pituitary,
adrenal, kidney, blood vessels, connective tissue, thyroid, liver,
and white blood cells."(4)
My thinking processes also were disordered;
however, I didn’t have a brain disease. It is useful to make a
distinction between the brain and the mind. The brain is the
physical location where most of the body’s functions begin, are
regulated, and controlled. The human brain is about the size of a
grapefruit and weighs about as much as a four hundred page
hardcover book of standard size. There are more cells in the brain
than there are stars in the Milky Way. Billions of interactions go
on between its cells, and this electrochemical process makes up
the brain system.(5) Viewing the entire time span of the world’s
existence as a twenty-four hour day, our brains came into
existence five minutes before that day ended. Virtually all human
history occurred in the last minute of that day.(6)
Loren Eisley observes that "the fossil memories
of its past" are encoded in the human brain.(7) In fact, every
situation a person encounters affects his body. The more important
the event, the more power it has to produce changes in biological
functions. Body memories remain even when traumatic situations
have caused a minimum of physical pain. (8) My constant straining
for academic achievement compounded the damage done by stressful
fetal and family environments. My body became a picture of my
attitudes and reactions to life's traumas.(9)
Our sensory-motor systems constantly react to
stresses with specific muscular reflexes. When repeatedly
triggered, these reflexes cause muscular contractions that can’t
be relaxed voluntarily. These contractions have become habitual;
their patterns are "learned" at an unconscious level. They become
ingrained "into the functional patterns of the central nervous
system.”(10)
My central nervous system has both structurally
and functionally two divisions: a sensory division and a motor
division. The sensory nerves appear in the area from the brain
down the spine to the tailbone; the motor nerves are in front. My
sensory nerves are responsible for transmitting sensations to my
brain of everything I sense outside as well as inside my body. My
perceptions of the world and of myself are directed by the sensory
nerves. The motor nerves are responsible for every movement I
make; by means of these nerves, my movements go from my brain down
my spine. Motor nerves have attachments to the muscles of the
skeleton and the smooth muscles of the viscera; through these
muscles, they control my movements within and outside myself.(11)
In the spine, the sensory and motor systems are
divided but in the brain they are integrated. When my brain
receives messages from the sensory nerves, it can compute what to
do and how to do it. That is, having received sensory information,
it can issue commands to my motor system. Thomas Hanna declares,
"These integrated functions of the sensory and motor systems are
so fundamental and so familiar that, like the fish that does not
notice the water, we do not notice their ceaseless operation."(12)
Due to my severely contracted muscles, the operation of my
sensory-motor system was disorganized and quite noticeable. My
movements were limited and inefficient; this motor system
malfunction affected the clarity of my sensory perceptions.(13)
All muscles have tone, or tonus. This is "a
natural elasticity or ability to stretch and contract in response
to stimuli."(14) Tonus is zero when I am in a state of rest. If I
have complete control of a muscle, I can have a muscle tonicity of
zero. But, if I can’t control the muscle voluntarily, its tonicity
increases to ten, twenty, or even forty percent. Then, my muscle
is chronically tense. The human body has almost eight hundred
muscles, all of which have sensory cells. My well-being depends on
sensory information supplied to my brain by my muscles.
Furthermore, the brain is a coordinating and
cooperating part of the immune system. Likewise, the immune system
affects and is affected by the brain.(15) Psychologist Paul
Pearsall notes, “The immune system, in coordination with the
brain, must run effectively if we are to be healthy."(16) While in
the resistance stage of the general adaptation syndrome, my
immunity to disease was weakened.
I have a supersystem of my mind and body within
which my immune system functions.(17) This supersystem is actually
a combination of the central nervous system, hormonal system, and
autonomic nervous system. It affects all of my 200 trillion
cells.(18) This network consists of all the interactions ’’between
brain, immune cells, behavior, environment, feelings, thought, and
other people.”(19) In other words, the supersystem is sensitive to
minute changes in the environment, to caring or its absence, to
words, to tone of voice, to stated feelings. A person’s brain
keeps developing and changing throughout life as his thoughts
emotions, and environment change.(21)
Every thought activates a messenger molecule in
the brain. This molecule is immediately converted into biological
information. The human body isn’t a body and a mind or a mind
inside a body but a body/mind. The mental happening doesn't cause
the physical happening; "the mental event and the physical event
are exactly the same thing,"
viewed from different perspectives.(22)
Furthermore, my mind isn’t located only in my brain. Consciousness
expressed through behavior is found in every cell of my body.
The right and left hemispheres of the cerebral
cortex are termed the higher areas of the brain. The gray matter
of the cerebral cortex or neocortex is the site where my daily
thinking and my sense of self is located. Much of my internal
self-dialogue is carried on in the neocortex. This thinking can
have a great impact on the regulation of other sites in the brain
and supersystem. Actually, my whole brain thinks in constant
interaction with my entire body.(23)
Every thought and feeling brings with it an
abundant flow of brain chemicals that affect and are affected by
the billions of cells in my immune system. The immune system is
"the most complex health maintenance system in the
universe...."(24) A person with a strong immune system has found a
balanced way to promote the growth of mind, body, and spirit.
Human beings possess four major whole-body
reflexes. These reactions occur quickly and are controlled
by the brain: the fight reflex, the flee reflex, the flow reflex,
and the "being" reflex. Pearsall points out, "Different hormonal
patterns, different changes in our stomachs, our bladders, and our
bowels take place in response to what our brains tell us is
happening."(25)
These responses first helped human beings face
various situations thousands of years ago. I was practicing the
flow response when I became silent because of mother’s threatening
behavior toward me. This tactic was used by ancient people to keep
predators from attacking them. The attackers might ignore the prey
who seemed to be weak, sick, or dead. The flow response can affect
the body negatively, just as the fight-and-flee response can.(26)
With its muscles severely contracted, my
biological system experienced the rage of the fight reflex.
Cavemen used fighting or fleeing in reacting to wild animals near
their cave. In this state, my sympathetic nervous system operated
ceaselessly for the next thirteen years. This system functions
when a person is under pressure or worried; it activates the
hypothalamus in the brain.
The hypothalamus, the ’’brain of the brain" is
found in the limbic system; it directs many of the body’s
interactions.(27) The hypothalamus excites to action the amygdala
and the brain stem, causing trophic hormones to activate the whole
sympathetic nervous system. This system prompts the adrenal
medulla to secrete catecholamines; these can decrease the
effectiveness of the immune system. The medulla is almost a
separate endocrine gland; it produces hormones, but its nerve
fibers also link up with the sympathetic system and are involved
in the fight-or-flight response. The adrenal cortex likewise
produces hormones from its three zones.
Janov’s description of the sympathetic nervous
system is worth quoting at length:
"The sympathetic system is the work horse; it
alarms and alerts, increases the activity level of all organ
systems, raises body temperature, and increases vital functions
such as heart rate and blood pressure. It increases urine
production, produces bowel spasms and churns up the viscera; it
regulates peripheral blood flow so that in anxious situations the
hands and feet become cold and the face pale. It is this system
that triggers the secretion of the steroids or stress hormones. It
mediates nervous sweating, dry mouth, high tension muscle states,
taut face and jaw, higher voice, and it is the agency for impulse
behavior. It keeps us focused externally rather than being
reflective.(28) On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous
system functions when a person is not tense, free from worry,
self-confident."(29)
Ever since the seventh grade, I had been
practicing the hurried, worry-filled lifestyle Pearsall calls
’’running hot.” He observes:
"Running hot is defending immaturely, being
driven, yet frustrated by the need for power, feeling alientated
from others, living in a state of alarm, being driven by time, and
sometimes frantically attempting to protect a narrow but precious
view of self."(30)
Now, running as hot as possible, my sympathetic
nervous system was totally out of control.
Many parts of my brain were not working
properly. The brainstem or reptilian brain is the oldest part of
the brain; it evolved more than five hundred million years ago. It
adjusts an organism’s basic level of alertness and gives notice of
vital incoming information. The reticular formation, located in
the brainstem, comprises at least four distinct neural systems,
each with its own neurotransmitter. One of its functions is to
operate the ’’reticular activating system,’’ an
arousal system that keeps the brain awake and
alert.(31) With my muscles contracted, I wasn’t clearheaded when
awake. In fact, the number of hours I could stay awake rapidly
decreased. I was soon sleeping fourteen hours a day.
The brainstem contains several centers that
regulate various functions that are vital for survival; these
include blood pressure, heartbeat, respiration, digestion, and
certain reflex actions such as swallowing and vomiting.(32) The
brainstem also controls sleep, modulates spinal reflexes and
sustains muscle tone. Maintaining and adjusting posture and
coordinating muscular movement are two important functions of the
cerebellum, or "little brain", located at the back of the
brainstem.(33) The cerebellum also plays a part in producing
speech.(34) My blood pressure was high, my heartbeat rapid, my
respiration shallow and fast, and my digestion poor. The
gastrointestinal area is especially responsive to general stress.
Not surprisingly, I soon developed a peptic ulcer.(35) I stooped
and couldn’t coordinate properly my muscular movements.
Neurons are the nerve cells that are the major
components of the brain; they are very tiny but are found in
extraordinary numbers. Their main function is to process
information and transport it to other neurons in the brain. Now,
my nerve impulses were totally disordered.
Psychologist Robert Ornstein declares, "Neurons
talk to each other by releasing certain chemical molecules, the
chemical messengers, or neurotransmitters, at the synapses."(36)
The chemical transmitter molecule is the nervous system’s basic
unit of action. There may well be hundreds of distinct chemical
messenger molecules in the brain. I’ve mentioned that the chemical
messengers called hormones are sent into the bloodstream by
glands; they are more numerous than neurotransmitters.(37)
The neurotransmitters fasten themselves to
chemical receptor molecules that are found in the post-synaptic
membrane. These receptor molecules have their own unique shapes.
The neurotransmitters also have unique forms which fit into the
receptor molecules, similar to the way that a key fits into a
lock. When the messenger molecules fasten themselves to the
receptor molecules on neurons, they activate the receptor
molecules. This can only happen when the messenger molecules fit
properly into the receptor molecules. Then, enkephalins, natural
brain opiates, are released into the bloodstream. Enkephalins have
the same effect as morphine, which obstructs pain and brings about
pleasure. Unfortunately, these natural painkillers are as
addictive as morphine and heroin.(38) Suffering from permanently
contracted muscles, I was awash in chemical painkillers.
I've pointed out that as a child and adolescent
my sense of personal identity had been tenuous. I had been
ontologically insecure. Now, the reliability of my bodily
processes had been shattered; I was "more or less unembodied."(39) My
personal cohesiveness also was fragmented as my thought processes
overwhelmed my organism. A person secure in his body at least has
a starting point with which to develop relationships with other
people. On the other hand, a person whose self and body are poorly
integrated can’t participate directly in meaningful activities m
the world.(40)
I entirely lost my ability for reflective
awareness. This "is the ability to be aware of one's own self
acting relatively unself-consciously or with a simple primary
nonreflectiveness."(41) My mind was absorbed in watching,
censuring, and managing as well as possible my dysfunctional body.
My intense self-examination was fraught with bad feeling. Any
possibility of spontaneity or happiness withered under this
prosecutorial stance.(42)
My world—never very broad—was now stunted and
meager.(43) I not only was extremely self-conscious of my own
actions but also of the way other people viewed me because of my
awkward movement patterns and slow speech. I was simultaneoulsy
more obvious to other people, yet isolated from them.(44) I had
entered the state Kierkegaard terms "shutupness.” However, "this
autistic, private, intraindividual world," is not a feasible
substitute for the only world there really is, the shared
world.(45)
Although I had attained the lofty academic
status of Dean’s List student at an Ivy League university, I was
profoundly stupid. Any animal that is confined to a narrow range
of abilities to act is stupid. Therefore, neurosis originates in
dysfunctional early learning. It results when a person dully
clings to a very limited range of habitual activities in order to
gain his feeling of self-esteem.(46)
The state of being that is labelled
"schizophrenic" carries this stupidity to an extreme. A person who
has this mysterious "disease" has been, in a sense, quite
unintelligent in handling "primary enculturation data."(47)
Psychosis results when his character structure breaks down
completely.(48)
The individual's awkwardness in ordering his
life experiences is always created by the society into which he is
born.(49) Part of the reason people labelled "psychotic" make
"normal" people so uneasy is that they provide caricatures of
these smoothly functioning lifestyles.(50) However, affixing a
label to the person’s problems doesn’t help him and often harms him.
As a child, I was supposed to start to acquire
my self-esteem from my mother’s mouth instead of her milk. I then
tried to enhance my self-esteem by following the patterns valued
by my society. In other words, my self-esteem began to depend on
symbols. Therefore, I began to devote most of my life to the
protection, maintenance, and enhancement of the symbolic means I
used to nurture this positive feeling about myself.(51) I wanted
to contribute to world life and be a hero in some way.(52) Now,
however, my self-esteem was shattered.
Becker believes that status and role are
fundamental to human societies. They show the individual how to
proceed in a specific social situation as well as the way he
should feel about himself in this situation. Status and role also
give predictability to behavior so that everyday affairs have a
dependable meaning.(53)
At this time, I was about to lose my status as
an excellent student at an elite university and assume the role of
a mental patient. My striving for success had been exaggerated and
not based on my own decisions. When I could no longer play my
false, accommodating role, I was scorned by society.
My transformation from honor student to
schizophrenic was similar to the protagonist’s transformation in
Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis.(54) Gregor Samsa is carrying a
heavy workload to support his mother, father, and seventeen-year
old sister Greta. His father’s business had collapsed five years
earlier. He is a commercial traveller who has to bear the
irritations of constant traveling. Gregor would like to quit his
job, but he is paying back his parents’ debt to the chief of the
business. He is proud that he has been able to furnish his parents
and sister with a comfortable life in a nice apartment. His family
initially was thankful for Gregor’s support but gradually came to
take it for granted. They didn’t really feel warmly toward their
provider.
Astoundingly, one day Gregor awakes and
discovers that he has turned into an immense insect. He speaks
with a constant, terrible, quavering squeak which barely is
comprehensible. He now possesses many small legs which perpetually
oscillate and are uncontrollable. The salesman oversleeps and
misses his train. The chief clerk comes to his family’s apartment
to inquire why he didn’t appear at work. He wonders why Gregor is
shutting himself in his room, giving ”yes" and "no" replies,
making his parents suffer a great deal of needless discomfort, and
thoroughly leaving undone his job-related tasks. Gregor is still
anxious to work, despite the fact that he doesn’t feel well and
has pains in the lower part of his body.
The chief clerk and Gregor’s parents are
horrified when they see his appearance. The clerk leaves, yelling
”Ugh!" His father physically abuses Gregor, and his mother suffers
greatly.
The family members wonder how they can make a
living. Gregor is ashamed when he hears them talking about this
question. Eventually, they all prosper in new jobs and probably
will enjoy an even better future. However, the members still feel
hopeless with the insect around; they feel that they have been
burdened with a unique misfortune. Gregor’s sister concludes that
nobody could criticize them for attempting to destroy it.
Meanwhile, Gregor is in pain and very weak from
lack of nourishment. He thinks about his family with compassion
and love. Feeling even more strongly than his sister that he must
not be a burden to the family anymore, he dies.
I had been carrying a heavy academic workload
in order to realize my parents’ unlived dream of success. Then, my
muscles contracted; and I turned into a schizophrenic. My mother
was horrified, and my father was puzzled. They were alarmed at the
strange-speaking creature with uncontrollable muscles that they
saw in front of them. Psychiatrists, functioning as agents for
society, would soon try to drug me and lock me in an institution as a
hopeless schizophrenic.
The tenseness of my muscles was causing an
enormous expenditure of energy. I would wake up at 7:00 or 8:00
A.M. and have to go back to sleep within a couple of hours. In
fact, because of muscular tension, old people often complain that
they are constantly tired.(1)
Like Gregor, I wanted to keep working. I
continued attending some classes and by sheer willpower kept
studying. I was even named to the Dean's List again at the end of
the semester.
By March 1966, my muscular tension was so
severe that, at times, I began to shake uncontrollably. As my
twentieth birthday approached at the end of the month, I was in
the final stage of the general adaptation syndrome: complete
exhaustion. Repression had saved my life during my childhood and
adolescence; now, it was about to kill me. Janov declares, "So
when one wonders if a person can die from a lack of love, the
answer is yes."(2) However, unlike Gregor, I didn’t die. The brain
is an adaptive organ; it will adjust to the events of 3 a person’s
life in whatever way is necessary to survive.(3)
I suddenly got the idea to start moving. I put
on a winter jacket and chinos and wore a pair of sneakers.
Stepping outside my dormitory, I jogged a half mile to Meehan
Auditorium, which contained the university’s hockey rink. Then, I
almost collapsed. Feeling severe pains in my chest, I required
five minutes just to catch my breath. A few minutes later,
however, I jogged back to my dormitory. I continued to jog
everyday that the weather permitted. Frequently, an individual
under stress preserves his sanity by trusting his body in order to
alleviate the fears, obsessions, and phobias that are destroying
his organism. For this reason, progressive educators from Rousseau
to Dewey and Reich taught that "self-directed activity by the
child" is a vital factor in maintaining mental health.(4) My
jogging gait was inefficient because my muscles were so tense.
However, for awhile after finisishing jogging, I felt relief from
my contracted musculature. Both my muscles and my mind relaxed
somewhat.
By early April, I dropped out of Brown. In the
summer, I got a work-study job at the local Young Mens’ Christian
Association day camp. I was supposed to be the reading instructor!
Because of tension in my eye and facial muscles, I could barely
read myself. Furthermore, I could barely communicate with anyone.
I had obtained the job through Joe Hines, the physical director of
the association. I had played tennis with him for several years at
a private club in Fall River. Hines saw to it that I kept the job
all summer despite my incapacity.
Driving was difficult for me that summer. My
peripheral vision had narrowed drastically; my body was so tense
that I had trouble staying in my seat. The few times I drove late
at night, I was afraid that I would fall asleep at the wheel. Over
the next seven years, I was involved in four minor accidents due
to my reduced visual acuity and tense musculature. It is amazing
that I managed to drive as well as I did.
My parents had purchases a beautiful new home
in a wealthy suburb, about a fifteen minute ride from Fall River.
Our family lived there for two months in the summer of 1967. My
mother was hysterical most of the time. James had started to
attend Alcoholics Anonymous but found it difficult to make much
progress due to the atmosphere at home.
When a person undergoes a crisis, he may make
significant changes in his lifestyle and reach a better state of
balance than before the crisis occurred.I spent the summer of 1967
exercising as much as I could. I played tennis at the private club
in Fall River and jogged in the grass around the playground of the
elementary school next to our house. Many nights I went bowling.
As will become apparent, my attempt to change my lifestyle was
greatly hindered by the fact that there was so little information
available in the mid-sixties about jogging, athletic injuries,
body work therapies, and meditation. My aerobic capacity continued
to improve, but my muscles remained severely contracted.
Florence frequently went to see her father, who
was ill in Fall River. Having concluded that he wasn’t receiving
the proper home care, she decided to return to Fall River to
supervise it. James sold the house and temporarily moved our
family into his uncle’s house, which was diagonally across the
street from our former house.
Circumstances soon overwhelmed my father. An
accountant discovered that he and my uncle Morris had stolen a
considerable sum of money from the business. My grandfather fired
James but not Morris. My father suffered a heart attack. Upon
recovering, he learned that Florence was initiating divorce
proceedings. She ordered him to leave. James was now virtually
destitute.
Forence’s mother died around this time, leaving
her $125,000. She used $36,000 of this money to build a new house
several blocks from our old one. Florence, Alan, and I soon moved
into it.
I returned to Brown in September 1966. The
university psychiatrist asked, "Are you coming back because of
parental pressure?" Upon answering negatively, I was readmitted. I
managed to survive the next two years, although my grades were
understandably poor. I was ingesting a large quantity of Gelusil
everyday for my ulcer. I also suffered from severe tension
headaches. Janov comments, "Tension as a total bodily experience
must wreak havoc with all the organism, especially
constitutionally weakened organs."(1) He also notes that headaches
and ulcers are routine symptoms in the United States. In the
mid-1970s, 20,000 tons of asprin were swallowed per year. This
amounts to "almost 225 tablets per
person."(2) I simply had a more severe tension syndrome than is
normal in this country.
I was a frequent visitor to the school’s
psychiatrist, who supplied me with copious quantities of Librium.
This drug is a minor tranquilizer used to treat anxiety. It is a
central nervous system depressant with effects similar to alcohol
and barbiturates. Librium is classified as a sedative-hypnotic,
producing relaxation (sedation) at low doses. Its anti-anxiety
effects are short-lived. As a minor tranquilizer, it suppresses
the brain’s ability to produce feelings. The brain attempts to combat its effects in
unpredictable and incomprehensible ways.(3) Other hazards of minor
tranquilizers include "addiction, withdrawal reactions, rebound
anxiety, mental dysfunction, and lethality."(4)
During the fall semester, I had a few sessions
with Dr. Morton Liberman, a psychiatrist near Brown; I merely
talked about my symptoms. He put me under the care of a young
psychiatric social worker in his office, Ronald Simpson. I could
barely communicate coherently with anyone, let alone deeply probe
my feelings about the present or past.
Dr. Liberman soon referred me to a nearby
psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Monahan, who gave me Tofranil. Dr. Monahan
said, "You don’t want to be a vegetable, do you?" He monitored my
progress by seeing me for about five minutes every two weeks. I
always told him that I was doing well; actually, I didn’t notice
any effect whatsoever. Tofranil is a tricyclic antidepressant.
Research shows that this type of drug is not much better than a
placebo.(5) However, in effective dosages, tricyclic
antidepressants can make a person lethargic and disinterested.
They cause generalized mental dysfunction and sometimes reduce
depression by preventing the brain from producing higher
psychospiritual reactions. Tricyclics can cause severe withdrawal
symptoms, are extremely lethal in overdose, and have many side
effects. I don’t know the dosage I was taking. It may have been
low enough so that it only produced a placebo effect. My body and
mind were so disordered that perhaps I just didn’t notice the
effect. I wasn’t so much depressed as oppressed by severe muscular
contractions. After about three months, I stopped taking Tofranil;
I found that my jogging regimen helped me much more than the
medication.
During the summer of 1968, I increased my
jogging to five or six miles a day. One day, I was running on the
grass on the edge of a nearby high school’s track when I tripped
over a rock and sprained my ankle. Due to a misunderstanding, the
injury wasn’t taken care of properly.
When I started jogging again, I couldn’t move
in the same way. My foot-leg system was misaligned now. I
continued jogging for the next seven years even though my movement
pattern grew increasingly dysfunctional. I began to suffer from
severe pains in my feet because of the way that they were striking
the ground.
I consulted several doctors during these years.
They all gave me different advice. I was told that I should wear
hightop shoes, that I had fibrositis, that it was psychosomatic. I
also was told to stop jogging because I might get arthritis. I
flew to the office of the newly-formed National Jogging
Association in Washington, D.C; then, I saw a nearby doctor
someone in the office recommended. His recommendation didn’t help.
I even tried acupuncture in New York City in 1973. My jogging
continued to be dysfunctional and painful.
In May 1968, I had completed 3| years of
college. However, my body and mind remained in disarray. I
realized that I would be unable to complete my last half year in
1969.
The sixties were a time of cultural and
political upheaval. The counterculture, Vietnam, the Civil Rights
movement, and the Students for a Democratic Society were important
parts of this era. I was too involved with my internal war to be
able to participate in any of these events. I had reported for a
draft physical in early 1967 and had told the interviewing officer
that I had suffered a nervous breakdown in college. He asked, "How
are you doing now?" I answered, "I’m doing better.” I soon
received a letter excusing me from the service.
I began to think that my schooling must have
been a trap if it had left me in this predicament. Educational
critic John Holt observes, "Next to the right to life itself, the
most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our
own minds and thoughts.”(1) For a few years, I had barely been
able to read anything. Vigorous aerobic exercise had revived my
ability to read. Out of school for a second time, I had the
leisure to read whatever I wanted. During the summer of 1968, I
started browsing through bookstores.
One of the first books that attracted my
attention was The Sane Society by psychoanalyst Erich
Fromm. He states, "Nothing is more common than the idea that we,
the people living in the Western world of the twentieth century
are eminently sane.”(2) The fact that many of our citizens are
afflicted with mental illness to varying degrees does not make the
majority question the overall mental health of our society. Yet,
despite advances in material prosperity as well as political and
sexual freedom, the world half way through the twentieth century
is more mentally disturbed than was the case during the nineteenth
century.(3) Fromm deals extensively with ’’the pathology of
normalacy” in The Sane Society and several other books.(4)
My reading wasn’t extensive between 1968 and
1970, but it was stimulating and informative. It was much more
interesting than Latin and Algebra. Ln the late 1960s and early
1970s, it was easy to find books radically questioning the
mainstream institutions of American society. I read books such as
Coming of Age in America: Growth and Acquiescence by social
critic Edgar Fridenberg and Culture Against Man by
anthropologist Jules Henry. I was starting to pierce the social
filter which impeded my learning the truth about society. This
filter allows some experiences to penetrate it and prevents others
from entering. All societies prevent their average member from
allowing some thoughts and feelings into consciousness.(5) The
average person has limited contact with reality; he is aware of it
only to the extent that his social functioning requires him to
be.(6) For him, reason and reality are "public consensus."(7) This
pathologically normal person rapidly learns "which thoughts are
’right,’ which feeling is normal, which taste
is 'in.'"(8)
The social character is the unique manner of
organizing psychic energy so that it helps to operate society.
Even though what it requires them
to do is harmful, society succeeds in gaining the allegiance of
most of its members. The fictitious interests it imposes on them
through ideological conditioning and even brainwashing make them
want to do what they must do. The playwright Ibsen describes this
process in commenting about a character: "He can do anything he
wants to do because he wants only what he can do.”(9) Furthermore,
some people finally see that their socialization has been harmful
to them. Yet, habit often impedes them from breaking free from the
most difficult and offensive paths of existence. William James
tells the story of a menagerie-tiger whose cage had broken open in
a railroad accident. The animal came out but soon timidly went
back in and easily was locked up again. He had found his incipient
freedom too overwhelming.(10)
The most successful, well-adjusted people
aren’t clinically insane. They function well; yet, in embodying
socially patterned defects, they are very sick people. Reason
develops from the uniting of rational thought and feeling. When
the two functions are forcefully separated, "thinking deteriorates
into schizoid intellectual activity, and feeling deteriorates into
neurotic life-damaging passions."(11) The new man of the
technetronic age suffers from a low-grade chronic schizophrenia,
which is a social rather than a psychiatric sickness. The people
affected are not isolated completely like the psychotic because
they share their sickness with millions of other people. These
people view themselves as normal and consider those whose heart
and mind have not been separated as being insane.(12)
I was stunned by The Sane Society, a
beautifully written and cogent book. I read seven other books by
Fromm during the next decade. He was my foremost intellectual
guide until I encountered the writings of Andrew Schmookler in the
late 1980s. Though it was "schizoid intellectual activity,” my
reading of Fromm and other social critics kept me going. I now
knew that I had been damaged by a dehumanizing society.
I was also impressed by The Greening of
America, which I read in 1970. Yale Law School professor
Charles Reich points out that "the most thoughtful and passionate
of our youth have become disgusted with the United States for
spreading death not only in foreign lands but to its own
citizens.”(13) They realize that the Corporate State has broken
faith with the American dream. This State takes advantage of,
controls, and eventually ruins both the environment and human
beings. Its type of rationality is actually insanity. This alleged
reasonableness gives the illusion that dishonesty, deceit,
poverty, dehumanization, and armed conflict are sensible and
unavoidable.(14) The erroneous priorities of this
scientifically-oriented, machine-dominated society are being
planned by private groups who don’t care about the public good.
Reich bewails the deterioration of representative government and
freedom, the alienated quality of both work and culture, the lack
of community, and the dissolution of psyche. Our current
predicament can be traced to the beginning of the industrial era.
It was at that time that scientific procedures, an emphasis on
comfort and wealth, and market economics overwhelmed more
humanistic possibilities.
There are three types of consciousness in
American society. Consciousness includes an individual’s
"background, education, politics, insight, values, emotions, and
philosophy”; yet, it goes beyond these attributes.(15) It is the
entire person including his psyche and mode of life. Consciousness
1 originally was the frontier ethic of individual effort and hard
work. However, the powerful industrial capitalists such as
Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Harriman, and Ford added repression and
order to this spontaneous individual effort. This managerial
arrangement was responsible for the development of a "hierarchy of
power and privileges" that supplanted genuine communal principles,
replacing them "with antisocial ’success’" and with
life-destroying science.(16_ Consciousness 1 believes
whole-heartedly in the Darwinian struggle for existence involving
a brutal competitive race spurred by personal self-interest.(17)
Consciousness 2 is that of the reformers of the
Progressive era and of the New Deal. They used governmental power
to bring order to the laissez-faire economy and shaped the
atrocious arrangement which presently dominates American life—the
American Corporate State.(18) Consciousness 2 has been an attempt
to mitigate the disastrous results of Consciousness 1: "Robber
barons, business privacy, ruinous competition, unreliable products
and false advertising, grotesque inequality, and the chaos of
excessive individualism and lack of coordination and planning
leading to a gangster world."(19)
Consciousness 2 believes in an elitest society,
the elite being those who best serve the progress of this
machine-dominated society. People still are involved in a
Darwinian struggle for existence; success, however, is measured by
institutional goals rather than strictly individual ones. They are
still driven by a terrible fear of defeat in the competitive
battle. This corporate State "has only one value, the value of
technology-organization-efficiency-growth-progress."(20)
Now, some people have escaped from the false
consciousness of the Corporate State. Consciousness 3 rejects the
competitive struggle. It replaces the jungle of Consciousness 1
and the meritocracy of Consciousness 2 with true community. People
who nurture this consciousness have a "feeling of being an
outsider."(21) They spurn the alienated labor that the rat race of
the technological society offers them. They deemphasize material
values; they try to recover their true self, simply by enough
people changing their consciousness, the Corporate State will be
overthrown. In other words, radicalization follows a change of
consciousness. The revolution involves cultural changes which
greatly influence the economic and political structures of
society. Therefore, once these cultural changes take place,
"economic equality and social ownership of the means of
production" will naturally occur.(22) High quality work can
flourish in such a free atmosphere. Law, organization, and
government will be used for sensible, compassionate purposes.
There will be maximum individuality within maximum community.
Reich’s analysis of the American mind is
correct. However, the majority of people in this country haven’t
experienced a fundamental change of consciousness due to deep
early injuries to their psyche. I’ll later discuss the way in
which power has ruled the world for ten thousand years. Therefore,
this deliterious state of affairs can’t be be balmed on capitalism
or industrialism.
In the 1960s, many alienated young people tried
"A life of withdrawal into personal experience."(23) Using drugs,
living in a commune, and striving for personal fulfillment were
important parts of this lifestyle. I was incapable of considering
this option. I was absorbed by my inner thought processes and the
attempt to reduce my physical tension. All I could do was read and
exercise.
I also was unable to participate in radical
political activism, another consequential phenomenon of the 1960s.
Few young people in the United States had previously pursued
radical activism fervently. Even when the New Left was at its
zenith, the percentage of youth that was radical was small.
The majority of radical students were from
upper middle class professional families; they were intelligent
and knowledgeable about contemporary affairs. A high percentage of
the students were Jewish. Often, both parents were graduates of
four-year colleges.(24)
In general, the student radicals were not
antagonistic to their parents’ values. Many parents were left of
center; a sizable percentage of them had earlier in their lives
been members of leftist organizations. Many, however, had dropped
their formal memberships and had acceded to the inducements of
capitalist society. Therefore, a large number of young radicals
were trying to implement their parents’ political desires. They
had been successful academically and had assumed leadership roles
in high school.(25)
Ronald Aronson, a young New Left college
professor describes his feelings about taking part in the rat race
of capitalist, technological society:
"Somehow, I had gotten on this machine in
motion, had become the machine, acting on behalf of some enormous
power I couldn’t even begin to fathom. To follow out its and my
momentum led to the ’good life’ whose every detail I already knew
in some instructive way: professional work, marrying, the
struggling young couple getting set up, vacation trips, a
wonderful child, a small house at first, then living better,
making more money. My own steps led naturally into the
full-fledged American way of life, a life in which I could look
good for other people and smile Hello, and buy and live better and
better. Phyllis and I called it ’the whole bit.’ Somewhere inside
I knew what attitudes and feelings were required for entry into
this good life: despair, boredom, the relentless drive to keep
moving, being ’realistic’ by putting society’s demands first and
my own second, giving up on happiness, lying about
pain."(26)
Aronson’s feelings were prevalent among
college-trained individuals of the late 1950s. The lures of
prosperity and safety that American society offered led to
desperation rather than to happiness among many of these people.
Some chose to fulfill themselves through political action rather
than accept a traditional vocation.(27)
In June 1962, the Students for a Democratic
Society released the Port Huron statement, a long declaration of
beliefs that aided the New Left in its quest for change during the
next five years. The students were concerned about the Cold War,
the possibility of nuclear war, racism, and personal economic
distress in the midst of affluence.(28) In its preamble, the
Statement declared: ”We would replace power rooted in possession,
privileges or circumstances” ... by power rooted in love,
reflectiveness, reason, and creativity.” It called for a social
system of genuine political and economic democracy in which people
would perform non-alienated work. Its anti-authoritarian and
individualistic characteristics had their roots in ’’the American
Jeffersonian tradition and classic anarchism.”(29)
The rest of the Port Huron Statement listed
many societal faults and outlined a plan for remedying them. Among
the radicals’ complaints were: universities were removed from
community problems and students were uninterested in solving them:
the Democrats1 and Republicans’ positions were too
similar most of the time; the country's foreign policy was in the
grips of a belligerent anti-communism directed by the
military-industrial complex; poverty and inequality were
significant factors in affluent America. (30) By the 1966-67
school year, Students for a Democratic Society national leadership
had determined that American corporate liberalism was
unreformable. Thirty years later, these problems remain. The Cold
War has ended, but the military-industrial complex is still
gigantic.
In 1965, Students for a Democratic Society had
seventy-five chapters with about two thousand members. By 1967, it
had become the major New Left organization. By the spring of 1968,
this group had had 350 chapters and 40,000 members. At its height
in the fall of 1968, 100,000 students were involved in 500
chapters. However, by 1967, 80 to 90 percent of the organization’s
membership was unknowledgeable about the intellectual sources of
the New Left and read almost nothing except articles from the
burgeoning underground press. On the other hand, 5 to 10 percent
of Students for a Democratic Society consisted of
’superintellectuals,’ mostly graduate students. The group’s
Weatherman faction escalated its violence in 1969, and Students
for a Democratic Society basically expired as an organizational
force at the end of that year. By 1972, student radicalism had
almost vanished.
Had my muscles not become contracted in
September 1965, there was no chance that I would have become a
student radical. I am Jewish. My parents, however, weren’t
professionals and were conservative. My mother knew little about
politics; she voted Republican because her father did.
My father voted for Richard Nixon in 1968 and
supported the Vietnam War. I had been an outstanding student in
secondary school. My learning, however, was narrowly focused,
shallow, and involved mostly memorization.
Although on the Dean’s List at an Ivy League
university, I knew practically nothing about American society
beyond what I had learned studying traditional secondary school
history texts. I was totally isolated from my peers and intended
to major in Spanish. I may have taken a few American history
courses before I graduated. At best, I would have become a
liberal.
I discovered radical political analysis in the
summer of 1968. At this time, I was suffering from both a physical
ailment and a psychic alienation bordering on psychosis.
Therefore, I was incapabl_e of participating in any organized
societal activity, whether supporting conventional societal
practices or opposing them.
About this time, my financial status changed
dramatically. In the summer of 1968, I received fifty thousand
dollars from the estate of my Uncle Harold, my grandfather
Isadore’s brother. Harold had owned and operated a clothing store
on Nantucket Island. He had suffered a stroke and had been
virtually a vegetable for a couple of years before his death. In
his original will, he had left the store to me. Unfortunately, it
had been altered by other relatives. Florence wanted to contest
the will. Her lawyer, however, could not be present the day the
trial was to start on Nantucket. He had recommended waiting and
moving the proceedings off the island. Dr. Harry Kozol, a
prestigious Harvard-trained forensic psychiatrist, had been
retained at $3,000 for the day to testify that Harold was mentally
incompetent when he signed a new will. The judge ruled that Dr.
Kozol would not be allowed to testify. I accepted $50,000 to
settle the case.
In 1969, Isadore died and left my mother close
to a million dollars. When the banks had started to finance
automobiles, he had branched out into the stock market. He had
been successful, especially in the 1950s.
Florence spent her time in the 1970s moving
from one home, condominium, or apartment to another in such
locations as Newport, R.I., Falmouth and Boston, Ma. and Fall
River. She moved and moved but could never escape herself and her
childhood humiliations. Janov points out:
"Because he is not where he is, the neurotic
will never be content for any lasting period of time. He is using
the present to work out the past. So he will buy a house and fix
it up, and when he is done he will want a new house.(1)
My mother spent much of her time shopping and
decorating her various residences. She also took trips to England,
France, Italy, Central America, the Panama Canal, and Bermuda.
Florence dated several wealthy men and a
distant relative of modest means. Fortunately, she had become a
friend of Dr. Kozol. She was going to marry her relative until Dr.
Kozol warned her that her fiance was simply after her money. My
mother never did remarry.
I lived mainly on the $50,000 I had been left
in the 1970s. My mother helped me with my modest medical expenses.
Most of the bills were covered by my Major Medical Blue Cross-Blue
Shield policy. They were mostly for psychotherapy and treatment of
athletic injuries. I had no additional major illnesses and few
minor ones. My ulcer had disappeared when I had persevered in my
jogging regime. My tension headaches gradually diminished in
intensity and frequency.
Florence also supplemented my income with
various gifts or small items; she particularly liked to buy me
sweaters. No matter how brutally she emotionally abused her
children, she always helped them financially. She would often
bemoan the fact that, despite her having given them the finest
food, clothing, and shelter, they had turned out to be no-good
bums! She had purchased an apron which read: "My children will be
the death of me!" To this day, Florence never really says a kind
word or praises her children; she knows how to lecture but not how
to advise or discuss. Over the years, she kept up a constant
stream of criticism about people, places, and activities. Florence
was especially severe on sales clerks, waitresses, and greedy
labor unions. She denigrated “Negroes.” She wouldn’t want to live
near one but would employ one as a maid.
In the middle of January 1970, I went to Fort
Lauderdale for the first time and stayed for a few weeks in the
Bahia Mar Hotel, which was across the street from the beach. Then,
I stayed in a less luxurious motel a few blocks away from the
beach for another month. Renting a car, I went to Jai Lai, Sea
World, a tropical park, several movies, and a few plays at the
Parker Playhouse. I drove to Hollywood and watched forty-year-old
Pancho Gonzales play tennis. I attended several New York Yankee
exhibition games at the team’s stadium on the outskirts of Fort
Lauderdale. I jogged on the grass almost everyday in Holiday Park.
The park had a tennis center with three hard courts and eighteen
clay courts. I did not, however, play any
tennis during this vacation.
I returned to Brown in September 1970 for my
last semester. It was still difficult for me to sit in class and
sit reading for several more hours a day. Yet, I managed to
achieve a 2.75 grade point average. I completed the requirements
for my degree in January 1971. Then, I went to live with my mother
and brother in the new house she had built. It was located in our
old neighborhood in Fall River.
I was tense and communicated poorly with
people. I continued my reading and jogging but didn’t cause any
real trouble. Late one morning in the spring, as I was sitting in
my room, there was a knock on my door. Four policemen entered the
room, grabbed me and took me to a police cruiser. It soon arrived
at the local community mental health center. I protested to the
man who was admitting me that I wouldn’t be able to jog in this
place. He said to keep quiet and admit myself voluntarily, or he
would have me sent to the state hospital. After signing myself in
and being given a
room, spent the afternoon on the ward with some
of the patients. That evening, I called a friend, who contacted a
lawyer.
The next morning, I attended a group therapy
session. Then, a staff member interviewed me. I replied
affirmatively when he asked me if I was receiving private care.
Shortly, a staff member informed me that I was being released.
Subsequently, I found out that my mother had persuaded a local
psychiatrist who had never seen me to sign a
commitment form.
I continued living at home; I read, jogged, and
went to the movies. I went to see Dr. Kozol a few times that
spring and several more times at infrequent intervals over the
next four years. Dr. Kozol had been trained before biological
psychiatry started to dominate the profession; he didn’t rush to
put me on medication. We mostly talked about books. He also told
me about his own career. He was especially proud that he had seen
Eugene O’Neill as a patient near the end of the great playwright’s
life. Many years later he told me that he had seen my grandmother
Marjorie early in his career.
Dr. Kozol’s lifestyle was a common one for an
affluent American physician. He had an apartment in the Prudential
Center complex in Boston and a home in an elite section of
Falmouth. He patronized high-priced restaurants such as the one in
the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Yet, his son Jonathan was rapidly becoming
a leading radical critic of the American educational system.
