superfluous, when a few pills of concentrated albumin combined with a
few drops of some essential ferment will supply the necessary energy
for our mental and physical labours. What a stupid dream! If such a
time ever came, how unhappy humanity would be! The most of mankind,
truth compels me to say, live only to eat. For them “eating” is
synonymous with “life.” With the discovery of such pills the wine of
life would be drawn. No! No! No! If there were no such thing as eating
we should have to invent it to save man from despairing. Eating enables
one who has suffered shipwreck on Life’s voyage to withdraw into a
sphere which once meant the greatest happiness to all human beings and
still means it to all animals. One takes refuge in the primal instincts
where one is safe and comfortable, until Mother Earth again devours and
assimilates him before she awakes him to new life. We are all eternal
links in an unending chain of links.
And that is the whole meaning of eating: life and death. Every bite we
eat means a quick death for myriads of living things. They must die
that we may live. And so we live by death until our death gives life to
others.
It’s no mere accident that Don Juan is summoned from the feast to his
death.
ARE WE ALL MEGALOMANIACS?
There is no sharp dividing line between health and disease. One shades
off into the other by imperceptible gradations. Disease grows out of
health organically. There are a thousand transitions from the one to
the other; a thousand fine threads link them together, and often not
even the best physicians can determine where health ceases and disease
begins. As Feuchtersleben says, there is no lyric leap in the epic of
life. Nor do delusions make their entry unheralded into a well ordered
mental life. Delusions slumber in all of us and wait for their prey.
The quiet normal being is just as subject to them as the raving maniac
with rolling congested eyes. We need only open our eyes understandingly
upon the bustle and tumult of life to be able to exclaim with Hans
Sachs: “Madness! Everywhere madness!”
Every form of insanity, one may say, has a physiological prototype.
Melancholia takes for its model the little depressive attacks of
everyday life; mania has its prototype in the unrestrained enthusiasm
of the baseball “fan”; and even the various forms of paranoia, the true
insanity, have their typical representatives among normal persons.
To bring out this kinship we need no better example than that offered
by the delusion of greatness. This delusion is so bound up with the
requirements of the human psyche, so organically knit together with
the ego, that it constitutes an indispensable element of our ethical
consciousness. Every one of us thinks himself the wisest, best, most
conscientious, and so forth. Each one thinks himself indispensable.
It is this delusional greatness of the normal person which makes life
tolerable under even the hardest conditions. It gives us the strength
to bear all our humiliations, disappointments, failures, and the “whips
and scorns of time.”
Of course we are very careful to conceal this delusional greatness from
the rest of the world. We all have our secret chapels in which we offer
daily prayers and into which no one, not even our nearest, is permitted
even to glance. In this chapel our idol sits enthroned, the prototype
of majesty, “our ego,” before whom we bend our knees in humble
supplication. But out there--in the world without--it is different.
There we play the role of the humble, respectful, subservient fellow.
We swear allegiance to alien gods and mock our ego and its powers.
But sometimes the delusional greatness breaks out with pathological
elementary force. We ought to keep our light under a bushel, trudge
along with the multitude, day in, day out. Then all would be well.
But destiny must not lift us to heights where our behaviour cannot
escape observation and every one of our thoughts will be deduced from
our actions. Success must not narcotise us to the extent of depriving
us of that vestige of self-criticism which we so imperatively need
in whatever situation life may place us. Success does not pacify the
roaring of our megalomania. Success goads it with a thousand lashes
of the whip so that it becomes restive and escapes from the security
of the preserves of the soul. Is this still a healthy manifestation?
Or are we already in the realm of the pathological? Is it the first
delusion or the ultimate wisdom?
The delusion of greatness penetrates whole classes of humanity,
infecting them like a subtle poison against which there is almost
no immunity. We have only to refer to the “affairs” of all kinds of
artists of the first, second, and third rank. The delusional greatness
of the artist usually appears along with the belittling mania displayed
by his confreres, his immediate competitors. The higher we esteem
ourselves, the more we depreciate our fellow climbers. That is the
reason why the artist, drunk with his own ego, loses the power to be
just, to measure the work of others by any but an egocentric standard.
Should any one venture to show this megalomania its true image in the
calm mirror of justice, he would be characterized a malicious enemy.
In the struggle to maintain the hypertrophied ego-consciousness the
delusion of greatness is assisted by a willing servant: the delusion of
persecution.
Along with the artist class there are many other vocations which to a
certain extent gratify the delusion of greatness. In some callings this
is a kind of idealistic compensation for the poor material returns. The
megalomania of the Prussian officer, or the American professor (who are
the butts of even the so-called harmless comic-journals) is an example.
A close second to this is the megalomania of certain exclusive student
organizations, patriotic megalomania, etc.
