POLITICAL AGITATORS
The essential mark of the agitator is the high value which he places
on the emotional response of the public. Whether he attacks or defends
social institutions is a secondary matter. The agitator has come by
his name honestly, for he is enough agitated about public policy
to communicate his excitement to those about him. He idealizes the
magnitude of the desirable social changes which are capable of being
produced by a specific line of social action. From the standpoint
of the administrative mind, we may say that an agitator is one who
exaggerates the difference between one rather desirable social policy
and another, much as the lover, according to Shaw, is one who grossly
exaggerates the difference between one woman and another. Whether
agitators behave like physicians or surgeons, as Munro would have it,
they are united in expecting much good to come from single acts of
innovation. The agitator easily infers that he who disagrees with him
is in communion with the devil, and that opponents show bad faith or
timidity. Agitators are notoriously contentious and undisciplined;
many reforming ships are manned by mutineers. The agitator is willing
to subordinate personal considerations to the superior claims of
principle. Children may suffer while father and mother battle for the
“cause.” But the righteous will not cleave to their families when
the field is ripe for the harvest. Ever on the alert for pernicious
intrusions of private interest into public affairs, the agitator sees
“unworthy” motives where others see the just claims of friendship.
Believing in direct, emotional responses from the public, the agitator
trusts in mass appeals and general principles. Many of his kind live
to shout and write. Their consciences trouble them unless they have
periodic orgies of moral fervor. Relying upon the magic of rhetoric,
they conjure away obstacles with the ritualistic repetition of
principles. They become frustrated and confused in the tangled mass
of technical detail upon which successful administration depends.
Agitators of the “pure” type, when landed in responsible posts, long
to desert the official swivel for the roving freedom of the platform
and the press. They glorify men of outspoken zeal, men who harry the
dragons and stir the public conscience by exhortation, reiteration, and
vituperation.
The first life-history to be excerpted here is that of Mr. A. This is
no “institutional” case. Mr. A is aware of no mental pathology, and
has never consulted a neurologist, psychiatrist, or “nerve doctor.”
He is one of those who at first reluctantly, then whole-heartedly,
allowed himself to be studied with the same thoroughness, intimacy,
and detachment with which an obviously unstable person would be
scrutinized. Mr. A at once saw the advantage for the progress of
science of an accumulation of life-histories taken from men who regard
themselves as perfectly normal, since so much of our case material is
from the ill.
A’s claim to a place among the agitators is not open to question.
He was compelled to resign his position when the United States went
into the World War on account of the tenacity with which he argued
the pacifist position. He had previously run for Congress on the
socialist ticket. Suspected of unorthodoxy in the theological school,
he steadily became more radical in his views, and was expelled from
one denomination. Previously he had been the secretary and principal
spokesman for a civic reform organization which had vigorously attacked
corruption in municipal affairs. He gradually became convinced that
“white collar reforms” were futile as long as the capitalistic system
prevailed in this country, and presently threw his energy into the
propaganda of labor organization and socialism.
A leading characteristic as moralist, socialist, and pacifist has
been his truculence in public on behalf of his cause. Mr. A speaks
rapidly, with great fervor and earnestness, and his discourse
is studded with abusive epithets, sarcastic jibes, and cutting
insinuations. He confesses that he has taken an unmistakable pleasure
in “rubbing the fur the wrong way.” He enjoyed nothing better than
accepting invitations to lecture on social and economic subjects
before conservative audiences, and scandalizing them by declaring that
“organized business and organized crime are hard to distinguish from
one another,” “corruption and capitalism are one and inseparable,” and
“capitalism depends on markets, markets ultimately depend on force, and
force means war.” Thus war was the logical result of the capitalistic
system.
Mr. A prides himself on his ability to cut holes in the logical fabric
spun by conspicuous men. He has engaged prominent preachers of the
gospel in correspondence, arguing that something in their writings
leads logically to the conclusion that any war, not excepting the last
one, is wrong, and that they should confess this openly, declaring
their sorrow for having been infected with un-Christian war-hysteria.
He believes that right reason is the hope of mankind, and the name of
science is exalted in his mind. He was glad to lay his own life-story
on the altar of science, and in the name of science to endure the
embarrassment of recalling private facts which most of us try to forget.
Mr. A’s later convictions have been held with enough intensity to
redefine many of his earlier opinions. Thus his pacifism brought him
into sharp opposition to the government, which resented his expression
of the truth as he understood it. Mr. A warmly champions the cause of
the individual against official interference in matters of taste and
conscience, and has modified his early enthusiasm for prohibition.
Although censorious, accusatory, didactic, and defiant in public
address, he is cordial and winning in those face-to-face situations
where he is unaware of hostility. His eyes twinkle with good humor,
and he is gentle, responsive, and anxious to impress. His speech and
gestures are quick, and his manner is alert and often tense.