The younger Kozol had graduated summa cum laude
from Harvard in 1958. He had gone to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar
but had resigned his scholarship. In 1967, his book Death at
an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro
Children in the Boston Public Schools won the National Book
Award. In 1974, The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home would
be published. It is a severe indictment of the school and
university system in America. According to Kozol, the function of
the public schools is state indoctrination. Students submit to
"twelve years of mandatory self-dehumanization, self-debilitation,
blood-loss."(1) The wealthy children submit to a similar process
of indoctrination in preparatory schools. It is more subtle but
more effective.
Kozol enumerates and emphatically condemns some
of the many social injustices in this country and abroad.
Secondary school students aren’t taught to make the connections
which would show how the wealthy gain their wealth by oppressing
and exploiting the poor. They are ethically emaciated; they are
living in an "intellectual prison.”(2) They can admire rebels and
write research papers on social injustice but stop well short of
dangerous rebellion against poverty, pain, and desperation. Most
American students become, in effect, "murderers, or else
soul-broken automatons for
an unjust social order."(3)
Kozol scorns doctors who live in luxurious
homes in elite communities. He excoriates the wealthy who live in
grandeur surrounded by headwaiters while simultaneously living in
moral isolation. He quotes the Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles
who doubts that most doctors or other professionals even ask
themselves "where their money comes from, who pays them, who
rewards them—whom they never get to represent."(4)
Dr. Kozol was dynamic, articulate, and humane.
He didn’t see me on a regular basis. Even if he had, this caring
physician could not have made much progress as long as my muscles
remained contracted.
By the spring of 1972, my mother could see that
it wasn’t possible for me to work. She sent me to see another
Boston psychiatrist. After my second appointment, this doctor
announced that he was going to hospitalize me. I protested that I
didn’t want to be hospitalized. He looked puzzled for a moment and
then asked, "You came here voluntarily, didn’t you?" After
replying affirmatively, I left; I never saw him again.
Upon voluntarily admitting myself to a
psychiatric hospital, I would have been detained involuntarily if
I had tried to leave. Only psychiatrists in Western society have
the right to use physical force to make consumers accept their
services.(5) I would have undergone a degrading examination and
stigmatizing diagnosis which would have invalidated me as a human
being.(6) Powerless, I would have had to adapt to the same kind of
bullying that I had received from my mother at an early age.
Involuntary treatment should be avoided; it is
immoral and unconstitutional. ’’Normal” people don’t like
authorities to force their solutions on them. So-called mental
patients are no different and are not likely to be helped by
involuntary treatment. Forcing help on people impedes the goal of
strengthening and empowering them. It also interferes with the
goal of helping them learn mutual respect and love.(7)
Any chance for recovery would have been
precluded by the treatments I would have been subjected to in the
hospital. Biological psychiatry follows the so-called biomedical
model, upon whose concepts modern Si
scientific medicine is based. My body would have been
viewed as a machine whose parts and their functions could be
examined separately. Psychiatrists
would
have tried to rectify the malfunctioning of a specific mechanism
through either injurious physical or toxic chemical means. I
wouldn’t have been viewed as a human being or assisted to heal.(8)
I especially was fortunate to have escaped
hospitalization because I surely would have been administered
neuroleptic medication. Neuroleptics are also referred to as major
tranquilizers and antipsychotics. They subdue the major nerve
pathways into the frontal lobes and limbic system. Breggin states,
"The frontal lobes are the seat of higher human functions, such as
love, concern for others, empathy, self-insight, creativity,
initiative, autonomy, rationality, abstract reasoning, judgment,
future planning, foresight, willpower, determination, and
concentration.”(9)
Patients in the traditional psychiatric system
often are given neuroleptics for several months or even longer.
They have a good chance of developing tardive dyskinesia, tardive
dementia, and other permanent neurological disabilities.(10)
Virtually any organ of the body can be damaged by these drugs.
They would probably be illegal if they were not being administered
to mental patients. I would have suffered psychological harm as
well, getting the message that I was a pathetic, defenseless,
flawed person.(11)
Psychiatry’s administration of dangerous
medication to so-called mental patients keeps disturbed or
disturbing people out of society’s view. This is especially
arrogant since psychiatry isn’t pure science or medicine. It is ”a
mishmash of philosophy, psychology, religion, law enforcement, and
politics as well as social engineering and big business, and
occasionally science and medicine."(12)
Since its beginning in the seventeenth century,
psychiatry’s function has been to control socially deviant
behavior. People are labelled when they are overwhelmed by their
emotional and spiritual problems, when they are too irritating to
conventional society, or when they get into trouble with the
law.(13) I certainly was irritating because of my sensory-motor
dysfunction, slow speech, and flattened affect. My thought
processes were hypermagnified; actually, the signs of so-called
schizophrenia are exaggerations of mental traits which "normal”
people also have. Psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan points out
that schizophrenic thinking contains nothing that normal people’s
thinking does not contain to some degree.(14) Labelling me either
a full-fledged or borderline schizophrenic did not benefit me.
Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz declares that the diagnosis of a person
as schizophrenic is a ’’pseudoscientific ritual” whose purpose is
to stigmatize the individual so that he is now regarded as less
than human.(15) Then, his fundamental human rights can be ignored.
Laing notes numerous studies which have shown
that the person who is diagnosed as shizophrenic has been part of
a group of people who communicate in extremely disturbed and
disturbing ways. He asserts ’’that without exception the
experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a
special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an
unlivable situation.”(16) I had remained silent throughout
my childhood and adolescence in order to survive. However, I had
narrowed my experience down far too much; I was mostly just
manipulating abstractions on paper in a tense way. Eventually, I
developed a severe stress illness because of this dysfunctional
lifestyle.
Becker notes that ’’schizophrenia can be
accurately diagnosed on the basis of a long and continuing history
of shallow object-relationships.”(17) I was clearly what
psychiatry labels a schizoid personality long before the
catastrophic malfunction of my neuromuscular system. So, viewed
from a holistic perspective, schizophrenia "is not an illness but
rather a way of life.”(18)
Human beings can be separated inexactly into
those who basically live in the outer world of people and those
who mainly live in the inner world of the imagination. Everybody,
however, lives in both worlds to diverse degrees. I was labelled
schizoid or schizophrenic because I lived to a lopsided extent on
the inner side. I unconsciously built up an extra thick character
armor, developing what may be termed a "mistaken" or massive
shutupness.(19)
I didn’t consider myself a schizophrenic or
"mental case," although I knew that my body and thought processes
weren’t working properly. I wanted to do as many healthy
activities as I could, while avoiding hospitalization. I was
impressed with Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
which I read in 1970. It is a highly entertaining satire on toxic
psychiatry.
In the novel, the patients in an institution
are tightly regimented and lack stimulating activities. Already
stymied by guilt, shame, and fear, they are punished by being
drugged and shocked. Many are in the asylum, according to Miss
Ratched, the Big Nurse, because they can’t conform to society’s
regulations. At group meetings, the patients are supposed to
confess to each other bad things they’ve done and criticize each
other. Ultimately, society determines whether or not a person is
sane; therefore, it insists that the individual comply with its
standards.
Randall McMurphy, a drunken wanderer, has been
admitted recently. This vagrant disturbs the hospital routine and
is insubordinate to the authority figures. He especially battles
the Big Nurse’s bullying and lecturing; furthermore, he convinces
other patients to follow him. McMurphy is dangerous to the staff’s
control because he is instrumental in reviving the residents'
spirits, bringing them out of the mental fog they are in, due to
the treatment and their own low self-esteem. The rebel insists
that the patients aren’t ’’any crazier than the average asshole on
the street...."(20) He points out that nobody is a perfectly
integrated human being but that everybody is criticizing other
people.
Each patient is molded into ”a functioning,
adjusted component” of a very large and powerful organization
called the Combine. The Combine is equivalent to the Establishment
or what social critic Lewis Mumford
called the megamachine. The hospital operates as a factory
for this organization. The staff look after the Combine’s
interests; they try to correct ’’mistakes made in the neighborhood
and in the schools and in the churches....”(21)
McMurphy attacks the Big Nurse and is
lobotomized. He is brought back to the ward as a vegetable in a
wheelchair. Another patient smothers him to put him out of his
misery.
Soon after I escaped commitment and a chemical
lobotomy, I went to see Dr. Kozol. He told my mother that it would
be expensive to treat me in a first-class pychiatric hospital. Dr.
Kozol knew that the drugs and other treatment that I would receive
in even a prestigious psychiatric hospital wouldn’t benefit me in
the long run. This dynamic psychiatrist was enthusiastic about
Harvard University and about traditional education in general. He
encouraged me to attend the Harvard Summer School and to continue
seeing him at his office on Beacon Street in Boston.
I did attend Harvard that summer. My parents
had wnated me to go there as an undergraduate; now, I was in
Cambridge as a student! I took an English course on the Victorian
novel and a political science course on the Middle East. Studying
five hours a day, I received As in both courses. I also jogged
five miles daily. I continued to use my body in an inefficient
way, expending large amounts of energy in studying and exercising.
Remote from people, I barely said a word to my roommate. I didn’t
take advantage of any of the entertainment in Harvard Square
during the two months I was there. On several Friday afternoons, I
drove back to Fall River and stayed until Sunday afternoon. I felt
that I was too busy reading, jogging, and sleeping ten hours a day
to bother taking the subway to see Dr. Kozol. I saw him once after
classes ended. He said, "You do well once you are in school."
After classes ended, I returned to live at home in Fall River.
I soon took the train to Bridgeport,
Connecticut to visit my father. I had made this trip two or three
times a year since he had moved there in 1968. James was living in
a small apartment and had a close relationship with Irene
Dubitsky. He had dated her briefly before coming to Fall River and
meeting Florence. A spinster, she lived at home with her bachelor
brother Stanley, a prominent lawyer, and her mother.
Irene would have married James if his health
had been better. He had suffered a serious heart attack while
living in Bridgeport and had spent many weeks in the nearby
Veterans Hospital. Irene had spent long hours with him each day in
the hospital; she played a significant part in his surviving the
ordeal. My father had stopped drinking after the attack. His 5’8”
frame now carried 140 rather than the 225 pounds it had during my
adolescence.
Spending long hours on the road, James was
working as a salesman on commission for an airlines training
school. He tried to sign up young women to attend the school.
After the attack, he worked part-time in a liquor store owned by
the Dubitskys; but, he never had a drink himself. Then, he resumed
his selling career.
Upon seeing me, James occasionally would ask
what was wrong with me. I couldn’t tell him. He still wanted me to
go to law school; he said that Stanley would help me get into the
University of Connecticut.
My father drove to Fall River occasionally to
see Alan. The divorce proceedings had been acrimonious. Ignoring
the fact that he had a serious heart problem, Florence continued
to show the utmost hostility toward James. She often belittled him
to Alan.
After my second close escape from mental
hospitalization, I continued to see the social worker Ronald
Simpson in Dr. Liberman’s office. I complained steadily about my
jogging difficulties. My desire for exercise was insatiable;
during the summer, I also played tennis at the private club in
Fall River. I could move normally playing tennis but not jogging.
Remembering the beautiful tennis center I had
seen in Fort Lauderdale, I discussed the possibility of going
there to live for awhile. Simpson thought it was a good idea
because he knew that my mother might soon try again to have me
committed somewhere if I stayed around the area. Dr. Liberman told
my mother that I wanted to go to Fort Lauderdale to play tennis.
He said that, since money wasn’t a problem, he saw no reason that
I shouldn’t go.
In late September 1972, I drove to Lorton,
Virginia and put my car on the Auto Train. Within two days after
arriving in Fort Lauderdale, I was living in a small room in an
apartment building about a mile from Holiday Park. On October 5, I
put on my tennis clothes, picked up my racket, and drove to the
park. For the next month, I spent a great deal of time around the
sign-up window trying to find partners. Gradually, players began
to notice that I could play at a Class A level in spite of the
fact that my eye-hand coordination was impaired. I couldn’t volley
the ball at the net because of this handicap.
The tennis boom was starting across America,
and Fort Lauderdale was one of the top tennis cities in the
country. Chris Evert was just starting her brilliant professional
career. Her father Jimmy was the teaching professional at the
park. I usually had to wait a half hour to forty-five minutes for
a court. The wait often reached an hour and a half to two hours
from around December twentieth to the end of March. When it was
that long, I often returned to my room. Singles players were only
allowed forty-five minutes of court time. I usually played three
courts of singles a day; I also jogged three or four miles. There
were only a few days when I couldn’t play at all because of the
weather. I was able to socialize with some of the players in a
rudimentary way. We mostly talked about matters relating to
tennis. I was having alot more fun than I would have had in a
mental institution; I was also much healthier.
I hardly did any reading from October, 1972
through March, 1973. Then, I started reading approximately one
hundred pages a day and continued at this pace for the next ten
years. I didn’t miss more than five days a year.
Most of my learning involved American society
and literature. History was my favorite subject. I had studied
American history in elementary school, the eighth grade, and the
twelfth grade. I had simply memorized the names, dates,
legislation, conflicts, and movements without trying in the least
to interpret what I read. When I read Frances Fitzgerald’s America
Revised in 1979, I had long since realized the validity of
her thesis. She showed how most high school history texts don’t
give an accurate portrayal of American life. In school, I had read
an ambiguous, watered-down version whose purpose is to manipulate
young students and sell as many copies as possible.
The textbooks I studied were "consensus
documents." They didn’t deal with any controversial subjects; they
catered to the "lowest common denominator" of our citizens’
biases.(1) They were meant to promote nationalistic sentiments.
The viewpoints of the ruling groups were advanced and those of
other groups were muffled.
The textbooks portrayed America as "perfect:
the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy,
freedom, and technological progress."(2) I learned that Americans
were generous, abundantly supplied with common sense, pragmatic,
democratic, good citizens, and homogeneous in a general way.
Unpleasant situations in American history, such as slavery and
labor unrest, didn’t alter the basic picture.
Political decisions and elections, economic
legislation and trends, and various governmental projects were
highlighted. Free enterprise was lauded but the word capitalism
was never mentioned. I didn’t learn about how the American economy
actually operated or about its alteration from one era to the
next. I didn’t realize that there were any economic, political, or
legal inequalities whatsoever. There was no indication that the
wealthiest and strongest groups exercise an exaggerated authority
in governmental affairs.
The textbooks portrayed the Soviet Union, a
powerful totalitarian country, as obstructing economic
improvements which would bring affluence to many areas of the
world. In fact, it was attempting aggressively to subvert our
free-enterprise economy. On the other hand, the United States had
labored mightily to distribute aid "to poor, ignorant and diseased
countries."(3) It always conducted itself in an altruistic manner.
However, its virtuous mission was difficult because it was
besieged by potential hidden adversaries. By the time I reached
high school, the major threat had shifted to the Chinese
Communists.
I graduated from country day school in 1964.
Due to the political upheavals of the 1960s such as the civil
rights movement and student rebellion, elementary and secondary
school history textbooks underwent the most significant changes in
American history beginning in 1965. United States society suddenly
was beset by enormous problems, although their causes weren't
explained. Despite covering a vast range of subjects, the
textbooks continued to make absolutely no connection between
events. They gave the impression that these problems weren’t
caused by anyone but just spontaneously arose. Therefore, ...
"history is just one damn thing after another. It is in fact not
history at all."(4)
In the spring of 1973, I started to read
serious academic history books. By the end of the decade, I had
read a few hundred books on American domestic history from 1890
through the Watergate scandal of 1973-74. I devoured books on
political, intellectual, black, labor, cultural and literary
history. I went through biographies of reformist and radical
politicians. I read books concentrating on a particular decade or
a particular movement. I covered a great deal less material on
foreign policy. Many of the books were from a radical perspective.
I was fascinated by the ongoing struggle
between the big capitalists and their radical adversaries. I
feasted on rhetoric such as Eugene Debs’s statement:
"The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am
for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with
the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis
of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society—we are on
the eve of a universal change."(5)
Another speech which was typical of the type of
material that affected me deeply was Bill Haywood’s declaration at
the opening convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, a
radical union. He stated:
"Fellow Workers... This is the Continental
Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the
workers of this country into a working-class movement that shall
have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from
the slave bondage of capitalism. ... The aims and objects of this
organization shall be to put the working-class in possession of
the economic power, the means of life, in control of the machinery
of production and distribution, without regard to the capitalist
masters."(6)
I’m hardly the only person to discover as an
adult that the history I studied in school was highly selective
and contained many lies. The extraordinary aspect of this
situation is that I was learning this material while my muscles
were contracted and my emotions were in the utmost turmoil.
Identifying with the working class, I was unable to work. I won’t
elaborate upon the lessons I learned about American history. I
refer the interested reader to Howard Zinn’s A People’s
History of the United States as a good starting point for
further inquiry into this subject.
I also read well over one hundred books of
sociology. I learned about the class structure in America. I
especially remember reading World of Pain: Life in the Working
Class Family and The Hidden Injuries of Class.
Growing up in a middle class neighborhood, I had attended school
with middle and upper middle class children. I had blocked my
family's turmoil from my mind. Otherwise, I had led a life
sheltered from the unpleasant realities of American society.
I read about thirty books on the mass media. I
learned that it portrays a narrow picture of American life which
is favorable to the upper middle and wealthy classes. The mass
media especially favor the largest corporations which dominate
American economic life.
My reading also included the areas of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency,
the military-industrial complex, and the big foundations. It
covered the Wall Street and Washington law firms as well as the
New York Stock Exchange. Furthermore, I was fascinated and
horrified in studying about how the multinational corporations
were attempting to dominate the entire world.
I repeatedly came across comments about how
mentally unhealthy American society is. Fromm notes that man has
made great technological progress in reaching the Space Age;
however, he has made virtually no progress emotionally since
ancient times. Gordon Rattray Taylor in Rethink asserts
that a society in which one-third of the people are emotionally
impaired is a psychological slum. Kirkpatrick Sale in Human
Scale reveals that people who have mental problems have
steadily grown in mumber during the last twenty years. In 1976,
approximately thirty-two million people obtained some treatment
for mental problems. Mental facilities treat six million patients
each year. An estimated forty million citizens have "diagnosable
disturbances" and require professional care; an additional
fifty-five million endure serious emotional distress.(7) According
to Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins, between 1975 and 1990, "the
number of psychiatrists increased from 26 to 36 thousand, clinical
psychologists from 25 to 80 thousand, and marriage and family
counselors from 6 to 40 thousand.”(8) Although many of these
diagnoses must be taken with a grain of salt, it is undoubtedly
true that there is a tremendous amount of pain in American
society.
Central-nervous -system agents were the fastest
growing part of the pharmaceutical market in the mid-1970s,
accounting for 31 percent of total sales. From 1962 until the
mid-1970s, dependence on prescribed tranquilizers rose by 290
percent. During this period, the per capita consumption of alcohol
rose by 23 percent and the consumption of illegal opiates by about
50 percent.(9) However, reliance on tranquilizers and sleeping
pills did drop dramatically in the 1980s as their dangers became
better known. Much of the responsibility for this dependence on
psychotropic drugs lies with the psycho-pharmaceutical complex.
Nevertheless, these statistics reveal something important about
the level of pain in America.
I read about life in corporate America. The
Managers by sociologist Dianne Margolis especially impressed
me. She conducted eighty-one in-depth interviews with the managers
and their spouses from a "Fortune 100 corporation” she calls
Global Products, Inc.(10) The men’s jobs were at levels from the
lowest to the highest managerial positions: most were in
"middle-management.”
These managers’ principal personality trait was
their courteous lack of intensity. They had no strong values; they
responded to almost every social issue by calling controversy
’’ridiculous.” Their beliefs, descriptions of their own
experiences and their emotions were not connected. Their speech
was emotionless and monotone; it was passionless and had little
variety in content.(11)
Since the time of Descartes, thought has become
more and more separated from affect. Thought is valued because it
involves reasoning while affect is considered irrational. Fromm
asserts, "The person I has been split off into an intellect, which
constitutes my self, and which is to control me as it is to
control nature."(12) My split was simply more pronounced than that
of these highly functioning and richly rewarded members of our
society.
Because of his schizoid inability to
demonstrate his feelings, Western man is "anxious, depressed, and
desperate." He talks about the goals of "happiness, individualism,
initiative;" he declares that he is living for his family or to
have fun, or to make money. Actually, however, he is without
goals. Most people in our society are merely going through the
motions of living in order to avoid isolation.(13)
The schizoid managers in Margolis’s study were
following "the Protestant Ethic." The Protestant tradition upheld
the belief that men are called to their vocation by God. The
Protestant Ethic is a distortion of that tradition; it holds that
material possessions are an indication of God’s approval. Since
one’s worthiness is judged by possessions, a person can never have
enough of them. The corporation becomes these people’s God and
utterly controls them.
Most of the managers worked sixty to seventy
hours a week from Monday through Friday; they were engaged in an
obsessive pursuit of status, money, and success. They "are the
one-dimensional men totally immersed in the fictional games being
played in their society."(14) Morally numb, the managers denied
dangers that the corporation caused outsiders. These included:
violation of antitrust statutes, price fixing, environmental
pollution, unsafe work places, production of dangerous products,
and the manufacture of consumer demands rather than the fulfilling
of consumer needs.(15)
Yet, the managers perceived their corporation
as the one rational order in a world of irrational forces; they
always viewed government regulations and court decisions against
Global Products as irrational. These executives deluded themselves
that Global Products operated in a perfect free enterprise system.
However, the company was part of an oligopolistic setup in its
industry. When discussing corporate issues, the managers parrotted
the corporate line.
I also learned about the psychotic process of
preparing for nuclear war. I read in Real Security by
Richard Barnet that the United States had increased its stock of
deployable nuclear warheads from 3,950 to 9,200, and the Soviet
Union had increased its warheads from 1,650 to 7,000. Sidney Lens
in The Day Before Doomsday reveals that United States
officials had secretly thought about starting a limited nuclear
war on several occasions. Robert J. Lifton and Richard Falk in
Indefensible Weapons expose the delusive beliefs of the
national security managers that fuelled the arms race.(16)
I also enjoyed reading about one hundred
novels. I concentrated on classic American authors between 1890
and 1940. I especially enjoyed the naturalistic school which
comprised Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Frank
Norris, and Theodore Dreiser.
My favorite novelist is Theodore Dreiser. My
favorite novel is his mammoth An American Tragedy, which
I’ve read six times. Dreiser focuses on the materialism, the
acquisitive spirit, and the wide discrepancies of wealth and
poverty in industrial America. Specifically, he chronicles ’’the
gospel of wealth of the gilded age” and its emphasis on "success
and the Darwinian survival of the fittest.”(17) His novels present
a world of contrasts: wealth and poverty, slums and beautiful
neighborhoods, expensively clothed socialites and ragged lower
class workers and beggars. He writes about the desperate search
for decent employment among the lower classes and about alienated
labor in capitalist society. Dreiser shows more clearly and at
greater length than any other American writer the social and
economic class differences of American society.
He emphasizes the deterministic view of man as
a mere mechanism. Yet, there is far more to his philosophy than
this idea. Charles Child Walcutt points out that his works
continually raise ethical questions about "tradition, dogma,
received morality, and social ’justice”’; they demonstrate great
sympathy for and insight into men.(18) His novels combine
desperation and utopianism, astonishment and terror, sympathy and
guilt, biochemical determinism and intuition. Through my enormous
reading about American society, I gradually became, in effect, a
purely cerebral Dreiser.
I read about forty plays. I especially admire
those of Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. My
favorite playwright is Dr. Kozol’s patient O’Neill, and my
favorite play is his Long Day’s Journey into Night. I
found the story of O’Neill’s own dysfunctional family fascinating.
I was able to provide myself with a broad
education in the humanities and social sciences simply by browsing
through bookstores and picking out interesting books to read. I
also got suggestions from my reading and the books’ bibliographies
as well as from reviews in newspapers and magazines. I wasn’t
affiliated with any university nor with any other group. I didn’t
discuss my reading with anyone except Dr. Kozol, and I couldn’t
write because of my neuromuscular problem. This is why my reading
can be labelled schizoid intellectual activity. I was functioning
like an isolated Students for a Democratic Society
superintellectual graduate student. In 1975, Dr. Kozol called me
’’the hermit scholar.”
Moshe Feldenkrais, inventor of the Feldenkrais
movement reeducation technique, points out that, "thought that is
not connected to feeling at all is not connected to reality."(19)
So, in this sense, I had lost contact with reality.
Intellectualizing often is used to escape from feelings of shame.
Bradshaw states, "Generalizing and universalizing keep one in
categories so broad and abstract that there’s no contact with
concrete specific sensory-based reality."(20) I had carried to an
extreme the behavior of the pathologically normal educated person
in our society. People trapped by the megamachine are driven at an
increasing speed by the techniques of modern industrial society.
An individual "thinks, figures, busy with abstractions, more and
more remote from concrete life."(21)
Jonathan Kozol scorns purely academic reactions
to social injustices. He asserts that a person who functions
solely at his desk or hall avoids all danger; this person has a
"tortured mind and soul."(22) I had a tortured mind and
introverted soul because neuromuscular disorder. The only action I
could take was to in a lecture introverted of my get up from my
desk and go jogging or play tennis! Of course, this routine of
exercising and reading was the best adaptation my brain could make
to the severely contracted state of my musculature. I could have
spent my time brooding or compulsively watching television.
Fritjof Capra notes:
"As the environment changes, the brain models
itself in response to these changes, and any time it is injured
the system makes very rapid adjustments. You can never wear it
out; on the contrary, the more you use it, the more powerful it
becomes."(23)
As I’ve made clear, you may not be able to wear
it out but you can exhaust it through excessive strain.
Fortunately, my early indoctrination had been
totally eliminated. Describing a society which emphasizes money
and possessions, Fromm declares:
"Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs
are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions,
prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the
reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and
true."(24)
In effect, I had escaped from a 1984
type of environment consisting of my mother’s critical attitude,
traditional schooling, and potential incarceration in a mental
institution.
Orwell1s novel takes place in
London, which is ruled by the Party of Ingsoc, meaning English
Socialism. The society is a totalitarian dictatorship modelled on
the Nazis and Bolsheviks. The Party is headed by Big Brother,
whose face is everywhere.
Thought control is a prominent feature of
Oceania. All information is supplied by a Ministry of Truth.
Books, periodicals, news reports, and other means of obtaining
information have been altered to conform to the Party line. In
addition, the historical records have been distorted or ruined.
The Party insists that only those who believe its orthodoxy are
sane. A person must accept it even if it declares that 2+2 = 5.
The three slogans of the Party are:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH(25)
The person accomplishes this feat by utilizing
a kind of self-hypnosis. Actually, this society is one of
’’controlled insanity.”(26) The educated elite are the craziest.
The official language is called newspeak. Its
purpose is to constrict the range of ideas. Entertaining an
aberrant belief is called thought crime. Therefore, people must
practice the habit of mind called crimestop in Newspeak.
It means instinctively halting any unsound thought before it
reaches consciousness. Crimestop ’’includes the power of not
grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of
misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to
Ingsoc....”(27) The Party members must also utilize Doublethink.
It is:
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of
complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to
hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them
to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic
against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to
believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the
guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to
forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when
it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above
all, to apply the same process to the process itself."(28)
The Thought Police constantly monitor Party
members. They keep them under surveillance by using a two-way
screen called a Telescreen, a satire on television. A Party member
can never know when he is being watched.
Unquestionably, the United States’ megamachine
in its capitalist, industrial form indoctrinates far more subtly
than the Party of Ingsoc. It also delivers a great many more
consumer goods than does Orwell's party. Parents, schools, and the
mass media promote a way of life which emphasizes consumption. A
clever system keeps people working and competing with each other
on a treadmill of success and achievement. This alliance of
bureaucratic Big Business and Big Government produces what
political scientist Bertram Gross calls "friendly fascism."(29)
State corporate capitalism sanctions welfare
for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. The free market is
dominated by oligarchical arrangements. Freedom is defended by
making alliances with third world dictatorships. Politicans who
shout the loudest about defending family values promote policies
that destroy families. Correctional facilities produce more crime.
People upset about heinous crimes sanction state murder through
the death penalty. Many pro-life advocates favor excessively
militaristic policies and legislation which impedes the healthy
development of infants. Attempts are made to bring peace by
stockpiling weapons. The Environmental Protection Agency accedes
to arrangements to exploit nature through allegedly wise use of
resources. The Department of Justice does not prosecute most
corporate crimes.
I left off my narrative in the spring of 1973,
when I had just begun this intellectual odyssey. At this time, I
flew to Bridgeport after Irene informed me that James was near
death. He died a few days after I arrived; he was fifty-three. In
our last conversation, my father told me that, while Irene had
been good to him, he didn’t love her. He loved and always would
love Florence. His fantasy bond with her remained totally intact.
On the other hand, Florence always has
maintained that she never loved anyone but Howard Goldstein. Many
years later, my mother told me that James had called her about a
month before her death. She said that he apologized for stealing
the money and for other things he had done to her during their
marriage. I’m sure that my father, having been raised in a
dysfunctional family, was at least partly responsible for their
many misunderstandings.
After the funeral, I said goodbye to Irene and
returned to Florida. She died within two years. A chain smoker,
she succumbed to a brain tumor.
In the spring of 1974, I left Fort Lauderdale
and returned north. I soon rented an apartment in Providence. In
the fall, I saw Dr. Kozol in his Boston office. He wanted me to be
able to earn a living and suggested that I apply to law school. I
took the Law School Admissions test and scored a respectable six
hundred. A few years later, I retook the test and scored a
mediocre five hundred. I hadn’t taken a course on how to prepare
for the examination. Neither had I ever taken a course related to
law or seriously studied anything about it independently. In my
current emotional and physical state, I wasn’t particularly
well-suited to analyzing cases and making fine distinctions
between them. However, as previously noted, I had developed a
strong interest in twentieth-century American history.
Furthermore, I had found that, despite my impairments, I possessed
an excellent ability to comprehend and analyze this historical era
and the overall workings of American society.
In 1975, I asked to meet Jonathan Kozol. Dr.
Kozol replied that his son was too busy. He also said that he
didn’t agree with the thesis of The Night is Dark and I am Far
from Home, but he always encouraged Jonathan to pursue whatever
path in life he felt was right. Later that year, my mother and I
went to hear the younger Kozol speak at Brown University. He
autographed a copy of his book for my mother. He also wrote,
"Yours in struggle, Jonathan Kozol."
I could barely run anymore when I returned
north. I found a slim book by a cardiologist from New Jersey, Dr.
George Sheehan, on athletic injuries. Sheehan was soon to become
nationally known as a writer on running and running injuries. I
called him and described the increasing difficulty I was
experiencing running. He gave me< the. namei of a podiatrist in
Connecticut, Dr. William Cornell. I went to see Dr. Cornell, who
had an orthotic made for me. It didn’t help.
I started taking yoga because I had read that
stretching helped runners. During the week of my first lesson, I
also started taking swimming lessons. The instructor owned a
diving supply company and had a small pool in the back of the
store. During the first lesson, he had me try a frog kick with a
crawl armstroke. I snapped my legs too hard and strained a muscle.
It was only a small tear at first and didn’t interfere with my
movement. I was so out of touch with my bodily sensations and so
determined to continue my lessons that I continued exercising. I
completed eight weekly swimming and yoga lessons with a torn
adductor muscle! Finally, the pain and swelling was so great that
I had to stop. The muscle was now spastic. However, the yoga
stretches had helped to reduce the tension in my contracted
muscles, although the tonus remained much too high.
After resting the injured muscle for a few
months, I began swimming again. I took more swimming lessons with
an instructor at a private secondary school and in a class at a
nearby university’s pool. I became an adequate swimmer;
eventually, I could swim a mile at a relatively slow pace. After
every exercise session, I had to put ice on the muscle.
Furthermore, I had to give up jogging because my gait was now too
lopsided and painful. I did, however, continue playing tennis
during the New England summers.
Dr. Kozol had helped to get me admitted to
Suffolk University Law School in Boston. I arranged to live with
Ira Lipson in an apartment in Brookline. Lipson, who was about
five years younger than me, had lived on the same block in Fall
River as my family. I looked at the apartment and was ready to
take up residence. Then I realized the obvious: I couldn’t
possibly go to law school! I had to struggle to survive everyday
because my muscles were permanently contracted. Two days before
classes were supposed to begin, I called the school and told an
administrator that I wasn’t coming.
Suppose I had proceeded smoothly through Brown
and gone to law school? I most likely would have specialized in
some aspect of corporate law. The independent Gerry Spence, in With
Justice for None, reveals that the average citizen has never
received justice in the United States. This is because, for a long
time, the corporation has been the king who rules this country.
The contemporary king is "an amorphous agglomeration of
corporations, of banks and insurance companies and mammoth
multinational financial institutions...."(1) Business owns
America’s soul, and its heart longs only for profit. The majority
of the American people have become corporate-like also, obsessed
with money and material possessions.
The United States is bursting with lawyers. It
has ”2.67 lawyers per thousand people while Japan needs only
0.10." In fact, the United States with a mere 6 percent of the
world’s population, has two thirds of the world’s lawyers. 355,000
lawyers were practicing in 1970. There was a 91 percent increase
in lawyers admitted to practice between 1970 and 1975. By the late
eighties, 40,000 new lawyers a year were being graduated by our
universities.(2)
There are, however, far too few lawyers who are
on the people’s side and will battle for them. Lawyers and the
justice they dispense have become commodities.(3) Most lawyers are
preoccupied with attaining money and success rather than with
obtaining justice. They sell themselves to prestigious law firms
that work for powerful corporations. The people need alot more
lawyers with the skill and persistence of Ralph Nader.
Spence asserts that "law school is no place for
human beings who care about other human beings.” Too many students
graduate from law school who are merely "intellectual
mechanics.”(4) They are similar to their professors in that they
are obsessed with the abstractions of the law and care little
about law that actually can help people. In fact, after three
years in an orthodox law school, most students have had little
experience with a client; some haven’t had any experience. Most
law students suffer long-lasting emotional damage from their law
school experience.
The Law School Admission Test and, in most
cases, the general admissions process, doesn’t measure: ’’common
sense, judgment, practicality, idealism, tenacity, fidelity,
character and maturity, integrity, patience, preparation, the
ability to listen, perseverance, client-handling, creativity,
courage, personality, oral skills, organizational ability and
leadership.”(5) If Charles Manson obtained a high score on the Law
School Admission Test and Mother Teresa achieved a low score, the
computer would give the nod to Manson for admission to law school
and eliminate Mother Teresa. In fact, Ralph Nader and Allen Nairn
closely studied the test and found that the questions have no
relevance to issues of social justice.Moreover, the test is not an
accurate predictor of law school grades or of graduation from law
school. It is only a moderately better predictor when supplemented
by undergraduate grades. The legal journal Law and the Social
Order featured a study which concluded: "There is no empirical
evidence of a significant correlation between LSAT scores and
probable ’success’ in the practice of law.”(7)
While speaking at law schools, Spence asks
students why they are there. A few confess that they are studying
to become lawyers because their fathers are attorneys. Over 20
percent are there because they aren’t sure what career they would
like to pursue and are giving law a try. Some are there because
law is a lucrative profession and success in America is measured
by the amount of money a person makes.
Some individuals do go to law school with the
intention of facilitating social change. They quickly change their
minds after being exposed to the professors, the method, and the
subjects of law schools. The schools use the case method in which
past cases are read and examined. From these cases, specific
axioms are selected and thinking abilities are presumably
sharpened. Yet, this method has been censured persistently as
worthless. Law students view it as "frustrating, humiliating, and
absolutely stultifyingly boring.”(8) The students are being
brainwashed into thinking like lawyers. They will be ridiculed and
chastized until their thought processes begin to match those of
their professors. They will learn to be complaisant and
submissive, not to question what they are being taught.
The professors must teach a curriculum that
allows their students to pass the Multistate Bar Examination, a
homogeneous multiple-choice test. Law professors seldom concur
about which are the right answers to the examination’s questions.
Leslie Whitmer, executive director of the Kentucky Bar contends
that the examination does not properly test a student’s legal
learning.(9) Almost every student who takes the test agrees. The
multiple-choice answers are so similar that a large number can be
answered in more than one way. Most lawyers concur that the
purposes of the bar examination is not to measure legal abilities
but to limit entrance into the profession.(10)
Spence sketches the way that a reformed law
school should operate. Students will primarily acquire knowledge
by doing. After two years of school, the students may have
taken part in as many as twenty actual cases of various types.
They also may have defended some poor people accused of
illegalities. For the most part, the students will learn the law
by themselves so they will have the knowledge needed to pursue
their cases. The main object of their learning will not be to pass
the Multistate Bar Examination. In fact, this examination should
no longer be used.
Finally, these new students will learn that the
law is not difficult to understand. The prized fantasy of legal
scholars—that the law consists of complex, bewildering, difficult
statutes that only a select group of erudite individuals can
grasp—will be shattered. Spence declares that he could teach most
legal rules to most eighth graders quite quickly.(11)
After not attending law school, I lived in
Providence until the fall of 1977, reading, swimming, playing
tennis and attending movies and plays. I attended about twenty
movies a year during the 1970s. Probably only one out of every ten
movies I saw had any artistic merit. In my opinion, it’s a rare
movie that does justice to the book on which it is based. But, in
going to a movie, at least I left my apartment and travelled to a
specific location. I paid my admission fee and participated two or
three hours in a public experience. Media and social critic Joyce
Nelson declares, "Of course, as a ritual moviegoing is not as
fully communal as live performance, or even live participation as
subject, not spectator.(12) However, for me, it was
better than sitting alone watching television.
While living in Fall River and Providence in
the 1970s and 1980s, I also attended numerous plays. Some I didn’t
enjoy. These included experimental dramas, eminently forgettable
light comedies, and heavier fare whose plots didn’t interest me.
Many, however, were memorable, high quality plays. These included:
The Price, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible by
Arthur Miller, The Glass Managerie and Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, and The Iceman Cometh
and Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill. It wasn’t
until recently that I saw Long Day's Journey into Night
performed.
In the spring of 1977, I had started spraining
my ankle when I moved too quickly in a lateral direction on the
tennis courts. I flew to New York to see Dr. Paul Montgomery, a
nationally known podiatrist. He put me in a special type of
orthotic which I wore in my regular as well as my athletic shoes.
He also put some kind of strip on the outside of my tennis
sneakers which prevented my ankle from turning. Although still
experiencing a great deal of difficulty, I was also able to jog a
mile or two in my new orthotics.
In September, 1977, I returned to Fort
Lauderdale and rented an apartment in Oakland Park, about a twelve
minute drive from the Holiday Park tennis courts. I mostly
concentrated on tennis during this stay in Fort Lauderdale. I only
missed playing about five days during the next year.
The city championship was held in late August.
I played everyday during the two months before the tournament,
often at noon in ninety-degree temperatures with high humidity. As
the second seed in the Class A division, I easily reached the
semi-finals. I won the first set of the semi-finals 6-4 and took a
commanding 5-1 lead in the second. I then proceeded to lose the
next five games; however, I managed to win the next game, forcing
a tiebreaker. The tiebreaker was the best of nine points. With a
4-2 lead, I served only my second double fault of the match. My
next serve was out, and my second serve was quite shallow. My
opponent stepped in and tried to put it away to even the
tiebreaker. When his shot landed just wide, I entered the finals.
The next day, I defeated the top seed 7-6, 7-6.
A schizophrenic who hadn’t played a tournament in over a decade
had won the Class A division in one of the toughest cities for
competitive tennis in the country! I received the trophy from
Jimmy Evert. About three weeks later, I returned to Fall River and
rented an apartment.
I had read about the humanistic psychology
movement' in Fort Lauderdale. I went for an appointment with a
psychologist in Newton, a suburb of Boston. He listened to me
recount my troubles of the last thirteen years, including my many
athletic injuries. He finally told me that he couldn’t help me and
referred me to another psychologist who was affiliated with McLean
Psychiatric Hospital. This psychologist said, "You look like
you’re holding something in." He did an exercise with me in which
he asked me to tell him what I was feeling. I sensed that this
course of action wouldn’t solve my problem and did not return for
another session.
I had also heard about the incipient holistic
health movement. Referring to a list of holistic health
organizations that I had found in a magazine, I called Interface
in Newton. Interface is an educational organization which features
lectures and classes relating to holistic health. I briefly
described the problem with my spastic adductor muscle to someone
who had answered the phone. She suggested that I contact Dr.
Samuel Hines, a psychiatrist affiliated with Interface. I called
his office and made an appointment in a couple of weeks.
Dr. Hines had a small, unpretentious office in
a shabby old building in Newton. He listened while I told him
about my adductor muscle, my jogging difficulties, and my
neuromuscular disaster in 1965. I asked him whether it would be
helpful to use acupressure on the adductor muscle.
He replied, “Do you want to treat the symptoms
or eliminate the problem?" Dr. Hines suggested a body work
technique formally called Functional Integration and informally
called Feldenkrais, after its founder Moshe Feldenkrais. Dr. Hines
thought it could solve all my muscular problems. Thinking that
this claim was unbelievable, I almost walked out of his office
right then. I read a brief article that he gave me about the
treatment, but I really didn’t understand how the technique was
supposed to work. Deciding to give it a try, I made an appointment
to see a practitioner named Josef Dellagrotte in a couple of
weeks.
