Self and the Social

The concern with the healthy personality and the actualized self pushes humanistic psychology to its discipline boundary. For now we must view the shoreline of self. We must consider the social context of self and formulate the relation of Self to Other. The self is not a "self"-contained unit. Its boundary and very creation is involved with other people. Maslow (1962) wrote:

We are confronted with a difficult paradox when we attempt to describe the complex attitude toward the self or ego of the growth-oriented, self-actualized person. It is just this person, in whom ego-strength is at its height, who most easily forgets or transcends the ego, who can be most problem-centered, most self-forgetful, most spontaneous in his activities . . . In such people, absorption in perceiving, in doing, in enjoying, in creating can be very complete, very integrated and very pure (p. 37).

It is precisely the ''self" actualized person who can become involved with other people, who can share the boundary of self and create in the moment, who can "lose" oneself. It is the unactualized person who must cling to ego as if it were made of gold. The actualized self allows the boundary between Self and Other to become porous: he or she can transcend self and participate in another.

Humanistic psychology originates in the need for self-love. The full "self" can extend and stretch its boundaries -- can move in and participate in another's space without then destroying Other. Love allows a shifting, moving boundary between Self and Other without having to claim all for self. Self-love includes a reverence for Other and is a stance toward life. Humanistic psychology seeks to avoid the debilitating altruism which turns Other into a prisoner. It also seeks to prevent Self from fusing too quickly: of giving up self to merge with other. For if we too quickly negate the human in order to fit ourselves to relationship, then we will never know the possibilities of life.

As the poet McWilliams (n.d.) wrote:

Yes, two halves do make a whole.

But when two wholes coincide,

That is beauty.

That is love.

(Poster, n.p.)

Humanistic psychology begins as an attempt to move beyond symbiotic relationship to a full human encounter. Seeing the abuses of the self-effacing altruism and self-denial humanistic psychology advanced an effort to correct these defects. However, such strategies must be kept in context. It began as an attempt to create whole selves because only full selves can come together and meet in love. It was not an end in itself. If we view the self-love psychology as the climax and the pinnacle of the movement, then we miss the point. It was part of a process and the implementation of a strategy to love: an attempt to create self in a way that would further meeting, greeting, and sharing. It sought to create a "self" that wasn't compromised. Relationship is not founded on one person giving away self to another, but on the mutual creation of both partners. The flight from self is the key to our inability to fully relate. Humanistic psychology sought to create true relationship without swindling the individual for the sake of the community. It was an exploration of the real human potential which is meeting, relationship, and community: of ways to come together in the fullness of ourselves.

Humanistic psychology desired to move beyond the denial of self which has characterized history. It sought the true possibility of the blossoming of self in relationship. This was the cornerstone of the movement: that self need not be negated for relationship or society to

be possible. Self-denial was deemed not a virtue, but a mechanism which prevented fuller love.

Yet, self-love and the psychological approach met the sociological of other. The embrace of self was not without its problems: "the message of duty to self seemed like the perfect alternative. Fromm, Rogers, May and Maslow had all effectively criticized the restrictive effects of self-denial" (Yankelovich, 1981, p. 242).

With the doors to self-actualization and human potential open, it often became difficult to distinguish between self-fulfillment and hedonism. When were they "following their heart" and when were they simply "following their greed?" The duty to self-philosophy had a

tendency to be reified as a private movement not concerning others. The line between effective strategies for a fuller self capable of entering into meaningful relationships became confused with the self that merely wants to horde. Yankelovich (1981) wrote:

The self is not confined to private consciousness in the sense of feelings and potentials unique to you and somehow imprisoned within your skull or skin. That is one aspect of self. But the self is also part and parcel of the world.

You are not the sum of your desires. You do not consist of an aggregate of needs, and your inner growth is not a matter of fulfilling all your potentials. By concentrating day and night on your feelings, potentials, needs, wants and desires, and by learning to assert them more freely, you do not become a freer, more spontaneous, more creative self; you become a

narrower, more self-centered, more isolated one. You do not grow, you shrink.

The search for self-fulfillment cannot succeed unless its seekers discard the assumption of the self as private consciousness. Only when one understands that self must be fulfilled with the shared meanings of the psychoculture is one; pursuing self-fulfillment realistically (p. 242).