A’s physique inclines toward the asthenic end of a hypothetical
pyknic-asthenic scale, such as Wertheimer and Hesketh have constructed
from Kretschmer’s observations on physical types.[30] He is noticeably
lean, but strikes the impressionistic observer as being toward neither
the tall nor the short end of the scale. The legs are somewhat longer
than the length of the body warrants, and the bony structures of
shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle are prominent. The thin face is rather
delicately molded, and is given added dignity and distinction by a neat
Van Dyke beard. The chest is flat, and the upper ribs fall inward.
His erect carriage seems to be a compensation against a predilection
toward a scholarly stoop. In middle and later middle life he has been
bothered by gastro-intestinal disorders.
The second son of an impecunious village parson, he grew up in
straitened circumstances with a brother somewhat his senior. The mother
died when A’s youngest sister was born, and the children were cared
for by the father and a succession of elderly housekeepers who left
faint memories behind them. A and his brother went to an old-fashioned
ungraded school, entering at the same time in spite of their disparity
in years, so the younger one would not be left alone in the house.
From a very early age A had a certain sense of hostility toward his
brother, and a feeling of his own superiority. For a reason that is
not clear, the school children teased his brother as the preacher’s
son, but left him alone. A was more agile than his brother, and climbed
trees and wriggled into tight places with ease. He prided himself in
doing things which his brother hesitated to try, and seems to have awed
him somewhat, for he remembers having heard his brother tell another
schoolboy to let A alone, “because when he gets mad, he can lick me.”
The older boy was held responsible by the father for pranks which were
really joint enterprises. On one representative occasion, the father
left the house to make a call, ordering the boys to stay indoors. They
decided to go out, and their father, who discovered footprints in the
snow outside the door, gave the older boy a sound whipping, but let A
off scot-free. The younger son was unquestionably the favorite, and his
father would frequently chide the older boy for being a dullard, and
point with pride to the ease with which A could get his lessons.
Indeed, A got on famously at school. One of his teachers, who chanced
to be a college man, told his father that A was brilliant and
promising. A also remembers a glow of elation when a relative wrote to
say that arrangements must be made for him to have a college education,
since he had shown that he could be a worthy successor to his uncle.
This uncle was a famous professor, who had written well-known
philosophical books, and remained a great hero in the eyes of the
family.
The father slept in the same bed with his two sons until they were
well along in the teens. For as long as he can remember, A found the
touch of his father very pleasant, though the touch of his brother
was repugnant. A’s strong hostility against his brother, based on
their rivalry for the affections of the father, received a certain
justification in the critical episode which occurred as his older
brother, who matured early, approached puberty and began to have
emissions. The preacher was horrified, for he took this as a sign of
masturbation, and masturbation was sinful and dangerous.[31] When he
thought that A was sound asleep, he would gravely lecture the older
boy on the evil consequences of self-abuse. Sometimes the son would
wake up in the morning and discover that an emission had taken place
during the night. In a hushed and contrite whisper he would say to
his father, “I’ve gone and done it again!” at which the parent would
exclaim reproachfully, “Oh!” The boy was presently taken to a physician
who seems to have modified the excitement of the father and in some
measure to have reassured the son that his manhood was not irreparably
lost. Dark rumors about self-abuse were whispered through the village
from time to time. The neighborhood idiot was supposed to have brought
idiocy upon himself by self-abuse, and a bachelor in the village who
went insane was supposed to have suffered from the same vice.
A listened to the rumors and to the nocturnal dialogues between his
father and elder brother, and gathered that ominous things were
connected with handling one’s self. He felt ashamed of his brother, who
brought so much suffering on his father, and silently determined never
to be a disappointment to his father. The tag end of a biblical passage
about bringing the gray hairs of his father to the grave in shame
ran through his mind, and he resolved never to repeat his brother’s
weaknesses.
A’s older brother surprised everybody about this time by suddenly
changing from a phlegmatic lad into a fervent religious enthusiast. He
became converted under dramatic circumstances and joined the church,
thus propitiating the unknown powers which might visit horrible
punishment upon him for his private iniquities. In this he was running
true to the adolescent pattern. Adolescence is notoriously the time
when the temptations of the “flesh” multiply and when many youths,
oppressed by their “animal” impulses, seek to escape from the burden
of guilt by adopting the ceremonial patterns provided in the religious
observances of society. Adolescence is so often a period of high
ideals, which are typically reaction formations to “low desires,” that
adolescence is the happy hunting ground for proselyters of every breed.
When A’s own emissions began, he was terribly upset by worry and
self-accusation. About fifteen he got an emission after a boy had
fooled with his genitalia, thinking he was asleep. He was taut with
sinful pleasure while the seduction was taking place, which added
to his guilty feelings. This was the time when he, too, exhibited a
fervent interest in the church. He quickly “overcame” masturbation,
but until late in life there was always a “fight” to overcome his
“wayward” impulses and his erotic imaginings. In his dreams he often
saw roosters and hens performing sexual acts in the barnyard of his old
home, and the reappearance of the old scenes is indicative of his early
sexual curiosity. Many more of his dreams used common sexual language.