I had also made an appointment to start
receiving physical therapy for the adductor muscle at
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, one of the most
prestigious hospitals in the world. During my initial appointment,
the therapist said that she would use a machine to electrically
stimulate the muscle. She told me to make another appointment for
next week. Before leaving, I mentioned that I was going to try the
Feldenkrais method. The therapist asked, ’’Isn’t that available
only in California?” It was true that in 1978 the practitioners
were heavily concentrated in California. The first American
training program, taught by Feldenkrais himself, had taken place
in San Francisco between 1975 and 1977.
Moshe Feldenkrais was an Israeli with a Ph.D.
in physics. He was an outstanding soccer player and had a black
belt in judo. He had damaged his knees and had been told that he
might become crippled. From this time, Feldenkrais researched the
movements of the human body for twenty-five years; he studied tai
chi, yoga, applied kinesiology, babies moving in their cribs, and
animals. He discovered that very slow movements were picked up by
the brain, which then transformed the way people moved.
Feldenkrais developed over one thousand movement sequences.
I went for my appointment with Dellagrotte. He
worked in a small room with a body work table across the hall from
Dr. Hines’s office. Dellagrotte had been a Fulbright scholar and
humanities professor before graduating from the first training
program. I described my muscular problems to him. He had me lie
down on the table; then, he started feeling various muscles.
Dellagrotte started moving parts of my body in a slow, gentle way.
At the end of the fifty-minute session, I felt no difference.
I returned in a week for another session; I
didn’t feel any different at the end of this session either.
Furthermore, I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing.
However, I was determined to come for at least a few more sessions
to see if there was any improvement in any of my muscular
problems.
During the third session, Dellagrotte had me
breathe while holding my chest in different spots. Then, he put me
through some movements. The muscles in my ribs, diaphragm, and
abdomen that had been severely contracted for thirteen years were
released. Gradually, my posture straightened until I was upright
and in line with the pull of gravity rather than bent inward. The
skeleton must be in this upright position to organize breathing
properly.(1) My muscles no longer had to do the job of the
skeleton in holding up my body; they were free to carry out their
main job of moving the body.
My posture had been poor from an early age. It
had become terrible when I had suffered my neuromuscular
derangement. Poor posture is the outward manifestation of inner
emotional disturbance or inconsistency. In other words, faulty
posture is a bodily revelation of the emotional strain that has
caused it.(2) Since a person’s posture relates to his actions, acture
probably would be a more precise term.(3) An individual’s acture
is the same ’’whether he tries to flex his body, solve an
important social problem or empty his bowels."(4) The manner in
which a person organizes himself for any action essentially
remains constant and will normally change very slowly unless
altered by a potent body work technique such as Feldenkrais.
Changing the posture is the most important consideration in
working on all situations of a distorted dependence relationship
to other people. A person who has good posture has an excellent
opportunity to enjoy mental or emotional calmness as well.
Upon leaving Dellagrotte’s office after the
third session, I noticed that my thought pattern was much calmer.
Able to communicate with people in a less remote and harsh way, I
was no longer "schizophrenic.” I had been "cured" of this
"disease" in one fifty-minute session! Actually, Feldenkrais
clients are not cured of their conditions; they relearn the proper
use of their bodies. Many problems that modern medicine considers
permanent can be changed dramatically using this method.(5)
I didn’t have to be persuaded to return for the
fourth session. Dellagrotte worked on my spastic adductor muscle
for two or three sessions; in fact, he concentrated on the
surrounding muscles. Eventually, the adductor muscle relaxed. I no
longer needed to put ice on it after exercising. In subsequent
sessions, various movements led to the relaxation of my jaw, neck,
and eye muscles. Upon starting to play tennis in the spring, I
found that my eye-hand coordination had improved so that I could
now hit the ball at the net.
During the next several sessions, Dellagrotte
concentrated on my feet and legs. He explained to me that there
was nothing wrong with my right ankle. The whole movement pattern
of that leg had been disrupted by the failure to treat the
original injury properly ten years ago. My subsequent jogging had
aggravated the condition. My other foot and leg had also suffered
from the awkward movement pattern on the right side. After being
put through various movements, the range of motion in my hips
increased significantly. When I jumped on a mini-trampoline and
moved my feet on a roller, the pains on the bottom of my feet
disappeared.
I had thirteen initial sessions, which lasted
until Dellagrotte went away in the spring of 1979. Later that
year, I had another thirteen sessions, during which time my
ability to move improved even further. Dellagrotte had told me
that I could shortly have become crippled if I had continued to
use my body in my habitually traumatic way.
As the sessions were ending, Dellagrotte said
that I could now try jogging; he also said that I could throw away
my orthotics. I found that my jogging gait had improved somewhat,
although it was not really as easy and smooth as it should be.
However, my ability to walk was perfect now. Therefore, I decided
to forget about jogging and stick to swimming, walking, and
tennis.
In the spring of 1979, I also attended classes
taught by Dellagrotte in which he gave instructions to the
participants, who would try to do various Feldenkrais movements.
The classwork is called Awareness Through Movement. In addition, I
bought Feldenkrais’s book Awareness Through Movement,
which explains the philosophy behind the movements. It also
includes ten lessons, which are difficult to do from the book.
Therefore, I bought them on tape narrated by Feldenkrais himself.
I soon bought another excellent series of tapes by Ruthy Alon, a
close associate of Feldenkrais. I did the Feldenkrais and Alon
tapes repeatedly from the spring of 1979 to the spring of 1983.
Feldenkrais observes, "The lessons are designed
to improve ability, that is, to expand the boundaries of the
possible: to turn the impossible into the possible, the difficult
into the easy and the easy into the pleasant.”(6) A person who has
been moving in a dysfunctional way learns to produce smoother
movements without simultaneously initiating unwanted impulses. I
began to sense parasitic contractions as I widened and refined my
control of my muscular range through very slow movements. I
gradually sensed which movements felt best and began to choose
them. I did the movements over and over again on a yoga mat at
home. Lying on the ground reduced the tension in my body. Doing
the movements slowly, I now could distinguish small differences in
muscle tension.
I found out that my future did not have to be
wrecked completely by my past misuse of myself. Feldenkrais’s
ability to redirect the nervous system demonstrates that life need
not be a sequence of stationary conditions in which we helplessly
find ourselves but can be a process self-consciously directed by
us? People can make fundamental changes in themselves and have an
opportunity to travel the path to maturity.
I was fortunate to have help in learning the
movements on the tapes from Ruth Monchik, a woman from Newton in
her early sixties. Monchik taught yoga at Harvard and in a
basement studio in her home. She was eager to learn some of the
movements and went through the tapes with me for free. Since then,
she has been a genuinely warm friend.
Early in 1980, my mother frantically told me
that the bankers in charge of her trust fund had stolen hundreds
of thousands of dollars from it. Her lawyer had supposedly been
watching over it, but he had been negligent. Florence was now told
that a lawsuit would be expensive and drag on for many years. The
bank was powerful and winning was far from certain.
My mother still had enough money to live
comfortably. I, however, was left in serious financial
circumstances. In the 1970s, I mainly had lived by using the fifty
thousand dollars I had received on Nantucket in 1969. Florence had
supplemented this money modestly. Dr. Liberman had certified that
I had been permanently disabled before the age of twenty-two. As a
son of a deceased veteran, I had been placed on a federal
disability program; I had started receiving monthly benefits in
1975. I also was given Medicare benefits which I never used until
1988. Until 1987, I had my own Major Medical Blue Cross-Blue
Shield policy.
I had started investing in the stock market in
1969. I dealt with Edward Kravitz, the broker who had handled my
grandfather’s account. Kravitz often had called him to obtain tips
on the market. I had made about twelve thousand dollars during the
1970s, although neither my father nor grandfather had ever given
me any advice about investing. I had merely read a few popularly
written books on the subject. My success undoubtedly was just luck
since the most astute observers have discovered that the market is
a random walk.
I enjoyed discussing the market with Paul
Kaplan, the only friend with whom I was in regular contact. Kaplan
had lived behind my family’s house in Fall River. He had graduated
from Bryant College, a business school, and subscribed to The
Wall Street Journal. When I was living in Fall River, I
spoke to him several times a week and occasionally went to a mall
or bowling with him.
I was investing in the market even as I was
reading copious amounts of radical material and identifying with
the working class in their battle against the capitalists. Maybe
this was the result of being adrift on a sea of abstractions.
Actually, I sensed that I would never be able to work; therefore,
I was trying to make some money in the only way I could within the
capitalist system.
I certainly was no worse than Theodore Dreiser.
Ironically, the book sales and film rights to An American
Tragedy, published in 1925, made Dreiser affluent for the
first time in his life just as he began to turn permanently
against the capitalist system. He himself finally had achieved the
Horatio Alger dream of going from rags to riches. Now, Dreiser had
a grand apartment in a stylish section of New York, liveried
servants, and an enormous estate and country house at Sroki, and
costly clothes. Yet, the great writer constantly censured the
rich, deriding ’’their vanity, pomp and vulgar display of
wealth.”(1) He had never become free emotionally from the pain and
humiliation of his own youthful poverty. Furthermore, his
fanatical authoritarian religious upbringing had implanted in him
feelings of insecurity which were never eradicated.
Michael Lyndon notes: "Sometimes Dreiser loved
’the people’, sometimes he considered them ’potato minds.’”(2) I
was identifying with the working class but other than working on
tables at Camp Indian Lake one summer, I had never worked a day in
my life. Other than superficial encounters, I hadn’t had any
contact with working class people other than Colleen O’Leary and
Gladys Rollins, our longtime maid in our first house. W.A.
Swanberg astutely declares that any accounting of Dreiser’s
manifold contradictions "would have to be done in the misty
suburbs of abnormal psychology.”(3) This statement fully applies
to me. It is undoubtedly true of all people whose childhood
traumas remain repressed.
Another financial disaster befell me in the
late 1970s. Cenco, Inc. had gone off the New York Stock Exchange
after someone had stolen twenty-two million dollars from the
company. I held seven hundred shares which a short while before
had been worth fifteen thousand dollars. I eventually received a
five hundred dollar bond, payable in 1993. I was left with about
twenty thousand dollars of the original fifty thousand; I used the
last of it in 1987.
These two criminal incidents aren’t unusual in
contemporary America, nor were they unusual in Dreiser’s era.
Commenting on Dreiser, Arun Mukherjeee notes: "Money and the
desire for it are the two prime movers of his plots. His
characters rob, steal, prostitute themselves and even murder in
order to get it."(4) The great writer had soon discovered through
his experiences as a young journalist in the 1890s that American
society was a morally bankrupt drama, refuting the instruction of
the religionists and moralists. Genuine Christians were not
abundant, and Sunday school precepts were not applicable to daily
life.(5)
White-collar theft and other corporate
wrongdoings are rampant in this country. The Bureau of National
Affairs estimates that every year corporations commit crimes whose
dollar cost to the country "is over ten times greater than the
combined larcenies, robberies, burglaries, and auto thefts
committed by individuals."(6) 20 percent of the United States’
five hundred biggest corporations have been found guilty of at
least one major crime or have had civil punishments imposed on
them for grave misconduct.
In fact, the corporation has become "society’s
frankenstein...."(7) It is a criminal mechanism that takes away
from an individual his accountability to his fellow men.(8) Yet,
the laws are heavily weighed to preserve the rights of the
powerful.(9) Slater points out that most judges and law
enforcement officers are quite lenient toward public officials and
corporation executives who steal. They act as if these officials
and executives are professional thieves and cheaters who should
receive mild punishment similar to that given to children who take
candy without permission. These judicial and legal personnel take
the attitude that even a few months in jail for a rich person is a
brutal and almost un-heard-of- disciplinary action.(10)
As the 1980s began, I had lost the security of
having a wealthy mother to help me financially. I had taken a
giant step towards joining the poor whose lives I had so
extensively read about in my history and sociology books as well
as in Dreiser’s novels. Ronald Reagan was elected President in
1980. Soon, the first reports about homeless people started coming
over the airwaves. Having studied American society so thoroughly,
I knew that eventually millions of people would be without homes;
I feared that I could eventually be among them. The only situation
worse than being a "mental patient" is to be a poor one. I had
already learned many times over that "the world is not just,
goodness is seldom rewarded, and the cruelest deeds are seldom
punished.(23)
As previously noted, my biochemistry had been
drastically altered in the womb, in early childhood, and during
the long period in which my muscles were severely contracted. My
nervous system was now miraculously better but still somewhat
impaired. I didn’t realize how impaired it still was, until years
later, it had improved much more. By then, my movements were less
jerky and angular.(1)
Jacob Liberman, who holds a doctorate in
optometry, points out that the eyes are extensions of the
brain.(2) The patterns of the mind’s activities and the vision
patterns of the physical eye indicate a person’s overall health
and more specifically his emotional health.(3) They are precise
indicators of the way an individual thinks and learns.(4)
Therefore, Shakespeare was correct in noting that the eyes are
"the windows of the soul."(5) The Bible also perceptively states,
"The light of the body is your eye; when your eye is clear, your
whole body is clear, your whole body is also full of light; but
when it is bad your body is full of darkness.”(6)
A person’s fields of vision represent the
amount of the world his brain is perceiving visually. Liberman
believes that they also represent the portion of his brain that is
actually working. The fields of vision provide the base for his
“postural, emotional, and physiological stability in the
world."(7) My emotions had been in turmoil and my posture poor for thirteen years.
During this period, my fields of vision had been drastically
narrowed, and the skin under my eyes had turned a deep black.
In the early 1980s, my thought patterns and
emotions were calmer, although my dark circles remained. Yet, I
was far from being in excellent emotional health. Unconscious
factors linked to my childhood still held sway over me. I still
squandered too much of my energy in useless thinking and worrying.
I still slept ten hours a night and another during the afternoon.
Furthermore, I continued to rush about during my waking hours
trying to fill every second with activity. In my daily living, I
continued to maintain the pace that is most favored by our
competitive society. This habit had survived my thirteen years of
neuromuscular disorder intact.
I was functioning in what Capra calls "the
Cartesian mode.” Relying solely on this style of living, I now
didn’t have obvious symptoms of mental illness but nevertheless
wasn’t mentally healthy. Although not employed or in school, I
still lead an "ego-centered, competitive, goal-oriented ”
existence.(8) I was engrossed with the past and the future;
therefore, I couldn’t enjoy present activities. Our academic,
corporate, and political institutions are filled with people
operating in this Cartesian mode.
As I’ve mentioned, psychologist Paul Pearsall
terms this hurried, worry-filled lifestyle "running hot." Hot
reactors are selfish and tension-filled. They are constantly
"charged up, defensive, over-mobilized, and ready to act."(9) My
emphasis on the head rather than the heart was causing my brain to
ignore caring and intimate feelings.(10) As a hot reactor, I
utilized information quickly and intensely; I allowed a minimum of
time to emotionally connect with it. This was certainly true of me
when I was reading book after book about American society.
Finally, as a hot reactor, I didn’t examine my childhood traumas
and the emotional patterns that developed from them.(12)
I hadn’t realized yet that rational and
clear-thinking people can learn to modulate their activity level
and practice the art of being. In In fact, a "being reflex’ is a
better option in the modern world than the fighting, fleeing, and
flowing reflexes.(13) I didn't learn this lesson until the late
1980s.
After my Feldenkrais sessions, I was able to
control my muscles and thought patterns well enough to attempt an
extended piece of writing. Over many years, I had taken notes on
some of the best books I had read. Now, I wrote a paper of over
one hundred pages summarizing the most perceptive criticism about
American society that I had studied. I concluded that the country
needed a radical third party such as the newly-formed Citizens
Party.
Soon after picking up the typescript, I read in
the newspaper that environmental scientist Barry Commoner, the
Citizens Party’s candidate for President of the United States was
going to speak at Brown University. I went to hear him and had him
autograph his book The Closing Circle. I met several
people who had formed a Rhode Island chapter of the party, and I
was invited to attend their next meeting.
The meeting was held at the home of Allison and
David Packer on the affluent East Side of Providence. I met a
sociology professor from Providence College and a progressive
lawyer, both ofjwhom lived on the East Side. There were a few
Socialists and two members of the Communist Party at the meeting.
I also met a radical historian who had authored nine books on
foreign policy.
At this time, I considered myself a Democratic
Socialist; therefore, I felt comfortable with these people. For a
long time, my bible of social criticism had been The Sane
Society. Fromm calls for a type of humanistic Democratic
Socialism. He indicates the strong points and the faults in Karl
Marx’s political vision. The great psychoanalyst declares that
Marxist Socialism overestimates bourgeois property rights and
focuses far too much on economic elements alone. Other groups,
called communitarian Socialists, have expressed socialism’s goals
in a much better way. They are: Owenists, syndicalists,
anarchists, and guild socialists. These groups wanted "an
industrial organization in which every working person would be
an active and responsible participant, where capital would
not employ labor but labor would employ capital."(1) Workers will
feel solidarity with all other workers, consumers, and indeed with
all mankind. Fromm concludes that the various schools of Socialism
contribute to "one of the most significant, idealistic, and moral
movements of our age."(2)
I attended several meetings of the Citizens
Party. Not playing a major role in the party, I didn’t storm any
barricades. I passed out some leaflets, stuffed some envelopes and
helped in a few campaigns. However, I was engaged in the real
world with real people rather than merely sitting in my room
reading. Unfortunately, the Citizens Party enjoyed little success
at the polls and died after the 1984 elections.
My other venture into social life did not go as
smoothly. I now understand the reason for this failure. My muscles
were working much better, but I retained many of the traits of an
adult child of an alcoholic. It’s true that my mother was addicted
to rage, and my father did not engage in the dramatic acting out
common to many alcoholics. However, children in various other
types of stressful environments are just as harmed emotionally as
are children of alcoholics.(1)
Rational behavior has a positive impact on a
person’s life and his intimate associations. Never having been in
a normal household, I could only conjecture at what actions
constituted rational conduct. "Normal" in this regard is a vague,
general term; perhaps functional is a better word.(2) My parents
had not modelled an intimate relationship for me; therefore, I had
no idea how to engage in one. I dimly sensed that I was quite
unlike most people. This was true in the sense that I was
thirty-five years old and, having been in a schizoid state for
many years, hadn’t worked.
One day my mother and I were eating lunch in a
restaurant in Fall River. A good-looking Jewish woman from our
neighborhood came over to our table. She was the wife of a Harvard
Law School graduate who specialized in estates and trusts. The
woman asked me if I would like to meet her daughter. After
replying affirmatively, I nodded when she
mentioned a day and hour.
I went to their comfortable home and rang the
bell. Their daughter Susan answered the door. She was the ugliest
woman I had ever seen! After entering, I had a pleasant chat with
her and her parents. I figured that she was better than nothing to
date. Perhaps, unconsciously, I felt that I could not get a date
with anyone much better.
Susan had graduated recently from Boston
University and was now training to be a dietician in a hospital
outside Boston. I dated her on Saturday nights and during her
summer vacation. She wasn’t particularly bright nor articulate but
was a pleasant young woman.
Young people usually go through a sexual
apprenticeship involving "courtship, dancing, kissing, and petting
with more or less intimate contact."(3) As I’ve related, the only
part of this apprenticeship that I served involved dancing during
my bar mitzvah year. Now, six months into our relationship, I
finally saw a woman undressed at the age of
thirty-five.
Janov notes that genuine sex problems are the
result of a lack of education and experience but that these types
of problems aren't frequent. People who canrt feel and
who have had limited experience can benefit greatly from education
and technique. He concludes, "However, feeling people manage to
learn by themselves to do what is instinctive and natural."(4) I
had obviously regained at least a partial ability to feel because
I had a good idea how to proceed. Maybe my avid attendance of
movies had provided models for me.
We engaged in mutual masturbation on three
successive Saturday nights. On the fourth, Susan refused my
advances, declaring that she didn’t want to be anybody’s sex
object! There was about as much chance of this happening as of me
becoming an astronaut. Two weeks after refusing me, Susan broke
off our relationship.
She had introduced me to drinking. I sowed some
of the wild oats that normally are sowed in adolescence. During a
few nights with her, I had five beers. After I stopped seeing her,
I occasionally had a beer or two. After reading For Your Own
Good and The Family in the late 1980s, I stopped
drinking entirely. My drinking with Susan was part of the false
self that I had developed as child. Miller declares:
"Splitting of the human being into two parts,
one that is good, conforming, and obedient and the other that is
the diametrical opposite is perhaps as old as the human race, and
one could simply say that it is part of 'human nature.'"(5)
However when, through successful therapy, a
person finds his true self, this split automatically heals. An
individual sees that his obedient as well as his so-called lewd
self are the immoderate poles of his false self, which are now
superfluous. I didn’t have successful therapy.
However, through my reading, I gained enough
awareness about the forces that had shaped my behavior to realize
that drinking wasn’t something I wanted to do. This relationship
could have been a scene out of Tennessee William’s The Glass
Menagerie. I would be playing the part of Laura Wingfield.
Laura has a physical handicap, wearing a brace on her leg. Her
real handicap, however, is psychological. She has an inferiority
complex caused by the sickness in the Wingfield family system. Her
father, an alcoholic, has physically abandoned the family; he
rarely was home and then permanently left. Amanda, her mother,
lives predominantly by remembering fantasies of past successes
with gentlemen callers when she was a young lady.
Amanda dominates her daughter and her son Tom,
criticizing them severely. Laura’s self-regard has been crushed in
this atmosphere. She quickly drops out of Rubicam’s Business
College and roams the city during school hours. The young lady
spends most of her time taking care of a glass menagerie of little
animals. This self-nourishing behavior gives her the illusion of
self-sufficiency. She can be labelled schizophrenic if her
behavior is viewed in isolation from the family system.(6) Tom
points out to his mother that Laura appears peculiar to people outside the family.
She’s very shy and exists in her own world. Amanda asks her, ”So
what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch
the parades go by? Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie,
darling?” She fears that her daughter will stay unmarried and live
a life of dependency "stuck away in some little mousetrap of a
room...."(7)
Amanda desperately wants to find a husband for
her daughter. Tom brings James D. O’Connor, a co-worker, to
dinner. Amanda’s hopes are dashed, however, when she is informed
that Jim is engaged to be married.
I still had a slow voice, dark circles under my
eyes, and too much tension in my body. I had low self-esteem
caused by the Rubin family’s sickness. James had been an alcoholic
who emotionally if not physically abandoned our family. Florence
was domineering and critical.
Due to my muscular problem, I had been forced
to drop out of society. However, through my reading and tennis, I
had been more creative active than Laura. Yet, Florence pretended
that nothing much was wrong with me. She sometimes asked if I were
going to spend my whole life playing tennis and reading alone in
my room. After my Feldenkrais sessions, she wanted me to get a job
and get married. Then, I wouldn’t be fated to live a life of
dependency ’’stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room....”
Inevitably, the outcome of this attempt to match me with a woman
turned out to be as illusory as Amanda’s attempt to find a partner
for Laura.
Soon after the demise of my relationship with
Susan, a doctor with whom I played tennis got me a date with a
pharmaceutical saleswoman. She wasn’t pretty but was a big
improvement over Susan. In a restaurant, she told me what she did
for a living. I remarked in a loud voice, "Oh, you sell drugs." My
date immediately said, "Shh!" I also made the mistake of telling
her that I had suffered from "mental troubles." We dated six times
until I realized that she simply wanted me to pay for some free
entertainment.
Ruth Monchik later got me a date with a
doctor’s daughter from Newton. This young lady was an authentic
blind date; she was partially blind. My second date with her was
the last I’ve ever had.
It’s just as well that my dating career was
brief at this time. Based on my background, I would have been
incapable of love. I had no model for it, and indeed no model even
for communication skills. Genuine love has far more to do with giving,
not receiving.(8) In fact, love doesn’t consist primarily of a
relationship to a particular person; it consists of an "attitude,
an orientation of character, which determines the
relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one
"object" of love.(9) My reading had taught me that we desperately
need a more loving society and world, but I still was under the
sway of repressed rage and hampered by interpersonal ineptitude.
In the summer of 1981, my mother was looking
for a way to get me out of the area again; she suggested that I
return to Fort Lauderdale in the fall. I took her suggestion and
rode the Auto Train south once again. I didn’t have enough money
to rent my own apartment; therefore, I took a small room in Steve
Heinz’s house. It was in the center of the city, within a couple
of miles of Holiday Park. I had met Heinz in 1978 when he had been
part of the maintenance crew at the park. Heinz didn’t have much
formal education but was bright and progressive; he soon started
reading some of the books of social criticism that I recommended
to him. He was the first genuine that I had who was part of the
working class.
I walked, read, went to the movies and swam at
a Young Men’s Christian Association’s outdoor pool for the first
couple of months that I was there. Then, I picked up my tennis
racket and started playing again at Holiday Park. However, playing
there didn’t provide the same thrill that it had in the 1970s.
I had never learned to cook; therefore, I ate
my meals in restaurants when I wasn’t living near my mother. Now,
I really didn’t have enough money to continue this practice. After
a seven month stay with Heinz, I returned to Fall River in the
spring of 1982, staying with my mother in a condominium she had
recently purchased.
Florence immediately started to lecture me
about getting a job. However, I didn’t have the vaguest idea how I
could reenter American society in a conventional way after having
been an outsider and observer for so long. I was a Rip Van Winkle
who had been restored to a relatively normal body seating after
thirteen years of extreme neuromuscular derangement.
Unfortunately, I still had physical problems which would prevent
me from working full time. Besides, I had read enormous quantities
of material about the problems and faults of this society.
During my recent stay in Fort Lauderdale, I had
discovered Russell Jacoby’s Social Amnesia: A Critique of
Contemporary Psychology from Adler to Laing. I now don’t
agree with his praise of orthodox Freudianism and have
reservations about some of his criticisms of specific
psychological authorities. I am, nevertheless, in complete
agreement with his overall portrait of American society.
Jacoby notes, ’’Psychic transfusions are to be
given to the schizophrenic so that he or she can be released into
the madhouse called society.(1) Appearances are deceptive in this
antagonistic society. In its entirety, the society is false to the
core. Sharp class differences create an existence that is human
for only some people. It is a society in which anxiety is
commonplace and blatant violence is the rule.(2)
The modern individual is decaying. The nurture
of self and self-fulfillment are emphasized in late capitalism
while the possibility for their realization constantly
diminishes.(3) The ideology of free competition, free initiative,
and equal opportunity maintains that everybody can transcend his
situation and reach his goal. The truth is that freedom and
individuality are present solely "in their mangled bourgeois
form."(4) These words are euphemisms that conceal a brutal
atmosphere of survival of the fittest. The individual has been
overpowered by this cruel reality and left "numb and dumb.”(5)
Each individual must harden himself for the sake of
self-preservation.
People are particularly numbed by the icy
atmosphere of interpersonal communications. The emphasis on human
relations, responses, emotions are actually "subhuman responses to
a subhuman world.(6) Human and social relationships are
relationships between things but are viewed as natural and
permanent. Modern man's relationship to his fellow man is one of
"two abstractions, two living machines, who use each other."
Employers use employees; salesmen use their customers. Although
they treat each other with a degree of superficial friendliness,
people are commodities to each other. Behind their facade lurks
"distance, indifference, much muted distrust." They are "atoms"
(meaning individuals in Greek) who cooperate to a limited extent
for selfish reasons.(7) Therefore, Jacoby is correct in pointing
out that the source of evil is to be found "not in the human
condition but in inhuman conditions."(8) Genuine human relations
are either obsolete or yet to be realized.
To competently evaluate an individual’s
personality, it is imperative that one evaluate also the condition
of his world. However, the state of his world is never contingent
on himself alone, nor solely on his past environmental influences.
In order to produce more people who are well-integrated, it
isnecessary to criticize and change a particular culture and its
values.
Fromm asserts, "Alienated psychiatrists will
define mental health in terms of the alienated personality, and
therefore consider healthy what might be considered sick from the
standpoint of normative humanism."(9) In order to find the cause
of "mental illness," the United States would have to engage in a
penetrating examination of its social processes rather than
increase the money spent developing psychotropic medications.(10)
In a humanistic society, the discipline now called psychiatry
would be an active force for social amelioration rather than a
refuge from social disorder.(11)
Dr. Arno Gruen, a professor of psychology and a
psychoanalyst, avers that the mentally ill who are avoided by
society aren’t the most damaged people. The truly impaired "are
the people who want to impose upon us a belief in a diminished
human reality.”(12) We ignore messages from our hearts and live in
a society in which a mutilated self is considered normal. It
sanctions preprogrammed varieties of love which aren’t genuine. It
is a society in which power rather than love prevails.(13)
People in this society fit into various groups
in which they can attempt to hide their rage and destructiveness.
These qualities predominate because their development of autonomy
has been blocked. A person who doesn’t achieve "freedom,
spontaneity, a genuine expression of self” has a serious
personality defect.(14) If the majority of people in a particular
society don’t achieve these positive traits, they are suffering
from a socially patterned defect. They are not conscious that they
have a defect and don’t consider themselves outcasts. As the
philosopher Spinoza argues, such traits as greediness and ambition
are forms of insanity.(15) It is ludicrous that, in contemporary
America, "the individual is born into a world in. which it has
been predecided that the promotion of free enterprise and the sale
of goods is the dominant problem in meeting the challenge of
life."(16) in other words, a normal person gains self-esteem by
suppressing his critical acumen and wholeheartedly engaging in the
sale and consumption of merchandise.
The race for success and achievement is really
a war of all against all.(17) Those who strive for power are
fleeing from feelings of suffering and helplessness. They are
trying to keep inner chaos and the possibility of psychotic
disintegration from overtaking them.(18) The more they are unable
to live fully, the more they will try to live through symbols of
living such as power and money.(19) The most successful people are
those who are the most isolated from their emotional world.(20) To
succeed, they must reject all qualities in themselves that are not
"wonderful, good, and clever." By rejecting "weakness, impotence,
uncertainty," they are rejecting the child in themselves and in
other people.(21)
Enormous numbers of people in contemporary
society are out of touch with their feelings and indifferent to
everything. They are inwardly empty and don’t see any meaning to
life.(22) Thought and feeling as well as perception and passion
must be properly connected for people to experience meaning in
life. These people are also lacking values which are well
integrated with their life experiences. Andrew Bard Schmookler
declares, "Knowledge that matters in human terms must be
integrated with the whole human being."(23) Fromm declares that
"we have the know-how but we do not have the know-why nor the
know-what for."(24) He adds that our intelligence tests reward
skill in memorization and fast manipulation of thoughts but not
the ability to reason. People may be outstanding at passing
objective tests but remain ignorant in a human sense.
The boosters of our society commonly associate
human achievement with technical achievement.(25) One of the
leading principles of this cybernetic society is that ’’something
ought to be done because it is technically possible to do it.”(26)
These projects include space travel, nuclear power, and nuclear
weapons. A rocket that can travel into outer space is valued much
more than a human being.(27) We are being ruined by our own
machines, poisons, weapons, and despair.(28) We are wallowing in
our own waste matter.(29) In fact, modern people "are encased in
the leaden armor” of their ’’technological schizophrenia.”(30)
The totally alienated cybernetic man’s most
striking trait is the split between thought-affect-will. In fact,
the word schizophrenia is taken from the Greek schizo, to
split, and phren, psyche. This overemphasis isn’t only to
be found among those people engaged in scientific work. Most of
contemporary urban workers, including "clerical workers, salesmen,
engineers, physicians, managers, and especially many intellectuals
and artists" qualify as cybernetic people. These cogs in the
megamachine worship science, technology, and progress.(31) The
megamachine may be defined as
"the totally organized and homogenized social
system in which society as such functions like a machine and men
like its parts."(32) It requires a steady growth of order, power,
predictability, and control.
The modern American society that I would be
attempting to reenter has been emotionally toxic for large numbers
of people for a long time. Due to the erroneous social principles
that have conditioned its citizens since infancy, this country is
filled with a "very large amount of mental disorder, nervous
tension, conflict, fear, anxiety, frustration, and
insecurity."(33) These false values have
produced loveless, deeply sick people.(34) In 1971-72, official
government statistics revealed that this country had 4 million
schizophrenics, 4 million seriously disturbed children, 9 million
alcoholics, and 10 million people suffering from 35 severely
disabling depression.”(35) 25 million adults were using Valium at
the beginning of the 1970s. By 1980s, the Food and Drug
Administration revealed that Americans were taking 5 billion pills
of the class of tranquilizers called benzodianzephines. Valium is
part of this class. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren are
drugged. One-fourth of women aged thirty to sixty use psychoactive
prescription drugs regularly.
Becker aptly defines this society:
"Life in contemporary society is like an
open-air lunatic asylum with people cutting and spraying their
grass (to deny untidyness, hence lack of control, hence their
death), beating trails to the bank with little books of figures
that worry them around the clock (for the same reason), ogling
bulges of flesh, bent over steering wheels and screeching around
corners, meticulously polishing their cars, trimming their hedges
(and of course spraying them), giving out parking tickets,
saluting banners of colored cloth with their hand on their heart,
killing enemies, carefully counting the dead, missing, wounded,
probable dead, planning production courves that will absolutely
bring about the millenium in thirty-seven years (if quotas are
met), filling shopping carts, emptying shopping carts, nailing up
vines (and spraying them)—and all this dedicated activity takes
place within a din of noise that tries to defy eternity: motorized
lawn mowers, power saws, electric clipshears, powered spray guns,
huge industrial machines, jack hammers, automobiles and their
tires, giant jets, electric shavers, motorized toothbrushes
dishwashers, clotheswashers, dryers, vacuum cleaners."
American society is dominated by this
obsessive-compulsive way of life. This standard cultural neurosis
almost totally suppresses human beings’ animal spontaneity. It is
a "material-technological character-lie which inhibits our
impulses toward "mystery, awe, and beauty."(36)
Laing points out that everyone is crazy because
they look at society from the perspective of the standard neurotic
arrangements. Becker feels that the only people who can break out
of this constricting viewpoint are those who have a breakdown and
relinquish their old perceptions. This happened to me when my
muscles went into contraction.
Some people, however, have managed to break out
of the culturally normal way of viewing matters without such a
drastic breakdown. Most of them haven’t had the time to do all the
reading I’ve done. Fortunately, this isn’t necessary to throw off
the chains of early conditioning. Yet, in order to earn a living,
a significant number of them remain connected with institutions
that allow them to engage in some limited reforms but basically
uphold the status quo. Finally, many of these people are involved
in work that requires a great deal of specialization. Some
specialization, of course, is necessary for a society to function.
Our society, however, is overspecialized. I had been fortunate in
that my enormous reading outside of institutional constraints had
allowed me to obtain an increasingly rare general perspective.
Our society is historically one of the
lowest-ranking ones in its degree of mutual caring and
cooperation.(37) The modern market society is unique in the way
that social and economic relationships are carried out "in such an
abstract, detached, superficial, and forced context.” Sociologist
Max Weber, in the early twentieth century, noted that a market
society fosters extremely impersonal relationships in which people
become commodities. He observes, "There are no obligations of
brotherliness or reverence, and none of those spontaneous human
relations that are sustained by personal unions."(38)
Many participants are full of self-blaming and
anger; they remain mired in jobs which are distasteful to them.
Huge numbers of people don’t believe that other people are honest.
Furthermore, our society is set up so that people are frequently
forsaken.(39) They start to feel completely isolated; they also
feel that they are responsible for their lives
having turned out so badly.(40)
Our capitalist society justifies itself through
the theory of the meritocracy. It holds that individuals are free
to do whatever they want in life. Their final position in the
hierarchy depends on their work habits and skills.(41) Those with
the most brains, stamina, and superior attitudes will end up on
top. This theory doesn’t recognize the fact that many individuals
start the race with large handicaps because of their parents’
psychological and financial situations. The degree to which people
have been traumatized in childhood is a very important factor in
how their adult lives turn out.(42) Of course, what is termed
"success" in our society often would not be considered success in
a healthy society.
People’s emotional health is damaged by this
type of society, in which most of its members emphasize
self-centered and self-serving traits. This is a gigantic mistake
because "our fundamental essence, our core being, exists in
relationship with others, as part of a community of meaning, love,
and solidarity.”(43) Needing each other is a sign of strength
rather than weakness. Human beings who don’t realize that "we"
rather than "I” is the fundamental structure of life are detached
from their genuine humanity.(44)
In his encyclopedic study Human Scale,
Kirkpatrick Sale enumerates the crises of modern life. They
include:
"An imperilled ecology, irremediable pollution
of atmosphere and oceans, overpopulation, world hunger and
starvation, the depletion of resources, environmental diseases,
the vanishing wilderness, uncontrolled technologies, chemical
toxins in water, air, and foods, and endangered species on land
and sea.
"A deepening suspicion of authority, distrust
of established institutions, breakdown of family ties, decline of
community, erosion of religious commitment, contempt for law,
disregard for tradition, ethical and moral confusion, cultural
ignorance, artistic chaos, and aesthetic uncertainty.
Deteriorating cities, megalopolitan sprawl, stifling ghettoes,
overcrowding, traffic congestion, untreated wastes, smog and soot,
budget insolvency, inadequate schools, mounting illiteracy,
declining university standards, dehumanizing welfare systems,
police brutality, overcrowded hospitals, clogged court calenders,
inhuman prisons, racial injustice, sex discrimination, poverty,
crime and vandalism, and fear.
"The growth of loneliness, powerlessness,
insecurity, anxiety, anomie, boredom, bewilderment, alienation,
rudeness, suicide, mental illness, alcoholism, drug usage,
divorce, violence, and sexual dyfunction.
"Political alienation and discontent,
bureaucratic rigidification, administrative inefficiency,
legislative ineptitude, judicial inequity, bribery and corruption,
inadequate government regulations and enforcement, the use of
repressive machinery, abuses of power, ineradicable national debt,
collapse of the two-party system, defense overspending, nuclear
proliferation, the arms race and arms sales, and the threat of
nuclear annihilation.
"Economic uncertainty, unemployment, inflation,
devaluation and displacement of the dollar, capital shortages, the
energy crisis, absenteeism, employee sabotage and theft, corporate
mismanagement, industrial espionage, business payoffs and bribes,
white-collar criminality, shoddy goods, waste and inefficiency,
planned obsolescence, fraudulent and incessant advertising,
mounting personal debt, and maldistribution of wealth.
"International instability, worldwide
inflation, national and civil warfare, arms buildup, nuclear
reactors, plutonium stockpiles, disputes over laws of the sea,
inadequate international law, the failure of the United Nations,
multinational exploitation, Third World poverty and unrepayable
debt, and the end of the imperial arrangement."(45)
With my muscles contracted, I necessarily
remained outside society. Therefore, I was stigmatized because I
couldn’t fit myself into the wage-work day and hold steady
employment.(1) Yet, the amount of work that people do in modern
industrial society is unprecedented. The traits of orderliness and
punctuality are emphasized to an extent far beyond most other
cultures.(2) Slater asserts that he "would rather pay people not
to make nerve gas than pay them to make it; pay them not to
pollute the environment than pay them to do it; pay them not to
innundate us with instant junk than pay them to do it; pay them
not to kill peasants than pay them to do it; pay them not to be
dictators than pay them to do it; pay them not to replace
communities with highways than pay them to do it, and so on."(3)
Fromm believes that a non-coercive society
would accept the principle of a guaranteed annual income. He
recognizes the possibility that a minority of people would choose
a life similar to that of a monk, totally pursuing their inner
growth, contemplation, or study. Yet, if the Middle Ages permitted
monastic life, our much wealthier society is easily capable of
bearing this cost. This idea would be ruined if a person had to
demonstrate that he was actually making "good use” of his time.(4)
Society may be conceived of as "a drama, a
play, a staging....(5) As a child, I learned to perform for the
people around me. I was then supposed to assume a part in the
status-role system related to my occupation, my family membership,
and my relationships. In competitive societies, behavior is
deliberately planned. (6) Even after my muscles were no longer
contracted, I was bound to be socially awkward because I was
"poorly trained as a performer.(7) The person labelled
schizophrenic often never learned to act convincingly in dialogue
with other people. I didn’t acquire self-esteem in my family and
was thus unable to get it in the wider society. As I’ve indicated,
a person—especially a "mentally ill" one—who can’t assume a
satisfactory part in society’s drama is for the most part shunned
by its people.(8)
Even after my Feldenkrais sessions, I couldn’t
put on a smooth performance with my loud, tension-filled voice,
still somewhat rigid mannerisms and dark circles under my eyes. I
was now able to satisfactorily make contact with other people but
had few social skills. My behavior furnishes people with the most
obvious information about me. Behavioral traits include: "The way
we look at someone or away from them; whether our voice tone
matches our body posture; the way we breathe; the flush and color
of our face; the way we hold our hands."(9) These non-verbal signs
reveal to others whether we are being congruent or incongruent.