We cannot isolate Self from Other; we cannot separate self from cultural meanings and resources. No matter how neglected the search for self-fulfillment has been, we must not forget to also understand human beings in relation. "Love is between an I and a You," Buber (1957, p. 66). wrote. "Whoever does not know this with his being, does not know love" ,

It is the experience between Self and Other which is critical. The individual potential is not the human potential because it merely cultivates the individual for marketplace success. The human potential is the human possibility. Perhaps this is no better illustrated than by the "God is inside You" rhetoric. We must be careful to recognize that the individual person is not God, even though he or she participates in this larger spirit of God. God is contained in humanity: between us in our interaction. It is a consciousness that we share. This is why Buber

was so insistent that love is an "in-between" space belonging neither to psychology nor to traditional sociology.

We must understand the play of the spirit between people if we are to understand love. Love s a spirit which shows up when other games have been dropped. We must understand that the nature of self is such that I and You are a mutual creation. The "self" is socially created in the relationship between "Self" and "Other". This is the key of the sociological view and the only way we can approach a fuller understanding of love. A humanistic psychology is incomplete without a companion humanistic sociology. Cooley (1902, n.p.) wrote: "The individual

and the group are but two sides of the same coin."

Self is fundamentally and inseparably related to Other. This was also Mead's social psychology of the formation of the self. Mead argued that self was created in a process of the moment: that it was fundamentally social (Mead, 1934). The self is a social process.

We must reflect back to what we mean when we use the word "self." It does not mean that the Self is self-sufficient; or a person unto oneself who does not need other people. Self is an experience -- a boundary with the world and others. In many ways, the term "Self" is a paradox: ''I can only know that much of myself as I am willing to confide in you." "I know myself most when I am in relation with another."

"I am most myself when I experience myself through love with another."

At times, I lose myself in relationships, and I must withdraw to solitude. But too much solitude is loneliness and I also lose myself. I can only regain myself when I find a "you" with whom I can share. And I can only retain myself when I don't just become that "You."

What does "self" mean? What is a whole "self'"? The answer can only be that it means an integrity: not giving up one's identity or violating one's "self". Self-love is refusal to compromise aspects of self which are crucial to one's own sense of well being. It is allowing time and space for development of those aspects of self which provide one with a sense of joy and accomplishment. One does not finish the creation of self and then become ready for relationship. Self is not an accomplishment that can be completed. Self is a process. A whole self does not mean that self-creation has now been completed. A whole self means a sense of integrity.

The boundary of Self is Other. And that boundary changes from interaction to interaction; from thought to thought; from moment to moment. At times we are so close that the boundaries of consciousness blur. Consciousness becomes a thing that we share: that we both participate in. To understand love, we must understand that boundary between Self and Other: where touching, greeting, and meeting become magic. As Rilke (1975, n.p.) wrote: "Love consists in this: that two solitude's touch, and meet, and greet one another."

We know ourselves best when we have comfortably set the boundary between our self and the world. Too much self is loneliness. The ideal amount is called solitude: time to reflect, remember, and regroup.

Some accomplishments of self require some amount of isolation: where we are forced back on the resources of self to gain new knowledge. Self is a balancing act between too much and too little.

Our sense of identity is established by communicating and meeting. Self is a relatedness toward the world which feels comfortable. If we push for our rights too strongly, sometimes we abuse another's integrity. We also lose our power of self-creation. The facility with which our wishes are catered too often leads to self-indulgence where we attempt to institutionalize the "free lunch". But to touch and greet requires a sense of self: an authenticity which strikes us as "us.'' It is only through such integrity that we can approach true communication and relationship. Self and relation are intertwined: a part of the same process. We will not be finished with either until death.

Cooley (1929) formulated the concept of the "looking-glass self." We see ourselves in the mirror of others. It is through interaction and relation that we are able to attain a sense of who we are. Rogers (1961, p. 1977) used this concept of the "looking-glass self" to develop a strategy of love. He attempted to create a social context of "positive self-regard" (Tageson, 1982). Roger's strategy was to positively reinforce the creation of self thus teaching self-love and nurturance.

