Control about,
remembering Fritz...

    I would like to star out with very simple ideas which, as always, are difficult to grasp because they are so simple. I would like to start out with the question of control. 
    There are two kinds of control: One is the control that comes from outside ―I am being controlled by others, by orders, by the environment, and so on― and the other is the control that is built in, in every organism―my own nature.

    What is an organism? We call an organism any living being, any living being that has organs, has an organization, that is self-regulating within itself. An organism is not independent from its environment. Every organism needs an environment to exchange essential substances, and so on. We need the physical environment to exchange air, food, etc.; we need the social environment to exchange friendship, love, anger. But within the organism there is a system of unbelievable subtlety ―every cell of the millions of cells which we are, has built-in messages that it sends to the total organism, and the total organism then takes care of the needs of the cells and whatever must be done for different parts of the organism.

    Now what is first to be considered is that the organism always works as a whole. We have not a liver or a heart. We are liver and heart and brain and so on, and even this is wrong. We are not a ''summation'' of parts, but a ''coordination''―a very subtle coordination of all these different bits that go into the making of the organism. 

    The old philosophy always thought that the world consisted of the sum of particles. You know yourself it’s no true. We consist originally out of one cell. This cell differentiates into several cells, and they differentiate into other organs that have special functions which are diversified and yet needed for each other.

    So, we come to the definition of health. Health is an appropriate balance of the coordination of all what we are. You notice that I emphasized a few times the word ‘are’, because the very moment we say we have an organism or we have the body, we introduce a split ―as if there’s an I that is in possession of the body or the organism. We are a body, we are somebody― “I am somebody”, “I am nobody”. So it’s the question of being rather than having. This is why we call our approach the existential approach: we exist as an organism ―as an organism like a clam, like an animal, and so on, and we relate to the external world just like any other organism of nature. Kurt Goldstein first introduced the concept of the organism as a whole, and broke with the tradition in medicine that we have a liver, that we have a this/that, that all these organs can be studied separately. He got pretty close to the actuality, but the actuality is what is called the ecological aspect. You cannot even separate the organism and the environment. A plant taken out of its environment can’t survive, and neither can an human being if you take him out of his environment, deprive him of oxygen and food, and so on. So we have to consider always the segment of the world in which we live as part of ourselves. Wherever we go, we take a kind of world with us.
 
    Now if this is so, then we begin slowly to understand that people and organisms can communicate with each other, and we call it the “Mitwelt” ―the common world which you have and the other person has. You speak a certain language, you attitudes, certain behaviour, and the two worlds somewhere overlap. And in this overlapping area, communication is possible. You notice if people meet, they begin the gambit of meeting― one says, “How are you?” “It’s nice weather.” And the other answer something else. So they go into the search for the common interest, or the common world, where they have a possible interest, communication, and togetherness, where we get suddenly from the I and You to the We. So there is a new phenomenon coming, the We which is different from the I and You. The We doesn’t exist, but consists out of I and You, is an ever-changing boundary where two people meet. And when we meet there, then I change and you change, through the process of encountering each other, except ―and we have to talk a lot about this―except if the two people have character. Once you have a character, you have developed a rigid system. Your behaviour becomes petrified, predictable, and you lose your ability to cope freely with the world with all your resources. Your are predetermined just to cope with events in one way, namely, as your character prescribes it to be. So it seems a paradox when I say that the richest person, the most productive, creative person, is a person who has no character. In our society, we demand a person to have a character, and especially a good character, because then you are predictable, and you can be pigeon-holed, and so on.

    Now, let’s talk a bit more about the relationship of the organism to its environment, and here we introduce the notion of the ego boundary. A boundary defines a thing. Now a thing has its boundaries, is defined by its boundaries in relation to the environment. In itself a thing occupies a certain amount of space. Maybe not much. Maybe it wants to be bigger, or wants to be smaller― maybe it’s not satisfied with its size. We introduce now a new concept again, the wish to change based upon the phenomenon of dissatisfaction. Every time you want to change yourself, or you want to change the environment, the basis always is dissatisfaction.