Congruence is the correlation between the content of our speech
and the way we deliver the words. Living in a competitive,
individualistic society, my lack of social poise was a
particularly deliterious obstacle.(10)
I wasn’t fully aware of these impediments at
the time, and I wanted to try to obtain a satisfactory status in
society. In our society, a person is a commodity who must invest
his energy and skills in order to successfully market his
personality.(11) Mocking careers, Slater declares: ’’When we say
’career,’ it suggests a demanding, rigorous, preordained life
pattern to whose goals everything else is ruthlessly subordinated—
everything pleasurable, human, emotional, bodily, frivolous.”(12)
Because of my past physical and emotional trauma, I probably would
have remained in Florida and continued my regimen of reading and
exercising if my mother hadn’t lost a great deal of money.
Slater asserts that all inheritance should be
eliminated. It is simply a carefully worked out and costly welfare
program for the wealthy. Inherited wealth probably never really
helped anyone; it simply allows parents to bolster their egos in
making their children rich but weaker in character.(13) I agree
that a just society would eliminate inheritance. I’m glad,
however, that it still exists in our dysfunctional society.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have survived my illness.
American society’s philosophy ’’about
institutionalizing the aged, psychotic, retarded, and infirm” can
be called the Toilet Assumption." (14) This principle holds that
unwanted material, problems, intricacies, and hindrances will be
eliminated if they are removed from society’s sight.
Philosophically, it is part of a general tendency of "escaping,
evading, and avoiding" which is a major feature of the American
lifestyle. These responses provide the reason for the shocking
differences between our riches and our methods of dealing with
people who can’t sufficiently care for themselves. A cooperative
stable society can assimilate old, sick, and disturbed people into
the local community. An individual in this category is a problem
that can be dealt with every day through constant association.
Instead, we place people who can't take care of themselves in
institutions which are "human garbage heaps."(15)
Anyway, I was accustomed to being outside of
the "consensus reality" or the "laws of reality" of American
society.(16) It is true that I would continue to be under the rule
of my mother and the federal government to a significant degree
unless I managed to secure a reasonably well-paying job. However,
the much ballyhooed freedom of American life is illusory. We are
ruled by machines as well as giant governmental bureaucracies and
corporations.
It so happened that one day in the fall of
1982, while browsing in the Brown University bookstore, I came
across books from the school’s courses in American Civilization. I
began to think about applying for a Master’s Degree in that
subject. I felt that this endeavor would be easy. My muscles were
functioning well. I had read well over a thousand books in the
last decade, mostly about American society.
I was about to engage in what Freud termed "the
repetition compulsion.” This is the need to "repeat old wounds and
traumas in order to master them."(1) I was trying to get
unresolved and unmet needs from childhood satisfied in adulthood.
An individual will unconsciously search for a person or condition
that is similar to the original circumstances. Then, they repeat
that situation. In effect, my unconscious, hopeless attempt to win
my mother’s love through intellectual effort was continuing
despite the earlier devastation it had brought to my body-mind
system. I was about to resume my attempt to be a top student at an
elite university. Truly, this was age regression. It also
demonstrates that mystified behavior is repetitious.(3)
I started seeing a therapist recommended by
Josef Dellagrotte. I knew that my body-mind system was still not
well-integrated and that I still required eleven hours of sleep a
day. I expected that the therapist would suggest a treatment to
supplement my Feldenkrais lessons. Previously, Dellagrotte had
suggested that I take up tai chi, the oriental martial arts form.
However, I couldn’t find a satisfactory group close enough to Fall
River. Now, there are classes in Fall River and the immediate
vicinity.
We just discussed my background and future
possibilities for four months while he waited for an opening in a
group he ran. Upon hearing that I was thinking of returning to
school, the therapist urged me to go. He was politically radical
and had read Social Amnesia. Therefore, he was impressed
with my writing on the Citizens Party. Yet, I remained highly
ambivalent because of the remaining problems in my body-mind
system. Furthermore, I now believed that any formal schooling
should be cooperative. The therapist expected me to remain in
therapy for about two years. I left after four months because I
felt that merely talking wouldn’t help me enough.
The efficacy of the many different types of
therapy has been questioned by numerous writers. Gruen and Jacoby
emphasize that individual therapy remains very limited because the
problem lies in an evil society. Jungian therapist James Hillman
makes the same point in his book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of
Therapy and the World is Getting Worse. Illich declares, "In
a triumphantly therapeutic society, everybody can make himself
into a therapist and someone else into his client."(4) Social life
turns into an imparting and undergoing of therapy: "medical,
psychiatric, pedagogic, or geriatric.(5)
The therapist uses kindness and caring to
maintain power over the client and keep him in a state of
dependency. What is routinely regarded as therapy and humaneness
is really role-playing.(6) Roles in general "are an alienated mode
of behavior custom-fit for an alienated society.’’(7) Jacoby
points out that this division between roles and real selves turns
society into a masquerade party. Perhaps, as Becker believes,
roles are a necessary part of any society. It is certain, however,
that the types of roles found in a society which lacks genuine
community are dyfunctional. Many patients ’’want society to make
them like the rest of us: well-adjusted, obedient, successful, and
with the freedom to act in a destructive way like other
people.”(8)
Jacoby doesn’t want to renounce therapy; he
notes, however, that therapy— whether individual, family, or
group—remains therapy. It doesn’t touch the social roots of the
person’s problems or bring about social change. In that sense,
radical therapy doesn’t exist—therapy and radical politics are the
alternatives. Yet, it is a perfectly legitimate activity to help
’’the victims, the sick, the damaged, the down-and-out."(9)
Former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson in Against
Therapy recounts many horror stories about therapists’
techniques and prejudices. He firmly believes that the profession
is fraudulent, although most therapists are honest and want to
assist their clients. Unfortunately, under the best of
circumstances, what they have to offer is inevitably far less than
what they would like to offer.(10) Most therapists believe that
their clients’ unhappiness is at least partially self-created. The
therapist frequently declares that he can’t change society or a
client’s personal life. He offers sympathetic awareness of the
person’s problems. This understanding, however, implicitly focuses
on how the patient has created unhappiness or at least increased
it. This approach is responsible for creating profound
misunderstandings and suffering.(11) Masson notes that, in his own
career as a therapist, he found that any counsel he could give was
no better than a knowledgeable friend could offer (and much more
costly).(12) He suggests that people with similar problems form
self-help groups in which no financial gain is involved. In his
latest book, Bradshaw urges people to act in accordance with their
"own impulses and intuition." With increasing age, he has come to
see the wisdom of the anonymous aphorism: No one can give you
better advice than yourself.”(13)
David Smail, Professor of Clinical Psychology
at Nottingham University agrees that psychological distress is
incurable by therapy. Smail declares, "The way to alleviate and
mitigate distress is for us to take care of the world and
the other people in it, not to treat them." We should make efforts
"to enlighten rather than mystify, to love rather than
exploit...."(14) However, given the disordered state of our
society, I’m not ready to jettison therapy completely. Some people
have been so traumatized and mystified that they can derive
considerable benefit from an effective therapy administered by a
competent therapist. After my Feldenkrais sessions, I could have
been helped. Alice Miller—whom I fully trust—recommends a type of
primal therapy developed by Jean Jenson, an American social worker
with thirty years experience. This therapy allows a person to feel
the pain of his childhood trauma in the precise manner that he
would have felt it at that time. He will also come to terms with
his apprehension of feeling it.15 a client must revert to
his childhood mode of awareness many times to heal his pain. He
will be dealing now with such feelings as "abandonment, rejection,
inadequacy, neediness, ’bad,’ and shame" because he was unable to
feel them as a child.(16) He must feel the grief of that child.
A person in therapy can recover repressed
facts, feelings, or both. He can also stop denying the meaning of
incidents that are already consciously remembered.(17)
Furthermore, the client must deal with current situations he has
unconsciously caused in order to preserve "his struggle or
avoidance defensiveness."(18)
Miller also recommends Facing the Wolf
by Theresa Sheppard Alexander. Alexander describes the process of
Deep Feeling Therapy, which is a modified version of Janov’s
Primal Therapy. Focusing on eight sessions of a three week
intensive, she portrays the method from both the patient and
therapist’s point of view. Using herself as both the patient and
therapist, Alexander recalls her confusion and pain stemming from
severe childhood emotional and physical abuse.
In the past, she disregarded or disbelieved her
emotions. Now, reliving a moment of past trauma, she "’feels’ the
emotions of that time, which was too painful or frightening to
fully experience when it occurred."(19) She experiences her
deepest emotions as they affect her whole body.
Primal therapy, however, is not a panacea.
Robert Firestone has carried out a Feeling Release Therapy
modelled on Janov’s original primal therapy and found that many
primal sessions may not change a person’s type of defensive
system. He concludes:
"A truly effective therapy must challenge all
aspects of the patient’s neurotic lifestyle: idealization of the
family, negative self-concept, distortion of people outside the
family, lack of compassion and feeling for oneself, withholding
and self-denying responses, self-nourishing habits, and the bonds
with the significant people in one’s life."(20)
In other words, a successful psychotherapy not
only will give people complete access to their feelings but help
them to dismantle their defenses.(21) Yet, most people who improve
in psychotherapy go back to a society that is highly toxic to the
undefended individual. In fact, personal defense systems are
concentrated in the organizations and conventions of society. The
dishonesty in marital relationships and in the conventional family
is reproduced in many organizations.(22)
In Febuary 1983, I went to the Department of
American Civilization at Brown and talked to Professor Alan
Meyers, a graduate adviser. I told him something about my illness
and about my reading; then, I gave him a copy of my long paper on
the Citizens Party and American society. He was accommodating and
said that I’d hear from the Department. Two months later, I
received a letter stating that I’d been admitted as a special
student.
I had expected to be admitted as a degree
candidate. I returned to Meyers’s office and told him rather
harshly that I wanted a degree. I hadn’t been subjected to the
authority of a teacher or employer for a long time and didn’t show
the proper deference. The professor became agitated and said I’d
be rejected as a regular student. Only my college grades counted.
He testily asked, ”Do you want it?” I replied affirmatively. I had
been rudely thrust back into the world of bureaucracy and
hierarchy.
During the summer of 1983, I continued my
exercise routine of playing tennis and walking. Two weeks before
classes began, I sustained a moderate tear in a calf muscle. I had
been going for a shot near the end of a two-hour tennis match when
I suddenly felt as if someone had just hit me with a baseball bat
on my right leg. I was placed in a cast by an orthopedic doctor; I
started school on crutches. This injury was upsetting to me
because I depended on being able to exercise everyday. When the
cast was removed, I went to Dellagrotte for a Feldenkrais session
rather than undergo conventional therapy. Then, I began swimming
and didn’t resume walking until April.
The American Civilization Department’s program
required that each student take four graduate seminars and four
one hundred level undergraduate courses for a Master’s Degree. The
courses had to relate in some way to American life. If I had
entered the program with a conventional undergraduate education, I
could have taken one History or English seminar each semester. I
hadn’t however, taken any courses on American History as an
undergraduate and had been too sick to learn much in my early
American Literature course. In effect, I had only benefitted from
my freshman year at college. Over the past decade, I had read
hundreds of books relating to American history and literature
after 1890 but only a few relating to the previous period. Only a
few graduate seminars in English or History were offered each
semester. Yet, I couldn’t take many of them because of this gap in
my knowledge.
Regular students were required to take a
graduate seminar numbered 201. Taught by the Department chairman,
Professor Leo Roberts, it focused on the Wild West of the
nineteenth century. I really wasn’t interested in this topic,
which I called Cowboys and Indians. But, as a special student, I
wasn’t required to take this seminar. Now, I would be interested
in studying Indian life, having read Jerry Mander’s absorbing book
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the
Survival of the Indian Nations. I’m impressed by the fact
that the traditional philosophy of the American Indian emphasizes
spiritual advancement rather than the accumulation of material
wealth.(1)
I couldn’t find any English or History seminar
that I could take. Therefore, I signed up for a sociology seminar
about some aspect of health and illness. Unfortunately, it was
being held on the third floor of a building with a steep flight of
stairs. I would have had a difficult time reaching the room on
crutches for the first couple of weeks. I didn’t, however, know
what else I could take.
A few days before classes started, the
Department held a social gathering for the professors and graduate
students on the lawn outside its building. Someone introduced
Professor Roberts to me. I then proceeded to tell him that I
wasn’t taking his seminar because I wasn’t interested in it! This
remark must have been especially shocking coming from a graduate
student, most of whom are notorious for their docility toward
professors.
Actually, as an adult child of an alcoholic, I
greatly feared authority figures.(2) I rationalized my anger by
couching my hostility in the lofty language of social
reconstruction. I remembered Illich’s statement ’’that a society
constructed so that education by means of schools is a necessity
for its functioning cannot be a just society.”(3) This is true but
shouldn’t have prevented me from playing the game of school in
which I now found myself involved. My angry, hurt inner child,
whose development had been so violently arrested, was
contaminating my present behavior.(4) Furthermore, to be fair to
myself, it was genuinely difficult for me to switch to prescribed
syllabi after having done independent reading for so long.
I still had to find a seminar that I could take
for the first semester; therefore, at home that evening, I looked
in the catalogue again. Finally, I realized that I would have to
take Professor Roberts’s seminar! I hobbled into the small class
of around fifteen students on the first day and sat down. Roberts
immediately looked up from a book and exclaimed, "You’re not in
it!" I replied that I had changed my mind.
The professor made little effort to teach
during the seminar. The material he did try to convey was
disorganized. Roberts had been a professor for many years. He is a
learned man; perhaps he was preoccupied with personal problems.
Not surprisingly, he acted coldly toward me.
The first assignment was to write a ten or
twelve page research page on a topic relating to the Wild West and
then give a talk to the class based on the paper. I went to
Roberts’s office and asked him to suggest a topic. He took down
four books from his shelf on some Indian tribe and suggested a
topic I don’t recall. I found the books dull, but I forced myself
to read them. I gave the talk and turned in the paper. It was
returned with a B and the comment that it was supposed to be
research. Thinking that the professor was being nasty, I was
determined to show him what I could do on my final paper. I didn’t
realize that the problem was that I’d never really done a college
research paper! I hadn’t learned this skill during my freshman
year in 1964-65. Yet, here I was among students who had been
carefully selected for graduate school on the basis of their
superior ability to carry out research projects. I was like a
rookie with the talent to be a major league baseball player, but
who hadn’t received the most rudimentary instruction in hitting
and fielding. Of course, after my freshman year, I couldn’t have
done research effectively even if I had previously mastered the
process.
After several classes of the seminar. Professor
Meyers came to one session to talk about the Wild West as
portrayed on television. He was an academic television critic! I
had read and fully believed Jerry Mander’s book Four Arguments
for the Elimination of Television.(5) Mander details the way
that watching television acts like a drug on the viewer. Drugs
allow a person to escape from reality while supposedly providing
experience and relaxation; television has a similar effect. The
television screen doesn’t really have a picture; it features a
flicker effect which is created by the phosphorescent glow of
three hundred thousand tiny dots which flash on and off thirty
times per second. The human eye was not designed to connect these
dots which are flashing at subliminal speed; therefore, the viewer
eventually falls into a trance-like state. Moreover, television
encourages people to be passive spectators of events rather than
to take action to change the world. The medium is an inferior
means of communication and education; it is most effective at
implanting permanent images in people’s unconscious. I had
included this information in my paper about the Citizens Party
that I had submitted to Meyers before he had admitted me as a
special student. I had no idea that his main academic interest was
television. To his credit, he had admitted me anyway.
I had virtually stopped watching television in
1965 when I had become ill. 1 was spending so much time sleeping
and exercising that I wanted to spend my other hours pursuing more
worthwhile activities. To this day, I remain outside the
electronic nervous system of the country. Ninety-nine percent of
the homes in the United States with electricity have a set; 95
percent of the population views television daily.(6) The average
American adult spends nearly five hours in front of the televison
everyday.
The young, the poor, and the superbly educated
are influenced by television. All public comprehension of
’’politics, news, education, religion, science, sports” is molded
by the prejudices of television. Our compound of electronic
techniques, including film and radio, had produced ”a
peek-a-booworld," in which an event will come suddenly into view
for a brief time and then disappear again. By watching television,
"we learn what telephone system to use, what movies to see, what
books, records, and magazines to buy, what radio programs to
listen to."(7) Television has become the soma found in Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World.(8) Most people in our society
have accepted this deeply unnatural, bizarre world. For the most
part, they believe its definitions of veracity, information, and
reality. Inconsequential matters appear to us to be significant
and babble seems remarkably sane. Television is so important that
our era may even be called the Age of Television.(9)
Television news provides disinformation. This
is misleading, out of context, insignificant, incomplete or
shallow information.^ Newscasters don’t display negative emotional
reactions when commenting before and after terrible tragedies on
the film clips. In fact, some remain enthusiastic as they tell
about various barbarities and disasters. The average television
news story is about forty-five seconds in length. Actually, no
story has any impact on the viewer.(11)
On the other hand, reading is fundamentally a
rational pursuit. It requires being attentive to a sequence of
thought, which requires a great deal of evaluation, analysis and
logic. A reader must unmask misuse of logic and common sense, as
well as unite one general idea to another. A reader must also
evaluate beliefs, examine statements, and discover similarities
and differences between them.(12) Therefore, the manner in which
television promotes learning is antithetical to book-learning.
Meyers is the exception: a person who watches a great deal of
television and also does a considerable amount of reading and
writing. Anyway, I kept quiet during the class in which he gave
his talk.
The Wild West seminar proceeded forward. The
second assignment was a fifteen page research paper. I decided to
do an analysis of Willa Cather’s My Antonia. This was an
English paper, but it was approved by Roberts. I spent long hours
frantically trying to put together source material; I didn’t even
know that the first rule of research is to limit the topic. My
paper, a mismash of history and attempted literary analysis,
wasn’t really research at all.
I was also taking an undergraduate course on
American Domestic History from 1890 to 1930. I had read about one
hundred books dealing with this era. Often, I had read a whole
book on a person or event which Professor John Peterson mentioned
during his lecture. I got an A- on the midterm examination; I also
received an A- on a book review. I really didn’t know the proper
way to write a review and would have benefitted from reading one
of the many short books on this subject. I wrote an excellent
final examination and received an A for the course. Brown had
eliminated all pluses and minuses in final grades as well as the
grade of F. A student received either A, B, C, or No Credit.
An award-winning historian, Peterson was
impressed with my work. He rarely stopped to ask questions during
his lectures. However, during one of them, he suddenly asked the
class of at least seventy students if anybody knew who ran against
Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency in 1904. I raised my hand
and replied, “Alton B. Parker." Peterson said, "I knew you’d
know." I was proud that I could name all the losing presidential
candidates of the twentieth century. I hadn’t memorized them; I
had read so much history that I automatically learned them. One
day I met the professor eating lunch with a student in a campus
sandwich shop. I interrupted their conversation and asked Peterson
if he could name all the losing presidential candidates of the
twentieth century. Without hesitation, he rattled them off.
Halfway through the course, he asked me if I would like to study
for a Ph.D.
I turned in my final paper for the Wild West
seminar. During this last class, Roberts made a comment about a
former chairman of the American Civilization Department. Then, he
remarked that the individual would remain nameless. Just as he
finished his sentence, I blurted out the professor’s name. It was
Hyatt Waggoner, who had written extensively on Hawthorne and
Faulkner. My remark wasn’t prompted by my unconscious rage; it was
an honest mistake. I had been taking Waggoner’s course on Faulkner
when I left school in the spring of 1966. Robert’s talking about
him had brought back a painful memory.
I picked up my paper just before attending a
social gathering for the students and professors at the end of the
semester. It was graded B- and had the comment: "Plot summaries
are not sufficient for graduate school.” Thinking that Roberts
still was picking on me, I told him that I’d like to talk to him
about the paper. He gave me an appointment in a few days.
I stormed into his office and started shouting
that he had given me a bad grade because he didn’t like me. This
was the first time that I had yelled at any authority figure in my
life. The professor became flustered and started defending
himself. He said that the paper was too long, the tone too shrill,
and that it wasn’t literary analysis. I quickly said that it was
history and tried to justify a few important points I had made.
Replying to his question about where I had
attended college, I said that I had graduated from Brown. Then, I
told him I had suffered a stroke. Dellagrotte had told me that my
illness had had similarities to a stroke. Roberts ended the
meeting by offering to take another look at the paper.
There was a month between the end of the first
semester and the beginning of the second. I doubted that I would
be returning after the fiasco in the Wild West seminar. However, I
signed up for two courses. I chose an English seminar on Hemingway
and started reading his novels. I also registered for a course
entitled ’’Possibilities for Social Reconstruction,” taught by
Professor George Morgan. He had been an applied mathematician but
years ago had become an interdisciplinary humanist. Seven years
ago, with my muscles contracted, I had gone to see Morgan. I had
told him about my illness and reading and asked to be allowed to
sit in on the course. He said it was impossible.
Now, in early January 1984, I went to his
office again. I’m sure that he didn’t remember my previous visit.
Now, my muscles were functioning normally, and I wasn’t totally
remote from people. I told Morgan that I was a student in the
American Civilization graduate program. I showed him my long paper
on the Citizens Party. The professor glanced at the bibliography
and was surprised to see his own book The Human Predicament:
Dissolution and Wholeness among the entries. He then asked,
’’Why do you want to take this course? Don’t you want to study new
material?” After replying that I really wanted to take the course,
I was admitted.
I had found two chapters of his excellent book
particularly interesting: Chapter Four, "Loss of the World," and
Chapter Five, "Dissolution of the Person.” He notes, "The
culmination of our predicaments is the disintegration of the
individual man, the dissolution of the whole and unified
person.(1) This problem greatly affects all our other problems.
For the most part, modern man doesn’t attempt to synthesize the
’’facts, values, claims, feelings and desires ’’that make up his
life. He often lacks a genuine awareness of self, an integrated
self. Feeling himself composed of disunited parts, he seeks
guidance about each of them from a different specialist. Lacking
values, modern man submerges himself in "the chaos of modern
trivialities." He is "estranged and isolated;" he is alienated
from nature, other people and from his work.(2) Most of this work
is meaningless; it is incapable of providing genuine
satisfaction.(3) Modern man’s emotional life has shrivelled, or it
is exploited by powerful forces emanating from the wider society.
In effect, an atmosphere that alternates between "anesthesia and
emotional whipping" pervades his life.(4)
Morgan laments the fact that a person’s
speciality rules his life and encloses it within narrow confines.
He becomes a captive of an arrangement, a specific aim, or an
organization.(5) Ruled by this specialty, the person adopts the
required social behavior. Moreover, the specialty insidiously
shapes his language as well as his general outlook and approach to
the world. All creative activity requires some specialization. The
degree of specialization and the spirit in which it is pursued are
the important points.(6)
Moreover, our society and its work largely
ignore our feelings; our jobs leave little room for passionate,
sensitive involvement in the world.(7) Subjective elements receive
a cool reception in the common, mechanized workday atmosphere.
Sensitivity to the characteristics of the working environment as
well as sympathy and feelings for the workers are lacking. The
people we deal with are usually known to us only by the way they
perform their job. Morgan agrees with Jacoby that roles in our
society are largely an alienated mode of behavior.(8)
He agrees with Becker that an individual’s
worth is now judged by how well he adjusts "to a scheme of
standardized, impersonal functionality.” In most instances, a
person is assessed only in regard to how well he fulfills his
duties in an organization. Applying this view first to others, the
individual eventually begins to judge himself also by this
criteria.
A few days after talking to Morgan, I received
a letter from the American Civilization Department. It said that I
could continue to take courses but asked whether I wouldn’t feel
more comfortable switching to the History Department. This was
impossible because I knew little about early American history.
I went to see Meyers; I started telling him
about my Hyatt Waggoner remark. He snapped, "Why are you telling
me this! Don’t you know that you have to be respectful to all
professors at this level.” The professor then asked me whether I
would like to transfer to the History Department. I replied that I
liked this department. He asked, "Don’t you know how to write an
English paper?" Without waiting for a reply, Meyers declared that
I didn’t have to take any more English courses. I stated that I
had signed up for the Hemingway seminar and had been reading him
already. He replied, "Well, what’s a month of reading Hemingway."
Meyers finally said that Peterson liked my work a great deal and
that I could get a Master’s Degree in the American Civilization
Department.
I had figured out what my problem was a few
days after my confrontation with Roberts. I realized that I didn’t
know how to do a research paper; therefore, I went to the Brown
University bookstore and purchased a book on this subject. It had
a good section on how to write literary analysis. After also
reading a book by Professor Roger Heinkle of Brown entitled Reading
the Novel, I was ready for the second semester.
The social reconstruction course was
innovative. Morgan preferred that the students not be graded but
receive either Satisfactory or No Credit. Graduate students,
however, had to be graded unless the professor absolutely refused
to give grades. There were no lectures in the course. The fifteen
students read some preliminary material together from such books
as Ivan Illich's Tools for Conviviality and Lewis
Mumford’s The Pentagon of Power. Subsequently, the class
broke up into groups that picked current topics of social
reconstruction to research. Each group of three or four students
then assigned reading material based on their topic to the rest of
the class. The group’s students led the class discussion on their
particular topic. Morgan had an exceptional talent for stimulating
dialogue; he moderated the discussion and interjected occasional
remarks. In addition to completing this class project, the
students had to write three three-page papers giving their views
on topics that had been dealt with in class.
This format took seriously the criticism of
education offered by Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. Freire states that ’’education is suffering from
narration sickness." The teacher narrates, and the students
listen. The contents of his talks "become lifeless and petrified";
often they don’t have anything to do with the realities of the
students’ lives. The students memorize his words; they become
containers being filled by the instructor. This method is called
"the banking concept of education" in which the supposedly more
learned teacher gives the gift of knowledge to his students, who
are presumed to know nothing.(10) This approach destroys the
ability to think.
On the other hand, problem-posing education
relies on communication and dialogue. Freire asserts, "Through
dialogue, the teacher-of-the students and students-of-the-teacher
cease to exist and a new term emerges; teacher-student with
student-teacher."(11) Dialogue requires the instructor to have
enough humility to recognize his own ignorance. His students now
are engaged in critical investigations with him; they can reflect
on problems and take action to change the world.
Morgan, like Slater, doesn’t believe that
learning should be divided into departments. Slater points out
that the notion of dividing knowledge into departments or
disciplines has its roots in feudal real estate customs and the
medieval clergy’s obsession with classification. Furthermore,
every discipline is organized hierarchically. Often, this order is
totally arbitrary; its purpose is to force the student to
assimilate a particular discipline’s "conventions, prejudices, and
worldview."(12)
The areas of knowledge in which one needs
previous information are the exceptions. Therefore, a student
usually can understand the "advanced" courses in a discipline
without having taken an introductory course. Perhaps the reason I
got a "C" in that course on classical political theory during my
first semester as an undergraduate was because I really wasn’t a
good learner but only a good memorizer.
Generally, schools and universities operate
under the assumption "that learning should be arduous, tedious,
and unpleasant."(13) It is well-known that introductory courses in
a university are boring except when a rare instructor makes a
course exciting. Undoubtedly, useless and outmoded academic ideas
would be eliminated much faster than currently if students were
allowed to study what they want. It’s unfortunate that
universities usually reward professors for writing and research
rather than for their teaching ability. I must point out, however,
that Brown University is close to the top in the United States in
the quality of its teaching. Its curriculum also gives the student
great flexibility in choosing courses.
Andrew Bard Schmookler adds that our society
has constructed universities ’’blind to the universal.”(14) The
various fields have specialties and subspecialties. The university
becomes a Tower of Babel, in which mutually unintelligible
languages are spoken. Becker also berates the academic
compartmentalization of such subjects as "sociology, anthropology,
psychology" and their attempt to make themselves as scientific as
physics. Our foundations and academic institutions largely spend
great sums of money in a mutually agreed upon attempt to
investigate everything but the real "problems of social and human
values."(15)
Morgan’s social reconstruction class was about
as good as a class can be in an institutional setting. The
students were smart, articulate, and self-motivated. I knew a
great deal about social reconstruction issues from my voluminous
reading and spoke often.
The only tense moment 1 experienced in the
course came on the day of my class presentation on the topic of a
need for a more holistic approach to medical care. I was studying
in my apartment. I suddenly realized that it was 12:50 and that
the class started at 1:30. I hurriedly grabbed the material for my
talk and went to my car to begin the twenty-five minute drive to
the campus. Upon driving down the street, I soon noticed that my
gas tank was nearly empty. Two stations that I tried to pull into
had cars at both full service pumps. Unfortunately, I had never
used a self-service pump. Finally having succeeded in getting the
tanks filled at a third station, I burst into class ten seconds
before it was scheduled to begin. My presentation then proceeded
smoothly.
However, when I returned to my apartment later
that afternoon, I was upset at the problems that I had encountered
so far during the school year. I hadn’t experienced nearly as much
pleasure doing my reading and writing in this institutional
setting as I had experienced doing it independently. My lack of
knowledge about the mechanics of scholarship had been one problem.
Another was my desire for perfection. A third problem was that the
critical voice I had introjected from my mother was working
overtime. At the height of my agitation, I took thirteen notebooks
filled with notes about books I had read and threw them into the
dumpster outside the building.
The seminar on Hemingway also went well. The
students’ first assignment was to write a three-page paper giving
an original view about some aspect of the author’s work. I used
Fromm’s The Art of Loving to argue that A Farewell to
Arms wasn’t a love story. I identified symbols and used
literary terminology properly. Professor Gerald Montgomery refused
to give grades; he returned the paper with a satisfactory on it.
He commented that Hemingway thought it was a love story.
I had written the phrase ’’the great
psychoanalyst Erich Fromm” in the paper. Montgomery had underlined
the word ’’great” with a red pencil. I asked him why he had done
this. He answered that, in his opinion, Fromm was influential but
not great. Morgan, on the other hand, thought highly of Fromm and
had used works by him in another course.
The main project was a fifteen-page paper.
Montgomery said that it could be longer but cautioned his students
to be reasonable. Early in the course, I was reading a passage
about heroism in one of Hemingway’s novels when I noticed that it
correlated closely with one of the main themes in Becker’s book The
Denial of Death. After deciding to use this book to write
a paper entitled Hemingway’s Search for Heroic
Values, I went to the professor’s office to ask his approval. Upon
showing him Becker’s book, I sensed his surprise that I knew about
it. I had read The Denial of Death three times; I thought
it was the greatest book I had ever read. Now, I would rate
Krishnamurti’s On Conflict first, followed by Andrew Bard
Schmookler’s The Parable of the Tribes and Alice Miller’s For
Your Own Good. Montgomery finally pulled a copy of The
Denial of Death off a bookshelf; then, he approved my topic.
I spent a great deal of time reading Hemingway
and writing the paper. I already knew so much about the subject
that I didn’t have to spend a great deal of time on the social
reconstruction course. Many of Hemingway’s ideas about heroism had
much in common with Becker’s. In fact, they fit so well that it
seemed that Hemingway had read The Denial of Death and
then had written his short stories and novels. Actually, it was
Becker who had read Hemingway.
My paper on Hemingway contains much material
that is strikingly relevant to my own life. Becker observes that
man’s existential dilemma stems from the fact that he is half
animal and half a symbolic being. He notes, ’’Man’s body is a
problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is
strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and
dreams.”(16)
My existential dilemma had stemmed from the
fact that I had become well over ninety percent a symbolic being
during my adolescence. I ended up in a situation in which my body
became a massive problem to me. My inner landscape had become numb
from repressing the pain of early abuse. I had almost died when
the physical bill for this repression had come due. The literary
critic Philip Young believes that Hemingway suffered from a
traumatic neurosis which resulted from his wounding by a trench
mortar on July 8, 1918 during World War I. Hemingway saw the legs
blown off three Italian soldiers who were with him. Two died
immediately and the third was carried screaming by Hemingway
toward help. The future recipient of the Nobel Prize was shot at
repeatedly by Austrian machine guns and subsequently had two
hundred twenty-seven fragments of steel removed from his right leg
alone. Thinking about this incident repeatedly, he was henceforth
preoccupied with death. Hemingway sought out primitive experiences
such as hunting and fishing in order to control his fear. He spent
long hours killing animals and fish so that he wouldn’t commit
suicide. Hemingway had learned in the most spectacular fashion
that it is dangerous to be a man.(17) He knew from vivid,
first-hand experience that "tis a hard trade and the grave is at
the end of it.”(18)
I now don’t think that Young’s theory about the
start of Hemingway’s emotional problems is accurate. Kenneth Lynn,
in his brilliant biography of Hemingway, has shown that this
talented author’s emotional problems stemmed from early abuse by
both parents. However, I saw striking parallels between Young’s
theory and my own life.
I suffered from what had been termed a
traumatic psychosis from the moment my muscles had become
contracted in late adolescence. I wasn’t able to do much but
engage in disordered thinking. I sought out exercise so that I
wouldn’t die or commit suicide. My defense of intellectualization
had allowed me to survive adolescence. I had finally learned,
however, that my survival technique carried a high price tag. I
had almost gone to an early grave and subsequently had expended
great amounts of energy in continuing my attempt to survive.
In Hemingway’s short story Soldier’s Home,
Krebs returns from fighting in World War I; he is thoroughly
alienated from the townspeople1s world. His mother
urges him to get a job because God has some work for each person.
Krebs finally does relent and gets a job; he adjusts to the
conventional hero system. Becker declares, ’’Most people play it
safe: they choose the beyond of standard transference objects like
parents, the boss or the leader; they accept the cultural
definition of heroism and try to be a ’good provider’ or a ’solid
citizen.”'(19) These people are what the philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard calls the Philistine or inauthentic cultural man who
follows too rigidly the daily routines of his society and accepts
too readily the gratification it provides.(20) Philistinism may be
termed "normal
neurosis."(21) It’s certainly true that many men gain partial
freedom or self-realization. Yet, most people end up involved in
the standardized roles into which they happen to fall ”by
accident, by family connection, by reflex patriotism or by the
simple need to eat and the urge to procreate."(22)
Hemingway’s values were in disarray because of
his war experiences. Yet, he was too creative a person to sink
into madness or extreme hedonism. Becker declares:
"The creativity of people on the schizophrenic
end of the human continuum is a creativity that springs from the
inability to accept the standard cultural denials of the real
nature of experience. And the price of this kind of almost ’extra
human’ creativity is to live on the brink of madness as men have
long known."(23)
Hemingway’s art became his own private religion
with unique heroic values. He could not follow Krebs and resign
himself to the standard cultural solution of an ordinary job; he
could not tranquilize himself with the trivial.
I had been an almost perfectly behaved child
and a close to ideal student in school. When my muscles became
contracted, I began to see that I had slavishly obeyed authority.
I did become trapped in a kind of madness. I didn’t have a chance
to work and resign myself to the standard cultural solution of an
ordinary job. Involuntarily at first, I became thoroughly
alienated from the conventional hero system. I could have died or
remained a virtual vegetable. I could have tranquilized myself by
taking psychotropic medication or by only exercising, watching
television, and attending movies. Instead, I used my academic
prowess to fashion my own creative solution to my predicament.
Eventually, I read about almost the entire hero system of American
life.
Anyway, in my thirty-four page paper, I
analyzed Hemingway’s major novels and five of his greatest short
stories. My analyses were cogent, and the paper as a whole was
cohesive. It was returned with this comment:
"This is a fully satisfactory account of your
understanding of the essential Hemingway. You have chosen a noble
theme and you have done it justice. Becker really does work here,
but it is not surprising, for Becker was clearly an avid follower
of Hemingway (and, of course, others). Do you know Leonard
Kriegal’s book on manhood? I think it will interest you. Very good
paper."
I received a “Satisfactory” for this course and
an "A" in my social reconstruction course.
Roberts, as chairman of the department, must
have been puzzled when he read the report on my work that
Mongomery sent to him. Last semester, I had botched an attempt at
an English paper in his course, causing him to conclude that I
didn't know how to write one. Now, I had written this highly
praised paper in a graduate English seminar. Meeting me on a
campus street just before classes began the next fall, the
departmental chairman asked me when I was going to receive my
degree. I replied that I would receive it in the spring of 1985. I
then blurted out that I had complaints against professors. This
statement wasn't directed towards Roberts; it referred to my
ambivalence about participating in a competitive educational
process. The chairman snapped, "You don't have to stay in school”
and walked away. I never spoke to him again.
I did want to get my degree. Most people want
some societal recognition for their talents and efforts. By
getting the degree, I would accomplish something within
conventional society. Now, instead of being an isolated
schizophrenic, I was a highly praised graduate student at one of
the country's leading universities.
My own funds were almost depleted. My mother
had taken out a loan through her bank in order to pay for my
tuition. In the early 1980s, Duane Elgin had written a book called
Voluntary Simplicity. I was now rapidly sinking into
"involuntary simplicity." Perhaps, with a Master's Degree, I would
be able to get a decent job.
The Reagan presidency was at its apex. This
administration deluded many people into thinking that it was
conservative. Actually, it was using state power heavily to
benefit the rich and powerful; it sanctioned welfare for the rich
and free enterprise for the poor. Books such as democratic
socialist Michael Harrington’s The New American Poverty
and Washington Post writer Thomas Byrd Edsall’s The
New Politics of Inequality were appearing. Professor
Peterson had recently published a book on poverty in twentieth
century America. At a gathering of students and professors before
the start of the fall semester, I mentioned to him that I had read
his book. He quipped, ’’Why did you read that? There’s no poverty
here.”
At the end of my successful second semester, I
again had to face the question of what seminar to take the next
fall. I noticed that there wasn’t any seminar that I could take
during the second semester. Therefore, I decided to take two
seminars during the first semester, which began in September,
1984. I selected one on intellectual history during the 1930s. I
then faced a choice between an English seminar on Hawthorne and an
Urban Sociology seminar. I went to see Professor Siegal in her
office before the summer break and asked her a few questions about
the course. She handed me a syllabus and said that it would change
“some.”
I wasn’t really interested in Hawthorne. I had
read The Scarlet Letter and some of his short stories at
country day school. I had studied him as an undergraduate English
major but had been too sick to absorb the writing. As I’ve noted,
I concentrated on twentieth century American life and literature
during my independent reading. I didn’t know much about the social
and historical background of Hawthorne’s time. Of course, I could
have read several of Hawthorne’s novels over the summer months.
Finally, I decided to to take the Urban Sociology seminar. I read
many of the articles in the syllabus during the break between
semesters.
During the summer, I paid a visit to Professor
Meyers in his office. He had seen the positive reports about my
work during the previous semester. He was friendly and asked if I
wanted to pursue a Ph.D. I said that I was too old; actually, I
couldn’t have afforded the tuition. The professor declared that
people in their fifties and sixties earn Ph.Ds. I nodded and left.
I next encountered Meyers at the gathering for
professors and students before the start of the fall semester. I
quipped that some researchers think that television can cause
cancer through microwave pollution. It now occurs to me that I
was, in a low-key way, using the same strategy of belittling
toward him that my mother employed for so long, especially toward
her sons.
I went to the first class of my Urban Sociology
seminar. My summer reading wouldn’t help me because Siegal had
changed the syllabus almost completely. Moreover, the students
were supposed to do their research in the field. I had never taken
a sociology course; therefore, I knew nothing about doing
sociological field work.
For the next week, I frantically tried to get
into a different course, even though it wouldn’t be a seminar. I
wanted to graduate in May and attend a Brown commencement.
Furthermore, I didn’t want it on my record that I had only taken
one course this semester. However, all the courses for which I
tried to sign up were filled. During this week, my mother
submitted a notice to our local Temple’s monthly bulletin claiming
that I was the top student in my graduate school class at Brown!
I went to Meyer’s office and told him that I
was in trouble again. He asked, ’’You?” I explained the problem in
my Urban Sociology course and told him that this meant that I
would only have one course. During the last semester, I had gone
to his office to ask him a question and given him a book called Lies,
Damn Lies, and Statistics. I had pointed out a chapter on
the fraudulent nature of the Nielsen ratings and urged him to read
it; now, I asked for the book back. Meyers removed it from his
bookshelf and handed it to me. He asked, "What are you doing
here?” Then, he said, "The students are conservative." The
professor was being flippant because he knew that the majority of
the students at Brown were liberal. Anyway, his demeanor made it
clear that he wasn’t particularly concerned about my current
plight. Finally, he suggested that I talk to Siegal.
The night before I went to see her, I talked to
my old friend, the social worker Ronald Simpson. He had married a
woman from Latin America and was publishing a small Spanish
language newspaper. Simpson suggested that I do a survey with him
on the attitudes of the rapidly growing Hispanic population of
Rhode Island.
The next afternoon, I mentioned this idea to my
sociology professor. She asked me whether I knew statistics; upon
hearing my negative reply, she said that I couldn’t do a survey.
Siegal declared that, as a graduate student, I was expected to
knew what I was doing. She then insolently asked, "Where did you
go to school, the University of Rhode Island?" I answered that I
was an American Civilization student, not a sociologist. The
professor proceeded to her bookcase and took down four books;
then, she literally threw them onto her desk. She asserted, "You
want to sti.dy Hispanics. Here, you can study Mayor Henry Cisneros
of San Antonio." I would be required to write a twenty-five page
paper from library sources.