Yet such a strategy is sociologically naive because except in rare instances, we have neither the self or the social context in hand. In psychotherapy and institutional settings, positive nurturance can bring the person to life. But in normal interaction, the dynamics between Self and Other are a much more complicated process.

In some ways, humanistic psychology creates a false "self." Popular humanistic psychology spin-offs miss the point. They can only be adapted as far as current capitalistic goals allow. Ultimately, we must change the system: the way people live their lives, relate and conceive of self. Otherwise, techniques of mediation, stress reduction, and self-formation merely funnel back into the main cultural scenarios. They dissipate and are only momentary "shots in the arm"; leaving one even more "burnt" and alienated from self and others. What is required are effective social arrangements, goals and ways of living that are brought to bear upon one's whole life.

In many ways, the term "self" has been abused. Freud wrote in the time when the approaching industrial society was watching the extended family give way to the nuclear family. The individual no longer felt a kinship outside of the mobile, self-sufficient unit of husband-wife-children. Moving past extended family ties that saw one generation bound to another was the whole core of Freud's theory of the development of self. Popularizing Freud and his version of self as breaking away, it now seems that we have come to an ideal version of self as a self-

sufficient unit: a nuclear self -- which moves encapsulated without relatedness. But Self doesn't mean that.

Part of this is confused by the issue of the freedom mythos of the American dream. In myth and legend, we have all heard testimony to a rare human possibility: relatedness, of living as a part of all with a sense of freedom. This freedom represents a call of the spirit -- and is psychological in nature: the heart's desire. But it is not an accident that the humanistic psychology movement sprang upon the cultural scene the same time the latest experiment with freedom -- the American Counterculture -- flourished. Roszak (1979) was right about what historically happened to the counterculture -- it become enculturated in the personhood movement of humanistic psychology. However, he was very wrong about its possibilities. Routinized, the personhood movement implied that others become but a support group for the creation of Self.

But self is not fitted to such a conception. The capitalistic ideal of the nuclear self must give way to another conception: self in relationship. We must realize that life is not a possession of Self. It does not mean that I have contained myself but that I have experienced life.

He: 'I can't believe how you make love: You totally give yourself.'

She: 'Well of course, that's the only way it's ever worth while.'

(dialog from the movie, Secrets )

The human possibility: to flow with the grain and purpose of life: to feel related; a part of something larger. To share and participate in the birth/creation of Self and Other. To know life.

This is the true freedom. To feel at one with life. It is not a matter of individual freedom but the right of the person to know life's fulfillment. Things become muddled if we confuse "freedom from" with "freedom to"; if we confuse ego maintenance with satisfaction. As the poet Gibran wrote, "Love is the only freedom."

The counterculture and humanistic psychology became confused about this issue of relatedness in much the same manner that they were confused about the American dream and its historical movement toward freedom: both have taken relatedness for granted. As the counterculture's Whole Earth Catalog summarized, "you cannot put it together, it is together." But such statements miss the point. Relatedness is knowing the freedom of being part of all while celebrating that knowledge.

Melville, the first great American novelist, wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips --lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feelings (Baird, 1979, p. 222).

It was as if Melville was saying, "is it a dream or has God been dissected into parts, and we the parts, now sailors on the sea of His dream?" The American dream of self provided the real frontier. Melville's Captain Ahab sailed the sea of this dream on a quest for power and glory. And though he saw "infinity in the twinkling of an eye" he did not explore it. Instead, he set sail alone on a dream of self. Unless we explore how far this potential identity for soul with soul actually goes, then we abandon ourselves to self with the full possibilities of life unshared. he vision will remain unexplored. In some ways, self does not exist but is a "summons to be created." If we cast off the grander aspects that we discover in life to self, then creativity -- the life spring -- is only recreation. Creativity means moving past what we though as self and embracing a relatedness with other. It means allowing our experience of love and the magical to restructure our lives. Recreation is merely the experience we have before we return to the regular world. It leaves common reality unaltered and intact.

