Neurosis & Treatment: A Holistic Theory Chapter 2    

Andras Angyal

 

 

 

2.  The Trend toward Homonomy^[1]

 

Human behavior cannot be understood solely as a manifestation of the trend toward increased autonomy.  Seen from another angle, human life reveals a basic pattern very different from self-assertiveness, from striving for freedom and mastery.  The person behaves as if he were seeking a place for himself in a larger unit of which he strives to become a part.  In the first orientation he is struggling for centrality in his world, trying to mold an organize objects and events, to bring them under his own control.  In the second orientation he seems rather to strive to surrender himself and to become an organic part of something that he conceives as greater than himself.  Processes concerned with procreation are evidence that even at the physiological-biological level the individual is integrated into superindividual units.  At the cultural level, the person's conception of the larger unit to which he belongs, or to which he strives to belong, varies according to his cultural background and personal orientation.  The superordinate whole may be represented for him by a social unit-family, clan, nation-by an ideology, or by a meaningfully ordered universe.  The objective existence of such superindividual wholes is a metaphysical question with which the empirical scientist need not be concerned.  For the student of personality, the important fact is that the trend toward homonomy, the wish to be in harmony with a unit one regards as extending beyond his individual self, is a powerful motivating source of behavior.

 

Many theories of personality have explicitly or implicitly recognized the existence of this trend.  The double orientation of human life has found reflection in various attempts to formulate the broadest system principle of the person, such as self-preservation and preservation of the species, or the will to power and Gemeinschaftsgefuehl.  I think the existence of both trends is obvious to the majority of people.  Still the tendency persists among theorists to view the second trend as less basic, as perhaps derived from the first in some circuitous way, or as being of lesser important.  I have been asked by people who have discussed my concepts with me whether I would not agree that autonomy was more important than homonomy.  I am certain that the second trend is quite as basic as the first.  I do not consider it a superstructure, a luxury which comes only after all other needs have been fulfilled.  It is just as much a part of human existence as the autonomous needs, at least in a fully functioning human being.  To ask which is more important makes no more sense than asking whether hands or feet are more important.  From the psychiatric point of view, the second trend is, if anything, more crucial, because if things go wrong in our lives we have more trouble in that area than in any other.

 

One difficulty in making the manifestations of the homonomous trend vivid and obvious to the reader is that actual samples of behavior can never be ascribed exclusively to one or the other orientation.  The behavioral items, particularly in a well-integrated person, always manifest both orientations, although in varying degrees.  While the autonomous trend is the predominant moving force in such areas as technology, relatively pure manifestations of homonomy can be found in certain forms of artistic, religious, and social behavior.  We shall touch on the artistic or aesthetic experience later.  In the context of the topic of this book, the expression of the homonomous trend in the so-called higher aspects of human life, such as art, is less important than its expression in the relationship of one person to another, of husband and wife, child and parent, among friends.  These relationships may have all kinds of patterns and qualities, but they always extend beyond the individuality of the participants.  They clearly show that in the human being life is not contained within his individual self; it extends into the world and particularly into other human beings.  What we call love is a manifestation of the homonomous trend in the relationships among people, and in a more general sense the whole concept of homonomy could be equated with love.

 

Clarification of the meaning of love is of paramount importance for psychiatry, for more than one reason.  Neurotic difficulties are universally attributed to not having received love, or certain qualities of love, in childhood.  In some approaches to therapy it is felt essential that this deficiency, among others, be made up in the process of treatment.  Clarifying what is meant by love thus becomes a crucial problem both in matters of prevention and in matters of therapy.  Perhaps no other word suffers from such a confusion of meanings.  It is used for dependence and possessiveness, for sexual attraction, for maudlin sentimentality, even for hate and exploitation.  Love should be defined in a way that would make comprehensible the crucial import that everybody believes it to have in people=s lives.  We cannot begin to understand the trend toward homonomy until we can say with some precision what we mean by love.  This can hardly be achieved by definitions.  Before listing what I consider to be the essential characteristics of love, I shall try to elucidate the trend I am talking about by approaching it from a number of different angles.

 

In one of the preceding paragraphs, I said that homonomous strivings were an inherent part of human existence.  Let us stop here to consider the meaning of the term human existence.  Let us take, for example, such a trite statement as "Life is a struggle for existence."  All right, it is.  But what do we mean by that?  We find that this depends on the sector of life or the level of existence we have in mind.

