The Solitary Mind and The Social Cure, A Schopenhauerian Challenge to Modern Therapy

“ Some of them will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of that which it had at first.
This is not the only point of view from which the social impulse may be regarded. On cold days people manage to get some warmth by crowding together; and you can warm your mind in the same way—by bringing it into contact with others. But a man who has a great deal of intellectual warmth in himself will stand in no need of such resources. ”

“ You could almost believe that this is a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many are invited, it is a rabble—even if they all wear stars. Really good society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at bottom, a sense of emptiness prevalent. ”

“ First of all, it shows why it is that common, ordinary people are so sociable and find good company wherever they go. Ah! those good, dear, brave people. It is just the contrary with those who are not of the common run; and the less they are so, the more unsociable they become; so that if, in their isolation, they chance to come across some one in whose nature they can find even a single sympathetic chord, be it never so minute, they show extraordinary pleasure in his society. ”

“ To be unsociable is not to care about such people; and to have enough in oneself to dispense with the necessity of their company is a great piece of good fortune; because almost all our sufferings spring from having to do with other people; and that destroys the peace of mind, which, as I have said, comes next after health in the elements of happiness. ”

“ The worst of what is called good society is not only that it offers us the companionship of people who are unable to win either our praise or our affection, but that it does not allow of our being that which we naturally are; it compels us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up, or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation, whether grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. ”

“ The less necessity there is for you to come into contact with mankind in general, in the relations whether of business or of personal intimacy, the better off you are. Loneliness and solitude have their evils, it is true; but if you cannot feel them all at once, you can at least see where they lie; on the other hand, society is insidious in this respect; as in offering you what appears to be the pastime of pleasing social intercourse, it works great and often irreparable mischief. The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind. ”

“ This he will do, because the more a man possesses in himself, the less he has need of the exterior world. Superiority of intelligence will therefore lead him to insociability; for, as Schopenhauer says, "It is precisely in solitude, where each of us is dependent on his own resources, that every one is brought face to face with his own individuality; there the imbecile in his purple groans beneath the weight of his miserable self, while he who is mentally gifted peoples and animates with his thoughts the most arid and desert region." ”

“ A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. Constraint is always present in society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in proportion to the greatness of a man's individuality, it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all intercourse with others demands, Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small,—the wretch feeling, when he is alone, the whole burden of his misery ”

“ No man can be in perfect accord with any one but himself—not even with a friend or the partner of his life; differences of individuality and temperament are always bringing in some degree of discord, though it may be a very slight one. That genuine, profound peace of mind, that perfect tranquillity of soul, which, next to health, is the highest blessing the earth can give, is to be attained only in solitude, and, as a permanent mood, only in complete retirement ”

“ The wise man will, above all, strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few encounters as may be; and so, after a little experience of his so-called fellowmen, he will elect to live in retirement, or even, if he is a man of great intellect, in solitude. For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people,--the less, indeed, other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. ”

“ If it were not for these two reasons, a man would probably elect to remain alone; if only because solitude is the sole condition of life which gives full play to that feeling of exclusive importance which every man has in his own eyes,—as if he were the only person in the world! a feeling which, in the throng and press of real life, soon shrivels up to nothing, getting, at every step, a painful dementi. From this point of view it may be said that solitude is the original and natural state of man, where, like another Adam, he is as happy as his nature will allow. ”

“ Most men cannot endure it, because they are slothful, as I said, and because their solitude hangs round them a chain of troubles and burdens. No doubt, for the man with this heavy chain, life loses almost everything that one desires from it in youth—joy, safety, honour: his fellow-men pay him his due of—isolation! The wilderness and the cave are about him, wherever he may live. He must look to it that he be not enslaved and oppressed, and become melancholy thereby. And let him surround himself with the pictures of good and brave fighters such as Schopenhauer. ”

“ True, if _quality_ of intellect could be made up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in the great world; but unfortunately, a hundred fools together will not make one wise man.
But the individual who stands at the other end of the scale is no sooner free from the pangs of need than he endeavors to get pastime and society at any cost, taking up with the first person he meets, and avoiding nothing so much as himself. For in solitude, where every one is thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in himself comes to light ”

“ It is just the contrary with those who are not of the common run; and the less they are so, the more unsociable they become; so that if, in their isolation, they chance to come across some one in whose nature they can find even a single sympathetic chord, be it never so minute, they show extraordinary pleasure in his society. For one man can be to another only so much as the other is to him. Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude. ”

“ Our own felicity we make or find."
"In a world such as ours," Schopenhauer thinks, "he who has much to draw upon from within is not unlike a room in which stands a Christmas tree, bright, warm, and joyous, while all about are the snows and icicles of a December night."
That which a man is in himself, that which accompanies him into solitude, and which none can give him or take from him, is necessarily more essential than all that he may possess or all that he may appear in the eyes of others. ”

“ It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds—why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you may get some result—some music from your horns!
A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument—a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself ”