    The boundary between organism and environment is more or less experienced by us as what is inside the skin and what is outside the skin, but this is very very loosely defined. For instance, the very moment we breathe, is the air that comes in still part of the outside world, or is it already our own?. If we eat food, we ingest it, but can still vomit it up, so where is the place where the self begins, and the otherness of the environment ends? So the ego boundary is not a fixed thing. If it is fixed, then it again becomes character, or an armour, like in the turtle. The turtle has a very fixed boundary in this respect. Our skin is somewhat less fixed, and breathes, touches, and so on. The ego boundary is of great, great importance. The phenomenon of the ego boundary is very peculiar. Basically, we call the ego boundary the differentiation between the self and the otherness, and in Gestalt Therapy we write the self with a lower case ‘s’. I know that many psychologists like to write the self with a capital ‘S’, as if the self would be something precious, something extraordinarily valuable. They go at the discovery of the self like a treasure-digging. The self means nothing but this thing as it is defined by otherness. “I do it myself” means that nobody else is doing it, it’s this organism that does it. 

    Now the two phenomena of the ego boundary are identification and alienation. I identify with my movement: I say that I move my arm. When I see you sit there in a certain posture, I don’t say, “I sit there”, I say, “You sit there”. I differentiate between the experience here and the experience there, and this identification experience has several aspects. The “I” seems to be more precious than the otherness. If I identify with, let’s say, my profession, then this identification may become so strong that if my profession is the taken away, I feel I don’t exist any more, so I might just as well commit suicide. In 1929, you remember how many people committed suicide because they were so identified with their money that life wasn’t worth living any more when they lost it. 

    We are easily identified with our families. If a member of our family is slighted, then we feel the same is done to us. You identify with your friends. The members of the 146th infantry regiment feel themselves to be better than the members of the 147th regiment, and the members of the 147th regiment feel themselves superior to the members of the 146th. So inside the ego boundary, there is generally cohesion, love, cooperation; outside the ego boundary there is suspicion, strangeness, unfamiliarity.

    Now this boundary can be very fluid, like nowadays in battles ―the boundary stretches as far, let’s say, as your air power goes. This is how far the security, familiarity, wholeness, extends. And there is the strangeness, the enemy who is outside the boundary, and whenever there is a boundary question, there is a conflict going on. If we take likeness for granted, then we wouldn't be aware of the existence of the boundary. If we take the unlikeness very much for granted, then we come to the problem of hostility, of rejection―pushing away. “Keep out of my boundaries”, “Keep out of my house”, “Keep out of my family”, “Keep out of my thoughts”. So you see already the polarity of attraction and rejection―of appetite and disgust. There is always a polarity going on, and inside the boundary we have the feeling of familiarity, of right; outside is strangeness, and wrong. Inside is good, outside is bad. The own God is the right God. The other God is the strange God. My political conviction is sacred, is mine; the other political conviction is bad. If a state is at war, its own soldiers are angels, and the enemy are all devils. Our own soldiers take care of the poor families; the enemy rapes them. So the whole idea of good and bad, right and wrong, is always a matter of boundary, of which side of the fence I am on.
 
    So I want to give you a couple of minutes now for time to digest, and to make comments, and see how far we have come. You have to let me in a bit into your private world, or you have to come out of you private world into that environment which includes this platform.
 
    Q: When a person’s in love, his own boundary expands to include the you, or the other, that was previously outside himself.

    F: Yah. The ego boundary becomes an ‘us’ boundary: I and you are separate against the whole world and, in a moment of ecstasy of love, the world disappears.

Q: If two people are in love, do they accept ―would they accept each other so completely that their ego boundaries would expand to include other persons completely, or would it just include the person they had contact with?

F: Well, this is a very interesting, relevant question. And the misunderstanding of this leads to many tragedies and catastrophes. We don’t usually love a person. That’s is very very rare. We love a certain property in that person, which is identical with our behaviour or supplementing our behaviour, usually something thateee is a supplement to us. We think we are in love with the total person, and actually we are disgusted with other aspects of this person. So when the other contacts come up, when this person behaves in a way that creates disgust in us, then again we don’t say, “This of you is disgusting, though this other part is lovable”. We say, “You are disgusting ―get out of my life.”

    Q: But Fritz, doesn’t this apply to an individual also? Do we include all of ourselves in our ego boundaries? Aren’t there things in us that we refuse to include in our ego boundaries?

    F: Well, we are going to talk about that when we come to the inner split, the fragmentation of personality. The very moment you say, “I accept something in myself”, you split yourself up into ‘I’ and ‘myself’”. Right now, I am talking about more less the total encounter of an organism, and I am not talking about pathology. Basically there are very few among us that are whole persons.

    Q: How about the reverse situation, hate or intense anger? Does that then have a tendency to shrink ego boundaries so that a person’s hate toward another person can absorb their whole life?

    F: No. Hate is a function of kicking somebody out of the boundary for something. The term we use in existential psychiatry is alienation, disowning. We disown a person, and if this person’s existence constitutes a threat to us, we want to annihilate this person. But it is definitely an exclusion from our boundary, from ourselves.