Sometimes he was making his way across a valley of snakes, or he was
naked and walking toward a goal he could never quite make out. The
nude female figure was usually repressed, though it occasionally came
through.
He was taken off the farm, on which his father eked out a supplement
to his meager salary, by an aunt, who insisted that the boy must have
better school facilities. This aunt had always taken a great interest
in this promising motherless nephew, and tried to fill his life with
the affection which would have been his had his mother lived. As a
small boy he had often come on short visits to his aunt. He had slept
in the same bed with her, and his lively curiosity about the female
figure was partly satisfied by glimpses of his aunt at the morning
bath. The aunt had a family with all of whose members he was on good
terms, and he was supremely happy to live in town with them. Out on
the farm he had been undernourished, but here he was filled out and
flourished. He took an active part in the church and in the social
activities of the neighborhood.
The early intellectual promise which A had displayed was no mere flash
in the pan. He was one of the brilliant students in high school, and
passed his college-entrance examinations with such distinction that
he entered college with a mild intellectual halo. He resolved to make
good scholastically, and this he did, finishing the four years at a
first-rate institution at the top of his class.
As time passed, he began to dissent from many of the dogmas of his
immediate social environment. During high-school days he had been
assigned to act the devil’s advocate and defend the free-trade side
in a tariff debate. The more he read and thought about it, the more
convinced he was that the free-trade position was sound. His relatives
without exception were high-tariff Republicans, and his arguments were
countered with sentimental rather than rational appeals. A’s conversion
to free trade led him to come out for the Democratic candidate for
the presidency. He remembers that the first time he announced this
heresy one of his aunts violently pushed her chair away from the
table, exclaiming in vexed, incredulous, and reproachful tones, “And
to think that my own sister’s son could say such a thing!” His college
course in biology converted him to evolution, and he argued this out
at great length with one of his uncles, who was a traditionally minded
preacher. A began to develop a feeling that intellectual brilliance
meant dissenting from the convictions of middle-class people like his
own relatives.
So far his nonconformity was strictly confined to a few theories. He
was a member of the prayer-meeting group in college, and his fraternity
consisted mainly of embryo doctors of theology who scrupulously upheld
a rigorous code of personal abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, strong
language, and women. One of the young men who had the temerity to
enter the house with a lighted cigarette had it gently but firmly
removed from his lips. It was in college that A took part in his first
law-enforcement drive. The state prohibition law was poorly observed,
as A had good reason to know, since he had a collection route which
took him to “drug stores” and other equivocal establishments about
town. “Tea” was openly ordered at the bar and drunk on the premises. A
conceived the idea of leaving posters in these places to advertise the
law-enforcement meetings, thus creating something of a stir.
Just before graduating from college A had a talk with a favorite
professor. The professor asked him what he proposed to do, and was
much interested when A said that he wanted to become a minister. The
professor said that during his own active years in the pulpit, before
he began to teach, he had learned at least one thing. Every man who was
intellectually honest and independent would sooner or later discover
that he questioned his own dogmas, and a period of bitter anguish would
ensue. If a man were intellectually honest, he would never flinch from
the truth, even for the sake of wife and family. But when the period
of doubt arose he advised A not to abandon his work too abruptly. He
had himself lived through six months of torture during which he had
been on the verge of dropping everything and going into business. But
finally he had arrived at a faith which he could defend, and stuck
to it. “I would rather be drawn and quartered than preach anything I
do not believe,” he declared emphatically. This conversation made a
deep impression upon A, leading him to anticipate doubts as a mark of
intellectual keenness and honesty.
Thus far in his life he had never questioned the tenets of the strict
and simple theology of his immediate surroundings. Indeed, he had never
met anybody who questioned it. Only a single episode had slightly
jarred his complacency and left a tiny scar behind. At one time his
Sunday-school teacher had been a young professor of theology who was
much more liberal than his contemporaries. A boy in the class had dared
to ask something about the authority of the Bible, and the teacher,
without the least trace of embarrassment, had replied that authority
should not rest on blind faith but upon clear reason. “If the Bible
told you to kill your father and your mother, you would not do it. You
would not be bound to do it. The justification of the Bible is that its
teachings prove to be sound in the experience of all reasonable men.”
In the divinity school the first course which A attended was on the
authority of the Bible. It was taught by a smug and full person of some
eminence. A was accustomed to distinguish himself by bold opinions,
and he undertook to challenge several of the propositions which were
supposed to be accepted and repeated by rote. His main point was
that authority rested on reason, not on faith. For his pains he got
the reputation of being a smart and troublesome upstart of doubtful
orthodoxy. His former Sunday-school teacher was a member of the
faculty, and A wrote a thesis on the authority of the Bible, in which
he elaborated the line of argument which had so much impressed him.
