The Courage To Be Disliked

by Fumitake Koga

  PHILOSOPHER: Yes.

  YOUTH: Furthermore, as the major premise of teleology, you say that people can change. That people are always selecting their own lifestyles.

  PHILOSOPHER: That is correct.

  YOUTH: So, I am unable to change because I myself keep repeatedly making the decision not to change. I don’t have enough courage to choose a new lifestyle. In other words, I do not have enough courage to be happy, and that’s why I’m unhappy. Have I got anything wrong?

  PHILOSOPHER: No, you haven’t.

  YOUTH: Okay, in that case, my question is, what are the real measures I should take? What do I need to do to change my life? You haven’t explained all that yet.

  PHILOSOPHER: You are right. What you should do now is make a decision to stop your current lifestyle. For instance, earlier you said, ‘If only I could be someone like Y, I’d be happy.’ As long as you live that way, in the realm of the possibility of ‘if only such and such were the case’, you will never be able to change. Because saying ‘if only I could be like Y’ is an excuse to yourself for not changing.

  YOUTH: An excuse not to change?

  PHILOSOPHER: Yes. I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but who never seems to be able to complete his work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that’s why he can’t complete work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No! It’s actually that he wants to leave the possibility of ‘I can do it if I try’ open, by not committing to anything. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it. In another five or ten years, he will probably start using other excuses like ‘I’m not young anymore’ or ‘I’ve got a family to think about now.’

  YOUTH: I can relate all too well to how he must feel.

  PHILOSOPHER: He should just enter his writing for an award, and if he gets rejected, so be it. If he did, he might grow, or discover that he should pursue something different. Either way, he would be able to move on. That is what changing your current lifestyle is about. He won’t get anywhere by not submitting anything.

  YOUTH: But maybe his dreams will be shattered.

  PHILOSOPHER: Well, I wonder. Having simple tasks—things that should be done—while continually coming up with various reasons why one can’t do them sounds like a hard way to live, doesn’t it? So, in the case of my friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, it is clearly the ‘I’, or the ‘self’, that is making life complicated and too difficult to live happily.

  YOUTH: But … That’s harsh. Your philosophy is too tough!

  PHILOSOPHER: Indeed, it is strong medicine.

  YOUTH: Strong medicine! Yes, I agree.

  PHILOSOPHER: But, if you change your lifestyle—the way of giving meaning to the world and yourself—then, both your way of interacting with the world and your behaviour will have to change as well. Do not forget this point: one will have to change. You, just as you are, have to choose your lifestyle. It might seem hard, but it is really quite simple.

  YOUTH: According to you, there’s no such thing as trauma, and environment doesn’t matter either. It’s all just baggage, and my unhappiness is my own fault, right? I’m starting to feel I’m being criticised for everything I’ve ever been and done!

  PHILOSOPHER: No, you are not being criticised. Rather, as Adler’s teleology tells us, ‘No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.’ That you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.

  YOUTH: My life is determined at this exact point?

  PHILOSOPHER: Yes, because the past does not exist.

  YOUTH: All right. Well, I don’t agree with your theories one hundred per cent. There are many points I’m not convinced about, and that I would argue against. At the same time, your theories are worth further consideration and I’m definitely interested in learning more about Adlerian psychology. I think I’ve had enough for tonight, but I hope you won’t mind if I come again next week. If I don’t take a break, I think my head might burst.

  PHILOSOPHER: I’m sure you need some time on your own to think things over. I am always here, so you can visit whenever you like. I enjoyed it. Thank you. Let’s talk again.

  YOUTH: Great! One last thing, if I may. Our discussion today was long and got pretty intense, and I guess I spoke rather rudely. For that, I would like to apologise.

  PHILOSOPHER: Don’t worry about it. You should read Plato’s dialogues. The conduct and language of the disciples of Socrates are surprisingly loose. That’s the way a dialogue is supposed to be.

  The young man was good to his word; exactly one week later, he returned to the philosopher’s study. Truth be told, he’d felt the urge to rush back there only two or three days after his first visit. He had turned things over in his mind very carefully, and his doubts had turned to certainty. In short, teleology, the attributing of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause, was a sophistry, and the existence of trauma was beyond question. People cannot simply forget the past, and neither can they become free from it.

  Today, the young man decided, he’d thoroughly dismantle this eccentric philosopher’s theories and settle matters once and for all.

  WHY YOU DISLIKE YOURSELF

  YOUTH: So, after last time, I calmed myself down, focused, and thought things over. And yet, I’ve got to say, I still can’t agree with your theories.

  PHILOSOPHER: Oh? What do you find questionable about them?

  YOUTH: Well, for instance, the other day I admitted that I dislike myself. No matter what I do, I can’t find anything but shortcomings, and I can see no reason why I’d start liking myself. But, of course, I still want to. You explain everything as having to do with goals, but what kind of goal could I have here? I mean, what kind of advantage could there be in my not liking myself? I can’t imagine there’d be a single thing to gain from it.

