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One of the perennial questions in Shakespeare studies concerns what Coleridge called the >motiveless malignity< of Iago. Instead of looking at Iago as an individual, however, I will argue that he is best understood as a representation of the >social character< of early modern bourgeois man. Iago’s denial of spiritual values and his mercenary nature can be understood in this light. Fromm’s theses concerning the interconnections among anal libido, the death instinct, malignant aggression, and necrophilia all find support in Shake-speare’s supreme villain.
This paper presents the text of an imagined oration from a senior faculty member to a newly hired faculty member on the topic of how to stay sane in the academy. It begins by characterizing the basic problem at the heart of the university: students are not learning as much as they should and professors are not teaching them in a way that ensures they do. The problem is one of dysfunction and denial. The university is not able to effectively perform its main function and the involved stakeholders pretend everything is fine. Seen in the light of Fromm’s (1955) criteria of mental health, many aspects of modern university life are quite >insane<. I discuss three specific things to avoid that will protect the faculty member’s sanity: avoid the >unstated compact< between faculty and students, avoid the prospect of a promotion to the administration, and avoid the lure of popularity and politics. I then discuss three affirmative steps to enhance faculty mental health: consider first things, honor the call of truth in the world and your discipline, and regularly recall the deeper purpose of the university. The paper concludes with a candid analysis of why the professoriate’s public prestige has precipitously fallen over the past 40 years. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
If psychoanalysis is to avoid total marginalization, something has to be changed in the way future generations are prepared for working with patients and doing research. Reformation of psychoanalytic education may easily be the crucial issue when it comes to the survival of psychoanalysis. Its current organizational scheme has been criticized for various reasons, and various models of its structure have been proposed. I advocate a model that would combine the best features of the university education (training in clinical skills together with philosophy of science and research methodology) with personal analysis as part of psychoanalytic institutes. Although universities can remedy some of the problems of psychoanalytic institutions, they cannot contain the subjective experience of being analyzed.
Erich Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom< (1941) charts the growth and decline of freedom and selfawareness in the West from the Middle Ages to modern times, when people sought refuge from insecurity and responsibility in totalitarian movements, such as Nazism and Fascism. In contrast to the thesis that >Escape from Freedom< is evidence of >The Americanization of a European Intellectual,< Fromm wrote it because freedom, or the lack of it, was an acute problem in Nazi Germany, not America. His language and concepts were formed and fused during the crucial ideological and intellectual struggles of a specific, wretched moment in German history, the rise and triumph of Nazism; hence, he waged a Kulturkampf against Nazi barbarism to save Western humanist civilization.
I describe my collaboration with Giovanni over the span of almost 15 years during which time we developed a multimotivational model that built on attachment theory and explored some of its clinical implications. I mention the many ways Giovanni influenced my thinking, and provide a few personal stories about Giovanni that give a sense of his generous, warm and creative nature. Throughout the article I describe how I developed some of the ideas we worked on together to provide a broad evolutionary and developmental outlook on human nature. We had planned to write a book together on this ambitious project, but personal circumstances got in the way.
This article describes a psychoanalyst's personal experience in an international and interdisciplinary social trauma research network. Crises and conflicts are understood as an integral feature of such a collaboration. Using the self-reflective capacity of the psychoanalyst may help to turn them into a new perspective. Crossing disciplinary borders, reconnecting to the field of academic research, might prove to be a rather rewarding step.
This text is intended as a contribution to the study of the profound mutual relations between architecture and psychoanalysis. Architecture creates representations that conceal unconscious forms of thought; psychoanalysis helps to explain the meanings of these representations – forms of construction and forms of the psyche. The multifaceted work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas – his thoughts on the relationships between psychoanalysis and architecture, on the vitality of objects, on the creative implications of the Oedipal relationship – serves as a critical and decisive instrument for the authors’ inquiry. The issue of the >vitality of objects< as described by Bollas also concerns – but only in part – the architectural >object.< One modern form of architecture with an inordinate capacity empathy has to be Louis Kahn’s. Kahn’s youngest son , Nathaniel, lost his father when he was still a child and hardly had a chance to get to know him. After becoming an adult and an established film-maker, he managed to recover his father in two ways: by discovering him in his works, with their powerful affective impact; and by drawing from those very works of his father to enhance his own creative process in his filmic art. As it turns out, it is this very process that has allowed for an emblematically positive resolution of the Oedipal relationship.
