Home » Posts tagged 'sigmund-freud'
Tag Archives: sigmund-freud
Hard Times on Economic Thinking
It is fashionable in certain circles to fix the blame for a man’s erring proclivities on his faculty upbringing—or lack of it—by parents, or on his companions, temptations, and surroundings. However, are they so much to blame as the man himself? And is he not the victim, the resultant, of his own prenatal past? And even this is not the ultimate cause of his sinning. He is misled by ignorance—without understanding of his deepest self and without knowledge of life’s higher laws. There is some kind of correspondence between the outward situations of his life as they develop and the subconscious tendencies of his mind, between the nature of his environment and the conscious characteristics of his personality, between the effects as they happen to him and the causes that he previously started. When he realizes how long he has been unconsciously building it up for the worse, he can begin to change his life for the better. The same energy which has been directed into thoughts can then be directed into optimistic ones. Were it not for the stubbornness of habit, it would not be harder to do this than to do the opposite. The emotions felt inside the heart, the thoughts evoked inside the head, affect the environment and atmosphere outside us. Without dropping into the artificial attitude which pretends to give small value to outward circumstances, one can yet try to set himself free from his own mental dominion. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
Until one has attained that inner strength which can concentrate thoughts and dominate emotions, it would be foolish to say that environment does not count and that he can mingle with society as freely as he can desert it. Without this attainment, he will be weakened by most of them or strengthened by a few of them. Birth into a prosperous elegant and gracious circle is valued highly in this World: it gives a man dignity and assurance. Education, which nurtures intellect and bestows culture, is likewise well appraised. However, both measure as trivial things in the other World of spiritual attainment. Although not to the extent to which it is affected by thoughts and feelings, inner life is affected by physical conditions. The foundation of human society, said Sumner, is the man-land ratio. Ultimately men draw their living from the soil, and the kind of existence they achieve, their mode of getting it, and their mutual relations in the process are all determined by the proportion of population to the available soil. Where men are few and soil is abundant, the struggle for existence is less savage, and democratic institutions are likely to prevail. When population presses upon the land supply, Earth hunger arises, races of men move across the face of the World, militarism and imperialism flourish, conflict rages—and in government aristocracy dominates. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
As men struggle to adjust themselves to the land, they enter rivalry for leadership in the conquest of nature. In Sumner’s popular essays he stressed the idea that the hardships of life are incidents of the struggle against nature, that “we cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of these. My neighbor and I are both struggling to free ourselves from these ills. The fact that my neighbor has succeeded in this struggle better than I constitutes no grievance for me. Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital has a great advantage over the man who has no capital at all in the struggle for existence…This does not mean that one man has an advantage against the other, but that, when they are rivals in the effort to get the means of subsistence from Nature, the one who has capital has immeasurable advantages over the other. If it were not so capital would not be formed. Capital is only formed by self-denial, and if the possession of it did not secure advantages and superiorities of a high order men would never submit to what is necessary to get it.” Thus, the struggle is like a whippet race; the fact that one hound chases the mechanical hare of pecuniary success does not prevent the others from doing the same. Sumner was perhaps inspired to minimize the human conflicts in the struggle for existence by a desire to dull the resentment of the less affluent towards the affluent. He did not always, however, shrink from a direct analogy between animal struggle and human competition. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
In the Spencerian intellectual atmosphere of the 1870s and 1880’s, it was natural for conservatives to see the economic contest in competitive society as a reflection of the struggle in the animal World. It was easy to argue by analogy from natural selection of fitter organisms to social selection of fitter men, from organic forms with superior adaptability to citizens with a greater sore of economic virtues. The competitive order was now supplied with a cosmic rationale. The competition was glorious. Just as survival was the result of strength, success was the reward of virtue. Sumner had no patience with those who would lavish compensations upon the virtueless. Many economists, he declared (in a lecture given in 1879 on the effect of hard time on economic thinking), “seem to be terrified that distress and misery still remain on Earth and promise to remain as long as the vices of human nature remain. Many of them are frightened at liberty, especially under the form of competition, which they elevate into a bugbear. They think it bears harshly on the weak. They do not perceive that here ‘the strong” and “the weak’ are terms which admit of no definition unless they are made equivalent to the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the extravagant. They do not perceive, furthermore, that if we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one possible alternative, and this is the survival of the unfitted. The former is the law of anti-civilization. We have our choice between the two, or we can go on, as in the past, vacillating between the two, but a third plan—the socialist desideratum—a plan for nourishing the unfitted and yet advancing in civilization, no man will ever find.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
The progress of civilization, according to Sumner, depends upon the selection process; and that in turn depends upon the workings of unrestricted competition. Competition is a law of nature which “can no more be done away with than gravitation,” and which men can ignore only to their sorrow. You may well ask, “But why does a person who is seeking help find himself changing in a relationship which contains these elements? Why does this initiate a process of learning to be free, or becoming what he is, of choice and inner development?” The reactions of the client who experiences for a time the kind of therapeutic relationship which we have discussed are a reciprocal of the therapist’s attitudes. As he finds someone else listening acceptingly to his feelings, he little by little becomes able to listen to himself. He begins to receive communications from within himself—to realize that he is angry, to recognize when he is frightened, even to realize when he is feeling courageous. As he becomes more open to what is going on within him, he becomes able to listen to feelings which have seemed to him so terrible, or so disorganizing, or so unique, or so personal, that he has never been able to recognize their existence in himself. While he is learning to listen to himself, he also becomes more acceptant of himself. As he expressed increasingly hidden aspects of himself, he finds the therapist showing a consistent and unconditional beneficial regard for him and his feelings. Slowly he moves toward taking the same attitude toward himself, accepting himself as he is, respecting and caring for himself as a person, being responsible for himself as he is, and therefore ready to move forward in the process of being free. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
And finally, as he listens more accurately to the feelings within, and becomes less evaluative and more acceptant toward himself, he also moves toward being more real. He finds it possible to move out from behind the facade he had used, to drop his defensive behaviours, and more openly to be what he truly is. As these changes occur, as he becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, more self-expressive, less defensive, and more open, he finds that he is at last free to change and grow and move in directions natural to the human organism. He can make imperfect choices—and then correct them. He recognizes that he can choose to be hurtful or constructive, self-aggrandizing, or committed to the welfare of the group, and when these choices can be freely made, he tends to move in the socially constructive direction. It is such experiences in individual and group psychotherapy which lead us to believe that we have here an important dynamic for modern education. We may have here the essential core of a process by which we might facilitate this production, through our educational system, of persons who will be adaptative and creative, able to make responsible decisions, open to the kaleidoscopic changes in their World, worthy citizens of a fantastically expanding Universe. It seems at least a possibility that in our schools and colleges, in our professional schools and universities, individuals could learn to be free. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
When considering our case study of Clare, she had a self-observation and became concerned about her inability to be alone. She had not been aware of this inhibition before, because she had arranged her life in such a way as to avoid any periods of solitude. When she was by herself, she observed that she became restless or fatigued. When she tried to enjoy them alone, things she could relish otherwise lost their meaning. When others were around, she could work much better in the office than at home, though the work was of the same kind. During this time, she neither tried to understand these observations nor made any effort to follow up her latest finding. In view of the incisive importance of that finding, her failure to pursue it any further is certainly striking. If we consider it in connection with the reluctance, she had previously shown to scrutinize her relationship with Peter, we are justified in assuming that with her latest discovery Clare came closer to realizing her dependency than she could stand at the time and therefore stopped her analytical endeavours. The provocation to resume her work was a sudden sharp swing mood that occurred one evening with Peter. He had given her an unexpected present, a pretty scarf, and she was overjoyed. However, later she felt suddenly tired and became frigid. The depressed feeling occurred after she had embarked on the question of summer plans. She was enthusiastic about the plans, but Peter was listless. He explained his reaction by saying that he did not like to make plans anyhow. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
The next morning, she remembered a dream fragment. She saw a large bird flying away, a bird of the most glorious colours and most beautiful movements. It became smaller and smaller until it vanished. The she awoke with anxiety and a sensation of falling. While she was still waking up a phrase occurred to her–“the bird has flown”–which she knew at once expressed a fear of losing Peter. Certain later associations confirmed this intuitive interpretation: someone had once called Peter a bird that never settled down; Peter was good-looking and a good dancer; the beauty of the bird had something unreal; a memory of Bruce, whom she had endowed with qualities he did not possess; a wonder whether she glorified Peter, too; a song from Sunday school, in which Jesus as the Christ asked to take His children under His wing. Thus, the fear of losing Peter was expressed in two ways: by the bird flying away, and by the idea of a bird that had taken her under its wings and dropped her. The latter thought was suggested not only by the song but also by the sensation of falling that she had on awakening. In the symbol of Jesus taking His children under His wing the theme of the need for protection is resumed. In view of later developments, it appears by no means accidental that the symbol is a religious one. Clare did not delve into the suggestion that she glorified Peter. However, the very fact that she saw this possibility is noteworthy. It may have paved the way for her daring to take a good look at him some time later. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