Only the constant intercession of this professor kept A from being
disciplined, or even expelled, at various times.
The young man was disposed to take rigid theology none too seriously
on account of his increasing disrespect for his father. A and his
brother both felt duty bound to return home every summer to help
with the farm work. Their father was happy enough to have them
rejoin him, but matters never ran smoothly. The father was quick to
reassert his parental authority and to criticize freely. Most of the
unpleasantness was as usual at the expense of the older son, but some
of it was deflected against A. Both sons were uncomfortably aware of
the uncouthness of their father in comparison with city preachers. He
laughed too boisterously at his own stale witticisms. His ever present
dignity was a little ludicrous when he wore an alpaca coat into the
fields on the hottest midsummer day.
The social life at the divinity school was wholly satisfying. The
students were warmly welcomed by the maidens of the local churches,
and several became engaged. A proposed to two girls during his career
there, and was turned down as often. He very quickly recovered his
good spirits after a night or so of melancholy. The first girl was a
relative whom he had known for many years, and the second was a close
friend of the family. The double defeat was something of a bruise to
his dignity and fed his determination to make a dent on the world.
A’s first congregation was in one of the poorer quarters of a little
city. A had no doubt of his towering intellectual superiority over his
parishioners, and he found it exasperating when an uneducated housewife
presumed to gossip about the dubious orthodoxy of his beliefs. At the
end of three years he resigned in disgust at the peppering of criticism
directed against his ideas. Looking back at the incident, he feels that
he was too hasty.
It was at this first charge that A began to make good copy for the
press, and to win a reputation as a sensationalist. He organized a Law
and Order League to harry criminals and the police. His pulpit rang
with stinging philippics against law-breakers and cowardly public
officials. All this gave him a zestful sense of making a stir in the
world of real affairs, so that he turned down an offer to join the
faculty of a famous university where his old Sunday-school teacher was
now located.
A’s new pastorate was among working people in a large city. He at
once began to hound the officials for non-enforcement of the law. He
led raiding parties to visit the biggest gambling hells and put it
up to the police to shut them. Renewed criticisms began to appear of
his opinions, and the governing body of his denomination asked him to
recant or resign. He refused to budge, and he was soon expelled. He
was immediately called to lecture before an ethical society, where his
comments on current religious and social problems won a wide hearing.
Although attracting much attention, the society was exceedingly poor
and A spent a little legacy which he had received upon it, indifferent
to his own future.
During these exciting troubles he became a socialist and joined the
socialist party. He had sympathized with the hard lot of the poor
since he could remember, and had cast his vote for Bryan as a symbol
of protest against the indifference of the privileged classes to the
privileges of anyone but themselves. His favorite college professor had
lost his job during the anarchist hysteria, when he came out against
the “judicial murder” of the Haymarket suspects. A was profoundly moved
by the spectacle of a man who backed his precepts of independence
with sacrifice for their sake. The argument which finally won him for
socialism was that political democracy is impossible until economic
democracy is realized, and that socialism is simply democracy in
industry. The principles of democratic brotherhood, once put to
practice in the world of work, would soon govern public relationships
of every kind.
His new convictions opened to A a new field of agitation and publicity.
Ignoring or overcoming the coolness of certain “horny-handed” elements,
he rushed into the little band of socialists, and was presently the
congressional candidate. In this campaign he conducted a whirlwind tour
of the district and enjoyed himself immensely.
A finally married a capable, motherly school-teacher whom he had known
for several years, but whom he had been prevented from marrying until
the death of her parents, who heartily disapproved of him. During his
bachelor years in the ministry he had certain knowledge that various
women were far from averse to becoming the preacher’s wife or mistress.
One married woman became the foremost worker in the church and
passionately assured him, “I am at your service day or night.” Another
woman, whom he barely recognized, came to the pastor’s study, declaring
that they must be married at once and “end this awful agony for both
of us.” He had not been aware that any agony had begun, and was in no
mood to begin it. He recognized that a wife would be a protection, but
most of the women who threw themselves in his way were so homely that
abstinence remained a pleasure as well as a principle.
For many years there had lurked in his mind the fear that he might not
be potent, and he was humiliated to find that he was at first unable to
consummate the sexual act. Since he first attempted sexual intercourse
when nearly fifty, and had practically never masturbated, his troubles
were not atypical, and they fortunately proved to be transitory. He
regretted having failed to consult a physician before marriage, and was
not at ease until the first of his children came.