    Q: Well, I understand that. What I’m trying to understand is what that kind of intense situation ―intense involvement in that kind of situation―does in terms of ego boundaries. Does it tend to make them smaller, or make them more rigid?

    F: Well, definitely, it does make them more rigid. Let me postpone these questions until we come to talk about projections. This is a special case in pathology, the fact that in the last instance we only love ourselves and hate ourselves. Whether we find this loved or hated thing in ourselves or outside has to go with breaks in the boundary.

    Q: Fritz, you mentioned the polarity of attraction and disgust, yet it’s possible to feel both of these things toward the same person which, as far as I can understand it, creates a conflict.

    F: This is exactly what I am talking about. You are not attracted to a person; you are not disgusted with a person. If you look closer, you are attracted to a certain behaviour or part of that person, and disgusted with a certain other behaviour or part of that person, and if you find, by chance, both the beloved and the hated thing ―we call it a thing, of course― in the same person, you’re in a quandary. It is much easier to be disgusted with one person and to love another. At one time you find you hate this person and another time you love the person, but if both love and hate come together, then you get confused. This has a lot to do with the basic law that the gestalt is always do formed that only one figure, one item, can become foreground―that we can think, basically, of only one thing at a time, and as soon as two opposites or two different figures want to take charge of this organism, we get confused, we get split and fragmented.

    I can already see where the whole trend of the question goes. You are already coming to the point where you begin to understand what happens in pathology. If some of ours thoughts, feelings, are unacceptable to us, we want to disown them. Me wanting to kill you? So we disown the killing thought and say, “That’s is not me ―that’s a compulsion”, or we remove the killing, or we repress and become blind to that. There are many of these kinds of ways to remain intact, but always only at the cost of disowning many, many valuable parts of ourselves. The fact that we live only on such a small percentage of our potential is due to the fact that we’re not willing ―or society or whatever you want to call it is not willing―to accept myself, yourself, as the organism which you are by birth, constitution, and so on. You do not allow yourself ―or you are not allowed―to be totally yourself. So your ego boundary shrinks more and more. Your power, your energy, becomes smaller and smaller. Your ability to cope with the world becomes less and less ―and more and more rigid, more and more allowed only to cope as your character, as your preconceived pattern, prescribes it.

    Q: Is there some kind of fluctuation in this ego boundary that might be determined by a cyclic rhythm? The way that a flower will open and close ―open― close―.

    F: Yah. Very much.

    Q: Does the word “uptight” mean shrink?

    F: No. This mean compression.

    Q: What about the opposite in the drug experience, where the ego boundary― /F: Where you lose your ego boundary./ Would this be an explosion in terms of your theory?

    F: Expansion, not explosion. Explosion is quite different. The ego boundary is completely natural phenomenon. Now I give you some examples about the ego boundary, something we are more or less all concerned with. This boundary, this identification/alienation boundary, which I rather call the ego boundary, applies to every situation in life. Now let’s assume you are in favor of the freedom movement, of acceptance of the Negro as a human being like yourself. So you identify with him. So where is the boundary? The boundary disappears between you and the Negro. But immediately a new boundary is created― now the enemy is not the Negro, but the non-freedom fighter; they are the bastards, the bad guys. 

    So you create a new boundary, and I believe there is no chance of ever living without a boundary ―there is always, “I am on the right side of the fence, and you are on the wrong side”, or we are, if you have the clique formation. You notice any society or any community will quickly form its own boundaries, cliques ―the Millers are always better than the Meyers, and the Meyers are better than the Millers. And the closer the boundary defences, the greater the chance of wars or hostility. You find wars always start on the boundary―boundary clashes. The Indians and the Chinese have a much greater chance of fighting each other than the Indians and the Finns. Because there is no boundary between the Indians and the Finns, except if now a new kind of boundary is created― let’s say an ideological boundary. We are all Communists, we are right. We are all Free Enterprisers, we are right. So you are the bad guys―no, you are the bad guys. So we seldom look for the common denominator, what we have in common, but we look for where we are different, so that we can hate and kill each other. 

    Q: Do you think that it is possible to become so integrated that a person could become objective, and not become involved in anything?