The main theme of her interpretations, however—the fear of losing Peter—not only was recognized as an inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the dream but was deeply felt as true and important. That it was an emotional experience as well as an intellectual recognition of a crucial factor was evident in the fact that several reactions hitherto not understood became suddenly transparent. First, she saw that on the previous night, she had not merely been disappointed in Peter’s reluctance to talk about a common vacation. His lack of zest had aroused a dread that he would desert her, and this dread had caused her fatigue and frigidity and had been the provocation for the dream. And many other comparable situations became similarly illuminated. All kinds of instances emerged in which she had felt hurt, disappointed, irritated, or in which, as on the preceding day, she had become tired or depressed for no good reason. She realized that all these reactions sprang from the same source, regardless of what other factors might have been involved. If Peter was late, if he did not telephone, if he was preoccupied with other matters than herself, if he was withdrawn, if he was tense or irritated, if he was not interested in having pleasures of the flesh with her—always the dread of desertion was touched off. Furthermore, when she was with Peter, she understood that the explosions of irritation that sometimes occurred not from trivial dissensions or, as he usually accused her, from her desire to have her own way, but from this same dread. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
The anger was attached to such trivial matters as different opinions about a movie, irritation at having to wait for him, and the like, but it was produced by her fear of losing him. And, conversely, when she received an unexpected present from him, she was overjoyed because it meant a sudden relief from this fear. Finally, she linked up the fear of desertion with the empty feeling that she when she was alone, but without arriving at any conclusive understanding of the connection. Was the fear of desertion so great because she dreaded to be alone? Or did solitude, for her, implicitly mean desertion? A person can be entirely unaware of a fear that is all consuming. That Clare now recognized her fear, and saw the disturbances it created in her relationship with Peter, meant a definite step ahead. There are two connections between this insight and her preceding one concerning her need for protection. Both findings show to what extent the whole relationship was pervaded with fears. And, more specifically, the fear of desertion was in part a consequence of the need for protection: if Peter were expected to protect her from life and its dangers, she could not afford to lose him. Clare was still far from understanding the nature of the fear of desertion. If anything, she was still unaware that what she regarded as deep love was nothing more than a neurotic dependency and therefore, she could not recognize that the fear was based on this dependency. Regarding her inability to be alone, the questions that occurred to her were more pertinent than she realized. However, since this whole problem was hazy because there were still too many unknown factors involved, she was not even capable of making accurate observations on this score. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Clare’s analysis of her elation at receiving the scarf was accurate as far as it went. Undoubtedly one essential element in her feeling overjoyed was that the act of friendliness allayed her fear for the time being. That she did not consider the other elements involved can scarcely be attributed to a resistance. She saw only the aspect that was related to the problem on which she was then working, her fear of destruction. Related to nongreedy desire for pleasures of the flesh but different from it is tenderness. Dr. Freud, whose whole psychology deals exclusively with “drives,” necessarily had to explain tenderness as an outcome of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, as a goal-inhibited desire for pleasures of the flesh. It is an experience sui generis. Its first characteristic is that it is free from greed. In the experience of tenderness, one does not want anything from the other person, not even reciprocity. It has no aim and purpose, not even that which is present in the ungreedy form of sexuality, namely, of the final physical culmination. It is not restricted to any pleasures of the flesh or age. It is least of all expressible in words, except in a poem. It is most exquisitely expressed in the way in which a person may touch another, look at him or her, or in the tone of voice. One can say that it has roots in the tenderness which a mother feels toward her child, but even if this is so, human tenderness far transcends the mother’s tenderness to the child because it is free from the biological tie to the child and from the narcissistic element in motherly love. It is free not only from greed but from hurry and purpose. Among all the feelings which man has created in himself during his history, there is none which surpasses tenderness in the pure quality of simply being human. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Compassion and empathy are two other feelings clearly related to tenderness but not entirely identical to it. The essence of compassion is that one “suffers with” or, in a broader sense, “feels with” another person. This means that one does not look at the person from the outside—the person being the “object” (never forget that “object” and “objection” have the same root) of my interest or concern—but that one puts himself into the other person. This means I experience within myself what he experiences. This is a relatedness which is not from the “I” to the “thou” but one which is characterized by the phase: I am thou (Tat Twan Asi). Compassion or empathy implies that I experience in myself that which is experienced by the other person and hence that in this experience he and I are one. Only if it is based on my experiencing in myself that which he experiences, then all knowledge of another remains an object, I may know a lot about him, but I do not know him. In psychoanalysis or similar forms of depth psychotherapy, a knowledge of the patient rests upon the capacity of the analyst to know him and not on his ability to gather enough data to know much about him. The data of the development and experiences of the patient are often helpful for knowing him, but they are nothing but adjuncts to that knowledge which requires no “data,” but rather, complete openness to the other and openness within oneself. It might occur in the first second after seeing a person, it might occur a long time later, but the act of this knowledge is a sudden, intuitive one and not the result of ever-increasing information about the life history of the person. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Goethe has expressed this kind of knowledge very succinctly: “Man knows himself only within himself, and he is aware of himself within the World. Each new object truly recognized opens a new organ within us.” The possiblity of this kind of knowledge based on overcoming the split between the observing subject and the observed object requires, of course, the humanistic promise that every person carries within himself all of humanity; although in varying degrees, within us we are saints and criminals, and hence there is nothing in another person which we cannot feel as part of ourselves. This experience requires that we free ourselves from the narrowness of being related only to those familiar to us, either by the fact that they are blood relations or, in a larger sense, that we eat the same food, speak the same language, and have the same “common sense.” Knowing men in the sense of compassionate and empathetic knowledge requires that we get rid of the narrowing ties of a given society, race, or culture and penetrate to the depth of that human reality in which we are all nothing but human. True compassion and knowledge of man has been underrated as a revolutionary factor in the development of man, just as art has been. Tenderness, love, and compassion are exquisite feelings and experiences and recognized as such. For Dr. Freud, only primitive man could be called “healthy.” He satisfies all his instinctual demands without need for repression, frustration, or sublimation. (That Dr. Freud’s picture of the primitive as having an unrestricted life filled with instinctual satisfaction is a romantic fiction has been made abundantly clear by contemporary anthropologists.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
However, when Dr. Freud turns from historical speculation to the clinical examination of contemporary man, this picture of primitive mental health hardly matters. Even if we could keep in mind that civilized man cannot be completely healthy (or happy, for that matter), Dr. Freud has nevertheless definite criteria for what constitutes mental health. These criteria are to be understood within the frame of reference of his evolutionary theory. This theory has two main aspects: the evolution of libido, and the evolution of man’s relations to others. In the theory of libido evolution Dr. Freud assumes that the libido, that is, energy of the drive for pleasures of the flesh, undergoes a development. It is at first centered around the oral activities of the child—sucking and biting—and later around the anal activities—elimination. Around the age of five or six, the libido has for the first time centered around the private organs. However, this age of “adult behaviour” is not fully developed, and between the first “phallic phase” near the age of six and the beginning of puberty there is a “latency period,” during which development of pleasures of the flesh is at a standstill, as it were, and only at the beginning of puberty does the process of libido development come to fruition. This process of libido development, however, is by no means an uncomplicated one. Many events, especially oversatisfaction and overfrustration, can result in a child becoming “fixated” on the earlier level, and thus never arriving at a fully developed genital level, or regressing to an earlier one even after having arrived at the genital level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
As a result, the adult may exhibit neurotic symptoms (like impotence), or neurotic character traits (as in the overdepednent, passive person). For Dr. Freud the “healthy” person is the one who has reached the “gential level” without regressing, and who lives an adult existence, that is, an existence in which he can work and have adequate satisfactions involving pleasures of the flesh or, in which he can produce things and reproduce the race. The other aspect of the “healthy” person lies in the sphere of his object relations. The newborn baby has not yet any object relations. It is in a state of “primary narcissism” in which the only realities are its own bodily and mental experiences, and the World outside does not yet exist conceptually, and even less, emotionally. The child then develops his strong attachment to mother. However, as the child ages, he shifts from the fixation to mother to the allegiance to father. At the same time, however, he also identifies with father by incorporating his commands and prohibitions. Through this process he achieves independence from father and from mother. The healthy person, for Dr. Freud, then, is the one who has reached the genital level, and who has become his own master, independent of father and mother, relying on his own reason and his own strength. However, even the key features of Dr. Freud’s concept remain vague and certainly lacks the precision and penetration is his concept of mental illness. It is the concept of a well-functioning member of the middle class at the beginning of the twentieth century, who is sexually and economically potent. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
In the modern, technology-filled World, we are bombarded with options: watch this, read that, listen to this. Our society is saturated with media and entertainment, and the influence they have on our beliefs, thoughts, and actions is subtle but powerful. The things we allow to fill our minds end up shaping our being—we become what we think about. If we all just believed what anyone said, what would happen? It was once taken for granted that whatever was written in school textbooks was true. And whatever you read in the trade papers or saw on the TV news was also true. With the vast amount of information available to all of us now, we have found that not to be true. So, if we must second guess the news media now, should we not do the same for any other information we are given? Technology is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, the purposes accomplished with and through technology are the ultimate indicators of goodness or badness. Our responsibility is not to avoid media altogether or to merely reject negative media but to choose wholesome and uplifting media. We can use the power of media to our advantage, to better our thoughts and behaviours by acknowledging our susceptibility to media influence and recognizing how it influences us. Identifying educational and high-quality media options, and recognizing no one is immune to media’s influence. We cannot expect to indulge in media designed to affect us mentally and emotionally without its influence being sustained in our subconscious long after the source of media is over. Those who believe media does not affect them are often the people who are most affected because they deny the influence and are therefore not guarded against it. Just as water will continue to seep through a leak in a boat, whether we acknowledge the leak, so will the media continue to influence our thoughts whether we address its impact. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
