The Passive Psychologist

Adlai Smith, On Love

What is love? Let us begin with two parts: self-sacrifice, and attachment.

The mother bear protects her cubs, feeds them, and shows them physical affection. This love might be called biological or organismic love, with a clear Darwinian basis. THE PARENT loves the child because, through natural selection, loving parents are preferred over negligent ones.

Besides biological love, the principle can operate across species, as sometimes a dog and cat might play together, despite sharing little ancestry in common. In humans, trans-species love is clear in pets, in the love they feel for us, and us for them. We observe in baby ducks “imprinting,” that the mind of a creature has no intuitive idea of “ancestry,” only of familiarity. Since ancestry and familiarity coincide (young being raised by parents), this formula does well enough as instinct. But when familiarity occurs outside the species, the instinct becomes a universal principle. Anyone can love anyone out of familiarity, arising from the desire for self-preservation, but acting against its original purpose.

Love, like any healthy instinct, is a mark of good breeding. A mother who ignores her starving children, rather than loving them, is deeply broken. But a mother who loves not only her own children, but also the children of others, is beautiful. We think of saints, like Mother Theresa, or how Christ instructed us in the love of little children. Displays of love are attractive, just as we are sexually attracted by other healthy traits -- when the body is in a shapely form, we cannot help but appreciate it.

Yet there are criticisms of “free love.” The “conservative” objects that too much charity is shown to outsiders, as “pathological altruism.” When the vagrant is given a dollar bill, some portion of this bill will be spent on liquor. To feed the broken man’s bad habit might proceed from good intentions, but in the end, it rewards a diseased mind.

Love becomes objectionable when it is indulgent -- when it rewards bad behavior, or feeds a parasite. If the bed bug sucks our blood, and we allow it out of love, eventually, that bug will pop under the pressure, showering us with blood, destroying itself. True love requires true knowledge. Rather than indulging immediate demands, we should know the difference between demands (which can be self-destructive) and true needs (which bring health). In some broken creatures, a return to health might prove impossible. In a terminal case, is not the most true love the mercy of death?

This point of tragedy brings us to the second kind of love: attachment. This bears the same name as the former, but is distinct. Whereas self-sacrifice offers itself up to someone else, attachment is jealous to the point of aggression. Consider that opera, Carmen, in which the lover kills his beloved out of jealousy. What kind of love is that, which destroys the object of affection? It is attachment, brought to a horrible conclusion.

When a mother loves her child, we recognize the purity and goodness of this love, in contrast to the violent attachment of a jealous lover. Yet, even in the mother, there is attachment. The mother hesitates to allow her child to roughhouse, or to go on sleepovers, or even feels some Oedipal jealousy when her son or daughter finds a new playmate. Although parental love has purer elements, it still contains elements of attachment, which stifle, suffocate, or spoil the child.

“If you love it, let it go.” With every truism, the reason it is often said is because it is often violated, and we need a constant reminder. Parents, attached to their children, sabotage their growth and freedom, prolonging their childhood, weakening them in the process. From every bump and bruise, from every mistake and error, the child can either learn or be protected from this learning and remain attached at the hip to THE PARENT.

In most cases, the adult gains natural freedom. A little boy can be picked up and held to his mother’s breast; a fully grown man is too heavy. But more than this physical constraint, men develop pride, which causes them, especially in teenage years, to acquire “angst.” Men are not alone in angst; it arises in girls as well, who rebel for its own sake.

Just as we can understand the suffocating and jealous attachment of a parent, we can also understand teenage angst as a natural reaction and defense mechanism. In this case, two wrongs can make a right, so the angst of the teenager pries off the claws of the over-attached parent, allowing for adulthood to begin, the wisdom of trial and error.

In all things, there is excess. An excessively attached parent displays hysteria, fainting, screaming over small cuts, exploding at the sight of mud. In the furthest extreme, THE PARENT imagines diseases in the child which do not really exist. A parent can sabotage a child, so that the child never escapes the “need” of care.

On the other hand, the child, having angst, can hate their parent and, going further, universalize this hatred to all authorities and relationships. Angst can become a hatred of love itself, associating love with suffocating control. Just as THE PARENT can grip too tightly, the child can become too sensitive, regarding any affectionate touch as an attack, a criticism, a humiliation. Despite romantic attraction, a man who cannot overcome angst will begin to hate his lover, reminded in the lover of the control of THE PARENT. [Freud, though maligned, had good sense to see in the relationship of THE PARENT to the child, already, the seeds of romantic love.]

Knowledge of excess provides the basis for the perfection of man. Those who fear attachment become aloof; those who become attached too quickly, or too intensely, find themselves in hysterical jealousy and catastrophic worry. Self-sacrifice is admirable when guided by true knowledge, but when issued carelessly, it indulges or enables guided self-destruction. As Aristotle wrote, we seek the golden mean.

