DELUSION and MASS DELUSION by A. M. MEERLOO

©1949 Introduction: The human mind is characterized by two antagonistic forces struggling for supremacy. This is the conflict between the intellectual components and the instinctive drives, each apparently attempting to achieve dominancy. In some situations the instinctive forces gain control in a way to encourage those individuals involved to gather in groups, masses and mobs. Here the "herd instinct" becomes supreme with the inclination to organize and to follow and obey a leader. In such situations either much good or irreparable harm to society may result, according to the issues involved. Psychology is the discipline that has the most direct bearing on our daily activities. Its phenomena are ever present in our feeling, thinking and dreaming. However, the ways in which it works and its actual significance are mysterious to the average person, and the language of the learned in this field is mere jargon to the uninitiated. It is unfortunate that it is not better understood by all, and particularly by those whose duty is to make decisions that may threaten the security of mankind. Many writers have attempted to inform the public on matters of psychology and psychopathology without having the proper training and experience, the result being a flood of books on the market having little value and too often presenting untrue and harmful pronouncements. The human mind is a very complex system of actions and reactions requiring years of persistent study to acquire even a working knowledge of its intricate patterns of expression and function. The average reader is not able, nor can he be expected to be able, to differentiate between the real specialist and the would be authority in psychological science. There is a great deal of psychological knowledge that has accrued without yet having gained its possible applications in society where it would enrich the lives of the people. The problems of mass psychology are complex and do not lend themselves to an early, rapid solution. Some may never be solved, but it is our task to make careful studies and to disseminate whatever knowledge that has been gained about the psychological peculiarities of so called "mass mentality". Dangers in social life cannot be avoided without some idea of their nature. People should be informed about these dangers

and taught to understand that individuals possess inborn tendencies driving them into actions that their logical powers of thought have difficulty in preventing.

This is the duty of our psychopathologists who in the past have devoted the greater portion of their time to working with individuals. Therapeutic work with individuals is important, but the person is only a unit in a huge social organism or mass of human beings influenced and moulded by its form and laws. Most of our mental reactions and adjustments are related to other persons in the mass. Mass psychology should be brought into the foreground for much needed research with special institutes for the study of its unique problems, where all aspects could be analyzed and data accumulated for the direction of practical applications. In this monograph Dr. Meerloo, an experienced psychiatrist, has presented a large area of psychological and psychopathological import. He has discussed, psychodynamically, the thinking process in all of its various normal and pathological ramifications and special significant functions. The different types of delusion formation, the problems of the masses, mass thinking, and the characteristics of collective action in its many expressions are treated in a most informative and interesting account. His concepts are clearly stated and they bring together a wide variety of facts, theories and constructive ideas that should prove to be thought provoking and a stimulation to additional investigation.

Nolan D. C. Lewis, M.D. Preface These essays are the reactions of a psychiatrist to fettered thinking. The first draft was written during the dark days of Nazi occupation in 1 Holland, when the iron blows of official "thought control" smashed down on all free cultural discussion. In such an atmosphere, imagine the cathartic value of setting down one's own aggressive reaction on paper, of clarifying-for oneself, at least-why man must resist attacks on mental freedom and civilization or perish. These days of conquest saw the people of Western Europe turning more and more to American thought, to the pragmatic philosophy of that huge, free land. Long before the two world wars Europe had been overwhelmed by German romantic idealism. With high-flown words and theories that captivated a willing world, Germany went far toward conquering European thought long before its armies annexed its material wealth. The first essay attempts to show the change in attitude that arose from our need to stem the German impact on our thinking. It started as a series of lectures in occupied territory and developed into an essay on man's fearful groping with the mind in the midst of his expanding knowledge of the universe. The two shorter essays present some practical implications of our deluded attitudes. Most of these reflections were gathered without benefit of scientific contact, without access to any literature, without the possibility of research or discussion. Yet the very fact that they were born of mental exile may help them to portray more convincingly the spirit of stubborn resistance that filled our hearts in those days. Are we not becoming increasingly aware of the tremendous influence that opposition exerts in shaping man's mental processes and character? A. M. MEERLOO, M.D.

New York, 1949 Contents Part One Delusion and Mass-Delusion THINKING AND DELUSION

Introduction.

The Tragedy of Thinking.

Thought and Delusion.

Affective Delusions.

Thinking as Contact with Reality.

Limitations of the Psychologist.

Our Thought is Capricious

Logical Tricks as justification for Our Wishes.

Ogling Reality, the Only Common Concept.

The Evidences.

Circular Reasoning.

Psychology and Logic.

Thinking as a Foetal Luxury.

Thinking as a Social Function

Adjustment by Retarded Reflection.

Thinking as a Function.

Thinking as an Ambivalent Function.

Thinking and Feeling.

Thinking and Intellect.

Pseudo-Intellect.

Previous Theory of Delusions.

Delusion as Substitute.

Hallucinations.

Thinking that Withdraws from Reality.

Learnedness

The Development of Thinking.

Archaic or Primitive Thinking.

Identifying or Magic Thinking.

Participating Thinking.

Participation Through Isolation of Culture.

Mythical Thinking.

Identification in Thinking.

False Figurative Language.

The Dictatorship of Imagery.

Wishful Thinking.

Totalitarian Thinking.

Traditional Thinking

Thought and Language.

The Language of the Child.

Word and Intonation.

Sound-Languages.

Word-Magic.

The Power of Talk.

Crypto-Archaisms

Causal and Final Thinking.

Laws of Thinking

Western and Eastern Thinking.

Types of Consciousness.

Male and Female Thinking.

Anatomical Thinking.

Biological Roots of Thinking.

Shallow Modes of Thought.

Labeling Thinking.

Juridical Thinking

Normal Delusions.

Seductive Stupidity.

Superfluous Thinking.

Obsessional Thinking.

The Autonomy of Ideas.

The Delusion of Certainty.

Proverbial and Patterned Thinking.

The Subject Thinks.

The Unconscious as Creator of Our Thinking.

Fashionable Thinking.

Scapegoating.

Nominative Thinking.

Fixed Thought Values.

The Readiness for Truth.

Knowledge-A Dangerous Game.

Synthetic and Analytic Thinking.

Autistic Thinking

Delusion and the Subjective Feeling of Power.

Delusion and the Subjective Feeling of Certainty.

The Incomprehensibility of the Delusion. . . . . 

Thinking-The Overstepping of Limits.

Dimensional Thinking.

The Conceit of Thinking.

Over-strained Thinking.

The Delusion of Justification.

The Treason of Our Thoughts.

The Mania for Objectivity.

Delusion and Resentment.

Pathological Delusion.

Thinking Needs Harmony II. MASS AND DELUSION

The Problem of the Mass.

The Molding of the Masses.

Mass Thinking.

The Craving for Catchwords.

The Equalization of the Masses.

Traditional Mass-Thinking.

Conformism and Submissiveness in the Masses.

The Paradox of Censorship on Public Opinion.

Suggestive Weapons.

Independence of Public Opinion.

Pseudo- and Real Public Opinion.

The Formation of Public Opinion.

Individual and Mass-Thinking.

The Effect of Suggestion.

Identification and Psychological Feeling.

Participating Feeling.

The Social Value of Suggestibility.

Anonymity.

Lability of Mass-Opinion

The Effect of Fear and Terror.

Induction Psychosis and Mental Epidemic.

Mass-Delusion.

Contagious Mass-Delusion.

Short-Cuts and Mass-Delusion.

Historical Delusions.

Mass-Delusion and Rite.

Chorea Major, St. Vitus Dance. Modern Chorea.

Mass Ecstasy.

The Suicidal Thinking of the Mass.

Mass-Suicide.

Delusion of Metamorphosis and the Delusion of Witches.

The Delusion of the Ritual Murder.

Collective Conceit.

The Readiness for Collective Delusion.

Collective Symbols.

The Power of the Masses.

The Urge for Equality in the Mass

Word-Sensuality.

The Dictatorship of the Printed Word.

Mass-Hypnosis.

Suggestive Association.

The Spread of Hypnotism.

Hypnotizing Noises.

Hypnophilia.

The War of Nerves.

Collective Paralysis.

Restitution of Free Opinion

The Sense of Mass-Delusion.

The Stability of the Mass. Part Two

Mass-Suicide and Atomic Fear

Latent Suicidal Thoughts of the Masses.

Atomic Fear.

SelfDestruction.

The Urge for Catastrophe Part Three

Some Mental Aspects of the Human Animal (Remaining Young, Walking Erect and Playing Continually) A Picture of the Human Animal.

Man Walks Erect.

Man Is An Escapist.

Man Has Instruments.

Man Lives Opposite Things.

The Tyranny of Instincts.

Man Grasps the Opportunity For Speech.

An Eager Learning Animal.

Only Man Is Surprised.

Prejudice-The Enemy of Learning.

Man, The Eternal Baby.

The Dreamer-Fighter.

Homo Ludens-The Playing Man.

The Quest for Safety.

The Sclerotized Student.

