The Self in Transformation - Dr. Fingarette

 VOLUME XVI, NO. 39

SEPTEMBER 25, 1963

"THE SELF IN TRANSFORMATION"

IN MANAS for Aug. 7, an article intended to survey "New Perspectives in Psychology" became less a survey than a briefly-stated thesis—the proposition that a truly radical view of the nature of man is now being born, either because or in spite of the extraordinary stresses of our time. 

This view may be termed "radical" since it concerns the root problems of man's nature and potentialities, and radical also in the sense of introducing ideas which are at fundamental variance with the presuppositions of other traditional religions and traditional science. At about the time "New Perspectives" went into type we received from Basic Books a volume called The Self in Transformation, by Professor Herbert Fingarette, which bears on the same great questions and merits much more than the usual space accorded a review. Dr. Fingarette's title, The Self in Transformation, can hardly be improved upon, and we have borrowed it to suggest a linkage between the development of the individual and the gradual emergence of a philosophic outlook in our psychologically-oriented culture. 

The most notable predisposition of recent modern thought looks at the human situation in terms of what may be called a "captive" psychology. By "captive" psychology we mean the fateful opinion that the conditions which cause human distress will hold man in inevitable bondage until those conditions are altered. In theological terms, the chief referencepoint is the contrast between earth and heaven, between the world of man and the world of God.

 Heaven is a symbol of transformed conditions, but not transformed by man. The scientific view, popularly speaking, is not much different, because the summum bonum is envisioned as possible only when natural hazards, diseases, mental disorders, neuroses, and conflicts of every sort, including fratricidal war, have been eliminated. 

But it is also possible to hold that man, even in the midst of his involvements with internal psychic suffering, with economic and social dislocations, or with the neuroses of the nations, is only "captive" in one portion of his total being. He may be, as the Greeks said—and as Viktor Frankl is now saying—the victim of "Nemesis" in his psychic nature. But if a man is noëtic as well as psychic—if the "soul" has two dimensions—it may be possible to transform one's life without immediately or observable transforming one's external situation. 

The "wise man" in history can, we think, be distinguished by his identification with the noëtic point of view—the view of the non-captive spiritual man. There have been attempts to describe the

philosophy which provides a natural basis for this

conviction as "the perennial philosophy." The

trouble with this phrase, however, is that it suggests

a static definition of truth, whereas it seems

necessary to hold that truth, like freedom, must be

won anew each day. The most inspiring insights of

philosophy may be in many important respects the

same from age to age, but they will have to be

perpetually reborn if they are to be fully realized by

each generation.

These are explanatory reasons for our feeling

that The Self in Transformation is a volume of

exceptional significance and value. Dr. Fingarette is

a professor of both philosophy and psychology at the

University of California at Santa Barbara, and it is in

the area where the disciplines of philosophy and

psychology meet that one might well expect the

greatest illumination for our time. The terminology

of psychotherapy has already penetrated literature

and filtered into popular usage, and it is in the hope

that the analysts and therapists can serve as oracles

that so many distraught individuals come to them for

assistance. Yet reliance on authority, however

promising the outlook, has always turned out to be a

bad habit. Meanwhile contemporary psychology

needs the broader perspective that philosophy can

provide.

In his introduction, Dr. Fingarette speaks of the

confusions which may result from "the force of

psychoanalytic studies bearing upon the life of the

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spirit," and, though he later defends what may be

identified as the philosophy implicit in

psychoanalysis, here he criticizes careless science

and religion in relation to "the life of the spirit":

As has many a philosophically minded person, I

have been struck by the awkwardness and

philosophical naïveté which so often seem to lead

psychoanalytic studies down the road to ruin. I have

in mind two special evils. One consists in

psychologizing the spiritual life ("reducing" it to

psychology, with nothing left over). The other evil

consists in mistaking widespread, popular perversions

of the spiritual life for the real thing, thus often

providing incisive analyses of something which is

familiar though incorrectly labeled.