We can no longer escape a generalization. We note that delusional
greatness is a compensation for some privation or hardship. This is
especially illuminating with reference to that patriotic delusional
greatness which has nothing whatever to do with a wholly justifiable
self-consciousness. The self-consciousness of the Briton emanates from
his proud history and the imposing power of his nation. But we note
that it is especially small nations, who ought in reason to be very
modest, who are guilty of a tremendous self-overestimation. And they do
not scruple to invent an illustrious past which is calculated to lend
some show of historic justification for the national delusion. _Exempla
sunt odiosa._
This mechanism teaches us how to estimate folk-psychology. A people
behaves like an individual. So that our findings with reference to the
psychology of individuals may be applied to whole races, and _vice
versa_.
And here we note that the individual’s delusional greatness invariably
has one and the same root: it is an over-compensation for an oppressive
diminution of the ego-consciousness. The daily life about us offers
innumerable proofs of this assertion. Persons particularly prone to
delusional greatness are those who suffer from certain defects and
who in youth had been subjected to painful, derisive, scornful, or
depreciative criticism. Amongst these we find especially the halt, the
lame, the partly blind, the stutterer, the humpbacked, the red-haired,
the sick, etc.--in short, persons with some stigma. By the mechanism of
over-compensation such individuals may manifest inordinately ambitious
natures. Is it accidental that so many celebrated generals--Cæsar,
Napoleon, Prince Eugene, Radetzky--were of small stature? Was it not
precisely this smallness of stature which furnished the driving power
that made them “great”? Instead of looking for the essence of genius in
peculiar bodily proportions (which Popper finds to be in a long trunk
and short legs!) it would prove a more gratifying task to ferret out
those primary factors that have brought about an unusual expenditure of
psychic energy in one particular direction.
A very brilliant and suggestive hypothesis (advanced by Dr. Alfred
Adler) attempts to account for all superior human gifts as an
over-compensation for some original “inferiority.” Even if this
principle may not prove true in every case, it can be demonstrated to
have played a part in the development of many a case of superior merit
in some field of mental endeavour. We are all familiar with largely
authentic anecdotes about distinguished scholars, who have just managed
to squeeze through in their final professional examinations. In their
case, too, by over-compensation a conviction of their inferiority
brought about a heightened interest in their work and this interest
then became permanently fixed.
Unawares we have wandered from the delusional greatness to true
greatness. But who will presume to decide what is true greatness and
what delusion? How many discoverers and inventors were ridiculed
and their imposing greatness stigmatized as delusion, and how many
intellectual ciphers rejoiced in the applause and the worship of their
contemporaries! It is this fact which encourages a megalomaniac to
permit the criticism of his contemporaries to “fly by him as the idle
wind which he respects not.” If it is not true that all greatness is
ignored, the opposite is true: every ignored person is one of the great
ones. At least he is so to himself. Delusional greatness unites both
criticism and recognition in a single tremendous ego-complex.
The roots of this delusion, as of all purely psychic maladies, are
infantile. There was a time in the lives of all of us when we were the
victims of a genuinely pathological delusion of greatness. In the days
of our childhood we were consumed by a longing to be “big.” At first it
was only the desire to be a “big man,” to be grown up. A little later
and our desires fluttered across the sea of our thoughts like sea-gulls
or flew like falcons into the unknown vast. We were kings, ministers
of state, princes, ambassadors, generals, trapeze artists, conductors,
firemen, or even butlers.
And yet we are all surprised when a butler plants himself squarely
before the door and assumes the easy port of a person of some standing
and identifies himself with the master of the house and graciously
dispenses his domestic favours. Are we then, much better, more
sensible, or freer from prejudice? We too stand before the doors of our
desires and act as if we believed that they are realities which we are
obliged to guard.
RUNNING AWAY FROM THE HOME
Once more the physician felt the young woman’s pulse. “But it’s
impossible: you must not go out to-day; you are running the risk of a
relapse. You stay in your beautiful home that you have furnished so
cosily, so comfortably, and with such good taste. I have no objection,
however, to your inviting a few friends, having a little music,
chatting, gossiping, but--stay home!”
The pretty self-willed woman pursed her lips at this and though her
grimace was very becoming to her it seemed a little to vex her old
doctor who had known her from her infancy. Somewhat irritated, he
continued:--
“I don’t just know what you mean by the moue. Must I point out the
dangers of exposing yourself to a ‘fresh cold’? Do you insist on making
a Sunday of every week-day? First, it’s a café, then, a restaurant!
From a hot room into the cold, moist, windy atmosphere of a winter
night!”
“But staying home is so stale and unprofitable,” wailed the young
woman. “Home! I’m home all the live-long week! Sunday, one wants a
change! I want to see human beings! You are very disagreeable to-day,
Doctor!”
The old doctor gently patted the young woman’s cheek. “Still the same
self-willed, obstinate child that will butt its head against the wall.