Paolo Gerbaudo’s book >The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest<, whose approach is reflected in his Crosscurrents piece in the issue of >Media, Culture & Society< at hand, is a response to these societal, political and academic challenges. This Cross Currents comment asks, I ask, the following: Why is it that right-wing authoritarian populism in recent times has become much more popular than left-wing movements? How do right-wing authoritarian movements communicate? Why is it that right-wing political communication strategies seem to garner and result in mass support? The critical theory of authoritarianism advanced by the Frankfurt School and related authors on fascism, Nazism, and the authoritarian personality help us to critically analyse the communication of authoritarianism. In this context, particularly the works by Franz Leopold Neumann, Erich Fromm, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and Willhelm Reich are relevant.
The postmodern university is experiencing a legitimation crisis because of a deepening and corrosive mistrust of all forms of authority; even those that are intended to benefit students by enabling them to >think critically<, or to deepen and improve their knowledge and skills. Some of the problem is rooted in prevailing cultural and economic trends, but others inhere in the nature of postmodernism itself; especially the postmodern claim that truth itself is non-existent or simply unattainable or unavailable, even at the best of times. Unlike earlier generations of critical theorists, who believed that >the truth shall make you free<, postmodern theorists, following Nietzsche, claim that the very idea of truth is moot, if not entirely obsolete. But absent a commitment to a search for truth, the entire structure of the university itself begins to crumble.
This paper combines historical and biographical work on the Frankfurt School of critical theorists with a sociological approach to intellectual creativity outlined in Michael Farrell’s provocative book Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work. Revisiting earlier research on the often unheralded role the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm played in the early years of the critical theory tradition, the paper reviews the theory of collaborative circles outlined by Farrell, applies this social science explanation of conflict and creativity to the Frankfurt School network of Horkheimer, Fromm, Adorno, Marcuse, Lowenthal etc. and suggests a new way of thinking about the history of this innovative and controversial group of social theorists and researchers. The paper concludes by suggesting revisions to the Farrell model of collaborative circles and compares and contrasts the strengths of the theory to the “scientific intellectual movements” approach outlined by Frickel and Gross.
Contemplating spiritual experience: Winnicott's potential space, Tibetan bardo, and liminality
(2018)
In this paper, ways of contemplating and accommodating the unfamiliar, especially the >other< of spiritual experience, are considered. Some concepts from psychoanalysis, such as Winnicott's >potential space< and his notion of >holding,< are helpful in comprehending spiritual experiences that can easily be misunderstood, or >flattened out< to use Bion's phrase. Interesting and rather remarkable confluences in these concepts from psychoanalysis and from Tibetan Buddhism (bardo) and cultural anthropology (liminality) are considered in their functions of both enabling and comprehending these extraordinary and often life-enhancing experiences.
This paper presents Fromm’s (1900–1980) ap-proach to religion and religiosity, in light of Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) thought. Despite differences in their thought, Cohen and Fromm share some things in common. Their critique of culture is based on a unique definition of das Individuum, the human condition. They demon-strate a cautious approach to modernity and progress.