PART ONE

Delusion and Mass-Delusion An Essay on the Capricious Thinking in Man and Collectivity To be a part of human tragedy, To know all things so very well, But still to act against all intellect. A.M.M. THINKING AND DELUSION SECTION ONE Can we be made to understand what an exciting adventure thinking is? Can we be made to understand at the same time that there is often more wisdom in silence than in endless talk? We live in the midst of a curious and continuous clash of opinions. Opinions and catchwords do not arise sui generis. We are constantly swayed and subjected to the convincing thinking of others. We are confronted with persuasive editorials. It is almost impossible to evade the suggestive pressures of the world around us. In this essay I have briefly attempted to place myself outside the tumult of hastening, deliberating and fighting mankind, attempted to answer how men came to accept their fictions, their chaotic notions and ideas. The Tragedy of Thinking The realization that our own open mind and brain are not entirely our own is a tragic one. We come to realize that the weighty thoughts with which we attempt to clarify the problems of our time are partially the products of the thinking of others and partially emerge from the unconscious patterns of our own mind. We think and try to become conscious of the world around us but we are not independent in our reasonable existence. The new psychology has given us many examples of primary instincts and urges which act upon our thinking. There is a close link between thoughts and emotions. A well-known philosopher, spokesman for a sharp-witted idealistic system, once confessed that during the writing of his best theories, he experienced several curious bodily sensations together with accelerated intestinal activity. It was as if his best logic were expelled physically as well as mentally. He functioned best when suffering from a headache.

Man involves his entire body in thinking and involves it in a distinct, personalized way. Some become quiet, silenced and meditative, others nervous, excitable. This essay is an attempt, from the clinical standpoint, to account for the various influences that rule our thoughts. Delusion and mass delusion, suggestion and mass suggestion have to be accounted for if they are to be corrected. Thought and Delusion Our first concern is the problem of delusion. The clinical psychology of the nineteenth century attempted to explain delusion as the result of a pathologically changed process of thinking. It defined delusion as an incorrigible error, as an incomprehensible obstinacy of the psyche. The intrapsychic process of delusion, since it was not understood, was written off as inexplicable. Examples of the curious thought pictures of the mentally diseased were cited, which were impervious to outside influence. These patients tried to prove one delusion with another, even more improbable one, and out of the primary error erected an entire delusional system. The analysis of this delusionary growth process revealed threads of comprehensible thought with, however, a bizarre and incomprehensible superstructure. Many adequately functioning people who show too much concern with themselves often conclude that the treatment accorded them does not do them justice. This common correctible aberration we refer to as "conceit" and "self-centered behavior". Incomprehensible in the delusion, however, was its fixed, incorrigible nature. The delusion seemed to persevere as an impenetrable mental armor. Many psychologists considered this well protected and armored insulation of the delusion the specific pathological process. They defined the delusion as a specific change in the thinking process, in which selfcentered evaluations turned into rigid delusions as a result of pathological processes of the brain. In most cases, however, it was impossible to point to the intracerebral deviation. Affective Delusions Beyond these pathological thinking processes there is also the formation of delusions due to the impact of emotions, namely, the affective delusions. When the intensity of certain emotions reaches abnormal proportions the thinking processes change. This form of delusion is a more comprehensible one. It is plausible, for instance, that a person under the impact of tremendous fear might think he is persecuted, or that a person in extreme pain and sorrow might consider these punishment for his sins. But even here our understanding is not complete. The reasons for the persistence of fears and suspicions, their incorrigibility and immutability, seem inexplicable. It is as if a strange growth had invaded the thinking processes and distorted them. Thinking is a

vivid, moving, dynamic process, changing and adapting in contact with reality And it is precisely these aspects, this alertness and dynamism, which cease in the delusionary process. Thinking as Contact with Reality The animal lives and moves in a passive world. The human being lives and moves in an active world. His senses transmit a passive picture of reality, but from these fragments he structures his own picture of the reality situation. Active and passive reality are interacting, related to each other. Without this interaction man is lost. This creates the constant need for accounting for both realities, for continually gathering new experiences. This constant process of orientation, confrontation and constant contact with reality is evidenced in the erect posture of man. Unlike the animal, man walks erect and faces reality. It is only tinder these conditions that the continuous interrelationship between the inspecting subject and the object can be maintained. This relationship is the basis for our relative and temporary knowledge. Thinking is that process which enables us to come to terms with reality. Through trial and error the subject gradually comes closer to the object and both subject and object undergo change as a result of this interrelationship. This dialectic process of interrelated development of man and world shapes the remaining elements of human culture and civilization. Limitations of the Psychologist In judging delusions and mass-delusions the psychologist studies the biological phenomenon of human thought, which, at the same time is his own instrument of research. Only one's own thinking can evaluate that of others. It is an unfortunate limitation of the method that one's own thinking might reasonably form the nucleus for further study. The necessary circularity of the operation in the study of delusions, therefore, poses a paradox which in its essence excludes the subjectmatter from philosophy and formal logic. But having faced this, it is not proposed that the subject be dropped here. It has been shown most convincingly that delusion and mass delusion do exist, that they are dangerous and persuasive. The psychological approach, however imperfect, is urgent. Straight human thinking is in danger and will remain in danger until the nature of delusion and mass-delusion is understood.

Philosophy, logic and the science of critical knowledge have investigated man's thoughts since the time of the ancient Greeks. They provide us with a wealth of subject matter, rules and methods which will be valuable in our psychological approach. However, we do not propose only to judge specific thoughts or rules by which "good" thoughts may be told from "bad", but rather to study the process of thinking as such. The subject matter of the psychology of thinking, unlike the science of philosophy, is the science of stupidity, of delusion and illusion, of the capriciousness of thought. Our Thought is Capricious During the past few years we have witnessed ages of science and critical thinking melt like snow in the sun as a result of mass feelings. The process was the same as the formation of affective delusions. The sense of reality dwindled before mass feeling and delusion. Politically inspired fictions penetrate science and philosophy. Systems of thought provide masks and justifications for brute drives and lust for power. We vaguely sense that desire and instinct are masked behind "logic". Mental tricks are easily substituted for "logic" and out of the multifarious logical possibilities we tend to choose those most compatible with our own desires.

How can we be taught to distrust this self-satisfying pseudo-philosophy? How deep is the relation between thinking and lying? We like to impress ourselves with words and thoughts and then to hide behind those very words. The animal is always true in his affections, the human being, however, selects some parts of reality while others, ignored or denied, fade into obscurity. We are forever expressing, hiding, demonstrating, charging, exaggerating and selecting. Much so-called "healthy" thinking hides hypocritical demonstration. And what is referred to as independent thinking is an unconscious transference and reproduction of the ideas of others. Small wonder that we have grown suspicious of "logic", especially when people emphasize their clear and logical thinking. SECTION TWO The old logic, the science which first sought to provide us with immutable laws for sound deductive reasoning, was grounded in the conviction that the thought processes were identical in all persons. Even the "possible" fallacies were tabulated and defined. A list of "thoushalt-nots" was compiled and as long as truth was dumped into one end of a syllogism truth would unfailingly emerge. Socrates is mortal. Thus it was hoped that through discussion differences could be resolved. In actuality the surface is only scratched. Clear thinking for any sustained period (five minutes, for instance) is rare indeed. But for two persons to hold a clear, dispassionate and mutually comprehensible discussion, which terminates in absolute agreement, is virtually unknown outside the field of mathematics. (And the only reason for the exemption of mathematics is its highly hypothetical nature. It is a question of if f I have four apples and if f you have four apples then between us we have eight.) The main single reason that the old logic is of little use in resolving differences of opinion is that there is no sound method of lighting on a mutually agreeable major premise. Aristotle and the logicians of his time were convinced that "all men are mortal" was an immutable truth, whereas we of the modern world recognize that all the data is not yet in. This is not to be construed as a bland dismissal of modern logic, which is even more hypothetical than arithmetic. It simply means that from a hypothetical premise one can draw only a hypothetical conclusion, and human thinking is rarely carried out on that level. The present world is a chaos of conflicting beliefs, not of conflicting hypotheses. It is not a mere question of "all men are mortal" but whether "this is better than that" or "that is strategically unsound" or "he is an evil man". A living logic sufficient for the purposes of psychology must be equipped to deal with moral and qualitative judgments. Not only are ideas subjective but so are the words that express them. The word "evil" alone has a separate connotation for each person who sees, hears or speaks it. Fortunately, there tends to be general agreement in practice on the meaning of some of our more common words. Webster-or rather the brothers Merriam-define the word "chair" as "a seat, usually movable, for one person. It usually has four legs and a back, and may have arms." Quite involved arguments may be constructed around this definition. Everything seems to be optional except that it shall hold only one person. Is an upended box a chair? We may argue (teleologically) that it is not, because it was not constructed for that purpose, but then neither are those cut-down and upholstered beer-barrels one falls into! Or we may argue (functionally) that anything becomes a chair when it is used as such. This of course immediately involves small tables, foot-stools, radiators and so on. But happily, one may yet use the word chair witch presupposes certain basic ideas or evidences on which unprovable ideas may be built (as in mathematics, complex conclusions). Thus, thinking, with the human being as the engineer, becomes an intelligent construction. Everyone utilizes these unconscious thought constructions of which analogies and syllogisms are a part. Conversations and discussions are understandable as long as they stem from similar premises. The technique of reasoning, however, results in constant error and chaos. Wrong analogies are constantly drawn. Circular Reasoning Man's present forms of aggressive argumentation and verbal seduction approach the comical. Not only do we pretend not to be aggressive, we go so far as to assert that our aggression is nothing but a higher expression of civilization. It was precisely this argument that the oppressor of our country (Holland) used against us. While our country was plundered and our freedom destroyed, the Nazis asserted that we were being ushered into the European heaven. Most arguments accomplish little beyond stating their own falseness. One supposes what one has to prove, and reasoning moves in a circle. It is like the story of the accused dishonest borrower, who attempted to prove before the court, first, that he had never borrowed anything, second, that he had received it in bad shape, and finally, that he had returned it long ago and did not owe a thing. The premise includes what one wishes to prove (petitio principii). In the same way, the tyrannical aggressor argued that bombardment of an open, peaceful, neutral town like Rotterdam was an emergency measure perpetrated for the benefit of the people oppressed by democracy. Constant repetition imbues this argumentative sophistry with more and more suggestive power. The vicious circle is only too well-known. As far back as Greek antiquity, a clear distinction was drawn between everyday reasoning permeated with incorrect syllogisms and analogies and a pure thinking which is conscious of itself and aware of its limitations. The latter produces philosophical derivatives of a qualitatively superior order. The clear statement of a problem encourages this advanced treatment. Psychology and Logic The psychologist is required to familiarize himself with both types of thinking. He approaches the process of thinking differently than the