The paradigms of the latter evil are Freud's

incisive analyses of what he calls religion. In truth,

as he himself shows, what he is analyzing is the

popular sentiment and illusion which goes under the

name of religion. It is as if a psychologist were to

study the layman's notions and attitudes in relation to

science. These are statistically the most common

attitudes and beliefs, and our quite hypothetical

psychologist might well argue that therefore they are

the characteristic scientific attitudes and beliefs. In

this hypothetical case, we see the error clearly.

Though we might get a penetrating and valuable

study of the popular attitudes and beliefs, we would

not expect from our psychologist a correct perspective

on the psychology of genuine scientific inquiry and

creativity. Yet, if he were to study the tiny minority

of men who (as we know) are the creative scientists,

might not those who are naive about science charge

him with overemphasizing esoteric groups and

doctrines and introducing unrepresentative population

samples?

There is a set of evils complementary to those I

have been discussing. The strictures I have presented

against psychologizing or misidentifying the spiritual

life are easily put to self-serving uses. We teeter here

on the brink of mere antiscientific rhetoric,

mystification, and politically expedient "dividing up

of the pie" of knowledge. The recognition that there

are different dimensions of life is often the occasion

for shutting off inquiry into the interrelations of those

dimensions. The strenuous and reactionary attempts

to keep physics out of biology, biology out of

psychology, and psychology out of the realm of the

spirit are all too familiar in the intellectual history of

the West. In truth it is just the discovery of such

different dimensions of life that obligates us to study

their interrelationships and the import thereof.

If a culture fails to see the need for this sort of

synthesis, just as when the individual fails to strive

for integration, "noëtic" man suffers starvation,

slogan-makers carry the day in politics, and

advertising sets the goals of a desire-oriented

personal life. In a chapter titled "Insight and

Integration," Dr. Fingarette reveals his rapport with

the theme of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for

Meaning:

Meaning may be used to maximize pleasure and

may itself provide gratification (as is especially clear

in the arts). Yet the drive toward meaning is

autonomous and distinct from the pleasure-aim. It

remains a fact that sometimes we can purchase

meaning only at the expense of pleasure. This

assumption of a drive toward meaning corresponds to

the assumption in psychoanalytic theory of the

primary autonomy of ego functions, especially of the

synthesizing ego functions. For "ego" is the name for

this unifying drive toward meaning and the specific

forms and outcomes of that drive. The ego's unity,

ego-integration as such, is a unity of meaning. Its

primary energies are its being.

The world was, after all, not created to please

us, nor does successful psychoanalysis guarantee the

banishment of suffering. Psychoanalysis can

transform the quality of suffering through

understanding, through the sublimative magic of

meaning, but it cannot guarantee the elimination of

suffering.

So rich and varied are Dr. Fingarette's

suggestions concerned with integation in thought that

one can easily become immersed in any single phase

of his book's development—the relationship of art to

philosophy and psychoanalysis, the bearing of

Eastern thought upon the nature of noëtic man, etc.

But it seems best to focus particularly upon the

author's interpretation of psychoanalysis as one key,

however imperfectly represented, to the eternal

drama of "soul." In "Art, Therapy and the External

World," he links the ideal role of the analyst—often

played as much by instinct as by training—to

universal tradition:

Constant at its core, though appearing in

varying guises, we find in many cultures the ideal of

the enlightened-agonist: he who insistently guides us

through the ordeal which liberates, who joins in it

though he is above it, who is disinterestedly our

burden and our ally.