Shortly after marrying, A came to the end of his financial resources,
and found it necessary to relinquish his lecturing for other work
until a suitable congregation should requisition his services. When
a call finally came, the war broke out in Europe, and A denounced it
with his customary ardor. He had read a book which popularized Prince
Kropotkin’s thesis that mutual aid and not struggle is the key to
the evolutionary process. War was irrational because it contravened
the principle of mutual aid, and it was un-Christian because it
set the hand of man against his brethren. As the hour of America’s
participation drew nearer, A saw that his outspoken position would
cause trouble. But he was accustomed to take a radical view and stick
to it, and the idea of compromising his independence for the sake
of family obligations was intolerable. His characteristic optimism
also misled him into overestimating the amount of pacifism which his
congregation would put up with, and soon he was forced to resign.
A was left financially high and dry, and rather hoped that his wife
would be willing to starve with him, if need be, as a gesture of
sanity in a war-mad world. He was left financially dependent upon his
family, and upon such support as was forthcoming from wealthy radical
sympathizers. Since his own professional opportunities were curtailed,
and he never applied for other types of work, he was left dependent
upon others. He was somewhat embarrassed by this, but was never
depressed by it, or by the social ostracism which was entailed by his
unpopular stand. As he once expressed it, “melancholy is alien to a
fighting nature.”
Looking back over A’s career, certain private motives appear which were
well organized in his early family life, and continued to operate with
considerable strength during his adult years.
A had a strongly repressed hatred for his brother. He was consciously
aware of his own coldness toward the brother, but succeeded in barring
from consciousness any recognition of the emotional charge on this
attitude. The older boy was his rival for the affection of his father,
and A’s quickness and boldness were cultivated in an effort to outstrip
his brother. He showed many of the traits of the over active younger
child, as Adler has frequently described them. A felt rather ashamed
of his brother, who went through school and college with no special
distinction, and whose modest subsequent career was prosaically
respectable. A struggled to keep hostile thoughts about his brother out
of his mind, and sought to keep his attention away from the brother by
corresponding or visiting with him infrequently.
Although A never frankly faced his own animosity toward this brother,
he was plagued by a sense of guilt for his unfraternal attitude.
This conflict was partially resolved by a reactive formation and
by displacement. The reactive formation was the reverse of the
anti-brother drive, but it was only supportable by displacing
his affection upon remote social objects. He generalized his own
prohibition against brother-hatred to all society, and identified
himself with the workers and with humanity at large, serving a
poverty-stricken congregation, spending his own money on the work of
the church, adopting the socialist dream of a brotherly state, and
demanding the abolition of fratricidal war.
His love for the downtrodden and for humanity (this reactive
displacement of his own brother-hostility) was buttressed by the
usual rationalizations. The democratic ideal in politics, the ideal
of effective equality in political power, had his support, and he
adopted socialism when it was presented to him as industrial democracy
(brotherhood), the indispensable antecedent of genuine political
democracy (brotherhood). His early prohibition appeals were cast in the
form of an appeal to the brotherhood sentiments. He argued that every
man was his brother’s keeper, and therefore bound to refrain from an
example which might lead his weaker brother to dash his foot against a
stone. War meant the destruction of mutual (brotherly) aid among those
who were brethren in Christ. A’s brother-hatred, so manifest in his
younger days, and so potent in arousing guilt feelings, created this
disposition to choose generalized brother-substitutes to love, and to
elaborate brotherly ideologies to defend his position. Then by keeping
his distance from the physical brother, he could maintain a comfortable
adjustment.
Another significant private motive, whose organization dates from early
family days, but whose influence was prominent in adult behavior, was
A’s struggle to maintain his sexual repressions. He erected his very
elaborate personal prohibitions into generalized prohibitions for all
society, and just as he laid down the law against brother-hatred, he
condemned deviations from the rigid puritanical code by which he lived.
Individuals who possess superego structures of such rigor often try to
protect themselves from the strain of sexual excitement by keeping away
from “temptation,” or by removing “temptation” from their environment.
Thus Mr. A avoided exposing himself to “lewd speech” and “immoral
suggestion.” Consciences of such severity can often be traced back
in deeply analyzed cases to unusually strong repressions at the time
when infantile masturbatory activities are being curbed. And it often
happens that the rôle of the intimidator is taken not only by the male
but by the female imago. In another highly moralistic person, who was
thoroughly psychoanalyzed, this came out distinctly. Thus for several
days the subject dreamed of standing before a butcher shop where he
had been sent by his mother, and where he saw his father sharpening
long knives. Or he saw his mother, dressed as Brünnhilde, carrying a
sword, while he cowered on a marble stairway. After many dreams of this
kind, the original situations finally burst into view. They involved
what were interpreted as direct threats to cut off a hand if the child
didn’t cease handling himself.
That A was never able to abolish his sexuality is sufficiently evident
in his night dreams and daydreams. In spite of his efforts to “fight”
these manifestations of his “antisocial impulses,” they continued
to appear. Among the direct and important consequences which they
produced was a sense of sin, not only a sense of sexual sin, but a
growing conviction of hypocrisy. His “battle” against “evil” impulses
was only partially successful, and this produced a profound feeling of
insecurity.