    F: I personally believe that objectivity does not exist. The objectivity of science is also just a matter of mutual agreement. A certain number of persons observe the same phenomena and they speak about an objective criterion. Yet it was from the scientific side where the first proof of subjectivity came. This was from Einstein. Einstein realized that all the phenomena in the universe cannot possibly be objective, because the observer and the speed within its nervous system has to be included in the calculation of that phenomenon outside. If you have perspective, and can see a larger outlook, you seem to be more fair, objective, balanced. But even there, it’s you as the subject who sees it. We have not much idea what the universe looks like. We have only a certain amount of organs―eyes, ears, touch, and the elongation of these organs― the telescope and electrical computers. But what do we know about other organisms, what kind of organs they have, what kind of world they have? We take for granted the elegance of the human being, that our world ―how we see the universe― is the only right one.

    Q: Fritz, let me go back to the ego boundary again because when you are experiencing yourself, when you’re experiencing an expanded state, then the feeling of separation seems to disintegrate or melt. And at that point it seems that you are totally absorbed in the process of what’s going on. At that point, it seems there are no ego boundaries at all, except a reflection of the process of what’s going on. Now I don’t understand that in relation to your concept of ego boundary. 

    F: Yah. This is more or less the next theme I wanted to come to. There is a kind of integration ―I know that’s not quite correctly formulated― of the subjective and the objectivity. That is the word awareness. Awareness is always the subjective experience. I cannot possibly be aware of what you are aware of. The Zen idea of absolute awareness, in my opinion is nonsense. Absolute awareness cannot possibly exist because as far as I know, awareness always has content. One is always aware of something. If I say I feel nothing, I’m at least aware of the nothingness, which if you examine it still further has a very positive character like numbness, or coldness, or a gap, and when you speak about the psychedelic experience, there is an awareness, but there is also the awareness of something. 

    So, let’s now go a step further and look at the relationship of the world and the self. What makes us interested in the world? What is our need to realize that there is a world? How come I cannot function, cannot live just a kind of autistic organism, completely self-contained? Now, a thing, like this ashtray, is not a type of relating organism. This ashtray needs very little to exist. First, temperature. If you put this ashtray in a temperature of 4000º, this is not an environment in which it will retain its identity. It needs a certain amount of gravity. If it would be subjected to a pressure of, let’s say, 40,000 pounds, it would break into pieces. But we can, for practical purposes, say that this thing is self-contained. It doesn’t need any exchange with the environment. It exists to be used by us as a receptacle of cigarettes, to be cleaned, to be sold, to be thrown away, to be used as a missile if you want to hurt somebody, and so on. But in itself it is not a living organism.

    A living organism is an organism which consists of thousands and thousands of processes that require interchange with other media outside the boundary of the organism. There are processes here in the ashtray, too. There are electronic processes, atomic processes, but for our purpose, these processes are not visible, not relevant, to its existence for us here. But in a living organism, the ego boundary has to be negotiated by us because there is something outside that is needed. There is food outside: I want this food; I want to make it mine, like me. So, I have to like this food. If I don’t like it, if it is un-like me, I wouldn’t touch it, I leave it outside the boundary. So something has to happen to get through the boundary and this is what we call contact. We touch, we get in contact, we stretch our boundary out to the thing in question. If we are rigid and can’t move, then it remains there. When we live, we spend energies to maintain this machine. This process of exchange is called the metabolism. Both the metabolism of the exchange of our organism whit the environment, and the metabolism within our organism, is going on continually, day and night. 

    Now what are the laws of this metabolism? They very strict laws. Let’s assume that I walk through the desert, and it’s very hot. I lose, let’s say, eight ounces of fluid. Now how do I know that I lost this? First, through self-awareness of the phenomenon, in this case called “thirst”. Second, suddenly in this undifferentiated general world something emerges as a gestalt, as a foreground, namely, let’s say, a well with water, or a pump ―or anything that would have plus eight ounces. This minus eight ounces of our organism and the plus eight ounces in the world can balance each other. The very moment this eight ounces goes into the system, we get a plus/minus water which brings balance. We come to rest as the situation is finished, the gestalt is closed. The urge that drives us to do something, to walk so and so, many miles to get to that place, which means our life is basically practically nothing but an infinite number of unfinished situations―incomplete gestalts. No sooner have we finished one situation than another comes up. I have often been called the founder of Gestalt Therapy. That’s crap. If you call me the finder or re-finder of Gestalt Therapy, okeh. Gestalt is as ancient and old as the world itself. The world, and especially every organism, maintains itself, and the only law which is constant is the forming of gestalts―wholes, completeness.