In true magical experiences of love, the self meets, merges, and interplays with other. If we define Self as a fixed unit, then we return to the normal world as if nothing had happened. Love becomes merely recreational rather than re-shaping and re-structuring our lives and social arrangements. We must come together for more than a brief recollection of the dream. We must experience ourselves as part of another self that is beyond our intents and purposes. Only on the shoreline do we find the dream. Only at the boundary between Self and Other do we experience our creation. It is only on this shifting shore that we find our freedom. Commitment to something larger: our birth in daylight. A celebration in joy and laughter of this quiet relatedness is this gentle dream. We only become whole in love. We only glimpse the stairway and taste truth out beyond the confines of ourself.

Each soul is a summons to be created

And none fulfilled

Till two can see

then dancing

Greet with thee

We create eternity.

But meeting is our only door

Not recreation, something more

the patterns of our lives

To meet and greet

And finally come

To fulfill the dance

As One

(n. p. , Writer Original).

There is another way in which we might frame an understanding of self-love. This becomes apparent if we consider A. S. Neill's (1960, I966) experiment in freedom at Summerhill. Summerhill was an exploration of growth and the abolition of rules. It was the concept of democracy applied to an educational setting. Yet through this process of freedom and self-expression, one norm developed. It was this: "If someone is standing on your toes, it is your responsibility to yell 'ouch."' In a society of freedom, one may not be aware that he/she is treading on another. It becomes the self's responsibility to complain when it hurts. This is a version of self-love; the simple articulation that self exists and yes, "you are stepping on my toes.'' Such demonstration does not reduce self to a power struggle, but opens the process up to dialog. It allows the recognition that freedom and self-exploration involve other. We can never successfully conceive of the development of self except in relation to other.

Self-love is affirmation of self. It is being nice to self in the sense of not setting oneself up for needless pain and suffering: an affirmation that self deserves more happiness and less unhappiness. It is an acceptance that one is indeed worthy of the blessings of life!

There is also a sense in which Self can dissipate into something smaller and more petty. This is what we might term self-indulgence. This is not a part of self-love, but its opposite. Over-indulgence destroys self. If we try to actualize all potential experiences, we lose our identity and end up like leaves in the wind. What self-actualization really means is to create a viable self; it is the experience of self as an integrity and an identity. Self-love is the feeling of having funneled one's energies into the construction of a life which is authentic and meaningful: to be able to say on one's deathbed "Yes, I have lived."

In relation to the difference between self-love and self-indulgence, we might ask rhetorically, ''Is the self a fleeting passion, a series of wants that demand immediate satisfaction; or is the self an ongoing integrity -- an identity?" The answer should be obvious.

Paul Tillich added some clarity to the discussion of self-love and self-indulgence. The cutting line is the idea of justice.

There is a definite sense in which one can speak of justice towards oneself, namely in the sense that the deciding centre is just towards the elements of which it is the centre. Justice towards oneself in this sense decides, e.g., that the puritan form of self-control is unjust because it excludes elements of the self which have a just claim to be admitted to the general balance of strivings. Repression is injustice to oneself and it has the consequence of all injustice: it is self-destructive because of the resistance of the elements excluded. This, however, does not mean that the chaotic admittance of all strivings to the central decision is a demand of the justice towards oneself. It may be highly unjust, insofar as it makes a balanced center impossible and dissolves the self into a process of disconnected impulses. This is the danger of the romantic or open type of self-control. It can become as unjust towards oneself as the puritan or closed type of self control. To be just towards oneself means to actualize as many potentialities as possible without losing oneself in disruption and chaos. This is a warning not to be unjust toward oneself in the relation of love. For this is always also an injustice towards him who accepts the injustice which we exercise towards ourselves. He is prevented from being just because he is forced to abuse by being abused (Tillich, 1954, p. 70).

This cuts both ways. It refers to the puritan types of justice where one surrenders self-identity only to have it resurface in a manipulating altruism. It also refers to the open type of self "control" which causes the flurry of the moment "to dissipate any ongoing continuity." This second type of attitude forces us to abuse ourselves in just the processes which we believe will bring us self-fulfillment. Striving after too many potentials may leave us drained, tired and unable to really experience happiness in the attainment of any of them.

