by the psychoanalyst Arno Gruen
I would like to reproduce here in several parts the content of a book that I consider to be extremely important. The 87-year-old Arno Gruen is not only a psychoanalyst who devotes himself to the concerns of individuals, but his in-depth analyzes relate to the effects of the internal division in our society that has been passed on from generation to generation.
The subtitle of the book is: The fear of autonomy in men and women. Autonomy means the complete conformity of a person with his feelings and needs - as a synonym for authenticity.
Arno Gruen writes the following in his introduction: “This book is written in the hope of strengthening in their being those whose view in a world of conformity and adaptation is still open to other human worlds. I would like to do something to give the emotional world - in contrast to thinking and understanding, which is split off from feeling - back to its rightful place in our scientific world. "
There are two paths to human development - that of love and that of power. Most cultures have chosen power and spread an ideology of domination. What is meant by autonomous does not refer to our true inner being, but to an idea of who we should be. This has more to do with the importance of oneself and one's superiority - an idea of oneself - than with one's own needs and feelings. Life as a permanent struggle for strength and superiority instead of an affirmative state that includes feelings of joy and pain as an expression of the living.
The newborn, which takes its first breath, is "socialized" from this moment on. The awareness of his caregivers, the access to their own feelings becomes the determining part of the development of his self. The mother who makes her child scream, who can only give him inadequate attention and care, is passing on her own limitations. The child learns that there is nothing they can do, that their needs are not answered and that they are only praised where they adapt their needs to the expectations of others. This lays the foundations for alienating oneself from one's feelings and for perceiving the process of learning as externally determined.
Internal processes lose their importance and cause fear as a result. You forget to recognize your own needs and motivations. The helplessness associated with it, the fear and anger about it, are again rejected. The more intense the experience, the more violently this person will, over time, direct himself against everything in and outside of himself that awakens real vitality. If the caregiver reacts too little empathically to the child, he feels helpless, a failure or repressed the feeling of being at the mercy and splitting it off. Then everything that reminds of the experience is repulsed and devalued. In order to keep the split going, helplessness is rejected - and not the experiences that led to it. In this way, the victims adjust to their oppressors and continue the eternal cycle of power and domination. Authentic expressions of life in oneself and others are rejected.
However, the original feelings have not disappeared, even if they are no longer felt directly and recognized in context. And not all people adapt equally well. In societies that demand obedience, conformity and submission as the price of “love”, autonomy often appears in disguise. Gruen gives the example of a client who was able to sense the wishes and thoughts of others with an almost unusual ability to perceive. By meeting their needs, he protected himself from opening up. He was always related to others. Since he kept his own life out of it, he believed himself inviolable and “free”. But this “freedom” only sprang from his imagination.
Nevertheless, this example also shows an unconscious struggle for autonomy. Even if it only consists of "keeping" one's self a secret to protect it. These facets of striving for autonomy usually remain hidden from us because they are not recognized for what they are: protective mechanisms to avoid having to reveal one's innermost being, to hide the associated fears.
Freud already saw instincts as basically malicious, which one could only master through socialization and compensation. The pathological was seen as a failure to adapt to social reality - but without ever questioning this reality. However, the fact that in some cases the pathological remains the only way to resist adaptation has not been considered; as long as we tolerate the extent to which social norms are accepted and made the measure of mental health, we do not see them Unhealthiness. By choosing roles that support this system, we are promoting pseudo-reality. The more successful we are with it, the more social recognition we get for it, the more cut off we become from our feelings. Ultimately, we identified with the rules themselves.
This also affects the physical. The process of socialization also leads to the separation of body sensations. The extensive division and repression prevents us from building ourselves from our own experiences. A breakthrough in original feelings mobilizes our defenses and evokes fear. We have been dependent on recognition and praise for so long that we have to constantly seek further confirmation. With those who neither know nor affirm our real needs.
Inwardly, true freedom is associated with rejection. Anyone who was made an enemy of their own vitality and lust for life in their early childhood fears nothing more than authentic self-expression. But responsibility for oneself means the task of realizing oneself. What we have learned, however, is that helplessness is terrible and we are only protected from it by superiority, recognition, and power. False freedom does not mean connection with one's own needs, but redemption from them.