 

Physically, we exist in a very tangible way as anatomical structures in which a cycle of rather well-standardized functions takes place.  On this level the struggle for existence simply means maintaining this structure in a properly functioning condition-maintaining an already manifestly existing entity.  We must fulfill the needs inherent in our biological design-take in food, protect ourselves from excessive heat and cold or other damaging conditions-and we struggle to make these necessities available to ourselves.  Such needs call to us in a rather unequivocal manner.  When we need food we feel hungry; when we need fluids we feel thirsty.  At this level, everything is quite well defined and clear.

 

There are, however, other sectors or levels of existence, levels on which the specifically human struggle for existence unfolds.  Let us take, for example, a person in his late adolescence, who must decide what kind of occupation he will pursue.  He must take into account the prevailing economic conditions and opportunities; but a wise decision must also contain a personal element.  The occupation must correspond to his inner potentialities, to his abilities and inclinations.  But how does he know what his inner potentialities are?  To find this out is quite a job and may require a great deal of experimenting and self-observation: What do I really want to do if I disregard what the Joneses do?  We have a greater urge to fill out our lives rightly, with the right goals, the right activities, but the signposts to guide us toward the choices that are right for us are few and unclear.  Before we reach the stage of choosing our life activity, we go through a standardized educational process without having much choice in the matter-nor would we be likely to make early constructive decisions if we had freedom of choice.  So personal existence on this level is not an actuality, not anything clearly known; it is there only potentially and has to be found laboriously.  In looking for it one makes mistakes of many kinds which, in fortunate circumstances, one may be able to correct by reversing earlier decisions.  The struggle for existence on this level is a struggle to become and to be what one really is, to discover ways of living in accordance with one=s potentialities.

 

There is a third level, the most specifically human of all.  This is where a person's true aspirations, joys and sorrows, apprehensions and hopes, failures and fulfillments reside.  These are the human problems that face us as therapists.

 

The struggle for existence at this level is for meaning and significance of our person.  To be, to exist on this level, is to mean something to someone else.  On the physical level we have only to maintain what we already clearly are.  On the second level we have to actualize the direction of our pursuits out of an initial state that is given to us merely in the form of vaguely perceived multiple potentialities.  On the third level we do not start even with potentialities.  We start with nothing.  We are nothing within ourselves, nonexistent.  To be is to mean something to someone else.  This existence we cannot directly create for ourselves; it can only be given to us by another.

 

The true human problem is this: in a sense that matters to us above everything else, we are nothing in ourselves.  All we have is a profound urge to exist and the dreadful experience of nonexistence.  A poem written in a language that no one can read does not exist as a poem.  Neither do we exist in a human sense until someone decodes us.  A man in the most crucial way is a symbol, a message that comes to life only by being understood, acknowledged by someone.  Otherwise, his existence has no more meaning or reality than an inscription on a rock on an uninhabited planet.  William James said that there could be no worse punishment for a human being than to be unnoticed by everyone.  Starting with the small child who urgently wants to be noticed, we all want to have a life in the thoughts and feelings of others, to have them reflect our individual existence, and reflect it in an understanding affectionate way.

 

As so often happens, this general trend can be seen in a particularly striking, exaggerated form when it has to assert itself in unfavorable conditions, against frustrations and difficulties.  Why do people want to leave a mark behind them?  Why are they so gratified if a person who has only met them briefly remembers them?  Why do some cut their names in the bark of trees?  Certain neurotic states show, in an especially clear fashion, the conditions under which the wish to be understood and accepted can be frustrated, the ways in which the person can be tormented by such frustration, and the means he uses to combat this intolerable state.  I said that the person would be nobody if he were alone on the earth, that life would not be worth living; we are restless and not at peace until someone comes and decodes us.  This immediately brings to mind a neurotic condition, the picture of a morbidly dependent personality.  Such a person cannot stand solitude even for a short time.  He suffers terrible feelings of loneliness and wishes that his wife or his friends were there to comfort him.  Sometimes, in describing their feelings, patients say: "When I am alone I feel as if I weren't alive." They themselves associate the feeling with nonexistence.  If the patient (who is often a women) feels that she needs love and must have it at any price, she may say, in talking about the man whose love she wants, that with him she could do anything, be everything, but without him she is nothing.  Some of these neurotic counterparts of the healthy trend look so similar to the real thing that when one describes them almost any person can say: "That's me!" Actually there are essential differences, as a more detailed description of the total neurotic picture would readily show.  But these examples serve to emphasize that existing in the thought and affection of another really is a very concrete level of existence, and that it is essentially on this level that the problems arise with which we have to deal in therapy.