Hispanics? San Antonio? I had read a biography
of Cesar Chavez; other than that, I knew absolutely nothing about
Hispanics or San Antonio. I skimmed through the books that Siegal
had so rudely given me; I only found one to be at all helpful.
However, I had read a great deal of sociology and knew that I had
a good understanding of the subject.
The following day, I rushed to the Rockefeller
Library at Brown and desperately looked in the card catalogue
under Hispanics. Not finding any promising sources, I was about to
give up and drop the course. Then I got the idea to look under San
Antonio. I suddenly came across a book entitled The Politics
of San Antonio: Community, Progress, and Power, published in
1983. Taking it from the stacks, I found that it was a series of
articles on the urban power structure of San Antonio. It was
edited by three professors from different colleges in Texas. I
checked it out and read it. I also read some articles on San
Antonio that had recently been published in such newspapers as The
Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The
New York Times.
However, I still didn’t have nearly enough
material for a twenty-five page paper. I decided to call the
professors in Texas. I managed to reach two of them. One provided
me with some helpful suggestions for further reading; he also
suggested that I send for a copy of a document that a city
planning committee had just published. I sent for it around
October 15, 1984 but hadn’t received it by late November.
I wrote the paper during November, managing to
stretch it to twenty-four pages. I finished it at the end of
November; I had to turn it in a week later. The day before I was
going to take it to my typist, a package arrived in the mail. It
was the planning commision report, entitled Target ’90: To
Build a Greater City, authored by the Target ’90 Commission.
I spent six hours daily for the next few days reading it and
writing an additional three pages which fit well at the end of the
paper. I then rushed it to the typist.
The paper came back with an A- on it, so I
received an A for the seminar. Siegal made some technical academic
criticisms of the paper. Among her general comments, she stated;
"Generally thoughtful and well-written, integratin theory and the
case study. Good use of sociological literature." She also
declared, "Overall, a very good job (especially for a
"non-sociologist.) I was also glad to see you integrate the
reading of the course; I guess someone was listening." As the
Chinese fortune cookie I opened tonight after dinner observed,
"Everything is impossible until it is achieved."
I also received an A- in my seminar on
Intellectual History. My topic was the philosopher John Dewey’s
and the American Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas’s attempt to
form a radical third party in the 1930s. I had read several books
during the past summer by and about Norman Thomas. I did an
enormous amount of research on my topic during the fall semester;
in fact, I spent as much time reading during this period as my
still damaged body/mind system would allow. I was more than
"running hot," as the psychologist Pearsall puts it. I was
blazing. I even researched the history of the American Socialist
Party, which was actually somewhat irrelevant to my main topic.
The final paper was thirty-seven pages. As a part-time student, I
wrote a total of about one hundred pages of academic papers this
semester!
I now had completed the four required seminars,
doing well in three different disciplines. After taking two more
one hundred level undergraduate courses, I would receive my
degree. I figured that the last semester would be easy, but I was
wrong.
I had looked forward to taking a course in
Twentieth Century Social and Intellectual History given by
historian Arnold McMurray. He had been teaching it when I was an
undergraduate in the 1960s. It was considered a difficult course
although it didn’t have examinations but only papers.
Nevertheless, I was confident that my extensive knowledge in this
field would make this an easy course for me. Unfortunately, upon
trying to sign up for it in the middle of the first semester, I
had discovered that the course had been cancelled. McMurray had
been asked by the History Department to substitute for another
professor in an introductory history course.
Therefore, I signed up for a history course on
American Foreign Policy since World War 11. I started reading a
few of the books during the break between semesters; however, I
didn’t find them interesting. Looking through the catalogue again,
I signed up for a political science course entitled Campaigns and
Elections. It was taught by young dynamic Professor Donald
Dickinson.
The banking concept of education was alive and
well in this course. Dickinson lectured in a pleasant voice and
presented the material in a lively format. He required that the
twenty students read about two hundred pages between the twice
weekly sessions. Furthermore, he reserved the right to call on any
student at random to answer a question about the reading. I read
all the material, which I found provocative.
The course had a midterm and final examination
of the traditional type in which the student stores up information
in his mind and regurgitates it on paper. I had never Liked this
type of examination; I had always overstudied for them. Studying
for my Master’s Degree, I had so far only taken a traditional
examination in American Domestic History, about which I already
knew so much.
The midterm examination arrived. I answered
some questions fairly well; I was only able to answer sketchily a
few others. I knew that I hadn’t performed nearly as well as I had
in American Domestic History. I thought that I might have flunked
or only earned a C, which is the equivalent of flunking for a
graduate student.
Upon returning the examinations, Dickinson put
a chart of the grades on the blackboard without the students’
names. Many of the students had found the test difficult because
most did not receive high grades. Fortunately, the professor had
given a substantial amount of credit for anything that resembled a
reasonable answer. I received an eighty-three. At home, I studied
the questions carefully and figured out that Dickinson had
expected the students to remember something about every article as
well as every chapter from the books that he had assigned.
Therefore, I changed my method of taking notes and studying for
the rest of the course.
Shortly after I received the examination back,
I got a letter from the Dean of the Graduate School. It said,
"Congratulations, you’re studying with us." I had just now been
officially admitted as a regular student and was eligible to
receive a degree! Nobody had ever told me that I was still on
trial after my first semester in the program.
I finished the Campaigns and Elections course
with a B. I know that I did much better on the final examination,
which I never got back. The only unpleasant incident occurred
during the last class of the semester. I had just turned in the
one required ten-page paper and was leaving class, At the door, I
commented to Dickinson that a certain election procedure reminded
me of the stock market. The professor turned pale and yelled,
"It’s not like the stock market. The stock market is a random
walk. We’ve got to study these things!" He then whirled around and
stormed out. Dickinson returned my paper with an 85 or B grade; he
wrote some mild criticism and a pleasant comment.
My other course was American Domestic History
1930-1980 with Professor Peterson. As expected, I did extremely
well and received an A. However, I was disappointed when the
professor responded in a lukewarm way to a paper I had written
comparing Philip Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness with
Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism. My problem
was that I still didn’t know how to do a book review properly.
Years later, I finally purchased a book on this subject and
learned the proper technique. Considering all the books I’ve read,
I’m certainly capable of writing a good review. Furthermore, I’ve
subscribed to The New York Times Book Review and read
thousands of reviews over the years.
A week before commencement, I ran into Meyers
on a campus street. As he hurried by on his way to a class, he
told me that he was leaving Brown for Brandeis University. I
asked, "You don’t believe Jerry Mander?" He yelled back, "It’s
art" and quickened his pace.
Commencement day arrived in late May. Had my
undergraduate career at Brown proceeded smoothly, I would have
received a B.A. in May 1968. Now, seventeen years later, I was
receiving an M.A. at a Brown commencement. This book could have
been entitled "Student Interrupted." Meyers must have been
thrilled when Bill Cosby received an honorary degree and spoke. I
may have been the only person in the audience who had never seen
him on television. As my mother watched, Professor Roberts handed
me my degree on the lawn next to the American Civilization
building.
I had written 250 pages of papers. I had
received two Bs, five As, and a Satisfactory. All that schizoid
intellectual activity had finally borne fruit. I had returned to
society and accomplished something it acknowledged as legitimate
activity.
Just after the start of my final semester, I
had gone to the Brown Career Planning office. I told the woman who
I was initially referred to that I was an almost thirty-nine-year
old graduate student who had never worked. Her eyes widened, but
finally she suggested that I see the assistant director of career
planning.
I told him the same story that I told the
woman. Then, I said that I had suffered a stroke but was now
healthy enough to get a job after I graduated. Today, I would tell
him that my muscles had been severely contracted or that I had
suffered from a serious nerve-muscle dysfunction. Anyway, he asked
with a prosecutor’s tone, ”Is that what the doctor said, Howard?”
Then, he said, "You have a strange voice. You can sign up to see
recruiters but don’t be disappointed. It’s doubtful that you’ll
get anything here." I left and never returned.
Shortly before graduation, the idea of trying
to teach high school occurred to me. In retrospect, this wasn’t a
good idea because I didn’t have the social skills and spontaneity
necessary for this demanding task. I was somewhat stiff in
demeanor, and I did have an odd voice. Referring to neurotic
speech, Janov states: "Because it rests on a layer of tension
rather than a solid foundation of feeling, the tense voice is
often shaky.
Furthermore, I didn’t really believe in
conventional schooling anymore. However, I reasoned that maybe I
could earn a respectable salary and enter society in a relatively
low position of power. Perhaps I was unconsciously identifying
with the aggressor because of the damage that had been done to me
as a secondary school student.
I went to see Professor Morgan and told him
that I was thinking of teaching; then, I asked for a
recommendation. He said that he would write one for me; he then
suggested that I talk to Professor Thomas Hadley, the chairman of
the Brown Education Department. He told me, "You’re good at
schoolwork. You should get a PH.D. and become a scholar."
Ruth Monchik, the yoga teacher, got me an
appointment with the headmaster of an elite private school. I went
to his home and showed him my research papers. He listened
patiently while I told him something about my background; then, he
gave me a few tips on obtaining information about other careers.
Finally, the headmaster said, "Some third-rate school may hire
you." Afterwards, he told Monchik that I should do something about
my voice.
An influential relative obtained an appointment
for me with the headmaster of another elite school. By this time,
I also had recommendations from Professors Peterson and
Montgomery. My relative also asked a headmaster of a preparatory
school for low-income students if he needed any teachers. The
headmaster called me and asked if I would like to teach science to
fourth graders. I replied that 1 knew little about science and
wasn’t qualified to teach it.
Then, my mother sent me to see a priest who
taught English at a local Catholic high school. Florence had met
him years before when she thought that she wanted to convert to
Catholicism and had remained friends with him. Recently, he had
told her that he’d be glad to help me obtain a teaching position.
1 went to the school and had a friendly fifteen minute
conversation with him. I asked him who his favorite American
authors were. He replied,
"Hemingway and Wolfe." Then, he remarked that
Hemingway travelled with a bottle of gin in one hand.
After filling out an application for a teaching
position at his school, I sent it to a nun who headed the
diocese’s education office. I soon went for an interview with her
and told her something about my illness. She remarked, "Oh, were
you hospitalized?" The nun made it clear that she had given me the
interview in order not to offend the priest. She hinted that I had
as much chance of getting a position at the high school as I had
of becoming President of the United States.
About a month later, my mother received a call
from the school. A secretary stated that the priest had
disappeared and wnated to know if my mother had any idea where he
was. A few days later, an article appeared in Fall River’s
newspaper revealing that the priest had committed suicide.
I now began to think that the possibility of a
teaching career was remote and that I should pursue other
activities. I saw an advertisement for a Spanish teacher in a
local publication and decided to take lessons. I wanted to try
learning from a tutor in a cooperative setting. Since I planned to
major in Spanish when I first entered Brown, perhaps I was longing
to return to those days when my life was proceeding in its
preordained groove.
David Stampler had been born in Spanish
Morocco; he held a Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University.
He had been a professor at a good college; but, for some reason,
he didn’t want to continue teaching at the college level. He was
now teaching primarily minority students at an urban high school.
I took a lesson once a week from him for eight
months. The Spanish that I had learned through my first year of
college quickly came back to me. After a month of lessons, I was
studying vocabulary, doing grammatical exercises, and reading for
four hours a day. Stampler, an outstanding teacher, said that I
was an excellent student. Unfortunately, it is difficult to learn
a language thoroughly without speaking it and hearing it spoken
frequently. I had hoped to go to Mexico to continue my studies;
however, I was unable to do this because of my mother’s dwindling
financial resources.
Then, in the spring of 1986, I got the idea to
teach in the public schools. I had read about the mounting social
and academic problems which challenged many of these schools.
Nevertheless, I decided to pursue this vocational avenue. In the
spring of 1986, I went to a local university which offered a
teacher training program. The professor in charge of the program
looked disdainful when I told her that I hadn’t worked. However,
she told me that I could sign up for the training.
Between the summer of 1986 and the summer of
1987, I took all the courses necessary to become certified to
teach English. I received A- to A+ in every course. Yet, despite
my enormous reading, I didn’t have the necessary background to
teach any particular high school subject. I had to sign up for
English because I had a B.A. in that subject. I knew little about
English literature and nothing at all about poetry.
For several months in early 1987, I did some
substitute teaching; I managed to survive this unpleasant ordeal
relatively unscathed. I also started tutoring minority students
preparing for college in the Upward Bound program operating out of
the university. I did the tutoring in several of the area’s high
schools and received $5.00 an hour.
In the spring of 1987, my mother decided that I
must immediately get my own apartment. I prepared to move into an
apartment building in which I had previously lived in the late
1970s. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding occurred; this incident
prevented me from taking up residence there. I stayed in an
acquaintance’s house for ten days; then, I had to go to a motel.
I had a terrible time living out of a suitcase
and looking for an apartment while I continued my work as a tutor.
I was also trying to finish a project for one of my teacher
training courses. Becoming increasingly agitated, I finally went
one night around midnight to the Crisis Center at the local
community mental health center. This was the center to which I had
been taken by the police fifteen years ago!
I told the female psychiatric assistant a
little about my past illness and about my current lack of housing.
I also told her about my working in the teacher training program.
She took out my file which contained my single past admission;
then, she advised me not to come into this facility as a patient.
She said that if I needed to enter a hospital, I should go to a
nearby private psychiatric facility.
I returned around midnight to the same
emergency unit about a week later. The psychiatric assistant
requested that I stop coming at this hour. She advised me to go to
the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission office in Fall River
in order to receive help with employment problems. I solved my
housing problem a week later when I found an apartment.
At the Commission’s office, I was interviewed
by a counselor and then by a psychologist. The psychologist spent
about ten minutes with me. He asked me what my psychiatric
diagnosis was. I didn’t know what to say; so, 1 replied:
’’Schizoid personality.” I had heard this term somewhere but
didn’t know what it meant because I hadn’t studied psychology yet.
The psychologist immediately noted this on a piece of paper; then,
he administered a standard psychological test. The results having
proved satisfactory, I was officially accepted as a client of the
agency.
Social critic Ivan Illich has termed the
mid-twentieth century "the Age of Disabling Professions." This
term unmasks the "antisocial functions" of educators, physicians,
social workers, and scientists. Commodities are institutionally
defined. "I learn" becomes "education," "I heal" becomes "health
care," "I move" becomes "transportation" and "I play" becomes "I
watch television."(1) This Age of Disabling Professions will also
be remembered as the Age of Schooling.
Authentic politics deteriorated during this
age. The voters, guided by professors, relinquished to technocrats
the power to legislate needs and to decide who needed what. They
also gave the technocrats complete authority over the means of
servicing these needs. During the initial one-third of their
lives, people are socialized to collect prescriptions of these
various needs and for the subsequent two-thirds become "clients of
prestigious pushers" who direct their routines.(2)
The most important factor in defining a
professional is his delegated power to call a person a client and
to decide what this client needs. The professional will then hand
out a prescription according to this need. Professionals have
prestigious positions in industrial society which allow them to
exercise control over many citizens. These contemporary
specialists who mostly service human needs commonly "wear the mask
of love" and supply a type of care. Educators, doctors, and social
workers have made "the modern state into a holding corporation of
enterprises that facilitate the operation of their self-certified
competencies."(3)
The new types of health professional is
generally more concerned with cases than with individuals. He
focuses on the breakdown that he observes in a particular case
rather than with the person1s grievances. His actions
primarily benefit the society rather than the person. This health
professional has been given substantial independence to design the
diagnostic means by which he is able to pinpoint which people need
treatment. The power of modern professions is so great that they
are able to define the boundaries of the client’s
"world-become-ward.Illich pungently concludes: "Life is paralyzed
in permanent intensive care."^
I was interviewed by a Commission counselor who
was knowledgeable about holistic health care. She was friendly and
accommodating. Yet, I was just another client in this bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is a setup in which strangers can deal with each other
concerning business or personal matters.It was obvious that my
best opportunity to escape from remaining trapped as a client was
to obtain a job in academia.
During July and August of 1987, I tutored and
taught in the Upward Bound program at the local university at
which I was taking my teacher training. I taught an American
history course to four students who had flunked the subject during
the school year. I also taught a course on how to write a term
paper. The students were generally well-behaved. I was working
from 8:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. on four weekdays. Back in Fall River,
I went for a three mile walk. After dinner, I slept for an hour;
then, I did homework for the last of my six courses in the
teaching program.
I was scheduled to do my teaching internship in
the fall in order to complete the certification requirements. I
wanted to do it at a high school in a solidly middle-class
community adjacent to Fall River. I observed English classes there
for a few weeks. It was a traditional school with fifty-minute
classes and a competitive atmosphere. The students were shamed by
having their grades read aloud. I had last encountered this
practice as a student at country day school twenty-three years
ago.
Just as I was about to start my teaching, I was
told by the chairman of the English Department in a hostile manner
that I wasn’t welcome and to leave. I drove to the Department of
Education at the university. The professor in charge of teacher
training told me that the high school’s English Department
chairman had called and said that I didn’t understand adolescents.
The school administration had somehow obtained information about
my background.
I was reassigned to a high school in a small
town about a twenty-five minute drive from Fall River. After
observing classes there for a few days, I was again ready to begin
teaching. Then, the English teacher under whom I was assigned to
work called the university’s Education Department and complained
about my voice. Incidentally, about a year later, I inquired about
taking lessons with the voice coach of an excellent repertory
theatre. However, I couldn’t afford his fee of forty dollars an
hour.
I returned to the university. The head of
teacher training consulted the Dean of Continuing Studies. The
Dean decided that I was qualified to teach; he knew that he didn’t
have any legitimate reason for denying me a chance. He told me to
report to a large high school in Fall River. It had many problem
students.
The next day, I received a phone call from a
community college in Fall River. I had applied to teach American
Civilization there earlier in the summer. The school needed an
instructor for an introductory course which started in two weeks.
I went to see Professor Carl Lambert, the chairman of the Social
Science Department. He gave me a syllabus with lecture topics and
two paperback books to use in the course. Lambert introduced me to
Professor Herbert Nicholson, who taught politics and government.
He then told me that if I had any questions I should consult
Nicholson. I took the material and went home. Then, I called the
Dean of Continuing Studies at the university and told him that I
was postponing my practice teaching for a semester while I taught
this course at the community college.
The course turned into a garbled nightmare.
Years later, Lambert explained to me that he had only given me the
syllabus as a guide. Not realizing this, I tried to lecture by
exactly following the topics on the syllabus. I spent long hours
putting together these lectures which I read from index cards. I
should have merely put key words on the index cards and spoken
from memory. Better yet, I shouldn’t have used the banking concept
of education, which I knew was ineffective. However, I didn’t
communicate my doubts to either Lambert or Nicholson. I thought
that I was supposed to lecture and that is what I proceeded to do.
I had prepared these lectures from material not
contained in the books, which I thought the students would read. I
remained oblivious to the fact that these students weren’t readers
and had trouble understanding abstractions. Despite my
wide-ranging knowledge, I remained limited in human qualities.
Mumford warns, ”To heed only the abstractions of the intelligence
or the operations of machines and to ignore feelings, emotions,
intuitions, fantasies, ideas, is to substitute bleached skeletons,
manipulated by wires, for the living organism."(1) The amount of a
person’s erudition or his zeal in acquiring knowledge doesn’t
measure his humanity. This is gauged by the amount and zeal of his
devotion to mankind. In fact, all the intellectual attainment in
the world is perilous if that learning is not humanely
comprehended and humanely utilized.(2)
It didn’t occur to me that few people in our
society other than professors at leading colleges and universities
had spent as much time reading as I had. I was too concerned with
showing off my own knowledge and too little concerned with putting
it in a form that the students could easily understand. I should
have given them less material to absorb and allowed them to ask
more questions. The best approach would have been to get
permission to run the course in a way similar to Morgan’s social
reconstruction class.
Two students in my course did well. One was a
young woman who had been scheduled to enter the university where I
had taught Upward Bound classes. Having become ill, she was just
taking a few courses at the community college that fall. She
wasn’t a reader but took excellent notes and showed on the
examinations that she understood most of what I was saying. The
other was a young woman who had come to the United States from
Austria to visit; she had only been in this country for three
weeks. She couldn’t understand the more difficult of the two books
but read the easier one. This foreign student understood the book
and my lectures well; she received an A for the course.
The course lasted from the middle of October
until the middle of December, 1987. Twenty students started it;
eight of them remained to the end. I received poor evaluations
from them and was dismissed.
I could still have started my practice teaching
at the large high school in Fall River after Christmas vacation. I
realized, however, that I didn’t have the academic background to
teach high school English. Moreover, I was afraid that my nervous
system wasn’t healthy enough to survive the rigors of high school
teaching. Therefore, I wrote the Dean of Continuing Studies that I
was going to pursue other plans. In retrospect, the end of my
teaching career was one of the best things that ever happened to
me. I had read widely, but I was yet to do my most informative
reading.
The immediate negative aspect of my failure to
enter the teaching profession was that I remained labelled as a
"schizoid personality" or mental patient. At this point, I was
socially inept, still neurologically impaired, and confused about
my status in society. I wasn’t, however, mentally ill.
The most satisfying work I could have done
would have involved political action to change the society. Yet, I
certainly wouldn’t be helped to obtain this type of work by a
government agency. Physicians and health bureaucrats "stress
delivery of repair and maintenance service for the human component
of the megamachine." They try to return people to "sickening
jobs."(1) Of course, 1 had hardly worked at all. Should I be
unable to enter the workforce, retaining my sick status was deemed
satisfactory by the powers that be. In fact, in a pathological
society, the conviction predominates that "defined and diagnosed
ill-health" is vastly superior to any other kind of negative
appellation.or to no appellation whatever. It is better than
criminality, political nonconformity, indolence, or voluntarily
staying away from work. Many people are excused from industrial
work by medically attested symptoms. Increasing numbers of them
subconsciously realize that they intensely dislike their jobs and
their leisure passivities. However, they eagerly accept the
falsehood that a physical ailment excuses them from social and
political
obligations.(2) They don’t engage in struggle
to change the society responsible for their illness. This
deception results in "the expropriation of health" or "social
iatrogenesis."(3)
Another possibility is that, after being placed
into a particular category by medical bureaucrats, a person may be
denied work. A society in which most people are certified as
deviants is similar to a hospital. Illich concludes, "To spend
one’s life in a hospital is obviously bad for health."(4)
The subject of diagnosis is a crucial one. The
modern physician invents the labels he uses to assign sick-status
to a person.(5) Physicians and ancillary personnel can make
diagnoses which can determine either transient or enduring roles
for their patients.(6) Diagnosis always increases emotional
trauma, demarcates incapacitation, imposes inaction, and
concentrates thought on the possibility of nonrecovery. The
patient loses his freedom for self-definition. His special role
tends to segregate him from "normal" and healthy people, and
demands acceptance of the management of experts.(7)
It was fortunate that I didn’t know that I had
been labelled a schizophrenic for almost the entire thirteen years
that my muscles were contracted. I just thought that I was a
person whose body-mind system had suddenly started to malfunction.
I may well have given up my fight to recover if he I had known
that I had the serious and incurable disease of schizophrenia.
Cultural anthropologist Becker agrees that such
psychiatric terms as schizophrenia, depression, psychopathy, and
mania, carry such connotations of "social opprobrium" that it is
dangerous to continue using them. Becker continues using them
simply "as pointers because in the present stage of knowledge and
history it would be impossible to communicate without them."(8)
However, he gives them very different meanings than does medical
psychiatry. The terms allow us to understand characteristic
manners of responding to experience and don’t have any medical
significance. Becker employs these terms from an outlook of social
criticism.
I had lived an extremely inward lifestyle from
early adolescence. This trait in itself wouldn’t have caused my
stress illness. Additionally, I lived in a stressful environment
and utilized poor body mechanics from an early age. Finally, I
didn’t find healthy ways to eliminate my stress on a daily basis.
When my muscles were contracted, my thinking and emotions were
split. However, this didn’t mean that I had the disease of
’’schizophrenia" but a severe stress illness which was an ongoing
manifestation of the general adaptation syndrome. I needed to make
intensive physical, emotional, social, and spiritual changes in my
lifestyle, using natural methods whenever possible.
Paula J. Caplan has recently written a
devastating expose of the way psychiatrists develop the categories
used in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders. She is a clinical and research psychologist who
was also a psychotherapist for several years. Caplan was a former
consultant to the psychiatrists who compose the American
Psychiatric Association’s manual, the most authoritative handbook
of supposed mental disorders.(9) This handbook’s judgements about
normality are developed by "at most a few dozen people—mostly
male, mostly white, mostly wealthy, mostly American
psychiatrists.(10)
The purpose of her book They Say You’re
Crazy is to aid individuals in understanding how normality
is determined. This knowledge will assist people who are labelled
abnormal or who personally believe that they are abnormal to
surmount the harm caused by this process. Although it is touted as
valid science, the manual is filled with prejudices, slipshod and
faulty thinking, and outright nonsense.(11) Unfortunately, the
authors of the manual have a value system in which zealous
absorption with particular elements of sexuality and with such
habits as ritual handwashing are called "mental disorders" but
zealous absorption with—and action involving—"racist,
woman-hating, or deeply materialistic attitudes and beliefs are
not."(12) Not surprisingly, numerous people who enter
psychotherapy have been dealt with wrongly ’’because of their
race, sex, age, class, sexual orientation, mental or physical
condition, and physical appearance.”(13)
Psychiatrist Joel Kovel points out that the
manual was produced to help therapists rather than sufferers. This
situation wouldn’t cause difficulties if it were likely that
therapists would follow paths that would help their patients. This
is less likely when they are labelled by the manual. Kovel notes
that people who are diagnosed as mentally disordered then are
placed into an arrangement of social relations and power. He
recommends ’’the person and his/her relation to the world” as the
center of attention rather than the "false abstraction of mental
disorder."(14)
Caplan makes it clear that some people are very
dyfunctional. They may injure themselves or injure or scare
others. Some individuals feel emotional distress, some are
outsiders, some don’t view reality as most people in our society
do.(15) Yet, projects such as the manual have provided little aid
in mitigating this pain.(16) The motives of the people who put
together the manual and of the American Psychiatric Association in
general include financial gain, power, and control.(17) Mental
health professionals, however, are seldom asked about the
procedures they use to determine which individuals and what
conduct are normal.
The Random House Webster’s College Dictionary’s
definitions of normal include: "conforming to the standard or the
common type; usual; regular; ...approximately average; free from
disease.” The dictionary defines mental health as "psychological
well-being and satisfactory adjustment to society and to the
ordinary demands of life." On the other hand, mental illness
is "any of the various forms of psychosis or severe neurosis."(18)
Mental disorder and mental
disease are equivalent terms for mental
illness. Indeed, most therapists and most laypeople use the
phrases "mental disorder," "mental illness," and "mental
or emotional abnormality" interchangeably.(19) A
parenthetical note in the dictionary reveals that it wasn’t until
between 1960 and 1965 that the phrase mental illness began to be
commonly used. Normality is viewed in either-or terms according to
both the dictionary definitions and common usage.(20)
A person labelled abnormal or mentally
ill conjures up pictures of dissimilarity and separateness.
These terms imply that this person is not as capable, nice, or
safe to associate with as normal people. Frequently, "abnormal"
and "mentally ill" are taken to mean "crazy," a label that "calls
forth images of someone who is out of control, out of touch with
’reality,’ incapable of forming a good relationship,
untrustworthy, quite possibly dangerous and probably not worth
one’s attention, time, or energy."(21) It is also imperative that
we ask ’’’normal’ or 'ill-disordered’ according to whom? And
compared to what standard?"(22) In the United States, a person who
is thought not to be emotionally normal is routinely thought to be
mentally ill.(23)
Actually, normality is a term called a
"construct" by psychologists. Therefore, there is no distinct
actual entity to which the term "normality" inevitably coincides.
At some point in time, several people looked at the first table
and then picked a word to call it. With a construct, however, the
word is initially chosen, and subsequently various people decide
to apply it to various things. The different individuals and
groups employing a particular construct seldom fully concur in
interpreting it or agree about its contents. The meaning of most
constructs—including "normality"—is highly debatable.(24)
Hearing the word normal may make one
think of these words and phrases:
Average; typical
As people should be
As nature or God meant people to be
As it is least dangerous to be
Similar to however we see ourselves
Acceptable
Morally upright and strong
Responsible for their actions
Able to exercise self-control
Socially appropriate
Not weird
In touch with reality
Aware of how they affect others
Not tending to make us feel frightened or
anxious
Not crazy; sane
Able to cope with life(25)
Hearing abnormal may bring up the
following words and phrases:
Not average; atypical
Different from how people should be
Different from how nature or God meant people
to be
Different from how we see ourselves
Unacceptable
Morally deficient and weak
Not responsible for their actions
Unable to exercise self-control
Socially inappropriate
Weird
Out of touch with reality
Unaware of how they affect other people
Tending to make us feel frightened or anxious
Crazy; insane
Unable to cope with life(26)
Currently, in the United States, categorizing
people as normal or abnormal is a large-scale undertaking that is
implemented by various individuals and groups, including the
American Psychiatric Association, academic staff, and the people
next-door. Yet, this procedure of delineating normality has
invariably consisted of ’’far more ’art* (politics, values, social
mores) than, science.”(27) Many people silently feel anxious about
whether they are normal. This worrying causes an undeterminable
amount of harm and consumes a great deal of energy. Numerous
individuals ’’feel needless shame, fear, panic, conflict and
anger’’ when they are labelled abnormal either formally or
informally.(28) As I’ve noted, diagnosing people as mentally ill
has helped very little to moderate their torment and often
increases it. This fact doesn’t mean that it is erroneous to
detect when some people need assistance.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—IV,
the edition currently in use as Caplan writes, contains nearly
four hundred ways to be abnormal. Its classification system leaves
wide latitude ’’for subjectivity, opinion, judgment, and bias” in
deciding who is abnormal.(29) A therapist who focuses on pathology
can easily discover a way to diagnose virtually anyone as
abnormal.(30) Yet, research has shown that therapists rarely
concur about which people are normal and which aren’t (and if not,
how).(31) In fact, the manual’s reliability is so poor that the
chance is not great that two therapists will make the same
designation of pathology (even in broad categories) for the same
individual. Therefore, we cannot presume that the groupings
describe anything authentic.(32)
When we find out that one person is calling
another person abnormal, we have to ask why he has made that
decision. Does the labeller want to aid the other person or is he
trying to show his superiority to that person? If he wants to
help, will calling the person abnormal advance that purpose?(33)
We must also ask, "Normal compared to whom?" A standard is always
involved in defining normality, and everybody believes some
standards are more appropriate than others. Caplan concludes,
"Thus we must always ask not only What is the standard? but Who
is Choosing the standard?"(34) Overall, the process of
attempting to define normality is dubious. Any attempt entails
extensive value judgments, nearly insuperable difficulties
involving interpretations and research methods, and formidable
hazards to the individuals labelled abnormal. Furthermore, it is
wrong for the manual to concentrate almost exlusively on
individual minds to the exclusion of societal problems. The manual
should focus much more zealously on our "crazy-making, sick,
impersonal society.”(35)
After my Feldenkrais sessions, I tried
periodically to assure myself that I was normal. I still wasn’t
"normal," if that word is interpreted as meaning that all systems
are functioning as they were naturally intended to function. A
normal person probably will not wonder whether or not he is
normal. A person who supposes he is normal is most likely not.(36)
In fact, one individual can’t exercise judgment
about another’s normalcy unless blatant mental illness is
involved. It is impossible for a therapist to find out enough
about another person’s body and brain to make this judgment.(37)
Each person must discover for himself what is normal.
By now I had entirely exhausted the $50,000 I
had received in 1969. It was difficult for my mother to pay a
large percentage of my rent in an apartment. The Massachusetts
Rehabilitation Commission placed me in subsidized housing. I was
enrolled in a special "voucher program" in which I paid a little
more than the usual rent for a subsidized apartment. I moved into
one in a decent complex in my childhood neighborhood.
My rehabilitation counselor referred me to a
group program for people who had experienced emotional problems
and now sought employment. The job placement specialist managed to
secure me a position at the minimum wage in a Walden bookstore
located about ten miles outside Fall River. This job went as
poorly as my teaching job at the community college. I wasn’t given
enough hours to learn how to ring up all the different kinds of
sales correctly. Furthermore, I enjoyed reading books far more
than putting them on shelves and selling them. I was occasionally
hostile to the managers and was fired after two months. I then
returned to my routine of reading and exercising.
A few weeks later, I went to my bookcase and
pulled out Alice Miller’s For Your Own Good: Child-rearing and
the Roots of Violence. I had bought it several months before
while browsing in a bookstore. I had been attracted by
anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s recommendation on the back cover.
He states that this significant book clearly traces the origins of
violence in the world to our unsound child-rearing customs.
Reading the book with great interest, I began
to understand what had happened to me as a child. In The Drama
of the Gifted Child, Miller notes:
"To put it another way: our patients are
intelligent, they read in newspapers and books about the absurdity
of the armaments race, about exploitation through capitalism,
diplomatic insincerity, the arrogance and manipulation of power,
submission of the weak and the impotence of individuals—and they
have thought about these subjects. What they do not see, because
they cannot see it is the absurdities of their mothers at the time
when they were still tiny children".(1)
This statement certainly applied to me before I
read For Your Own Good. I rushed to a bookstore and
purchased Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child and Thou
Shalt not be Aware. During the next three years, I read
about forty books on prenatal development, birth, early childhood,
and dysfunctional child-rearing patterns.
Fromm declares that a few books have provided
great inspiration to him and significantly influence his life. He
states that everybody should ask himself whether there are a few
books that have been of crucial importance to his development.
Until I read Jiddu Krishnamurti’s books On Relationship
and On Conflict in 1998 and 1999, the two books that
influenced me the most were The Sane Society and For
Your Own Good.(2)
I had led my life at a frenetic pace for a long
time. Fromm explains that the neurotic person is an alienated
person because he is driven by unconscious forces which seperate
him from his genuine self and other people. The psychotic has
simply carried this alienation to an extreme and lost his sense of
self completely.(3) Passivity in the classic definition of the
word means that a person "is driven by forces he does not control,
that he cannot act but can only react."(4) A person isn’t passive
when he sits still and meditates, thinks, or gazes at natural
phenomenon.
In 1989, I slowed down my tempo considerably. I
began to attend only a few movies a year and even quit playing
tennis. For a few years, I meditated about an hour a day. However,
Krishnamurti points out that conventional meditation, which
involves sitting in one place and repeating words or visualizing
scenes, isn’t really meditation at all. It’s actually
self-improvement, which is egocentric.(5) Genuine meditation isn’t
an isolated activity; it must be practiced during the activities
of daily life.(6) It’s a demanding task involving methodical
attention to inner and outer happenings.(7) By restricting
meditation to a particular time, one is actually engaging in
self-hypnosis.(8) The true meditator is able to quiet his mind
through the understanding of its clashing elements.(9) Although
not carried out in an ideal way, this change of pace did help my
body-mind system to attain some sense of emotional balance for the
first time in my life. The source of my constant activity
undoubtedly derived from certain feelings which started in the
womb and early infancy. Janov declares, "I view the original
primal feelings as essentially nurochemical energy which is
transformed into kinetic or mecanical energy impelling constant
physical motion or internal pressure.”(10)
I had simply carried to an extreme the feverish
pace which is common in our society. Activity which is actually
busyness is stressed. Most people engage in so many "activities"
that they are incapable of inner development; they even transform
their so-called leisure moments into further activity. Always
depending on stimuli from outside themselves, these people are
very passive in the classical sense. These stimuli include:
aimless chatter with other people, viewing movies or television,
travel, shopping, and new sex partners.(11)
Every culture has a tempo and the word that
best categorizes America’s tempo is ’speed.’ Many other cultures
believe that haste makes waste; our culture, however, believes
that speed represents attentiveness, strength, and
accomplishment.(12) Medieval craftsmen were usually sef-employed
and set their own pace. They didn’t think it was improper to quit
work for lengthy periods each day to talk with a friend, do tasks
at home, or sit in a neighborhood tavern.(13) Then, the bourgeois
class started to use the clock in almost every part of daily life.
Rifkin explains: ’’The new god was science and technology, the new
salvation material progress; the new church, the industrial order;
the new idol, the clock and watch; and the new ritual, the daily
schedule.”(14)
In the modern factory system, the machinery
began to regulate the pace of work. The factory tempo was
continuous and merciless.(15) The worker had to come to work
punctually, work at the required tempo, and depart at the
scheduled time. Most farmers and tradesmen had to be coerced into
accepting this system and didn’t make disciplined employees.
Employers used severe penalties and disciplinary measures along
with incentives and rewards to ensure compliance.(16) Employers
even limited or completely forbade talking between employees so as
not to upset the schedule. Finally, they started to use their
employees’ children instead.
Traditional schools have operated like
factories. This educational system trains children to learn at the
same rapid pace in which events in the frantic urban industrial
world take place. Speed in giving an answer or solving a problem
is emphasized. Examinations have time deadlines, and the best
achiever is said to be the one who can give the most correct
answers in the allotted time. Rifkin notes, ’’Students are taught
to cram, compartmentalize, and segment their learning to conform
with the dictates of clocks, bells, and schedules.”(17)
With the addition of the computer and the
program to the clock, efficiency has become the most important
value in the contemporary age.(18) Computers and programs are the
most powerful form of social control ever devised; they allow each
person’s immediate future to "be predetermined down to the tiniest artificial time segments of
milliseconds and nanoseconds."(19) This high-tech world of clocks
and schedules, computers and programs promised to release people
from a situation of agonizing toil and scarcity. Actually, the
human race is becoming more isolated from each other. Extremely
anxious, they long to escape back to the natural world for a
respite from this high-tech
environment.(20)
Most workers are not purchasing merchandise
because they agree with the consumerist philosophy behind the
American Way of Life. They are buying these goods in order to
allay their immense self-doubt. Consumerism is also a protest
against a mode of life that that has harmed them and that they
secretly disdain.(21) I am living within this urban industrial
culture but have barely participated in its work routines. I
remain alienated from this type of life.
C
Two extraordinary incidents in 1989 disturbed
my attempt to establish a slower pace of life. First, my mother
acted out a scene which could have come directly from one of
Miller’s books. When the lease on my subsidized apartment was
about to expire in June, I didn’t renew it at Florence’s request.
She said that I should move back in with her in order to save
money. Yet, when I appeared with several suitcases at the door of
her apartment, she told me that I couldn’t stay. A glazed, almost
trance-like expression suddenly appeared on her face. My mother
then quietly but firmly remarked, ”l’m not afraid of you, Howard.”
At the age of sixty-three, Florence continued to act out her long
repressed fear of her own mother.
In August 1989, another incident could have
ended my turbulent odyssey through American civilization. It
involved my friend Leonard Sokoll, with whom I had played tennis
for thirty years at the Match Point Tennis Club in Fall River. I
had accompanied Sokoll three times during the last few years to a
bird sanctuary which was a fifteen-minute drive from Fall River.
One Sunday morning I drove to his apartment around 8:30 A.M.
Sokoll started driving his car with me in the front passenger
seat. This seventy-four-year-old man was a good driver. As a
salesman, he was accustomed to driving over fifty thousand miles a
year. However, on the outskirts of Fall River, he suddenly fainted
while the car was traveling sixty miles an hour. It swerved off
the highway onto a divider. The divider was usually grass but was
now gravel because the road was being repaired along this stretch.
Sokoll’s automobile weaved back and forth as it traveled over the
gravel for about five seconds. I thought that he had suffered a
heart attack.
Then, the car suddenly smashed into a huge
mound of soft dirt. The only mound in sight, it had been left by
the construction crew. The vehicle came to a halt with only a
slight dent in the front fender. Sokoll woke up and exclaimed,
"What are we doing here!" I told him what had happened. A rescue
vehicle soon arrived. We assured the medical technician that we
were uninjured. My friend also assured the two men that he would
consult his doctor about the cause of the blackout.
A tow truck arrived and brought the automobile
to a nearby repair shop. A mechanic unbent the fender which was
preventing one of the wheels from turning properly. Sokoll then
insisted on driving home! I hadn’t had time to become nervous when
the car had left the road; now, however, I was inwardly praying
that we reach home safely. Fortunately, we soon arrived back at my
friend’s apartment in one piece. Then, we went to Match Point and
played tennis! Sokoll went for an examination in Boston about a
week later; there, he was given a portable monitor to wear as he
went about his daily routine. After it picked up an arrhythmia, he
entered a Boston hospital and had a pacemaker Installed.
I fully agree with the many commentators who
think that the automobile is a very destructive technology.