People who are emotionally damaged in this way do not feel connected with other people or in real company. They just crave approval and mistake addiction and admiration for love. The real needs become a burden which disturbs the adaptation - switching off the feelings is equated with freedom.
Behind this, however, is the unconscious desire to escape one's own suffering. The really weak are not the ones who suffer but the ones who fear it. Strength is sought in identification with authorities, the struggle for self-realization is given up. False self-respect is based on the confirmation of our importance. Even when we help others, this impulse often does not come from empathy with their suffering and the courage to face it, but rather we try to gain something for our own self-respect. The point of becoming aware is to become aware of ourselves. If we constantly doubt our feelings and are ashamed of our humanity, we block our way to our own self.
By glorifying thinking separate from feeling, the constructed is more important than reality. Abstraction instead of immediate perception obscures the separation from our feelings. It is science itself that has created the climate for it. It captures life through abstract concepts and reality through methods. This gives the division between thinking and feeling its cultural approval. Methodologies that do not include human experience degrade humans to input-output robots.
However, we are all innate to be empathetic and compassionate. If we are touched by the helplessness of another person, the victim reflects our own rejected parts and we distance ourselves from it. Those who suffer are marginalized and should overcome their suffering as quickly as possible in order to be acceptable again. The conformity of a group protects us best from self-doubt, "one" replaces "I" and serves as a legitimation for one's own repression. The source of our destructiveness lies in our culture, which conveys a reduced human being as normal. As a result of the merging with the collective, independent thinking and human ethics go under - a "murder on the guessworks of oneself".
Those who resist run the risk of being cast out or labeled as sick. The fiction is not to be questioned, the 'healthiest' is the one who adapts best. Often it is precisely outsiders and artists who fight against it. However, those who constantly dream of success and mighty deeds want to escape their feelings of helplessness, fear and despair. For him, helplessness is nothing more than weakness. That it doesn't kill us if we let it happen is never seen - that strength and true identity can grow from this seems inconceivable.
Many who never deal with the causes of their attitudes ultimately develop a magical self-image and worldview. Because fantasized feelings of omnipotence hide the true inner state. The ability to face everything with equanimity allows wars, fantasies of destruction and power to become normal reality, completely separated from one's own feelings. “We see that ideological abstractions can lead to the murderer's lust for murder being veiled. ... When a human finally becomes a robot using abstract concepts about himself, the danger is very great that he will become angry. "
Destructiveness does not only arise from the suppression of feelings, but also from the specification of certain social values and life orientations. A high goal is to successfully master cognitive tasks. Thinking, unencumbered by any feelings, stands for spiritual growth in a performance-oriented child rearing. Parents push their children in the direction they want through rewards to satisfy their own ambitions. These children, manipulated without punishment, are unable to express their anger. They don't understand their discontent, everything seems to be going for their best. The reduced is sold under the guise of performance. Intellectually stressed people in particular are often unable to express their feelings. The extreme focus on thinking blocks access to their feelings. What remains is an identity "which can only be put together like an assembly on an assembly line."
Men in our society are affected even more than women. The male image, his addiction to power and affirmation prevents love and stirs up the fear of sensitive touch. Men therefore prefer the pleasing woman with fake warmth. Behind their reliance on admiration lies fear of failure. But precisely because they make themselves heroes, they are abandoned when the real person appears. The ideal of invulnerability and constant strength creates distorted images of the "right man". Together with the caricature images of “real women”, they lead far away from real experience. If the male image forbids tender feelings, the longing for them must be rejected. Those who best embody these ideas of masculinity become heroic characters. Even if the manhood madness produces merciless competition and leads to socially sanctioned cruelty to people and nature.
Although, on the one hand, women are extremely important for male self-affirmation, on the other hand they are considered inferior. The male need for performance, together with his greed for praise and applause, makes success and victory the measure of human worth. But this leads to the dilemma of lack of relationship, because real intimacy requires equality. The male fiction of superiority is a life lie that does violence to everyone. It creates contempt and fears failure. There is “love” for performance, but not for our selves as they are. From an early age, we have been made impossible to believe that we can be loved for our own sake. Hence the adult continues to play his part and admire those who are even better at it. False love is the only one we have come to know and ultimately our anger is directed towards those who perceive the unreality of our game.
The advantage of women is their potential to be able to carry life within themselves and thus to participate in the creation and development of a living being with all its pains, sufferings and joys. Helplessness is not equated here with powerlessness or failure, but rather evokes warm, empathic feelings. However, if the woman herself is attached to the male ideology, the children serve her as a substitute for self-realization and she uses them for her own purposes. "The deepest hurt done to a mother in our society is not just her oppression, but her adjustment to the male myth of his superiority and acceptance of her own worthlessness."
Men prefer thinking and devalue feeling. In their focus on logic and order, however, they turn against their own vitality. But life does not follow a given logic or order. This is a fundamental difference between men and women. Women are mostly closer to reality and less removed from their feelings. As a result, they are often forced to live on two levels: that of their inner feelings and that which, as “official” reality, equates feelings with irrationality. This again expresses the contempt for anything that contradicts the ideas of strength and power. “A self that runs away from helplessness can only experience parts of its inner happenings to a very limited extent.” Only admiration promises the illusion of longed-for strength. Men want to be loved for heroic deeds, even if the fear of weakness is behind it. The price they pay for it is never experienced closeness.
It is easily overlooked that he who admires also has power over the object of his worship. If the admiration is withdrawn - history is full of such changes - he throws it from its pedestal and exposes the grandiosity as a deception. Nevertheless, idealization has an advantage for both sides: it keeps away from each other. We are not looking for real encounters, but for mutual strengthening. Be it through admiration on the one hand or through the worshiper sharing in the strength of his idol on the other. To those who depend on it, the pursuit of possession becomes the basis of human relationships.
Another aspect of the search for strength is obedience to the mighty. It almost triggers a “holy feeling” like sheep running after guides who promise us salvation. We die for higher purposes when we lose touch with ourselves. Identity is sought in submission, adaptation to an ideology of strength creates heroism. And those who oppose power are cruelly persecuted. As an example, Gruen names the Scholl siblings who resisted the Nazis and were executed for it. An impressive example of the fact that fear does not help some people to find their own strength. However, those who do not get beyond their child-like dependency will remain faithful in authority, obedient and dependent all their life. He hopes that the principle of authority, which caused his suffering, can also free it.
Only those who face their fear can become aware of themselves. Real strength grows from the courageous confrontation with one's own weakness.
“Some can no longer walk around without their transistor radio being tuned to a program. ... It is important to emphasize that, because we appropriate this stimulus world and values, we consider ourselves to be autonomous and do not even notice that Orwell's 1984 is with us. ”Even if we are in the affluent society of impressions and stimuli are flooded, they cannot make us feel alive. The self cannot be found in things that do not touch us inside. To be really alive you have to feel.
It is very difficult in our society to find the way to yourself. Everyone acts according to the same pattern, the real needs have been lost. We live in a society that deliberately suppresses real experience and the fear of it. We keep out of connection with our inner feelings because we are afraid of them. Anyone who nevertheless connects love with the unique individuality of a person and wants to be loved as well, pays a high price for it - he becomes an outsider.
Despite all conformity, some people could never accept the social unreality because it contradicts the power of their own perception too much. And there are others who had such a profound experience that it made their world of appearance collapse. The highest peak of division is found in schizophrenia.
Unfortunately, many people come to psychotherapy or counseling with the hope of being freed from their feelings as they arise. If they succeed in removing the emerging doubts, in some cases they can in fact become adapted members of society again. But there are also those who want to get to the bottom of the truth. Since they are far more challenging, they are not exactly the favorite patients of psychiatrists who work with psychiatric drugs or systematic behavioral training. They are fighters by nature who, by experiencing original feelings, also face the rising fear. Psychotherapies therefore differ in whether they support adaptation or the search for truth. Do they give people the strength to integrate their painful experiences or do they further promote repression and denial and equate the lack of fear with mental health?
Real change only comes about when a person grapples with the horrors of his tireless pursuit of unreal security. Only through the painful process of becoming conscious can his heart open and expand his sensitivity. Since this is anything but easy, many evade and continue to believe that they can live free of conflict through adaptation and obedience. An internalized commandment of our society is: One should not feel sorry for oneself. In this way, the experience of violence and pain is sanctioned by authorities from an early age. Especially those without an authentic self, who through their adaptability evoke the appearance of being particularly “healthy”, often do not even know how crazy they are.
However, those who do not want to extinguish their self, do not want to be an abstract image but a living person, have to reconnect with their own feelings. He also affirms constant inner change because vitality is not static. Its stability comes from the ability to endure tension and to unite heart and mind. Those who do not have the strength to endure suffering cling to the myth of suffering and compassion as weakness, when the opposite is true.
We must finally stop looking for gods outside of ourselves. Only compassion and love enable the transition to a true self. There is no method or technique that leads to it. We have to find the way to ourselves alone. Those who dare to experience themselves learn that the ghosts of fear are losing their power. The long, difficult and never-ending path to overcoming the fear of freedom and autonomy leads to one's own human heart.
***** Notes (author see source) *****
I think Arno Gruen's book radically expresses the truth about our society. We live in a world in which intellectualization serves to ward off genuine feelings and has meanwhile become normal. We were raised that way and we keep it up. The unbearable nature of this unnatural existence makes depression a widespread disease or drives people en masse to flee to a mystical worldview. We are becoming overly manipulable, we believe those with fake selves more than those with real selves, are used to accepting ready-made solutions to our problems, and have stopped paying attention to our own feelings. But since these can never be completely erased, we look for our salvation in many substitutes.
Arno Gruen advocates an autonomous, authentic person who draws his strength from his own vitality. However, anyone who looks around the psycho and esoteric market will find a plethora of manipulation techniques, all of which promise to live a painless life in a simple way. A society that relies on functioning cannot affirm the path through the very early pain of the suppression of our authentic feelings, because it ultimately brings liberation. Our (power) structures are not tailored to this.
Still, it's the only worthwhile path - not just for the individual, but for the change in society as a whole. I think that many know or feel this, but shy away from the difficult path to get there. As long as it goes on halfway, as long as we have enough external crutches available that make us believe we are independent and authentic, we will continue as usual. We are caught up in the mistake that being cut off from our real feelings for a lifetime is less painful than reliving the pain once - only to be freed from it afterwards.
However, I believe what stands in the way of this - and is probably fundamentally important - is that we can hardly go this path without understanding and without people who are close to us. It is a contradiction in terms to be able to discover your own warmth in isolation and alone. That includes human connection.
I also wanted to summarize Peter Schellenbaum's “The Wound of the Unloved”. But basically he doesn't write anything other than Green. What Schellenbaum puts in the foreground, however, is the living connection between people, which is a prerequisite for healing. He is a therapist who engages in real relationships with his clients and gives them this chance.
Arno Gruen's book “The betrayal of the self” is a very important book for everyone who feels inside that they really want to live authentically. But even if you have to go alone, you need a connection to other people, because trust and openness - and I agree with Peter Schellenbaum - are an important step towards change. The difficult thing is to find a counterpart who gets involved with it with his real self. Source for the text and the notes:
***** My additions *****
If you want to know more about the “health” of society, I recommend these previous posts:
The loss of humanity by the psychoanalyst Arno Gruen
And the contribution:
Against the obedience of Arno Gruen
And here is mine Letter to the prison chaplain, which shows how it came about that we followed the path that we as humanity have taken so far.
More about the difference between being a person and a citizen, also on Telegram
https://t.me/mensch_oder_buerger
or @Mensch_oder_Buerger You can become a citizen, but as a person you are born, no matter where on earth, the person remains at the core always human (of course) to a citizen, however, he becomes due to a fiction, i.e. a thought construct, simply due to a belief or a Ideology, THAT IS ELEMENTALLY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND. Please share this post so that more and more people can find out what society / humanity as a whole is really suffering from.
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