Chapter VI: Part 6

Gradually there crept into her embittered soul envy of the youth and beauty of others and augmented the poison of her depression. There was no longer any escape from this labyrinth of woes! In whatever direction she looked, she saw only grey clouds; everywhere she saw dark and confused roads losing themselves in the darkness of a ruined life. One would suppose that by this time she would have resolutely determined to end her sufferings and remove herself from a world which had nothing more to offer her.

One who supposes any such thing is not acquainted with this type of person. He has not yet discovered the secret of “sweet sorrow,” the delights of self-pity. This woman, too, found her pleasure in the tragic role which life had temporarily assigned her and to which she was clinging spasmodically with all her power. She virtually drank herself drunk with the thought that she was the unhappiest woman in the world. She directed over her own wounds all the streams of love that flowed from her warm heart. She tore these wounds open again and again so as to be unhappy and pity herself. If it did not sound so paradoxical, I would say that this woman would be unhappy if one deprived her of her unhappiness. I wonder whether an unconscious religious motive did not play a role in this self-assumed suffering. Did she hope for compensation in the life to come for all the happiness that she had missed in this world? Was her everlasting looking backwards only a voluntarily maintained attitude behind which was concealed the anticipation of never-ending looking into a radiant eternity?

All my attempts to restore her to an active life failed. The surest of all therapeutic remedies, work, failed because she never took the matter seriously. She stubbornly maintained herself in the position of looking backward, and from this position no power on earth could move her....

One who looks upon the Bible as a poetic account of eternal conflicts and has learned to recognise the symbolic significance of legendary lore will have no difficulty in recognizing in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah the significance of looking backwards. The woman who was converted into a pillar of salt because she looked back into the burning city--what a wonderful symbolisation of losing oneself in the past! Everyone has his secret Sodom, his Gomorrah, his disappointments, his defeats, his fearful judgments! Woe to him who looks back into the dangerous moments of his life! And does not one of von Schwab’s legends warn us against the dangers of past terrors? Does it not tell us that we are flying madly over abysses, that the perils of the road are concealed and that it is dangerous to retain in the mind’s eye the perils that are past?

There will be no difficulty now in comprehending my formula that to be well is to have overcome one’s past. I know of no better means of distinguishing the neurotic from the healthy. The healthy person also suffers disappointments--who can escape them?--he too suffers many a fall when he thinks he is rushing on to victory, but he will raise the tattered flag of hope and continue on his way to the assured goal. The neurotic does not get done with his past. All experiences have a tenfold seriousness for him. Whereas the healthy person throws off the burden of past disappointments, and occasionally even transforms the recollection of them to sources of pleasure, and is stimulated to new efforts by the contrasts between the pleasureable present and the sad past, the nervous person includes in his burdensome present the difficulties of the past. His memories become more and more oppressive from year to year.

It is for all the world as if the neurotic’s soul were covered over with some dangerous adhesive material. Everything sticks to it and does not permit itself to be loosed from it, becomes organically united to it, wraps itself up in it, blinds his clear vision and cripples his freedom of motion. This not getting done with the past betrays itself also in his inability to forgive, in his craving for revenge and in his resentments. A neurotic is capable of reproaching one for some trifling humiliation or for some unconsidered word many years after the event. He treasures up these humiliations and defeats and does not lose sight of them for a single day. It might almost be said that he enacts daily the whole repertoire of the past.

How often are we amazed to find people who continue to make the same mistakes over and over again and whom experience seems never to teach anything. Nietzsche says: “If one has character he has his experience which keeps on recurring.” In reality all that life is capable of depends upon this ability to forget the past. Of course some experiences continue to live as lessons and warnings and go to make up that uncertain treasure which we call Experience. True greatness, however, shows itself in being able to act in spite of one’s experiences, in overcoming latent mistrust.

What would become of us if all of us permitted our unhappy experiences to operate as inhibitions! We should resemble a person who avoided an article of diet because it had once disagreed with him. Experience may be that which no one can learn unless one has been born with it: to find the appropriate mean from one’s experiences and one’s inclinations.

