When Individualism Becomes Neurotic

January 1982
Lakeland

Surely he jests! Perhaps that occurred to you when my title suggests that unshackled individualism could be anything other than the apex of a human mind that is searching, logical, free of the coercions of creed or culture.

We shared Channing’s enduring words on the Free Mind as we have on many occasions, and have been shared countless times by Unitarian Universalists gathered for worship. I know of no other brief passage which so broadly and so deeply expresses the need for, and power of, the inquiring spirit. How could such a spirit of search and independence of spirit become neurotic?

It is the opposite of the spirit of the free mind which squelches human reach and the blossoming of the human spirit. A writer, Dorothy Lee, in FREEDOM AND CULTURE, writes of her experience visiting her child’s seventh grade classroom on a Parent’s Open Night, “I went first of all to my son’s room, the seventh grade. The teacher showed me a mural, covering all the walls, depicting the life of the ancient Egyptians. It was a group project, and the teacher pointed out the part for which my son was responsible. The painting depicted a war scene: some pinkish, sleek, placid, fat, lifeless horses. These were nothing like the horses I had seen my son draw at previous times – skinny, elongated beasts, full of straining movement and savage life. I protested that these lifeless horses could not be my son’s doing. The teacher explained that my son had not been allowed to paint his own unique horses; they were too different. Since this was a group project, uniformity was essential, so the children had all copied illustrations from a history textbook. As I turned away, appalled and only half-convinced, I spotted the tiny figure of a bird, of no known genus, scraggy, leering, menacing, and I knew that my son’s uniqueness had not been entirely mown down in the drive for uniformity; it had burst through, however irrelevantly and illicitly. It reminded me of the mushrooms which push up a cement pavement, cracking and disrupting the even surface. I was happy to see it.”

Emerson too would have been appalled at the teacher’s imposition of uniformity. Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps more than any other, imprinted on many of us the need and glory of the free mind in his most well-known essay, “Self Reliance.” His enduring influence has drawn many persons to our religion because in Unitarian Universalist settings, his superb expression of independence of mind resonates among us without apology, without deference to outworn creeds or institutions. In “Self Reliance” almost every sentence is a familiar quotation.

He begins the essay quoting Beaumont and Fletcher:

“Man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts, our angels are for good or ill. Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Then some of the superb sentences:

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts.”

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

“Your goodness must have some edge to it – else it is none.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after one’s own; but the great man is he, who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

In April, Emerson will have been dead 100 years, but his influence persists. I hope to do at least two presentations of his life and thought.

Emerson’s thought has reflected, like light through a prism, in many ways.

Freud, that pioneer in understanding our strange emotions and mental stresses, wrote, “Man must educate himself to face reality and to do so he must overcome the infantile fixation of being a child in his father’s house. We must grow up and think for ourselves.” (Quoted by Spinks in PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION, p. 89).

There have been many departures, refinements, and different therapies since Freud’s revolutionary insights and methods. But few, if any, would challenge the sentence, “We must grow up and think for ourselves,” variously termed self-actualization, self-realization, self-fulfillment, I’m OK, You’re OK, and on and on.

But can the free mind, the self-reliant person, the self-actualized one become neurotic? At first glance, this seems absurd. Is there anything more valuable, clearly logical, and good for the individual and society than the Free Mind, the uninhibited inquiring spirit?

Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.” Or, can there be light without shadow? There is a philosophy called Solipsism which asserts that we have no contact with the world outside of self except through the ideas in our minds. Therefore, the only reality exists in my mind, my neighbor’s and their ideas are not real – only my perceptions of them, my ideas are real. Each person is shut up to himself, herself, alone. [CJW note: subjective idealism]

Now, while I do not entirely grasp this philosophy let alone hold to it, it does point to a state where free individualism can become neurotic.

Anticipating a question, I ought to state what I mean by neurotic, as it seems that there is some disagreement in the mental health profession as to the meaning of neurotic. Neurosis seems to involve only part of the personality [CJW note: as contrasted with psychosis] and will exhibit certain behaviors in response to a situation – phobias, depression, obsessive or compulsive acts, or a rigidity of reaction.

The late Karen Horney, an analyst, provides the context for today when she wrote (THE NEUROTIC PERSONALITY OF OUR TIME), “By rigidity in reactions I mean a lack of flexibility which enables us to react differently to different situations.”

I believe that the free individual can have a neurotic reaction when he/she is so convinced of the truth he/she hold that in effect he/she becomes a fortress self, seeking no wisdom beyond the boundaries of present convictions; persuaded that there is no light which could alter a fixed focus; no situation which could call for the admission, “well, I guess I don’t know it all.”