 

The unquenchable longing to come into existence in this sense is not a prerogative of reflective or sensitive natures.  Only the conscious formulation of this need requires a degree of sophistication.  The need itself is an all-embracing need of everyone, whether he be clever or stupid, sophisticated or ignorant, sensitive or callous.  The need does not depend on the degree of maturity.  Only the manifestations of the need are determined by that.  It is the crux of our existence from the cradle to the grave.  When we are babies this need expresses itself in things that concern us as babies, and when we are adults in things that concern us as adults, but it is the same superordinate to this broad trend, and our physiological functions, whatever their degree of autonomy and standardization, work within this frame of reference.

 

I want to emphasize this aspect of human life because my view of it has been misunderstood many times, and I do not want to be misunderstood again.  This is not poetry.  This is earthly reality.  And you cannot begin to understand human begins if you do not see the importance of this realm, not just in the general way in which I am presenting it here, but in its very specific manifestations.

 

Let us approach the same trend from a different angle.  In explaining human behavior we usually talk in terms of needs as sources of motivation, and one thinks of a need as being a lack of something that is necessary for the functioning of the individual as such, as a self-centered unit.  It is of course true that a person's own needs and wants are a powerful driving force.  But there is something else.  We ourselves want to be needed.  We not only have needs, we are also strongly motivated by neededness.  To be of no use to anything or anybody would make life intolerable.  What is the main problem of old people?  Some of them are well provided for and do not suffer from the insecurity that arises out of losing one's earning power and thus the satisfaction of one's "needs."  But they are not happy.  They suffer from the diminution of their usefulness, from the feeling that they cannot be of help to anybody any more.  This would not make any sense if the human being were merely an egocentric organization complete within itself.  We are restless when we are not needed, because we feel "unfinished," "incomplete," and we can only get completed in and through these relationships.

 

We are motivated to search not only for what we lack and need but also for that for which we are needed, what is wanted from us.  We struggle to find out what is demanded from us, and we are restless until we find and fulfill this demands.  No one would deny, because it is factual, that men do assume duties and seek to live up to what is expected of them.  The question is only whether this characteristic of man='s motivational structure is basic and primary or is derived, is a tool in the service of his needs in the narrower sense of the word.  In most psychological theories, the second alternative seems to be implied.  Assuming obligations, responding to the needs of others, is regarded as payment for obtaining satisfaction for one's own needs.  This may be true in many cases but by no means in all.  Consider, for example, our relationship to children.  People can have children for many reasons; they may acquire them simply as a result of satisfying their sexual needs.  But why do some people adopt children, deliberately assuming burdens and responsibilities?  Among all the possible motives the wish to take care of the needs of someone else must figure high.  The fact that the "neededness" motivation is seldom present in its pure form, that other motives are also detectable, should not be taken to mean that they are all that is there. One could say that the feeling of being needed increases one's feeling of personal importance, one's self-respect and value.  This is true, but it does not place the motivation back within the realm of individual needs.  It remains significant that self-respect is heightened by the person's being of value to another.

 

Whatever other meanings and functions may attach to the tendency to serve the needs of others, fundamentally it does express one's homonomous integration.  The need to belong, to participate in larger wholes, is an abstraction, a general pattern; it does not exist in this abstract way but must always be manifested in some concrete relatedness.  One of the concrete expressions of this need to belong is to be of some use or service to another person, group, or cause.  This is one of the important ways for an individual to avoid or overcome his separateness and isolation.  The dread of isolation does not originate merely in the fear that without others one would be incapable of providing for one's own needs, although this, too, may be involved.  Essentially the dread of isolation asserts that, for man, individual survival is meaningless as such, that human life is lived not in oneself alone but also in others.  The threat of isolation arouses not only anxiety but also anger that one's existence should have to be limited to the boundaries of one's individual self.