philosopher, for he finds that overemphasis on logic weakens man's links to reality. Life is not clearly logical and simply determined, for such logic prevails only in the rule-ridden world of the insect. The psychologist cannot subscribe to the superstition of logical thought. Ideas spring forth illogically. Idle play, sleep and other partially-aware states are fertile soil in which ideas germinate. The determination to think logically is not sufficient for production of thought; the mind requires the motoric power of passion to produce. Man opposes logic when he cannot profit from it, hence a scrupulous application of laws of logic is no adequate guide for the solution of life's problems. Logic only assists in the avoidance of major errors. Kant defined comprehension as the solution of a problem to that extent to which it is adequate for our purposes. The logic of the moron is brought forth as unconsciously as the clear systematic thinking of Hegelian philosophy. The psychologist allows riddles to exist. He opposes the fiction that phenomena demand an immediate explanation. All logical reasoning was produced as much by impressions and suggestions as logical rules. Logic presupposes a world made tangible by hand and idea, a world in need of coordination and selection. Logic can only prevail in a stable world. Life, however, is forever bypassing logic. Psychology studies the inner and outer conditions which determine thinking. Philosophy concerns itself with the laws of thinking apart from those conditions. Psychology plays a role in those areas where thoughts are still rigidly rooted in the conditions that are responsible for their growth. The psychologist looks upon thinking as a biological luxury largely limited to the human species. Thinking is a curious biological function, an inhibition of vital functions accompanied by a curious self-accounting consciousness. The anatomist Bolk (4) ascribed those peculiar inhibitions and retardations of functioning and the special structure of the brain to the erect posture of man, his long youth and his never-ceasing play. Because man remained a foetus and his physical defenses did not develop and differentiate, as for instance in the ape, his forebrain had the opportunity to develop as a useful instrument of consciousness. Foetalization and retardation provide the opportunity for thinking. Thinking as a Foetal Luxury Man, homo sapiens, does not throw himself impulsively upon his prey, but has the capacity for restraint which is a function of his reflective organ. Many scholastic philosophers will shudder at the follies written by this philosophic outsider. The guns and tanks and planes, however, jump their prey and leave philosophy in rags. Today's world bears dramatic proof of thought as a reaction to the occurrences of the day. We get more and more "liberated" from the serene period of isolated scientific thinking which preceded the first World War. Today we are forced, nolens volens, to take a stand toward the events around us. It did not take Hitler long to convert many an idealistic philosopher into a spokesman for his madness. Thinking as a Social Function Thinking is a social instrument. We think and speak to someone, in relation to others. Thought is unconscious speech and communication. We must speak, even if only to the trees. Not until recently has the intellect become so aware of its social function of thought. It had remained aloof from wisdom and peace, power and wealth. Intelligence and technical thought were available for the highest bidder. They were at the service of drives and instincts, negligent of their social and harmonizing function. Thinking is a multifarious instrument with roots and stimuli in all organs, instincts and emotions. Thinking is an attitude of the organism as a whole. Feeling and willing, striving and acting, cannot be differentiated from the reactive and reflective organism. The psychologist has to try to unravel our complex split world of platonic fictitious thought and unguided animal action. SECTION THREE

Adjustment by Retarded Reflection Comparative psychology teaches us that the higher mammals still live in a world of pure sensations. Nevertheless, a primitive synthesis of sensations and new responsive actions does function, namely the socalled conglomerate of conditioned reflexes. The reflex, however, occurs without reflection, without the knowledge of knowing. This should immediately brake the action. Unlike lower animals, however, the mammal is able to adjust to a new environment. The insect is almost completely bound to its innate rigid instinctual actions. The insect remains chained to the reflexes brought about by the stimuli of the outside world. Only the highest mammal, the human being can synthesize the different sensations with his own observations and create the distinction between an inner world-the subject-and an outer world-the object. The insect can adjust only in the most limited way, that is, it can survive in a world already geared to its innate potentialities. The mammal, by means of the conditioned reflex, has the capacity for growing and changing adjustment. Man alone, with forethought, afterthought, self-reflection and self-observation at his disposal, can achieve an almost unlimited adjustment to his environment. His mind is an organ of adjustment. More effective than innate and conditioned reflexes, it teaches the organism to adjust itself to changed circumstances. The organism is free to select its form of adjustment. Consciousness of its aim determines the selection of stimuli. The instinct can adjust rapidly but is limited in scope. Thinking adjusts gradually but is unlimited. Man is most adapted for adjustment to reality. Man, therefore, can also fear, anticipate and tolerate more than any other organism. Thinking is the retarding and tolerating process. Via its sensations the animal is in continuous and direct communication with the outside world. Man, however, opposes, confronts the outside world. Once reflection has been liberated from sensation and representation, it becomes pure and independent thinking. Thinking must be planned and be productive; it must be regulated and directed toward an adjustment and a real aim-thinking has to reflect something. Representations and feelings weaken thinking and regress it to the level of animal dependency on accidental impulses. Love makes us blind. Due to hormonal action people in love revert to magical thinking. The adult tackling of reality is supplanted by reflex actions springing from direct communication with a limited world. On one hand, thinking widens the distance between man and his physical universe; on the other, it bends him toward it and sharpens his conception of reality. Thinking observes the personal struggle, observes the disentanglement of the biological chains and biological indispensabilities. Thinking as a Function Thinking is a developing function. Every thought process integrates previous and lower processes. Thinking is the function of growing consciousness and self-enlightenment. It is the instrument of readaptation. It is the ripening of prejudices into judgments. Man is never completely conscious but is always progressing toward complete consciousness, that is, toward a better adjusted approach to himself and reality. The growth of consciousness signifies the capacity of the organism to contemplate and confront reality. Man gradually rouses himself from somnambulistic slumber to a waking contact with reality. Without difficulty, however, he slips back into sleepwalking and automatisms. Man can sleep with his eyes wide open without ever taking account of himself. A few men become seeing prophets and show us a new reality. Most people, however, remain in a sleeping state having hardly opened their eyes. The thinking of others does not benefit us no matter how great its stature may be. Only our own readiness to think and verify for ourselves, to attack new problems benefits us. The ability of the thinker to put forth his thoughts demands the courage to doubt old truths and correct threadbare thoughts. Thinking, as stated above, is coming to grips with reality. It is the probing and searching of reality with accepted propositions and the reshaping and reformulation of these where they no longer serve adequately. This coming to terms with reality takes place with an aim in mind, namely, the reshaping of reality. Interest and self-interest direct the thoughts, and thinking, however imperfect, is motivated movement toward a goal. This reshaping of reality takes place even under the most tragic circumstances. In concentration camps one of the first deeds was to rebuild the reality following some simple symbolic schemes, a womb, a house, some cozy corner; it was the only way to cope with the circumstances. All psychological thinking implies identification with its object of study. It presupposes the feeling of oneness with the object of research. It feels itself a part of it. Because of its failure to grasp with care, psychology runs the risk of faulty observations. Its aims compel psychology to take this risk.

Since the thinking process implies memory and conscience, it requires the capacity for gathering and judging observed data. Thinking is the process of internal observation and selection of sensations, experiences, memories, judgments and evaluations to serve the purpose of a thought-aim. Von Monakow (19), the well-known Swiss neuropsychiatrist, referred in his book on hallucinations, to this judging, adopting and selecting instance as the beginning of moral conscience. Thinking aims at the stabilization of man grappling with reality. Without loving reality, we cannot cope with it. The original love we received from our environment made us accept its norms and value judgments, shaped our conscience (superego) and now demands an accounting for reality. Thinking, then, consists of imaginative action and selection, a regulation of impressions and sensations with an aim in view. The psychologist refers to an intentional thinking "act", apart from all content of thoughts. Thinking as an Ambivalent Function Thinking, as much as speaking, is an ambivalent function. Thinking is the effort to acquire knowledge and is at the same time an intellectual play facilitating escape from the riddles of the world. Thinking is both a cognitive function and an active imaginative process which shapes a private, secluded world. It is simultaneous approach to and flight from reality, submission to nature and worship of idols. Thinking and Feeling The gradually expanding consciousness liberates itself slowly from the partly conscious, partly unconscious receptive world of feelings. Feeling is the partly conscious experiencing of emotions. Feeling is a reaction to the outer world directed by instincts. Every such reaction has components of pleasure and displeasure, depending on the impressions from without and drives from within. An impression without feeling does not exist; an impression without thinking does not exist. An impression is always partially an observation. Feeling and thinking are the inseparable function of becoming conscious. Nevertheless, a continual polarity between thinking and feeling exists. I use my intelligence in certain instances and follow my feelings in others.