Ah, you seem to have forgotten how nice and sociable your parents’ home
was. Those never-to-be-forgotten Sundays! How we used to congregate
there, a group of intimates--the young ones chatting and singing while
the older ones played cards,--and every Sunday was a real holiday!
And when things got a little more lively, then young and old romped
together. Do you remember? Now and then someone would read us a new
poem or the latest novel. How we did enjoy those Sundays! And how
unforced and unconventional it all was! We would get our cup of tea
or coffee and were as happy as happy as could be. But the things that
are going on now seem to me, in my rôle as physician, to be a kind of
neurosis, a something that I should call ‘the flight from home!’”
“But, my dear doctor, must it be a neurosis? Is it necessary to brand
everything as a disease?”
“But it is a disease and its character as such is very clearly
established by this one element: its compulsive character. The flight
from the home is a compulsive idea, that is, an idea against which
logic, persuasion, and appeals are of no avail.”
“I think you are going too far,” replied the young woman. “If I insist
upon going to the café to-day, I do it not because I do not like my
home; no, I do it because at the café I get a kind of stimulation
which I do not get at home. There I can look through various journals
and papers that I cannot afford to have at home. I get a chance to
see friends and acquaintances whom I could not receive at home so
often. And the main thing, at any rate for a young woman who still
wishes to please--and that, I am sure you won’t resent, you dear
old psychologist!--the main thing is that there I see new people
and--am seen by them. I know that in return I must put up with a few
unpleasantnesses. Yes, there is the stuffy and smoky atmosphere, the
continual din and noise, and so forth. But I really do think that we
moderns need these things. We are not born to rest.”
The physician shook his head.
“No! Never! You will pardon, I hope, my telling you that yours is a
very superficial psychology and does not go down to the heart of the
problem. To the modern civilized human being his home seems to be an
extremely disagreeable place. All his life he is fleeing from his
home, from his environment, and--yes!--even from himself. An inner
restlessness, a discontent that cannot be quenched, a nervous stress
permeates the people of our time. What they possess seems to them
stale, worthless. What they pursued madly disappoints them when they
have attained it. They crave for change because they do not know how to
make the best use of the present and of their possessions. How else can
we understand the phenomenon that the whole world is happy to get away
from the home and those who are incapable of running away long to do
so? For, I am sure if you will give it careful thought you will confess
that you call ‘experience’ only what happens to you away from home. The
days at home don’t count. Am I right?”
“Only partly so, my dear doctor. It does not tally with the
facts--because nothing can be experienced at home. And I would be only
too happy to receive my friends here daily, if it were possible. Don’t
you know that servants would rebel at it? That they want to have their
day off? That I must not expect them to do such work as waiting on my
guests every Sunday? Why even on week days the invitation of guests
causes a little rebellion in the ordinary household!”
“And why must there be invitations? Must your visitors always be
guests? Just look at Paris! There you may drop in on any of your
acquaintances after 9 p.m. You may or you may not get a cup of tea. You
chat a few hours and then depart. With us that’s impossible, because
our so-called ‘Teas’ have assumed proportions which were formerly
unknown. You invite one to come and have tea with you but instead
of that you serve a luncheon and make a veritable banquet of it,
going to a lot of trouble and expense, a course which must have bad
consequences.”
“Do you know, doctor, I think you are a magician! It’s only
conventional politeness that makes us receive our guests cordially. But
you must serve your friends something when you invite them for a little
chat, mustn’t you?”
“There you are again! How beautifully you chatter away so
superficially! No, my dear! Nowadays one no longer invites friends to
spend a pleasant time with them, but to show them a new gown or to
impress them with the new furnishings. The main thing is to poison the
friend’s peace of mind. If the guest’s face betrays all the colours
of envy then the hostess has attained the acme of delight. One might
almost say that their dissatisfaction with their lot in life drives
human beings on to stir up discontent in the hearts of others. This
sowing of dragon’s teeth bears evil fruit. For at the next ‘tea’ the
friend has a more beautiful dress, perhaps some other new sensation,
and her husband’s achievements and income mount to supernatural
heights, if one is to believe the hostess’ eloquent speeches. Finally,
there is no possibility of out-trumping her and there is nothing left
to do but, in a more moderate tone, to fight out the rivalry on a
neutral soil. The restaurant or the café is this neutral soil.”
“And what are your objections to this neutral soil?”