The nervous individual becomes useless as far as life is concerned because his experience becomes a source of doubt for him and intensifies his wanting will-power. In the presence of a new task he takes his past into consideration and makes his unhappy experiences serve as warnings, hesitates, vacillates, weighs, and finally does nothing. How much could any of us do if we lacked the courage to venture? What could we accomplish if we never thought the game worth the candle? I have often been enabled to prove that the neurotic’s will is weak because his will is divided. I must supplement this with the statement that his will is oppressed by the burden of his past.

Let us after this disgression turn back to the unhappy woman with whom we began. I intimated that it was within her power to alter her destiny. Virile and kindly disposed men offered her a helping hand. But her unhappy experience begot a fear of a second disillusionment. She preferred to be unhappy rather than to venture a second time and again be unhappy.

But it is not only our past unhappiness that is dangerous. Past happiness, too, must be overcome and grow pale. Who does not know persons who are ever speaking of the past, the good old days that never return? This is a particularly striking phenomenon with reference to childhood. Some people do not seem to be capable of forgetting their blissful childhood. There is an important hint here for parents and educators who wish to assure their children a beautiful childhood. One must be careful that it is not made too beautiful! Because of the pleasureable initiation into life the later disharmonies prove too painful and awaken a longing for childhood which can be fulfilled only in fruitless dreams!

Recollections must not be permitted to kill the present. We must not be permitted to be ever lured back into the past and forever to be making comparisons. Every one of us carries the key to his past about in his bosom and opens the secret portals in order to roam about in it during the night in his dreams. In the morning, just before awaking, he locks the shrine and his daily duties resume their career. But there are people who cannot tear themselves away from their dreams and are ever harkening back to the voices of the past.

In insanity this absorption in one’s past may easily be observed. The invalids become children again, with all their failings, their childish prattle, their childish pranks, and their childish games. They have come upon the road to childhood and lost the way so that they cannot get back again into the world of the grown-ups. They have looked backwards so long that finally they went backwards.

This “return to childhood” may also be observed in nervous people who have retained their critical faculty. I recall a woman of forty who employed a maid to dress and undress her, also to wash her, and who did not perform certain personal functions without the company and assistance of the maid. And I must not forget to mention the twenty-four-year-old youth who was brought to me by his mother because he was incapable of doing any work and who was not ashamed in my presence to take a good swallow of milk every five minutes from an ordinary baby’s milk-bottle. This kind of “infantilism” often attains grotesque proportions. To-day the aforementioned woman laughs at the “incomprehensible malady,” and the grown-up suckling is an industrious official who supports his family very comfortably. Both of them wished to defeat nature and return to childhood. Not infrequently a bodily change accompanies this mental state. The hair falls out, the features become softer, and the signs of adult masculinity undergo regressive changes. In all probability this condition is associated with certain disturbances of the internal metabolism. But who can say positively whether the impulse to these disturbances did not proceed from the stubborn look backwards, the yearning for childhood, and the enraptured glance into the depths of the past?

All the wisdom of life consists in the manner of our forgetting. What fine overtones of the harmonies and discords of the past must accompany the concords of the day! But every day has a right to its melody. Each one lives its own life and is a preparation for the future. One who fills his day with the delights and the pains of the past murders it. Only on appropriate occasions may we, must we, direct our eyes backwards, survey the path we have traversed, and again concentrate our gaze on the milestones of memory.

All ye who are ever bewailing your lot and are incapable of rising above your fate--hearken unto me and know that ye no longer live, that ye died ere the law of destruction robbed ye of life! Let me tell ye what ye may find writ in burning letters in the firmament of knowledge: _it is never too late!_ Only he has lost his life who thinks he has lost it. Forgive and forget! Drink of the lethe of work and solicitude for others! Ye are egoists! For even the mirror of your woes on which your eyes are riveted shows you only your own agonized image. And measure your pains by the infinity of pain that fills the world.

ALL-SOULS.

I am not crying for the dead who have died but who are still alive for me. I am crying for the dead who are still alive but who are dead for me. When I look back upon the long succession of years that I have travelled, and think of all my lovers who accompanied me part of the way, and then left me to wander alone, I feel as if a heavy fog were enveloping everything that otherwise appears beautiful and delightful....