Many firefighters have many ways of learning to fight fires. “In the U.S.A. Forest Service, when I first started, the training was all done at the station level. The old-time captains and engineers teach you as you go along. Then, as you advance in the ranks, they begin to send you to specialized schools on fire behavior and safety and all kinds of things. It’s an ongoing process. Then, when I switched to the California Department of Forestry, it was pretty much the same program, although as part of the probationary term you have to go to six-week academy for engineers. Driving, pumping, hydraulics, ladder, hose, fire behavior tactics, everything compacted into a six-week school. Then the same thing when you come back to your unit, it’s an ongoing training thing at the local level. Plus schools, they send guys to the more sophisticated schools with other agencies. And now, of course, like everyone else, we’re sending people to the National Fire Academy too. I was fortunate when I first came to work, we went to several rather small fires, and I was able to kind of gradually build up to the tough ones. That doesn’t always happen. I’ve seen some guys come on the job, and right off the bat they’re put on some monsters, some hairy deals. That tends to scare some of them off. They decide this is not what they really want, and they go back to being a bookkeeper or something. But in my case I was able to kind of wade into it and go from the little easy stuff into the big bad stuff. That way I gradually became aware of what was going on and conscious of the difficulties of the job and the safety problems. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“When I came back from the Army, the first thing they sent me to was a fire weather class. All I knew was that on a hot, dry day, things burn better, and when the wind blows they burn still better. I had never been taught the effect of weather on fire behavior. In the class, this guy’s going on about wind and dry weather, and humidity, and the causes and effects of all those things, and methods I had never heard of before. It was almost funny, because every once in a while all of us in the class would go, ‘Oh, no wonder. Not I understand why the fire did that.’ Earlier there had been a lightning-caused forest fire that kind of startled me. It was a small fire—that fire would up taking 5,000 acres. We were there for over an hour before anybody else showed up. We didn’t realize that there were a lot of other fires going on, and that was why backup troops weren’t available. Anyway, we attacked the head end of the fire, the direction it was moving, and we made pretty good progress, only to realize that we were suddenly on the back side of the fire—the front end of the fire was on the other side now, going the other way. It dashed around us, and finally it blew out at the canyon, and we couldn’t stop it. I never did understand totally what had happened, until I went to this weather class and the guy explained it.” Please remember to donate to the Sacramento Fire Department so they have all the resources they need. The relativity of good and evil is no justification for the tolerance of wrong and evil. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, One Nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
Designed to maximize views to the front, side, and rear outdoor areas, this Cresleigh Home utilizes strategically placed windows and an open floor plan. Off the foyer is a home office, library, or sewing room. There is an option fireplace in the great room, and an expansive cabinet system in the dining room. A large walk-in pantry, and butler’s pantry provide ample storage space, and make this home an entertainer’s dream. An impressive center island, along with a built-in breakfast nook, are special kitchen amenities.
There is a master bedroom on the first floor with ensuite bathroom, a powder room, and the option for a self-contained apartment inside of the house. The master suite provides a comfortable retreat with large windows, a closet the size of a bedroom, and a magnificent spa inspired bathroom with dual vanities, a soaking tub and separate shower. There are as many as three additional bedrooms upstairs with the option of a loft as a substitution for one of the bedrooms, which families often like because it allows for an additional living room for the kids.
Many buyers are impressed with the option of a four bay car garage or three car garage with a gym. The gym could also be converted into a bedroom. At nearly 3,800 square feet, this two-story home is one of the largest on the traditional home market in our region. Depending on how one uses the space, there is the possibility for up to seven bedrooms, and as many as 5.5 bathrooms. What many new parents like is that the master closet on the second floor has a window and could double as a nursery for a newborn baby. https://cresleigh.com/magnolia-station/residence-5/
Home is the place of love, compassion, and dreams. Make your home, a Cresleigh Home. #CresleighHomes
Four Seasons Fill the Measure of the Year
Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society downwards and favours all its worst members. The most vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America was William Graham Sumner of Yale. Sumner not only made a striking adaptation of evolution to conservative thought, but also effectively propagated his philosophy through widely read books and articles, and converted his strategic teaching post in New Haven into a kind of social-Darwinian pulpit. He provided his age with a synthesis which, though not quite so grand as Mr. Spencer’s, was bolder in its stark and candid pessimism. Mr. Sumner’s synthesis brought together three great traditions of western capitalist culture: the Protestant ethic, the doctrines of classical economics, and Darwinian natural selection. Correspondingly, in the development of American thought Mr. Summer played three roles: he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. His sociology bridged the gap between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century, for it assumed that the industrious, temperate, and frugal man of the Protestant ideal was the equivalent of the “strong” of the “fittest” in the struggle for existence; and it supported the Ricardian principles of inevitability and laissez faire with a hard-bitten determinism that seemed to be at once Calvinistic and scientific. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on October 30, 1840. His father, Thomas Sumner, was a hard-working, self-educated English labourer who had come to America because his family’s industry was disrupted by the growth of the factory system. He brought up his children to respect the traditional Protestant economic virtues, and his frugality left a deep impress upon his son William, who came in time to acclaim the savings-bank depositor as “a hero of civilization.” The sociologist later wrote of this father: His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to these matters, I hold with him and not with others.” The economic doctrines of the classical tradition which were current in his early years strengthened Sumner’s paternal heritage. He came to think of pecuniary success as the inevitable product of diligence and thrift, and to see the lively capitalist society in which he lived as the fulfillment of the classical ideal of an automatically benevolent, free competitive order. At fourteen he had read Harriet Martineau’s popular little volumes, Illustrations of Political Economy, whose purpose was to acquaint the multitude with the merits of lassie faire through a series of parables illustrating Ricardian principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
There he became acquainted with the wage-fund doctrine, and its corllaries: “Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not affect the proportion of population to capital”; and “combinations of labourers against capitalists…cannot secure a permanent rise of wages unless the supply of labour falls short of demand—in which case, strikes are usually unnecessary.” There also he found fictional proof that “a self-balancing power being…inherent in the entire system of commercial exchange, all apprehensions about the result of its unimpeded operations are absurd,” and that “a sin is committed when Capital is diverted from its normal course to be employed in producing at home that which is expensive and inferior, instead of preparing that which will purchase the same article cheaper and superior abroad.” Charities, whether public or private, Miss Martineau held, would never reduce the number of the indigent, but would only encourage improvidence and nourish “peculation, tyranny, and fraud.” Later Sumner declared that his conceptions of “capital, labour, money and trade were all formed by those books which I read in my boyhood.” Francis Wayland’s standard text in political economy, which he recited in college, seems to have impressed him but little, perhaps because it only confirmed well-fixed beliefs. In 1859, when he matriculated at Yale, young Sumner devoted himself to theology. During undergraduate years Yale was still a pillar of orthodoxy, dominated by its versatile president, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, who had just turned from classical scholarship to write his Introduction to the Study of International Law, and by the Rev. Noah Porter, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics, who as Woolsey’s successor would one day cross swords with Sumner over the proper place of the new science in education. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Sumner, a somewhat frigid youth (who could seriously ask, “Is the reading of fiction justifiable?”) repelled many of his schoolmates; but his friends made up in munificence what they lacked in number. One of them, William C. Whitney, persuaded his elder brother Henry to supply funds for Sumner’s further education abroad; and the Whitneys secured a substitute to fill his place in the Union Army while Sumner pursued theological studies at Geneva, Gottingen, and Oxford. In 1868 Sumner was elected to a tutorship at Yale, beginning a lifelong association with its faculty that would be broken only by a few years spent as editor of religious newspaper and reactor of the Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey. In 1872 he was elevated to the post of Professor of Political and Social Science in Yale College. Despite personal coldness and a crisp, dogmatic classroom manner, Sumner had a wider following than any other teacher in Yale’s history. Upperclassmen found unique satisfaction in his course; lowerclassmen looked forward to promotion chiefly as a means of becoming eligible to enroll in them. William Lyon Phelps, who took every one of Sumner’s courses as a matter of principle without regard for his interest in the subject matter, as left a memorable picture of Sumner’s dealings with a student dissenter: “Professor, don’t you believe in any government aid to industries?” “No! It’s root, hog, or die.” “Yes, but hasn’t the hog got a right to root?” “There are no rights. The World owes nobody a living.” “Yo believe then, Professor, in only one system, the contract-competitive system?” “That’s the only sound economic system. All others are fallacies.” “Well, suppose some professor of political economy came along and took your job away from you. Wouldn’t you be sore?” “Any other professor is welcome to try. If he gets my job, it is my fault. My business is to teach the subject so well that no one can take the job away from me.” The stamp of his early religious upbringing and interests marked all Sumner’s writings. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
Although clerical phraseology soon disappeared from his style, his temper remained that of a proselytizer, a moralist, an espouser of causes with little interest in distinguishing between error and iniquity in his opponents. “The type of mind which he exhibited,” writes his biographer, “was the Hebraic rather than the Greek. He was intuitive, rugged, emphatic, fervently and relentlessly ethical, denunciatory, prophetic.” He might insist that political economy was a descriptive science divorced from ethics, but his strictures on protectionist and socialists resounded with moral overtones. His popular articles are read like sermons. Sumer’s life was not entirely given to crusading. His intellectual activity passed through two overlapping phases, marked by a change less in his thought than in the direction of his work. During the 1870’s, 1880’s and early 1890’s, in the columns of popular journals and from the lecture platform, he waged a holy war against reformism, protectionism, socialism, and government interventionism. In this period, he published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), “The Forgotten Man” (1883), and “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894). In the early 1890’s, however, Sumner turned his attention more to academic sociology. It was during this period that the manuscript of “Earth Hunger” was written, and the monumental Science of Society projected. When Sumner, always a prodigious worker, found that his chapter on human customs had grown to 200,000 words, he decided to publish it as a separate volume. Thus, almost as an afterthought, Folkways was brought out in 1906. Although the deep ethical feeling of Sumner’s youth gave way to the sophisticated moral relativism of his social-science period, his underlying philosophy remained the same. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