According to the National Safety Council, more Americans have died
in automobile-related deaths than were killed in all America’s
battles during the past two hundred years.(1) More disabling
injuries to the brain and spinal cord result from automobile
mishaps than from any other cause. Between ten and forty people
per 100,000 suffer significant impairment and pain from these
types of injuries. Many impairments aren’t noticed by crash
victims until days or even months later; they cause undiagnosed
discomfort and distress. These statistics don’t include the many
accidents that aren’t even conveyed to the police.(2)
A few days before finishing the last draft of
this chapter, I walked out the door of my apartment building and
started toward the circular road in front of the complex’s two
buildings. A car driven by a resident drove down the road,
swerving onto the grass near my building and down a ditch next to
the structure. This elderly woman either had fallen asleep or lost
consciousness for a few seconds. Fortunately, she emerged from the
badly damaged vehicle limping slightly but apparently otherwise
unharmed. Had I walked out the door about seven seconds earlier, I
would have appeared shortly thereafter in the obituary section of
Fall River’s newspaper. Actually, one-fifth of the 43,000 people
deprived of life by the automobile each year are pedestrians and
bicyclists.(3) Nevertheless, politically aware doctors don’t tell
an automobile accident victim that he "is not the victim of a
specific car accident but a victim of an obsolete transportation
system kept alive by the necessities of profit."(4) Instead, the
injured person is released so that he can resume driving and this
time be fatally injured.
The automobile is harmful in other ways. It is
the most environmentally destructive non-military device ever
manufactured.(5) It is the technology most responsible for ruining
community life in the United States.(6) It tends to make people
competitive, arrogant, ruthless, and irascible."(7) Furthermore,
the private car does not stimulate a person to use any of his
genuine abilities. It causes mental confusion, stopping a person
from thinking. Finally, giving
him an incorrect feeling of strength, the
automobile hampers him from walking.(8)
On the other hand, walking is a natural human
function. Dr. Andrew Weil, a nationally known proponent of natural
medicine, declares: "Walking is a complex behavior that requires
functional integration of a great deal of sensory and motor
experience; it exercises our brains as well as our musculoskeletal
systems." A person1s limbs move in a cross-patterned
way when walking. This means that "the right leg and the left arm
move forward at the same time, then the left leg and the right
arm."(9) This sequence causes electrical activity in the brain
that has a harmonizing effect on the entire central nervous
system. It is a unique benefit of walking as an exercise.
Personally, in recent years, I have benefitted greatly from
walking. Since 1985, I’ve walked four to seven miles a day year
round.
Additionally, following John Bradshaw’s advice
to let go and let God in, I regularly attended Temple Shalom from
1990 to 1993. Faced with an absolute void of relationship, fear
and self-interest had driven me back to the temple in which I had
spent a considerable amount of time as a child. However, I was
only partially successful in breaking my isolation; I didn’t
socialize with any of the congregants outside of the temple. I did
become a friend of Rabbi Solomon Kravitz, an intellectual and
author of several books on religion. Rabbi Kravitz and I conversed
extensively about books and social problems. In hindsight, I see
that I was travelling down another false path.
Social character has to satisfy any person’s
natural religious requirements. A religion does not necessarily
have to be a system which has a concept of God, involves idols, or
even is perceived as a religion. It may refer ”to any
group-shared system of thought and action that offers the
individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion."(1)
Market economics has become the primary religion.(2) This may be
termed "moneytheism." Shakespeare declared that money had become
the new "visible God" of Western civilization.(3) Norman O. Brown
observes that our culture doesn’t offer its surplus to God (as
previous societies did). Instead, the procedure of creating an
ever-growing surplus has become God.(4) R. H. Tawney, in his
forward to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism sums up this ethic clearly: "So far from there
being an inevitable conflict between money-making and piety, they
are natural allies, for the virtues incumbent in the
elect—diligence, thrift, sobriety, prudence—are the most reliable
passport to commercial prosperity.(5)
We have wandered off the path of true
enlightenment into a "spiritual cul-de-sac."(6) "Ambition,
atomism, and alienation" have poisoned human awareness. The words
holy and health may be traced to the concept of wholeness.
Therefore, it is imperative that more and more people see the
connections that have led to our dysfunctional state of
affairs.(7)
Unfortunately, organized religion has bee quite
limited in its effectiveness among alienated men. This type of
religion is merely a commodity in a department store window.
Genuine monotheism is incompatible with the capitalist success
ethic, which relegates concern about God and meaningful answers to
the problem of man’s existence to a decidedly secondary role.(8)
Ministers, priests, and rabbis should be leading the criticism of
modern capitalism. Certainly, some religious leaders have voiced
this criticism and even taken meaningful action against
capitalistic abuses. However, overall, organized religion helps to
maintain the conservative forces
in contemporary life and uphold "a profoundly irreligious
system."(9)
I’ve come to the conclusion that organized
religion isn’t even worth reforming. As Krishnamurti points out,
there will never be peace in the world as long as nationalism and
organized religions exist. Historically, members of different
religious groups have killed each other for God’s sake.(10)
Although it talks about peace and love, the religious world is as
responsible for the perpetuation of fear and self-interest as the
commercial society.(11) They both have a devastating effect on
human life because fear is the most harmful feeling in man.
Krishnamurti notes: "It makes the mind wither, distorts thought,
leads to all kinds of theories, extraordinarily ingenious or
subtle, to absurd superstitions, to dogmas and beliefs."(12)
Religion’s dogmas, rituals, and sacred books
aren’t really sacred or holy; its gods and priests don’t have any
value.(13) The dogmas and rituals have been passed from generation
to generation. Therefore, believers’
minds are similar to computer programs.(14)
During my brief sojourn into the religious
world, I was still self-absorbed; I was now pursuing God rather
than abstractly pursuing social revolution. Since I hadn’t
achieved a respectable position within conventional society, I was
now trying to gain some respectability in the religious world. My
behaviour was still based on the fear of being an outsider, a
nobody.(15) Now, at least, I could be close to God. This path was
unsatisfactory because the pursuit of respectability unvaryingly
brings isolation and never liberates the mind.(16)
Reading and tennis had given me pleasure in my
otherwise stunted life. At this moment, I was pursuing the supreme
pleasure—God.(17) My search was driven by my weariness of the
world’s brutalities and social injustices that I had both
experienced and addictively investigated academically. I was using
the temple as another escape, similar to drinking or going to the
movies. I was thinking about life rather than living it. I
continued following the path that so many people art treading as
second-hand human beings, quoting others, following others, empty
as a shell.(18) The quotes in the temple revolved around the Bible
rather than criticisms of capitalism.
Most worshippers’ lives aren’t holy at all;
they are lived within the brutal competitive struggle and corrupt
consumer society. The majority of congregants are devoid of
compassion. Krishnamurti points out, "Compassion means passion for
all human beings, and also for the animals, for nature."(19) This
isn’t surprising, because the age-old dogmas and rituals are mere
thought processes.(20) Actually, humanity is stupidly worshipping
what its own thought has created.(21) In other words, it’s
worshipping itself.(22) Of course, a small percentage of the
faithful within organized religions are leading truly religious
lives, promoting harmonious and just relations among people.
However, they could engage in these activities without relying on
religious abstractions.
I now understand that a person who wants to
find the truth, to discover reality must find it himself, not
through intermediaries. Knowing oneself is the only path to
enlightment; a person can successfully achieve this understanding
only through complete awareness of his own thoughts and feelings
in daily relationships.(23) Krishnamurti notes, "No expert, no
specialist can show us how to understand the process of the
self.”(24) The mind becomes still, and a person is in affectionate
communion with others. This is genuine religion.(25)
"Normal" and "sane" modern men have killed
millions of human beings in wars. Preparing for and fighting wars
have been major preoccupations of human institutions in the
twentieth century. 120 wars have been fought by countries during
the last forty-five years. Twenty-two wars took place in the world
during the 1980s. During this decade, the United States’s military
spending amounted to over $2.3 trillion. Presently, research and
development funds spent on military projects account for over 70
percent of all research and development spending in the United
States.(1)
During battles, most soldiers believe that they
are engaged in self-defense, upholding their honor, or supported
by God. The people on the enemy side are regarded as "cruel,
irrational fiends," who must be subdued in order to eliminate evil
from the world. However, a short time after hostilities end, our
enemies often become our friends and vice versa.(2)
R.D. Laing points out:
"In the last fifty years, we human beings have
slaughtered by our own hands coming on for one hundred million of
our own species. We all live under constant threat of our total
annihilation. We seem to seek death and destruction as much as
life and happiness. We are driven to kill and be killed as we are
to let live and live. Only by the most outrageous violation of
ourselves have we achieved our capacity to live in relative
adjustment to a civilization apparently driven to its own
destruction. Perhaps to a limited extent we can undo what has been
done to us and
what we have done to ourselves. Perhaps men and
women were born to love one another, simply and genuinely, rather
than to this travesty that we call love. If we can stop destroying
ourselves we may stop destroying others. We have to begin by
admitting and even accepting our violence, rather than blindingly
destroying ourselves with it, and therewith we have to realize
that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to
die."(3)
We are cruel and callous because we have
repressed our own early humiliation and suffering.(4) Miller
concludes, "The stockpiling of nuclear weapons is only a symbol of
bottled-up feelings of hatred and of the accompanying inability to
perceive and articulate genuine needs."(5) Miller doesn’t write
abstractly about social structures; she draws her conclusions from
the observable realities of daily life.(6)
Historian Philip Greven has shown in Spare
the Child that corporeal punishment of children is a
significant factor in the perpetuation of violence through the
generations. The implements "range from hands to belts to rods to
switches to rulers to boards to paddles to whips to chains and to
almost anything else grown-ups might think to use...."(7) This physical punishment is
actually child abuse.(8) The kinds of punishment, the degree of
pain, the types of suffering, the levels of physical and emotional
harm vary greatly between individuals, extending from quite mild
to very harsh.(9) Commonly, parents begin to attack their
children’s bodies and spirits before the age which allows
subsequent conscious recall.(10_
Greven asserts, "Love is natural; hate is
created."(11) Some children, however, come to despise their
parents because of the violent assaults they have undergone at
their hands. The resulting anger and frequently rage are exactly
the same feelings as are generated in adults who are struck. Anger
is the most important emotion that remains embedded in our psyches
after the pain has been repressed or disowned. Corporeal
punishments suppress empathy and deep sympathy for oneself and
other people. These lacks often last for a lifetime.(12)
These early assaults against children’s bodies
are also assaults upon their identities. Even if struck only once,
a child retains the memory in his brain and body for life.
Children who were hit only once or twice can frequently recall the
sensation of hurting and violent blows years later. A "psychic
warehouse of assaults, fears, and pains" is built; an individual’s
future experiences, actions, fantasies, and thoughts" will rely
heavily on withdrawals from this warehouse.(13) Those children who
are repeatedly punished also have to deal with the apprehension
and intense fear of future punishment. It is apparent that
children who are assaulted transfer their feelings about such
punishments into their adult domestic relationships. These
feelings are "anger, rage, anxiety, fear, terror, hatred,
hostility, and love."(14)
Exploring and attempting to comprehend the
effects of distressing assaults on children which ostensibly are
carried out for disciplinary purposes is a pressing but complex
task. The hurts are stronger and more likely to cause injury to
ourselves and other people when they are deliberately disregarded
or repressed than when they are felt and admitted to be true.(15)
As Eugene Bliss notes, "Although reality may be unfair, the truth
must be faced, the past is unalterable and must be accepted.(16)
In any case, the consequences are extraordinarily widespread; they
radiate from individual minds to our communities and ultimately to
the entire world. Indeed, early physical punishment affects all
aspects of our society and its culture.
It is urgent that we find answers to a series
of questions about early punishment. How does early punishment
affect ”our innermost selves, our feelings and personalities?”(17)
How does it affect our beliefs and actions in public matters? How
does childhood punishment mold our consciousness and our firm
beliefs about authority and power?
The world’s current problems are reflections of
what is inside us— poverty, violence, pain.”(18) Humans pretend to
be godlike and act violently because their inner torment has made
them the sickest of animals.(19) The death of the world through
environmental collapse or nuclear catastrophe are distinct
possibilities. These impulses to destroy all life on earth can be
traced to early punishments.(20) Our society must begin to
perceive and comprehend "that the end of the world begins with the
striking of a single child." Only in this way can we "reshape our
lives, our consciousness, and our world."(21)
It appears that for every step civilized man
has taken forward in science, technology, and the manufacture of
material goods, he has taken a step backward in moral growth.(22)
Humaneness doesn’t come from a culture’s intellectual
sophistication or from thinking about moral
values.(23) Children who are loved, respected, and cared for
properly will naturally develop their own humane ideals.(24) Janov
points out, "On the contrary, teaching values is what is
desperately needed for those who do not feel, who cannot
sympathize, empathize, and understand naturally."(25)
Overall, our society has succeeded in
generating an intellect lacking intelligence.(26) This is
certainly true of the half million brilliant scientists who spend
their careers developing weapons. People with genuine intelligence
would do things that truly benefit themselves, other people, and
nature. Unfortunately, most people in the world today have been
damaged severely and have not developed the many genuine
intelligences which are the birthright of every normal person.
Society really doesn’t need geniuses "in a technologic-scientific
and socially cubistically dilapidated world....” It needs
individuals "who are able to love, to work, to play, and to use
their minds soundly.”(27)
My agitated mind had achieved right thought but
not right thinking. The latter can’t be discovered in books or
obtained from an advisor; it must be generated effortlessly and
without premeditation through the mind’s
becoming attentive to its behaviour in ongoing
relationships.(28) The American philosopher and educational
reformer John Dewey defines intelligence as a questioning,
experimental receptivity to experience that facilitates a person’s
ties to the outside world.(29) It is the
discerning of what is, which is continously altering.(30)
Actually, intelligence is totally unrelated to
’’knowledge or information."(31) My uncreative mind had been like
a phonograph record repeating ideas from books; yet, I called this
parrotting of thought knowledge.(32) I had been
living in a magnificent maze —really a prison
—constructed by my own intellect. Addicted to knowledge, I didn’t
realize that the faster I acquired it, the faster was my
degeneration.(33) My experience was unique only because of the
state of my body-mind system while I was obtaining much of my
information. Unfortunately, the world is top-heavy with book
knowledge but short of people who understand themselves.(34) Human
difficulties are so complicated that
people can resolve them only by being
uncomplicated, not by seeking enormous intellectual
attainments.(35)
In the late 1980s and early nineties, I sat on
the coordinating committee of a state chapter of a national peace
group. The committee’s members talked politely to each other and
solved differences of opinion in a calm and rational way. They
reached agreement by consensus. This was the first time in my life
that I had been exposed to such an atmosphere when important
decisions were being made. I was able to improve my social skills
through this volunteer work. It was much more effective than
reading books on developing social skills or attending therapy
sessions. I was learning from real life models, as I would have
done if I had been raised in a more functional family. My
improvement was rudimentary; I certainly didn’t attain the
vibrancy of an extovert. Yet, this experience was valuable because
it broke the trance that caused me only to relate to books rather
than to people. The fog in which I had been so long enveloped
started to dissipate.
However, society no more needs peace
organizations than it needs organized religion to solve the
problem of war, a catastrophe caused by our daily relationships.
The respectable members of society fervently desire peace, but all
their actions in the home and the wider society lead to war.(36)
When I virtually stopped going to Temple Shalom
late in 1993, I became isolated again. Social historian
Christopher Lasch asserts that in our troubled age, everyday life
turns into a struggle for survival. People become accustomed to
taking one day at a time; they rarely allow themselves to look
back at better times. If they look ahead, they try to figure out
how they can put themselves in the best position to weather future
disasters. Selfhood is a luxury in this disturbed era. Lasch
asserts, "Selfhood implies a personal history, friends, family, a
sense of place."(1) A self under attack shrinks inward;
beleagured, it finds this is necessary in order to ensure its
psychic survival.
One of the most important causes of distress is
a sense of complete loneliness. Krishnamurti defines it as the
feeling ’’that you have nothing to depend upon, that you have no
relationship with anyone, that you are totally isolated."(2)
Loneliness brings action and stimulation to a halt; it even
prevents development of self-acquaintance and identity. The lonely
person doesn’t contribute to the making of cultural meaning or
gain his proper share of it.(3) Fortunately, it is impossible to
live in complete solitude.(4) Through books, I’ve had access to
the world’s greatest minds. I’ve also been constantly subjected to
my own repetitive thoughts and conflicts. It would be far more
beneficial to communicate face-to-face with fellow human beings.
Actually, in order to function at a superior level, a person must
be living harmoniously in the community. Pearsall asserts, "Holism
means ’integration with others,’ not just within self."(5) I’ve
continued to feel impotent, overwhelmed by a sense of
victimization. As Kai Erickson puts it, the
traumatized person "has no defence other than
to make himself small, to draw a curtain over his sensory organs,
to take his inner self out of the field of combat so that there is
less of him to be wounded and less of him to be implicated in the
insanity of what is happening."(6)
With rare exceptions, animals associate with
each other in the natural world. When a creature segregates itself
from the group, something is amiss or else this action is helping
the group to survive in some way.(7) So, it is not surprising that
evolution made human beings into social animals. Schmookler points
out:
"In our natural condition, society was
essentially an extended family. Intimate relationships of sharing
and caring were at the core of our species strategy for survival,
and it is in such relationships that our deepest selves tend to be
nourished. This is another aspect of connectedness that can
strengthen the human in its strategy against the inhumane."(8)
Therefore, human beings want to live in a
society with the quality of life which a young child in a
functional family experiences. This environment gives the infant a
sense of trust; he feels that he is part of a loving group.(9)
On the contrary, Americans are automatic
nobodies because no one has any stable position or lasting union
with other people. Society consists of "a jungle of competing
egos” trying to make places for themselves. Competition breeds
loneliness and results in only short-term contentments, because
one competition is followed by another one.(10)
All mentally sound people have a fundamental
impulse to establish and preserve important associations. These
relationships must involve friendly communications with at least a
couple of people fairly often and in a dependable environment.
However, in the United States, there are currently fewer of these
types of relationships than ever before in modern times. Far too
many individuals in our society have turned into effective robots
who are financially comfortable but have few relationships with
others.(11) Richard Goodwin
has noted that 'clubs, associations, citizens’ groups, and
recreation leagues” aren’t an effective replacement for the
habitual communication of individuals who inhabit a common
environment.(12)
In fact, Americans have slighted their
neighbors more and more during the past twenty years. This is
unfortunate, because many of these neighbors are solitary. The
United States Census Bureau found in 1995 that people living alone
now comprise one-fourth of American households. In 1970, the
figure was one-sixth and in 1950 it was one-eleventh.(13)
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that ’’unfamiliarity,
suspiciousness, distrust and loneliness” are increasing. (14) Fewer and
fewer hours are being spent socializing. This is sad, because
friendship that merely entails talking can be beneficial. Lacking
friendship, a person is likely to question whether he is
human.(15)
My failure to establish genuine communication
with the community is similar to that of K., the protagonist in
Kafka’s The Castle. A land-surveyor, K., is summoned by
the authorities from the Castle; he travels to the village where
it is situated. K. is powerless and lonely. He doesn’t fit in with
the peasants nor with the Castle. He is even unsure about life in
the Castle is like. The villagers don’t accept visitors and greet
him coldly. Both K. and his assistants call the Castle and are
told by the Castellan that K. will never be allowed into the
Castle. Gardena, the landlady of the Bridge Inn tells him: ’’You
are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t
anything.(16)
As time passes, the Castle authorities refuse
to communicate with K. , although they allow him to roam the
village. In his wanderings, however, he has to exercise extreme
caution. The authorities’ psychological abandonment of K.
’’transposed him to an unofficial, totally unrecognized, troubled,
and alien existence.”(17)
The Mayor finally informs K. that his case is
unimportant and that, in fact, he has been summoned because of a
bureaucratic error. The village doesn’t require a land-surveyor at
this time. Furthermore, even K.'s and his assistants’ contacts
with the authorities in the Castle up to now have been illusory.
Yet K., in his ignorance, has thought that they were real.
The Mayor tells the land-surveyor that he is
too sensitive and that he is receiving respectful treatment from
the villagers. He states that K. is free to leave at any time but
emphasizes that he isn’t being thrown out. K. gradually feels that
he has a stake in the village and is determined to hold on to it.
He insists that he doesn’t expect any special treatment from the
Castle; he merely desires his rights.
K. is unsuccessful in repeated attempts to gain
access to Klamm, the chief of Department X. He eventually comes to
believe that he is the victim of a plot to keep him from reaching
the Castle authorities. These authorities’ power is absolute on
important matters. K. notes that the officials infuse fear of
themselves in the villagers. The land-surveyor basically doesn’t
disapprove of these actions, because a ruler who is virtuous
should rightly be feared. However, ” the authorities often abuse
their power, speaking very offensively....(18)
Miller points out that K.’s predicament
symbolizes that of a small child who is psychologically abandoned
by his parents and other adults in his environment. The officials
are his parents, and the villagers are the household servants. The
abused child is bewildered by the unmistakable disregard shown to
him and mystified by the adults’ manipulation. He is
’’discredited, misled, not paid attention to, shunted off with
promises, humiliated, and ignored....”(19) In fact, not a single
person comforts him and clarifies things for him. The poor
child—like K.— "is groping in a dark labyrinth."(20)
The abused child has been born but isn’t really
wanted. He simply longs for the respectful treatment that he is
entitled to from his parents. Unfortunately, his hopes are
shattered time and again by the child-rearing principles Miller
terms poisonous pedagogy, as K.'s are dashed by the
uncommunicative bureaucracy.(21_ The child and K. are repeatedly
told that they should realize that the authorities’ intentions are
good. Therefore, they should ignore any cruelty that may be
perpetrated upon them. The abused child’s own desires and emotions
are neglected; only his parents’ count. Similarly, only the Castle
authorities’ needs are important. There is no "dialectical process
involving dialogue."(22) The manipulated child is as much an
ignorant, bothersome outcast as is K. If he tries to make clear
his stressful feelings, he is considered recalcitrant to
pedagogical advice. All his childish spontaneity, wonder, and
curiosity are crushed.
The Castle had eluded me all my life. As
a young child, I found myself in a household devoid of healthy
communication. Starting in the seventh grade, I began to focus
heavily on abstract symbols and entered a preliminary schizoid
state. Later, with my muscles contracted, I was as far away from
the Castle as possible. Finally, I managed to return to the
classroom and earn a Master’s Degree. However, as a graduate
student, I remained isolated outside of class. It then appeared
that I would reach the Castle by becoming a teacher. This wish
proved to be illusory. Like K., I
have remained on the periphery of the Castle.
I survived my illness because I exercised
vigorously and escaped from taking powerful medications. These
strong medical drugs commonly do more harm than good; they promote
the perception of the body as a machine "run by mechanical and
manipulating switches."(1) Capra sums up this approach:
"For the past three hundred years our culture
has been dominated by the view of the human body as a machine, to
be analyzed in terms of its parts. The mind is separated from the
body, disease is seen as a malfunction of biological mechanisms,
and health is defined as the absence of disease."(2)
Drugs are overconsumed in a society which
believes that technology can be utilized to shape human life
according to virtually any plan.(3) In fact, technical medical
interventions cause enormous "pain, dysfunction, disability, and
anguish."(4) This clinical iatrogenesis is one of the most
virulent epidemics of contemporary society.
In the 1980s, increasing numbers of people paid
office visits to the burgeoning numbers of holistic health care
practitioners. Unfortunately, the holistic doctors I visited
weren’t working as a team. Now, centers which
feature an integrated medical approach using
both traditional and alternative methods are arising.
Dr. Patch Adams gives some excellent ideas
about how to develop a humanistic medical system in Gesundteit!
Adams, a graduate of the Medical College of Virginia, ran a
medical practice from his various homes in Virginia and West
Virginia. He and his associates didn’t charge their patients, take
money from health insurance or carry malpractice insurance. For
several years, Adams earned an adequate living by working at
part-time jobs related to medicine. His group’s practice was also
funded by gifts from friends. Usually, the personnel included
fifteen to twenty people, including two or more doctors. The group
emphasized preventive medicine and combined alternative therapies
with allopathic medicine. Homeopaths, chiropractors, and
naturopaths began to treat patients at Adam’s residence; an
acupuncturist practiced in the basement. The practitioners lived
together and tried to develop "an environment that was loving,
humorous, creative, cooperative, and open to change.”(5)
Adams deplores the fact that medicine is now
primarily "an efficiency- driven business” and has neglected its
service-oriented nature.(6) It has changed from a community
endeavor to a corporate undertaking ladened with greed and
selfishness. This is tragic because medical care shouldn’t be "a
commodity to be bought and sold"; basically, it should be a gift
from the society to its citizens.(7)
Ideally, healing should be a loving human
interaction rather than a business matter.(8) Adams and his staff
try to become friends with the patient. This caring physician
asserts that "friendship is great medicine.” House calls are an
essential part of his practice; he believes that a medical history
is sadly deficient without one. Initially, this humanistic
physician spends hours with a patient "learning about his or her
parents, lovers, friendships, jobs, and hobbies: the entire
person."(10)
Adams learned that most patients needed a great
deal more than medication to get well. Frequently, he saw that
discontent with a person’s "work, family, and self" precluded a
"cure" or change for the better from occurring. He
began to understand that his group must learn
how to stop these misfortunes from happening or change them if
they had already occurred. Only then is it possible to properly
treat an individual’s health difficulties.(11)
This humane physician is another observer of
American civilization who has found that most people in our
society are lonely. This condition, in conjunction with
lovelessness, brings the greatest suffering of all.(12) This is
bad because happiness is a critical factor in keeping healthy; in
fact, it may be the most important factor of all.(13) Love is the
most powerful medicine in the world.(14) No quantity of physical
health can make up for dysfunctional relationships "with our
families, friends, and ourselves."(15)
Adams deplores the fact that our important
professions such as medicine, education, and law are now largely
incapable of rendering good service to humanity. He notes that we
spend huge sums of money on war preparations, fancy clothing,
makeup, and amusements rather than on activities which could lead
to a healthy society.(17) Individual wellness is integrally
related to that of society and of the entire world. Social and
global improvements are vitally necessary to ensure individual
health.
It’s obvious that even the best holistic health
practitioners don’t yet influence the disorder of the wider
society very much. Shamans have long provided people with a social
myth that transcends past personal experiences. The shaman tries
to influence the collective and social unconscious which involves
the entire community. Medicine, whether traditional or holistic,
"will have to go beyond the study of biological mechanisms and,
like shamanism, find the causes of illness in environmental
influences, psychological influences, and social relations."(18)
Advanced industrial society incapacitates
people from successfully contending with their surroundings and
when they become ill, "substitutes a ’clinical’ or therapeutic
prothesis for the broken relationships.(19) People would resist
this atmosphere more frequently if medicine did not rationalize
their biological confusion as a weakness in their health instead
of as a weakness in the life style which is forced on them or
which they force on themselves. This is a clandestine and amoral
way to accuse the victim. The physician, who is in an elite
position in society, decides that a patient is not suitably
adapted to an environment that has been created by other
professionals. Instead, the physician should be reproaching his
colleagues for shaping environments into which the human organism
has a hard time adapting itself. Originally, my illness was
largely the result of the repression of early abuse. To a
significant degree, I’ve recovered from this trauma. However, I
must still confront a crazy-making and an advanced technological
environment which I find unhealthy and frightening.
Currently, a person seeking psychological
therapy faces many potential hazards. V. Rainy has defined therapy
as an "unidentified technique applied to unspecified problems with
unpredictable outcomes.(20) Hans Strupp points out that
psychotherapy is a billion-dollar business which has ambiguous
limits, vague quality control and comparatively indefinite ethical
principles.(21) The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual disguises
the actual origins of many distressing feelings such as
"loneliness, mourning, disempowerment, insecurity, shame, anxiety,
and anger."(22)
People who are emotional disturbed do need
advice and help in taking I now believe that positive steps to
find solutions to their problems.(23) I know believe that those
individuals who are avid readers and want psychological advice
will obtain the greatest benefit from studying some of
Krishnamurti’s many books. Another positive step would be the
joining of a self-help group with people who have undergone
similar problems, as Jeffrey Masson suggests in Against
Therapy. However, many people, at least in the immediate
future, will still seek outside assistance. Therefore, it is
imperative that the helping professions devise effective means to
deal with great emotional shock rather than to focus on the
supposed mental imbalance of the victim.(24)
What the path of healing pursued, it’s vital
for the individual to bring unconscious ideas and impulses to
consciousness. Psychiatrist Leonore Terr in Unchained Memories
describes the way people repress traumatic memories, the way their
lives are affeted, and how and when they can be recalled. She
notes, "To repress is unconsciously and energetically to defend
against remembering. It is a more active process than merely
forgetting.”(25) People occasionally can remember traumas such as
kidnapping, abuse, or the death of a sibling that happened before
three years old. However, they will only remember fragments of the
trauma, which don’t contain the essence of what happened. They can
describe very early visual memories in word pictures but find it
virtually
impossible to narrate at any length.(26) 3-1/2
years old is approximately the earliest age from which memories
can be freely recalled. When asked about a specific event, such as
the birth of a younger sibling, most people can remember back a
little further than 3-1/2.
Some memories are "forgotten’’, regardless of
the youngster’s age, because they involve recurrent physical or
verbal attacks from which the child can’t defend himself. Terr
published a clinical research study in 1988 about twenty children
who had experienced various traumas under the age of five. She had
outside documentation of their experiences. The researcher points
out: "No matter how young or how nonverbal these children were at
the time of their traumas, their nonverbal behaviors—how they
played, what they feared, how they acted—indicated that their
memories had been stored and remained strongly operational.(27)
Some memories of repeated traumas later return
after having been repressed, dissociated, split off, or displaced.
It is possible for these memories to be as accurate as single
traumas that never became unconscious; customarily, however, they
are more incomplete and abridged.(28)
Human beings most likely have two memory
systems. One is already active enough so that an infant can use it
"as the infant focuses his eyes, follows, feels emotion, and
responds to other human beings."(29) Psychiatrist Daniel Stern has
demonstrated that babies retain mental pictures of very vibrant
puppets for several days. When they see the puppets again, they
instantaneously smile. The infants don't smile when the puppets
are calmer.
This is the implicit memory system. When I was
terrorized at an early age, I formed implicit memories. These
memories were "planted time after time and then stored via
entirely nonverbal pathways."(30) The verbal memory system may be
called the explicit or conscious system. It starts working around
the age of three.
Learning involves the changes in behavior of an
organism affected by its experiences. Memory is the retention of
these experiences over lengthy periods of time.(31) After a
person’s behavior is modified and stored, it is fixed in neural
circuitry. Memory is found throughout the brain; it causes an
enduring change in the connections between cells.(32) Old
non-verbal memories from a person's infant and toddler stages
frequently are the keys to that person’s ties to other people as
he grows up.(33) My implicit memories warned me that people were
unstable, even dangerous, and that I would be served best by
remaining unobtrusive.
Terr declares that every person needs his
memories and must try voluntarily to retrieve them at times. Even
when a person has many memories, he can still try to recover more.
Memories are not recovered by hammering the brain. A person should
relax and allow his mind to work calmly. Terr asserts, "Relaxed
thinking, visualization, and free association are generally as
successful in retrieving memories as hypnosis is."(34)
My memories started to come back after 1 had
read Miller and Bradshaw. My slower pace of life and extensive
reading about human development facilitated this process. Writing
this book has helped me to recall even more material. This is an
important process for any person. Terr concludes, "We need our
remembrances to understnad ourselves—who we are and what we
believe.(35) We are our memories." However, Krishnamurti asserts
that it is possible for the
mind to remember the past but to totally dissociate itself from
those happenings. Therefore, the mind can liberate itself from the
past instantly.(36)
Most people are able to remember and understand
their preschool years if they can retrieve only two or three small
fragments of events.(37) I have inferred what happened to me
during my preschool years from my reading, experiences, and
observations because I don’t remember anything. Anyway, the most
damaging abuse was perpetrated at such an early age that it would
not be retrievable by me through simple memory.
I was just as ill-served by the educational
system and its emphasis on competitive formal schooling as I was
by the fragmented health care system and its emphasis on labelling
and medication. Many brilliant social critics, including
Krishnamurti, have found fault with schools and universities. One
of the most astute has been Ivan Illich, whose comments are found
in his books Toward a History of Needs, Tools for
Conviviality, and Deschooling Society. Certified
educators currently dictate the curriculum to society and dismiss
learning outside of school. In fact, modern political culture has
substituted knowledge-stock certificates given by schools for the
means test. "I want to learn” is translated into "I want to get an
education."(1)
The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling
communicates the idea that an individual must prepare for
adulthood in society by going to school. Therefore, those who can
bear the trying experience of school the longest and those who
receive the costliest education are deemed superior and are
thought to merit "the right to more power, wealth, and
prestige."(2)
This is ironic because the brightest students
usually find the classroom routine tiresome in traditional
schools.(3) Too often in schools and higher education, the
operative assumption is that learning should be difficult and
unenjoyable. There are exciting teachers in every university who
employ innovative methods to spur students to learn, but they are
distrusted by the more traditional professors. These people often
have difficulty securing tenure because they emphasize teaching
instead of writing and research. This is because bureaucratic
universities usually reward efforts that are quantifiable and will
make them look good.(4)
The message is transmitted that material not
taught in school is unimportant and that what a person learns
outside of school is virtually worthless. Learning is changed from
an activity into a commodity called education which is monopolized
by professionally planned institutions called schools.(5) This
commodity must be given out thriftily so that unauthorized
unauthorized people don’t obtain it employ it improperly.(6) This
convoluted educational process has been substituted for "the plain
knowledge of the facts and the ability to use tools which shape a
man’s concrete life."(7)
Professional teachers think the idea that
people would learn more from random access to learning resources
than they learn by being taught is ridiculous.(8) In fact, people
don’t use libraries enough because they have been conditioned to
demand that they be taught. Kirkpatrick Sale, a Cornell University
graduate and author of several brilliant radical books, agrees
that little learning usually takes place in schools. He declares
that he learned a great deal more in the 42nd Street library of
New York City than he did in his sixteen formal school years.(9)
Philip Slater, author of the best single book I’ve read on
American society—The Pursuit of Loneliness— also found
traditional schools to be a waste of time. He eagerly engaged in
independent reading. Slater asserts, "That school could be a place
where ideas were exchanged—where you could think and talk about
important questions— was inconceivable."(10) The great playwright
George Bernard Shaw notes, "(Schools are) machines for forcing
spurious learning on children in order that your universities may
stamp them as educated men when they have finally lost all power
to think for themselves."(11) For many years, I was able to buy
nine-tenths of my books; I found this independent reading to be
valuable and pleasurable. This was in spite of the fact that my
body-mind system was under tremendous tension.
Andrew Bard Schmookler, a summa cum laude
graduate of Harvard, is equally unimpressed with his school
experiences. He notes that he learned in school to be a good boy
and sit obediently at his desk until the clock showed that he
could move. In serving this sentence, he learned to be alienated
from himself.(12) After completing high school, Schmookler
realized that he had been shortchanged by his schools, even though
they were supposedly good ones. He felt that he learned less per
hour in these institutions than in practically any other activity
he pursued. The lessons the curricula actually taught the students
include: obeying the institutions demands, accepting boredom
willingly, engaging in meaningless, repetitive lessons, ignoring
their biological rhythms and disconnecting themselves from their
bodies, except during athletic pursuits.(13) Schmookler had wished
that grades weren’t given in high school. Yet, what he calls his
"Taskmaster” insisted that he get superior ones.
In his freshman year at Harvard, he didn’t just
fulfill the requirements that his professors demanded of him. In
his search for meaning and understanding, he tried to do much
more. Sometimes he would write a forty page paper although only
assigned one of fifteen pages; he found himself studying more than
one hundred hours a week. This overly conscientious student was
following in his father’s footsteps. As an economics professor at
Michigan State University, he had been a workaholic for years
early in his career. Schmookler asserts that, in general, our
society is driven by the psychology of compulsive work and of
insatiable consumption. Both traits are the results of the early
injuries to the psyche that I mentioned in discussing The
Greening of America. By
his senior year, he was mostly engaged in independent studies,
supervised by eminent professors Erik Erikson and Robert Bellah.
Schmookler admits that he’s never really freed himself from his
’'taskmaster. However, he feels that the most valuable aspects of
his work have come from times when he wasn't worrying about and
judging his performances.(15)
David and Micki Colfax homeschooled their
children and sent three sons to Harvard. In their book Homeschooling
for Excellence, they emphasize that this need not be the
goal of homeschooling. The Colfaxes assert that real earning in
and out of the classroom depends on a diversity of community,
cultural, and class conditions. It varies from locality to
locality and from one age to another. They note, "For the most
part, any standardized, official curriculum is largely
meaningless, incoherent, and irrelevant to the lives of most
children.” Contemporary assembly-line schooling greatly restricts
classroom teachers’ ability to cope with individual differences.
Early childhood educational research has consistently found that
children develop at quite different paces, possess very different
natural talents, and differ considerably in their ability to
organize coherently what they have learned.(16) The official
curriculum is actually a device for controlling children; it
impedes genuine education.
Homeschooling is much more efficient than
public education. A child who attends public school usually spends
about 1,000 hours yearly there. However, only about twenty percent
of these hours are spent on genuine educational matters. The rest
of the time is wasted on matters which are basically
organizational. The homeschooled child who devotes only two hours
everyday year-round to basic education spends over three times as
many hours on genuine education as the public school child does.
Additionally, the homeschooled child has a great deal of time to
participate in other such as athletics, gardening, art, or
music.(17)
Likewise, in universities, students possess
minimum power over activities the arrangements that are supposed
to help them. They are "an inferior subject class,” sanctioned by
the rest of society only if they are isolated and distant.
Furthermore, as I’ve previously mentioned, most hierarchical
ordering of material in the academic world is totally arbitrary,
and most introductory courses are uninteresting. A truly curious
student might learn much more if
not restricted to a particular field’s very old
biases and uncritically accepted customary practices.(18)
Slater pillories the educational obsession with
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and grade-point averages.(19) He
declares that Intelligence Quotient tests and other tests
basically gauge a person’t talent at taking tests and frequently
not much more. Montagu points out that
Intelligence Quotient tests don’t really evaluate intelligence; in
fact, they misrepresent and conceal its true more complicated and
nature. Whatever intelligence is, it is a great deal more
complicated and comprehensive than the Intelligence Quotient
measures.(20)
A democratic educational system recognizes that
people learn "uniquely, unevenly, erratically, and
continually."(21) Competence in a genuine democracy is shown
rather than graded by examination. Unquestionably, compulsory
instruction destroys the enthusiasm for
autonomous learning in most people.(22_
In fact, Howard Gardner’s research at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education has shown "that there are at
least seven areas of intellectual competence, which are
comparatively unrelated to each other. There are:
(1)
linguistic—responsiveness to the interpretation and
arrangement of words;
(2)
logical-mathematical—skill in making logical connectioons
and processing sequences;
(3) musical—a feeling for "pitch, molody,
rhythm, and tone";
(4) bodily-kinesthetic—skill in using the body
and in using objects proficiently;
(5) spatial-skill in observing the world
correctly and in modifying or improving components of that world;
(6) interpersonal—skill in comprehending human
beings and their associations;
(7) intrapersonal— ability to understand one’s
emotions and those of other people.(23)
At nineteen and a half years old, I had
attained a position close to the top of the academic ladder in the
United States. Yet, as I’ve pointed out, aside from having
developed a moderate linguistic competence and a moderate but
largely fraudulent mathematical competence, I was profoundly
stupid in every other way.
Based on what I observed and experienced in
schools, I fully endorse Illich’s view that the American
university is the last stage of the most involved initiation rite
in the history of the world. He assert, "No society in history had
been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first
which has needed such a dull, protacted, destructive, and
expensive initiation into its myth."(24) He doesn’t rule out any
possibility of some formal instruction; he simply cautions that
special arrangements must never be more important than chances for
independent study.(25)
Illich later expanded his critique of schooling
to include other forms of education. He defines "education as
learning when it takes place under the assumption of scarcity
in the means which produces it."(26) Illich coneludes that
the disestablishment of traditional schooling would bring about an
overzealous restoration of various arrangements of corrupt,
all-inclusive education. The world will then become "a universal
classroom, a global schoolhouse."(27)
Wolfgang Sachs, a friend and colleague of
Illich, helped him to see that the teaching role was already
leaving the schools and being taken over by other kinds of
obligatory learning which was not required by law. For instance,
people now suppose they are acquiring knowledge from television.
They are also forced to go to in-service training or lured into
spending large quantities of money in order to learn how to
acquire sensitivity, how to take vitamins, or how to participate
in leisure activities.(28)
Illich also points out that some of society's
members are able to criticize the entire society by means of their
positions in universities. However, those who enjoy this freedom
are full members of our consumer society and accept the idea of
required public schooling.(29) Schools, which employ an enormous
number of people, may be termed the World Church of our collapsing
society. The foremost principle of a deschooled society would be
to refuse teachers the right to hold professional status. Anybody
who risks teaching somebody must also be responsible for the
outcome. Likewise, the student must also assume responsibility for
his own learning.
The January-February 1995 issue of the Utne
Reader, an alternative Reader's Digest, contains an
interesting article on Illich by Marilyn Snell entitled, "An
Invitation to Ivan Illich." As a priest, he founded and directed
the Center for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
The center functioned as "an intensive language school and
training center for United States priests, nuns, and brothers on
their way to Latin America" and a think tank for radicals." The
politically conservative church ordered Illich to Rome. Within a
year, he had resigned from the priesthood; however, he remains
dedicated to the spirit of the church and its values of "beauty,
truth, awareness, and mystery."(3)
The article reveals that Illich himself hasn't
been fully able to escape from the institutional academic world.