  PHILOSOPHER: I see. You feel that you don’t have any strong points; that you’ve got nothing but shortcomings. Whatever the facts might be, that’s how you feel. In other words, your self-esteem is extremely low. So, the questions here, then, are why do you feel so wretched? And, why do you view yourself with such low esteem?

  YOUTH: Because that’s a fact—I really don’t have any strong points.

  PHILOSOPHER: You’re wrong. You notice only your shortcomings because you’ve resolved to not start liking yourself. In order to not like yourself, you don’t see your strong points, and focus only on your shortcomings. First, understand this point.

  YOUTH: I have resolved to not start liking myself?

  PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. To you, not liking yourself is a virtue.

  YOUTH: Why? What for?

  PHILOSOPHER: Perhaps this is something you should think about yourself. What sort of shortcomings do you think you have?

  YOUTH: I’m sure you have already noticed. First of all, there’s my personality. I don’t have any self-confidence, and I’m always pessimistic about everything. And I guess I’m too self-conscious, because I worry about what other people see, and, then, I live with a constant distrust of other people. I can never act naturally; there’s always something theatrical about what I say and do. And it’s not just my personality—there’s nothing to like about my face or my body, either.

  PHILOSOPHER: When you go about listing your shortcomings like that, what kind of mood does it put you in?

  YOUTH: Wow, that’s nasty! An unpleasant mood, naturally. I’m sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me. If there were anyone this wretched and bothersome in my vicinity, I’d keep my distance, too.

  PHILO
SOPHER: I see. Well, that settles it then.

  YOUTH: What do you mean?

  PHILOSOPHER: It might be hard to understand from your own example, so I’ll use another. I use this study for simple counselling sessions. It must have been quite a few years ago, but there was a female student who came by. She sat right where you are sitting now, in the same chair. Well, her concern was her fear of blushing. She told me that she was always turning red whenever she was out in public, and that she would do anything to rid herself of this. So I asked her, ‘Well, if you can cure it, what will you want to do then?’ And she said that there was a man she wanted. She secretly had feelings for him but wasn’t ready to divulge them. Once her fear of blushing was cured, she’d confess her desire to be with him.

  YOUTH: Huh! All right, it sounds like the typical thing a female student would seek counselling for. In order for her to confess her feelings for him, first she had to cure her blushing problem.

  PHILOSOPHER: But is that really the whole case? I have a different opinion. Why did she get this fear of blushing? And why hadn’t it gotten better? Because she needed that symptom of blushing.

  YOUTH: What are you saying exactly? She was asking you to cure it, wasn’t she?

  PHILOSOPHER: What do you think was the scariest thing to her, the thing she wanted to avoid most of all? It was that the man would reject her, of course. The fact that her unrequited love would negate everything for her; the very existence and possibility of ‘I’. This aspect is deeply present in adolescent unrequited love. But as long as she has a fear of blushing, she can go on thinking, I can’t be with him because I have this fear of blushing. It could end without her ever working up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and she could convince herself that he would reject her anyway. And finally, she can live in the possibility that If only my fear of blushing had gotten better, I could have …

  YOUTH: Okay, so she fabricated that fear of blushing as an excuse for her own inability to confess her feelings. Or maybe as a kind of insurance for when he rejected her.

  PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you could put it that way.

  YOUTH: Okay, that is an interesting interpretation. But if that were really the case, wouldn’t it be impossible to do anything to help her? Since she simultaneously needs that fear of blushing, and is suffering because of it, there’d be no end to her troubles.

  PHILOSOPHER: Well, this is what I told her: ‘Fear of blushing is easy to cure.’ She asked, ‘Really?’ I went on: ‘But I will not cure it.’ She pressed me, ‘Why?’ I explained, ‘Look, it’s thanks to your fear of blushing that you can accept your dissatisfaction with yourself and the world around you, and with a life that isn’t going well. It’s thanks to your fear of blushing, and it’s caused by it.’ She asked, ‘How could it be … ?’ I went on: ‘If I did cure it, and nothing in your situation changed at all, what would you do? You’d probably come here again and say, “Give me back my fear of blushing.” And that would be beyond my abilities.’

  YOUTH: Hmm.

  PHILOSOPHER: Her story certainly isn’t unusual. Students preparing for their exams think, If I pass, life will be rosy. Company workers think, If I get transferred, everything will go well. But even when those wishes are fulfilled, in many cases nothing about their situations changes at all.

  YOUTH: Indeed.

  PHILOSOPHER: When a client shows up requesting a cure from fear of blushing, the counsellor must not cure the symptoms. If they do, recovery is likely to be even more difficult. That is the Adlerian psychology way of thinking about this kind of thing.

  YOUTH: So, what specifically do you do, then? Do you ask what they’re worried about and then just leave it be?