The Christian scriptures name obstacles the aspirant may have to deal with. They are frivolity, changeableness, unruly desires, dissatisfaction, gratification of the senses, and craving for the ego’s existence. Even if he finds himself in a moral solitude, as he may in earlier years, it is still worthwhile to be loyal to ideals. He must cast off the long mantle of arrogance and put on the short coat of humility. A lapse in artistry may be pardoned but a lapse in sincerity may not. Be sincere! That is the message from soul to self, from God to man. It is not man’s own voice, which is to acclaim him as a master, but his life. His willingness to acknowledge he has faults and lots of them is admirable—so few ever like to confess such a thing—but they are not so deep or so numerous as he imagines. He should not forget that he has some merits too and they are able to balance the others and keep them where they belong. As for perfection, alas, the self-actualized Christian too is still striving for it. Pride can take a dozen different disguises, even the disguise of its very opposite, humility. The quicker he grows and the father he goes on this quest, the more an aspirant must examine his character for its traces and watch his actions to detect it. He is indeed a prudent man who refuses to be blinded by passions or deluded by appearances. He does not know in advance what he will do in every new situation that arises—who does?–but only what he will try to do, what principles he will try to follow. He who trims his sails to the winds of expediency reveals his insincerity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
It is true that environment contributes to the molding of character but not true that it creates or even dominates character. Thought and will are linked with our own rebirth in Jesus as the Christ. Character can be improved by effort and Grace. If we will only attend to the first and persistently carry out the inner work required on ourselves, destiny will attend to the second and not seldom remove the outer obstacles or improve the outer environment in the process. Each person who enters our life for a time, or becomes involved with it at some point, is an unwitting channel bringing good or evil, wisdom or foolishness, fortune or calamity to us. This happens because it was preordained to happen—under the law of recompense. However, the extent to which he affects our outer affairs is partly determined by the extent to which we let him do so, by the acceptance or rejection of suggestions made by his conduct, speech, or presence. It is we who are finally responsible. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. When a therapist is experiencing a warm, beneficial and acceptant attitude toward what is in the client, this facilitates change. It involves the therapist’s genuine willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on in him at that moment—fear, confusion, pain, pride, anger, hatred, love, courage, or awe. It means that the therapist cares for the client, in a non-possessive way. It means that he prizes the client in a non-possessive way. The is accepted in a total rather than conditional way. He does not simply accept the client when he is behaving in certain ways and disapproves of him when he behaves in other ways. It means an outgoing optimistic feeling without reservations, without evaluation. This is known as an unconditional beneficial regard. Again, research studies show that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the more likelihood there is that therapy will be successful. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Empathic understanding is when the therapist is sensing the feelings and personal meanings which the client is experiencing in each moment, when he can perceive these from “inside,” as they seem to the client, and when he can successfully communicate something of that understanding to his client, then this condition is fulfilled. Each of us has discovered that this kind of understanding is extremely rare. We neither receive it nor offer it with any great frequency. Instead, we offer another type of understanding which is very different. “I understand what is wrong with you”; “I understand what makes you act that way”; or “I too have experienced your trouble and I reacted very differently”; these are the types of understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding which we usually offer and receive, an evaluative understanding from the outside. However, when someone understands how it feels and seems to be me, without wanting to analyze me or judge me, then I can blossom and grow in that climate. And research bears out this common observation. When the therapist can grasp the moment-to-moment experiencing occurring in the inner World losing the separateness of his own identity in this emphatic process, then change is likely to occur. Studies with a variety of clients show that when these conditions occur in the therapist, and when they are to some degree perceived by the client, therapeutic movement ensures, the client finds himself painfully but learning and growing, and both he and the therapist regard the outcome as successful. From our perspective, it seems that it is attitudes such as these rather than the therapist’s technical knowledge and skill, which are primarily responsible for therapeutic change. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
Not later than high school every student should receive a solid course of instruction in general psychology. Such a course should enable the student to see that the behaviour of people is proper, indeed a crucial, area for the application of scientific method. He should be introduced to the general principles that have been uncovered through careful study of how people learn, how they perceive their World, how they acquire attitudes and how those attitudes influence their modes of adjustment. The aim of such a general psychology course taught at the secondary level would be not simply to provide the student with an awareness of the substantive content of psychology as a field of human inquiry but, more importantly, to instill in him attitudes toward behaviour, his own and that of other persons, likely to encourage and maintain hygienic personal relationships. The study of psychology encouraged an attitude of objectivity and persisting examination of reasons for behaviour; it provides a foundation and stimulus for the student to seek to understand himself and others. With a scientifically psychological orientation toward the understanding both of self and others the individual is less likely to be victimized either by his own emotions or by the irrationalities of others. An adequate general psychology would introduce the student to the “psychology of everyday life,” would sensitize him to the meaning of errors, oversights, and momentary distortions in his perceptions and thought. With this instruction he would have at least the equipment, if not the motivation, for the life-long exploration of his own developing personality—for the continual challenge to self-realization and self-understanding. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
As the frontiers of geograpy have been progressively pushed back and exhausted, it becomes increasingly difficult for the average man to be an explorer, to make discoveries. For the average man, the last frontier challenging his urge to search and to uncover new lands if provided by the complex vastness of his own mind, by the boundaries of his own spirit. It is a sorry epiphenomenon of the mental health movement that many persons who are admirably equipped to embark on this voyage and who long for insight for the sheer sake of discovery and not out of any pressing need, have been persuaded that they require the services of an expert guide. While it is true that the psychotherapist may shorten the trip to the island of insight it is not certain that the seeker cannot find it on his own, or that he will be significantly discommoded by the longer journey. Sound courses in psychology and inspired instruction can afford possibly a reduction in the susceptibility to neurosis. Certainly, it can reduce the number of sentient persons who relinquish the responsibility and privilege (and the exquisite rewards) of a personal, life-long exploration of their existence, and who in so doing waste the time and energies of the therapists whose skills are required by those voyagers who are truly lost. Until recently courses in psychology have been almost totally restricted to colleges and universities, and in these settings, they have frequently been unavailable before the sophomore year. While the proportion of the college-age population attending institutions of higher learning is steadily rising, it is still very small. Consequently, it is good to find increasing signs of thoughtful planning for the introduction of psychology as a basic subject in high school, and experience with such instruction is being carefully recorded. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The study of psychology is not provided by courses in how to be successful, how to be proper, and the like. There is a need for research to determine at what minimal age levels a formal course in psychology can be effectively introduced. Considering the central role of psychological phenomena in the enitre life of the individual it seems incredible that we have been so slow to find a place for the study of psychology in our secondary school curricula. The mental health movement should lend its resources and energies to supporting those teachers and educational leaders who are seeking to find a stable and adequate place for the study of psychology in our secondary schools. In our ongoing case study of Clare, it struck her that there was a contrast between the two men she was focused on. One man rescued her from drowning; in connection with the man in the novel she was reading, a similarity occurred because he offered the girl a refuge from abuse and brutality. Bruce and the great man of her daydream, while not saving her from any danger, also played a protective role. As she observed this repetitious motif of saving, shielding, sheltering, she realized that she craved not only “love” but also protection. She also saw that one of the values Peter had for her was his willingness and ability to give advice and to console her when she was in distress. A fact occurred to her in this context that she had known for quite a while—her defenselessness when under attack or pressure. She saw now that it produced, in turn, a need for somebody to protect her. Finally, she realized that her longing for love or marriage had always increased rather acutely whenever life became difficult. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
In recognizing that a need for protection was an essential element in her love life Clare took a great step ahead. The range of demans that this apparently harmless need embraced, and the role it played, became clear only much later. It may be interesting to compare this insight into a problem with the last one reported regarding the same problem, the insight concerning her “private religion.” The comparison reveals a frequent happening in psychoanalytical work. A problem is first seen in its barest outline. One does not recognize much beyond the fact that it exists. Later one returns to the same problem with a much deeper understanding of its meaning. The feeling would be unwarranted in such a case that the alter finding is not new, that one has known it all along. One has not known it, at least not consciously, but the way for its emergence has been prepared. Despite a certain superficiality this first insight struck the initial blow at Clare’s dependency. However, she glimpsed her need for protection, she did not yet realize its nature, and she could not draw the conclusion that this was one of the essential factors in her problem. She also ignored all the material in the daydream of the great man, material indicating that the man she loved was expected to fulfill many more functions than mere protection. Experiences with pleasures of the flesh can be simply sensuously pleasurable without the depth of love but also without a marked degree of greed. The arousal involving pleasures of the flesh is physiologically stimulated, and it may or may not lead to human intimacy. The opposite of this kind of desire involving pleasures of the flesh is characterized by an opposite sequence, namely, that love creates the desire for pleasures of the flesh. This means that a man and a woman may feel a deep sense of love for each other in terms of concern, knowledge, intimacy, and responsibility, and that this deep human experience arouses the wish for physical wisdom. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