He holds degrees in theology, history, and chemistry. Previously, he
had been vice rector of the Catholic University in Ponce, Puerto
Rico; now, he is back in academia. Snell reveals, "Unwilling to
associate himself with any one institution, Illich splits each
academic year between guest professorships at Penn State and in
Bremen, germany, and spends the remaining months in a Mexican
village outside Cuernavaca working on various writing
projects."(31)
One might be tempted to dismiss Illich’s
message as a remnant of the radical sixties. Yet, it is still
relevant in the 1990s. In fact, John Gatto, in a series of five
essays entitled Dumbing Us Down; The Hidden Curriculum of
Compulsory Schooling has updated Illich’s message. Gatto
quit his job in the public school system upon winning an award as
New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. He declares that,
while there are many humane people who teach in schools, the
institution is psychopathic.
In unusually clear expository prose, Gatto
enumerates the seven lessons that schools teach. He states, "The
first lesson I teach is confusion. Everything I teach is out of
context. I teach the un-relating of everything."(32) This
statement was certainly true in the public schools I attended for
the first eight grades and just as true in the private schools I
attended from the ninth through the twelfth grades.
The first lesson schools teach is class
position.(33) Very few children escape the class from which they
started. Of course, in my case, I started out destined for the
upper middle class and through illness and financial fraud ended
up in the lower class.
The second lesson schools teach is
indifference.(34) The fifty-minute periods of my traditional
schools taught me this well. I learned smatterings of many
subjects. However, I was quite ignorant of anything that really
mattered and unable to actually do anything in the world after
twelve years in supposedly good schools. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote
in one of his journals: "We
are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or
fifteen years and come out at last with a belly full of words and
do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our
eyes, or our The fourth and fifth lessons schools teach are
emotional dependency and intellectual dependency.(36) They
emphasize a perverted kind of individualism. George Leonard
observes, "A culture dedicated to creating standardized,
predictable human components could find no better way grinding
them out than by making every possible aspect of life a matter of
competition. ’Winning out’ in this respect does not make rugged
individualists. It shapes
conformist robots."(37) A student who wants to
get the highest grade in a class is not apt to dispute the
teacher’s version of the subject being studied.(38) Yet, it is
vital that children learn "how to evaluate humanely and critically the world in which they are
living."(39) To be educated people, they must receive more than
instruction in the three Rs and technological skills.(40) Then,
they must learn how to take action to correct the world’s
deficiences.
Schools create a false reality because they
assume that the child’s home environment is fine and that if the
child misbehaves in school, he is the one with a problem.(41) In
other words, the school ignores the emotional realities of home
life. The myth of equal opportunity ignores the widely differing
degrees of hurt that children carry with them to school. This pain
will greatly affect their concentration as well as their conduct.
Yet, paradoxically, the perfect children often are those who have
suffered through the most painful occurrences at home.
Psychotherapist Michael Lerner notes:
"They are being ’perfect’ little children
precisely because they have internalized the fears most
considerably and have managed to repress their own feelings so
completely that they no longer experience any overt contradiction
on the conscious level in fulfilling their parents’ ongoing
fantasies and in trying to fit into their parents’ ongoing
drama."(42)
As this book makes clear, this statement
precisely describes the emotional reality of my early years.
Schools don’t emphasize the uniqueness of each
person. This is disastrous because it is the greatest possible
tragedy for a person to live his life without a genuine sense of
identity.(43) This situation is responsible for the rage and shame
that dominates our addictive society and violent world. We are
addicted to dependency; we are waiting for the teacher to tell us
what to do, but this happy day never arrives. Gatto warns:
"Bridges collapse, men and women sleep on the
streets, bankers cheat, good will decays, families betray each
other, the government lies as a matter of policy, corruption,
shame, sickness, and sensationalism are everywhere. No school has
a curriculum to provide the quick fix."(44)
The sixth lesson schools teach is provisional
self-esteem. Everything in a school system obsessed with
performance is based on trying to get an A. Gatto agrees with
Slater that working for official favors, grades, or other symbols
of subordination has nothing to do with genuine education or
freedom.(45) Grades and standardized tests are excellent ways to
treat people "impersonally, ’objectively,’ that is, as if they
were objects."(46)
The seventh lesson schools teach is that one
can’t hide.(47) Schools are an integral part of the centralized
society which started to grow from the time just before the Civil
War.(48) Students are monitored constantly by teachers; the
surveillance even extends into private households through
homework. Janov declares that a child in our society who doesn’t
want to sit in classes for six hours a day is thought to have
something wrong with him. He concludes, "What’s wrong may be that
he is normal.”(49)
So, it is apparent that "school is a
twelve-year jail sentence" whose only effective curriculum is the
teaching of bad habits.(50) It destroys the possibility of
children growing up as active members of the community and having
a meaningful family life. Our dehumanized society suffers from
epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and
hardening of class into caste. These pathologies develop to a
large degree because the seven lessons of school prevent effective
personality maturation in children. They fail to learn lessons in
self-motivation, persistence, self-reliance, bravery, dignity,
love, and service to other people. Reason must be balanced by
other parts of our humanity or we become unreasonable and
foolish.(51) Indeed, the conventional school system couldn’t
survive at all "without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness,
and inexperience of children...."(52)
John Holt, the author of How Children Learn
and How Children Fail, gave up on reforming conventional
schools. Shortly before his death, he wrote Teach Your Own.
The Coifaxes’ Homeschooling for Excellence also gives many
valuable practical suggestions for carrying out this project.
Children can learn from mentors, family members, independent
study, and apprenticeships. Buckminster Fuller stated that he
wasn’t a genius nor were any people he knew. Some people are
simply fortunate not to have been damaged as severely as others.
Fuller, like Margaret Mead, was basically taught at home.(53)
Scientists aren’t made in science classes,
politicians in civics classes, or poets in English classes.
Actually, the only thing that schools really teach is the way to
obey orders.(54) Miller notes that those in power always use
conditioning and manipulation but disguise these weapons by
calling them ’’education and therapeutic treatment."(55) She
quotes a long passage by J. Sulzer, written in 1748, that calls
for training children from two and three years old to strictly
obey parents and superiors and trustingly accept all they do.
Sulzer asserts that obedience is so significant that all education
amounts to learning how to take orders.(56)
This emphasis on strict obedience is the
foundation of the dysfunctional rules that have governed parenting
for a long time. These rules are: “Children are to speak when
spoken to; children are to be seen and not heard; children are to
obey all adults (any adult) without question."(57) The result is
that most children in our society have lost access to their own
needs and feelings.(58) In Western societies, boys especially have
been socialized to repress their deep feelings. Instead, they are
taught "to be strong, invulnerable, competitive." Unfortunately,
human experience is destroyed when people lose access to their own
feelings. We live in an unreal world because we can now relate to
ourselves only through abstractions exterior to ourselves.(60)
Indeed, most cultures develop and recreate "splits in human
consciousness"; in this way, they suppress children’s
autonomy.(61)
I don’t think anyone has made the case against
traditional schooling in a more amusing but truthful way than
Charles Dickens in his satirical novel Hard Times, written
in 1854. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, a retired wholesale hardware
merchant, runs a model school. He is not unkind and really means
well. He declares, "Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys
and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant
nothing else and root out everything else."(62) Gradgrind
understands only the reality of facts, statistics, definitions,
calculations, and practical reasoning. He doesn’t want the
school’s pupils or his own children Louisa and Tom to exercise
their imaginations in any way. Furhthermore, they must learn to be
solely concerned with their own self-interest. Dickens describes
Bitzer, a top student in the school, in this way:
He had grown into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man,
who was safe to rise in the world. His mind was so exactly
regulated that he had no affections or passions. All his
proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest
calculation:...(63)
Mr. M’Choakumchild is a teacher at the school.
He himself had graduated from a teahcers’ school which taught its
students the same methods in a factory-like manner. His knowledge
of facts was immense. He knew:
"orthography, etymology, syntax, astronomy, geography, and
general cosmography, the science of compound proportion, algebra,
land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from
models...." He also knew: "the higher branches of mathematics and
physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek." Finally:
"he knew all about the Water Sheds of all the
world (whatever they are) and all the names of all the rivers and
mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all
the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the
two-and-thirty points of the compass.(64)
In fact, M’Choakumchild taught his pupils every
Ology in existence. Had he known less, he might have been a much
better teacher.
The school is located in the industrial
manufacturing town of Coketown. It is smoky, dirty, and dominated
by the factory machines. The streets are very much alike. CoketownTs
inhabitants are also very much alike and are rigidly regimented by
the rat race of the industrial system. Efficiency and proper use
of time are paramount. The wealthy capitalists propagate the myth
that there is equal opportunity to make a fortune.
The entire system runs on facts, including the
dealings between the businessmen and the ordinary workers. The
impersonal market in which the aim is to buy cheap and sell dear
reigns supreme. Buying commodities for as little as one can and
selling them for as much as one can is held to comprise the entire
obligation of man.
Mr. Gradgrind proposes to Louisa that she marry
a close friend, Mr. Josiah Bounderby. She accedes to his wish,
even though she doesn’t love him. Bounderby is a wealthy banker,
merchant, and manufacturer. Louisa becomes dissatisfied with her
marriage and her life.
Eventually, Gradgrind’s daughter confronts her
father and curses the fact that she was raised by him. She asks:
"How could you give me life, and take from me
all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state
of conscious death? Where are the graces of my
soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, 0 father, with the
garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness
here?"(65)
Louisa bemoans the fact that she didn’t acquire
the character traits that would help to make the world a little
better. Gradgrind tells his daughter that he thought he was
raising her correctly and is devastated by her statements. Perhaps
he was wrong in totally concentrating on the Head and utterly
neglecting the Heart. Eventually, in old age, he puts "Faith,
Hope, and Charity" ahead of facts and figures.(66)
Coketown’s bank is robbed. Gradgrind’s son Tom,
who worked there under Bounderby, is finally discovered to have
committed the crime. Tom doesn’t understand his father’s shock
upon hearing the name of the criminal. He points out that
Gradgrind taught him to trust statistical Laws. His father often
told him about the law that of so many people "employed in
situations of trust" so many will be dishonest.(67)
The model student Bitzer appears and is going
to turn in Tom to Mr. Bounderby rather than let him escape
overseas. He is doing this purely out of self-interest, which he
has been taught to emphasize from an early age. Then, Bitzer says
to Gradgrind:
"It was a fundamental principle of the
Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody
was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render
anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and
the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the
existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a
counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a
politico-economical place, and we had
no business there."(68)
Yet, some parents and children will want
schools to remain in their lives. Fortunately, it’s possible to
devise an effective school. One type is found in Waldorf
education; its curriculum produces well-rounded, well-integrated
people. This educational philosophy was developed by Austrian
thinker Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who founded a school in
Germany in 1919. In Steiner’s view, any systematized scholastic
course of study is an "instrument of murder for the real
development of human forces....(69) Waldorf schools promote
genuine idividuality. Each school operates as a close-knit society
of instructors, parents, and pupils; it attempts to incorporate
their particular social principles and aspirations. Mary C.
Richards visited many Waldorf schools throughout the United
States. She found that the association between grownup and
youngster involves a genuine human relationship and that
"hierarchical, authoritarian decision making or professional
aloofness" are uncommon.(70)
In Education in Search of the Spirit,
John Fentress Gardner gives an excellent introduction to its
philosophical underpinnings. Today, the traditional educational
paradigm emphasizes performance carried out by mere biological
organisms.(71) Viewing human beings as machines, it programs
behavior. The intellectualistic thinking it promotes is abstract
and suppresses warm feelings.(72) It results in the heartless
objectivity of scientism. The skills it most values are linguistic
and mathematical ability, proficiency in retaining information,
and the strength of rational inquiry. These skills are quantified
by Intelligence Quotient tests.(73) This traditional paradigm
doesn’t concern itself with "objective spiritual values like
compassion, genorosity, and courage—to say nothing of integrity,
idealism, or creativeness."(74)
Traditional education encourages egoism based
on fear and competition. It encourages materialism and "the
decline of positive—aesthetic—religious experience."(75) Healthy
egoism manifests itself as personal thoughtfulness and initiative.
The unhealthy type encouraged by traditional education results in
self-centeredness, disorder, and dishonesty. People practicing
this negative egoism exploit each other and the natural world. The
school tries to restrain the antisocial urges that result from
this egoism. The society that sanctions them refuses to believe
that reflective people can live cooperatively without laws
mandating compulsory education.
So-called progressive education also has
numerous flaws. It has not educated students to cope with the real
world and has often lead to social conformity. Gardner notes,
"While it awakened enthusiasm, it often came up short on facts
learned, on the systematic ordering of facts, and on certain
social and intellectual skills needed to deal with facts.(76)
Finally, it usually ignores the higher self or spiritual being
which religion emphasizes.
It’s unfortunate that both innovative and
traditional schools don’t concentrate on "healing, harmonizing,
and humanizing" their pupils.(77) They should be helping
youngsters to develop their genius. In its original sense, genius
is a directing, motivating ideal that is found in everyone.
Strength of purpose originates with genius, which utilizes
whatever skills a person possesses. A person with genius puts his
talents to use helping humanity and delights in life. This is
genuine creativity.
Intellect is not nearly as important as this
"active, love-filled thinking" and determination to help other
people. In other words, one’s character matters far more than any
specialized talents that one has been genetically given.(78)
Presently, school lessons employ skills that are comparitively
insignificant for the development of genius. Yet, scholars who
excel at these tasks are considered to be socially superior
people.(79)
School doesn’t have to be the type of place
Gatto calls "a jail for children."(80) Actually, children want to
admire and obey their teachers. In young children, determination
or will should be developed. Then, in the middle years of
elementary school, their ability to feel should be encouraged.
Teachers should "guide the children’s feelings about the beautiful
and ugly, the noble and ignoble, in a purely artistic way,
avoiding many rational ’evaluations’ and definitions of just what
shall be considered beautiful or ugly, noble or ignoble and
why."(81)
Then, in adolescence, young people will find
fulfillment by discovering a hero or heroine who will provide an
example for their endeavors. Having followed mature adults at a
young age, these adolescents will now be able to decide for
themselves what ideas and actions are inherently correct and
beneficial. They will be able to think clearly about reality. This
is due to the fact that intellectual cognition will develop after
feeling and will are solidly entrenched in the youngster’s
personality.(82) They will arrive at "true knowing, deeper
knowing, intuitive-participatory knowing...."(83) Only this
comprehensive intelligence, which has evolved from all-inclusive
experience, is capable of accomplishing its goals. It must be
balanced, at peace with with itself, and based on love.(84)
Gardner concludes, "For the youngest child, imitation is active
love; for the elementary school pupil obedience and trust are feeling love; and at
adolescence a burning idealism becomes thinking love."(85)
Teachers, parents, and older children must have
genuine freedom of choice in educational matters. Therefore, state
control of subject matter, assessment of personnel, and means for
preparing and licensing teachers is just as wrong in a democracy
as in a totalitarian country.(86) Teachers in so-called
independent schools must also be liberated from pressures
emanating from the church, particular business and professional
influences, and higher education. Finally, educators must free
themselves from the worship of materialistic values; then, they
can develop a truly religious outlook.(87)
The Waldorf approach to schooling is
perceptively and clearly described in School as a Journey
by Torin M. Finser. He relates his experiences teaching a group of
students from the first through the eighth grades. His students
cover an amazing variety of subjects, taught in blocks of several
weeks. They include:
'Reading, writing, music, art, mathematics,
spelling, grammar, geography, zoology, botany, geometry,
punctation, meteorology, astronomy, physics and mechanics, history
from ancient to modern times, mineralogy, phsiology/health, two
foreign languages, physical education, chemistry, computers, and
environmental science."
In high school, the pupils are taught by
specialists in one field.
Their reading includes fairy tales, fables,
legends, bible stories, historical biographies and Shakespeare. It
is selected in order to stimulate the students’ gratefulness,
wonder, emotions, imagination, and veneration of the creator’s
handiwork. Reading about the lives of transformative individuals
"such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi,
Mother Theresa, and Jacques Lusseyran” is especially important.
These studies are designed to nurture an idealism that will grow
in adolescence. The Waldorf curriculum isn’t supposed to be merely
a more humanistic version of Gradgrind’s school. The pupils do
much more than study academic subjects; they engage in practical
activities such as building, farming, and woodwork. Also doing
handwork, they make such items as scarves, hats, pot holders,
mats, cushions, pillows, socks, mittens, and stuffed animals.(88)
Even while teaching academic subjects, the instructors try to show
their practical applications.
Finser participates in many of the classroom
activities. He is also aided by many teachers who enter the
classroom two or three times a week to teach a particular subject.
In addition, he works closely with his students’ parents. At the
end of every year, he writes extensive commentaries on each
student.
Waldorf education strives to develop both
analytic and creative thinking. Rather than lecturing or
moralizing, the teachers attempt to stir the learners’ own
imagination and let them draw their own conclusion about their
readings. More importantly, it strives to create well-balanced
people whose will, feelings, and thinking are ’’working together
harmoniously.”(89)
This method is suitable for those parents and
children who want an intensive educational experience which takes
place largely in a specific building called a school. However,
it’s probable that the vast majority of of people will neither
need nor want such a comprehensive learning experience. Most
learning should take place in psychologically sound homes and
cooperative communities.(90) Schools should be "richly stocked
community resource centers."
The community will feature systems of
cooperating individuals of different ages who will take part in
investigations and undertakings which are related to their genuine
occupations and hobbies.
James Moffett's book The Universal
Schoolhouse offer an excellent plan for redesigning
education. Moffett holds two degrees from Harvard, a Bachelor’s of
Arts in English and a Master's of Arts in French. He spent thirty
years teaching and attempting to reform schools. Now, Moffett
agrees with Gatto that contemporary schools are similar to jails.
As do Illich and Gatto, he calls for the dismantling of schools as
presently organized. He predicts that, within twenty years,
citizens will look back on these institutions as amazingly crude,
just as they now regard the eighteenthcentury methods for dealing
with mentally disturbed individuals. Future generations will find
it hard to comprehend how citizens who believed themselves devoted
to individual freedom and democratic government could require
obligatory learning which forced children to report to specific
buildings every weekday. In public schools, they were then
controlled by government agents.(91)
Moffett, agreeing with Colfax, Slater, and
Gatto, declares that the systematization of subject matter into
courses is a major cause of difficulty in schools.(92)
Simultaneously, subjecting classes to identical subject matter
with the cirriculum established ahead of time, even in optional
courses, greatly restricts the material that can be treated.
Considering the possible range of information, the selection is
also arbitrary. Moreover, students usually have difficulty
recalling and employing this material.(93)
History isn’t the only subject whose curriculum
is adjusted to the lowest common denominator. School districts and
state departments of education severely limit the contents and
approaches of textbooks and other purchased materials. This is
especially unfortunate because a high percentage of schools buy
their materials. Unquestionably, such a vital matter as learning
shouldn't be left in the hands of the corporations who shape the
content.
Furthermore, books aren’t always the most
effective method to obtain knowledge of a subject or master a
skill. They often lead to an overemphasis on memorization and
submissiveness rather than nurture "interaction, initiative, and
inquiry."(95)
Moffett envisions an extensive system of
individualized learning "a school without walls."(96) Continual
advice will be available to learners from knowledgeable people.
Ultimately, the student himself must decide what he wants to learn
and also assess the effectiveness of the teaching. Using Moffett’s
plan, there will still be a need for professional educators; they
will teach a speciality as well as coordinate the system as a
whole. It is imperative that these people comprehend how personal
and moral growth are achieved.(97) The state will merely
facilitate this network.
Finally, Krishnamurti offers extensive advice
about education in his books. A good starting place for the
interested reader is his Education and the Significance of
Life.(98) Agreeing with other progressive educators, he
decries the fact that fear poisons traditional schooling, blocking
the development of genuine intelligence. Therefore, a school which
arouses this feeling should not operate.(99) In fact, a good
educator should assist students in comprehending fear and freeing
themselves from all kinds of this toxic emotion.(100) The
comparison between students and the promotion of ambition and the
success ethic in traditional schools can only perpetuate conflict,
resulting in psychological wounds.(101) Furthermore, Krishnamurti
is another progressive educator who declares that government
control of education is a catastrophe.
The purpose of education is to develop human
beings who have an integrated intelligence. Knowledge, technique,
and efficiency have their place but to give them a primary place
in life produces conflict and chaos.(102) Therefore, a genuine
educator doesn’t only supply information; he helps the student to
develop wisdom.(103) As I’ve noted before, Krishnamurti points out
that people may obtain degrees and cultivate a certain machinelike
ability but be utterly lacking intelligence. The emphasis on
passing examinations and obtaining degrees tends to shape crafty
intellects that shun fundamental human concerns. Intelligence is
the skill of discerning the quintessential meaning of existence,
the what is; and education consists in developing this
ability in oneself and other people.(104) Krishnamurti concludes
that good education doesn’t follow any system.(105)
In criticizing traditional schooling, I’ve
ignored the positive accomplishments and experiences that somehow
often take place in them despite their flaws. The trait that
fatally poisons these places as well as the wider society is
competitiveness.
Alfie Kohn, a former student of Professor
George Morgan and a Brown University graduate, has written a
brilliant book debunking competition in American life. No Contest:
The Case Against Competition won the American Psychological
Association’s 1987 National Psychology Award for Excellence in
Media. Kohn declares that competition is an American cultural
addiction; it is our state religion.(1) Since one person’s success
depends upon another’s failure, competitiveness promotes hostility
and emotional isolation in human relations. It creates "easily
aroused envy toward the stronger ones, contempt for the weaker,
distrust toward everyone."(2) Therefore, competition is never
beneficial.
Yet, since Darwin’s Origin of Species was
published in 1859, the predominant view of the nature of evolution
has been that life involves "a struggle for existence in which
only the fit survive."(3) The fittest are defined as those who
take whatever actions are necessary to survive; they leave the
most offspring through natural selection. This view justifies
businessmen taking advantage and tyrannizing their employees,
governments their citizens. It vindicates countries when they
deprive "inferior peoples" of their lands. It holds that it is
natural for the poor to lack food and perish. War keeps nations in
good health and powerful.(4)
Darwin provided a scientific justification for
a strain of social and political thought that had been developing
since the early years of the nineteenth century.(5) Originally, he
interpreted natural processes in such a way that they mirrored the
brutal struggle for existence between men which was taking place
at this time in a Victorian England that was undergoing a rapid
industrialization and urbanization.(6) Additionally, imperialism
was widespread in Europe.(7)
However, in The Descent of Man (1871),
he modified this one-sided picture. In this book, he heavily
emphasized cooperative behavior between members of large
communities and between nations. Yet, this correction was lost
amidst the belligerent voices of those who were promoting "the
crude, muscular Darwinistic point of view...."(8) One of these
voices belonged to the English sociologist Herbert Spencer, who
developed a belief about how nature operated in society. This
doctrine was eventually termed "Social Darwinism." The supposed
overwhelming competition found among organisms in nature was said
to apply to human society as well. This was misguided because
Darwin, Spencer, and Thomas Huxley grossly overemphasized the
element of competition in the natural world and seriously
underestimated that of cooperation in natural selection and the
evolutionary process as a whole.(9)
Darwin meant "competition" when he used the
word "struggle." For Darwin and his interpreters, competition or
struggle in nature or human society usually meant fighting.(10) In
the Origins of Species, Darwin often writes about "the
warfare of nature.(11) This is nonsensical, however, because there
isn’t any warfare in the natural world. Similarly, animals don’t
mainly struggle against other animals for their existence but
struggle with their environment.
Leonardo da Vinci pointed out that man is the
only animal which cruelly oppresses its own and other species.(12)
On the other hand, Petr Kropotkin (1842-1921)
has had the most lasting impact among the writers who have tried
to propose a more balanced evaluation of evolution.(13) Kropotkin
in Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (1902) explained that
competition is not the customary course of events in nature.
Animals only compete during extraordinary times. Kropotkin
declares, "Better conditions are created by the elimination of
competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support.(14)
Natural selection shuns competition in order to produce the most
robust conditions of life while conserving energy. Competition
always harms a species, and there are numerous ways to avoid it.
This is nature’s inclination, although it doesn’t always succeed.
Actually, the so-called "struggle for
existence" in nature is completely different than the contention
between nineteenth century capitalists.(15) It is understandable
that people socialized in an industrial, mercantile environment
would readily accept this combative view of nature. However, this
lifestyle is not what life is supposed to be like. In fact, even
in modern times, this competitive way of life isn’t practiced by
most people in the world.(16)
Much study in recent decades has substantiated
Kropotkin’s thesis. This research has clearly shown that most
relationships between living organisms are essentially cooperative
ones, characterized by coexistence and interdependence and
symbiotic in various degrees.(17) Benefits in differential
reproduction are commonly gained through peaceful means. These
means include: "better integration into the ecological situation,
maintenance of a balance of nature, more efficient utilization of
available food, better care of the young, and elimination of
intragroup discords that might hamper reproduction."(18) Whatever
competition exists usually is carried on within a general
environment of cooperation. It is true that predator-prey
relationships hurt the immediate prey; however, they generally
benefit the overall existence of both species.
Yet, people who are satisfied with the status
quo promote the idea that human beings are naturally aggressive.
What they’ve done is develop biological theories to fit their
socioeconomic biases. Unconsciously, they’ve shaped their
understanding of nature to conform to their own behavior. People
learn to cooperate or compete, and individuals in the United
States are carefully taught to compete.
The experience of cooperation will lead to the
good-natured development of more cooperation while competition
will result in an increasingly depraved escalation of competition.
The result has been that, except for minimal types of cooperation
necessary for any society to exist, "Americans appear to be
uniquely uncooperative as a people."(19) Competitive schools
really provide the service of screening people for entrance into
business and governmental positions. Competitive sports teach
people to value hierarchical power arrangements and the existing
state of affairs within society.
Kohn proposes that people compete because they
are unsure of their abilities; they are trying to overcome low
self-esteem.(20) David and Roger Johnson reviewed seventeen
separate studies on the psychological impact of cooperative versus
competitive learning situations. They concluded that cooperative
environments are clearly superior in promoting increased
self-esteem. The Johnsons noted elsewhere that cooperation closely
relates to many attributes of psychological well-being. These
include: fully developed emotional stability, harmonious
interpersonal dealings, a firm personal identity, and confidence
about other people’s actions.(21) Lawrence Frank succinctly sums
up the psychological underpinnings of a competitive society when
he comments that its energy is generated by a combination of
"obsessional thinking, anxiety over personal inadequacy, and
hostility requiring an outlet."(22)
Lerner fully agrees with Kohn’s assessment that
very few societies in history have been more competitive than
ours.(23) Cooperation is rewarded only if it is with those who are
more powerful.(24) People live in "a basically inhumane, paranoid,
rapacious society whose dominant idea is "Look out for Number
One.’" Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel states that the
cardinal principal of our society is "Suspect Your Neighbor as
Yourself." Therefore, our society, based as it is on selfishness
and egotism, ranks extremely low in qualities of mutual caring.
Its citizens encounter severe difficulty in getting the nurturance
and support that are the vital ingredients for psychological
well-being. Fancier, more plentiful consumer items can never
replace their needs for community and purpose.(25)
Many people face the choice between one
oppressive work situation or another equally oppressive one.(26)
The workplaces in our society commonly treat their employees as
children and send the message that they have ruined
their lives and that they alone are
responsible.(27) Fear generates aggressiveness as a rational
response to this environment. Hatred is actually "love
frustrated."(28) An aggressive person is looking for love. Many
people, viewing themselves as powerless, direct their anger inward
instead of toward social action to transform their society.(29)
In a society which operates under The
Theory of the Meritocracy, people learn to view themselves
as commodities at work; they try to obtain the attributes that
will sell for the most money. These include: "the best degrees, training, resumes, appearance
and manner of self-presentation."(30) They learn to blame
themselves about their childhood and adulthood if their lives are
going badly rather than an unfair or destructive society.(31)
The idea of merit is transferred from the job
market to social life. People view their partners as commodities;
they eventually start to think whether they "couldn’t get a better
list from someone else."(32) If a person is alone, he probably
doesn’t deserve a satisfying relationship. People in our society
eventually learn that they are indeed alone and that even their
friends are incapable of emphatically responding to their
plight.(33)
Parents in our society typically don’t give
children the love they need. Their relationship with their
offspring is what the Jewish theologian Martin Buber terms an I-It
instead of an I-Thou relationship. The two people in an I-Thou
relationship acknowledge "each other as free, conscious, and
infinitely precious subjects."(34) In an I-It relationship, one
person uses the other as an object that can be manipulated and
controlled in order to fulfill his own needs. Parents offer their
children conditional love; they insist that the children must
fulfill their desires. Most children try to develop the attributes
that will fulfill their parents’ expectations. It is apparent that
my mother carried this controlling mind-set to an extreme with me.
Lerner emphasizes that he is focusing on
parents’ limitations; he points out that most parents freely give
as much love as they can to their children. Yet, virtually every
part of our society opposes the development of genuine love.
People must usually adjust to these circumstances in order to
survive.(35)
Fromm and Montagu thoroughly describe the
absurdities of competition in their books. Fromm declares,
"Indeed, what most people would like is to be aggressive,
competitive, maximally successful in the market, liked by
everybody
and at the same time tender, loving, and a
person of integrity."(36) Montagu states that the main disorders
of Western civilization are due to competition.(37) He avers that
greatest progress undeniably results when people cooperate. The
anthropologist points out:
"Cooperation and competition are not mutually
reconcilable drives. Either you are a cooperator or you are a
competitor; if you are both, then you are in a state of
disoperativeness, of confusion, unreconciled and in conflict with
yourself. And this is the state in which most members of Western
civilization find themselves."(38)
Montagu concludes that if a man must be
violent, offensive, coarse and competitive, and if only a sissy is
mild, warm, compassionate, and cooperative, then for the benefit
of humanity, there should be "fewer men and more sissies."(39)
Indeed, the United States is one of the few countries where it is
a compliment to call a person "aggressive." Yet, what progress
American society has made has been despite its competitive ethos,
not because of it. People have often worked together and
accomplished beneficial tasks.
Kohn subsequently published a book entitled Punished
by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s,
Praise, and Other Bribes; in it, he clearly shows how
destructive and ineffective the ways our competitive society uses
to motivated people really are. After labelling our system of
rewards "pop behaviorism," he notes that its main proposition is:
"Do this and you’ll get that."(40) Behaviorism is the school of
psychology founded by John b. Watson; its leading contemporary
proponent has been B.F. Skinner. Our society has socialized
children, instructed pupils, and managed employees by using its
main axiom. Francis W. Parker humorously summarizes its mind-set
in this manner:
"Bought at home, bought at school, with merits,
percents, and prizes, bought in college and university by the
offer of high places, the young man with a finished education
stands in the world’s marketplace and cries: "I’m for sale; what
will you give me?"(41)
Unfortunately, both behavioral psychology and
orthodox economic theory have created "truncated picture of the
human being."(42) The behaviorist’s idea that people must be
goaded into doing good work by extrinsic motivators is outdated.
In fact, rewards and punishments are similar in effect. The use of
rewards to induce people to do things is dehumanizing and
demeaning; this practice simply controls them by means of
seduction instead of force. Some people are punished by not
getting the reward they expect. Rewards benefit the more powerful
party and support the status quo.(43) Both rewards and punishments
cause individuals to behave in a manner that will win the approval
of the person who gives them. Therefore, pop behaviorism "is by
its nature inimical to democracy, critical questioning, and the
free exchange of ideas among equal participants."(44)
Research suggests that rewards completely fail
to produce lasting change in people.(45) Rewards simply motivate
people to get rewards; they don’t stimulate creativity. When
individuals are pursuing a reward, they commonly
do just what they have to do and no more.(46)
Morton Deutsch found in six separate studies that don’t work more
productively when they will be rewarded based on their performance
rather than equally or based on their need. In fact, rewards are
most successful in motivating "those who are alienated from their
work."(47)
High achievers in conventional schools often
are not good learners. Students who earn high grades by studying
and even memorizing exactly what schools assign frequently hate
what they are doing.(48) Those who concentrate on how well they are doing—or
worse, how well they are doing compared to other students—are more
likely to perform poorly.(49) Richard Ryan and Jerome Stiller
declare, "Externally imposed evaluations, goals, rewards, and
pressures seem to create a style of teaching and learning that is
antithetical to quality learning outcomes in school, that is,
learning characterized by durability, depth, and integration.(50)
A few years ago, I discovered Andrew Bard
Schmookler’s writings and was able to put my experiences in
historical perspective. Schmookler, one of the great intellectual
integrators of the twentieth century, in his books The Parable
of the Tribes, Out of Weakness, and Sowings and
Reapings analyzes the practical and psychological reasons
why civilization has developed in such a dysfunctional and violent
way since its beginning ten thousand years ago. Before that, as
anthropologists have found, the so-called "primitive" societies of
the hunters and gatherers did not engage in the Hobbesian battle
of every person for himself. Sharing was a distinguishing trait of
these early societies; they tried to sustain the lives of every
person for the safety of the group. In them, the person who is
most highly regarded is not the one who possesses the most
resources, but the one who transfers the most to other people.(1)
Primitive warfare hadn’t been centrally
organized, nor was it directed by permanent chieftains. Most
primitive wars were basically armed melees; the participants
didn’t aim at conquest nor at killing the maximum of the enemy.(2)
Then, living entities were thrust into a state of anarchy,
ungoverned by any order which promoted a safe life. The
international system became a war of all against all.(3) This
disorder started when man’s relationship to nature changed from
9000 to 7000 B.C. during the "Protoneolithic period," in a
thousand mile area between western Iran and Greece.(4) The great
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes perceived this situation
correctly but misnamed it. He termed it the state of nature, not
realizing that it is really a very unnatural state.
In the fourth and third millennia B.C.,
centrally organized large-scale societies developed which were
ruled authoritatively by a dominant minority. The first societies
which relied on great industrial and military power, they invaded
other territories, exacted tribute, took slaves, and grabbed
resources.(5) Patriarchal rule was a crucial feature of the new
urban societies. Control was paramount in these societies; it
included: control of nature, control of slaves, women and
children.(6) Aggressiveness isn’t an isolated trait but part of a
syndrome. Aggression is found in coordination with traits such as
strict hierarchy, dominance, and class division.(7)
Schmookler declares that this struggle for
power is deeply unnatural because, looked at from an evolutionary
perspective, it is simply not plausible that man is either sick or
criminal by nature.(8) Human beings have been forced
to live under zoo conditions.(9) They have been
living in a prolonged emergency situation analogous to the body’s
adrenalin response.(10) Schmookler aptly notes, "Human nature is
what unfolds when healthy people grow up in a healthy
society."(11)
The two choices human beings have are love or
power. Unfortunately, an escalating struggle for power has been
the rule since the start of the anarchical intersocietal system.
Frustrating human needs in the maternal relationship or in any
other areas of the socialization process benefits the
intensification of power in civilized societies.(12) Anna Freud
points out that a child who receives genuine love and approval
will develop a firmly established "primary narcissism,” a secure
kind of self-love. This child is at peace with himself; he is an
indication that the surrounding system of relationships is
harmonious. However, when a child’s needs are ignored, he will
feel that his worth is diminished. Then, secondary narcissism
withtwo components develops.
Schmookler notes:
"The first is a sealing off of the self, so
that the disappointing and hurtful connection with the outside
world loses some of its sting. The second part of this
narcissistic strategy is a denial of the internalized image of the
self and a compensatory
overinflation
of the self-image."(13)
A person who develops this pathological
narcissism because of neglect or abuse can’t relate meaningfully
and constructively to other people. This pathological narcissism
is found in a certain type of character but is probably found to
some degree in all members of our society.(14) When I taught at
the community college, I was still alienated from my real needs
and feelings. I had a tremendous abstract knowledge about social
structures and social injustice, but I couldn’t relate to the
students as concrete human beings. Lacking self-knowledge, my
self-expression at the college had lead to self-assertion, with
its combative and power-hungry qualities. Egotistically driven, I
only loved my intellectual achievements, which my mind was cruelly
using for its own self-satisfaction. Such behavior is inconsistent
and unsocial.(15)
Nature has gradually perfected over a very long
period of time in both infant and caregiver the behaviors and
responsibilities required "to develop individuals, not
mistakes."(16) The epidemic sickness in the system of human
relationships has caused these narcissistic injuries. Profound
students of childhood such as Lloyd de Mause (The History of
Childhood) and Alice Miller (For Your Own Good) have
shown the pervasiveness of abusive and defective parenting
historically.(17) In fact, the chronic conflict in civilized
societies has caused parents to be in a virtual state of war
against their children. This war is transferred from generation
because parents who haven’t received "the gift of mutuality—of
respect, of compromise, of accommodation"—can’t give it to their
offspring.(18)
Insecurity and a sense of scarcity are the
prevalent feelings in such an atmosphere. We remain oblivious to
our hypocrisy because we refuse to confront our internal rage,
which is produced by "the war between the demands of our
culture and the needs of our nature."(19)
Injured people make sick history, and sick history injures the
next generation.(20) A world in which narcissistic injuries are
prevalent is a belligerent world. To a great extent, the
intersocietal system can be described as a group of peers who live
within reach of one another and all of whom experienced abuse in
childhood.(21)
The struggle for power injures not only those
on the bottom but those at the top. In fact, every human being
growing up in this type of society probably will have "an impaired
relationship with himself."(22) People grow up in a world divided
into victims and victimizers, winners and losers, the chosen and
the rejected.(23) Each person in this world frantically tries to
protect a self-image that deep within he realizes is
fraudulent.(24) The area of interpersonal relations becomes a
stage on which self-centered actors try to destroy each other.(25)
Schmookler fully agrees with Jonathan Kozol
about the defective upbringing to which the members of the ruling
class must submit. They must frequently endure a socialization
process which consists "of systematic (if subtle) deprivations and
humiliations.(26) As adults, the powerful attack or economically
exploit other nations, destroy the environment and steal the
masses’ freedom and belongings. The dysfunctional patterns of mind
that people learn in such an injurious and traumatic system should
be regarded as illness. Manifestly, the disordered state of
civilization has produced a consciousness sick in its cognitive,
emotional, and spiritual qualities.(27)
Schmookler agrees with Krishnamurti that fear
is the basic cause of our hostility and violence. In order to make
peace, we must recognize our mutual fear and ability to be hurt;
then we must reveal our mutual desire for love. (28)
We must come to realize that self-respect and
identity don’t have to be in short supply. Indeed, Schmookler
believes that human beings would naturally receive all the love
they need if civilization were in its proper condition. (29)
Unfortunately, creatures born for love are especially susceptible
to becoming instruments of hate when they are injured.(30)
However, unless we quickly learn to love other people as nature
intends a mother to love her children, we may cease to exist.
Schmookler also agrees with Kozol that there
are far too few moral people in our zero-sum society. Psychically
damaged parents and teachers don’t raise moral children. In
Bringing Up a Moral Child, psychologists Michael Schulman and Eva
Mekler offer many ’’clear-headed, wise and empirically sound
ideas” on this important subject.(32) Moral behavior has two
elements. It must promote the well-being of one or more people:
and it must be fair or just, taking into account other people’s
rights without prejudice or favoritism.(33) Personally feeling
gain when someone else gains is the most important quality of
moral motivation.
This attribute is acquired through three
psychological processes. The first is the internalization of
parental standards about right and wrong behavior. Schulman and
Mekler declare:
"Whether internalization takes place depends on
how parents state the rules, on how clear and consistent they are,
and also on what they say and do when their child follows or fails
to follow the rules (such as praising and scolding him in
timely and appropriate ways, and teaching him
’nicer’ ways to satisfy his needs.(34)
The accomplishment of internalization also
depends on whether a child’s parents have acted toward him in ways
that stimulate loving feelings toward them. A loving parent’s
discipline affects a child much more strongly than a cold parents
discipline. Spanking a child doesn’t accomplish anything that
won’t be accomplished better by punishments that are more
instructive. The most effective and instructive punishments are
those that ’’are swift, strong, reasonable, and not so severe as
to be frightening.(35) Parental sharing of thoughts and feelings
with their offspring allows those children to feel loved.(36)
Treating children’s thoughts and feelings with respect also
communicates love to them.
The second psychological process the child must
develop to become a moral person is that of responding with
empathy to another person’s feelings. He will feel bad when
someone else is unhappy and good when that person is happy. The
development of personal standards is the third requirement for
moral behavior.(37)
Numerous studies have shown that
one-and-two-year olds will more likely follow their parents’ rules
without being reminded frequently or coerced when their parents
act with warmth and sensitivity toward them, make the rules easily
understandable, and don’t use corporal punishment. The rules as
well as the consequences of following or disobeying them should be
consistent.(38) The caregiver should never censure the child in
general but only criticize actual conduct.