We implemented research of >surveillance study for independence and Improvement in ADL of the fracture of the femur patient by a welfare device >by the Association for Technical Aids in 2000< and >Research investigation about the upper-limbs training combined with lift device development for Motivative exercise, Small and Medium Enterprise Corporation, 2001<. Through those study by the national grants, the 21st Century Rehabilitation Research Society was born again as the Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy (hereafter BRA). We explore the mechanism, spread the new rehabilitation method, and enable them to do by anyone who learned it. The purpose of the BRA is, i) to study a new rehabilitation method in order to live for the disabled elderly independently and the physical ability improved by overcoming impairment, ii) to explore the mechanism, to spread the new rehabilitation method, and to enable them to do by anyone who learned it, and iii) to study the influence on the social economy by independence acquirement for them. The source of biophilia which we used is preface of the Revolution of Hope which U.S. philosopher Erich Fromm wrote. The preface of a source is shown below: Appealing to the love for life (biophilia) that still exists in many of us. Only through full awareness of the danger to life can this potential be mobilized for action capable of bringing about drastic changes in our way of organizing society. Not that the author optimistic about the chances of success; but he believes that one cannot think in terms of percentages or probabilities as long as there is a real possibility even a slight one that life will prevail. The predecessor of BRA, the 21st Century Rehabilitation Research Society studied to confirm the fact as a medical fact that the 30% of bedridden elderly became a walk possible, as a result of performing Takizawa Method rehabilitation. Japanese have been promoted and allowed to live on the others' care and to be admitted to a hospital if one needed care due to a cerebrovascular disorder, fracture and/or else by their kindness. The Japanese pension system of the current disbursement approach seems to be a pyramid investment organization. If the newer members increase in number, the earlier members gain more money. The Baby boomers increased in the population of workers’ number and was a kind of the newer members for paying. If the public pension maintains the present system, it would be bankrupted by increasing old baby boomers who receive money in number and descendants as newer members decrease in number by the lower birthrate. The increase in care related people and in the medical expenses by aging (social security expenditure 2025 prediction 207 trillion yen/216 trillion-yen gross pay in whole Japan) would hit baby boomers directly, and it becomes impossible and to live peacefully in Japanese tenderness like the former lifestyle. Therefore, we consider that >the heart and will which he continues hope to live as human just when it becomes a disabled person< are important. The author titled our study group >biophilia< which represented it and got all the members’ approval. We introduced the studies of the Biophilia Rehabilitation Academy, which was evolved from this way in 2002.
In this article, I discuss in detail how Erich Fromm’s categories can help de-scribe Trump’s character, or >temperament,< a word used to characterize a major flaw in Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and his rule as President by the end of the first year. In >The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness< (1973), Fromm engages in a detailed analysis of the authoritarian character as sadistic, excessively narcissistic, malignantly aggressive, vengeably destructive, and necrophiliac, personality traits arguably applicable to Trump. In the following analysis, I will systematically deploy key Frommian socio-psychoanalytic categories to Trump and his followers to show how they can illuminate Trump and authoritarian populism.
This discussion explores and compares the explicit interpersonal method of psychoanalysis of Harry Stack Sullivan and the implicit and until now insufficiently recognized interpersonal method of Sigmund Freud. Interpersonal means interaction via expression of feelings, emotions, and actions, gestures of body and face, and words. The centrality of emotions as motives and movers or action suggests redefining psychic reality as emotional reality. While Freud did not have the word >interpersonal,< invented by Sullivan, he nevertheless acted as an interpersonal psychotherapist both in his prepsychoanalytic period and, thereafter, from his beginnings as a psychoanalyst in 1893. The other purpose of this paper is to promote a new era of collaboration and cross-fertilization between the IPA and other psychoanalytic authors and organizations.
Donald Trump and his followers who never waiver stand at 41.5% of the US population (Fivethirtyeight.com), the embodiment of a lust for power and fame and the minions who crave fulfillment through his arrogant and belligerent antics. Speaking from the mid-Twentieth century, Fromm offers a starting point for our discussion of the present day, centered on the social-psychological intersection where everyday people recreate the systems upon which they both depend, and which may very well destroy them.
Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian
Populism in the United States
(2018)
Posing the question of the possibility of transference at the moment of a decompensation, the author proposes rethinking the psychiatric concept of >unmotivated laughter< in light of psychoanalytic experience, taking a case study as a point of departure. In the present research, the intention is to understand the rule of laughter outside the conception of the joke (Witz), by tracing the trajectory of the conceptualization of laughter from Freudian to Lacanian psychoanalysis. This review is needed in order to understand an experience of interpretation of laughter at the time of a decompensation in the schizophrenia of an adolescent, in which (un)motivated laughter formed a symptom. >Jouissance-laughter< necessitates changing the psychiatric understanding of laughter in schizophrenia, where its motivation is not what is comical in the here-and-now. In this laughter, the humorous or comic response of the clinician becomes an interpretation. Published online: 18 Apr 2018.