It is obvious that this second type of desire for pleasures of the flesh will occur more frequently, although by no means exclusively so, among people beyond their mid-twenties and that it is the basis for the continuation of desires of pleasures of the flesh in monogamous human relationships of long duration. Where this type of arousal with pleasures of the flesh does not take place, it is natural that—aside from sexual perversions which might bind two people together for a lifetime because of the individual nature of their perversion—the merely physiological arousal will tend to require change and new experiences with pleasures of the flesh. Both these kinds of arousals of pleasures of the flesh are fundamentally different from the greedy one that is essentially motivated by anxiety or narcissism. Despite the complexity of the distinction between greedy and “free” sexuality, the distinction exists. Everyone who becomes aware of and sensitive to the difference can observe in himself and herself the various types of arousal, and those with more experimentation in pleasures of the flesh than was the case in middle class of the Victorian age may be supposed to have rich material for such observation. They may be supposed to have, because, unfortunately, increased experimentation with pleasures of the flesh has not been combined sufficiently with greater discernment of the qualitative differences in experience with pleasures of the flesh—although I am sure that a considerable number of people exist who, when they reflect upon these matters, can verify the validity of the distinction. If you are one of those people with what some call an overactive imagination, you had better watch out for those people who will see it and exploit it. It is relatively easy to get people with vivid imaginations to fall for things. After all, they can picture what the speaker is saying. Their emotions get all caught up in stuff without them even meaning to. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Modern man, in industrial society, has changed the form and intensity of idolatry. He has become the object of blind economic forces which rule his life. He worships the work of his hands; he transforms himself into a thing. Not the working class alone is alienated (in fact, if anything, the skilled worker seems to be less alienated than those who manipulate men and symbols) but everybody is. This process of alienation which exists in the European-American industrialized countries, regardless of their political structure, has given rise to new protest movements. The renaissance of socialist humanism is one symptom of this protest. Precisely because alienation has reached a point where it borders on insanity in the whole industrialized World, undermining and destroying its religious, spiritual, and political traditions and threatening general destruction through nuclear war, many are better able to see that Marx had recognized the central issue of modern man’s sickness; that he had not only seen, as Feuerbach and Kierkegaard had, this “sickness” but that he had shown that contemporary idolatry is rooted in the contemporary mode of production and can be changed only by the complete change of the socioeconomical constellation together with the spiritual liberation of man. Surveying the discussion of Dr. Freud and Marx’s respective views on mental illness, it is obvious that Dr. Freud is primarily concerned with individual pathology, and Marx is concerned with the pathology common to a society and resulting from the system of that society. It is also clear that the content of psychopathology is quite different for Marx and for Dr. Freud. Dr. Freud sees pathology essentially in the failure to find a proper balance between the Id and Ego, between instinctual demands and the demands of reality; Marx sees the essential illness, as what the nineteenth century called la maladie du siecle, the estrangement of man from his own humanity and hence from his fellow man. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
Yet it is often overlooked that Dr. Freud by no means thought exclusively in terms of individual pathology. He speaks also of a “social neurosis.” “If the evolution of civilization,” he writes “had such a far-reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization—or epochs of it—possibly even the whole of humanity—have become “neurotic” under the pressure of civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which would claim a great practical interest. However, it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual, we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be “normal.” No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And regarding any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses the power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? Despite all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. However, in Dr. Freud’s interest in the “social neuroses,” one fundamental difference between Dr. Freud’s and Marx’s thinking remains: Marx sees man as formed by his society, and hence sees the root of pathology in specific qualities of the social organization. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
Dr. Freud sees man as primarily formed by his experience in the family group; he appreciates little that the family is only the representative and agent of society, and he looks at various societies mainly in terms of the quantity of repression they demand, rather than the quality of their organization and of the impact of this social quality on the quality of the thinking and feeling of the members of a given society. This discussion of the difference between Marx’ and Dr. Freud’s views on psychopathology, brief as it is, must mention one more aspect in which their thinking follows the same method. For Dr. Freud the state of primary narcissism of the infant is not a sick infant. Yet the dependent, greedy adult, who had been “fixated” on, or who has “regressed” to, the oral level of the child is a sick adult. The main needs and strivings are the same in the infant and in the adult; why then is the one healthy and the other sick? The answer obviously lies in the concept of evolution. What is normal at a certain stage is pathological at another stage. Or, to put it differently: what is necessary at one stage is also normal or rational. What is unnecessary, seen from the standpoint of evolution, is irrational and pathological. The adult who “repeats” an infantile stage at the same time does not and cannot repeat it, precisely because he is no longer a child. Marx following Hegel, employs the same method in viewing the evolution of man in society. Primitive man, medieval man, and the alienated man of industrial society are sick and yet not sick, because their stage of development is a necessary one. Just as the infant must mature physiologically to become an adult, so humans must mature sociologically in the process of gaining mastery of nature and of society to become fully human. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
All irrationality of the past, while regrettable, is rational because it was necessary. However, when the human race stops at a stage of development which it should have passed, when it finds itself in contradiction with the possibilities which the historical situation offers, then its state of existence is irrational or, if Marx had used the term, pathological. Both Marx’s and Dr. Freud’s concepts of pathology can be understood fully only in terms of their evolutionary concept of individual and human history. The victim of exterior suggestion is never quite an innocent victim, for his own quota of consent must also be present. It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, if one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, it is also true that the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in others, but the law of compensation always operates to even matters out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the external circumstances may be. What is in a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. With most people the reaction to their environment and to events is mainly impulsive and mostly uncontrolled. So the first step for them is to become conscious of what they are doing, the second being to refuse to do it when reflection and wisdom dictate a better course. All this implies a taking hold of the self and a disciplining of its mechanism—body, feelings, and thoughts. It leads to using the self with awareness and functioning it with efficiency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
Being a firefighter is very rewarding, but it also comes with risks, and even recovery can have unforseen risks. A firefighter we will call Brunno Groning shares his story with us. “Four months out of the fire academy, I had had a lot of garbage runs, you know, smoke scares and pots of food. Then one day we had a fire in an attic, and we had the old service masks, just a canister and a face piece. I was climbing through the attic, and the flap of my coat kept coming down over the intake hole of my mask. It was cutting my air off, and the only air I was getting was the air that I was breathing out. I was hyperventilating. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my side, and I thought, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” I was laying on a rafter, and I just rolled over and fell through the plasterboard into a closet. There were no injuries or anything. Looking back on it, I thought, ‘Hey, I could have died up there.’ I could have been pinned or whatever and never come out. After that, three of us were on top of a house extension, it was a summer kitchen, and we were pulling some boards down when the whole thing collapsed. Fire and the rot of the old timbers brought it down. I didn’t know I was injured until I took about four steps, and my leg went out that way. Bot the led and the ankle were broken. They sent me to Mercy Hospital, that’s where they used to send us, and the hospiutal sent me home. To let the swelling go down, they said. The doctor told me to come in on Saturday and he would put it in a cast. The guy was a boozer, and I looked at him that morning, and he had half a jacket on. I looked down, and he had two different shoes on, a brown wingtip and a black one. And I said, ‘Oh, (expletive).’ When he was wrapping the foot, I kept telling him he was wrapping it too tight. He said he had to go play golf. He said, ‘If your toes turn blue, come back in.’ Well, I got home, and they turned black on me. So I went to the hospital, and they took that cast off and put another one on. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“I was out of work seven months that time. I had to go for whirlpool treatments, and one day the leg was in the whirlpool and the technician came in and said he had to take the hospital rig to a fire, so he left. That temperature gauge on the side climbed up in the red, and I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ I wound up with blisters on my leg from that. If it had been too hot to start with, I couldn’t have put my leg in it. But it was like, you know, if you’re sitting in a warm tub you can stand the water getting hotter and hotter. The guy, being in a rush to get to the fire, didn’t adjust the temperature right. So you could day I was in a job that was dangerous, and I was surrounded by people who were dangerous, too.” It is perfectly true that environment does count, and often heavily, in the sum of life. However, it is also true that is one’s faith is strong enough or if one’s understanding is deep enough, the quest can be pursued effectively anywhere, be it a slum tenement or a stockbroker’s office. It is easier to pursue it in some places, harder in other, but the law of compensation always operates to even matter out. If there is a total giving-up of oneself to this higher aim, sooner or later there will be a total result, whatever the circumstances may be. What is a man, in his character, his mind, and his heart is, in the end, much more important than what is in his surroundings; but his surroundings have their own importance, for they either limit or they promote what he can do. Please show support for the Sacramento Fire Department by making a contribution. Wisdom is the greatest good, for it does not depart for man. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, where I may find the agonies, the strife of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, o’ersailing the blue cragginess, a car and steeds with streamy manes–the charioteer looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: and now the numerous tramplings quiver lightly along a huge cloud’s ridge; and now with sprightly wheel downward come they into fresher skies, tipt round with silver from the sun’s bright eyes.
