The Autobiography of My Father

by Martin Edmond

  I accept also when he says this – fear of disapproval is the expression of unconscious guilt feelings (methodist upbringing) and that man substitutes approval of others for approval by himself – I have done a great deal of this.

  I also accept Fromm when he says: ‘The selfish person loves himself too little (hates himself) – it is one expression of his lack of productiveness, it leaves him empty and frustrated. He is necessarily unhappy and anxiously concerned to snatch from life the satisfaction he blocks himself off from attaining’ – does not care for his real self. I am guilty of this lack of productiveness and inner laziness. Productiveness is the source of strength, freedom and happiness. People are not concerned enough with the interests of their real self and do not love themselves. I think for many years I loved myself for the wrong reasons – for my success and for other people’s good opinion which have nothing to do really with any true inner productiveness on my part.

  Fromm says: ‘Know yourself, tolerate yourself, love yourself, and then you can love your neighbour.’ At least I have begun to know and I think to tolerate (with certain changes if I can make them – from which love may follow).

  I have spent much time on the last chapter of The Art of Loving – ‘The Practice of Love’. He talks much of self-deception, concentration, pastimes and supreme concern with the mastery of an art. I believe I have to discipline myself, and practise concentration – complete concentration on what I am doing in the present. For years I have not lived in the present at all – only the present for the sake of the future. I have also been lazy about myself and what I do. Self-indulgent, putting things off, not bothering to use the powers I have and not keeping them ‘in good shape’. I have been far too good at trivial conversation and escapist activities, at just doing nothing constructive.

  Fromm in this chapter also talks of courage and faith in oneself – what he calls rational faith rooted in productive intellectual and emotional activity. He says ‘the basis of rational faith is productiveness: to live by our faith is to live productively’ and goes on to say ‘to have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness to accept pain and disappointment.’ (I have always tried to avoid these – almost pathological avoidance.) ‘Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a mystical defence where distance and possessions are his means of security makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love takes courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern’ – and to take the jump – ‘stake everything on these values’. I have never been able to do this or anything like it.

  I believe I need to impose a rational self-discipline on myself, to learn to concentrate, to have patience throughout every phase of my life and then I may love and be loved.

  Fromm gives suggestions on how to practise discipline and I’ll refer to these later in my ‘programming’ but he also makes the point that after some initial resistance these disciplines should not seem to be imposed from outside but should be as expressions of one’s own will, pleasant and missed if not done.

  He always speaks of concentration saying:

  ‘One must be fully given to the activity of the moment.’

  ‘Any activity done in a concentrated way makes one more awake.’

  ‘To be concentrated means to live fully in the present and not to think of the next thing to be done while doing something right now.’

  ‘One cannot learn to concentrate without becoming sensitive to oneself – to be aware of why one has feelings, to question honestly and not to rationalise them.’

  Speaking of love he says:

  ‘To achieve love one must overcome one’s narcissism – must demand objectivity … faculty to see people and things as they are and not as they are pictured by one’s own desires and fears.’ (I have not developed this objectivity). He says ‘All forms of psychosis show the inability to be objective.’

  To think objectively requires reason backed up emotionally by humility – a true realisation of one’s own powers.

  Love being achievement or the relative absence of narcissism requires the development of humility, objectivity and reason – one’s whole life must be directed to this aim.

  Irrational faith is one’s submission to irrational authority (I have this).

  Rational faith is conviction rooted in one’s own experience of thought or feeling – it is a quality of certainty and firmness which our convictions have.

  Faith is a character trait pervading the whole personality, rather than a specific belief. Rational faith is rooted in productive intellectual and emotional activity.

  ‘To take the difficulties, set-backs and sorrows of life as a challenge which to overcome makes us stronger, rather than as an unjust punishment which should not happen to us (me) requires faith and courage.’

  I believe in what he says about inner activity – the productive use of one’s powers; I must be in a constant state of awareness, alertness, activity and have no place for laziness, which I have been very prone to.

  I also believe him when he says ‘that the real though usually unconscious fear is that of loving – love is an act of faith and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. If one is not productive in other spheres, one is not productive in love either.’

  I have concluded that I have never really faced failure at home or at work and that I now face the possibility of both and have to deal with them. It will involve self-discipline, concentration, patience to gain final mastery. It will involve a cessation of my mental and physical laziness and constant activity (in the right sense), alertness, awareness on my part. I realise that my emotional equipment will have to be watched most carefully and that I must emerge from my present childish state and become ‘more adult’ or ‘more mature’ in my outlooks and attitudes and that the old easy way of childish dependency must be forsaken.

