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Page 10
The inevitable problem of having to study other persons as well as
ourselves necessarily leads us on to efforts at solution of other
philosophical problems, the problem of integrating materialism and
idealism, mechanism and relative biological determinism and purpose,
etc. Man has to live with the laws of physics and chemistry unbroken and
in harmony with all that is implied in the laws of heredity and growth
and function of a biological organism. Yet what might look like a
limitation is really his strength and safe foundation and stability. On
this ground, man's biological make-up has a legitimate sphere of growth
and expansion shared by no other type of being. We pass into every new
moment of time with a preparedness shown in adaptive and constructive
activity as well as structure, most plastic and far-reaching in the
greatest feat of man, that of imagination. Imagination is not a mere
duplication of reality in consciousness and subjectivity; it is a
substitute in a way, but actually an amplification, and often a real
addition to what we might otherwise call the "crude world," integrated
in the real activities of life, a new creation, an ever-new growth, seen
in its most characteristic form in choice and in any new volition. Hence
the liberating light which integration and the concepts of growth and
time throw on the time-honored problem of absolute and relative
determinism and on the relation of an ultra-strict "science" with common
sense.
In logic, too, we are led to special assertions. We are forced to
formulate "open definitions," _i.e._, we have to insist on the open
formulation of tendencies rather than "closed definitions." We deal with
rich potentialities, never completely predictable.
This background and the demands of work in guiding ourselves and others
thus come to lead us also into practical ethics, with a new conception
of the relation of actual and experimental determinism and of what "free
will" we may want to speak of, with a new emphasis on the meaning of
choice, of effort, and of new creation out of new possibilities
presented by the ever-newly-created opportunities of ever-new time. We
get a right to the type of voluntaristic conception of man which most of
us live by--with a reasonable harmony between our science and our
pragmatic needs and critical common sense.
The extent to which we can be true to the material foundations and yet
true to a spiritual goal, ultimately measures our health and natural
normality and the value of our morality. _Nature shapes her aims
according to her means._ Would that every man might realize this simple
lesson and maxim--there would be less call for a rank and wanton
hankering for relapses into archaic but evidently not wholly outgrown
tendencies to the assumption of "omnipotence of thought," revived again
from time to time as "New Thought." Psychiatry restores to science and
to the practical mind the right to reinclude rationally and
constructively what a narrower view of science has, for a time at least,
handed over unconditionally to uncritical fancy. But the only way to
make unnecessary astrology and phrenology and playing with mysticism and
with Oliver Lodge's fancies of the revelation of his son Raymond, is to
recognize the true needs and yearnings of man and to show nature's real
ways of granting appetites and satisfactions that are wholesome.
Hereby we have indeed a contribution to biologically sound idealism: a
clearer understanding of how to blend fact and ambition, nature and
ideal--an ability to think scientifically and practically and yet
idealistically of matters of real life.
To come back to more concrete problems again, a wider grasp of what
psychiatry may well furnish us helps toward a new ethical goal in our
social conscience. The nineteenth century brought us the boon and the
bane of industrialism. More and more of the pleasures and satisfactions
of creation and production and of the natural rewards of the daily labor
drifted away from the sight and control of the worker, who now rarely
sees the completed result of his work as the farmer or the artisan used
to do. Few workers have the experience of getting satisfaction from
direct pride in the end result; as soon as the product is available, a
set of traders carries it to the markets and a set of financiers
determines, in fact may already have determined, the reward--just as the
reward of the farmer is often settled for him by astounding
speculations long before the crop is at hand. There is a field for a new
conscience heeding the needs of fundamental satisfactions of man so well
depicted by Carlton Parker, and psychiatric study furnishes much
concrete material for this new conscience in industrial relations--with
a better knowledge of the human needs of all the participants in the
great game of economic life.
Psychiatry gives us also a new appreciation of the religious life and
needs of our race. Man's religion shows in his capacity to feel and
grasp his relations and responsibility toward the largest unit or force
he can conceive, and his capacity for faith and hope in a deeper and
more lasting interdependence of individual and race with the Ruler or
rules of the Universe. Whatever form it may take expresses his capacity
to feel himself in humility and faith, and yet with determination, a
more or less responsible part of the greatest unit he can grasp. The
form this takes is bound to vary individually. As physicians we learn to
respect the religious views of our fellow beings, whatever they may be;
because we are sure that we have the essentials in common; and with this
emphasis on what we have in common, we can help in attaining the
individually highest attainable truth without having to be destructive.
We all recognize relations that go beyond individual existence, lasting
and "more than biological" relations, and it is the realization of these
conceptions intellectually and emotionally true to our individual and
group nature that constitutes our various religions and faiths.
Emphasizing what we have in common, we become tolerant of the idea that
probably the points on which we differ are, after all, another's best
way of expressing truths which our own nature may picture differently
but would not want to miss in, or deny to, the other. One of the
evidences of the great progress of psychiatry is that we have learned to
be more eager to see what is sane and strong and constructively valuable
even in the strange notions of our patients, and less eager to call them
queer and foolish. A delusion may contain another person's attempt at
stating truth. The goal of psychiatry and of sound common sense is truth
free of distortion. Many a strange religious custom and fancy has been
brought nearer our understanding and appreciation since we have learned
to respect the essential truth and individual and group value of fancy
and feeling even in the myths and in the religious conceptions of all
races.
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