Thinking implies placing oneself in opposition to the world, yet acting with that world, conceiving that world. It implies choice, selection, arrangement, placement and active motion. Our impressions and reactions to the outside world and our relation to it are expressed in various terms of evaluations. Certain evaluations are directly dependent on the impact of the outside world. Scheler (17) referred to these as sense feelings, or reality feelings. Ego-feelings, or spiritual feelings, on the other hand, are much more dependent upon evaluations of the central selecting and judging instance, the thinking ego. Thinking becomes a function sufficient unto itself, apart and independent from reality, while feelings always maintain some relationship with this outside reality, however inappropriate they may be. This latent dichotomy between feeling and thinking leads to erroneous assumptions. The human being needs the harmony of both a thinking and a feeling reality-response. The human being cannot permit over-evaluated affects to suffocate the intellect, or the biting intellect to kill the warm feeling. This is the explanation the psychologist provides for the split-personality prototype. Thinking and feeling constantly alternate. Certain neurotic persons substitute thought for feeling. One cannot only think but must feel at the same time; man has to experience the world with all layers of his personality. In our period of civilization our feelings about many things are even more difficult to accept than our thoughts about them. Who, conscious of his moods, can accept and be happy with them? Fascism has taught us how destructive the solely emotional basis of thinking can be. Thinking and Intellect Consciousness grows out of observation, regulation, schematization, planning, abstraction-the polishing and chiseling of all these component functions to a thought-picture. There is a tendency to shape and fix such a picture instead of maintaining its mobility and vividness. Thinking actions tend to become rigid systems in the service of narrow aims. Man has a tendency to repeat his primary actions even when they are failures. The same phenomenon occurred with the unhappy laboratory dogs of Pavlov. The trained functional and useful reflex (conditioned reflex) became a useless automatism. Productive thinking is extension of the first thought and first deed to further suppositions and possibilities. Intellect comprises not only the analytical research quality, but the vivid ability to search for a new aim and broaden the scope. The higher animals, too, act intelligently; that is, they adapt speedily to a new situation. Man, however, because of his eccentric position in the world, has special opportunities for developing his intellect. Vivid intellect, however, can regress to rigid automatisms and so resemble the innate instinct patterns. In man every automatism and rigid behavior pattern can revert again to a new adjustment. If this were not so, neurosis would be inaccessible to treatment.

Beyond the analytic, selective function, intellect is the vivacity and spiritual potency of life. Intellect becomes vulnerable when no personality is developed to fortify it. The cultural acquisition of intellectuals is easily paralyzed by terror and fear when character falters. Character, its potency, and the stable personality it provides for mental functioning is more important in society than a purely analytical intellect. This we could observe among the people who formed the resistance movement. The pure intelligentsia stayed away. In a fullgrown personality feeling and thinking harmonize with each other. The analytical part of the intellect, the selecting and sifting capacity, is forever hesitant. It opposes all that is accepted. It welcomes discussion and dialectic research. It breaks the spell of old thought concepts and paves the way for the spontaneous, creative function of the intellect. Unintelligence implies an inability to change, a rigid adherence to the same pattern, enslavement to habit. Intellect can remain the sterile tool for selection and correction, the mere librarian of observed data. It can be creative only so long as it remains active, charged by the live personality. Out of his delusions of greatness, man overestimated the technical intellect and neglected the instinctive, creative power that propelled it. The supertechnical surgeon, however, is helpless without the instinctual regenerative forces. Those forces heal the wounds inflicted by his tools. In every human being there dwells an instinctual unconscious technician operating outside the conscious functions. This formative intelligence, which makes or breaks us, can be studied by different methods beside the usual ones of psychoanalysis. Pseudo-Intellect We still tend to evaluate all labor of the mind as intellect instead of the thinking potency behind it. The human being comes into the world a bare, unprotected and unadapted animal, who can be subjected to various forms of training. He may even be made an imitative, mechanical thinking automaton. An intellectual is not necessarily a personality. On the one hand, training has created pedants, students, servile clerks-mental engineers who fall easy prey to the economically and mentally powerful. This form of imitative intellect is as much for sale as the labor of our hands and the power of our muscles. On the other hand scholarly training may make independent free thinkers of people who are forced to reorientate themselves as soon as they stand before a new situation. The real power of thinking is not imitation. The over-development of technique and pseudo-intellect creates the myth that special training in a certain school or college produces more valuable personalities. The development of character and personality is subordinate to scholastic and technical achievement; to diplomas and report cards. The quiz can become a fatal instrument of education. The last war taught us the danger inherent in the mass production of pseudo-intellectuals. They failed to resist overwhelming fatal emotions and capitulated to every outside mental power. Knowledge and philosophy were controlled by the blackjack. Many of the "intelligentsia", emotionally dissatisfied and disgruntled, surrendered to traitors and tyrants who ruled by intellectually-rationalized brutality. Previous Theory of Delusions Analysis reveals that instinct and affect, memory and conscience, are the roots of the thinking function. Love and hate penetrate our thinking and stimulate it to demonical activity. Gradually it becomes stripped of affects, but it cannot survive without feeling. Thinking loses its potency and contact when thoughts become isolated; one set point of view obscures all others. In our world too much is thought and not enough is felt. Thinking is stripped of its instinctual basis. Delusion is a regression or isolation of the thinking function. It is either the dominance of archaic instinctual forms of thinking or the isolation of consciousness, the autonomy of thoughts without feelings. Delusion seeps gradually into the thinking function. It begins with a basis of truth, but the persistent error gradually supplants reality to such an extent that it is impervious. Feeling must never he without thinking, thinking never without feeling. If either of these functions gains autonomy the individual loses his consciousness of and contact with reality. Our science of thought has as yet failed to detach itself from the Aristotelian concept of one way of thinking. The science of physics was dominated by the same misconception until the period of the renaissance. It is regrettable that the experimental inquiry into thought processes is such a difficult procedure. (The Rorschach test has taught us a great deal about the relation between thinking and feeling and psychoanalysis has clarified the role of the unconscious.) I want this essay to be limited to the phenomenology of deluded thinking under normal circumstances. Delusions are incorrigible ideas for which many normal men are willing to die. Delusion as Substitute Let us first understand that delusion is inherent in normal thinking. The delusion treated by psychiatrists belongs to the same thinking process, but is fortified by pathological disturbances of the psychosomatic organism. '

Thinking can be ruled by anarchy to such an extent that any formulation

of ideas becomes impossible. The unconscious content of our thoughts may overwhelm our logical consciousness. The dream is the moot normal example of this phenomenon of delusion. In all growing'processes of consciousness man reaches a limit. Beyond that limit thinking ends and faith begins: Credo quia absurdum. Delusion is a substitute belief. It is the enforcement of certainty instead of the acceptance of uncertainty. Delusion is the fear of uncertainty, of hesitation and skepticism. Just as the "idee fixe" defends the human being against the small vaccilations of life, the delusion defends us against the great leap into the obscure and unknown. Every acceptance of limits implies an obscure and unknown. Superstition is also a substitute for faith, it is a collective delusion, a remnant from previous magical and mythical conceptions of life. Delusion is the fear of realistic, critical thinking, the kind of thinking which is subject to criticism from without and the criticism from within that illuminates one's own subjective notions. Hallucinations The hallucination is a regression to a genetically older mode of feeling and observation in which ego and world are not yet distinct entities. This archaic orientation toward and contact with the outside world is dependent on functional disturbances of several organsystems. Otherwise it occurs only among children and primitive people. Since reality contact is disturbed, most of the hallucinations are the result of a chaotic projection of memory-pictures (engrams). (13) When man is possessed by an overwhelming emotion, he immediately may hallucinate its possible causes. Fear produces hallucinations even more easily. The exhausted soldier on the battlefield envisions every automobile noise as an aerial attack of the enemy. Every social formation has its own collective illusions, hallucinations, revived images and primitive representations. These collective conceptions are never subject to discussion but only to blind acceptance. Every form of rite and suggestive training enforces these collective images. Many a member of such a collective can never be freed of such an unconscious, enforced image. In the delusion we become familiar with a similar process. Thinking that Withdraws from Reality Janet was one of the first to call the attention of psychology to the reality function (fonction du reelle). He speaks of a mental tension and force in. man, the highest perfection of which is the reality-function. When this tension diminishes certain mental characteristics disappear. The first to weaken is the capacity for adjustment to changing reality. The immediate experience of, insight into and enjoyment of reality is a highly differentiated and vulnerable mental activity. Mature man, confronting reality, must have an alert adjustment.

"Carpe diem" is a vulnerable function. Most people's enjoyment is only the memory of experiences, the recounting of these to others. They are too exhausted to enjoy the supreme moment. They take snapshots of their experiences and relive them through the photograph album. "Kodakomania" is a form of mental ennui. But thinkers and dreamers, too, who withdraw into meditation are among those who cannot bear the tensions of reality. Escape into a system, or dogma relieves them of all tension. Their vague idealism bears an "as if" touch of reality. They withdraw into the abstraction, the isolated reality, the extraordinary. Learnedness Eventually we may prefer learnedness to wisdom. The learned and strange holds for us a magic fascination before which, like children, we bow. Learnedness grasps only that which has already developed and become rigid; it can never, however, follow the continuous stream of development. It is often a mixture of undeveloped wisdom and lust for power. The learned man is distracted and lacks contact with living reality. His system of thinking is a facade for inner doubt. His scientific display is often a well-regulated collection of plagiarisms.

It should now be easy to understand that conceit and partial delusion result from the loss of continuous, alert, and lively contact with reality. The study of these problems on a deeper level would reveal that these delusions and hallucinations, intensified, relate to the same mental disturbances. This essay, however, is concerned with the normal, rather than the pathological delusion.