But the dead have clung to me. They live with me, feel with me, and speak to me. When the noise of the day dies out and when the bells within begin to ring, when shapeless forms emerge from the unconscious with strange questions and uncanny gestures, when I turn from the world of reality into that of mystery, then my dead friends are with me and I hold converse with them. With every question I wish I had asked another, and I get the conviction that this other one would have answered my question, or, that other one would have understood me.

Ah! there is really so little that we desire: we wish to be understood, and do not know that we are demanding the impossible, the unattainable. For we must know ourselves ere others can comprehend us. But the urge to share ourselves with another, the longing for a heart attuned to ours deceives us as to our own inadequacy. What we do not possess we would find in another. And we compress all our stupid cravings into the one wish which appears to us as the wish for friendship.

Frightful is the thought how many friends I have lost, how many persons whom I had once thought so valuable and unreplaceable have died as far as I am concerned. And even more painful is the thought that this is the experience of all of us. Every one of us finds persons who accompany us a short distance, their hands in ours, their arms about us lovingly, and we think this will continue for ever, and then we come to a turn in the road and they have vanished. Or they travel along a road that seems to run very near our own. So near one another do we travel that we can almost touch hands even though our paths are not the same. And gradually our paths diverge. We are still within sight of one another. We can still converse with one another. Then this, too, becomes impossible. If we shout we may make ourselves heard on the other highway, but there is no reply. They are gone!

First, there were the friends of our childhood! Among these there were some whom we termed friends but who were really only a plaything, like the rocking-horse and the wooden sword. They were created only for the purpose of playing a role in the rich world of our fantasies. There was something impersonal about our friend--he did not yet cling to us. Mother used to say to us: “To-day you have a new friend!” And we were ready to accept him as such at once unless he was unsympathetic to us or obstinate or inclined to lord it over us. Of course no one could be forced on us, no matter how earnestly mother demanded it. Gradually there developed in us that dark and puzzling concept, made up of the fusion of numerous primary impulses, which we call “friendship.”

Then one came along who was more to us than all the others. In his presence life was much more beautiful and richer than we had supposed; when he was absent we longed for him. When he came all our pains were forgotten. Ah, what great loves and hatreds we were capable of in the blessed era of our first friendship!

It is incomprehensible to me that I have lost the friend of my early youth. On one occasion our teachers interfered and separated us. Why they did so I do not know. But I was a wild, unruly youngster; they may have feared that by my example I might poison the inexperienced soul of my friend. But of what avail were prohibitions in the presence of our great friendship! We met secretly behind dark hedges, where no teacher’s eyes could discover us. As evening approached we roamed out upon the meadow beyond the city, as far as the cemetery wall upon the gentle slope of the mountain, where we could lie down at our ease and gaze up at the stars, while we discussed the many serious questions which were beginning to trouble the souls of the maturing youngsters. When night came and wrapped the white buildings and the green gardens in a dark veil, and when the distant trumpet summoned the soldiers to their barracks, and at the sound there sprang from many an obscure nook frightened couples who quickly embraced again and said hurried farewells, we grasped each other’s hands feverishly, and it seemed as if we could never, never be separated. Once we were angry at each other. It had been a serious dispute. Both of us were obstinate, for months we sulked and did not speak to each other. But one day my friend’s heart melted. He confessed that he had suffered the tortures of jealousy, and that he made up only because he feared he might lose me for ever.

He was quite right. Slowly I had become half a man. Instinctively I had found among the High School pupils one who had my own inclinations, who spent sleepless nights with me in measuring verses on our fingers, fearing we might be too late for immortality. If it was the sensuous that had to be disposed of formerly, it was now the supersensuous that forced itself between the innocent pleasures of life. Now we could sit in the moonlight for hours speculating on the mysteries of existence, infinity, and immortality. Every time we discovered something beautiful we were happy for days thereafter.

He was not our only friend in those days of youthful enthusiasms. Then we had many, many friends. And when we sat in the close cafés and with palpitating hearts sang the old student-songs, and the pitcher filled with beer was passed around, we spoke of “eternal friendship” and “eternal loyalty.” The “eternal” pledge was sealed by the shaking of hands, and we really felt like brothers. Every one had his good qualities which were admired, his weaknesses which were smiled at indulgently, and his strength which was feared. Each one seemed unreplaceable, and once when death snatched one of our friends from our midst we all cried like little children who want their mother.