 

Like any other trend, the tendency to serve others may deteriorate and suffer a variety of distortions.  One of the most notable of these distortions is the tendency to assume responsibilities which, because of their extent or their nature, are more than the person can or actually wishes to carry.  This over commitment inevitably leads to resentment.  The unhealthy superstructure can be built around the healthy nucleus in various ways.  The needs and expectations of others may be misperceived or unrealistically exaggerated.  The person may not dare to reject demands made on him even if they originate in misconceptions of his possibilities or in the neurotic needs of others, either because he wants to be liked or because he fears to disappoint or to hurt the other.  The fear of hurting may be very strong, and it is often a crucial feature in the assumption of hated responsibilities.  If the person seeks love and obtains it but feels unworthy of it, he may, in order to really deserve it by being of service, pile obligations on himself to the limit or beyond the limit of his capacities.  The fact that through his attitude he greatly tempts the exploiting tendencies of others makes matters worse.  Concentration on service may also result from an inhibition and impoverishment of the total expressive gamut of the person.  If few other ways of expressing affection are open, over service may be the consequence.

 

In some situations the necessity to respond to neededness, even in the absence of a loving relationship, imposes itself so forcefully that the person cannot escape it without guilt.  This seems to be the case, e.g., when a person accepts responsibility for an invalid relative even if it nearly wrecks his own life.  It is very difficult to disentangle the healthy, the basically human, from the neurotic over commitment have some of their roots in the tendency that is common to all of us.  Even the compulsive need to make promises, to feel compulsively obligated by them and compulsively unable to free oneself from these obligations when they become hated burdens can be better understood, and the strength of the compulsion more fully appreciated, when one sees it as a distorted complex formed around the nucleus of a basic human trend.

 

I shall try to elucidate this basic trend further by still another approach to its meaning.  Let us start with the analysis of an everyday concept, the concept expressed in the word possession.  When we possess something we say, "It is mine." But we can mean very different things by these words.  We may mean them in the sense of the autonomous orientation: I can do with it what I want; it is under my control; if I want to I can use it; if I don't like it I can throw it away; I can break it or destroy it-it is mine.  This is one meaning of possession, but there is another.  Consider the relationship to your child or to your wife.  It would be strange if you thought you could do with her or him whatever you please.  Yet we say "mine," and we say it meaningfully.  What do we mean by that?  We mean that we identify with the person so that we feel our life extending beyond ourselves and involving these other people.  If we say, for example, we the Smiths, or we the Cohens, do things in such and such a way, we define a unit with whose every part we identify, to which we feel we belong.

 

Now it is interesting that we designate such different attitudes by the same term, "mine."  This is not just a verbal matter; it reflects the fact that the homonomous tendency can become neurotically distorted.  One of the most frequent distortions is that identification becomes possessiveness.  Another person becomes one's possession in the first sense of the word.  A similar double meaning can be shown to attach to the phrase "give and take," the double meaning deriving from the trend toward autonomy and the second from the trend toward homonomy.  Give and take in one sense means "I will give you this, but shall take from you something to make up for it."  This implies the idea that I deprive myself of what I give you: "Now you have it, not I; you possess it in the sense of having mastery over it. " It is either you or I."  But possession in terms of the second trend is entirely different matter.  In this case it would be much truer to say that one is possessed by, not that one possesses.  Anything to which you "give yourself," be it an activity, a person, or a goal is yours not through somebody else's being deprived of it.  You "possess" it by giving yourself to it, not by taking from it, and in giving yourself to it you can still remain whole; nothing of you gets lost.  This is a very different meaning.  Obviously, what I am speaking about now is love in the true sense of the word.  It may be love of one's work, but it applies particularly to love between people.

 

The idea of giving and taking in a material sense, where you cannot take without depriving another and cannot give without depriving yourself, frequently becomes neurotically involved in matters of affection.  Affection then is treated as if it were merchandise and as if the only possible fun were in getting it.  Usually one has little doubt about whether one gives enough affection; one always feels that one gives plenty.  Some people have doubts about that, too, but it is much more common to feel: "I don't get affection; I don't get enough."  If you look at this feeling closely, it implies an interpretation of affection as a material object.  A new complication arises from this dealing in affection as though it were merchandise.  The exchange of merchandise becomes a substitute for affection.  I once had a wealthy patient who went on an excursion with his best friend.  The friend was not well to do but could afford this pleasure trip.  Everything started happily, but before they left the hotel they settled the accounts, and my patient felt he had been shortchanged.  It was a matter of a few dollars, a sum that meant nothing to him.  (Most of us would like to posses a fraction of his taxes.)  But a quarrel developed, and he broke with his best friend because the friend had taken advantage of him, taken something away from him.  It is, of course, fantastic to act in such a manner-he could have thrown a hundred times that amount out the window and never noticed it.  But to him it meant that his friend had shortchanged him in affection.  Some people's troubles with the giving and taking of affection take a more complex form. F or example, some cannot accept a present; it makes them feel very uncomfortable.  Others feel they must make presents all the time.  In whatever form, if the exchange on this material level becomes troublesome and psychiatrically significant, it is almost always a symbolic matter; the actual trouble is with affection.  The observed disturbance is an indication that the person interprets affection primarily as a deal, a giving and taking accompanied by counting: "How much am I getting?"  "Am I getting the right compensation for what I give?"  All of which is based on a superficial analogy with material exchanges between people.