I remain profoundly alienated from the
mainstream values of contemporary American life. Before writing
this book, my recent reading list had included such titles as: Declaration
of a Heretic by Jeremy Rifkin, The Poverty of Affluence
by Paul Wachtel, In the Absence of the Sacred by Jerry
Mander, Fool's Gold by Andrew Schmookler, as well as two books by
Bill Mckibben, The End of Nature and The Age of
Missing Information.
This society makes people slaves to technology,
while paying little attention to technology's "side effects.(1)
They frequently turn into the principal effects and totally cancel
the supposed advantages. Fromm declares that society has a much
greater need for "a human renaissance" than it does for "airplanes
and television."(2)
I fully endorse Jerry Mander’s outlook on
technology, which he explains in In the Absence of the Sacred.
He points out that in a genuine democratic society the merits and
drawbacks of every new technology would be fully debated. If the
technology is judged injurious, it would be rejected. Currently,
the corporate sector of society makes the actual decisions about
introducing a technology. The most important factor is the
potential profit.
Computers play a fundamental part in "every new
technical innovation, whether in communications, the military,
genetics, transportation, automation, or multinational corporate
activity."(3) The academic world, corporate executives,
politicians running for the presidency, futurists, and the
communications industry continually tout the benefits of
computers. Heavy television advertising for computers sends the
message that neither commercial enterprises nor individuals can
live during the coming years without computers.
I don’t own a computer, nor do I know how to
use one. I didn’t grow up using one and have no desire to learn.
This recalcitrance may seem bizarre but is actually prudent.
Computers are highly unhealthy for workers manufacturing them, the
environment surrounding the plants, and users. Chemicals involved
in computer manufacturing are the most harmful compounds that have
ever been combined, according to attorney Ted Smith of the Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition.(4) Many medical problems among users have
been reported. These include: tiredness, eye fatigue, migraine
headaches, and cataracts. Pregnant women who use video display
terminals suffer a higher percentage than normal of "miscarriages,
birth defects, premature births, and infant deaths."(5)
I was born just after World War II ended. It
was then that the idea of the American Dream through technical
innovation started operating with full force. This was called the
"American way of life." Currently, a single technical-economic
network surrounds the earth. Important elements of this
magatechnology are: "Computers, television, satellites,
corporations and banks, space technology, genetics, and the
alarming new ’post-biological’ machinery: nanotechnology and
robotics."(6)
Mander’s comment on the way this emphasis on
science and technology has drastically changed people’s lives is
worth quoting in full:
"I was born in 1936. At that time, there were
no jet airplanes and commercial plane travel was effectively
nonexistent. There were no computers, no space satellites, no
microwave ovens, no electric typewriters, no xerox machines, no
tape recorders. There were no stereo music systems nor compact
disks. There was no televison in 1936. No space travel, no atomic
bomb, no hydrogen bomb, no "guided” missiles, as they were first
called, no "smart" bombs. There were no fluorescent lights, no
washing machines, no dryers, no cuisinarts, no VCRs. There was no
air conditioning. Nor were
there freeways, shopping centers, or malls. There was no Express
Mail, no fax, no telephone touch dialing, no birth-control pill.
There were no credit cards, no synthetic fibers. There were no
antibiotics, no artificial organs, no pesticides or herbicides.
That was fifty-five years ago. During my lifetime all of this has
changed."7
I had become alienated from this way of life
after I learned more about its consequences through my reading
during my illness.
Growing up, I lived in a neighborhood where the
homes had lawns. Many families, including ours, owned dogs and
cats. The only other contact I had with the natural world was at
summer camp. At Camp Indian Lake, I had helped row boats and had
been a passenger in sailboats on Lake Winnipesaukee. I had also
gone on trips which involved climbing mountains and camping
overnight in nearby woods.
Psychologist Chellis Glendinning notes that
about ten thousand years ago, the human scale itinerant life that
had persisted for more than a million years was irreversibly
changed. Domestication of plants and animals occurred; then came
large-scale civilizations. Human beings consideration for the
earth and sharing of its natural rhythms were profoundly altered.
They began to subjugate the earth’s resources, and the human
spirit entered a condition of persistent emotional turmoil.(8)
Currently, psychological stress is incessant in large-scale
technological civilization, which suffers from a widespread
addictive process which Glendinning calls techno-addiction.(9)
Most people in contemporary society only pay
attention to books and speakers who they consider as eminent
authorities; they aren’t ever attentive to natural phenomena.(10)
This is unfortunate because to preserve their mental health, human
beings must live in the natural world.People frequently undergo a
modification of consciousness when they come into contact- even
briefly-with uncultivated areas.(12) They become unhurried and
quiet. Ralph Waldo Emerson thought that authentic education has to
emanate from original sense-impressions in the natural world. He
deplored the fact that docile youngsters matured in libraries.(13)
It is imperative that youngsters delve into nature for themselves,
not just learn about it from school books.(14)
Genuine groups of hunter-gatherers are not
psychologically disturbed; usually, they are unified in thinking,
emotional response, and spirit. They live in truly democratic
small groups. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins states that in
nature-based societies neither manual power nor technology are
fully utilized, and natural resources are consumed sparingly. Work
activity takes only a few hours a day, and there are a greater
number of idle days than work days. Large amounts of time are
occupied by "dancing, fishing, games, sleep and ritual."(15)
Had I been able to continue on my ordained
academic path, I would have utilized my skill in handling
abstractions to enter a corporate law firm. There, I would have
helped my company to manipulate the natural world for profit. This
European materialist mind-set despiritualizes life. It isn’t
satisfied with observing nature but must wreak havoc with it in
order to gain more material possessions.(16) In fact, the more we
have become isolated from nature and from each other, the more we
have relied on material possessions to fill the void. Words like
progress and development actually refer to the insane activities
that are destroying the planet. Mother Earth, however, will strike
back and eradicate the careless and greedy practitioners of this
lifestyle.(17)
American society has continued to travel in the
direction forecast by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World
(1932). This satirical novel takes place in A.F. (after Henry
Ford) 632. The setting is a totalitarian World State, an
anti-utopia or dystopia (meaning "bad place" in Greek).(18) Its
motto is COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. Its inhabitants are
produced scientifically in test tubes by an assembly-line
procedure. The reproductive cycle has been conquered by genetic
engineering and artificial insemination. Identitcal twins are
manufactured by the dozens at one time.
The World State is a "society of altered,
cloned, and patented organisms."(19) Infants are raised in State
Conditioning Centres, which feature Neo-Pavlovian conditioning
rooms. The behaviorist psychology of Ivan Pavlov and J.B. Watson
is fully utilized. Individuality having been totally abolished,
unorthodoxy of behavior is the greatest crime. People are
conditioned to fill prearranged jobs, which range from menial to
highly intellectual in a vertical hierarchy. A type of
sleep-teaching relying on repetitive "hypnopaedic" messages
implants ideas in the child’s mind and will continue to implant
suggestions in the adult’s mind.
This society reveres Our Ford or—when dealing
with psychological matters— Our Freud. It is administered by a
special class of technocrats. At the apex of the pyramid are Ten
world Controllers, who are also conditioned and genetically
engineered for their positions.
The inhabitants are perfect machines.(20) They
must be obedient, conformist, and stable. All spontaneity and
creativity that would disrupt society’s political, social, or
economic efficiency are prohibited.(21) Ashley Montagu has
characterized the culmination of this machine age in this manner:
"Not only are things increasingly produced by machine but human
beings, who are also turned out to be as machinelike as we can
make them, see little wrong in dealing with each other in a
similar mechanical manner.”(22) The people reside in the ultimate
consumer society, totally divorced from natural processes. The
residents are forced to consume a certain amount of resources a
year to keep the industrial mass production system healthy. They
are "consumers, even commodities, but
never
citizens."(23)
Huxley’s World State carries the German
sociologist Max Weber’s warning about "the dangers of
overorganization, especially as it tended toward systematic
coercion or what he called ’the iron cage’ of bureaucracy" to its
extreme.(24) Science, manipulated by specialists and experts, is
used to maintain the stability of this bureaucratic state. High
technology reigns supreme. In fact, science has completely
eliminated ethics.(25)
Immediate happiness, gratification and
comfort—not truth or beauty—are the main goals of this industrial
civilization. All desires are satisfied instantly so that people
don’t need feelings. The society features television, movies with
tactile stimuli called feelies, and unlimited sexual intercourse.
In other words, it stresses a depraved materialism replete with
sensory experiences and animal enjoyments.(26) These pleasant
activities give the society its
stability; they provide a "hedonistic
conformity."(27) In fact, people can avoid any unpleasantness
whatever by taking the drug soma which makes them euphoric.
The majority of American citizens are either
willingly or unwillingly trapped in this brave new world of
managerial rule through advanced technology and mass suggestion.
Fortunately, the situation isn’t yet as extreme as that portrayed in Huxley’s novel.
The United States is presently a relatively benign plutocracy;
however, the primary manipulation is carried out by the
multinational corporations rather than the State. Large segments
of the population are narcotized by television, shopping, movies,
spectator sports, gambling, psychotropic and illegal drugs. Of
course, the system of rewards and punishments that conditions
people at home and at work is far more subtle than the one found
in Brave New World. Furthermore, helpful information is
readily available in books, newspapers, and magazines outside the
mainstream. Authentic relationships and the arts provide respite
from the megamachine’s stifling grip.
As I’ve noted, I considered myself a democratic
or humanistic for many years; I especially had been impressed by
Fromm’s books. Even when he was ten or twelve years old, Fromm
felt somewhat disconcerted when a person told him that he was a
salesman or businessman. He thought that this individual must feel
very badly that he’s only spending his life making money. The
great psychoanalyst continued to be alienated from the business or
bourgeois culture as an adult. He became a socialist because he
did not think that capitalist society featured a way of life that
was humanly fulfilling.(1) The essay Humanist Socialism in
Fromm’s On Disobedience and Other Essays is an excellent
introduction to his thought on this subject.
I also read numerous other authors who
criticized American society from a democratic socialist
perspective. A particularly outstanding one was Michael
Harrington, who became "the National Chairman of the Democratic
Socialist Organizing Committee, the main successor organization to
the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas."(2) Reading
Deb’s and Thomas’s biographies, I was moved by their criticisms of
capitalism and inspired by their humanistic visions. I especially
noted their warnings about the dangers that an overcentralized
government poses for freedom.
In addition, I studied many authors who
partially or wholly approach the problem of social reconstruction
from an anarchist perspective. Ivan Illich, Noam Chomsky, J.
Krishnamurti, and Kirkpatrick Sale are some of the best. However,
I now realize that the political philosophies of socialism and
anarchism—as well as capitalism—are abstractions. There’s no
blueprint for a good society; the most important attributes are
maximum individuality within maximum community, the nurturing of
positive human potentialities, and the protection of the natural
world.
I also understand that, taking a long-term view
of civilization, even capitalism has had positive qualities.
Schmookler, in The Illusion of Choice points out that the market
system has certainly been beneficial to us in many ways. After
all, the civilized societies of the five thousand years before
capitalism were rarely charitable ones; they were predominantly
exploitative and despotic associations. Therefore, to a
significant extent, the appearance of "the liberal order of the
market society" truly liberated the human psyche and human
industriousness.(3) Unfortunately, it has also caused great
imbalance in our society and environment.(4)
For the sake of his argument, Schmookler
ignores the many ways that oligarchic concentration has shattered
the free market so beloved by conservatives. The basic
relationship of people in the market is the simple one of "buyers
and sellers making exchanges."(5) The market is free, but people’s
liberty to decide how their society will be shaped is greatly
restricted.(6) Of course, our society has various other social
organizations that affect our lives. Yet, the market system is so
strong that, for the most part, it shapes our fate. It does this
throogh coercion, persuasion, and ordering society so that people
encounter serious obstacles in selecting options other than what
the market sets before them.(7)
Its rational and bureaucratic system both
nourishes and imprisons us simultaneously.(8) It is responsible
for the ironic situation that all our free human choices result in
a society nobody would elect to live in.(9) People act alone to
improve their own situation; simultaneously, they are destroying
their collective surroundings.(10)
C. B. Macpherson, in his book The Political
Theory of Possessive Individualism, points out that, in such
a society, the individual, possessing his body and skills, is not
viewed as owing anything to the community.(13) The contract
represents the major factor in human relatioships. It defines all
the privileges and obligations individuals have in connection with
each other. The narcissistic economic beings of this society "are
out to pursue self-interest, to satisfy wants, to maximize
utility, or preference, or profit, or reinforcement, or
reproductive fitness."(14) Of course, there are many positive
aspects of American life not captured by the foregoing portrait of
a selfish contract society; overall, however, the power of the
market prevails.(15)
The market methodically underestimated the
worth of natural resources because no one must be compensated for
them. It thus ignores the rights of other living beings and is
oblivious to "the wholeness of living systems."(16) Its accounting
system is distorted and should be changed, according to Robert
Repetto of the World Resources Institute, to reflect the actual
expenses of using natural capital.(17)
Schmookler, like Spence and many other social
critics, locates the source of our trouble in the modern
corporation. He declares, "Many of our corporations are, in a
meaningful sense, virtually beyond human control."(18) Management is fundamentally directed by
the corporate system, rather than the opposite. The type of people
who reach the top rungs of the bureaucratic corporate ladder are
actually quite similar in outlook. Their responsibility to the
shareholders is solely to maximize profits, as the market
dictates. Therefore, the market system, instead of the
shareholders, directs the corporation. Any interests the
stockholders have as human beings are ignored. These corporations
function like machines on automatic pilot within the larger
machine of the market economy.(19)
Schmookler speculates that the unrestricted
growth ethos has developed because nations are still taking part
in a world system that features an unrestricted fight for
power.(20) In effect, international economic competition has
functioned like an arms race.(21) In the final analysis, the most
important purpose of economic power is to bolster a country’s
power rather than to increase affluence and liberty.(22) In other
words, a country’s strength in international competition depends to a large
extent on the degree of its economic vigor.(23) This is the reason
that a society which wants to excel in this race must make its
children apprehensive very early in their lives and force them to
compete.(24)
However, this forced productivity is gained at
a high physical cost. Psychologist Ernest Lawrence Rossi in The 20
Minute Break states that for an enormous period of time people
lived closely attuned to nature’s rhythms; they worked in daylight
and slept at nightfall. They rested during the day whenever they
felt the need. However, when civilization arose ten thousand years
ago, this pattern started to change; many cultures and governments
demanded work schedules that disrupted this natural rhythm. This
problem reached its apex in the urban industrial societies of the
twentieth century. Rossi points out that "human consciousness
became crowded with stimulation, distraction, and
demands for more and more outer-world
performance."(25) Gradually, most people failed to notice their
need for a rest period, although evolution had prepared them to
take it over a hundred million years of development.
Rossi shows how to use the new science of
ultradian rhythms to reduce stress, maximize performance and
improve health and emotional well-being. Ultradian rhythms involve
90 to 120 minutes of activity and fifteen to twenty minutes of
rest; this pattern makes up what is termed "the basic
rest-activity cycle (BRAC)."(26) During the 20-minute rejuvenation
period, a person’s body-mind complex’s system are restored so that
they can continue working
properly.(27) Then, he can function at his peak
during the next activity cycle.
If an individual ignores the first chance for a
rest, the Ultradian Stress Syndrome begins. Stress molecules
travel from the limbic-hypothalamic region of the brain into every
part of the mind and body. These stress-messenger molecules were
supposed to be used in an acute life-threatening situation; they
give a person what is popularly termed a second wind after a few
minutes. His fatigues and pain are hidden by many natural opiates.
High on his hormones, the individual may feel terrific for awhile.
By repeatedly ignoring his need for a rest, a person will cause
his body-mind system to deteriorate; he will eventually bring
about serious symptoms and illness.(28) This was exactly the
sequence which led to my reaching the exhaustion stage of the
general adaptation syndrome at nineteen years old. Actually, each
person must live and work at the pace that is right for him; he
must be guided by his own feelings and experiences rather than the
clock or calender.(29)
Our system’s enormous productivity also has a
high psychological cost. Many of our greatest ancient teachers
such as Buddha, Jesus, Chuang Tzu, and Rabbi Hillel declared that
a materialistic attitude would not bring contentment. Furthermore,
as I’ve noted, Kohn presents compelling reasons why this strategy
is not as effective as our society believes that it is.
This feverish activity is leading to an
environmental cul-se-sac. Schmookler notes, ”E.J. Mishan has
calculated that if our per capita income were to increase at 3
percent per year for five hundred years it would be one million
times higher than it is now.”(30) Yet, we remain firmly addicted
to economic growth despite overwhelming affluence for the majority
of people in te industrial nations. Affluence, according to
anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, can be attained by wanting small
amounts of goods as well as by creating large amounts. In Stone
Age Economics, Sahlins wrote about what he termed "the original
affluent society," that of the hunter-gatherers.(31) They were
happier with their modest assets than modern man is with his
unprecedented possessions.
A contented society has a very different
psychological mind-set than a maximally productive one. Without
having to participate in this economic arms race, our society
might choose to deemphasize material goods and live in peace with
its natural environment. Since the United States is already so
rich and strong, it could decide to part with a portion of its
economic superiority in order to promote other beneficial
experiences and values.(32) Schmookler proposes that the United
States, Japan, and the Western European nations who have been
allies for two generations formulate a treaty to limit economic
competition.(33) This would be a major step toward global economic
cooperation. A global economy requires global control and the
elimination of anarchy in the intersocietal political system.(34)
Eventually, as Herman Daly proposes, our
society should live in "a steady-state economy that develops but
does not grow."(35) This will involve concrete institutional
modifications.(36) In the long run, all of civilization could form
the equivalent of one society. It would feature an "interconnected
market, with peace maintained by an overarching political
order."(37) Only if we can create a safe world order can diverse
communities flourish and their peoples’ human needs and creative
potentialities flourish too. Their social orders are apt to be
very different than the ones we see today. However, unless we
recognize the ways we have been wounded by a hostile world, we
will not be able to develop these new societies.
The subject of what a new society would be like
is a vast one. The interested reader would do well to start with
Fromm’s essay Humanist Socialism and Schmookler’s The
Illusion of Choice. Extensive theorizing on this topic is
far beyond the scope of this book. However, I will mention a few
other interesting approaches to societal reconstruction.
Dr. Peter Breggin divides human experience into
three psychosocial dynamics. These "correspond to three basic
human needs: love, liberty, and coercion.(38) He notes that
socialism is "coerced love." It involves the government forcing
people to do what they should voluntarily want to do. The free
market proponents and anarchists are right in reasoning that
government’s range of action should be as restricted as
possible.(39) Let me hasten to add that Fromm’s humanistic
socialism wants to minimize governmental coercion and emphasizes
voluntary cooperation among citizens.(40) Breggin avers, "Human
beings need and want as much autonomy and personal freedom as
possible in their lives."(41) In a society in which liberty
thrives, they are able to enhance their freely chosen
contributions to their community.
The question is whether any way can be found to
curb the tendencies of government to accumulate power and the
tendencies of the free market to impede competition, and at the
same time to stimulate compassion, benevolence, and
regard for each other and the earth.(42) The
answer is found in the natural powers of love and community. Love
rejects violence and coercion; it takes great pleasure in life and
seeks to multiply feelings of happiness and gratification. Breggin
concludes, "Human beings throughout the world need an infinitely
more loving attitude toward each other, nature, and the earth
itself.(43)
More importantly, the United States must
relinquish the belief that large scale institutions and facilities
are better. Massive research has shown that "smaller buidings,
communities, cities, offices, factories, farms, economic networks, and societies are
both more efficient and more humane.(44) Many people in the United
States who call themselves ’'conservatives” point out that big
government is unwieldy, time-consuming, and unresponsive. Big
government rightly generates much resistance among citizens and is
responsible for much improper distribution and faulty use of
resources. Large governmental bureaucracies are distinguished by
these traits: inflexibility, lack of productiveness, a tendency
toward defensive behavior, inefficiency, irresponsibility, and
hindrance of democracy.(45) Large-scale institutions,
multinational corporations, centralized governments,
high-technology machinery, large cities, high-rise buildings" and
expensive automobiles are integral features of the American dream
of unchecked growth.(46)
We should return to the "small arrangements,
small groups, small communities and cities" that have been
preponderant through most of human history even in the modern
industrial era.(47) Human success has depended not only on our
talent of living in small groups of about twenty-five people but
also on our skill in organizing communal institutions involving
several hundred individuals which stress mutual aid and
cooperation. This human ability to live in genuine communities has
been the indispensable "adaptive mechanism' during the history of
human development.(48) Designs for social living and the economy
as well as political arrangements should all be planned and
carried out so that individuals can make sense of their
experiences in the community and at work, associate
with other individuals in an unintimidated and
honorable manner, and actively participate in the decisions which
affect their lives.(49)
During the past ten thousand years, the vast
majority of human beings have resided in villages of about five
hundred people.(50) The face-to-face community or association
group should be a primary living unit and contain between four
hundred and one thousand individuals, with about five hundred the
best number.(51)This small arrangement may be termed the
neighborhood. A larger
community, consisting of an alliance of sveral neighborhoods,
should contain between five thousand and ten thousand people, with
about five thousand optimal. These human scale communities have a
good chance to maintain the qualities of ’’intimacy, trust,
honesty, mutuality, cooperation, democracy,
congeniality.”(52) A full size city should have
an optimum population of about fifty thousand people.(53)
Once the world’s military and economic arms
races are ended, the way will be clear for what political
scientist Joel Jay Kassiola calls the death of industrial
civilization. The industrial worldview or social paradigm should
be replaced by that of the ecological or transindustrial
worldview.
The politics of industrialism include:
An ethos of aggressive individualism
Materialism pure and simple
Patriarchical values
Economic growth and GNP
High income differentials
Demand stimulation
Employment as a means to an end
Hierarchical structure
Dependence on experts
Representative democracy
Sovereignty of nation-state
Environment managed as a resource
The politics of ecology include:
A co-operatively based, communitarian society
A move toward spiritual, non-material values
Sustainability and quality of life
Low income differentials
Voluntary simplicity
Work as an end in itself
Non-hierarchical structure
Participative involvement
Direct democracy
International and global solidarity
Resources regarded as strictly finite(54)
Jonathan Kozol has written six more books
concentrating on the plight of "the poor, homeless, illiterate,
and forgotten."(1) Rachel and Her Children won the Robert
F. Kennedy Book Award in 1988. It focuses on people in the Hotel
Martinque in New York City. He quotes the farmer in Robert Frost’s
poem The Death of the Hired Man who tells his wife, "Home is the
place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
Kozol states that his wife’s reply is more interesting but less
frequently quoted. She says, "I should have called it something
you somehow haven’t to deserve."(2) Unfortunately, in the 1980s,
public policy in the United States sanctioned the belief that
people must deserve or earn the right to a home.
Contrary to Dr. Breggin’s vision, the people
currently considered worthy of respect in our society are mostly
tough, hard, and lean. Those who are capable of "gentleness,
unselfishness, or love" are not considered true assets to society.
Kozol summarizes the 1980s in this way: "Winning is all; the
solitary runner, tuned in to a headset that excludes the cries of
his less fortunate competitors, becomes a national ideal."(3)
Even the homeless people who Kozol talked with
constantly discuss whether they deserve secure housing, food,
forgiveness, love, freedom from fear...."; many of them don’t
think they really are deserving of these blessing.4) Most of these
people don’t feel political anger. Yet, the ones who adjust best
to the horrors of homelessness and who most successfully resit
alcohol or drugs are usually those who have some grasp of the
political forces that have landed them
in the Martinque.(5)
In 1995, Kozol published Amazing Grace: The
Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. It is a
forceful description of a physical and spiritual wasteland—the
South Bronx. The book asks what our society can provide poor
children after it has cut welfare rolls, closed up public housing,
wrecked Medicaid and subtracted funds from Head Start.(6)
Incidentally, in 1993, I met Dr. Kozol for the
first time in sixteen years. I accompanied my mother when she
treated him and his wife Ruth to lunch at the luxurious Ritz
Carlton Hotel in Boston. Dr. Kozol was then ninety-three years old
and still seeing a few patients! In 1997, he was diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease and entered a high-class nursing home.
He hadn’t seen me since I had completed my
Feldenkrais sessions. His mind was still sharp, although he spoke
in a subdued voice. He was perplexed because my body and behavior
were dramatically altered. My movements and ability to carry on a
pleasant conversation weren’t those of a schizophrenic. We had an
enjoyable lunch and then went to a nearby sitting area. My mother
talked mostly to Ruth, and I talked to the doctor. I discussed
books, current events, Eugene O’Neill, and Jonathan with him. I
also told him about my obtaining a Master’s Degree from Brown.
Let’s return to the question of worth pondered
by the residents of the Hotel Martinque. Most people believe that
I’ve done absolutely nothing productive in the world. This belief,
however, bears scrutiny. It’s undeniable that, because of
circumstances largely beyond my control, I couldn’t engage in the
goal-oriented behavior so revered by our society. Yet, this may be
viewed as a refreshing contrast to the extreme emphasis that
Americans place on success, achievement, and productivity. Fromm
states:
"We find ourselves giving more and more of our
time and energy to things that have a point, that produce results.
And when all is said and done, what are those results? Money
perhaps, or fame or a promotion. We hardly ever consider doing
something anymore that has no purpose. We’ve forgotten that it is
possible, even desirable and, above all, pleasurable to do
something without a specific goal in mind."(7)
What I haven’t done is important. I haven’t
destroyed nearly as many of the world’s resources as have large
numbers of more "successful" citizens. In other words, I haven’t
fulfilled my obligations in our maximum growth economy which
features "consumption for consumption’s sake.”(8) In this economy,
as Slater points out, we must have superfluous employment so that
individuals will accumulate superflous funds to purchase
superfluous goods. Moreover, we have to purchase superfluous goods
in order to generate superfluous employment so that people will
accumulate superfluous funds.(9)
Yet, most people in our society would call me
unworthy because I haven’t worked and contributed to the common
good; they uphold the principle "He who does not work should not
eat." Fromm, however, notes that the fact a person hasn’t
benefitted his society in some way isn’t really the problem. The
psychoanalyst points out that rich people in those cultures which
explicitly or implicitly have endorsed this principle haven’t been
ordered to follow it. Fromm asserts that every person has an
inalienable right to live. This means that it is his right to
receive essential commodities, as well as education and medical
care. In other words, he deserves to be treated at least as well
as a pet, which does not
have to "prove" anything in order to live.(10)
Work and all other social obligations should be
appealing enough so that people want to fulfill their
responsibilities. However, a modest guaranteed income, somewhat
below the lowest worker’s income, should be given to anyone who
doesn’t work. A certain minority of people may "prefer what would
be the equivalent of the monastic life, completely devoting
themselves to their inner development, to contemplation, or
study.(11) The Middle Ages accepted monastic life; therefore, an
affluent, modern society should be able to economically accept its
equivalent. However, bureaucratic methods which force people to
prove that they are making good use of their time would ruin the
idea.
Massive evidence has demonstrated that man is
naturally active and that laziness is a symptom of sickness. Even
with my severely contracted muscles, I engaged in a great deal of
exercise and reading. I achieved my goal of survival; I managed to
recover from a serious condition that wasn’t treated correctly for
thirteen years. Rather than dying or remaining an invalid, I read
widely and exercised vigorously.
My story makes it apparent that a future
decentralized society must feature more moderate differences in
income and wealth. Peter Steinfels in The Neoconservatives
points out that a society has no more reason to allow the
allotment of income and wealth to be decided by the share of
natural abilities than by historical and social fortune. The
degree to which capacities are fulfilled is influenced by many
different social factors and class opinions. Steinfels concludes,
"Even the willingness to make an effort, to try, and so to be
deserving in the ordinary sense is itself dependent upon happy
family and social circumstances.(12)
Yet, our political system has continued its
rightward shift in the 1990s. My mother’s trust fund will be
exhausted in a few years. As I sit alone in my apartment, I
envision myself in a homeless shelter in my old age. I’m reading
O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. In my cynical moments, I
identify with Larry Slade, one of the alcoholic derelicts who live
upstairs at Harry Hope’s bar. Larry no longer believes in the
Anarchist Movement or the State. He has declined to play a part as
a functioning member of society. He’s proud to be "a philosophical
drunken bum.” I nod in approval when Larry declares:
"Forget the anarchist part of it. I’m through
with the Movement long since. I saw men didn’t want to be saved
from themselves, for that would mean they’d have to give up greed,
and they’ll never pay that price for liberty. So, I said to the
world, God bless all here and may the best man win and die of
gluttony! And I took a seat in the grandstand of philosophical
detachment to fall asleep observing the cannibals do their death
dance."(13)
He also states that a good society will have to
be composed of human beings but, unfortunately, a marble temple
can't be built from ”a mixture of mud and manure."(14)
The great folksinger Pete Seeger wrote a song
entitled Little Boxes. He describes people living in
houses on a hillside which are of various colors and made of
"ticky-tackyThe inhabitants all graduated from universities and
then were placed in the same little boxes. Although entering
different fields such as law, medicine, or science, they are
following an approved path in life. Then, they have children who
grow up and repeat the process. This is the system that I was
involuntarily pushed out of when I became ill. Becker observes:
"In the Christian view of a great poet like
Charles Williams one cannot even begin to be an adult unless one
has gone through the most heartbreaking baptism of all: the
banishment of one’s self-respect to Hell; or in our words, the
disintegration of the self-esteem that sustains one’s
character."(1)
In this sense, I certainly reached maturity.
However, I do regret not having been able to use my hard-earned
wisdom in the world. I’ve had to settle for being an ivory tower
(and Ivy League) radical. The true heroes are people like the
freedom riders of the 1960s and people like Jonathan Kozol who
forgo comfort and financial gain to work with the poor and
oppressed.
I know intellectually that there are some good
people and positive things happening in our highly disordered
world. Yet, affectively, I continue to carry within me Yossarian’s
impression of the world in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. He
declares:
"What a lousy earth! He wondered how many
people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous
country, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how
many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families
hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts
were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night,
how many people would go insane? How many winners were losers,
successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were
stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many
honest men were liars; brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how
many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to
blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many
straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best
families were worst families and how many good people were bad
people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might
be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein
and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.(2)
Could feelings which correspond with this
impression first have assaulted me on Oct. 31, 1945?
Chapter One
1. Alice Miller, Breaking Down the Wall of
Silence, trans. Simon Worrall (New York: Dutton-Penguin, U.S.A.,
1991), p.l.
2. The Drama of the Gifted Child (New York:
BasicBooks-HarperCollins, 1981), p.Xl.
3. Elizabeth Noble, Primal Connections (New
York; Simon and Schuster, 1993), p.60.
4. Alice Miller, For Your Own Good, trans.
Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, 2nd. ed. (New York; Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1984), p.158.
5. John Bradshaw, Bradshaw On: The Family
(Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1988), p.66.
6. Thomas Verny, M.D. and Pamela Weintraub,
Nurturing the Unborn Child (New York: Delta-Dell Publishing,
1991), p.79.
7. Arthur Janov, The New Primal Scream
(Wilmington, DE: Enterprise Publishing, 1991), pp.65-66.
8. Quoted by Ashley Montagu, Foreword, Noble,
p.13.
9. Leni Schwartz, Bonding Before Birth (Boston:
Sigo Press, 1991), p.219.
10. Thomas Verny, M.D. with John Kelly, The
Secret Life of the Unborn Child (New York: Delta-Dell Publishing,
1988), p.118.
11. Janov, New Primal, p.142.
12. Verny and Weintraub, p.79.
13. Verny and Weintraub, p.31.
14. Miller, Drama, p.66.
15. Noble, pp.54-55.
16. Francis Mott, quoted in Noble, p.58.
17. Verny and Kelly, p.54.
18. Schwartz, p.34.
19. Verny and Kelly, pp.56-57.
20. Verny and Kelly, p.27.
21. Verny and Weintraub, p.XXV.
22. Noble, p.18.
23. Verny and Kelly, p.27.
24. Verny and Weintraub, p.XXVl.
25. Verny and Kelly, pp.29-30.
26. Verny and Kelly, p.50.
27/ Verny and Kelly, p.13.
28. Schwartz, p.68.
29. Verny and Weintraub, p.81.
30.Stanley Coren, The Left-Hander Syndrome (New
York: Vintage-Random House, 1992), p.208.
31. Coren, p.140.
32. Coren, p.158.
33. Coren, pp.166-67.
34. Coren, p.153.
35.Coren, p.163.
|
3636. |
36. oren,
p.138 37.
Coren, p.161 38.
Coren, p.206 39. Coren
p. 284 |
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Chapter Two |
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1. |
Leboyer, p.56. |
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2. |
Leboyer, pp.64-65. |
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3. |
Verny and Kelly, p |
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4. Joseph Chilton Pearce, Evolution1s
End (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco-HarperCollins, 1992),
pp.111-112.
5. Pearce, Evolution1s, p.112.
6. Pearce, Evolution1s, p.122.
7. Pearce, Evolution’s, pp.124-25.
8. Janov, New Primal, p.265.
9. Janov, New Primal, p.16.
10. Pearce, Magical, p.63
11. John Kennell and Marshall Klaus, quoted in
Pearce, Evolution's, p. 116.
12. Jeremy Rifkin, Biosphere Politics (San
Francisco: HarperCollings, 1992), p.221.
13. Schwartz, p.19.
14. Verny and Kelly, p. 156.
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15. |
Rifkin, Biosphere, pp.221-222. |
16. Rifkin, Biosphere, pp.221-22.
17. Ashley Montagu, Toucing, 3rd ed. (New York:
Haper and Row, 1986), p. 88
18. Ashley Montagu, On Being Human, 2nd ed.
(New York: Hawthorne Books, 1966), p.80
20. Stern, p71.
21. Stern, p.95.
22. Stern, p.1.
23. Stern, p.128.
24. D. Stayton and colleagues, quoted inMichael
and Eva Mekler, Bringing Up a Moral Child (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1985), p.2.
25. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New
York: MacMillan, 1973, p.229.
Chapter Four
1. John Bradshaw, Homecoming (New York:
BAntam-Doubleday Dell, 1990), pp. 71-72.
2. Steven Farmer, Adult Children of Abusive
Parents (Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1989), p. 5.
3. Robert Firestone, The Fantasy Bond (New
York: Human Sciences Press, 1985), p.310.
4. Firestone, p.107.
5. Quoted in Firestone, p.99.
6. Firestone, p.205.
7. Miller, Drama, p.16.
8. Firestone,
p.21.
9. Firestone,
p.92.
10. Firestone,
pp.37-38.
11. John
Bradshaw, Creating Love (New York: Dutton-Penguin books, U.S.A.,
1995), p.65.
12. Bradshaw, Creating, p. 85
13. Bradshaw,
Creating, p. 82.
14. Peter
Breggin, M.D., Beyond Conflict (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1992), p.99.
15. Jean Jenson, Reclaiming Your Life (New
York: Dutton-Penguin Books, U.S.A., 1995), pp.27-28.
16. Jenson, p.34.
17. Jenson, pp.30-31.
18. Bradshaw, Creating, p.31.
19. Bradshaw, Creating, p. 108.
20. Alice Miller, Thou Shalt not be Aware,
trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum (New York: Meridian-New
American Library, 1986), p.241.
21. Miller, Aware, p.257.
22. Miller, Aware, pp.255-56.
23. Franz Kafka, "in the Penal Colony," in The
Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and Other Stories, trans. Willa
and Edwin Muir (New York: Schoden books, 1988), p.197.
24. Miller, Good, p.22.
25. Andrew Bard Schmookler, Out of Weakness
(New York: Bantam Books, 1988), p.153.
26. Breggin, Beyond, p.82.
27. Schmookler, Weakness, p.152.
28. Andrew Bard Schmookler, Sowings and
Reapings (Indianapolis: Knowledge Systems, 1989), p.22.
29. Breggin, Beyond, p.83.
30. Schmookler, Sowings, p.4.
31. Schmookler, Sowings, pp.5-6.
32. Schmookler, Sowings, p.10.
33. John Bradshaw, Family Secrets (New York;
Bantam Books, 1995), p.216.
34. Schulman and Mekler, p.224.
35. Miller, Good, p.106.
36. Bradshaw, Family, p.145.
37. Philip Greven, Spare the Child (New York:
Vintage-Random House, 1992), p.159.
38. Breggin, Beyond, p.109.
39. Franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. E.M. Butler
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p.9.
40. Janov, New Primal, pp.259-260.
41. Deepak Chopra, M.D. Restful Sleep (New
York: Harmony, 1996), p.61.
42. Creating, p.47.
43. Janov, New Primal, p.57.
44. Janov, New Primal, p.59.
45. Janov, New Primal, p.69.
46. Janov, New Primal, p.37.
47. Janov, New Primal, pp.47-48
48. Janov, New Primal, p. 38.
49. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.75.
50. Janov, New Primal, p.48
51. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.75.
52. Janov, New Primal, p. 48.
53. Janov, New Primal, p. 40.
Chapter Five
1. Peter Breggin, M.D. Toxic Psychiatry
(New York; St. Martin’s Press, 1992), p.277.
2. Bradshaw, Family, p.164.
|
3. Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New
York: Rinehart and Company, 1955), p.30. |
4. Fromm, Sane, pp.30-31.
|
5. Becker, Denial, p.166. 6. Firestone, p.334. 7. Firestone, p.48. 8. Firestone, p.182. 9. Firestone, pp.334-35. 10. Firestone, pp.183-84. 11. Firestone, p. 375. 12. Firestone, p.133. 13. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.87. |
14. John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds
You (Deerfield Beach, FL: Healthcommunications, 1988), p.42.
15. Jenson, p.125.
16. Bradshaw, Healing, p.42.
17. Bradshaw, Family, p.81.
Chapter Seven
1. Jenson, p.113.
2. Bradshaw, Creating, pp.49-50.
3. Ernest Becker, The Revlution in Psychiatry
(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe-MacMillan, 1964), p.140.
4. Arno Gruen, The Betrayal of the Self (New
York: Grove Press, 1988), p.5.
5. Miller, Drama, p.75.
6. Bradshaw, Family, p.170.
7. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.20.
8. Bradshaw, Creating, p. 14.
9. Bradshaw, Creating, p.37.
10. Firestone, Fantasy, p.206.
11. Franz Kafa, "The Hnger Artisit" in
Metamorphosis, p. 238.
12. Kafka, "Hunger," p. 250
13. Miller, Aware, p.274.
14. Firestone, p. 101.
15. Firestone, p. 307
16. Firestone, p.319.
17. Firestone, p. 298.
18. David and Micki Colfax, Homeschoolingfor
Excellence (New York: WAgner, 1988), pp.90-91.
19. Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, ed.,
Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Warner, 1988), p.76.
20. (1960; rpt. New York: Bantam-MacMillan,
1972), p.46.
Chapter Eight
1. Montagu, Toucing, p.XI.
2. Bradshaw, Family, p.94.
3. Jenson, p.113.
4. Quoted in Janov, New Primal, dedication
page.
5. Janov, New Primal, p.43.
6. Quoted in Firestone, p.137.
7. Jenson, p.18.
8. Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into
Night (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p.98.
9. O'Neill, Long, p.131.
10. Bradshaw, Creating, pp.45-46.
11. Miller, Good, p.107.
12. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.161.
13. Montagu, Toucing, p.216.
14. Firestone, p.215.
15. R.D. Laing, The Divided Self (New York:
Pelican Books, 1965), p.138.
16. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.164.
17. Bradshaw, Family, p.13.
18. Janov, New Primal, p.137.
19. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.160.
20. Bradshaw, Homecoming, p.144.
21. Laing, Divided, pp.138-42.
22. Rifkin, Biosphere, p.188.
Chapter Nine
1. Noble, p. 124.
2. Montagu, Touching, p.108.
3. Moshe Feldenkrais, The Potent Self, ed.,
Michaeleen Kimmey (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p.73.
4. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.82.
5. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.71.
6. Feldenkrais, Potent, p. 92
7. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.235
8. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.57
9. Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness Through
Movement (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p.75.
11. Feldendrais,Aware, p.75.
12. Arthur Janov, The Primal Scream (New York:
Perigree-G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1970), p.49.
13. Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., Superimmunity (New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987), p.216.
14. Feldenkrais, Potent, pp.XIII and XIV.
15. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.XIV.
16. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.XIV.
17. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.86.
18. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.90.
19. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.90.
20. Feldenkrais, Potent, p.83.
21. Chopra, p.2.
22. Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point (New York:
BAntam-Simon and Schuster, 1983, p.343.
23. Janov, New Primal, p.68.
24. Janov, New Primal, p.68.
25. Miller, Good, p.259 and Janov, New Primal,
p.6.
26. Miller, Aware, p.316.
Chapter Ten
1. Hans Selye, The Stress of Life, rev. ed.
(New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1976), p.l.
2. Selye, p.55.
3. Selye, p.59.
4. Selye, p.150.
5. Pearsall, p.17.
6. Pearsall, p.21.
7. Quoted inPearsall, p.21.
8. Bradsahw Secrets,p.221.
9. Kathlyn Hendricks, quoted inPearsall, p.22.