Delusionary thinking can be called the continuation of primitive thinking without the correction by self-reflection. It is a withdrawal from reality. In all civilized thinking, however, these forms of thinking persist. SECTION FOUR The Development of Thinking To understand the above statement, we have to give up the dogma of identical thinking in all human minds. We may say that the more purified and technically trained thinking is, the more identical it becomes. Unconsciously the different laws of logic are accepted. The more primitive thinking is, the more confused feelings it contains and the less identical it is. It is possible, nevertheless, to study the general development of thought. It was analytical psychology which first called our attention to the gradually evolving relation to reality. The following stages in the development of a sense of reality may be distinguished (7). First is the phase of intrauterine development, preceding birth, in which there can be little more than a feeling of satisfied omnipotence. There is no noxious outside world. The stage of magic-hallucinatory potency follows birth. The child has the feeling of knowing and directing all. No distinction between an inner and outer world is drawn. This phase is succeeded by initial attempts at conquest of the outside world with magic gestures. The child tries to command the world within his reach by pointing at it with his hands. Children feel that ideas are tangible and plastic. By keeping their lips stiffly closed they withhold evil thoughts. They also imbue inanimate objects with life. When they get hurt by bumping against a table, it is the table which beats them. Out of this gestural thinking develops an uncritical animistic thinking, in which self-qualities are projected upon the outside world. All inanimate objects have a soul and no distinction between dead and alive is made. This thinking has a passive nature; thoughts are experienced as personified actions in which father, mother and siblings are the actors. Mythology is filled with such personifications. The adult, too, creates his personified delusions. The following stage of magic thought is more active. It is a form of primitive strategy in which the spirits of objects are not only passively accepted but manipulated. The magic action attempts to seduce the spirits and to command them. The inner and outer world grow apart and magic thoughts are used to maintain contact between the two. After the phase of imaginary omnipotence a change takes place. Unlimited power is granted not to the ego but to the outside world. In the games of children, every toy can become a symbol of parental power. Gradually this power and influence are incorporated and conscience is shaped by the penetration and incorporation of social values. In these early stages of thinking the main influences emanate from the outer world. They overwhelm the thinking subject. His feeling of loss and helplessness is the same that we experience when we feel ourselves part of a mass. The regressed thinking of many psychotics reflects a similar experience; everything in the mind is experienced as an influence from outside. Archaic thinking is an almost wordless thinking, a kind of dream thinking and sinking away unto unconsciousness. In totemistic thinking a symbolic displacement has already taken place. Good or bad spirits are represented or symbolized by a totem. In this projective thinking one's own power, misery and cruelty is transferred and attributed to the totem. The totem, the sacred animal, for instance, is the feared animal.

The confession to pure reality, the "adequatio cum re", the acknowledgment of preoccupation and prejudice of all wishing and thinking is the final phase of consciousness of reality. Nevertheless, it accepts responsibility for its limitations. It takes some time before an independent judging ego is shaped, free from observations and images. The first ego is the product of observation rather than an independent entity. Primitive thinking is primarily affective thinking. The ego judges immediately under the influence of an observation and emotion. Only gradually this subjective form of thinking adjusts itself to reality. In adult thinking the archaic illusion of almighty power may lead to self-overestimation and egocentricity. The evolution of individual thinking is paralleled in the growth of civilization. Archaic or Primitive Thinking During the last few decades primitive thinking has been subjected to careful study. This is due not only to progress in the fields of ethnology and anthropology, but also to the realization that analogous forms of thinking could be found in children, psychotics and the unconscious of every human mind. The idea has also developed that the difference between civilized and primitive thinking is one of degree. Many present primitive societies are the descendants of formerly civilized peoples. Primitive thought is not less logical than mature thought. Sensual experiences, however, are less adequately controlled and the reaction is a far more emotional one. The primitive confronts the world with more affectivity. He lives in a world o£ continually existing fear toward which he is constantly alerted. Constant tension prevails between himself and his environment. His feelings are more explosive, his actions more instinctive. Modern man of the Atomic Age shares the same attitudes to some extent. The European of the Middle Ages was still a man of uncontrolled emotionality. His actions were affect-ruled. The mourner was paralyzed 1>y sorrow for weeks; the sad man displayed his feelings with theatrical complaints. Collective hallucinations and delusions were experienced with greater ease (20). Collective myths, alive in all, came to the fore more easily. Primitive thinking is not subject to argumentation and correction and is almost insensitive to experience. If it fails to coincide with the reality situation, its errors are ascribed to mysterious influences from without. The primitive easily resorts to pretexts and magic forces to explain his failure. Hidden qualities take precedence over actual ones. The primitive rejects logic. B may be equal to A or not, depending on the wishes of strange powers. The archaic thinking is concept- and habit-bound. It is dominated by the images and emotions of the collectivity, which easily abandons logic. Its own rules are elementary and infinite in power. The archaic psyche has an unlimited memory. It is comparable to our own subconscious. The primitive man is familiar with a large quantity of images and words. His language, usually more complex than our own, does not combine word pictures to form abstractions. What he thinks he sees, he sees. That is why he lives in a hallucinated world. Affect and drive rule his observations. A vague feeling, a superficial resemblance, an insignificant totem carry more meaning than generalized concepts. Man, animal and inanimate object bear mystical relationships to each other. The world is colored with subjective expectation and the expectations are hallucinated. Primitive conception of life supposes a "mystic participation" existing between man, animal and inanimate object.

When the primitive comes into contact with an ominous totem, he may die of fear. In his pre-logical form of thinking no distinction between conscious and unconscious is made. Primitives dream aloud, so to speak. The fearful dream becomes reality; unpleasant reality is fantasied away. In Northern Borneo, all dreams are interpreted as real. The man who dreams that his wife is unfaithful to him has the right to disown her. Identifying or Magic Thinking In primitive societies a man does not live far apart from his fellows. A relationship of common fate and mutual thought pervades primitive community life. The thoughts of one member of the tribe, for instance, can endanger the entire community. The word as such has suggestive and destructive power. The victor who slays an enemy is imbued with the power of the dead man. The Dajaks in Borneo believed that the decapitation of their enemies would fortify them with the power of the killed. One is what one possesses. The artistic remnants of pre-historical man are interpreted as examples of magic thinking. The pre-historic hunter inscribed his prey on a rock wall so as to gather greater power. Creative art was a magic action performed as a symbolic conquest of future prey. Our unconscious is still permeated with magic archaic power. The twentieth century slave is too dependent on his technical intellect to show concern for his magic, yet a Teutonic magician restored him to a stage of collective madness. The economic logic of our time has rejected all magic and fears the untouchable possibilities of long forgotten worlds. It does not dare to live side by side with the shadows of long ago. Yet all objective knowledge preserves the magic experience of unity. Every higher form of thinking embodies earlier forms. Participating Thinking There are many causes for regression to primitive thinking. Terror and persecution, slavery and famine can reverse high civilization to more primitive modes of mentality. Recall the extinct Negro civilizations of central Africa, the civilizations of the Mayas and Aztecs. Even more clearcut are the many examples of primitive thinking we find in our own present-day society.

We call participating thinking (mystic participation) (12) that form of identificatory thinking that accepts no difference between inner thought and physical occurrence. This form of thinking assumes that inner thoughts precipitate a change in our fellow beings and even in inanimate objects. Every thought wields influence. Our prayers are reminiscent of that type of thinking. Thinking implies active participation in collective events. Barriers between individuals are nonexistent, and each individual participates in the thinking of the entire world. Growing consciousness, however, opposes reality as critical judge and observer. The public in the theater considers itself a participant In In the dramatic action. Participation Through Isolation of Culture Participating thinking spreads if the community remains isolated. We shall see how this may cause mass delusions in a modern civilization. In a closed circle of conversation some magic participating thinking occurs.

The same type of thinking goes on within a school or university. Students preserve the thinking of their school years. Even the scholar experiences difficulty in liberating himself from the suggestion of his philosophical instructor. Participating-thinking imbues life with all kinds of rites. Without these, the world would not be what it is. We experience this clearly with the thinking of the Malayan people among whom a general feeling of spiritual participation prevails. Everyone is invested with a soul, whether dead or alive. Everything is imbued with good or evil forces. The man who covers his dagger with saliva thus makes it part of himself and assures his own immunity. In Java people open doors and chests to facilitate the birth of a child. The world is a magic helper in everything that affects the individual. Similar concepts survive in popular medical superstition. The weak child is made to eat horse. meat and drink oxblood. The father partakes of the medicine when his child is ill. The newborn infant is protected from future trouble by burial of the placenta and so forth.

In the periphery of our consciousness participating thinking lives on The most acutely critical person experiences moments of vague and relaxed meditation in which archaic forms of thinking come to the fore together with day dreams and half-dreams in which no differentia- tion between object and subject is made. In sleeping and dreaming the archaic world takes complete possession of us. Mythical Thinking Man likes to live in myth. He converts his fatherland into a legend a beautiful fairy tale. He speaks of the old European liberalism an( the new American democracy while he by-passes reality with all its subtleties. As part of a mass, as members of a crowd, our identifications and

participations come to the fore with greater ease. The meeting of a former schoolmate immediately precipitates patterns of former studentthinking; adolescent thoughts are reactivated, we relive the beautiful myth of our youth.