    A gestalt is an organic function. A gestalt is an ultimate experiential unit. As soon as you break up a gestalt, it is not a gestalt any more. Take an example from chemistry. You know that water has a certain property. It consists of H2O. So if you disturb the gestalt of water, split it up into two H’s and one O, it’s no water any more. It’s oxygen and hydrogen, and if you are thirsty you can breathe as much hydrogen and as much oxygen as you want, it won’t quench your thirst. So the gestalt is the experienced phenomenon. If you analyse, if you cut it further up, it becomes something else. You might call it a unit, like, say, volts in electricity, or ergs in mechanics and so on.
    Gestalt Therapy is the one of the ―I think right now it is one of the three types of existential therapy: Frankl’s Logo-Therapy, the Daseins Therapy of Binswanger, and Gestalt Therapy. What is important is that Gestalt Therapy is the first existential philosophy that stands on its own feet. I distinguish three types of philosophy. One is the “about-ism”. We talk about it and talk about it, and nothing is accomplished. In scientific explanation, you usually go around and around and never touch the heart of the matter. The second philosophy I would call the “should-ism”. Moralism. You should be this, you should change yourself, you should not do this―a hundred thousand commands, but no consideration is given to what degree the person who “should” do this can actually comply. And furthermore, most people expect that the magic formula, just to use the sounds, “You should do this”, might have an actual effect upon reality.

    The third philosophy I call existentialism. Existentialism wants to do away with concepts, and to work on the awareness principle, on phenomenology. The setback with the present existentialist philosophies is that they need their support from somewhere else. If you look at the existentialists, they say that they are non-conceptual, but if you look ate the people, they all borrow concepts from other sources. Buber from Judaism, Tillich from Protestantism, Sartre from Socialism, Heidegger from language, Binswanger from psychoanalysis, and so on. Gestalt Therapy has its support in its own formation because the gestalt formation, the emergence of the needs, is a primary biological phenomenon.

    So, we are doing away with the whole instinct theory and simply consider the organism as a system that is in balance and that has to function properly. Any imbalance is experienced as a need to correct this imbalance. Now, practically, we have hundreds of unfinished situations in us. How come that we are not completely confused and want to go out in all directions? And that’s another law which I have discovered, that from the survival point of view, the most urgent situation becomes the controller, the director, and takes over. The most urgent situation emerges, and in any case of emergency, you realize that this has to take precedent over any other activity. If there would be suddenly a fire here, the fire would be more important than our talks. If you rush and rush, and run from the fire, suddenly you will be out of breath, your oxygen supply is more important than the fire. You stop and take a breath because this is now the most important thing.

    So, we come now to the most important, interesting phenomenon in all pathology: self-regulation versus external regulation. The anarchy which is usually feared by the controllers is not an anarchy which is without meaning. On the contrary, it means the organism is left alone to take care of itself, without being meddled with from outside. And I believe that this is the great thing to understand: that awareness per se―by and of itself― can be curative. Because with full awareness you become aware of this organismic self-regulation, you can let the organism take over without interfering, without interrupting; we can rely on the wisdom of the organism. And the contrast to this is the whole pathology of self-manipulation, environmental control, and so on, that interferences with this subtle organismic self-control.

    Our manipulation of ourselves is usually dignified by the word “conscience”. In ancient times, conscience was thought to be a God-made institution. Even Immanuel Kant thought that the conscience was equivalent to the eternal star, as one of the two absolutes. Then Freud came and he showed that the conscience is nothing but a fantasy, an introjection, a continuation of what he believed was the parents. I believe it’s a projection onto the parents, but never mind. Some think it is an introjection, an institution called the superego, that wants to take over control. Now if this were so, then how the analysis of the superego is not successful? How come that this program does not work? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is verified again and again. Any intention toward change will achieve the opposite. You all know this. The New Year’s resolutions, the desperation of trying to be different, the attempt to control yourself. All this always comes to nought, or in extreme cases the person is apparently successful, up to the point where the nervous breakdown occurs. The final way out.

    Now if we are willing to stay in the center of our world, and not have the center either in our computer or somewhere else, but really in the center, then we are ambidextrous― then we see the two poles of every event. We see that light cannot exist without non-light. If there is sameness, you can’t be aware any more. If there is always light, you don’t experience light any more. You have to have the rhythm of light and darkness. Right doesn’t exist without left. If I lose my right arm, my center shifts to the left. If there is a superego, there must also be an infraego. Again, Freud did half the job. He saw the topdog, the superego, but he left out the underdog which is just as much a personality as the topdog. And if we go one step farther and examine the two clowns, as I call them, that perform the self-torture game on the stage of our fantasy, then we usually find the two characters like this:

    The topdog usually is righteous and authoritarian; he knows best. He is sometimes right, but always righteous. The topdog is a bully, and works with “You should” and “You should not”. The topdog manipulates with demands and threats of catastrophe, such as, “If you don’t, then―you won’t be loved, you won’t get to heaven, you will die,” and so on.