“My objections? The people lose the greatest pleasure that they could
derive from one another. At home it must happen now and then that the
walls which separate the inmates from one another fall, the wrappings
that encase our inmost being burst, and soul speaks to soul. At home
it is possible to devote the time to the nobler delights that life has
to offer. At one time there can be--as there was in your own parents’
home--a reading, on another occasion singing or music. And would it be
such a terrible misfortune to spend one’s holiday with one’s family, to
be one with them, reviewing the week that is past or playing with the
children and being a child again? Don’t you see that you are giving up
the gold of home-life and pursuing the fool’s-gold of pleasure outside
the home? You do see it, you know I am right, and a little voice within
you implores and pleads: ‘Stay home! Stay home! here you are safe and
comfortable!’ But another power, a power that is stronger than you,
drives you out, rushes you away from peace and quiet to restlessness,
and whirls you about. And this whirl, you call ‘life.’ What have these
empty pleasures to offer us? What inspiration for the work-a-day life
do they leave behind? Is this anything less than just simply killing
the hours? I don’t want to spin out the old stuff about the dangers
of pleasures, getting over-heated, catching cold, overtaxing one’s
nervous energies, losing one’s sleep, etc. As to these things, I must
admit, there is a great deal of exaggeration. One ought not to fly from
pleasures. But they ought to serve as inspiring exceptions to break, as
it were, the day, just as a trip does.”
“But, my dear doctor, now you’ve caught yourself in your own springe.
Is not a trip a flight from the home?”
The young woman laughed hilariously. But the doctor--now that he had
assumed the rôle of preacher--did not permit himself to be put off or
confused.
“Of course, the ordinary journey does belong to my theme. A trip may,
in fact, constitute the crisis in our neurosis. A crisis that we must
all go through, for we all--I am sorry to say, I too--suffer from this
compulsive idea. As after every other crisis the invalid is for a time
restored to health, so is it also after a trip. But only for a short
time. A few weeks--and the compulsive idea is again manifest and the
flight from the home begins again.”
“Come, now, doctor!” interrupted the convalescent, “travelling is a
necessity. As you so aptly said, we want to break the monotony of the
day--to get out of the customary environment.”
“That’s just what I want to designate as the chief symptom of the
neurosis of our time. Everyone wants to get away from the customary
environments. Everybody makes attempts at flight. Whether they succeed
depends upon other social factors. Why is the customary environment
repugnant to you?”
“Because I crave a change. I do not know why. But I have an instinctive
longing for it.”
“There you have it, my dear. It’s just as I said: It’s a compulsive
idea. The flight from one’s environment, from one’s home, from one’s
furniture, is the same as the flight from one’s house. To me every
piece of furniture that I have used a long time has become so dear
and so much a part of myself that I do not like to give them away and
can only with difficulty part with them. And if I were to come into
possession of a vast fortune to-day I could not renounce these dear
associates to whom I am bound by so many memories. With all their
shortcomings and modesty they are a thousand times dearer to me than
the most beautiful English or secessionist furnishings. I’ll confess
that in these matters I am not at all modern. For the moderns are glad
when they can change something, and so they change their furniture,
their carpets, their pictures, etc. About every ten years there is a
change in the fashions and your housewife cannot bear not to be in
style. One day you enter her house and you find new rooms. And just
as the furnishings in the house are changed from time to time, so the
residence too must be changed frequently--in fact, everything that can
be changed is changed: The servants, the family physician, the music
teacher, and, where it is possible, the husband and even the wife.”
The young woman reflected a little. “There is much truth in what you
say. It is in fact a tremendous flight that we see enacted everywhere
about us, a flight from oneself and from one’s environment. If I were
to judge by my own feelings I should say that this fleeing has its
origin in our life’s needs. We women all have a large ‘Nora’ element
in us and are waiting for the ‘miracle.’ Inasmuch as we cannot find
it at home we look for it elsewhere. Believe me, doctor, most women
do not fall because of sensual appetites. No! they fall because they
crave for some experience. We experience too little. The monotony of
the days asphyxiates us. And this great whirl of life, this senseless
running after a change--as you call it--is only because our hearts
are discontented, because our spirits are wrecked by the monotony and
insipidity of our lives. Do you think that it will ever be different?”
“Why not, pray? Some day a great physician must arise, an apostle of
human love, whose voice will pierce the whirl and who will be capable
of opening man’s stupid eyes: A new religion would do it, a religion
that would satisfy all of humanity’s longings, a religion of work
and the joy of life. Our time is ripe for a Messiah. Whether he will
come----.”
“Ah, he has come,” said the charming young woman, her face beaming.
“For me you are the Messiah of domesticity! You have cured me of my
flight neurosis. I shall stay home to-day, and as often as I can do so.”
The old doctor took his leave with animated steps. With the power of
his words he had once again reformed a human being.
But his joy was short-lived. That afternoon, as he walked by a café on
the main thoroughfare his eyes fell on a vivacious group within. And
there he saw his recalcitrant patient who had evidently gone out only
to get a chance to discuss thoroughly with her friends the theme: “The
flight from the house.”
DEAD-HEADS
“Are there any people who still pay for tickets?” I was asked in all
seriousness by a man, who, as a result of his numerous connections,
had been able to develop the art of getting passes to its utmost
possibilities.