Yankelovich (1981) wrote that we have basically institutionalized two types of self-control: one is the self-denial which has characterized normative structures throughout the ages. The other is relatively new and is the "duty to self" philosophy: that there is plenty of everything and one can have anything that they want. He argues that the "abundance of everything" scenario will not work, but at the same time, it will be impossible for selves raised on self-fulfillment to return to self-denial as a practical strategy. The revolution of consciousness and the fulfillment of the human potential will have to take the form of advances in meanings, community, and the whole nature of the social bond. This will require an ethic of commitment which transcends the narrowness of self but at the same time furthers all selves.

The duty to self ethic itself has taken a peculiar form. For at first, it did not appear that the credo "Be yourself" or "Do your own thing" is a social norm -- and imposed from the outside. Yet, as humanistic psychology became popularized, guilt over not having fully lived became institutionalized into a "duty to self" ethic. This led to more guilt at not having actualized all of one's potentials; it became an additional pressure when in fact it had been designed to free the individual: a psychological device (self-actualization) had slipped over into the realm of social consequences. It may be hard for some to recognize that the personhood movement -- which decries expectations, norms and the like -- has been translated into expectations and norms.

Researcher Daniel Yankelovich (1981) illustrated this perfectly:

A psychologist friend told me an anecdote which had amused -- and bemused -- her. A patient in psychotherapy with her, a woman in her mid-twenties, complained that she had become nervous and fretful because life had grown so hectic -- too many big weekends, too many discos, too many late hours, too much talk, too much wine, too much pot too much love-making.

'Why don't you stop?' asked the therapist mildly. Her patient stared blankly for a moment, and then her face lit up, dazzled by an illumination. 'You men I really don't have to do what I want to do?' she burst out with amazement.

Ordinarily we think of norms in opposition to desires -- dictating what we should do (wake-up, work hard, buckle down, use moderation), as distinct from what we would like to do. It had never occurred to her, my friend admitted, that norms could support desires and that people could come to feel it was their moral duty to yield to their impulses. Her psychological thinking had been influenced by Freud, and she had come to think of social norms as the outgrowths of the parental do's and don'ts people internalize in early stages of development. She made no clear distinction between individual conscience and social norms, or rules (pp. 83-84).

The norm of "duty to self" can send one fleeing from self-identity just as self-denial might. If self-actualization is translated into a norm, its original meaning is dissipated. It becomes but another in the long list of social obligations. Authenticity, at this level, becomes a charade. The power of self-actualization becomes confused with the power to assert one's will over another to get one's whim. Self-actualization thus becomes routinized into the normal societal order.

Now we can understand more fully the inter-relation between self and other. De Rougemont wrote that relationship is a process of mutual commitment where each self creates the other. Commitment

. . . thus understood sets up the person. For the person is manifested like something made, in the widest sense of making . . . . Its first condition is a fidelity to something that before was not, but now is in process of being created . . . . It is by this roundabout way through the other that self arises into being a person. . . . What denies both the individual and his natural egotism is what constructs a person (De Rougemont, 1956, p. 307).

But the cult of self would deny such parameters. Self and other must then be reduced to a symbiotic relationship. Others become simply pawns in our game, or we in theirs. The denial of the existence of the other is essential in such a strategy. Other can be a face in the sunset or a star to guide our projections, but can never be allowed to be more than an extended appendage of self. Other must become unreal. We are reminded of the earlier romanticism.

When the love in the Manichaean legend had undergone the great ordeals of initiation, he is met, you remember, by a 'dazzling maiden' who welcomes him with the words: 'I am thyself.' Fidelity is then a mystic narcissism -- usually unconscious of course, and imagining itself to be true love for the other.

The love of Tristan and Iseult was the anguish of being two; and its culmination was a headlong fall into the limitless bosom of Night, there where individual shapes, faces, and destinies all vanish . . . . The other has to cease to be the other, and therefore to cease to be altogether, in order that he or she shall cease to make me suffer and that there may be only 'I myself am the world!' But married love is the end of anguish, the acceptance of a limited being whom I love because he or she is a summons to be created, and that in order to witness to our allegiance this being turns with me towards day. . . . But few people now seem to be able to distinguish between an obsession which is undergone and a destiny that we shoulder (De Rougemont, 1956, p. 308).

De Rougemont (1956) argued it is uncontrolled passion that destroys the self.