And when we scattered in the directions of the winds, one going to the High School, the second into the army, the third into a vocation, our passion flared up again, and we swore to come together again after a certain number of years had gone by. What merry, spirited, and lusty boys we were!...

If only I had not seen them again, these friends! If only they could have continued to live in my memory as a precious heritage from a period that was rich in hopes and poor in disillusionments. It is with a shudder that I recall the evening, when, after many years of separation, we had a reunion. Were these my living friends? No, these had been dead many years. I sat among corpses, among alien corpses who spoke a language that was not mine. One whom fortune had made a millionaire sat there vain and self-conscious. Absorbed in himself and morose sat one who clung to his grandiose fantasies in the modest station he occupied. A third kept looking at his watch uneasily because he had promised his wife to be home before ten o’clock. The fourth stroked his paunch and was absorbed in the mysteries of the menu. A fifth gazed at his highly-polished finger-nails and yawned. The sixth and the seventh--but enough! They looked at one another strangely, and on the lips of all was the unuttered question: “Why in--did we come here?”

These were friendships which had been made when we were still in our childhood. Later on the matter was not quite so simple, and it took a long time before we found one with whom we could become as one. In reality, we are still like children. We want to find a playmate for our thoughts and feelings. We let each other speak and we listen, and we call that “being understood.” That is not so easy as one would like to believe. There are people who cannot listen and people to whom we cannot listen. But ultimately one finds the right person, one to whom we can entrust our secrets, one with whom we share our joys and our woes. But for how long? How strange! The fate of these friendships is sealed the moment a third person acquires the right to participate: a woman. Marriage is the rock on which most friendships split. What was formerly a question for two is now a question for three. And if the friend too marries it becomes a question for four. But how difficult it is to find four persons whose hearts beat harmoniously! What new elements now enter into the previous requirements “to understand each other!” Vanity, jealousy, envy, disfavour.

And thus we lose one friend after the other. And one day we find ourselves in an all-souls’ mood, and place wreaths on the graves of the dead who are dead to us. We ask ourselves anxiously whose the fault was that we are so lonesome. And if we are not honest we blame the others. But if we are honest we see that we were not free from guilt and from all the hateful things that human beings say about one another, and we realize that it is man’s destiny to be alone. The more pronounced our individuality becomes, the more sharply our qualities are outlined, the more difficult is it to lose oneself in a crowd. We are not capable of keeping our friends. We demand instead of giving. And that is why we lose them and weep at their graves.

I had one friend who was true to me through all the vicissitudes of life. Fate drove this one friend far away, and when we got the chance occasionally to see each other it was only for a few hours, which fled like seconds--so much did we have to say to each other. It was our earnest yearning once to get a chance to go away during the summer and spend a vacation together, free and unhampered, satiate ourselves with each other, and then have enough for a whole year. At the cost of many sacrifices we succeeded in having our dream fulfilled. But I would not make the attempt again. I am afraid I would lose my friend altogether.

When we found the long days before us and heard ourselves again and wanted to open our hearts to each other, we became aware--with secret horror--that we had become different in many respects. And occasionally in those beautiful hours we were conscious of something like a shudder at the thought that something fine and delicate that had been anxiously guarded might die. We separated sooner than we had planned or had originally wished. We were happy that we had parted, for we were still carrying home with us a precious heritage from our youth: our friendship--which had not yet been destroyed, but slightly bruised by rude and heavy hands. We shuddered how near we were to including ourselves among the dead.

Was that anything wonderful? Years had passed. Each one of us had experienced thousands of impressions, and what had once been common and had borne the same image had become so different that it would have been impossible to recognize them as having had a common origin. And thus it is that we stand on the roads that once were so near each other but are now so wide apart and that we call to each other like frightened children seeking flowers in the woods and longing anxiously to hear the voices of their comrades. We call to each other to prove to ourselves that we have not died.

* * * * *

It is all souls’ day. Numberless persons are making pilgrimages to the graves of their dead to lay a flower there. I stay at home and close my eyes. I am not crying for the dead who have died but live for me. I am weeping for the dead who still live but who are dead to me....

MIRROR SLAVES.

