Historical Cycles and Personal Doubts
Prof.
Guy J Manaster
USA-Austin, TX 78712
Phone: +1-512-4714155
Alfred Adler, though a realist, was an optimist.
His theory was optimistic and positivistic. That, in part,
is probably why we are here. We share his optimism and his
theory. We assert that humans are rational, creative, goal
oriented, and social - responsible for their own behavior.
In itself that view of man is positive. There are none of
the strange and mysterious doings of psyches decreed by
instincts or inherited cultural characteristics. The
individual is not captive to conditionings and
reinforcements that determine who he is. People learn from
their environment and create who they are. As Chekhov
stated, “man is what he believes.”
Man’s social nature, man’s embeddedness in the
social world, forms the basis for much of Adler’s
understandings of individuals, his awareness of individual’s
mistakes, societies’ mistakes and the potential for
individuals and societies to overcome these mistakes and
make a better world. His holistic perspective incorporates
the creativity of the life style and the mistakes, the
biased apperceptions. Selectively then, a person’s life
experiences are what they seem to the individual, not
necessarily as described or evaluated by others, and the
individual moves toward the goals he or she has created as
appropriate for, or necessary in, the world as he or she
sees it. This description and understanding is holistic and
inevitably circular. As we cannot think holistically and
describe involved beings holistically, we have to try to
capture that makeup circularly.
Even the notion of striving for superiority is
circular and holistic. In the ways a person feels himself
inferior he strives to be superior, a constant and
continuing movement. When Adler drew the inferiority –
superiority line it was a vertical line, going up and down
and up again. It is said that Adler drew a social interest
line that was horizontal. It signified equality, a being
with and a part of others. Movement in the social interest
is not circular.
Quoting Adler: “Social interest means… a struggle
for a communal form” (Adler, 1964a, p.275). “It is not a
question of any present-day community or society, or of
political or religious forms. On the contrary, the goal
that is best suited for perfection must be a goal that
stands for an ideal society amongst all mankind, the
ultimate fulfillment of evolution” (p.275) “It means
particularly the interest in, the feeling with, the
community sub specie aeternitas (under the
aspect of eternity). It means the striving for a community
which must be thought of as everlasting, as we could think
of it if mankind had reached the goal of perfection” (Adler,
1956,p.142).
Dreikurs stated “the ideal expression of social
interest is the ability to play the game (of life) with
existing demands for cooperation and to help the group to
which one belongs in its evolution closer toward a perfect
form of social living” (Dreikurs, 1953,p.8). Lewis Way
(1962) stated that ‘social feeling is the ideal Goal of
Perfection, the goal at which all religions and moralities
aim, since… the community is the fundamental concern of
all. It is also the ideal norm of human behavior, which
should serve us as a measure for every deviation” (p.203).
In these accounts social interest is linear. Social
evolution in the name of social interest is linear, a
direct, though hazy, line from now to a never ending future
of equality, democracy and harmony. The ideal Goal of
Perfection, the ideal community, appears in these accounts
as if it is knowable, or actually known.
As Adlerians, we believe in social interest, we have
had a vision of the direction or aim of ideal communities,
local and international. And I admit that I have agreed
with this vision. This paper questions that vision in these
times and the effect of these times on our visions.
This will sound trite, and maybe it is, because in a
sense it is always true – the world is changing. We are
told that the age we have known as ‘modern’ is ended and
that we have entered a postmodern period. I confess that I
do not understand postmodern as an age. It seems to me to
be defined by what it is not and seems to be a time without
a center. I think it must be an intermediate period or a
transitional stage. We have moved from belief in modernity
to disbelief without a replacement. If ever there was a
description of the substance for anxiety, an environment
prone to anxiety, this is it. Being in a time where
superordinate and universal directions and goals have
vanished, or are confused, and are without a replacement,
without a new vision, is a time of anxiety.
Of course we don’t know what it means and how it
feels to move in our lifetime from one age to another. We
have a sense of what it means and how it feels to move from
pre-war to post-war from our own perspective within an
involved country. Some of us have felt the change from
before the Bomb to after the Bomb, from before the Soviet
Union broke up to after. We have a sense, in the United
States, of a change from pre to post 9/11. We know good
times and bad times in our families, in our work, in the
economy that affects us. But we don’t have experience with
the changing of our age, change in the fundamental givens
under which and through which we understand our lives and
live them – such changes do not occur frequently or quickly,
as in a lifetime.
I knew of one set of ideas by the Italian
philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) that I thought
might be helpful here. I have to admit to you that I made
an attempt to understand more of Vico and made very little
progress. However the ideas are still useful and I feel
somewhat better at not mastering Vico seeing that Alasdair
MacIntyre wrote “that Vico’s scattered insights are useful
only when ‘detached from their place in the sterile
systematics of Vico’s new science’.”
The idea, relevant here, is that “Vico conceived
human society as developing through three ages – that in
which men lived and thought in terms of gods, that in which
they lived and thought in terms of heroes, and that in which
they lived and thought in wholly human terms” (Verene,
1891,p.62).
These ages, these structuring principles may be
viewed in Western cultural history as a pattern of
repeating cycles in which faith (acceptance of the non
rational), logic (understanding of empirically determined
phenomena) and power (direct attempts to control events) are
successively employed. Although all three structuring
principles are present in the culture at all times, only one
is dominant at a time. (Hershenson, 1983, p.3).
Hershenson (1983) proposed ‘that the Hebrew prophets
(faith), Athenian philosophers (logic) and Roman Empire
(power) constituted the first cycle in western culture. The
second cycle consisted of the Middle Ages (faith), the
Renaissance (logic) and the empires of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (power). These structuring principles
were preserved in the dominant philosophies of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ romanticism, rationalism
and materialism.
What is the dominant structuring principle in
Western culture today? I don’t think we can say. In
Western culture, faith, logic and power are all prominent
values, but no one is dominant. We can see that in our own
lives and in people around us. But we can also see people
for whom one principle is dominant and the same for nations
and subgroups, voluntary groups with which people affiliate
in the name of a particular structuring principle.
Globalization in technology/materialism, in
science/academia, and globalization and communication and
technology in religions, confuse the matter even more. The
historical ages that Vico defined were only applicable, to
the degree they were, in Western Culture, possibly only to
the end of the eighteenth century.
The last two hundred, one hundred and especially the
last fifty years have seen stark changes in the makeup of
the ‘Western’ world altering, maybe diluting, the
traditional culture and injecting other cultures within its
societies. Eastern culture has incorporated all manner of
Western thought differentially by nation and religious
orientation. Vast areas of Latin America, the Middle East,
the Far East, and almost all of Africa are now amalgams of
their own traditional culture, nearby cultures, and Western
culture and technologies. The rates of changes and the mix
vary across cultures and nations and within them.
The rate of change and the mixing of cultures places
the Western world and the entire world in an age without a
dominant structuring principle. No matter that George Bush
acts as if power were dominant while speaking of a
particular faith and the logic of democracy. No matter that
the Ayatollahs and Mullahs preach faith while garnering
modern weapons. No matter that scientists and the
vocabulary of science dismiss the strength of faith and the
illogic of nation dominating nation. In sum they all need
the other views and methods and thus their quest for
domination is lacking.
“In 1963, the historian Thomas Kuhn published the most
influential book written about the philosophy of science.
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” observed that
history was divided into long periods of ‘normal’ science
followed by shorter bursts of ‘revolutionary’ science.
Normal science ‘does not aim for novelties of facts and
theory, and when successful finds none’. In times of
revolutionary science, by contrast, the most fundamental
ideas are there for the taking – just as they were when
Copernicus declared the ear went round the sun.
“Kuhn called such changes from one scientific world
model to another ‘paradigm shifts’ and noted that they often
required a generation to accomplish. Controversially, he
argued that reason alone can never compel a scientist to
switch allegiance from one paradigm to another, however good
the evidence: in part, this kind of mindshift would always
have to be an act of faith.” (Turpin, , 2005, p.W2).
In our diverse globalized world we hang in the winds
of all manner of thought and ideas without consensus on
views and common purpose. The global community is a
whirling mass not a community. With no dominant organizing
structure, people grasp ferociously to single ideas, single
principles, single groups, to something, anything, to give
them the feeling that they know what is going on, that they
belong and have an identity.
When Cushman (1990, 1995) speaks of the ‘empty self’
he is describing the individual who has no organizing
principle on which to fit himself. “The ‘bounded, masterful
self’ of modern times, left to its own devices, almost
inevitably collapses into an ‘empty self,’ or into an even
more devastating kind of fragmented and superficial
‘multiple self’” (Richardson & Manaster, 2003, p.131). The
‘multiple self’ grasps at ideas and roles that allow it to
fit in as appropriate to a situation. But there is no
central, core identity.
At the end of modern times, as post moderns, in the
midst of a paradigm shift from modernity to a new, as yet
unknown structuring principle, we are blown about in the
winds of contrasting and conflicting thoughts and forces.
Then we grasp at definites, absolute logic, total power,
complete faith. Individually we choose a structuring
principle and we choose the one that relates, as possible,
to a group with which we can identify or affiliate.
The result, it seems to me, is masses and masses of
fundamentalists – religious fundamentalists of all
persuasions, scientistic fundmentalists from all fields, and
power fundamentalists – patriots of nations and do gooders
for a cause. Masses of single issue persons, persons
clinging to a structuring principle or part thereof, whose
sense of themselves revolves around something definite. “If
a man doesn’t think much of himself – and in secret most
men don’t – he takes his pride in his tribe” (R. MacLeish,
The first Book of Eppe. NY: Random House, 1980).