This Mother’s Day, treat your loved one with a delightful brunch experience at Winchester Mystery House, complete with delicious food, live music and a Mansion Tour! 💐
Tickets on sale now, learn more at the link in bio. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Here We Ascend from Earth to Heaven
From time to time man’s higher self will show him his own moral face as in a glass. However, it will only show him that side of it which is the worst as well as the least-known one. He will have to look at what is thus exposed to him in all its stark fullness and hidden reality, only because he has to reeducate himself morally to a degree far beyond the ordinary. The experience may be painful, but it must be accepted. He has involved the Overself, now its light has suddenly been thrown upon him. He has invoked the Overself, now its light has suddenly been thrown upon him. He is now able to see his ego, his lower nature, as it has not hitherto shown itself to him. All its uglinesses are lit up and revealed for what they really are. By thus showing up its true nature and evil consequences, this experience is the first step to making the ego’s conquest possible. He should begin with the belief that his own character can be markedly improved and with the attitude that his own efforts can lessen the distance between its present condition and the ideal before him. It is a prime rule that quality of character and education of conscience are more important than nature of belief. And this is much more applicable to would-be philosophers than to would-be religionists. Many students are haunted by a bad idea of undesirable character, and should try five methods for expelling it: attend to an opposing good idea; face the danger of the consequences of letting the bad idea emerge in action; become inattentive to the bad idea; analyse its antecedents and so paralyze the sequent impulse; coerce the mind with the assistance of bodily tension. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
However, philosophy does not trust to developed reason alone to control emotion and subjugate passion. It trusts also to psychological knowledge and metaphysical truth, to developed will and creative meditation, to counter-emotions and the prayer for Grace. All these different elements are welded into one solid power working for him. Just as the writer turns his experiences of society to writing use and creates art out of the best and worst of them, so the disciple turns his experiences of life to spiritual use and creates wisdom or goodness out of them. And just as it is harder for the author to learn to live what he writes than learn to write what he lives, so it is harder for the disciple to convert his studies and meditations, his reflections and intuitions, into practical deeds and beneficial accomplishments than to receive these thoughts themselves and make them his own. The valuing process which seems to develop in this more mature person is in some ways very much like that in the infant, and in some ways quite different. It is fluid, flexible, based on this particular moment, and the degree to which this moment is experienced as enhancing and actualizing. Values are not held rigidly, but are continually changing. The painting which last year seemed meaningful now appears uninteresting, the way of working with individuals which was formerly experienced as good now seems inadequate, the belief which then seemed true is now experiences as only partly true, or perhaps false. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
It is not so much that we have to change ourselves as to give up ourselves. We are so imperfect and faulty, so selfish and weak, so sinful and ignorant, that giving up our own selves means being more than willing to part with what is not worth keeping. However, to what are we to give them up and how are we to do it? We are to invoke the higher self, request it daily to take possession of our hearts, minds, and wills, and to strive actively to purify them. Much of our striving will be in the form of surrendering egoistic thoughts, impulses, and feelings by crushing them at the moment of birth. In that way we slowly give up our inner selves and submit the conduct of our outer selves to a higher will. If he fails to pass a test, or if he succumbs to a temptation, he should realise that there must be a defect in character or mentality which made such a failure possible. Even though the test or temptation has been provided by the adverse powers, he ought not to lay the blame upon them but upon himself. For then he will seek out and destroy the defect upon which the blame really rests. After all, there must have been a corresponding inner weakness in him to have permitted him to become the victim of a temptation. Consequently it is often better not to ask for protection against the temptation. This simply hides and covers over the weakness and permits it to remain in his mental makeup. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
It is better to ask for the strengthening of his own willpower, to cultivate it through a creative meditation excecise special directed to the purpose: he should picture the arousal and hardening of this willpower during the very moments of temptation by seeing himself emerge victorious by his own forces. As my class of prospective teachers learned, general principles are not as useful as sensitive discriminating reactions. One says, “With this little boy, I just felt I should be very firm, and he seemed to welcome that, and I felt good that I had been. But I’m not that way at all with the other children most of the time.” She was relying on her experiencing of the relationship with each child to guide her behaviour. I have already indicated, in going through the examples, how much more differentiated are the individual’s reactions to what were previously rather solid monolithic introjected values. In another way the mature individual’s approach is like that of the infant. The locus of evaluation is again established firmly within the person. It is his own experience which provides the value information or feedback. This does not mean that he is not open to all the evidence he can obtain from other sources. However, it means that this is taken for what it is—outside evidence—and is not as significant as his own reactions. Thus he may be told by a friend that a new book is very disappointing. He reads two unfavourable reviews of the book. Thus his tentative hypothesis is that he will not value the book. Yet if he reads the book his valuing will be based upon the reactions it stirs in him, not on what he has been told by others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
There is also involved in this valuing process a letting oneself down into the immediacy of what one is experiencing, endeavouring to sense and to clarify all its complex meanings. I think of a client who, toward the close of therapy, when puzzled about an issue, would put his head in his hands and say, “Now what is it that I’m feeling? I want to get next to it. I want to learn what it is.” Then he would wait, quietly and patiently, trying to listen to get close to himself. In getting close to what is going on within himself, the process is much more complex than it is in the infant. In the mature person, it has much more scope and sweep, for there is involved in the present moment of experiencing the memory traces of all the relevant learnings from the past. This moment has not only its immediate sensory impact, but it has meaning growing out of similar experiences in the past. It has both the new and the old in it. So when I experience a painting or persons, as well as the new impact of this particular encounter. Likewise the moment of experience contains, for the mature adult, hypotheses about consequences. “I feel now that I would enjoy a drink, but past learnings indicate that I may regret it in the morning.” “It is not pleasant to express forthrightly my negative feelings to this person, but past experience indicates that in a continuing relationship it will be helpful in the long run.” Past and future are both in this moment and entering into the valuing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
I find that in the person I am speaking of (and her again we see a similarity to the infant) the criterion of the valuing process is the degree to which the object of the experience actualizes the individual himself. Does it make him a richer, more complete, more fully developed person? This may sound as though it were a selfish or unsocial criterion, but it does not prove to be so, since deep and helpful relationships with others are experienced as actualizing. Like the infant, too, the psychologically mature adult trusts and uses the wisdom of his organism, with the difference that he is able to do so knowingly. If he can trust all of himself, he realizes his feeling and his intuitions may be wiser than his mind, that as a total person he can be more sensitive and accurate than his thoughts alone. Hence he is not afraid to say—“I feel that this experience (or this thing, or this direction) is good. Later I will probably know why I feel it is good.” He trusts the totality of himself. It should be evidence from what I have been saying that this valuing process in the mature individual is not an easy or simple thing. The process is complex, the choices often very perplexing and difficult, and there is no guarantee that the choice which is made will in fact prove to be self-actualizing. However, because whatever evidence exists is available to the individual, and because he is open to his experiencing, errors are correctable. If a chosen course of action is not self-enhancing this will be sensed and he can make an adjustment or revision. He thrives on a maximum feedback interchange, and thus, like the gyroscopic compass on a ship, can continually correct his course toward becoming more of himself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
One example that first set me to considering the possibility of self-analysis was Erich. Erich was a physician who came to me for analysis because of attacks of panic, which he tried to allay by taking morphine and cocaine; also he had spells of exhibitionistic impulses. There was no doubt that he had a severe neurosis. After some months of treatment, he went away on a vacation, and during this time he analysed by himself an attack of anxiety. The beginning of this piece of self-analysis was accidental, as it was in the case of John, whom we discussed in the previous reports. The starting point for Erich was a severe attack of anxiety, apparently provoked by a real danger. Erich was climbing a mountain with his girl. It was strenuous climbing but not dangerous as long as they could see clearly. It became perilous, however, when a snowstorm arose and they were enveloped in a thick fog. Erich then became short of breath, his hear pounded, he became panicky and finally had to lie down to rest. He did not give the incident any thought but vaguely ascribed the attack to his exhaustion and to the actual danger. If we want to be, this is an example, by the way, of how easily we may be satisfied with wrong explanations, for Erich was physically strong and anything but a coward in the face of an emergency. The next day they went on a narrow path hewn into the steep, rocky wall of the mountain. The girl went ahead. The heart pounding started again when Erich caught himself at a thought or impulse to push her down the cliffs. That naturally startled him, and, besides, he was devoted to her. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Erich thought first of Dreiser’s American Tragedy, in which the boy drowns hi girl in order to get rid of her. Then he thought of the attack of the previous day and barely recaptured a similar impulse he had checked it as it as it arose. He remembered clearly, however, a mounting irritation against the girl before the attack, and a sudden wave of hot anger, which he had pushed aside. This, then, was the meaning of the attack of anxiety: an impulse of violence born out of a conflict between a sudden hatred on the one hand, and, on the other, his genuine fondness for the girl. He felt relieved, and also proud for having analysed the first attack and stopped the second. Erich, in contrast to John, went a step farther, because he felt alarmed by his recognition of hatred and a murderous impulse toward the girl he loved. While continuing to walk he raised the question why he should want to kill her. Immediately a talk they had had the previous morning recurred to him. The girl had praised one of his colleagues for his clever dealing with people and for being a charming host at a party. That was all. And that could not have aroused this much hostility. Yet when thinking about it, he felt a rising anger. Was he jealous? However, there was no danger of losing her. This colleague, though, was taller than he, and non-Jewish (on both points he was hypersensitive), and he did have a clever tongue. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
