everything with him. I realized later he had shifted the whole problem of human life to the problem of the creative will, and that he was counting on this creative will to find its own solutions. He was challenging my creative will, and having strengthened that, I began to alter my personal life. The change came from within; it was a force which could solve conflicts and dualities. That is why I give the artist such importance, because he possesses this power from the beginning. Even in the darkest periods of social history, outer events would be changed if we had a center. It is only in the private world that we can learn to alchemize the ugly, the terrible, the horrors of war, the evils and cruelties of man, into a new kind of human being. I do not say turn away or escape. We cannot turn away from social history, because it is necessary to maintain our responsibilities to society, but we need to create a center of strength and resistance to disappointments and failures in outward events. Today I am working for causes which I consider worthwhile, but that is in the world of action, and the world from which we draw our wisdom, our lucidities, our power to act, our courage, is in this other world which is not an escape but a laboratory of the soul. It is this inner world Dr. Rank was eager to see us create, and for that he had to deliver us from the sense of guilt, inbred in us, towards individual growth. In
Truth and Reality
he does say that the culture tries to make us feel that the active individual is really endangering the growth of his fellow men. And I had this problem, in common with so many students today. When I talked about individual growth in order to have something to contribute to the collective, they thought I meant to turn away and take refuge in an ivory tower. For me it was the place where I did my most difficult spiritual work, where I practiced the confrontation of psychological obstacles, in order to be able to act and live in the world without despair and loss of faith. It was the place where I reconstructed what the outer world disintegrated. Because it is just as important to live outside of history as it is to live within it. Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it. Our American culture made a virtue of our living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center, and so we lost our center and had to find it again.
Someone asked me the other day, Are we ever going to reach a time when we don’t need therapy? I answered, Not until we cease to be in trouble for lack of a center. Dr. Rank talked about this and mentioned that guilt accompanies every act of will—creative will or the assertion of our personal will. He knew the extent of our guilt. The artist knows it. It was proved very often in the history of artists’ lives. They often expressed the need to justify their work, to justify their concentration and even obsession with it.
Now, in the woman this problem is far deeper, because the guilt which afflicts woman is deeper than man’s. Man is expected to achieve. He is expected to become the finest doctor, the finest lawyer, the finest teacher, etc. Whatever he does is expected of him by society, and he is delivered of guilt when he produces. But woman was trained to give first place to her personal commitments—home and children and husband or family—she was encumbered with duties which absorbed all her energies, and the very concept of love was united to the concept of care and nurturing, whether physical or symbolic. When she reduced the hours of devotion and gave her energies to other interests, she felt a double guilt. She was made aware that she was failing in her personal responsibilities, and her other achievements were severely undervalued by the culture. So the guilt is much deeper in woman and becomes in many cases the roots of
Truth and Reality
he does say that the culture tries to make us feel that the active individual is really endangering the growth of his fellow men. And I had this problem, in common with so many students today. When I talked about individual growth in order to have something to contribute to the collective, they thought I meant to turn away and take refuge in an ivory tower. For me it was the place where I did my most difficult spiritual work, where I practiced the confrontation of psychological obstacles, in order to be able to act and live in the world without despair and loss of faith. It was the place where I reconstructed what the outer world disintegrated. Because it is just as important to live outside of history as it is to live within it. Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it. Our American culture made a virtue of our living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center, and so we lost our center and had to find it again.
Someone asked me the other day, Are we ever going to reach a time when we don’t need therapy? I answered, Not until we cease to be in trouble for lack of a center. Dr. Rank talked about this and mentioned that guilt accompanies every act of will—creative will or the assertion of our personal will. He knew the extent of our guilt. The artist knows it. It was proved very often in the history of artists’ lives. They often expressed the need to justify their work, to justify their concentration and even obsession with it.
Now, in the woman this problem is far deeper, because the guilt which afflicts woman is deeper than man’s. Man is expected to achieve. He is expected to become the finest doctor, the finest lawyer, the finest teacher, etc. Whatever he does is expected of him by society, and he is delivered of guilt when he produces. But woman was trained to give first place to her personal commitments—home and children and husband or family—she was encumbered with duties which absorbed all her energies, and the very concept of love was united to the concept of care and nurturing, whether physical or symbolic. When she reduced the hours of devotion and gave her energies to other interests, she felt a double guilt. She was made aware that she was failing in her personal responsibilities, and her other achievements were severely undervalued by the culture. So the guilt is much deeper in woman and becomes in many cases the roots of
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