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Socrates, Jesus, Gautama Buddha—each

represents a human of unwavering and selfless

dedication to individuals in their struggle for spiritual

transformation. Each represents the penetrating

power of understanding; each, in his relation with

men, grasps the Other's human condition in the very

act of dialogue with him; each responds to the person,

not with a theory. They have a mediating role: they

are midwife, son, or guide rather than primary source

of Being, and they emphasize this. Each is dedicated

to man's salvation; martyrdom is not sought but is

accepted if necessary. The enlightened-agonist moves

dramatically among humanity while remaining

himself unmoved, autonomous, detached. All persons

are treated with equally compassionate objectivity,

and there is no special involvement with any. Each

of these enlightened-agonists undergoes no

sentimental suffering in leaving human beings to

their fate when the occasion calls for it. We say that,

in the last analysis, each is moved by the Divine, and

this is to say that in some sense their impersonality is

radical. Yet it is also to say that their acceptance of

the other person as a person rather than as an object

is profound.

The psychoanalyst responds preponderantly to

the psychic integration problem; he responds to the

gesture only as an element within the pattern. For all

the storm and fury visited upon him, he is, as

Greenson suggests, not a friend but a doctor; for all

his detachment, he is not an acquaintance but an

intimate. I have called him an enlightened-agonist.

Socrates would have called him a midwife. He

participates in the agony and in the contest of the

spirit, helps to bring victory out of defeat, a new birth

out of a death. Yet, enlightened, he is somehow

above the contest, an unaffected helper.

In Dr. Fingarette's context this is not, we think,

so much an apologia for analysis as a way of

illustrating that every significant probe for meaning

and integration "in the life of the spirit" must take

into account two qualitatively different dimensions of

man. The "other world" of the religionist is, in true

perspective, literally here and now—to the extent

that its configurations come clear to the eye. Man is

not one "self," but the thread of individuality which

binds together a collectivity of selves—all himself,

but also sharing a participatory relationship with

other aspects of culture and other persons of divers

orientation. It is in this light that Dr. Fingarette links

ancient wisdom to modern psychology, choosing as

introductory text for The Self in Transformation a

passage from the book of Chuan-tse:

In practicing and cherishing the old

he attains the new;

Attaining the new, he reanimates

the old

He is indeed a teacher.

Dr. Fingarette continues:

The crust which was forming in the dogmatic

1930's and '40's has begun to break up. The old battle

lines and war cries are history. The formulations of

empirical philosophy in the first half of the century

were penetrating and fertile, they were as

understandably and enthusiastically one-sided as the

early formulations of Freud. In each case, it has been

necessary to amplify and refine, yet without denying

the substance or the spirit of the original insights.

If Master K'ung was right, we must indeed all be

teachers; we must practice and cherish the old in

order to discover the new; and in attaining the new,

we indeed reanimate the old.

An outstanding example of Dr. Fingarette's

"reanimation of the old" occurs in a seventy-page

section titled "Karma and the Inner World"—in

many ways the touchstone of his book as a unique

contribution. The "doctrines" of karma and

reincarnation are here viewed psychologically, in a

presentation which hardly needs arguments

concerning belief for support. Chapter Five begins:

The doctrine of Karma, whether we accept it or

not, poses profound questions about the structure,

transformation, and transcendence of the self. It

raises in new ways general questions of ontology. We

may be parochial and dismiss the doctrine, especially

its theses on reincarnation, as obvious superstition.

Or we may recall that it was not any self-evident

spiritual superficiality but the historical accident of

official Christian opposition which stamped it out as

an important Greek and Roman doctrine, a doctrine

profoundly meaningful to a Plato as well as to the

masses. Perhaps more significant, it has remained

from the first millennium b.c. until the present, an

almost universal belief in the East, even among most

of the highly trained and Western-educated

contemporary thinkers.

The assumption in this chapter is that joining a

fresh examination of karmic doctrine to an

examination of certain aspects of psychoanalytic

therapy will throw a new light on therapy, on the

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meaning of the karmic doctrine, and on certain of our

major philosophical and cultural commitments. The

task of the reader in such a discussion is to see what

the evidence and the argument say rather than to read

into the words the Westerner's stock interpretation of

"esoteric" doctrines.