Identification in Thinking As the native identifies with the totem in his group, so do more civilized groups identify with their subtly concealed totems. If our home town is subjected to criticism we spring to its defense. We identify with our school, our town, our country. At a meeting in which this topic of disguised identification was discussed a philosopher debated rather indignantly: "My Groningen-heart is revolted." In his criticism he had identified with the theories of his university. We identify with our countries, our climates, our class, with the layer of the population to which we belong and with its way of thinking. We identify especially with our possessions. The more we possess, the more difficult it becomes for us to renounce either the possessions as such or the theories which justify our having them. Certain remnants of archaic thinking permeate our daily existence. Take, for instance, "lese majeste". It is a rather primitive conception that damage to the name or damage to the picture implies damage to the person himself. The magic man lives on within us. A preconceived idea, a rooted, fixed way of thinking is often such a remnant. It is as if archaic thinking continued to contaminate our well-adjusted system of thought. There exists a refined form of identifying thinking. To empathize or sympathize with another is impossible without this thought process. The serious psychologist has to utilize this process to familiarize himself with his fellow human beings. Psychology, therefore, maintains certain aspects of a magic science. Such thinking processes, however, are of slight value to the physical scientists. False Figurative Language Since our daily language so frequently resorts to allegory and figurative speech, we can assume that man feels a tremendous need for identification. Whenever we are anxious to prove something, we refer to an analogous case. These analogies, which play on feeling rather than logic, are dangerous for our thinking. A political speech, for instance, can overwhelm and narcotize by a flood of suggestive pictures and allegories. When our feelings are aroused we lose our critical ability and insight and reactivate earlier, incorrect concepts of reality. False figurative language dims our thinking. The Dictatorship of Imagery In primitive thinking as well as in our trained twentieth century mind imagery plays an almost dictatorial role. Ask a philosopher to walk the plank over an abyss-as Pascal proposed-and he will hesitate as much as the child who has no reason. The imagined risk defies all logic. Images and representations exert a formative influence on our organism; they are creative thoughts. Wrong and good images act deeply on our biological being and produce organic reactions. The science of hypnosis teaches us these facts.

Contemporary life overwhelms the human brain with the most chaotic impressions and images. Propaganda and advertisement, the manifold forms of distractions create such chaos of impressions that logic can no longer find its way. Man has become hypersensitive to suggestion. We are grateful to anyone who takes us in hand and clears our path through the chaos of our thoughts and images. Wishful Thinking The subjective wish as well directs our thinking. Our daydreams and undefined wishes are forever misinterpreting reality. There is chaos in our thinking. Sorrow and defeat and all other emotions are continuously playing on the direction of our thoughts. Pride and bitterness revolve our thoughts in an eternal vicious circle. Totalitarian Thinking Totalitarian or dictatorial thinking is a remnant of archaic times. Objective verification of ideas is rejected since no reality beyond the dictatorial opinion exists. The deviant point of view is considered dangerous for the weak. Free thought is experienced as a thwarting, hostile force. The critical word, the deviating attitude, the non-conformism of one man threatens the clan. The individual is only permitted to think with the tribe. Archaic thinking follows what we might call an imperialistic strategy. It lulls people to sleep, it resists their consciousness and critical confrontation, it suppresses all individual creativity. Totalitarian thinking is identifying thinking; it takes account only of totalities and never of parts. Specific and particular forms have no value. Only the recurrent and expected is accepted. Man remains one with his people, his land, his race. Human evolution, however, breaks the bond between man and his world and places him in opposition to it. In time of war primitive attitudes come to the fore in all fighters. The individual is only part of an organism. The army is hypersensitive to

criticism. There is no sense of humor-the army offends easily. Blood revenge and collective punishments are again made use of. Collectivities are held responsible for the deeds of individuals. In the highly vulnerable feeling of military honor one finds much archaic thinking. To lose face, to be shamed, is equivalent to a beating. The aggressive word demands revenge as much as the bullet. Restrictions placed on the topics of discussion by soldiers and enemy aliens are a further reflection of the authoritarian attitude. Primitive civilizations are more keenly aware of the need for respect of leaders and superiors. In Java, for example, a respectful language, devoid of the aggressive and sharp words of everyday speech, is used in addressing superiors. In occupied Europe a great many had to learn restraint in their speech. Expression of individual thinking was severely punished by the magic Teuton. Traditional Thinking We find the archaic way of thinking in all forms of traditional thought, rooted in fixed patterns of feeling, acting and thinking. Tradition is the continuum of mass action. School already forces ideas into the harness of dogma. Only after intense conflict is the personality able to free itself from this tradition.

It is one of the paradoxical tasks of teaching to form fixed patterns of thinking in the student. The learning man must first embrace that which is handed down from the past. Beyond this, however, he must be taught to confront and criticize what he has learned. The true school prepares its students for free thinking-thinking that is capable of renewing and correcting itself continuously. "La tradition, c'est la democratie des morts." SECTION FIVE

Thought and Language Thought and language are intimately related to each other. All memory of mankind, all tradition, are enclosed in language. Language reveals old historical traditions. He who creates new words opens up new territories of thought. The word raises man above the level of the animal. It provides the

opportunity for mental contact. Gesture and mimicry are the oldest forms of communication. Indians and Greeks made use of a sign language, and remnants of sign language are still found in the Javanese dances. But we too use gesture and mimicry subconsciously. At times we use a theatrical gesture to make ourselves understood, and a wink, a hidden laugh, a cough, can change the meaning of an earnest word. In a later phase of development sound and speech become our chief means of communication. Timbre, velocity of expression and gesture as well, constantly change the meaning of words. Primitive languages express sensual variations and concrete peculiarities with a tremendous richness of distinction. They are unfamiliar with the symbolic condensations, displacement and transference of meanings, which, for instance, the mathematical sciences use. Hence, primitive man must resort to manifold distinctions. He cannot arrive at a general insight-his language affords no opportunity for thinking in generalizations. He speaks in a pictorial way, as the poet, he identifies in word and gesture with the expressed situation.

Language-the gradually expanding treasury of words-is always the expression of a special kind of thinking. That is why language may block our attempt to attain a purer and better form of thinking. Gradually, customary language becomes too limited for special ways of thinking. This is why thoughts must continually strive to free themselves from the existing language and must create new word symbols in order to express new and better thoughts. With our mother's milk we swallow a special -language and with that language, anchored habits of thought. The Language of the Child The first verbal expression of the child is usually a monosyllabic prattling, much like that of animals, used to indicate the aim of his drives. Natural sounds are imitated. The dog is "wuf, wuf", the cat "meow, meow", etc. Soon the sounds and half-words are utilized as magic strategy. When the baby says "fair", he means chair, give me that chair, I want to do something with that chair. The child endows the object with life through the use of the word. When babies converse in their broken tongue they do not ask for a logical compromise. They talk with no thought of relating the different parts of their conversation. The same abracadabra recurs in the language of senile patients.

The word which was originally attached to the object and considered an integral part of it, later becomes endowed with an independent existence of its own. The child begins to grasp that the word is a creation of human intelligence. The more keenly he senses that the word belongs to him, the more the child is able to free himself of his inner fixation to the rest of the physical world. As we have already seen, identification with and feeling for someone are the incipient processes of reality contact. Without these "human" qualities, deeper communication between beings is impossible. However, by naming things, the child partially frees himself of this process of identification and acquires the notion of a real world distinct from the "I". The monosyllabic nominative thinking of the child is the beginning of his capacity for confronting reality. Word and Intonation Our word is a manifold being. Every word evokes visual images from our unconscious. We first thought in pictures, later in words. In dreams we revert largely to the world of pictures. The pronunciation of words as such changes their meaning. Every word has its significance but at the same time its unconscious background. Words are expression, but also disguise. They are a living act with peripheral scenes and hidden motives. Sound-Languages Sound and rhythm often have a more important function than the specific meaning of the word. Eros especially colors ordinary words and makes them deep and significant. Would it even be possible to write the semantics of the half-words and sounds that people in love use as a means of conversation? The murmuring and small names between mother and baby mean words of love indescribable in stark definitions. There are languages which rely more than others on undefined emotional sounds. German words often have more sound than real meaning. Appealing more to mass and sentiment than reason, they keep the words caught in ambivalence, suspended between emotion and intellect. It was a strange experience to hear the vocal disguise of Goebbels propaganda thrown over one during the Nazi-occupation. Word-Magic Words may become magic symbols, condensations of meanings endowed with special power. This is seen especially in the rapt, repetitious phrases of the child. The expression of the word signifies the attainment of power over the indicated object. Words themselves become powerful. During the evolutionary phase of a word especially, during its period of detachment from an object, the value of the word and its power become especially great. The words become bold flashes of lightning with which one can banish, beat or praise. How many snobs there are, whose loaded words tyrannized their surroundings! With a master-word, one can conquer masses. The magical quality of the word is greater than most of, us realize. How many of us "touch wood" when we express a certain word? We fear that the word with its magic background attracts danger. This superstitious influence is especially pronounced in vague, undefined words. Their contact with the unconscious is closer and they therefore exercise more power. To move the masses one has to make use of such vague terms whose real significance defies definition. The therapist uses the magic influence of the word when asking the patient to express freely his feelings. The verbalization of vague feelings is of great cathartic value. The Power of Talk Endless talk my conquer fear. One fears silence. Those who least understand the world in which they live are its most talkative citizens. Propaganda tries to achieve its aim through endless repetition and the constant dinning in of words. The masses like mythical words and the sledgehammer blows of windy speeches. Clear expression becomes heresy. The word that evokes the most bizarre associations becomes the most beloved. Everyone projects his own unfulfilled wishes upon it. The preachers of penitence in the Middle Ages were familiar with the suggestive power of words. Their word-pictures of hell could transport whole masses into a state of religious ecstasy. In our age the loudspeaker has assumed that task.