Socrates commands us: “know thyself.” When a patient presents to a doctor, it is not necessary to know the healthier parts of the patient, but the weaker ones, in order that they might be cured. If they cannot be cured, they must be nursed. If not nursed, one must avoid further damage. And if further damage cannot be avoided, then it is better to know the consequences of the disease than, by ignorance, to aggravate it accidentally. This is the goal of psychology: to act as a doctor to the soul. The soul is divided into three parts, as Plato described: the sensuous, the passionate, and the symbolic.

a. THE INDIVIDUAL SENSATION

With the sensuous we have a pure animal feeling, but even more basic than that: it is the sensation of the plant which stretches toward the sun its leaves, and stretches with its roots down into the soil. Physical feeling is the basis of all life, even the smallest microbe. Excessive coldness and heat are a danger, while moderate warmth is always the goal. Living things move away from what is painful, and toward that which is pleasurable. Within the sensuous realm, there are three parts: individual, habitual, and relational experiences.

As regards individual sensation, we have pleasant fragrances, and putrid stenches; palatable flavors, and rotten tastes; melodious tones, and cacophonous alarms; pleasurable petting, and painful pricking; arousing visions, and frightful images. Beyond the regular five senses, we also have a feeling of internal motion, which can be the joyful swaying of a rocking chair, or the terrifying roll of a ship in storm. One calms the stomach, while the other brings sickness and disorientation. There are still other senses, barely recognized, which are yet to be fully explored: an electro-magnetic sense, apparent in the rubbing of rubber on wool, that guides pigeons over long distances and sharks to their prey. There are even smells undetected by the conscious mind, but which convey sexual health. All of this is the sensuous realm, which has guided us for millennia, but which we still have yet to fully discover and understand.

b. THE HABITUAL SENSUAL SYSTEM

Within this sensuous realm exist more than isolated actions or singular events, but also continuous habits which form an internal sensual system. When a sick man lies stagnant in bed, eventually, his circulation weakens; his heart and lungs dwindle; the whole internal operation of the body slows, until finally, the sick man has developed additional illnesses, unrelated to the original one which put him in bed.

Even the plants move with the passage of the sun. The body is a moving thing, and if it ceases to be stimulated in that natural way, its functions fail. To the sensuous not only belongs the individual events of the external world, but also, the cumulative total of our daily habits; eating, breathing, walking, running, sleeping, gymnastics, calisthenics, the rhythm of heat and cold on the body, our exposure to high or low altitude, humidity and dryness, the sun on the skin, hydration, and much else besides. Too much of anything destroys us; too little weakens us. With every sensuous experience, the rule for health is balance.

c. THE RELATIONAL SENSATION

Finally, the third aspect of sensation is the combination of two sensory bodies into one, that is, in physical affection, intimacy, and sexuality. Just as the yogis of ancient India were careful to train their bodies alongside their minds, in the karma sutra, relational sensation was investigated as an exact science.

What is the nature of the orgasm? Is it merely a utilitarian function for the reproduction of the species, or does it also, like running or walking, provide a dynamic habit to keep the body in good health? Alternatively, can the exhaustion of the semen, or hypersexuality, drain man of his energy, as diarrhea or vomiting? These intimate questions, we are less apt to discuss openly. But from a scientific perspective, the sensitivity of the subject indicates its significance.

The sensuous soul provides innumerable mysteries which we could never exhaust even in a lifetime of study. Some operate well in the night, others in the day, and to force all to the same rule would be Procrustean, and ruin both. In man, variation is not a flaw, but a flexibility, an adaptation to the diversity of environments. Man covers the deserts and the tundra, and within society, some are night watchmen, and others are daywalkers. Specific dispositions defy general rules, so that “health” is not a uniform question of input and output, but one of trial and error. With a mind toward true knowledge, rather than uniformity and conformity, what is best for the individual can be discovered.

Although we would like to think that sensation is separate from intelligence, it is not possible to disentangle the two. Even simple organisms must collect, interpret, and act upon information to survive, whether that is in seeking light or food. Although this intelligence is not linguistic, it is still a form of pattern seeking behavior, and can be quite complex, as when the spider organizes its web, or the beaver builds its dam. It is impossible to look upon the beauty of a flower and not recognize that within this flower is an intellect, operating without the use of language.

THE PASSIONATE SOUL

If the sensuous soul contains a lifetime of adventure and exploration for the scientific mind, the passionate soul contains an even greater world. In the passionate we have the love of contest and competition, of victory and conquest, of ambition and greed. Here is man’s quest, his heroism and jealousy, and the beginning of love. In passion, morality is born. “It feels right,” or “it feels wrong” are passions in the mind, and in the body too. Pride spreads a warmth in the breast, and moral disgust stirs a sickly stomach. Passions act upon the sensuous body, doubling the mystery of the soul -- and oppositely, sensuous life acts upon our passions. In physical sickness, the passions dim; yet passions can inspire us to bear sensuous burdens and improve our health. The power of prayer is evident in physical sickness, and mothers are known to perform feats of strength to save their children.

Rather than seeing the sensuous and the passionate as divided by a chasm, they must instead be understood as differing rings of an interconnected and interdependent web. A man without passion falls into depression, decaying his body, whereas a man with passion seems to retrieve youth even in old age.