An illustration of this method is provided in a

discussion of the "Intermediate Existence" between

lives on earth, in the words of one of the early Indian

Sutras:

As the time of [the human being's] death

approaches he sees a bright light and being

unaccustomed to it at the time of his death he is

perplexed and confused. If he is going to be reborn as

a man he sees himself making love with his mother

and being hindered by his father; or if he is going to

be reborn as a woman he sees himself hindered by his

mother. It is at that moment that the Intermediate

Existence is destroyed and life and consciousness

arise and causality begins once more to work. It is

like the imprint made by a die; the die is destroyed

but the pattern has been imprinted.

Dr. Fingarette continues:

It takes little effort to "transpose" such passages

into the analogous psychoanalytic language: indeed

they can be read as poetic accounts of the nature and

import of the Oedipal phase in individual maturation.

It will be no great surprise after this to learn that

according to the detailed Tibetan accounts the

"Intermediate Existence" before "entering the womb

in order to be born" is a complex one, an existence

fraught with openly id-like experiences, an existence

which has a definite genetic continuity, however, with

the eventual "birth" and with the specific spiritual

nature of the being which thus comes to life.

In such discussion of birth and rebirth the three

driving forces which must be overcome in the inner

man are of course, Anger, Lust, and Stupidity. These

are mentioned in varying terminologies, but nowhere

can we mistake the broad intention. These three

"cravings" at the root of all suffering are remarkably

reminiscent of certain basic psychoanalytic

conceptions.

"Karma," then, in psychological terms, is an

awareness of our identity with all phases of selfhood.

Dr. Fingarette has a provocative passage on this

point:

We become responsible agents when we can face

the moral continuity of the familiar, conscious self

with other strange, "alien" psychic entities—our

"other selves." We should perhaps speak of an

"identity" with other selves rather than a "continuity."

For we must accept responsibility for the "acts" of

these other selves; we must see these acts as ours. As

Freud said of our dream lives, they are not only in me

but act "from out of me as well."

Yet identity is, in another way, too strong a

term. There is a genuine difference between, say, the

infantile, archaic (unconscious) mother-hater and the

adult, humane, and filial (conscious) self, between the

primitive, fantastic brother-murderer and the

sophisticated fair-minded business competitor,

between the archaic sun-priest and the teacher.

Indeed, it is the assumption that there is a genuinely

civilized self which is the prerequisite for classical

psychoanalysis as a therapy. The adult, realistic self

is the "therapeutic" sine qua non of the therapist. The

hope in the psychotherapy of the neurotic is that his

neurotic guilt is engendered by a "self" which is in a

profound sense alien to his adult, civilized, realistic

self. "For whosoever has, to him shall be given. . . ."

Insight only helps those who already have a realistic

ego.

The psychoanalytic quest for autonomy reveals

the Self in the greater depth; it reveals it as a

community of selves. The genuinely startling thing in

this quest is not simply the discovery that these other,

archaic selves exist, nor even that they have an

impact in the present. What startles is the detailed

analysis of the peculiarly close, subtle, and complex

texture of the threads which weave these other selves

and the adult conscious self into a single great

pattern.

It is a special, startling kind of intimacy with

which we deal. It calls for me to recognize that I

suffer, whether I will or no, for the deeds of those

other selves. It is an intimacy which, when

encountered, makes it self-evident that I must assume

responsibility for the acts and thoughts of those other

persons as if they were I. Finally and paradoxically,

in the morally clear vision which thus occurs, there

emerges, as in a montage, a new Self, a Self free of

bondage to the old deeds of the old selves. For it is a

Self which sees and therefore sees through the old

illusions which passed for reality. Yet this Self is the

Seer who is not seen, the Hearer not heard.