People are possessed with a motoric lust for talk. Many dogmas and political theories appeal to this motoric lust-pattern. They gratify a universal need for talk which abreacts vague fears rather than promoting a real understanding of their message. Crypto-Archaisms It is difficult to free our thinking from hidden archaisms. After the first world war, many crypto-archaisms came again to the fore. There was a preference for the emotional and the ecstatic, the elementary and the chaotic. In the field of art, futurism and dadaism were the fads of the day. This rebellion against civilized refinements was rationalized with theoretical explanations of the respect for the primitive. Jazz was existence of its own. The child begins to grasp that the word is a creation of human intelligence. The more keenly he senses that the word belongs to him, the more the child is able to free himself of his inner fixation to the rest of the physical world. As we have already seen, identification with and feeling for someone are the incipient processes of reality contact. Without these "human" qualities, deeper communication between beings is impossible. However, by naming things, the child partially frees himself of this process of identification and acquires the notion of a real world distinct from the "I". The monosyllabic nominative thinking of the child is the beginning of his capacity for confronting reality. Word and Intonation Our word is a manifold being. Every word evokes visual images from our unconscious. We first thought in pictures, later in words. In dreams we revert largely to the world of pictures. The pronunciation of words as such changes their meaning. Every word has its significance but at the same time its unconscious background. Words are expression, but also disguise. They are a living act with peripheral scenes and hidden motives. Sound-Languages Sound and rhythm often have a more important function than the specific meaning of the word. Eros especially colors ordinary words and makes them deep and significant. Would it even be possible to write the semantics of the half-words and sounds that people in love use as a means of conversation? The murmuring and small names between mother and baby mean words of love indescribable in stark definitions. There are languages which rely more than others on undefined emotional sounds. German words often have more sound than real meaning. Appealing more to mass and sentiment than reason, they keep the words caught in ambivalence, suspended between emotion and intellect. It was a strange experience to hear the vocal disguise of Goebbels propaganda thrown over one during the Nazi-occupation. Word-Magic Words may become magic symbols, condensations of meanings endowed with special power. This is seen especially in the rapt, repetitious phrases of the child. The expression of the word signifies the attainment of power over the indicated object. Words themselves become powerful. During the evolutionary phase of a word especially, during its period of detachment from an object, the value of the word and its power become especially great. The words become bold flashes of lightning with which one can banish, beat or praise. How many snobs there are, whose loaded words tyrannized their surroundingsl With a master-word, one can conquer masses.

The magical quality of the word is greater than most of, us realize. I low many of us "touch wood" when we express a certain word? We fear that the word with its magic background attracts danger. This superstitious influence is especially pronounced in vague, undefined words. Their contact with the unconscious is closer and they therefore exercise more power. To move the masses one has to make use of such vague terms whose real significance defies definition. The therapist uses the magic influence of the word when asking the patient to express freely his feelings. The verbalization of vague feelings is of great cathartic value. The Power of Talk Endless talk my conquer fear. One fears silence. Those who least understand the world in which they live are its most talkative citizens. Propaganda tries to achieve its aim through endless repetition and the constant dinning in of words. The masses like mythical words and the sledgehammer blows of windy speeches. Clear expression becomes heresy. The word that evokes the most bizarre associations becomes the most beloved. Everyone projects his own unfulfilled wishes upon it. The preachers of penitence in the Middle Ages were familiar with the suggestive power of words. Their word-pictures of hell could transport whole masses into a state of religious ecstasy. In our age the loudspeaker has assumed that task.

People are possessed with a motoric lust for talk. Many dogmas and political theories appeal to this motoric lust-pattern. They gratify a universal need for talk which abreacts vague fears rather than promoting a real understanding of their message. Crypto-Archaisms It is difficult to free our thinking from hidden archaisms. After the first world war, many crypto-archaisms came again to the fore. There was a preference for the emotional and the ecstatic, the elementary and the chaotic. In the field of art, futurism and dadaism were the fads of the day. This rebellion against civilized refinements was rationalized with theoretical explanations of the respect for the primitive. Jazz was preferred to more traditional musical forms, expressionism replaced naturalism. One could also find these crypto-archaisms in the lability and suggestibility of human opinions. Year after year new dogmas were presented to an eager audience. The extreme was defended. Romantic attitudes toward crime and gangsterism developed and the criminal was idealized. The intelligentsia, especially, provided fertile ground for this peculiar fluctuating thinking. They did not know what to confess or what to believe and bent to each passing wind. In central Europe the adoration of the people's mentality (das Volkische) was a triumph of archaic thinking. In retrospect, such crystal-clear dogmas and proven theories are later seen to belong to a certain period. Even for the man of science, the more objective he considers himself, the less aware he is of the subjective premises of his knowledge. SECTION SIX

Causal and Final Thinking The causally-oriented theoretician tries to reduce reality to generally valid rules. The smaller probability becomes absorbed into a larger probability. He is not taken up with the accidental constellation of reality, but only with the manifest causal chain. Causes and consequences were at work in the world, even when they remained unobserved by the thinking individual. It is impossible for us to view something outside these causal relations. We are confronted everywhere with the outcomes of causes. Causality dissects the continuum of reality into a series of sections. It responds to the human preference for regularity, for interrelated and dependent facts, for continual and gradual development. It does so, even where reality does not correspond. Final thinking, however, tries to discover the sense and significance of historical events. Every historical event is an accidental "cross-section" of continuity. The individual conceives of the "accidental happening", the "unique event" (Einmaligkeit) only as a phase of historical, purposeful reality. Indeed, creative thinking tries to free itself of archaic automatisms and aims at planning before acting. This tendency to plan, to develop a thought-program, is projected by man onto external affairs. For him there is no accident. Historical events are symbolic meeting-places of the historical process and the historical cause. Reality never changes suddenly; the foundations for these changes are laid underground and come to the fore as historical facts. From the causal point of view, occurrences are living proof of prevailing laws. From the final point of view, the concrete event is an incidental happening in the service of a greater aim. Both forms of thinking aim to create eternal continuity out of the chaotic present. Laws of Thinking Thanks to the influence of Aristotle, philosophy is burdened with formal laws of thinking. Aristotle's postulate of the identity of thinking is an incorrect one. Even philosophers in their discussions don't think in the same way. Their education, training, social environment and other factors combine to determine their way of thinking. Acquaintance with other systems of thought invalidates Aristotelian logic. The Brahman philosophy, for instance, preaches that human sorrow begins with thinking, that thinking is revolt against the Gods and bans us from the truth. Aristotle's principle, nevertheless, provided the thinkers of twenty centuries with a meeting ground and formalized laws of thought. Other civilizations demonstrate that common modes of thinking are the product of a culture.

The imperialistic European thinker, of course, considered other systems of thought as primitive and less refined. Participating thinking, magic thinking were attributed only to natives. Gradually, however, the realization grew that our forms of thinking were permeated with these forms of thought. The idealistic German system, for instance, surrendered without protest to the participating Nazi philosophy

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Western and Eastern Thinking Western thinking is restless. The Western spirit is impelled toward activity. The Eastern thinker does not think with the same motility. He enjoys a static state, rest and contemplation. He is more open to inner visions than to illusions of the senses based on external stimuli. Western thinking is geared toward the broadening of its views of the world. Eastern thinking does not search for disparate point of views. It does not define but creates inner worlds. Western civilization makes use of confronting thinking. Its logicloving mentality places itself in opposition to rather than in the midst of reality. It belongs essentially to an individuating civilization. The Aristotelian logic belongs to him who, in his loneliness, touches the world with critical antennae. This touching has an element of danger, since it may alter reality. There is always a destructive element in restless touching and tasting of the world. Nervous, obsessional thinking and verifying continually destroys part of its own world-picture. Once the individualistic man conforms to the logical laws of thinking, all other forms of thinking become illogical or primitive to him. He praises only what is adequate in terms of his own system. Logic, however, also embraces a series of rules which are made use of as long as they prove adequate. Who can tell what other means of gaining consciousness remain unexplored (metaphysical, parapsychological) as a result of the dictatorship of Aristotelian thinking? The clinician knows that the exploration of the apparently chaotic unconscious yields a treasure of knowledge about man and universe. European logic, however, nearly always fails in actual life. It is difficult to convince people in a logical way; they are eager to convict and mistrust logic. They justify their actions in terms rooted in unconscious wishes and drives. Logic remains only one means for cataloging reality. Types of Consciousness Psychology has tried to classify the ways of gaining consciousness of oneself and the world. The roads toward reality are manifold. The typical separation is dependent on the means chosen toward gaining consciousness of the world. Jung (10) and Van der Hoop (21) distinguish intuitive types, feeling types and thinking types. Although any such classification is rather artificial, it offers insight into the varied character structures of man, and his reasons for choosing a particular road toward reality. Male and Female Thinking Let us take an example of different approaches to reality. In reality there is no pure distinction between masculine and feminine thinking; both forms exist in everyone in varying degree. Man is more of a specialist, concerned with specific aspects of the universe. He is one-sided, and stronger because of this one-sidedness. Woman is more of a generalizer. Her functions demand familiarity with many things that man treats with disdain. She must know a little of a great many things while the man seeks to know a great deal about few. Ancient science went through a generalizing feminine approach.



Modern science has passed through a male stage of research, namely a a specialistic stage. Until a few decades ago only the male was permitted to study science. That is why modern science bears the aspect d male aggressive power. Those who restrict themselves to highly specialized knowledge have the opportunity to attain power. This power is part of the Western ideal.

Male thinking is one-sided and split thinking. Particularly pronounced in the male is the split between thinking and feeling to the extent that he is unable to relate the two. In the future, science must become more conscious of the new need for generalized integrated knowledge. It will have to become more female in character. Female thinking is more realistic; it is imbued with more sense and feeling for practical adjustment.