This self-punishing strain of insecurity might be alleviated, he found,
by publicly reaffirming the creed of repression, and by distracting
attention to other matters. A’s rapid movements, dogmatic assertions,
and diversified activities were means of escape from this gnawing
sense of incapacity to cope with his own desires and to master
himself. Uncertain of his power to control himself, he was very busy
about controlling others, and engaged in endless committee sessions,
personal conferences, and public meetings for the purpose. He always
managed to submerge himself in a buzzing life of ceaseless activity;
he could never stand privacy and solitude, since it drove him to a
sense of futility; and he couldn’t undertake prolonged and laborious
study, since his feeling of insecurity demanded daily evidence of his
importance in the world.
A’s sexual drives continued to manifest themselves, and to challenge
his resistances. He was continually alarmed by the lurking fear that
he might be impotent. Although he proposed marriage to two girls when
he was a theology student, it is significant that he chose girls
from his immediate entourage, and effected an almost instantaneous
recovery from his disappointments. This warrants the inference that
he was considerably relieved to postpone the test of his potency,
and this inference is strengthened by the long years during which he
cheerfully acquiesced in the postponement of his marriage to the woman
who finally became his wife. He lived with people who valued sexual
potency, particularly in its conventional and biological demonstration
in marriage and children, and his unmarried state was the object of
good-natured comment. His pastoral duties required him to “make calls”
on the sisters of the church, and in spite of the cheer which he was
sometimes able to bring to the bedridden, there was the faint whisper
of a doubt that this was really a man’s job. And though preaching was a
socially respectable occupation, there was something of the ridiculous
in the fact that one who had experienced very little of life should
pass for a privileged censor of all mankind.
He had long practice in the art of the impostor. From the plight of
his older brother, A learned that he would lose the affection of his
father if he was discovered to have indulged in certain practices
like masturbation. He resolved never to do anything to cause his
father to withdraw his affection, and when he was not entirely
successful in living up to this ideal, he pretended to virtues which
he did not possess. Never once was he found out, and his life was
the life of a “model” boy and man. This reputation he owed in part
to his abstinences, but likewise to his concealments. He learned to
cultivate the mask of rectitude, and succeeded in carrying off the
rôle so successfully that he was never found out during adolescence or
adulthood.
Cut off by his impotence fears from loving others fully and completely,
A loved himself the more. He had unbounded confidence in the brilliance
of his mind, and this intellectual arrogance was nourished by the easy
ascendance which he won over the poorly educated people among whom he
worked. He was careful to keep in environments where his mind would
not be put to the test of keen competition. A didn’t compete with the
clergymen who had the largest posts in his denomination, he struck out
for himself in no hazardous business or professional enterprise, he
took up and finished no piece of investigation; instead he cut a big
figure among the workers, among whom he was the best-educated and the
best-known leader. His chances of being elected to Congress when he was
nominated were never good, and he had everything to gain and nothing to
lose by making a campaign. After the days of his scholarly ascendance
in high school and college, A fell out of competition in academic
pursuits.
He valued his capacity to produce words. Ferenczi remarked in
conversation with me that the revolutionary agitators who had come
to his attention had been noticeably deficient in the intensity of
their emotional attachment to objects. They were notably indifferent
to the accumulation of property, and they were lacking in possessive
jealousy in their sexual life. This deficiency in warmth of affective
experience was sensed by the revolutionaries themselves, who felt
that they were in some way estranged from others. Their orgiastic
indulgence in language is to be interpreted as an effort to heighten
the affective intensity of their own lives. Either because the
emotional life is physiologically defective or because the libido is
too narcissistically fixated, this general description holds true of
some obsessive and many psychotic persons. It was no doubt a factor in
the history of A.
Before following out the full implications of this struggle of A’s
to repress his sexuality, we will take up another topic of major
and not unrelated importance. I refer to A’s ambivalence toward his
father. A was not conscious of the full force of his hatred and
his love for his father, but his personality history is full of
evidence of the formative influence of these bipolar attitudes. In
the course of his competition with his older brother, A accepted
abstinence from genital indulgence as the price of holding paternal
preference. Now psychoanalytic findings are unanimous in showing that
genital indulgence is not given up without a continuous struggle,
and that recurring waves of sexuality break against the barrier of
the introjected prohibition, and reanimate hostile impulses against
the sanctioning authority. It is of the utmost importance for A’s
development that he fought to bar from consciousness any hostile
thought directed against his father, and that he succeeded in
repressing his father-hatred very deeply. He was able to identify
himself with the father, and to copy many of the paternal standards and
attributes. The strength of these identifications is indicated by the
tenacity with which A held to certain paternal patterns. Although his
much-touted uncle had been a famous writer and professor, A remained a
preacher, even when tempted by a flattering offer to leave his first
humble parish for the faculty of a great university. He cherished the
paternal prejudice against money-making and money-makers. His boyhood
home was where some wealthy people spent their summers, and A’s
father would speak contemptuously of “the fashionables” who loitered
ostentatiously past the house. This was an additional determiner of A’s
subsequent devotion to the welfare of the poor, which manifested itself
in financial sacrifice and socialist agitation. A was very susceptible
to old men, and idealized not only his early teachers, but a venerable
pacifist who approved of his wartime conduct.
