[written 1980 when I was 28 • please wait for translation]
In order to have my thesis approved at university, I had to argue for the theoretical, methodological and practical "value" of my thesis for sociological theory and practice. Hence the following spontaneous comment:
Traditional science, as it understands itself, is mainly a science of thinking. The scientist searches ”outwards” in physical reality to find answers to his questions, and if he does not find them here, he searches - not inwards - but apparently inwards: in the world of thinking, in the accumulated knowledge that belongs to the area of consciousness. That is, at most he can come to recognize already gained experiences, theoretical considerations, etc., which can never be original or liberating for both the theory and for a possible practice, if he intends such.
And this question (namely about freedom of values) thus becomes again - albeit in a different way - relevant in this context. Habermas began with his 'Knowledge and Interest'; an interesting discussion which unfortunately remained in its philosophical university form, because it did not go beyond its own limits in practice. Habermas even dealt with psychoanalysis, but only in thought, not also himself in his own life practice.
But the question arises again: for whom is science done and why does science do what it does? The now somewhat outdated discussion of freedom of values, the discussion about science for the people or for capital, was just as limited to physical-material reality as most of the Marxist theories I am familiar with, and here my philosophical and methodological considerations are just as important, for they show how Marx's lack of epistemological insight drove him to develop admittedly magnificent theories, but his successors and their various Marxist theories and proposals for so-called 'revolutionary' practice superficialized the human perception of the physical body.
Marx's method was clearly a method of thinking, albeit approximately meditative, but it was only meditative with the purpose of further developing the theories about physical reality. My method is in this respect twofold: it is not only meditative about thinking, but it is also meditative about meditation itself, and thus it is self-absorbing and self-consuming. It is further twofold, insofar as I examine the influence of my own inner reality on my own theories: what psychology in recent years has called the primary and secondary influence of socialization on the mind and the psyche.
And this is actually one of the essential moments in my work: what influence does repressed, now unconscious content have on the scientific work of a scientist (e.g. sociologist). Shown by my own example in a review of my life, it became quite clear to me that my life was governed by highly unconscious forces that were not possible to uncover through a traditional scientific method: reading and thinking.
Perhaps the strongest repression of all in the West today is the denial of the need for love and thus also of the person's own self-esteem. And this is an empirical result from all forms of psychotherapy, meditation, etc. This is actually, in my opinion - and this can also be empirically ascertained - the world's greatest ”disease.” And that is why, in my work, I have focused my attention in this direction, both theoretically and practically, i.e. how can one work with this. Therefore, my "interest in knowledge" is clearly the uncovering of the relationship between theory and practice for the forms of practice of various liberating theories.
And this has required the concrete testing of these forms of practice in order to be able to assess their value, which I discussed, for example, during the self-presentation groups. And here I think that one of the most interesting things was that the therapeutic practice in this alternative form of life undermined certain thought Marxist theses, and this clearly shows how little practice the Marxist theoretical people have or have had. As far as I remember, Marx said something in his 11th Feuerbach thesis about the cessation of philosophy through practice, and the Marxists have largely neglected it.
Another point, which is also a theoretical methodological point, is the understanding of historical materialism. According to this methodological view of social development, the intellectual must direct his gaze towards the emancipatory elements that are valid in society at any time. In Marx's time it was quite clear - since the working class was oppressed on the physical plane (plane I) - that an intellectual had to seek to uncover this plane in order to arrive at a liberating theoretical proposal for a form of practice based on true theoretical insight - an intellectual cannot do otherwise in the first place.
Whether Marx was conscious of it or not, his theoretical work (unlike Hegel's) was paradoxically revolutionary at a socio-historical time when the working class would not have been helped by love or faith. They needed theoretical and practical means to fight against physical oppression.
But now - about 100 years later - the working class has won many victories on the physical plane and now world development has reached a stage where we are swimming in matter. The strange thing in this context - for me at least - is that an incredible number of critical intellectuals have intellectually realized that oppression today is psychological and takes place in primary and secondary socialization, where the nuclear family consciousness is formed, which the person later blindly reproduces to the pleasure and satisfaction of those in power. Yes, even the socialization of those in power is in this respect - as far as the repression of anxiety, the need for love, aggression, etc. - in the same boat.
But the theoretical answer of these same intellectuals - based on their apparently correct insight - is NOT psychological development (this would have been natural), but an ever-increasing elaboration of theoretical castles in the air. Very strange and yet not. For intellectuals, like so many others, are dependent on the sale of their own commodity: human intellectual labor. And the institutions that are particularly well-suited for this purpose are called universities and higher education institutions. The barrier that thus prevents the intellectual from real liberation is anxiety. And this anxiety is subjective and must be tackled entirely alone. Here it is of no use to develop collective measures, as N. P. Agger would like to do. Liberation from anxiety is individual, and therefore the liberating practice must also be individual.