 

I have discussed three important areas to indicate what kind of human tendency I am speaking about.  The first discussion showed that in a very real sense we do not exist on the specifically human level unless we are discovered, noticed, loved, and loved right, by someone else.  Another indication of the same basic tendency is that we do not only have needs but are also strongly motivated by "neededness."  I mentioned that this is not clearly seen in old people.  Some of them have material security, their needs are satisfied, they can sit in the sun, but they feel useless, superfluous.  If human beings were living merely within themselves, why on earth should they care, as long as they were comfortable?  But we are not comfortable when we are not needed.  The third example was in the area of give and take, of possession.  There I tried to show the difference between the possession of material things, after which distorted human relations may be patterned, and calling something Amine" in the sense of participation and devotion, in the sense of being "possessed by."  None of the experiences I described are exceptional.  All people have them in one form or another.  All people want to be loved and to love, and their lives are enlarged through both aspects of a loving relationship.  One who is loved lives not only within his own skin but also in the love and affection and thought of the other person.  To be received in this way into the life of another seems to be one of the most important issues for human beings.  The one who loves extends his life by participating in the life of another with all its joys, hopes, and disappointments.  Through the community and the communication established in an affectionate relationship the person becomes a part of a unit extending beyond himself.

 

There is a possible pitfall here which I want to mention.  It hinges on the use of the word love, which is open to so many distortions.  People very easily assume that if one loves, if one participates in the life of another, this necessarily results in great pleasure for oneself-a lot of fun and very pleasant, cheering moments.  Such a romantic conception of love makes us forget that participation in another's life implies also shared suffering, which is not a gain.  Loving means that one's life is larger but not that it is necessarily easier or more pleasant.  A mother whose child has gone wrong-has done something criminal, let us say-does not reproach the child but suffers for him, and she suffers under something that can only be described as guilt.  This does not necessarily means that she blames herself in a neurotic fashion.  Whether or not she has any real reasons to blame herself for the child's trouble, and apart from any specific self-reproaches, she still participates in her child's guilt.  Identification means something very positive-the enlargement of one's life, psychologically, far beyond one's own confines.  But it does not always mean pleasure, and sometimes it means great pain.  It does not have to, but sometimes it does.  Usually it means some of this and some of that, both joy and suffering.  You do not choose one and discard the other.  If you sit up at night with a sick child, let us say, you would not want to give up this experience: you do not want anyone to relieve you so that you can go out and have a good time; you are not in a mood to dance and sing.  You want the child to be well, but if he is sick, you want to be there.  You accept his enlarged experience.  This is also true in relations other than the mother-child relationship, which comes closest perhaps to what a loving relationship can be at its fullest.  Of course I am talking about the relatively normal situation, not the kind of parent-child relations we hear so much about from our patients.  I think we have to keep the healthy ways in mind as well, if we are really to understand what went wrong with the patients.

 

I shall now try to round out what I have been saying by listing what I consider to be the three main characteristics of the loving relationship: the experience of a certain fundamental belongingness and unity between lover and loved, the recognition and acceptance of the difference, of the "otherness" of the loved person, and the understanding of the other, and understanding of a special kind.