    The underdog manipulates with being defensive, apologetic, wheedling, playing the cry-baby, and such. The underdog has no power. The underdog is the Mickey Mouse. The topdog is the Super Mouse. And the underdog works like this: “Mañana”. “I try my best”. “Look, I try again and again; I can’t help it if I fail.” “I can’t help it if I forgot your birthday”. “I have such good intentions”. So you see the underdog is cunning, and usually gets the better of the topdog because the underdog is not as primitive as the topdog. So the topdog and the underdog strive for control. Like every parent and child, they strive with each other control. The person is fragmented into controller and controlled. This inner conflict, the struggle between the topdog and the underdog, is never complete, because topdog as well as underdog fight for their lives.

    This is the basis for the famous self-torture game. We usually take for granted that the topdog is right, and in many cases the topdog makes impossible perfectionistic demands. So if you are cursed with perfectionism, then you are absolutely sunk. This ideal is a yardstick which always gives you the opportunity to browbeat yourself, to berate yourself and others. Since this ideal is an impossibility, you can never live up to it. The perfectionist is not in love with his wife. He is in love with his ideal, and he demands from his wife that she should fit in this Procrustes bed of his expectations, and he blames her if she does not fit. What this ideal exactly is, he would not reveal. Now and then there might be some stated characteristics, but the essence of the ideal is that it is impossible, unobtainable, just a good opportunity to control, to swing the whip. The other day I had a talk with a friend of mine and I told her, “Please get this into your nut: mistakes are no sins”, and she wasn’t half as relieved as I thought she would be. Then I realized, if mistakes are not a sin any more, how can she castigate others who make mistakes? So it always works both ways; if you carry this ideal, this perfectionistic ideal around with yourself, you have a wonderful tool to play the beloved game of the neurotic, the self-torture game. There is no end to the self-torture, to the self-nagging, self-castigating. It hides under the mask of “self-improvement”. It never works. 

    If the person tries to meet the topdog’s demands of perfectionism, the result is a “nervous breakdown”, or flight into insanity. This is one of the tools of the underdog. Once we recognize the structure of our behaviour, which in the case of self-improvement is the split between the topdog and the underdog, and if we understand how, by listening, we can bring about a reconciliation of these two fighting clowns, then we realize that we cannot deliberately bring about changes in ourselves or in others. This is a very decisive point: Many people dedicate their lives to actualize a concept of what they should be like, rather than to actualize themselves. This difference between self-actualizing and self-image actualizing is very important. Most people only live for their image. Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are so busy projecting themselves as this or that. This is again the curse of the ideal. The curse that you should not be what you are.

    Every external control, even internalized external control ―“you should”― interferes with the healthy working of the organism. There is only one thing that should control: the situation. If you understand the situation which you are in, and let the situation which you are in control your actions, then you learn how to cope with life. Now you know this from certain situations, like driving a car. You don’t drive a car according to a program, like “I want to drive 65 miles per hour”. You drive according to the situation. You drive a different speed at night, you drive a different speed when there is traffic there, you drive differently when you are tired. You listen to the situation. The less confident we are in ourselves, the less we are in touch with ourselves and the world, the more we want to control.
 
    Q: I’ve been wondering about Joe Kamiya’s brain wave test and the question of self-control. If he puts himself in a calm state when he experiences irritation, would this be avoidance?

    F: Avoidance of what?

    Q: The cause of the irritation, that he is leaving by putting himself in a calm state of mind. I suppose it depends on what causes the irritation that is alleviated.

    F: Well, I partly don’t follow you, partly don’t know if your report is correct, and I don’t know enough of it from the title I have understood. It seems that the alpha waves are identical with organismic self-regulation, the organism taking over and acting spontaneously instead of acting on control. I think he describes that as long as he tries to control something, the alpha waves are not there. But I don’t like to talk about it because I have no experiences with this set-up yet. I hope to get to see it. I think it is for once a gadget that seems to be very interesting and possibly productive.

    Q: I can see how, on the level of organismic functions, such a thing as this water loss and the need to fill this loss--- this process of allowing the organism to function by itself will work. But then when you get to the level of relationships, what happens? Then it seems as if there is necessity for discrimination in what’s foreground and what’s not.

    F: Can you give us an example?