It is Eros, passionate love . . . that spread through the European world the poison . . . that Nietzsche unjustly lays at the door of Christianity. And it is Eros, not Agape, that glorified our death Instinct and sought to idealize it . . . . The god Eros is the slave of death because he wishes to elevate life above our finite and limited creature state (p. 311).

It is the reckless passion which refuses to recognize the other as a person, which in turn, destroys ourselves as a person. This is the flight from self. Self is not a fleeting desire, but a created continuity. The inability to recognize the inseparable relationship between self and other encourages us to flee in the hope that another will save us. Heroes and princesses die hard. But without ever moving past the myth of self, it is not possible to arrive at the actual self. Indulgence must give way to a faith in an active self which we are creating. In some ways, it is only by "virtue of the absurd" -- that is, by "faith" -- that we maintain and create our chosen integrity.

On the analogy of faith, passion, born of a fatal desire for mystical union, may be regarded as open to being surpassed and fulfilled only thanks to the meeting with some other, and the admission of this other's alien life and ever distinct person, which although distinct, holds the promise of unending alliance and begins a real dialog.

Then dread having been banished by response and nostalgia by presence, we both cease . . . to suffer, and accept our daylight. It is then that marriage is possible. We are two in contentment. . . . However, . . . married couples are not saints . . . . We are unendingly and incessantly in the thick of the struggle between nature and grace; unendingly and incessantly happy and then happy. But the horizon has not remained the same. A fidelity maintained in the Name of what does not change as we change will gradually disclose some of its mystery; beyond tragedy another happiness awaits. A happiness resembling the old, but no longer belonging to the form of the world, for this new happiness transforms the world (De Rougemont, 1956, pp. 322-323). [Italics Original]

This is the true romance: the creation of self and other. If self expands without considering the other, then self is misunderstood. If one flees from self, then one must abuse other. There is no integrity or continuity from which to meet. Self can only meet other if both are allowed to exist.

If one person simply subsumes another, then there is no distance over which to communicate; there is no separateness for love to bridge. One person has simply become an appendage of the other. To echo Buber, love is between self and other. Without both, there is no dialog and there is no love.

Other is not simply a projection of self. Even though self may be ultimately connected to Consciousness itself and intuitively a part of all the world, there is a separate other who is also connected with this same larger awareness. We can only explore other if we realize that he or she is other. Only then are we capable of meeting. Only then can we explore the magic of two souls put to purpose.

It is not a historical accident that "self psychology" and the ''women's movement" appeared at the same time. This is the mystery which the ideal of self and the feminist movement seeks to disclose. It was Kant who maintained that humanism is the refusal to treat the other as merely a ''means.'' Other is not a means for the self, but an end. Other is separate and real. Only then can we move back and forth across the boundary in the experience of love.

. . . A man gives evidence of his love for a woman by treating her as a completely human person, not as if she were spirit of the legend -- half-goddess, half-bacchante, a compound of dreams and sex . . . .

Women turn into persons instead of being reflections or means . . . . A man . . . feels the difficult and serious mystery of an independent, alien existence: he realizes that he has been desiring only an illusory or fleeting aspect of what is actually a complete life, and that this aspect has been but a projection of his own reverie. . . . The sway of the myth is by so much weakened, and although this sway is unlikely ever to be entirely abolished without leaving traces in hearts drugged by images, hearts such as men harbor today, at least it loses its efficacy. The myth no longer determines the person (De Rougemont, 1956, pp. 312-313).

Such a conception of the other as person, and not as convenient indulgence for self, is accomplished

. . . by becoming accustomed not to separate desire from love. For if desire travels swiftly and anywhere, love is slow and difficult. Love . . . exacts nothing less than this pledge in order to disclose its real nature. . . . Neither the excuse nor the alibi can deceive any one who does not wish to be deceived because he thinks deception will be to his advantage; they are part, of a romantic rhetoric, and allowable in that form, but only become ridiculous if confused with psychological truth (De Rougemont, 1956, p. 313).

Love needs a commitment to love to reveal its secrets. It is a commitment to "I" and to "You". One will know self with a maturity. Only then can one come to other "whole" and undeceived. There is a twin frontier on the human potential exploration. It is self. And it is other. It is I. And it is you.

Synergy