  I know I have to learn to stand up to unpopularity and opposition and deal with it myself and have the courage and faith to do this without help from anyone else. I have got to expect that ‘bad’ things may well happen to me and that I must cope with them and not just treat them as ‘not fair’.

  In general I have to be more productive and more active, more realistic and generally develop more inner activity and general productiveness: In Existential terms I have to take much more care of my ‘Dasein’ and develop a belief in my future, in my becoming a mature person and put my energies into the development in ‘being’ and not fall back on ‘non-being’.

  I must avoid at all costs mental and physical laziness.

  As far as my relations with my wife are concerned – the central point of my trouble I believe: I accept that dependency must cease and that ‘independence and inter-dependence’ is the only possible way to preserve the marriage – and improve it. I must concentrate on my own maturing, on eliminating that which cripples me, on being independent as a person. I realise that I have immature emotional equipment and that I have to operate with it and improve it.

  I accept that sexual relations now will only grow out of the independence and inter-dependence of two mature people and that the incestuous phase is well past and that each must gain pleasure from the act.

  I accept too that largely I have excluded myself from the family and that I cannot in fairness blame my wife for this exclusion. I must be active myself.

  I accept that she has gone to extremes (for valid reasons) in developing herself and that I must so develop myself.

  I accept that it is no good moaning about her spending money unless I do something about having a say in the spending of it and then we must discuss the problems.

  I accept that if I am superfluous at home then it is my business to do something about it and not hers.

  I accept that I cannot have the older form of marriage to which I am emotionally attached and that I have to try to achieve a new basis through independence and interdependence.

  I realise fully that I shall hav
e to be most careful not to fall back on old habits of dependence on strong male authority figures and on ‘easy’ (for me) emotional attachments to women; that warm friendships with women are good and desirable but they must be friendships and not weakening entanglements as they can become so easily.

  I realise too that, as I said earlier, it will be easy to fall back on old habits especially drinking too much – but I have some horror of this now because of what it did to me physically and mentally and I don’t think I will fall back on it again.

  I now quote (as you requested) from my wife’s letter:

  [THIS MATERIAL IS MISSING]

  Subsequent Notes

  Greet wife calmly – but show warmth.

  Mutual social activities with congenial couple – too close proximity for too long not a good idea – caravan dangerous at this stage – perhaps later when new stage reached.

  Keep in touch with Dr Bell from time to time – do not expect answers – Write in the first week and report on progress.

  Medication: Prescription for three months – as she is not listed as a specialist but a psycho-therapist – if questioned get chemist to ring McDougall: If decide to go off medication do it slowly and consult wife for possible observable changes or local G.P. and keep in touch while going off – do it slowly. Any doubts get in touch with Dr McDougall.

  Post back to her my notes.

  Use Mogadon here and replace by Valium at home (prescription).

  (1st course of Mogadon)

  Must accept separation from wife now – no other way.

  Learn to accept less than perfection and learn to delegate as much as possible.

  In her opinion New Zealanders are being over-educated.

  Do not be misled by the number of apparently ‘normal’ marriages around – often not so.

  She feels Lauris’s last letter hopeful and instructive and that I was too pessimistic about it.

  Spending time with family – five to ten minutes of concentrated listening after perhaps I have been to my room and got rid of my preoccupations.

  Says McDougall nice when you know him and go back to him if I feel the need to do so.

  Keep anxiety at reasonable level

  Keep attempting complete concentration

  Watch drinking.

  She will write discharge to Dr McDougall.

  Use TV if very tired.

  Do not expect perfect programming – she insists programmed activities will give great pleasure – especially getting back to them after unavoidable breaks.

  Try to have order of priority if work piles up. Sit and work them out.

  Delegate but let people see you are interested – she goes informally through Wards at Cherry Farm and has highest rate of discharge – much delegation to staff at her ‘villa’.

  Sleep most important – use Mogadon/Valium.

  Do not force sex (I had no intention of doing so anyway) unless Lauris keen (she won’t be).

  Almost like starting courtship again with her – kisses – warmth etc. She thinks I can manage it. (I wonder.)

  If emotional states arise – seek reason for them: If too bad see McDougall.

  Panic, upset, disappointment, even if it lasts some days is not depression. She says my life pattern does not show tendencies towards depression.

  With relations, conquer distaste after subsequent good beginning and keep going at them. Most important – relations at the centre of everything as far as she is concerned.

  She says I was six months into psycho-therapy when I came and did not resist and worked at it – hence this short stay. I hope she is right.

  She feels strongly about the over-education of N.Z. youth and says many of her cases are the result of this – the drive to qualification and to University. This drive often coming from parents not from pupils.

  Advises me to remember education not the most important thing in the world: moderate perfectionism. Have to learn to live with job. Do not fall back on drinking again.