    Q: Say I’m in a situation in which there are four or five emergences occurring, what I consider to be emergencies, in which I should be taking some part and doing something. Then comes what I call discrimination, in that one or the other of these is more important than the rest of them. And it’s just that it’s not as easy for me to see how the organism makes a decision like that, as how it makes a decision that it needs water.
 
    F: Yah. The organism does not make decisions. Decision is a man-made institution. The organism works always on the basis of preference.
 
    Q: I thought you said it was the feeling of need.

    F: Well, the need is the primary thing. If you had no needs, you wouldn’t do a thing. If you had no need for oxygen, you wouldn’t breathe.

    Q: Well, I guess I ―what mean is, the most pressing need is the one that you go to.

    F: Yah. The most pressing need. And if you talk about five emergencies, I would say none of them are emergencies, because if one was really an emergency, it would emerge, and there would be no decision or computing done. This emergency would take over. Our relationship to this emergency, to the world, is the same as, for instance, in painting. You’ve got a white figure. Then you make certain blots on this canvas, and then suddenly the canvas makes demands, and you become the servant. It is as if you said, “What does this thing want?” “Where does it want to have some red?” “Where does it want to be balanced?” Except you don’t ask questions, you just respond.

    Now the next thing that I want to talk about is the differentiation between end-gain and means-whereby. Let’s say that I have to send a message to New York. That is the thing that is fixed, the end-gain. The means-whereby to send the message, the medium, is of secondary importance― whether you send it by wire, by mouth, by letter, by telepathy if you believe in it. So in spite of McLuhan’s thesis “The medium is the message,” I still say that the end-gain is the primary thing. Now, for instance, in sex, the end-gain is the orgasm. The means-whereby can be a hundred different possibilities and as a matter of fact, the recognition of this by Medard Boss, the Swiss psychiatrist, is how he cured homosexuality. By having the patient fully accept homosexuality as one of the means to get to the organismic satisfaction, the end-gain, in this case the orgasm, he then had the possibility of changing the means-whereby. All perversions are variations of the means-whereby, and the same applies to any of the basis needs. If you want to eat, the end-gain is to get enough calories into your system. The means-whereby differ from very primitive eating some popcorn or whatever, to the discriminating experience of the gourmet. The more you realize this, the more you begin to select the means, come to select all the social needs, which are the means to the organismic ends.

    This type of organismic self-regulations is very important in therapy, because the emergent, unfinished situations will come to the surface. We don’t have to dig: it’s all there. And you might look upon this like this: that from within, some figure emerges, comes to the surface, and then goes into the outside world, reaches out for what we want, and comes back, assimilates and receives. Something else comes out, and again the same process repeats itself.
 
    The most peculiar things happen. Let’s say, you suddenly see a woman licking calcium from the wall―licking the plaster from the wall. It’s a crazy thing. Then it turns out that she is pregnant and needs calcium for the bones of her baby, but she doesn’t know that. Or she sleeps through the noises of the Beatles, and then her child just whimpers a little bit and suddenly she wakes up, because this is the emergency. This is what she is geared for. So she can withdraw from the loudest noise, because this is not gestalt-motivated. But the whimper is there, so the whimper emerges and becomes the attraction. This is again the wisdom of the organism. The organism knows all. We know very little.

    Q: You said the organism knows all, and we know very little. How is it possible to get the two together? I guess there aren’t two of them.

    F: They are often split up. They can be together. If you have these two together, you would be at least a genius, because then you might have perspective, sensitivity, and the ability to fit things together at the same time. 

    Q: Would you then class experiences that are sometimes called “instinctive” or “intuitive” as integrated experiences?

    F: Yah. Intuition is the intelligence of the organism. Intelligence is the whole, and intellect is the whore of intelligence― the computer, the fitting game: If this is so, then this is so ―all this figuring out by which many people replace seeing and hearing what’s going on. Because if you are busy with your computer, your energy goes into your thinking, and you don’t see and hear any more.

    Q: This is a contradictory question because I am asking you to use words. Could you explain the difference between words and experiences? (Fritz leaves podium, goes to the woman who asked the question, puts his hands on her shoulders, kisses her. Laughter) OK! That’ll do it!

    F: I experience a dismissing pat from you. (Fritz pats himself lightly on the shoulder as he returns to the podium)

    Q: You were talking about self-control or inner control, versus external control. I’m not sure that I understood you. I feel sometimes that external control is fantasy ―that you are actually doing it yourself.
 
    F: Yeah, that’s true. That’s what I call self-manipulation or self-torture. Now this organismic self-regulation I’m talking about is not a matter of fantasy, except if the object in question is not there. Then you have a fantasy, which so to say guides you until the real object appears, and then the fantasy of the object and the real object melt together. Then you don’t need the fantasy any more.