 

The first of these characteristics has already been discussed as an identification with the person whom one loves.  My use of the term "identification" might be misleading for some.  I do not use it in the specific sense that it has in the psychoanalytic theory but simply to indicate the experience of a certain sameness, a communality, which permits those who share the relationship to share also in each other's lives.  It is not brought about actively. In loving someone the person recognizes that this identity exists.  The term "we-feeling" may have been coined to indicate the kind of "identification" I have in mind-an inclusion into the same unit, a sense of oneness that exists, emotionally, in spite of the recognition of separateness.  The second characteristic, the acceptance of difference, is no less important than the first.  In an ideal case the person who loves, in spite of his identification with the other, allows the other to live his or her life and does not want to take over.  He realizes the other is different from himself, a person in his own right, and in a very real way the person who loves stands off, enjoying whatever direction the other is taking, even if it is not what he had expected or what he would have preferred the other to do.  The recognition and acceptance of the otherness of the person also implies an understanding of him, and this is a very essential condition.  One cannot love unintelligently and love well.

 

In saying this I do not mean that one should be able to formulate one's understanding of the other person clearly.  If this were so, simple people who are poor at verbalization would not be able to love, but they do love: they do have understanding, though they may not be able to say any clever or poetic things about it.  The understanding of the person you love is primarily on an intuitive level, although if you are trained to crystallize your feelings into thought, you may find formulations for it.  Essentially, however, it is an intuitive understanding involving deep insight.  It is said that love is blind, but I believe that real love is not blind.  I think real love is visionary; it sees further than other people do.  Sometimes we wonder about a woman who loves a man.  That drunk, we think, that person who has done such terrible things . . . How can she?  But she sees something further than we do.  She sees the essential core of the person, which means she can love.  You can see that I use the word understanding in a special sense.  This kind of understanding is different from the one that is limited to the surface.  Some shrewd people, including some psychiatrists, have an excellent knowledge of people's weaknesses; they are in a certain sense knowers of men.  Such knowledge has practical value.  It often enables us to predict the other's reactions, but it is certainly not conducive to love.  Real understanding of a person means seeing the real self behind and within his weaknesses and his neurotic distortions.

 

Such understanding is not the same as idealization, which is a distortion of the truth.  Suppose a patient tells me that I am a wonderful person, ascribes to me all kinds of characteristics that I do not have.  In the therapeutic setting this will eventually be worked out; it may even be favorable for therapy that he feels that way now.  But it is not true.  It does not matter in this case.  It will be worked out and will not cause any trouble in the long run.  But what about a person who sees his father or mother in someone he loves and resents the other whenever he or she does not live up to that image?  He does not really love, because he does not love that particular person but a phantom behind that person.  To love someone you must understand him in the sense of knowing him as he is.  In reality, of course, this understanding will often be imperfect.  There are biases and distortions in love, but they may be indications that it is a relationship in which one has some personal axe to grind.

The issue of understanding has some bearing on the attempts to influence the attitude of parents toward children.  The public is becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the parental attitudes for personality development, and some people try to bring up children according to books.  It is to be feared that very little good can be derived from greater enlightenment.  One can suggest methods of educational procedures to parents, and, by providing pertinent information about children's emotional and mental development, one may hope to increase the parents' understanding of them.  However, the kind of understanding children need for emotional growth depends less on information than on the parents' attitudes, which are not so easily influenced and changed.  Even the question of whether or not the parents use physical punishment-important though it is-is less important than the question of whether they love the child in the right way.  If they do, this love will be conveyed unintentionally.  If something essential is missing from their love it cannot be compensated for by knowing the "right method."  It all depends on how far the parents are loving, and how far they can be loving depends on how free they are from emotional disturbances and difficulties.

 

With some qualifications this holds also for the relationship of a therapist to his patients.  Unless the therapist deliberately remains aloof there will be a natural development of feeling as in any other situation of prolonged acquaintance. A s he learns to know and understand his patient he also learns to like him, and the more this feeling approximates devotion, the more help he will be able to give.  If the attitudes that the therapist develops are right, and are not strongly colored by his personal problems, he can be confident they will transpire and be convincing to the patient.  A therapist who holds these beliefs and follows this course is involved in the therapeutic process more personally and deeply than one whose ideal it is to remain a mere screen for the patient's projections.

 

Manifestations of the homonomous trend are not limited to the field of interpersonal relations.  We cannot pursue here in detail its expressions in the various fields of cultural endeavor, but we shall say a few words about one instance-aesthetic experience-which throws some additional light on the dynamics of homonomous processes.  The conceptual categories of stimulus and response, even if holistically interpreted, do not fit the aesthetic experience.  An aesthetic impression is not perceived as a biospheric opportunity or contravention.  We resonate to it but it does not stimulate us to do something about the situation.  Correspondingly, an artistic expression does not aim at molding or conquering the environment.  Both impression and expression may be likened to communication; we can view impression as receiving a message and expression as sending forth a message.  When the two meet communication takes place. 