The woman with deep and clear intellect,' who yearns for creative expression in science, remains, however, burdened throughout her life with the care of her children and family. After maturing considerably, she becomes aware that she has gathered through her multifarious experiences wisdom not learned and abstract, but real and warm and full of life. Anatomical Thinking The sharp, dissecting thinking, which destroys feelings, is unaware of moral value judgments. It makes no distinction between good and evil.

Anatomical thinking-due to its lust for pure dissection-is heartless. It is aware only of objective morphological relations, not of human beings. It is incapable of penetrating the mysteries of man. It lacks the capacity for identification and intuition. It cannot identify with the world into which it probes. It cannot rid itself of the idol of mirrorlike objectivity. Complete knowing is impossible, however, without loving. Anatomical thinking became a means of gaining power. He who could handle it well could subject the world and his fellow beings. This is the main reason for the worship of cold, intellectual thinking and critical dissection.

Such thinking, however, may cause neurosis and unhappiness in its students. It creates a bulwark of intellect against feeling and emotion. Such people no longer live, but only read and think about life. The world is reduced to a cold and loveless existence, a formula without inner sense. Biological Roots of Thinking All thinking has biological roots. Thinking requires certain foods and fluids for growth, a special diet and special physical exercise. Certain rites and rhythms alter thinking. The gastronomist thinks in another way than the aesthete who tries to purify his thought by fasting. We witness the arousal of self-awareness in those who are successful erotic partners and its disappearance among those whose sexual pride was hurt. Woman nearly always places her thinking in the service of an erotic aim. Male thinking derives more satisfaction from maintaining a logical equilibrium.

All ideas demand a vital basis. They get lost in a vacuum without it. Shallow Modes of Thought Many thinkers live among big and idle thoughts and words, borrowed from books, rather than derived from experience. Unaware of life's reality, they think in the same way in which the child plays with colorful soap-bubbles, watching the brilliance and color of the bubble until it bursts. It is the infantile philosopher in us who is seduced by weighty thoughts and impressive plans. But we use this play as training for the realities of life. We learn to select from superfluous wisdom. In practical life we are able to distinguish other forms of thinking, dependent on the special adjustment of the individual. We distinguish dogmatic thinking, wishful thinking, labeling thinking, juridical thinking, political thinking, modish thinking. All these speak for themselves. Labeling Thinking Only two forms of thinking, dangerous to everyday practice, are mentioned here. Labeling thinking is that which attaches labels to all thinking human beings. If one once belonged to a certain school, class, or race one's opinions and language are forever regarded as part of this school, class, or race. Once labeled, the label can never be lost. Forever, we have to belong to a certain rubric. What lives behind the label doesn't matter. Juridical Thinking Juridical thinking is another rigid form of interpreting life and its habits. Because men require rules and laws for the limitation of each other's instincts, the man of law seeks to reduce all spontaneous life to similar rules and laws. He thinks in a codified world and views people as its codified inhabitants. It was this form of anti-psychological thinking which ruled international relations between the two world wars. The United Nations are still in danger of viewing peace as a purely codified Valhallah. SECTION SEVEN Normal Delusions Francis Bacon (2) in his Novum Organum was the first to view delusions of the spirit and errors of thinking from a psychological standpoint. He rejected all rigid philosophical abstractions. Because of its rigidity theory can become the wrong object of thinking rather than reality. Bacon reproached his predecessors for living too much in theory and not enough in reality. Our thoughts are representatives of ourselves, rather than of reality. Theory aims at subjecting reality to its own dictatorship. Human intellect is no pure instrument of research but is bound to influences of feeling and will; what man would like to see as true, he believes as true. Hence, Bacon advises us to approach with suspicion all that which the spirit accepts greedily. Fantasy is the greatest enemy of the intellect. This conceit of thought Bacon refers to as general delusion, the "idola generis". He calls special delusion, "idola specus", that type of human thought which is colored by man's special characteristics, by his temperament, his mood, his yearning. Language, the unstable vehicle of thought, also leads to delusion and error. Don't the phrases and definitions of philosophers serve to disguise their nude irresolution? Bacon calls this delusion of words and labels "idola theatri". Catchword and label accomplish their greatest triumph in establishing a mass-delusion. The famous English statesman and philosopher was referring especially to the dogmas and theatrical parading of philosophers which only served to justify the creations of their own imagination. They were thought-plays detached from reality and representative only of the mind of their conceited creator. A person's cherished dogmas reveal his personality. The manifold systems of philosophers describe more adequately the philosophers themselves than the world of realities, according to Bacon. Can we add anything better to this concept of delusion and conceit? Bacon's ideas are as valid today as they were three centuries ago. Seductive Stupidity When intellect can no longer contribute to the knowledge of the world, when our spirit is no longer potent enough to struggle with the facts of the day, we take recourse to the stupidity and "innocence of childhood". We experienced this regressive behavior and escape from consciousness most pointedly during the years of occupation and terror, and understood it as a natural defense against pain and sorrow. But there is another more seductive way of flirting with superficiality and playing with stupidity. There is a yearning to return to the land of morons. We are relaxed and gay when we hear the radio voices carry us back to a realm which does not require our brain. Gradually we become more and more infected with silliness and escapism. Why should we think? Why should we fight to understand this world? Why not remain in comfortable stupidity? Superfluous Thinking Thinking often has a firmer grasp on some of us than we expect. Thoughts often remain rooted in our mind; we are possessed with a problem and we cannot escape its answer and the consequent presentation of newly aroused problems. We would prefer to idle away and yet a cogitating fury lives in us. We destroy things by thinking and destroy ourselves with it in the delusion that only thinking solves our problems. The self-temptation of superfluous thought and the restless overestimation of our own brain makes us suspicious. This is reminiscent of the baby's strategy. The repetition of the same gruesome tale helps him to conquer his vague, bigger fear. Similarly the adult tries to free himself from "the great fear of being in the world" by compulsively torturing his own brain. Obsessional Thinking This form of obsessional thinking exercises a narcotic influence. Gradually unconscious drives take possession of our thought. Thoughts arise which cannot be mastered. They are feared and alien to us, yet we cannot rid ourselves of them. They are absurd yet they possess us. There is a tragic relation between cogitating, ruminating and meditating. Vague thoughts may become rooted in our mind as symbols of suppressed unconscious drives. The Autonomy of Ideas Every thought as such has a growth-potential. It can expand to an allembracing image that suppresses all other ideas. He who creates ideas may become possessed by them. The idea may become detached from him, subdue all other ideas and precipitate unwilled actions. In reality every new thought leaves its creator and lives its own life. It may stimulate the imagination of other people. Dostoiewski describes Raskolnikov as one who was dragged away by one pure idea. Fascinated by an isolated thought the hero justifies the crime in the service of his lust for power. It is as if in every idea some mystic archaic powers remained alive. With one simple idea, with one catchword, one can sow poison and hate as well as blessings for many people. Think, for instance, of the treatment by Coue, who tried to heal neurotics by the monotonous repetition of one simple idea and image. All these phenomena can occur because thinking is a biological function, comparable to other motor and sensory functions. Every thought is an unconscious action. The Delusion of Certainty Only the reflexive animal is instinctively certain. Man is and remains unsteady in his thinking. His world is neither ready, nor fixed, nor limited, but must grow. From one uncertainty he must move on to others. The nineteenth century was too much preoccupied with constant norms and evaluations and too insensitive to the dynamics of its own system of thought. He who firmly asserts his certainty is often surpressing his doubt and evading the vacuum of his ignorance. Every delusion is endowed with the same inner certainty we find in primitive thinking. It does not create problems. Delusion is a regression, a theatrical disguise of inner impotence. This process does not refer to pathology only. It occurs in everyday thinking. The scientists of the last century were possessed by the delusion of hasty declaration and explanation. Many theories preceded the facts. Many scientists wrote off as understandable and transparent that which remained secret and obscure. By atomization of the infinite they tried to profane unsolved mysteries. Thinking is the equalization of chaos, the reduction of single accidental occurrences to generalized happenings. Every theoretical reduction, however, omits the secret of the unique historical accident, the mystery of the individual event. Man overestimates his instinctual certainties. Thinking extinguishes the certainty of innate knowledge. Recall the story of the thousandfooted insect who was interrogated by the cunning fox. From the day he was asked which foot he set in motion first, he could no longer walk; he was paralyzed by the new problem. Instinctual certainties disappear as soon as they reach the domain of reflection and thought. Feeling alone can give certainty. Thinking and reflection create doubt. That is why art provides straighter insight into truth than philosophy.

It is the tragedy of man that thought has brought him to new uncertainties. He has partaken of the tree of knowledge and is expelled from the paradise of instinctual life. This does not mean, however, that his thinking is always striving toward reason and logic. Rationalism and irrationalism, mature and archaic thinking develop side by side. Proverbial and Patterned Thinking

Most thinking processes take place outside our consciousness. It is thinking in usual patterns. These patterns are lifted from popular wisdom, proverbs and the manifold crystallizations of collective knowledge. The proverb, above all, is suggestive of a philosophy of acquiescence. Collective knowledge continuously builds and stimulates our individual thinking. In all our arguments we must fight against inadmissible generalizations. Popular psychology embraces those generalizations. Mass knowledge is inert. The patterning of thought is enhanced by the industrialization and standardization of life. Our brain is a maze of fixed patterns, slogans and cliches. It has become a bad camera for recording reality.

Through continuous facing of reality man must conquer it gradually. In youth he learns to see reality through special colored glasses, in special patterns. Gradually, however, he must change those patterns and relate them to reality. It is as if through the gro