“ Gradually, a more organized style of interacting comes into being through the directive efforts of the therapist or as a result of general group frustration over the lack of coherence. At the same time, group members will begin to feel more at ease with one another and will in time begin to lift their public masks and reveal more of their private selves—their often hard-to-admit feelings of loneliness, pain, anxiety, depression, etc.—and to express their personal needs. ”

“ The natural conditions of group self-consciousness, which in primitive societies rendered its development inevitable and spontaneous in every man, have then been in the main destroyed. But man cannot stand alone; men cannot live happily as mere individuals; they desire and crave and seek membership in a group, in whose collective opinions and emotions and self-consciousness and activities they may share, with which they may identify themselves, thereby lessening the burden of individual responsibility, judgment, decision and effort. ”

“ Group therapy is often used for marriage, family, and child-guidance counseling and to help families in which a member is physically or emotionally disabled. Group therapy is used by churches for family guidance and for spiritual counseling. It is used in virtually any area where people share problems: victims of crime and physical abuse, former patients, the aged, children of the aged, those who are discriminated against—the list goes on. ”

“ Individual {185} therapy, with its one-to-one relationship between therapist and client, does not encourage some clients enough for them to feel like members of humanity. They tend to feel sorry for themselves while in individual therapy or to judge themselves harshly for their need for help. Being with other clients in a group situation answers their needs better. ”

“ Therapy usually begins with individual sessions. Once clients have learned how to identify mental habits that create disturbing emotions, therapy is sometimes continued in groups, where new attitudes and forms of behavior can be practiced in a kind of microcosm of the larger world. ”

“ But equally sympathy cannot belong to the next stage in our development—the particularistic. Particularistic psychology, which gave us ego and alter, gave us sympathy going across from one isolated being to another. Now we begin with the group. We see in the self-unifying of the group process, and all the myriad unfoldings involved, the central and all-germinating activity of life. The group creates. In the group, we have seen, is formed the collective idea, “similarity” is there achieved, sympathy too is born within the group—it springs forever from interrelation. ”

“ Family therapists also sometimes make home visits: often, being in their own familiar surroundings will encourage family members to let down their defenses and more clearly define the problems that need to be resolved. Another innovation that is becoming more widespread is multifamily therapy. Two or three families participate together in an especially modified form of group therapy so that each family can see its own problems in clearer perspective and learn by seeing more or less troubled interactions among members of another family. ”

“ T-groups gradually widened their focus and became the basis for the practical orientation of many therapy groups today. Clients who feel isolated or alienated, find it hard to relate to others, lack a sense of meaning and direction, and do not have strong self-discipline often are attracted to T-groups.
HUMAN POTENTIAL GROUPS
These groups have probably done the most to give group therapy its popular image. "Growth centers" are usually rural retreats where psychological growth of participants is encouraged. ”

“ The ideal that grows up in familiar association may be said to be a part of human nature itself. In its most general form it is that of a moral whole or community wherein individual minds are merged and the higher capacities of the members find total and adequate expression. And it grows up because familiar association fills our minds with imaginations of the thought and feeling of other members of the group, and of the group as a whole, so that, for many purposes, we really make them a part of ourselves and identify our self-feeling with them. ”

“ Participation in group life degrades the individual, assimilating his mental processes to those of the crowd, whose brutality, inconstancy, and unreasoning impulsiveness have been the theme of many writers; yet only by participation in group life does man become fully man, only so does he rise above the level of the savage. ”

“ And it is also quite logical that Schopenhauer, who deduced pessimism from the voluntarist doctrine or doctrine of universal personalization, should have deduced from both of these that the foundation of morals is compassion. Only his lack of the social and historical sense, his inability to feel that humanity also is a person, although a collective one, his egoism, in short, prevented him from feeling God, prevented him from individualizing and personalizing the total and collective Will—the Will of the Universe. ”

“ Solitude, solitude! It is a lovely thing to abstract contemplation. The mind of man, not called upon to try the vast experiment, looks upon it, as upon every great endeavour, as bringing a reward with it equal to the difficulties and the impediments; but brought nearer, placed within the reach of effort, we cannot grapple with the mighty task. The feeble heart shrinks from it; the firm mind doubts and hesitates. We feel how sad and terrible it is to be alone; we learn that it is the antithesis of our nature. ”

“ We love solitude, indeed; it is the cold and silent fountain at which our soul is purified and confirmed. But what would it profit us to have amassed great riches, by the help of solitude, if we had no one to whom to offer them?
It is because he feels this anxiety that man seeks a lasting union. Among a thousand generosities, love offers him the opportunity to enjoy companionship without renouncing solitude. A happy home is the solitude of many a soul. The man who has entered into a beautiful union is sure of at least one person to whom he can give the best that he possesses. ”

“ How to enter life and be one with other men, how to be the child of society, and a peer there, belongs to our duty; and to escape from the solitude of private life is the most important thing for men of lonely thought and feeling, such as meditation breeds. ”