The negative side of A’s attitude toward authority came out in the
choice of the abstract (remote) objects upon which to vent his hatred.
The hostility which was denied conscious recognition and direct
indulgence against the actual father was displaced against substitute
symbols, such as the dogma which required the acceptance of the
Scriptures by faith, of the capitalistic system, and of the militarists.
When A was introduced to a stranger, he was genial, talkative, and
anxious to impress. When he was aware of opposition in his environment,
he overreacted at once, hurling a vast repertory of jibes and flouts
and sneers at the offender. This gives a clue to an important element
in his makeup which will come out very distinctly in subsequent cases,
namely, a strong latent homosexual trend. When the individual is not
able to achieve full heterosexual adjustment, the sexual libido tends
to work itself out in more primitive ways, and one of the phases of
emotional development is the homosexual epoch. Earlier, however, than
the adolescent homosexual period is the phase connected with the
suppression of auto-erotic activities. The child characteristically
uses its nutritional object (nurse-mother) for the sake of stimulating
his own erogenous zones as much as possible. This “incestuous” drive
is curbed, and the child is denied the pleasure of promiscuously
fingering others, and of manually stimulating his own genitalia.
Though the nurse or mother, who is the target of the desires of the
child, also administers the prohibitions, the sanction which lurks most
prominently in the background is the strength of the father. Reduced
to its ultimate expression, this sanction is the threat of depriving
the child of his much-valued organs unless he observes the “hands off”
prohibition. The “normal” development is for the hostile protest at
authoritarian interference to subside, and for the child to copy the
idealized father. The repression of hostilities and the identification
with the father do not take place instantly. Identification is not
achieved without a phase in which the child plays a femininely passive
rôle toward the father, and this is the passively homosexual reaction
which may for one reason or another be unusually strong. A’s fantasies
of his father’s beautiful skin are common screen fantasies for more
primitive drives.
A’s tendency to overreact to the stranger who is merely polite,
and to interpret the stranger’s interest as a “personal” one, is
characteristic of the one in whom this passive “winning” rôle is of
some importance. He tries to create an overpersonal relationship
in those somewhat formal situations where ordinary conversational
requirements are such as to force conventional compliments.
The overreactive hostility toward those who merely differ from him is
partially motivated by the desire to punish those who have rejected
the affection which he all too quickly volunteers. This wound to his
narcissism demands that wounds shall be inflicted on the offending
objects. Now it is commonly observed that repressed drives are likely
to secure partial gratification in the very activities which are in
part a protection against them. Sneers and jibes would at first seem
to free him from those who arouse and reject him, but this is not
the whole result. A exceeded the bounds of convention and became
recklessly provocative. His wild assaults and defiances tended to
provoke the social environment into attacking him, and thus to gratify
two powerful unconscious drives. He wanted to be forced into a passive,
feminine, victimized rôle, and to inflict upon himself the punishment
which he deserved for excessive hatred of others. Thus A felt quite
happy, escaping moods of depression, as long as he was indulging his
hostility against conspicuous conventional authorities in society, and
as long as he was suffering from society’s retaliatory measures. His
romantic idea of starving to death as a gesture of sanity in a war-mad
world is indicative of his pleasure in the “martyr rôle.”
He could not endure “inharmonious” people, and built up a “soft” and
overindulgent group around him. He had a small group of admirers who
turned to him for advice and who looked up to his superior wisdom
and moral courage. Nothing pained him more than the slightest jar in
personal relations. This disparity between his demands for gentleness
in the primary group, and his genius for creating a disturbance in a
secondary group, suggests the tension produced within his personality
by the struggle with the feminine component. He was careful to keep
away from close-working subordination to a powerful personality. He
stayed in environments where his authority was unchallenged. In the
church he was both a financial pillar and the pastor, and among the
socialists he was sustained by the halo of moral and cultural prestige.
It is noteworthy that though A was venomous when publicly opposed,
he was capable of a wooing and persuasive strain which he could
effectively use in his proselyting work. His humor was of the
mock-modesty variety, and relieved the moral earnestness of his
discourses. A showed much tenacity and skill in following people whom
he once loved and respected, and in attempting to convert them to a
community of views with him. He displayed a strong impulse to enter
into and to cultivate personal interchanges by correspondence.
That A found the task of asserting himself in the world rather arduous
is suggested by the desire for dependence upon women. He entered
into a whole series of “platonic” friendships (“platonic” in the
popular and not in the correct use of the word) with women, and he
accepted economic support from his wife for several years. He was very
“sensitive,” and required a great deal of coddling in the home.