In an earlier chapter, "Guilt and Responsibility,"

Dr. Fingarette indicates his reasons for thinking that

the "theory" of karma and reincarnation has so much

in common with the working hypotheses of the

psychoanalysts. Indeed, it might be said that the

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limitations of psychoanalysis appear when the

"karmic view" is ignored:

If we are to discover the moral viewpoint

consistent with psychoanalysis (which is a principal

purpose of this study), we must give up the postulate

which conflicts with what we know to be

psychoanalytic practice. Apparently the patient must

accept responsibility for traits and actions of his

which are the inevitable results of events over which

he had no control and of actions which he did not

consciously will.

It holds that, paradoxical as it may at first seem,

this is precisely the case.

As do so many moralists, Hospers looks to the

antecedents of the act in order to settle responsibility.

The real issue as revealed by our present perspective,

however, is that: What is the (moral-therapeutic)

solution to the present human predicament, granted

that what happens now is a consequence of what

happened when we could not control what happened?

The solution is, as I have already indicated, that

moral man must accept responsibility for what he is

at some point in his life and go on from there. He

must face himself as he is, in toto, and as an adult,

being able now in some measure to control what

happens, he must endeavor so to control things that

he is, insofar as possible, guiltless in the future.

The broad philosophical view presented in The

Self in Transformation seems an articulation of ideas

implicit in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a

Thousand Faces—the view that man is continually

dying and being reborn, psychologically, with each

new cycle of metempsychosis leading toward

"autonomy":

At first one lives with one vision for years before

there is readiness for another. After the accumulation

of experience and of acquaintance with more than one

of these ways of seeing, the movement from one

organizing view to another can come more rapidly.

This shifting of visions is not then any the less a

matter of genuine and deep commitment. It is not a

sampling or tasting, not an eclecticism. For one calls

upon a vision with a life, one's own, behind it. One

earns a vision by living it, not merely thinking about

it. Eventually, however, when several such lives have

been lived, one can shift from life to life more often

and more easily, from vision to vision more freely.

Here a Buddhist image helps. We are told that

there are degrees of enlightenment and, further, that

with the higher forms of enlightenment, the

enlightened one can move from realm to realm, from

world to world, from dharma to dharma, with ease;

yet he is at home in each. The Buddha uses doctrine;

he is not a slave to it. Doctrine is the ferry, and the

enlightened one knows there are many ferries which

travel to the farther shore. But when he is ferrying,

he is skillful, wholehearted, and at one with his craft.

We know also that, even in Buddhist terms, the

very Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have their special or

favorite powers and realms. We must not ignore the

fact that in this last analysis, commitment to a

specific orientation outweighs catholicity of imagery.

One may be a sensitive and seasoned traveler, at ease

in many places, but one must have a home. Still, we

can be intimate with those we visit, and while we may

be only travelers and guests in some domains, there

are our hosts who are truly at home. Home is always

home for someone; but there is no Absolute Home in

general. With all its discovery of relativism, the West

has been fundamentally absolutist and therefore

parochial: we claim to tolerate other visions than the

logical and technological, we explain them praise

them, enjoy them; and gently, skillfully,

appreciatively, do we not, too often, betray them?

In conclusion, and in partial confirmation of the

opinions here expressed, we quote from a reviewer

in the Library Journal for April 15. Dr. Louis De

Rosis, Fellow of the Academy of Psychoanalysis,

says of Dr. Fingarette's book:

This approach is not polemical; it is sympathetic

and also one which cuts through to the main bases on

which psychoanalysis rests. There are areas in the

work which can be disputed and others which

elaboration would serve to clarify but for the greater

part, the volume is a high-powered microscope used

by a brilliant philosopher to bring profound

illumination into psychoanalysis—not only to its

basic theoretical underpinnings but to its

relationships in the whole scheme of man's being.

This is truly required reading for all psychiatrists,

psychoanalysts, and clinical psychologists of any

school or persuasion. It should also have more than

passing meaning for the informed layman.

The Self in Transformation contains 352 pages

and is priced at $8.50. This may seem a

considerable expenditure, but in this case, we think,

the book will be worth a good deal more than its

cost.

Volume XVI, No. 39 MANAS Reprint September 25, 1963