    I am not yet talking about the fantasy life as such, as rehearsal and so on. This is quite a different story. I am talking about the ability of the organism to take care of itself without external interference ―without momma telling us, “It’s good for your health,” “I know what’s the best for you,” and all that.

    Q: I have a question. You talked about control. If what you said is so, that the organism can take of itself once the integration is complete and self-regulation is available for the total organism, then control not longer becomes a factor ―externally or internally; it’s something that is, and is in operation.

    F: That’s right, and then the essence of control is that you begin to control the means-whereby to get satisfaction. The usual procedure is that you don’t get satisfaction, you merely get exhaustion.
 
    Q: I can recognize that what you say is true, that if I keep on computing, I’ll stop seeing and hearing. And yet the problem comes with me all the time how, when I have many many things to accomplish in the day―

    F: Wait a moment. We have to distinguish ―do you have to accomplish them as an organismic need or as part of the social role you play?

    Q: As part of the social role.

    F: That’s a different story. I am talking about the organism per se. I am not talking about ourselves as social beings. I don’t talk about the pseudo-existence, but of the basic natural existence, the foundation of our being. What you are talking about is the role-playing which might be a means-whereby to earn a living, which is a means-whereby to get your basic needs satisfied ―give you food, etc.

    Q: And yet ―I know there’s something sick about this― at the beginning of each day, computing, thinking, planning, scheduling my day, planning that at this hour I’m going to do this and at another hour, that. And I do this all during the day. And I know that it cuts out just seeing and hearing, and yet if I go around just staying with the seeing and the hearing, then certain other things don’t get done and I get completely confused.

    F: That’s right. This is the experience that comes out of the clash between our social existence and our biological existence―confusion.

    Q: Well, you’re leaving me in that confusion, then.

    F: Yah. That’s what I’m talking about. Awareness per se. If you become aware each time that you are entering a state of confusion, this is the therapeutic thing. 
    And again, natures takes over. If you understand this, and stay with confusion, confusion will sort itself out by itself. If you try to sort it out, compute how to do it, if you ask me for a prescription how to do it, you only add more confusion to your productions.

Excuse my English.

Eyes of a Martian.
This is not my language. That is why it has been quite hard for me to start. But I feel like I ever have got any one. Just by revolving around this matters I have found out that language is a "royal road" to freedom, oh yes, it is; till the same extent as it is a prison too. Inside you have got more stuff. 


By this wording I will try to wash myself by working on feelings and means delicately. Even if it were painstakingly (for you, English speakers too, to read. Of course, with my pardons).     


I really feel like there were something not properly decoded in Chomsky's when he states that after certain point in the growing process, human brain remains blocked or hindered to operate beyond his early language. Or maybe he is right but has been misunderstood by a reductionism of this issue and times are leading us to certain renaissance of those universal (lost) structures by creating bypasses and compensations for our handicaps. Which some day will become in further abilities for using successfully (or fluently) a kind of multi-lingual code. 


Stage which only will be out there, if ever there was one inside us, actually. And that is, probably, the very cause which makes me to need to try out expressing myself out of my first language. 


There is indeed an economical reason for this fact. Everything happening regarding IT, per instance, subject which is giving me a reference framework as it's become a reference to understand the last development in society, happens in English language quite first. Then it's wide spreading in other languages as an expansive wage in sea when we drop a stone in it. And that wave expresses itself in time, of course. Historical time. 


In turn, this bit is part of what economists call competitive processes. Liberal enthusiasts still believe that perfect competence is the key for everything. And maybe they are right, but they overlook that whatsoever the current international system has reached so far, is instead based on important lakes of information. Which implies rather differences. Actually we may get a time-trip if tracked, from the furthest point in the global village to central countries, by whatever that differences mean to each point in the discretionary route, from its financial terms to everything else. 


So that from some extent on we might guess that the current rate-of-profit engineering is by its inertial properties itself contrary to its own foundations. Since it pleads for freedom as in same conditions for counterparts which is rather, let's say, an hypothetical state of conditions we can't meet otherwise than by straight conflict. What we got instead is a handicap informational based system.


Anyway I wish we would be able to overcome words and language differences. I feel myself leaded by my time. It's what I do make here, and just making it, with no remorse about mistakes. I am afraid this is the only way. Time and try it's been always and will be forever the key. 


This ship's log will be a way of posting my road trough the matrix there should be behind it for sure. 


Io, one a.