 

What does a conception, or such a simile, imply about the nature of aesthetic experience?  The "message" is not an intellectual or factual one, and in the case of a true artistic expression it can hardly be improved by rational formulation.  Similarly, the general nature of aesthetic experience, its common denominator, cannot be conveyed through simple description.  We can only try to hint at it indirectly, either by a concrete metaphor or an equally inadequate "intelligent" statement.

 

Every object and every creature in the world is somehow expressive of the kind of world in which such creatures and such objects can exist.  They are not isolated existences unto themselves.  Each is a sample, an expression, an indicator of the kind of world we live in.  When an object is perceived in its expressive function one has an aesthetic experience.  An aesthetic or beautiful object does not end with its confines, but points beyond itself; an aesthetic experience opens onto wide infinite vistas.  Though an expressive valence attaches to every object, it varies in richness and degree.  It is the artist's task to enhance the expressive quality of his production so as to maximize its power of pointing to some general feature of existence.  Media and styles may vary, but the aesthetic value of a work of art depends on whether it points beyond the specific object or pattern that forms its content and leads the mind of the beholder toward the perception of expressiveness.  The perception of opening horizons, of widening meanings, makes the aesthetic experience a striking expression of the homonomous orientation.  The person's separation from the world is overcome together with the separateness of objects, and wider patterns emerge.  I believe that experiences of this kind, marked by intensity, clarity, and harmony, are the nuclei of the "peak experiences" described by Maslow.  A similar effortless emergence of new patterns of relations and meanings also characterizes some phases of creative work, both in art and science.

 

The nature of the aesthetic experience points up some essential features of the homonomous person-world interaction.  Both in the homonomous and autonomous trends the person aims at overcoming his separation from the "object," but the object is not the same in the two kinds of reunion, even when it is "physically" identical.  The object of mastery is nothing but an object.  It is foreign and dissimilar to the person-meaningful only insofar as it can be made to serve him and thus be assimilated into his sphere.  The object of homonomous strivings is conceived of as having a "selfhood," a meaningful existence of its own-either that of another human being or of some other intrinsically valuable entity with which it is possible to form a community.  The interaction here is not that of discreta having an impact on each other but the interaction of parts in a whole.  The message of the nature and state of one entity is received by the other, and through this communication a community, a unit, is formed.  Impression and expression are vehicles of communication, modes of holistic interaction through which all homonomous exchanges are carried out.

 

The directions of the autonomous and homonomous trends are different, and they appear to be opposites, but in a well-integrated person the two orientations are complementary rather than conflicting.  In fact they logically presuppose each other.  As one strives to master and govern the environment, one discovers that one cannot do this effectively by direct application of force, by sheer violence.  One must understand and respect the laws of the environment, go along with them, so to say, which means assuming a homonomous attitude.  On the other hand, brining one's best to a loving relationship requires not only a capacity for self-surrender but also a degree of proficient mastery of one's world, of resourcefulness and self-reliance.  Without these qualities one does not have much to offer the other, and the relationship may deteriorate into dependency and exploitation.  It is true that in some pathological formations mastery and love are played one against the other and may clash right and left.  The problem of how best to combine them, how to be for oneself and for others, do what one wants to do and be loved for it, looms large for most people at some points or periods of their lives.  Yet a wide range of possible forms of integration is available to a person if neither of the two basic satisfactions are essentially threatened or reduced to fixed channels.  It is astonishing to see how quickly and fully the previously baffling conflicts are resolved once these inner threats have been removed.  Within a healthy organization mastery and love can mesh and work together in an almost endless  variety of ways which up to now have not been systematically explored.  This is a challenging topic for future studies.

 

Far from being irreconcilable opposites, the autonomous and the homonomous trends can be viewed as part aspects of one trend or perhaps as one trend functioning in two directions-downward and upward.  To put it abstractly, the human being behaves as if he were a whole of an intermediate order, comparable to the cardiovascular system or the central nervous system, each of which is a whole, an organization of many parts, but at the same time apart of the total physical organism.  The human begin is both a unifier, an organizer of his immediate personal world, and an participant in what he conceives to be the superordinate whole to which he belongs.  His striving for mastery is embedded in his longing for participation.