While Erich’s thoughts were meandering along these lines, he forgot his anger against the girl and focused his attention on comparing himself with the colleague. Then a scene occurred to him. He was probably four or five years old, and had tried to climb a tree but could not. His older brother had climbed it with ease and teased him from above. Another scene came back vividly when his mother praised this brother and he was left out. The older brother was always ahead of him. It must have been the same thing that infuriated him yesterday: he still could not stand to have any man praised in his presence. With this insight he lost his tenseness, could climb easily, and again felt tender toward the girl. Compared with the first example, the second achieved in one way more and in another less. Despite the greater superficiality of John’ self-analysis, he did take one step that Erich did not take. When John had accounted for the only particular situation, he did not rest satisfied: he recognised the possibility that all his headaches might result from a repressed anger. Erich did not go beyond the analysis of the one situation. It did not occur to him to wonder whether his finding had a bearing on other attacks of anxiety. On the other hand, the insight that Erich arrived at was considerably deeper than John’s. The recognition of the murderous impulse was a real emotional experience; he found at least an inkling of the reason for his hostility; and he recognized the fact that he was caught in a conflict. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
In the second incident, too, one is astonished at the number of questions not touched upon. Granting that Erich became irritated at praise of another man, whence the intensity of the reaction? If that praise was the only source of his hostility, why was it such a threat to him as to arouse violence? Was he in the grip of an excessively great and excessively vulnerable vanity? If so, what were the deficiencies in him that needed so much covering up? The rivalry with the brother was certainly a significant historical factor, but insufficient as an explanation. The other side of the conflict, the nature of his devotion to the girl, is entirely untouched. Did he need her primarily for her admiration? How much dependency was involved in his love? Were there other sources of hostility toward her? What are the motivating forces which make man act in certain ways, the drives which propel him to strive in certain directions? It seems as if the answer to this question Marx and Dr. Freud find themselves furthest apart and that there is an insoluble contradiction between their two systems. Marx’s “materialistic” theory of history is usually understood to mean that man’s main motivation is his wish for material satisfaction, his desire to use and to have more and more. This greed for material things as man’s essential motivation is then contrasted with Dr. Freud’s concept according to which it is man’s appetite for pleasures of the flesh which constitutes his most potent motivation for action. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The desire for property on the one hand and the desire for satisfaction involving pleasures of the flesh on the other seem to be the two conflicting theories as far as much motivation is concerned. That this assumption is an oversimplifying distortion as far as Dr. Freud is concerned follows from what has been already said about this theory. Dr. Freud sees man as motivated by contradictions; by the contradiction between his striving for pleasures of the flesh and his striving for survival and mastery of his environment. When Dr. Freud later posited another factor which conflicted with the one’s already mentioned—the super-ego, the incorporated authority of the father and the norms he represented, this conflict became even more complicated. For Dr. Freud, then, man is motivated by forces conflicting with each other and by no means only by the desire for satisfactions of pleasures of the flesh. Dr. Freud again thought in terms of contradiction, that between the “life instinct” and the “death instinct” as the two forces battling constantly within man and motivating his actions. The cliché of Marx’s theory of motivation is even more drastic distortion of his thinking than the cliché of Dr. Freud’s. The distortion begins with the misunderstanding of the term “materialism.” This term and its counterpart, “idealism,” have two entirely different meanings, depending on the context in which they are applied. When applied to human attitudes, one refers to the “materialist” as one who is mainly concerned with the satisfaction of material strivings, and to the “idealist” as one who is motivated by an idea, that is, a spiritual or ethical motivation. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
However, “materialism” and “idealism” have entirely different meanings in philosophical terminology, and “materialism” must he used in this meaning when one refers to Marx’s “historical materialism” (a term which, in fact, Marx himself never used). Philosophically, idealism means that one assumes ideas form the basic reality, and that the material Word which we perceive by means of our senses has no reality as such. For the materialism prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century matter was real, not ideas. Marx, in contrast to this mechanical materialism (which was also underlying Dr. Freud’s thinking), was not concerned with the causal relationship between matter and mind but with understanding all phenomena as results of the activity of real human beings. “In direct contrast to German philosophy,” Marx wrote, “which descends from the Heaven to Earth, here we ascend from Earth to Heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men imagine, conceive, in order to arrive at man in the flesh. We set out from real active men and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process.” Marx’s “materialism” implies that we begin our study of man with the real man as we find him, and not with his ideas about himself and the World by which he tries to explain himself. In order to understand how this confusion between personal and philosophical materialism could have arisen in the case of Marx, we must proceed further and consider Marx’s so-called “economic theory of history.” This term has been misunderstood to mean that, according to Marx, only economic motives determine man’s actions in the historical process; in other words, the “economic” factor has been understood to refer to a psychological, subjective motive, that of economic interests. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
In government policy and strategy, the ideal is that foreign policy—and that means also military planning—are freed from the arbitrariness of the human will an entrusted to a computer system, which tells the “truth” since it is not fallible like men, nor has it any ax to grind. The ideal is that all foreign policy and military strategy are based on computer decision, and this implies that all the facts are known, considered, and made available to the computer. With this method, doubt becomes excluded, although disaster is by no means necessarily avoided. However, if disaster does happen after the decisions are made on the basis of unquestionably “facts,” it is like an act of God, which one must accept, since man cannot do more than make the best decision he knows how to make. It seems tome that these considerations are the only terms in which one can answer this puzzling question: How is it possible for our policy and strategy planners to tolerate the idea that at a certain point they may give orders the consequences of which will mean the destruction of their own families, most of America, and “at best” most of the industrialized World? If they rely on the decision the facts seem to have made for them, their conscience is cleared. However dreadful the consequences of their decisions may be, they need not have qualms about the rightness and legitimacy of the method by which they arrived at their decision. They act on faith, not essentially different from the faith on which the actions of the inquisitors of the Holy Office were based. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, some may even be tragic figures who cannot act differently, because they seen o other way of being certain that they do the best they can. The alleged rational character of our planners is basically not different from the religiously based decisions in a prescientific age. There is one qualification that must be made: both the religious decision, which is a blind surrender to God’s will and the computer decision, based on the faith in the logic of “facts,” are forms of alienated decisions in which man surrenders his own insight, knowledge, inquiry, and responsibility to an idol, be it God or the computer. The humanist religion of the prophets knew no such surrender; the decision was man’s. He had to understand his situation, see the alternatives, and then decide. True scientific rationality is not different. The computer can help man in visualizing several possibilities, but the decision is not made for him, not only in the sense that he can choose between the various models, but also in the sense that he must use his reason, relate to and respond to the reality with which he deals, and elicit from the computer those facts which are relevant from the standpoint of reason, and that means from the standpoint of sustaining and fulfilling man’s aliveness. The blind and irrational reliance on computer decision becomes dangerous in foreign policy as well as strategic planning when done by opponents, each of whom works with his own data-processing system. He anticipates the opponent’s moves, plans his own, and constructs scenarios for the X possibilities of moves on both sides. #RanolphHarris 14 of 20
He can construct his game in many ways: that of his side winning, a stalemate, or both losing. However, if either “wins” it is the end of both. While the purpose of the game is to achieve a stalemate, the rules of the game make a stalemate unlikely. Both players, by their methods and their need for certainty, give up the way which has been that of precomputer diplomacy and strategy: the dialogue—with its possibility of give and taken, open or veiled withdrawal, compromise, or even surrender when that is the only rational decision. With the present method, the dialogue, with all its possibilities for avoiding catastrophe, is ruled out. The action of the leaders is fanatical because it is pursued even to the point of self-destruction, although in a psychological sense they are not fanatics, because their actions are based on an emotion-free belief in the rationality (calculability) of the computer methods. There is a correlation with job of the psychologist. The clinical psychologist is exposed didactically (and casually, like any sentient person, through a myriad of cultural media) to the Freudian theory of psychopathology and to Freudian principles of psychoanalysis. If we focus too heavily on computer-based information and decision making, we risk alienating ourselves from our humanity and becoming psychopaths. This is why psychology focuses on the human relationships and communication. The goal is to help people become fully human. The psychologist, unlike the social worker and psychiatrist, is more likely to have his Freudian garden sprinkled from the watering cans of the dozen or so recognized variations on the theme, but the exfoliation does not serve to weaken his appreciation of Dr. Freud’s discoveries or his recognition of the fundamental principles of analytic therapy. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