  PHILOSOPHER: She didn’t have confidence in herself. She was very afraid that things being what they were, he’d reject her even if she did confess to him. And, if that happened, she’d lose even more confidence and get hurt. That’s why she created the symptom of the fear of blushing. What I can do is to get the person first to accept ‘myself now’, and then regardless of the outcome, have the courage to step forward. In Adlerian psychology, this kind of approach is called ‘encouragement’.

  YOUTH: Encouragement?

  PHILOSOPHER: Yes. I’ll explain systematically what it consists of once our discussion has progressed a little farther. We’re not at that stage yet.

  YOUTH: That works for me. In the meantime, I’ll keep the word ‘encouragement’ in mind. So, whatever happened to her?

  PHILOSOPHER: Apparently, she had the chance to join a group of friends and spend time with the man, and in the end it was he who confessed his desire to be with her. Of course, she never dropped by this study again after that. I don’t know what became of her fear of blushing. But she probably didn’t need it any longer.

  YOUTH: Yes, she clearly didn’t have any use for it anymore.

  PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Now, keeping this student’s story in mind, let’s think about your problems. You say that, at present, you notice only your shortcomings, and it’s unlikely that you’ll ever come to like yourself. And then, you said, ‘I’m sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me,’ didn’t you? I’m sure you understand this already. Why do you dislike yourself? Why do you focus only on your shortcomings, and why have you decided to not start liking yourself? It’s because you are overly afraid of being disliked by other people and getting hurt in your interpersonal relationships.

  YOUTH: What do you mean by that?

  PHILOSOPHER: Just like the young woman with the fear of blushing, who was afraid of being rejected by the man, you are afraid of being negated by other people. You’re afraid of being treated disparagingly; being refused, and sustaining deep mental wounds. You think that instead of getting entangled in such situations, it would be better if you just didn’t have relations with anyone in the first place. In other words, your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people.

  YOUTH: Huh …

  PHILOSOPHER: Now, how can that goal be realised? The answer is easy. Just find your shortcomings, start disliking yourself, and become someone who doesn’t enter into interpersonal relationships. That way, if you can shut yourself into your own shell, you won’t have to interact with anyone, and you’ll even have a justification ready whenever other people snub you. That it’s because of your shortcomings that you get snubbed, and if things weren’t this way, you too could be loved.

  YOUTH: Ha-ha! Well, you’ve really put me in my place now.

  PHILOSOPHER: Don’t be evasive. Being ‘the way I am’ with all these shortcomings is, for you, a precious virtue. In other words, something that’s to your benefit.

  YOUTH: Ouch, that hurts. What a sadist; you’re diabolical! Okay, yes, it’s true: I am afraid. I don’t want to get hurt in interpersonal relationships. I’m terrified of being snubbed for who I am. It’s hard to admit it, but you are right.

  PHILOSOPHER: Admitting is a good attitude. But don’t forget, it’s basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too. Adler says, ‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.’ But one can’t do such a thing.

  ALL PROBLEMS ARE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS

  YOUTH: Wait a minute! I’m supposed to just let that one slip by? ‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone?’ What do you mean by that? If you lived all alone, wouldn’t you be horribly lonely?

  PHILOSOPHER: Oh, but being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual’.

  YOUTH: If you were really alone, that is, if you existed completely alone in the universe, you wouldn’t be an in
dividual and you wouldn’t feel lonely, either?

  PHILOSOPHER: I suppose the very concept of loneliness wouldn’t even come up. You wouldn’t need language, and there’d be no use for logic or commonsense, either. But such a thing is impossible. Even if you lived on an uninhabited island, you would think about someone far across the ocean. Even if you spend your nights alone, you strain your ears to hear the sound of someone’s breath. As long as there is someone out there somewhere, you will be haunted by loneliness.

  YOUTH: But then, you could just rephrase that as ‘if one could live in the universe all alone, one’s problems would go away’, couldn’t you?

  PHILOSOPHER: In theory, yes. As Adler goes so far as to assert, ‘All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.’

  YOUTH: Can you say that again?

  PHILOSOPHER: We can repeat it as many times as you like: all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear.

  YOUTH: That’s a lie! It’s nothing more than academic sophistry.

  PHILOSOPHER: Of course, we cannot do without interpersonal relationships. A human being’s existence, in its very essence, assumes the existence of other human beings. Living completely separate from others is, in principle, impossible. As you are indicating, the premise ‘if one could live all alone in the universe’ is unsound.

  YOUTH: That’s not the issue I am talking about. Sure, interpersonal relationships are probably a big problem. That much I acknowledge. But to say that everything comes down to interpersonal relationship problems, now that’s really an extreme position. What about the worry of being cut off from interpersonal relationships, the kind of problems that an individual agonises over as an individual; problems directed to oneself. Do you deny all that?