There are indications of the way in which his very early experiences
influenced his trait formation. The infant takes pleasure in activities
centering about the mouth, and this at first involves pleasurable
sucking and later on, as the teeth begin to push through, this involves
pleasurable biting. In our culture this leads to a withdrawal of the
nipple, precipitating one of the major crises of growth. Weaning is the
first substantial loss which is inflicted upon the individual after
birth, and the way in which it is met establishes reaction patterns
which may serve as important prototypes for subsequent behavior. About
the time that the weaning deprivation occurs, the child is exposed to
another set of conditions which demand sacrifice. He is supposed to
control the elimination of his feces by giving up a part of his body
at regular intervals. The growing child is also supposed to sacrifice
another source of irresponsible pleasure by blocking his impulses to
handle his genitalia. When the taboo on handling the genital organs
for erotic purposes is set up with particular stringency by the
methods adopted to curb early masturbation, some of the energy of the
personality regresses to reanimate previous auto-erotic dispositions.
This involves strengthening of the anal and oral components of the
personality.
On the basis of the oral and anal origin of various traits, Karl
Abraham has worked out a psychoanalytic theory of character
formation.[32] The material which is available on A is too scanty to
reveal the psychological mechanisms of infancy and early childhood.
If a cross-section of his later character traits be tentatively
interpreted in the light of Abraham’s scheme, it may be said to show a
predominance of traits from the oral phase of development. A striking
characteristic of A has always been his optimism. He has never become
despondent and passed through serious “blue spells,” whether he lost
his job, reached the end of his financial resources, lost a bride, or
suffered social ostracism from all but a small though admiring circle.
Disappointments and some illness have brought him comparatively little
worry. Abraham traces this trait to the earliest level of character
organization, saying that it indicates a child who, thanks to the
abundance of nursing care, is accustomed to find the world responding
copiously and quickly to his demands. A always felt an inner assurance
that he would be cared for, and that all would come out for the best in
the end “to those who serve the Lord, and are called according to his
purpose.” He accepted a position of economic dependence upon his wife,
and upon the charity of radical ladies, without conflict. His nurse
was still there to provide for him. A never showed any interest in
accumulating money, and generously shared all that he possessed. His
small legacy was eaten up by the society over which he presided, and he
was always on the poverty line.
He not only gave bountifully of such money as he possessed, but
copiously of his ideas. Automatically he took the lead in conversation,
genially pouring forth streams of ideas. The savagery of his attack
on those who disagreed with him, though an oral trait in part, stems,
according to Abraham, not from the sucking phase of early development,
but from the next succeeding or oral-sadistic phase.
Those individuals who have difficulty in accepting their
heterosexuality are cut off from normal sex life, and seek to emphasize
the acts preparatory to, and not consummatory of, copulation. An
interest in sexual peeping was in some measure gratified by A’s
experiences in listening to the personal difficulties of those who
came to him for counsel. The high value which he placed on appearing
before the public, while perhaps adequately accounted for on the basis
of his father-identification, probably had the additional advantage
of gratifying his exhibitionistic drive. Since drink is in legend and
life a frequent precursor of copulation, the reformer exaggerates its
importance, and tries to stop it. Alcohol was early associated with
sexual excesses in the mind of A, and his hostility to it was something
more than a simple reflection of his milieu.[33]
A’s intensity of manner betrayed the magnitude of the neurotic
conflicts within his own personality. This intensity is not alone
due to the insecurity arising from the failure to exterminate his
own conscious awareness of sex, nor to his sense of sin for erotic
impulses, nor to his fears of impotence, nor to the reaction organized
when he was competing with his brother for the attention of the father.
His sexual inhibitions removed from him one of the most dependable
means of disposing of the tensions which arise from the miscellaneous
frustrations met with in the course of daily life.[34]
We have traced A’s demand for widespread emotional response to his
difficulties of personal adjustment, especially in the field of early
sexual development. We have followed through the displacement of the
drives, which were originally organized with reference to the family
circle, on to remote social objects, resulting in the espousal of
ideals of social change. We have seen that A’s particular technique for
arousing emotional response was denunciatory oratory, and that such a
technique expressed important underlying drives of his personality.
Since A happened to be a socialist, it is natural to compare him
with the socialist thinkers studied by Werner Sombart in _Der
proletarische Sozialismus_. There is no doubt that A is numbered among
the “artificial” rather than the “natural” men, since his relation to
reality is less direct than with the “natural” type. But it cannot be
said that social criticism was as deeply motivated in his life as among
the men mentioned by Sombart. He expressed himself not only in radical
agitation but in conservative, moralistic agitation. His career was
not wrecked at any particular point in his history, and he possessed
no mania for destruction, although showing much resentment against his
family, and indulging in an active fantasy life. He was fundamentally
an agitator, and secondarily a social radical.