And, in the quiet of the consulting room, face-to-face with a candidate for therapeutic conversation, there are multiple reasons (ranging from the sheer pertinence and richness of the psychopathological concepts to the broadly social “prestige” of analytically oriented therapy) that cause the psychologist to tend to think and behave, in that moment of truth, more like a psychiatrist or social worker, and less like a psychologist. There are a few striking general consequences of the over-arching role of psychoanalytic doctrine in the preparation of current psychotherapists: a belief that psychoanalysis is the most powerful of all forms psychotherapy and that its primary limitation and restriction as the “therapy of choice” for psychoneurosis is a function of its cost and limited supply, not of its general appropriateness; a belief that distinctly psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy is the next best to psychoanalysis; a belief that truly effective psychotherapy must be intensive, id est, it must entail frequent therapeutic sessions (usually weekly) over a long period of time; a belief that the gaining of insight by the patient is a primary goal and result of therapy; a belief that the major mechanism of therapy is in the nature of the therapist-patient relationship; a belief that the prognosis for psychotherapy rests upon the suitability of the patient which is defined generally in the same term as the good candidate for psychoanalysis. These generally accepted orientations, stemming from a shared theoretical bias, lead to common administrative and therapeutic practices on the part of psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
There is a common preference to do “intensive” psychotherapy and there are common predilections (leading possibly to subtle therapeutic attitudes and maneuvers of which the therapist may be aware) to keep the patient “in treatment.” A fascinating side-effect of this peculiar bias has been a cluster of studies by psychologists which aim to identify at the outset jut which patients will remain in treatment and which will break off. The purpose of such studies could be to identify the short-term client with a view to providing a specific therapeutic experience for him. Generally, however, the implicit assumption in these studies is that patients who break off after only a few sessions are “failures” and could not possibly have derived any benefit from their limited exposure. The goal appears to be to find ways of selecting “good” patients for therapy, id est, those who come back interminably. (Contrary to what many experts might predict, the sudden administrative termination of “interminable” psychotherapy cases does not appear to precipitate acute disintegration.) If such psychological studies should achieve a high level of predictive accuracy, it would become possible for an increasing portion of psychotherapeutic time to be devoted to a decreasing number of patients! (Perhaps this is a rare example of an instance in which we may be thankful that the accuracy of psychometric prediction is not greater.) #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
Another result of the common theoretical bias is that all of these expert therapists have a marked preference to provide their services to the same sample (a very small portion of the total population of persons in need of psychological assistance). These “ideal” patients are not prominent among the clients of public clinics and hospitals. By contrast, the typical supplicant to a community psychiatric facility may present a set of attributes (such as level of education and verbal facility) that discourage the “depth-oriented” therapist from feeling that he can either effectively (or usefully?” establish a really therapeutic relationship. As a consequence, they are apt with such patients to effect the sort of brief and “incomplete” therapy of which they are disdainful. During therapy sessions, many patients often ask “How do I say no and mean it?” The basic rule here is to never go back on your answer of no. And the secret to this is not to allow anyone to continue to ask the same question you have already given the answer of no to. The way to enforce this is to add a consequence to asking the same question again. With a child, it is easy. “Ask again, you will not get any dessert after dinner.” An adult might be a little harder. If you put your mind to it, I am sure you can think of something they would not want to give up just so they could bug you about your answer. It has been said that ideas rule mankind. This is but a half-truth, but be as it may, it can be unhesitantly asserted that ideals rule the traveler on the quest. If they do not, then he is not embarked on the quest. However, an ideal is only an abstract conception. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Unselfishness, freedom, goodness, and justice are intangibles, and their practical application has altered from age to age according to the conditions prevailing in different times and places. An ideal must have a concrete shape or it becomes sterile. The Sacramento Fire Department has many ideals that are concrete. One person cannot rise in the ranks through the fire department without the support and respect of a large group of people. They do not let political opportunism interfere with the running of the fire department or the running of their lives. The Sacramento Fire Department has had a great line of chiefs of department. The chief of department is the highest uniform position, a competitive civil service position, and once an individual makes it, he or she is secure in the job and outside the authority of the mayor’s office. He or she represents safety of the city’s public. In critical situations the chief of the department is the person with responsibility. There is something that happens to a person when one becomes a firefighter. That something is that one begins to care about what one is doing, about the person one works with, and about the department’s reputation in ways that surprises, a depth of feeling that is entirely new. It is what feeling that enables people to enter burning buildings, and it is that feeling that will preserve the histories of fire departments throughout the land. It becomes a part of the human being, and part of every action. Any intelligent person can see that a firefighter is on the street to help people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
In a car accident, if you pull the alarm the fire engines usually come faster than the ambulance. The firefighter will pull somebody out of the car, it does not matter what kind of a mess the victim is in. One is well trained in emergency situations. The firefighter knows how to deal with people. One knows when to move an injured person and when not to, when to put on a splint and when not to. One is trained to make a fast assessment of an emergency situation. When a firefighter arrives at a fire and sees people on the fire escape in the front of the building, one automatically knows there will be people on the back fire escape and in trouble inside the building. One knows to think about what is not immediately seen. One is there only to help, and one is asked to help in all kinds of situations—not only fires but accidents, drug overdoses, shootings, knifings, injuries from whatever cause. So a young person coming out of high school sees all this, and asks oneself, “What is it that I really want to do?” And the fire department winds up getting the best people. Be sure to make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they receive the necessary resources. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
The Winchester Mystery House
Kaefer lived in upstate New York. In 2007 a friend showed him a brochure concerning The Winchester Mystery House, and the house intrigued him. Since he was traveling to the Silicon Vallery, he decided to pay The Winchester Mystery House a visit. With his family, he drove to the house and parked the car in the parking lot. At that moment he had an eerie feeling that something was not right. Mind you, Kaefer had not been to the house before, had no knowledge about it, nor any indication that anything unusual occurred in it. The group of visitors was quite small. In addition to him and his family, there were two young college boys and one other couple. Even though it was a sunny day, Kaefer felt cold. “I felt a presence before we entered the house and before we heard the story from the guide,” he explained. “If I were a host there, I wouldn’t stay there alone for two consecutive minutes.” Kaefer had been to so many old houses and restorations before but had never felt as he did at The Winchester Mystery House.
It is not surprising the Sarah L. Winchester should be the subject of a number of psychic accounts. Probably the best known (and most frequently misinterpreted) story concerns Mrs. Winchester’s vision which came to her during the late 1800s. Mrs. Winchester was in the habit of meditating in her Blue Séance Room at times and saying her prayer when she was quite alone. On one of those occasions, she returned to the Daisy Bedroom more worried than usual. As she busied herself with her papers, she had the feeling of a presence in the room. Looking up, she saw opposite her a singularly handsome man. Since she had given orders not to be disturbed, she could not understand how he had gotten into the room. Although she questioned him several times, the visitor would not reply. As she looked at the apparition for what it was, she noticed it was her late husband and became more and more entranced with him, unable to make any more. Finally, she heard a voice saying, “Sarah, I love you.” At the same time, William Winchester extended his arm toward the east, and Mrs. Winchester saw what to her appeared like a blue mist at some distance.
As the mist dissipated, she saw various new additions to her mansion, a wide veranda and generous use of expansive windows and French doors, which offered views in every direction. A raised foyer directly overlooking the formal dining room and the living area. Special features like fireplaces with mini bricks, built-in shelves, a morning room, a door that opened to a two story fall into the garden, a staircase leading to an option third-floor area. And an exterior that boasts delicately turned rails and decorated upside-down columns. A unique gazebo projection off the covered porch to the north of the plan. She then noticed a dark, shadowy angel standing in the room of the witches’ cap, taking gold flakes out of water and sprinkling them on the wall. Then a dark cloud rose from the ground and enveloped her home. Sharp flashes of lightening became visible at intervals in the cloud. At the same time, Mrs. Winchester heard the anguished cries of departed souls. Next, William showed her an Observational Tower and legions of legions of angels descended from the Heavens, and William faded away.
Come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion. For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Randolph Harris Research and Development 