When many adhere to unbending, unyielding single
positions with no interest in compromise, which would feel
like being thrown back into isolation, confusion and
anxiety, discord is the sole outcome. When communities of
like minded people get their meaning, purpose and personal
identities from not compromising, disagreements between
communities is constant and continuous. And, of course,
these absolutists are surrounded by the confused, the
unsure, the searchers and the lost.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the British
Commonwealth, in his book “Dignity of Difference: How to
Avoid the Clash of Civilizations” writes:
“On the one hand, globalization is bringing us closer
together than ever before, interweaving our lives,
nationally and internationally, in complex and inextricable
ways. On the other, a new tribalism – a regression to older
and more fractious loyalties – is driving us ever more
angrily apart. One way or another, religion is and will
continue to be, part of these processes. It can lead us in
the direction of peace. But it can equally, and with high
combustibility, lead us to war. Politicians have power, but
religions have something stronger: they have influence.
Politics moves the pieces on the chessboard. Religion
changes lives. Peace can be agreed around the conference
table; but unless it grows in the ordinary hearts and minds,
it does not last. It may not even begin… (p.7).
“Peace involves a profound crisis of identity. The
boundaries of self and other, friend and foe, must be
redrawn. No wonder, then, that as Sir Henry Maine observed;
War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern
invention” (p.8).
{Interestingly, the chapters following these quotes
in Sacks book highlight tenets central to Adlerian theory:
responsibility, contribution, compassion, creativity and
cooperation.}
We seem to be coming full circle. Sacks asks for a
new age, a new era, new cultural and personal identities.
For our contentious times he notes that “the greatest single
antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our
fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing
of vulnerabilities discovering a genesis of hope” (p.2). He
also speaks, of conflict resolution in relation to faiths,
but I will generalize his point for nations, economies, all
groups and individuals: we require “a candid admission
that, more than at any time in the past, we need to search –
(each faith, nation and interest group in its own way) for a
way of living with, and acknowledging the integrity of those
that are not (like us)” (p.5).
This echoes Richardson and Manaster (2003). “We have
to open ourselves to other perspectives, let them call us to
account and interrogate or interpolate us and allow at least
some degree of what Gadamer (1989) calls a ‘fusion of
horizons’ to take place, a melding of insights that
incorporate old ones and new in a transformed outlook. In
doing so, we sometimes incur, in Taylor’s phrase, a deeply
personal, sometimes painful ‘identity cost’” (p.127).
Maybe now, or soon, the next age will not be as Vico
explained. Maybe now, or soon, a new era will emerge that
rests not on power, faith or logic but on all three in
concert or with a different take on these three constructs –
a new era of security (as sufficient without a need for
power), faith (that respects all faiths) and logic (that
includes understanding).
We may now be on the verge of a horrible conflict of
civilizations, within our cultures and nations and across
cultures and nations. Or we may be on edge of a new era in
which social interest, properly understood, opens us to
“help the group to which one belongs” (which must now mean
the entire human group) “in its evolution closer toward a
perfect form of social living” (Dreikurs, 1953,p.8).
For this to occur we must understand that our vision
of a world with social interest is a world of becoming.
Social interest does not imply that we know what that
perfect form of social living is. Social interest implies
that we know how to live in harmony as we always try to move
closer to the goal of perfection. Social interest implies
that we are equal members with other equal members in an
ongoing conversation, a hermeneutic dialogue, about the
perfect form of social living we seek. The implication is
that we attempt to reach a ‘fusion of horizons’. “The goal
that is best suited for perfection must be a goal that
stands for an ideal society amongst all mankind, the
ultimate fulfillment of evolution” (p.275). This is the
goal we cannot envision – it is over the horizon. With each
other, and with all others, our goal should be to see the
ideal that works for the other and for all.
Social evolution in the name of social interest is
linear, a direct line from now to a never ending future in
which equality, democracy and harmony move us toward a
horizon beyond which we cannot see with clarity, but beyond
which we have to continue to move with equality, democracy
and harmony.
We should be content with an understanding of social
interest that is clearer about our path than about goal. As
Gwyn Thomas wrote:
“The beauty is in the walking. We are betrayed by
destinations.”
As we work with individual clients we are faced with
the goals of their individual life styles. In this paper I
am suggesting that we are and will face people clinging ever
more desperately to mistaken and exaggerated goals. They may
themselves see their goals as personal and unique, to fill
their empty selves, because they cannot see unanimity on
principles and goals in their environment, in their lives.
The therapist’s job may be that much harder because we
cannot guide our clients to ways of living that adhere to a
societal consensus. We will have to retrain them to walk on
the path of social interest among those who are convinced
they are right and those who are without conviction.
Would it not be good for the world and for the
individual if we all felt comfortable in ourselves and our
place in the world knowing we were looking together at a
future without domination of one faith, group or point of
view – that we were all on the path equally and together.
References
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Copyright ©
2005 International Association of Individual
Psychology