In recent years, identity-based movements have increasingly been criticized by outsiders for espousing a >culture of outrage< both in terms of their academic expressions and activist mobilizations. In the present study, I examine this charge from within the struggle by advancing a self-reflexive socio-psychological investigation into certain emotional responses, attitudes, and practices that have, in significant ways, come to define this type of political agitation. Specifically, I focus my analysis on anti-racist feminism given my personal ties and investment in this movement. Following Wendy Brown, I investigate whether anti-racist feminism suffers from the Nietzschean affliction of ressentiment, and if so, what can be done to reorient the movement towards a more affirmative and humanist future. I address this latter objective through the work of Erich Fromm who I argue provides us with insights that are especially pertinent to our current problem, and which, when developed further with the aid of anti-racist interventions, can offer a fruitful means to moving forward.
This article takes the position that our contemporary overheated media environment lends itself to comfortable passivity, resulting in mental breakdown in the guise of the dark emotions: anxiety, melancholia and boredom. This is especially the case with the inevitable synergy of the upcoming technological transformations from genetic modification, virtual reality simulacra and artificial intelligence/robotics. After discussing the data from the World Health Organization regarding the stark increase of people across the globe suffering from depression and anxiety, this article weds the concepts of McLuhan’s hot-cool distinction with Fromm’s delineation of the productive character orientation. Following Fromm, this article argues that joy ensues from reason, productive labour and love–sorrow from ignorance, alienated work and indifference. When we willfully abrogate our responsibilities to self and other via non-participational mediated forms, we cede away our potential for growth and development. This leads to the emotional breakdowns of guilt, boredom, anxiety and melancholia. Viktor Frankl’s logo-therapeutic perspective is discussed as a counterbalance to the social effects wrought by our overheated technological environment. Frankl’s stress on phenomenological meaning as the cornerstone of existence provides a lens to understanding the affects of an over-reliance on technological gadgetry.
Business and economy use advertising to promote their products and to increase their profits. Political parties also try to win votes with the help of commercial propaganda. Every step of the way we are accompanied by advertising, our everyday life and our culture are shaped by it.This article asks how the permanent confrontation with advertising affects the recipients. What consequences does propaganda and manipulation have for people who are exposed to this constant influence? The phenomenon of the Homo oeconomicus is also examined in this context. The Homo economicus is primarily a person who consumes and subconsciously identifies with his or her consumption. He's addicted to consumption. Advertising determines the life of the Homo oeconomicus. The psychologist Erich Fromm already dealt with the phenomenon of exuberant materialism in his book >To have or to be< in the 20th century. This book in particular and his work in general are also presented in this article. Fromm propagated a >rational< consumption that focuses on the real needs of people. A separate chapter is dedicated to Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, a pioneer of public relations, whose work >Propaganda< – his famous book from 1928, which is still surprisingly current – is presented. Gewista is an Austrian advertising company. This company is in the focus of this article because we can find its out-of-home commercials also in places that were previously free of advertising. That's why the story of Gewista is told and its product range will be presented.Using the example of Gewista there will be asked for the self-image and the foreign attributions of advertising companies. These companies offer a service they describe themselves as a form of communication. Therefore, the article also analyzes whether advertising can really be seen as a topic of communication theories.
Identity theft
(2018)
Psychoanalysis has almost disappeared from the curricula of most American universities, which I illustrate by the case of the department of psychology at my own university, Harvard. Courses on psychoanalysis are very rare there and it is mostly seen as a part of history of psychology and not as a set of ideas that can be useful nowadays. Personality models developed by Freud or Melanie Klein, as well as many more contemporary psychoanalysts, are, however, still very relevant for the humanities. This is particularly the case for Shakespeare studies and I am trying to show that despite the fact that psychoanalysis can enrich this field, less and less students show interest in it or are willing to admit that they themselves may have unconscious reactions. I focus on the usefullness of the concept of projective identification and propose the thesis that is another name for the activities of theater, and indeed for theater itself.
Analytic therapy enables patients to relive and repair failures to promote their mentalization by parental figures. However, therapists also fail temporarily to provide the patients with a growth-promoting environment when their patterns of reflexivity on the patients’ experience are undermined. These temporary failures create new opportunities for therapists to access unformulated knowledge about their patients’ experiences and enrich their reflexivity on them, and for the patients to promote their ability to hold themselves in their own minds.