  Concentrate on self-discipline which is the hard way but can give great satisfaction in the end.

  She said she would miss me and I shall certainly miss her. She said goodbye very firmly.

  My summary (she has a copy) was correct but she was more interested in Lauris’s letter – extracts from it.

  She hopes to cut out smoking and drinking sometime. She finds towards end of a holiday – preoccupation with difficulty of starting work – now puts it aside – because she knows it is not real anymore. I wish I could be like this but I suppose I could be if I tried.

  Programming of my time

  Daily:

  1. Get up at a regular hour (which involves going to bed at a reasonable one). Here it has been 6.30.

  2. Devote a regular amount of time to activities such as

  meditating (concentrating)

  reading

  exercise

  walking

  talking to wife and family

  3. Do not indulge beyond a certain minimum escapist activities – TV (I have done a lot of this until I came here) or in over-eating (no longer here) or over-drinking (mentioned earlier); light novels, re-reading familiar pleasant parts of novels.

  Weekly

  At week-ends – say Friday night check back on how I have used my time – how I have kept to my daily programme, whether I have been lazy and unproductive in any way, where I have refused to face reality, where I have rationalised away feelings I had; where I have failed to face life in an adult way.

  Try to ensure that things I am doing are becoming part of me and agreeable to me and that I would miss them if I stopped doing them.

  Try to think how I have acted towards my wife and family and when I have been less than adult in my approaches and reactions.

  Make sure I have treated her as an independent person in her own right at all times and if I have not discuss this and get it right.

  Ensure that I have been as active at home as it is possible to be and that I have taken as full a part in family life as possible – this includes a real contribution to household chores which must be shared when both husband and wife work.

  Fragments And Dreams

  I doubt my ability to cope with life as I now see it. Some horror of reality has suddenly hit me. I cannot now see how I survived so long.

  I think I have always been an over-dependent person who has managed mainly with the help of my wife who in a sense but by no means completely withdrew her support recently. She is now a stronger person than I am although this was not always so as far as I can remember. I can remember her telling me when I broke down before that ‘I was the strong one’ but I am not sure that this was true. I think I have always managed to get other people to do things for me but have now reached the point where I can’t manage this because I see what I am doing and realise I cannot go on doing this.

  I also appear to have lost the drive and intensity which kept me going for so long. This seemed to happen quite suddenly. I have always attached a lot of importance to status but not to living in the ordinary sense and this is the thing I find hardest to bear in some ways … loss of status in the world. I feel and perhaps have always felt over-anxious about the future and what it holds. This feeling is so strong now that I cannot concentrate on the present. I have always felt anxious about my health although I have never really been sick.

  I find it hard to make decisions and stick by them, especially now.

  I used to be a very active person but seem to have become less so over recent years so that suddenly everything seems difficult to do.

  I have an intense desire to give up despite the fact that I know this will be disastrous for all of us. This withdrawal I do not really understand unless it is because I began to dislike my job which was perhaps too difficult for me.

  I find it very hard to accept the reality of what has happened and yet I realise I have brought it on myself. My anxieties are such that I really cannot seem to get control of them. I always feel that someone is going
to help me if I get into difficulties and yet I really know they are not going to do so. There is an air of unreality about this that I cannot cope with at present.

  I am not sure if I have faced up to life properly and not sure that I now can do so. I feel the need of help but suspect I am beyond help at this stage. I have a sense of unreality about the world and cannot seem to come to grips with it. I wonder sometimes if I am two people and I do not know which is the real one at all. I do not feel real and cannot explain this to anyone at all. There are things I do not understand about myself and I find it hard to explain to anyone else.

  I was always able to operate in public but have failed in private life I believe. I find it hard to make contact with other people and still find it so. Perhaps at my age there is nothing to be done about it.

  I know I have to learn new patterns of behaviour but doubt my ability to do so now.

  I can stay here and try to be real – what I really am like – which I do not honestly know. Try to find some reality somewhere in me – a hell of a long job Go home and face it all out as I’ll have to in the end anyhow.

  Best for family if I stay here – at least they will have a happy Christmas thinking things are OK and I will not ruin it for them. But I cannot keep up the bluff here – it will be called soon and I may just be told to go home.

  What future have I got? None that I can see

  Perfect School with people mainly from past. Good reliable people. Pleasant, popular, head – me – All important people there.

  Often had this –

  – Alone on ledge of cliff – Dardanelles – have to get off – never alone – one other, someone very reliable. Always get out but not much done by me. Enemies at times turn out to be friends after all.

  Two girls to sleep with – tried out both without actual sexual act. Rejected both. Wanted a motherly person, competent to wrap me up in them.