There are persons who spend their entire lives under the tyranny of the mirror. From early morning to late at night they are thinking, “How do I look to-day?” The mirror follows them into their dreams and shows them their ego horribly distorted and grotesquely transformed, or it annihilates the imperfections which make them so unhappy. Everybody has a tremendous interest in his personal appearance, an interest which may assume such proportions as to amount to self-love, to being in love with one’s bodily ego, or to hatred of one’s self, disgust with one’s own appearance. Ultimately every one of us is egocentric. For each one of us our ego is the hub of the world. Every slightest happening is looked at and judged from the standpoint of our own ego. In the mirror slaves this trait is exaggerated to the n-th degree, to the extent of being uncanny and neurotic. They spend their lives in front of the corporeal and spiritual mirror. For they fix their gaze not only on their physical appearance, but even on their thoughts, feelings, sensations, and work; they are constantly checking themselves up, criticising themselves, and are most discontented with themselves, or they are ridiculously conceited, and never cease to admire their actions and transformations.

Mirror slaves waste a part of their lives in front of the mirror. They keep a little mirror by them constantly so as to look at themselves from time to time. They can’t pass a mirror without stopping in front of it long enough to survey themselves from head to foot. There is a story of a king who promised to give his daughter in marriage to the man who would pass a certain mirror without looking into it. Vanity foiled all but a poet, and the princess was awarded to him. (And, in all probability, the poet did not look into the mirror because he was absorbed in admiring his ego in the mirror of his soul!) This story teaches us the intensity of human vanity. In the case of mirror slaves this human failing becomes a disease; it fills their lives and, under certain circumstances, unfits them for life.

A mirror slave devotes a great deal of attention to the matter of his external appearance. He is dominated by an imperative which makes life a torture. This imperative is: “What will people think of me?” He feels all eyes are upon him, everybody is looking at him, everybody is thinking of his appearance. He has a horrible fear of being laughed at. For God’s sake! only not to be laughed at, not to become the subject of other people’s mirth! He would love to be lost in the crowd and not be noticed. If he could only possess a magic cap that would enable him to go about invisible! On the other hand he thirsts for triumphs. He would like to find favour, to be larger, bigger, more elegant and more beautiful than others, would like to shine in society, and be able to outshine others in wit, intellect, vivacity, education and culture. Above all he is desirous of making an impression on the opposite sex, to make conquests, to be a Lothario, free from all restraints, uninterfered with in his inclinations, and unconcerned about the judgment of his environment.

The mirror slave begins his day with the question, “What shall I wear to-day?” As soon as a careful inspection has convinced him that this is going to be a good or a bad day for him, that he is looking younger or older, sick or well, the painful task of selection begins. What dress will be most adapted to the taste of this day, to the weather, or to the mood? After some deliberation a choice is made. But then, all of a sudden, the mirror discloses a blemish! Woe! The toilet must be gone all over again. Everything is weighed carefully in the balance, and finally the arduous task is completed.

And now the mirror slave’s martyrdom begins. He studies the people he meets to see whether they greet him or ignore him, are friendly or unfriendly, pleased or indifferent, etc., whether they take note of him, whisper behind his back, criticise him, make remarks about him, or make merry over him. If one laughs without his participation he is on the rack; unquestionably it was he who was being laughed at: there must be something wrong with his clothes. Why is everybody looking at him so curiously? In his distress he may even be induced to address strangers. “Why did they stare at me so fixedly?” In a sudden outburst of passion he may even call an acquaintance to account for not having greeted him or for having done so carelessly.

He experiences extraordinary sensations when he puts on new articles of clothing. What a difficult task it is to go out in new shoes! All eyes must be magically directed on his shoes. He makes himself ridiculous with his new shoes. People surely think him silly or a slave of fashion. He lives through all this with every new garment, and ultimately he develops a fear of changing his clothes and goes about in old, worn, and even shabby clothing, thinking that thus he attracts less attention.

All daily tasks become a great undertaking. To go into a store to make a purchase, to enter a theatre when other spectators are already seated, or to look around for a seat in a restaurant, etc., are difficult and often impossible tasks. He loves to be the first person in the theatre or at the concert--to come in while the hall is still empty. The selection of a seat is a source of worry. A mirror slave would love to sit alone in a box or in the front row if he were not so afraid of being looked at--which is exactly what he longs for. He therefore conceals himself in a modest inconspicuous seat, but does not enjoy himself because he is always impelled to observe and study the people.