In plants, sensuous motives exist without passions. But in mammals, with their love of play, intimate affection, and sexual lust, it is impossible to separate the two aspects of the soul. In man, the interplay of the sensuous and the passionate produces, like an echo in the mountains, reverberation, resonance, and harmony. As the body strengthens, the passions grow. As the body weakens, the passions decline. In the passions, we have the sex drive, the heroic drive, and the emotional basis of all moral impulses, which give good or evil their sensuous basis in laughter or tears.

In passion, as Spinoza noted, will and intellect are one. When the animal is aroused, it achieves this arousal by recognition of the sexual potential of its counterpart. Although animals can masturbate alone, at the bare minimum, the male of the species relies upon his power of discrimination. The male is a heat-seeking missile, cutting away the distractions, finding the exception, and leaping upon opportunity. Whereas the spider’s web, beaver’s dam, or the petals of a flower all contain sensuous intelligence, the passions have their own intelligence which operates without the use of language. We see that intelligence displayed most profoundly in athletics and acrobatics, especially of predators, such as in the flight of the eagle or the race of the cheetah.

THE SYMBOLIC SOUL

There is one more element to add to the soul of man, which is his symbolic, linguistic intellect. Whereas the sensuous and passionate soul exercise intelligence in a wordless and animal state, the symbolic soul operates according to language.

[This could also be called the logical soul. By logic, we don’t mean anything which is necessarily correct, true, rational, or reasonable, but refer to the Greek word logos, meaning word. Our formula of the soul, so far, differs slightly from Freud’s. We split the Id into two parts, sensuous and passionate, and regard both the ego and the superego as constructed out of logical functions. The ego might be regarded as the introverted symbolism, while the superego is extroverted symbolism. Both rely upon one another, and cannot exist without each other.]

The symbolic soul projects abstractions and rules, past and future, overlaying reality with imagination. Whereas the sensuous and the passionate intelligences deal with what is immediate, or immanent, the symbolic intellect is distant, magnifying and miniaturizing. Through the symbolic soul, we imagine ourselves as small as a bug, or as big as a city. We can imagine what could have been in the past, or what could still be in the future. Regret, guilt, fear, and anticipation all relate to the passions, but which, through symbol, arise by entirely artificial means. With these three elements, sensuous, passionate, and symbolic, we now have the total genius of the soul.

RELIGION

In his sensuous soul, man might go awry, either in instances (injuries), habits (sloth), or relations (deprivation of intimacy). In the passions, the extremes of attachment and jealousy, violence and lust, mania and depression all have their own excesses. But in the symbolic soul, morality gains its conscious form, and criticism lays upon judgment without end.

With the sensuous and the passionate, it is easy to be objective, and to distinguish sickness from health. What is beautiful and ugly can be discerned mostly through instinct: the beautiful flower, or the winning athlete. But in the symbolic realm, we must consider things outside ourselves, beyond the animal realm, with only symbol to guide us. This is the blind leading the blind, and the pursuit of true knowledge seems recursive. We can test a man’s sight by means of a vision test; we can even test the passions by semi-physical means, observing the contortions of the face and posture of the body. But as for the symbolic soul, this is where all speculation falls in on itself, and we turn our eyes to religion.

The symbolic soul is the social function brought, by way of language, beyond the immediate moment. We consider past, future, and society “at large,” and ritual “in detail.” Morality, in the symbolic mode, goes beyond mere “gut feeling” and now enters history, tradition, and genealogy. With modern science, we might try to perfect morality, but in this, we lose sight of the present and become futurologists, trying to avert some future disaster. Symbol always escapes the present, and goes beyond, into new dimensions of possibility. It is by symbol that we can imagine our own deaths, and what might lie beyond them. We can see entirely new worlds, heavenly, or hellish.

Through anthropology and the study of primitive tribes, we can find ridiculous symbols, but although primitive, they have their own logic. When the tribesman perceives a fetish-stick, meant for a particular ritual, he becomes first alert, and then panicked -- such a stick might curse him. We can laugh, but are we any different, when we panic at the sight of dollar bills going up in flames? These are both fetish objects, one primitive, and the other civilized, but both are entirely arbitrary and contingent upon made-up rules. If symbol can be so destructive, how does it persist?

Symbol is never beneficial in the immediate, but it connects us to timescales beyond our immediate perception. The fetish-stick, at first a ridiculous thing, orders the violence of the tribe. It prevents the endless fratricidal warfare that would otherwise ruin a small band, and directs it outwards towards enemies. Similarly, money, another arbitrary sign without inherent worth, allows us to trade gold for cash, and then, cash for bread, so that the goldsmith and the baker can exchange their value by an intermediary. Symbol is the basis of economy, and economy the basis of society.

Just as the brain organizes the senses and passions, so does symbol organize the economy. There are better and worse forms -- the primitive tribe operates according to logic, but its logic is dim; the capitalist economy operates according to a more brilliant and terrifying logic, and threatens mankind with weapons of annihilation. The primitive tribe is relatively harmless, owing to a weaker logic.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD