Arno Gruen’s thesis is that autonomy, which
he defines as "that state of integration in which one lives
in full harmony with one’s feelings and needs," is often
in direct conflict with the needs of society and the collective
rules that govern adjustment and the attainment of so-called success.
Indeed, our cultural history is largely composed of a "suppression
of these feelings and the needs they awaken." The splitting-off
of our most deeply felt awareness and perception leads invariably
to the danger of violence against the authentic self. As Gaetano
Benedetti warns in his preface, "the roots of evil, of negativity,
of psychopathology" may be traced in part to this blocking
of one’s true inner nature.
Gruen identifies abstraction as one of the most destructive forces
governing the fragmentation of the self. We "glorify abstract
thought – at the expense of passion, enthusiasm, and openness,"
successfully avoiding the pain of encountering our actual selves
and fearing the broad emotional spectrum that such an encounter
entails. The participation of science in abstraction’s almost
total usurpation of all other core human values has only further
validated this growing "split between intelligence and feeling"
– this blind worship of rationalism, which in turn threatens
the preservation of authenticity. Ironically, those who work hardest
to preserve their psychic authenticity are often "labeled as
maladjusted and as failures." Among the so-called maladjusted
are the prolific writer Henry Miller and the renowned mystic/philosopher
Meister Eckhart, as well as many other notable artists and philosophers
whom the author quotes at length.
Gruen provides a solution to what reads in large part as an anatomy
of the terrors that one may feel when turning within and facing
the dark countenance of the secret self. Although we may ultimately
"develop a fear of fear itself," we need to Discover
that though our fear is of complete helplessness – it is actually
a helplessness pertaining to a specific situation. It does not have
to be equated with total impotence and failure. Feeling helpless
can instead lead to a recognition of the limits of one’s influence
and the ability to accept interdependency.
A
shift in mental attitude away from a possible inflation of the omnipotent
ego toward the recognition of the significant "other"
- through the experience of rapport, empathy, and open-mindedness
- is a theme that runs throughout this work.
Certain
specialists as well as some general readers will no doubt view Gruen's
reinterpretation of Oedipus as being somewhat provocative. He believes
that "Our betrayal of what we might have been, which lays the foundation
of our destructive tendencies in general, is determined by our relationship
with our mother." Yet he rejects what he calls the Oedipal "myth,"
arguing: "it is neither love nor sexuality … that makes a
little boy in the Oedipal stage want to possess his mother. Rather,
this is brought about by her often unconscious rejection of his
authentic self." The child is thus motivated to either "serve her
- or to dominate her." All this, he adds, is
not ro blame her, for
in this regard she serves only as a link to the father and to society,
where the self is predicated upon power as the sole worthwhile reality.
Gruen
is to be lauded for the sincerity of his promulgation of feeling
and authenticity, particularly in an age when psychology has had
less to do with the study of the soul than with the obsessive and
soulless accounting of extroverted patterns of human behavior. Yet
there are dangers, even destructive ones, in this approach, which
rings of a literalness and a one-sidedness that one all too often
observes in a therapist's identification with the victim. It remains,
for instance, of vital necessity to separate the personal, literal
mother from both the "introjected" mother and from the idealized
or archetypal mother. Both the reality of internal nurturing - of
assuming the role of a mother to one's self - and the overall reality
of the psychic mother complex are points of view that are not mentioned
here. The naïve or general reader is left only with a personal
notion of "mother" and of "society" where a discussion of an "inner"
psychic mother or father, and of the "inner" psychic determinants
of society are necessary if the authenticity of the self is to be
at all preserved.
Authenticity
to the self and to one's feelings are also, ultimately, non-rational
categories of being, and if one is to isolate them, or rather, "rescue"
them (as Gruen seems to be doing) from psychiatric orthodoxy, then
that rescue must also entail a non-rational treatment. Here, instead,
the author falls back upon a so-called logical treatment that protects
and defends our needs for feeling and self-expression through a
method which is itself destructive because of its concreteness and
literalism - its assigning of every problem to some outer causality
located in (or projected upon) society. But what is society? What
is its psychic root? Statements such as "there are societies, such
as the African Ituri … or the Yequana in the Venezuelan jungle,
where men are whole human beings. But in our society they are not,"
explain nothing, and are, at the very least, highly questionable.
The "noble savage" seems to haunt this argument, as does that all-too-modern
spirit that, under the guise of an anything-goes "feminism," denigrates
"all men" to be guilt of one thing and "all women" to be in possession
of a multiplicity of heroic and endearing traits. Tied up with the
Oedipal drama, Gruen tells us, "is the male conception of possession
of power that comes into play."
Men
think of themselves in a logical, orderly way without realizing
that it crushes their spontaneity, which they have grown to fear.
As
a man who has to rely on spontaneity and the illogical, strangely
ordered flow of the unconscious in the act of writing, in creativity,
and in life itself, I've long grown tired of such superficial generalizations
about men and women, mothers and fathers, even individuals and societies,
whether they appear in political discourse, in works of psychology,
or in supercilious dinner table conversations. "Men are deeply tormented
by doubts about their superiority," and "women who are true to themselves
- that is, who are in touch with their own authentic life-forces
- are never in favor of war" - it all begins to read like a trivial
pursuit in an age of generalizations that has itself damaged the
individual through omission of a higher psychological understanding
and a more complex and mature analysis. So what begins as a refreshing
call to inner truth unravels in a welter of simplistic assertions
that undercut their own validity.
Had
Gruen followed his own stated philosophy of uncovering the voice
that is individual and unique to the self – the creative impulse
at the core of the psyche toward which one is always striving –
then his goal of propelling the reader toward a genuine experience
of this inner authenticity might have been more convincingly accomplished.
As it now stands, The Betrayal of the Self is a summons to the creative
but surely not an example of it.
Arno
Gruen The Betrayal of the Self. Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women
Arno Gruen psychotherapy psychology Oedipus complex