He is a slave of public opinion. At no price would he do anything not quite proper, that would cause the slightest head-shake, or would make him the subject of public comment. He would purchase the good-will of all, court everybody’s favour, and wants to be loved and admired by the whole world. He spares no pains to get the approval of his environment. He is one of the eternally amiable, modest, and helpful persons that we encounter now and then. He gives very liberal tips in order that he may be highly thought of. In fact, he loves to give presents and fears nothing so much as being thought niggardly.

In time he becomes socially useless. A trivial public function, a speech, a betrothal, any appearance in public liberates a whole host of apprehensive ideas. If he happens to be an artist he fears to make a public appearance, and contents himself with being a teacher. If he overcomes his fear of appearing in public, he becomes the slave of the critics. An unfavourable criticism brings him to the verge of despair; a favourable criticism temporarily lifts him above all difficulties.

If we inquire into the cause of this neurosis we find it to be a defective educational method in childhood, which has led the child to overvalue its environment and has implanted in it a pathologic degree of vanity. How many parents have the habit of calling the child’s attention to the fact that people are looking at it, observing it, or laughing at it! How often when a child is wearing a new garment is it told that everybody is looking at it and admiring it! And how often is a child admired and worshipped to such an extent that it really imagines itself the hub of its little world! All the boundless overvaluation of the world, of one’s surroundings, the striving for public recognition, for reputation, for honour emanate from our childhood years. We ought to make it our object to bring about just the opposite. The child should be brought up to be modest, to learn that happiness lies in the feeling of having done one’s duty, in the quiet joys of life, in work, in a capacity for enjoyment. It is our duty to limit the child’s vanity, to restrain his ambition, and to train him to be self-reliant. One who has learned to consider contentment with oneself--not self-satisfaction based on vanity and arrogance--as worth more than what people say about one has found the way to health and happiness.

Who would deny that a mirror has its uses? Who does not know that it is necessary occasionally to observe ourselves in the mirror of the body and the soul so that we may recognize our shortcomings, remove our blemishes, and make ourselves better and more beautiful? All excess becomes a vice. A mirror is a dangerous thing for the vain person who cannot live without it. Everything is a mirror to him. The world as a whole is a mirrored salon which reflects his image from every point. But he fails to see that behind these mirrors there is another world to which he has lost access. For the next step beyond this mirror-neurosis is insanity, a disease which we now know is a losing of oneself in oneself.

_Printed in Great Britain by The Cheltenham Press, Cheltenham, Glos._

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Archaic, unusual and inconsistent spellings have been kept in the text. Obvious misspellings have been fixed.

Details of the changes:

PAGE original text[**corrected text]
12 the glory of supreme worldy[**worldly] wisdom and branding
42 being a phsyician[**physician]. That’s a great, a noble,
64 could wear the shirt of a happy man. Mesengers[**Messengers]
79 experiences can strip of[**off] the pollen linked with
105 The servants, the family phsyician[**physician], the music
106 its origin in our life’s needs. We woman[**women] all
113 on the homœpathic[**homœopathic] principle. They fight the
114 to work. For behind their zeal to accummulate[**accumulate]
119 suprising[**surprising] forms among the victims of hysteria.
129 if she lost him! But a careful psychanalysis[**psychoanalysis]
129 brought forth ample and convincing comfirmation[**confirmation]
138 country of the bethrothal[**betrothal] period, and thus
146 example from our daily life. A women[**woman] is
146 pyschic[**psychic] origin. When we investigated carefully
157 to a splinter in the brain. An excellent mataphor[**metaphor]!)
158 instincts and impulses with dont’s[**don’ts]. The sum
159 and the Checko[**Czech] rustic are always at each other’s
160 wage a war for exsistence[**existence]. A few survive longer
172 of their excitement is imcomprehensible[**incomprehensible]
179 in all likelihood takes it[**its] origin from the sexual
179 “Walkyre[**Valkyrie],” that forced the dagger into Tullio
183 the feeling that the counsellor’s malicious wittiism[**witticism]
211 or they are ridicously[**ridiculously] conceited, and never cease
214 its environment and has inplanted[**implanted] in it a

End of Project Gutenberg's The Depths of the Soul, by William Stekel