There was a folk-song (Anna Russell, do not have the tune available) which parodied some psychiatric methods. The song went like this:

“At three I had a feeling of
ambivalence toward my brothers,
and so it follows naturally
I poisoned all my lovers.
But now I’m happy; I have learned
the lesson this has taught;
that everything I do that’s wrong
is someone else’s fault.”

The basic reality this parody illustrates (for me) is that the free mind – the autonomous individual – must also be the responsible self.

Ernest Becker wrote, “No one is strong enough to support himself alone.”

I cited Emerson as a prime example of the free individual, the independent and comprehensive mind. Jefferson also comes to mind as a hero of this stamp. Yet Emerson was dependent on the thousands who bought his books and attended his lectures. Jefferson, whom I admire more than almost any other American, depended on slave labor to build Monticello and maintain his plantations, and depended on the good-will or bad judgment of his creditors, for he was heavily in debt most of his life and died bankrupt.

This inter-dependence of all of us is much more than economic. We depend on each other for almost every good experience. Do we not value the experience of happiness? Rarely is happiness experienced in isolation. Someone wrote (?) “Man’s greatest happiness is experienced in those moments when his perception of himself as a separate individuality is at its lowest. All happiness is a little death, in which the individual abandons for the moments of its duration the conglomeration of desires, sentiments, and ambitions which go to make up his personality.” [Editor’s note: it is from Erich Fromm].

I read to you the fable from the preface of Philip Slater’s book THE PURSUIT OF LONELINESS describing the loneliness of the self-centered man. This book can be strongly recommended (published some years ago).

Slater suggested that in our American emphasis on “free enterprise” (incidentally a condition which does not exist, if it ever did), the Horatio Alger theme that anyone can go from rags to riches with pluck and luck, can frustrate three deeply imbedded human desires:

1)The desire for community – the wish to live in trust, and cooperation with one’s fellows in a total and visible collective entity.
2)The desire for engagement – the wish to come directly to grips with social and interpersonal problems and to confront on equal terms an environment which is not composed of ego extensions.
3)The desire for dependence – the wish to share responsibility for the control of one’s impulses and the direction of one’s life.

The writer D. H. Lawrence put these ideas of social theory more plainly when he wrote (quoted by Van Wyck Brooks, FLOWERING OF NEW ENGLAND, p. 528):

“Men are free when they are in a living homeland – not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep inward voice of religious belief from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized, purpose.”

Lawrence eloquently summarized the ideal of human fulfillment – autonomy and dependence. One without the other is neurotic – that is rigid.

Nothing I have said dilutes my belief in the free inquiring mind and the right and necessity to march to a different drummer. Even then, there is dependence – a drummer as well as a marcher.

There is still the necessity, for some of us, at least, to remember what Stefan Zweig, the biographer of Erasmus, said of that striking Renaissance non-conformist (p. 17): “He refused to pay homage to an opinion he considered erroneous. He refused to champion a dogma that was alien to his mind.”

Truth marches on, is refined, tempered by new discoveries, enlightened by fresh perspectives on the human condition. As Chas. Francis Potter wrote (CLF Nov. 1981),

“The story of religion has not yet been told. When we chronicle all the evidence in the history of religion, even to the present hour, we have not told the story of religion, for that story is still in the making. Only the first chapter has been written.”

Whether from unyielding skepticism or from blind faith, the ... the story of religion has been fully told, that rigidity can be a formal obstacle, a neurotic wall to new ventures to understanding one’s self and one’s relationship to persons, situations, and new experience.

Addendum:

The Program Committee’s theme in this month, the first of the New Year 1982, is health of body and mind.

The Janus god of the Romans had two faces – looking back, looking forward. If we look back in anger or unwarranted guild we will blur the vision of a forward look. If we look forward with a cynical vision, all that we see will be wrongly lighted.

Accepting the past, even though its brand upon (us) is deep; keeping the future open, even though many options may be limited, these are wise attitudes for any of us.

But backward looks and future anticipations are secondary to the Now – the immediacy of the Now – the present moment can be our only direct experience. Past lessons and future hope are the stage setting for life’s drama where we play our roles in the NOW.

[Editor’s note:

In recent sermons, say since about 1980, Rev. Westman began to add “and women” whenever a reference is made to “men,” even when “men” clearly refers to mankind in a universal sense. When it is his own words, the present editor is including this addition. However, he also made such insertions in quotations. In this sermon, for example, he inserted “and women” after “men” three times in the D. H. Lawrence quote. It is the opinion of the present editor that such inclusiveness, while laudatory as an attitude, is inappropriate when quoting a person if a false impression is given about the words said by the person being quoted. As a result, such insertions will not be included in these transcriptions when the insertion is in a quote.]