This paper examines how clinicians can arrive at effective therapeutic action by means other than spoken language. The paper presents a view that resonating affective states promote intimacy in the therapeutic encounter and is in fact a vital part of the curative process of psychotherapy. This emotional interchange supplements traditional notions of insight by adding an aspect of an >embodied self< who knows. A clinical case that demonstrates this view is presented and discussed.
Here, I attempt to formulate some thoughts about the past, present, and future of psychoanalysis and its institutions in Germany. To do this, I have employed my varied experience as a supervisor and consultant to many such psychoanalytic institutes over the past several years. Themes discussed include the history of psychoanalysis in postwar Germany, the organizational structure of German psychoanalytic institutes, and their cultures in regard to group and organizational dynamics, and political and economic aspects. Finally, I add brief thoughts about the future, taking into account recent developments relating to planned changes in laws governing psychotherapy in Germany. Further, I attempt to analyze and comment on: coming to terms with the past; how to begin after the >Zero Hour<; the form of organization of psychoanalytic institutes in Germany; missing patients and missing candidates; constructive debate and hurting people’s feelings; the lack of >detoxification< and >recycling< of the poisonous remains of psychoanalytic processes; and the future of psychoanalytic institutions in Germany. I end with an example of a typical primary task used in conducting large groups in the institutes in which I worked, and include an anonymized table listing individual interventions, their duration, and frequency. These should provide an idea of my way of working, and an overview of the dimensions of the task.
Love as a core value in veterinary and medical practice: Towards a humanimal clinical ethics?
(2018)
This article represents the outcome of a dialogue between a vet and a healthcare ethicist on the theme of >love< in professional life. We focus on four types or varieties of love (eros, agape, philia and storge) in relation to the professional care of humans and animals. We discuss the relevance of Fromm’s core elements of love (care, responsibility, respect and knowledge) and consider the implications of these for human and animal health care practice. We present and respond to five arguments that might be waged against embracing love as a professional value in veterinary and medical practice. We argue that a moderated love can and should be reclaimed as a contemporary professional value. It is most helpfully contextualised within virtue ethics or care ethics. We suggest that love is a rich starting point from which to launch an exploration of an interprofessional humanimal clinical ethics.
Love as an Active Choice
(2018)
Thanks to Nestor Haddaway, one cannot simply ask, >What is love?< without instinctually following it with the lyrics >Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more<, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it in this essay. However, now that I have posed the question – and gotten that song stuck in my head I’d like to ask the question in a better way: How does one love? The root of society’s widespread confusion on love is that it is not asking the right question. By asking how to love, one can then move on to ask more specific questions, particularly, how to maintain one’s individuality in love. I argue, with the help of Erich Fromm’s book >The Art of Loving< and Bell Hooks’ book >All About Love< that this image of a moving statue, >Man and Woman<, by Tamara Kvesitadze (Fig. 1) represents the answer to this question with its oscillation between the individuality and the connectedness needed for mature love. Contrary to the common conceptions that love is simple and out of one’s control, love is an active balance – a constant motion – between being together and yet separate.
Building on bell hooks’ conceptualization of love as a mode of political resistance, this article explores how prisoners’ radio employs love to combat injustice. Through an examination of two prisoners’ radio projects – The Prison Show in Texas and Restorative Radio in Kentucky – I argue that incarcerated people and their loved ones appropriate the radio to perform public and revolutionary acts of love, countering the oppressive forces of mass incarceration in the United States. By unapologetically positioning their love for prisoners front and center, ordinary Americans subvert systems of oppression which mark incarcerated folks as incapable and unworthy of love. Love is an intrinsic marker of humanity, so prisoners’ radio allows the incarcerated and their advocates on the outside to actively challenge the dehumanization that people face behind bars.
