The Sentiments of Love, Friendship : Part 4

The Foundations of Personality
by Abraham Myerson, M.D.

(Page 12 of 22)

Because self-disgust and hatred are so painful, compensatory "mechanisms" have been set up. There is in many people a tendency to project outward the blame for those acts or thoughts which they dislike. In the pathological field we get those delusions of influence that are so common. Thus a patient will attribute his obscene thoughts and words to a hypnotic effect of some person or group of persons and saves his own face by the delusion. In lesser pathological measure, men have fiercely preached against the snares and wiles of women, refusing to recognize that the turmoil of unwelcome desire into which they were thrown was internal in the greater part of its origin and that the woman often knew little or not at all of the effect she helped produce. One of the outstanding features in the history of the race has been this transfer of blame from the desire of men to the agent which aroused them. Of course, women have played on the desires of men, but even where this was true the blame for VULNERABILITY has seldom been fully accepted.

Whenever any one has been "weak" or "foolish" or "sinful," his mind at once seeks avenues of escape from the blame, from the painful feeling of inferiority and self-reproach. The avenue of escape selected may be to blame others as tempting or not warning and not teaching, may become entirely delusional, or it may take the religious form of confession, expiation and repentance. There are some so hardy in their self-esteem that they never suffer, never seek any escape from self-reproach, largely because they never feel it; and others, though they seek escape, are continually dragged by conscience to self-imposed torture. Most of us seek explanations for our unwelcome conduct on a plane most favorable to our self-esteem, and there arises an elaborate system of self-disguise, expiation, repentance and confession that is in a large part the real inner life of most of us. To explain failure especially are the avenues of escape utilized. Wounded in his self-esteem, rare is the one who frankly acknowledges inferiority. "Pull," "favoritism," "luck," explain the success of others as do the reverse circumstances explain our failures to ourselves. Sickness explains it, and so the defeated search in themselves for the explanation which will in part compensate them. Escape from inferiority follows many avenues, - by actual development of superiority, by denying real superiority to others, or by explaining the inferiority on some acceptable basis.

Here (as elsewhere in character) there is evident an organic and a social basis for feeling. We have not emphasized sufficiently a peculiarity of all human feeling, all emotions, all sentiments. They have their value to the individual in organizing his conduct, his standard of value. They are of enormous importance socially. A great law of feeling of whatever kind, of whatever elaboration, is this; it tends to spread from individual to individual and excites whole groups to the same feeling; tender feeling is contagious, and so is hate. We are somehow so made that we reverberate at a friendly smile in one way and to the snarl and stern look of hate in another way. Ordinarily love awakens love and hate awakens hate, though it may bring fear or contempt. It is true that we may feel so superior or cherish some secret hate that will make another's love odious to us, and also we may admire and worship one who hates us. These are exceptional cases and are examples of exceptional sentimental stability. It is of course understood that by love is not meant sex passion. Here the curious effect of coldness is sometimes to fan the flame of passion. Desire obstructed often gains in violence, and the desire to conquer and to possess the proud, that we all feel, adds to the fire of lust.

Self-esteem, self-confidence, hateful to others if in excess or if obtrusive, is an essential of the leader. His feeling is extraordinarily contagious, and the morale of the group is in his keeping. He must not show fear, or self-distrust or self-lowering in any way. He must be deliberate, but forceful, vigorous, masterful. If he has doubts, he must keep them to himself or exhibit them only to one who loves him, who is not a mere follower. It is a law of life that the herd follows the unwounded, confident, egoistic leader and tears to pieces or deserts the one who is wearying.

The basic sentiments of interest, love and hate, projected outward or inward, organize personality. Men's characters and their destinies rest in the things they find interesting, the persons they love and hate, their self-confidence and self-esteem, their self-contempt and hatred. And it is true that often we hate and love the same person or circumstance; we are divided, secretly, in our tenderest feelings, in our fiercest hate, more often, alas, in the former. For occasionally admiration and respect will mitigate hate and render impotent our aim, but more commonly we are jealous of or envy son, brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother and friend. We love our work but hate its tyranny, and even the ideal that we cherish, when we examine it too closely, seems overconventionalized, not enough our own, and it stifles and martyrs too many unpleasant desires. We rebel against our own affections, against the love that chains us perhaps to weakness and forces us, weary, to the wheel.

How deeply the feeling of "right" enters into the sentiments and their labors needs only a little reflection to understand. Here we come to the effect of the sentiment of duty, for as such it may be discussed. The establishment of conscience as our inner guide to conduct, and even to thought and emotions, has been studied briefly. On a basis of innate capacity, conscience arises from the teaching and traditions of the group (or groups). The individual who has a susceptibility or a readiness to believe and a desire to be in conformity accepts or evolves for himself principles of conduct, based on obligation, expectation of reward and fear of punishment, these entering in various proportions, according to the type of person. In children, or the very young child, expectation of reward and fear of punishment are more important than obligation, and this remains true of many people throughout life. Gradually right, what we call duty, becomes established as a guiding principle; but it must struggle with impulse and the desire for immediate pleasure throughout life. In fact, one of the dangers of the development of the feeling of duty lies in the view often held by those guided by principle and duty that pleasure is in itself somehow wrong and needs justification. Whereas, in my opinion, pleasure is right and needs no justification and is wrong only when it offends the fundamental moralities and purposes of Society.