I examined a better therapeutic approach for addressing the heart-rending emotional state of a client exposed to serious traumatic experiences during early childhood without experiencing affect attunement from surrounding adults. The clinical case describes a woman in her early 20s who had lost her memory of past sexual abuse by her father. She visited an on-campus student counseling room complaining of feeling she was >not herself.< This paper focuses on intersubjective exchanges involving moments when her traumatic experiences were about to be revived during weekly face-to-face psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I took note of the joint attention that developed between us concerning my attunement with her painful emotional experiences. We eventually shared subjective affective states fostered within a safe mental space. Using this as a starting point, we traced the process by which she came to accept the painful memories and associated experiences surrounding the heart-wrenching affect that she had had no choice but to >shroud in darkness,< as well as accepting her feelings of reality. I made use of knowledge from infant research shedding light on how two people can instantly mutually influence their actions and behaviors, and explored, in great detail, what sort of implicit relatedness had developed between us.
One of major challenges facing contemporary psychiatry is the insufficient grasp of relationship between individual and collective mental pathologies. A long tradition of diagnosing >mental illness< of society – exemplified by Erich Fromm – stands apart from approach of contemporary social psychiatry and is not perceived as relevant for psychiatric discourse. In this Perspective article, I argue that it is possible to uphold the idea of a supra-individual dimension to mental health, while avoiding the obvious pitfalls involved in categorical diagnosing of society as suffering from mental illness. I argue for an extended notion of public mental ill-health, which goes beyond the quantitative understanding of mental health as an aggregate of individual diseased minds captured in statistics, and which can be conceived as a dynamic, emergent property resulting from interactions of individual brains/minds in social space. Such a notion, in turn, presents a challenge of how to account for the interfacing between individual minds/brains and the collective mental phenomena. A suitable theoretical framework is provided by the notion of epidemiology of representations, originally formulated by cognitive anthropologist Dan Sperber. Within this framework, it is possible to highlight the role of public (material) representations in inter-individual transfer of mental representations and mental states. It is a suitable conceptual platform to explain how the troubling experiences with causal or mediating role on mental health, to a significant degree arise through a person’s direct interaction with material representations and participation in collective mental states, again generated by material representations.
This paper applies the theoretical framework of Fromm’s humanistic psychology to examine the reported content of North Korean defectors’ dreams during sleep and considers what the psychological data suggests about the defectors’ past social experience in authoritarian North Korea and their present social situation as adults learning to adjust to a new life in neo-liberal South Korea.
Patients contribute to analytic endeavors through a knowledge of their own unique ways of organizing their experience, of building an intersubjective space with significant others, of the type of life that they consider worth living, and primarily of their specific passions and yearnings. The more that therapists allow the patients’ unique self-knowledge to influence their therapeutic perceptions and decisions, the further they will advance patients’ status as co-experts working together with the therapist to create and formulate new, richer knowledge. In the present article, it is suggested that one of the main reasons why patients’ self-knowledge is excluded from the therapeutic dialogue is that the persuasive power of the therapists’ rich and deep knowledge challenges the patients’ self-authority. Through an illustrative vignette, therapists are recommended to use a metacommunication intervention to restore the balance that has been undermined between the therapist’s authority and the patient’s self-authority.
Modern society is marked with utmost ambivalence. There is the utmost desire to be free, creative, and productive. Yet, our creative and productive desires trap us and now control our own freedom to become. Couple this inconsistency with the rapid sociostructural changes, fragmentation of traditions, and dissolution of communal well-being, what we have is a life of uncertainty. It is a life debased from its very ontological foundation with the transmission of technorationalities of the capitalist industry. In modernity, we could no longer speak of individuality and subjectivity since the very historical thread that serve as its foundation is now wavered towards accumulation and possession of the capital. Moreover, this overleaning towards the capital deadens us unconsciously that we mistake this for reality. The market ideology with all its rationalizations reifies human consciousness to the extent that we consider the technorationalities as the ontological normative structure. As a result, there is a growing dislocation of subjectivity which leads to neurotic social behaviors and inner social contradictions. As a result, we have our own social discontents. It is then the aim of this paper to ponder on the psychosocial effects of the market economy. I argue that there is a need to look at the effects of this economic system that perpetually delineate subjective experiences and plunge humanity into incontrovertible pseudo images. It is at this point that Fromm’s radical psychosocial interpretation of society becomes binding. I argue with Fromm that our social libidinal drives or what he termed as social characterology, which we are all unconscious of, must be thoroughly brought to fore. I claim that this particular characterology result to the obstructions of a normal and healthy society.