And as described in my work, this part of liberation (inner liberation) is surrender to the meditative state. It must be clear to everyone that previously tried forms of practice have failed. In the 1960s, this form of practice flourished to a certain extent, but the average social need was not developed sufficiently for its necessary impact, and by necessary I also mean consciously, because from the dialectically developed necessity, at a given historical stage, the necessary theoretical insight arises. And this did not arise at the end of the sixties. I will not discuss why it did not do so here.
The 1970s became a decade in which the critical movement was divided into several different theoretical, but to a very high degree also practical parts, which resulted in, among other things, the women's movement and later other individual liberation groups that aimed at inner liberation. And this happened out of both need and theoretical insights. And this is interesting: that liberating theories and practices (and thus also methods for the development of both) arise from precisely this duality, which in turn is double as far as the average social situation is concerned. For the need of a few is not sufficient for a social impact, the need must be of many. And therefore we also see the new growth movement starting in the Western countries, where the need - the psychological - is greatest: the USA, West Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Australia, England, Holland, etc. and to a lesser extent Scandinavia.
And this places a methodological discussion in the social context in which it should stand in my opinion: the socially necessary one for theory, method and practice. Only then can their possible feasibility be discussed and tested. To leave the discussion of method in the medium of theory can never be true. Method is, on one level, the mediation between theory and practice. The scientific method used up to now has been mainly oriented towards the increase of productive forces, production and profit: in short, material reality and this also applies to the so-called critical "Marxist" sciences.
We have reached a ritual in world history: death and rebirth. But this time it is not voluntary. One must be very blind to suppress the risk of a nuclear war, of enormous destruction and aggression against the entire globe from psychologically totally disturbed and oppressed men, who are acting out their unresolved infantile inner energies on the world stage.
This time it is forced: real anxiety exists. And it exists doubly: both in inner reality and in outer reality. The anxiety accumulated in inner reality through this (and if we count incarnations: through countless) life and the threat of death from weapons, nuclear power plants, the violence of those in power, etc. mirror each other to the point of unbearableness.
It is largely up to the individual to choose. And the choice is not a theoretical one. There is simply no time - as there was in the sixties and seventies, for example - for long discussions, etc. The choice is practical. I do not believe that a dualistic division between theory and practice has suddenly arisen, but that so many experiences have been made by the people who are mentioned in the liberation movement. Just like that, the choice of the subject of my work has been - after the initially Danish social development - around alternative liberating practice contexts.
One of my intentions before starting the thesis was to give the new growth movement a theoretical intellectual argumentation apparatus against the traditionally critical left wing, and this is quite clearly and honestly guided by my own subjective experiences and choice between intellectual work under socialist auspices and sensitive more or less therapeutic work within the development of love and warm communities (communes) in Denmark.
This apparatus or framework of understanding is not developed in volume I, but is suggested in beginnings at least. This for the theory. For myself, it has been accomplished through a duality, thinking and perception. My method has thus also been the same as all other science: composition and accumulation of theoretical and practical experiences. But since we can only communicate via language in this context (thesis or book), my method must necessarily depend on this. That is. be explicitly communicating to the reader's mind and the reader's frame of understanding. But at the same time it must free itself from this dependence, as otherwise it would remain stuck in conventions and thus merely glorify and reinforce the ruling ideology. Whether it were the Marxist ideology, it makes no difference.
Dependence on conventions and norms is based on individual anxiety, because liberation from this is associated with a risk. And this risk is identical for the scientist with the threat of excommunication from his scientific environment, friends, etc., to which he may have tied his entire ego qua identity. What this means, we can study, for example, at the Danish Sociological Institute, where since the youth revolt intellectual works have been produced that have been blatantly out of step with potential social emancipatory initiatives, because they have remained theoretical works that have incredibly often relied on Marxist dogmas.
The ”Kopfarbeiter” materially dependent on the state; have been bound in their own individual anxiety, which is reinforced by the group pressure built up in the inner reality in the form of the conventionally and group-determined ”correct” (i.e. Marxist) theories, so in this way Papa Marx functions as a guru on the intellectual level, where for example Bhagwan functions on the psychological-spiritual level for many now (March 1981 approx. 200,000).
The internalized Marx plays the father role substitute and thus doubly closes off the development of new ideas and fantasies: Instead of a psychic confrontation ("Auseinandersetzung”) with the authority in the interior and thus a possible confrontation with the anxiety- and attraction-obsessed Marx, the internal and external projection mechanisms now reinforce each other. Historically, this happened at the Copenhagen Sociological Institute, where probably neurotic power-hungry individuals rigidly enforced Marxist scientific theory and stifled the emotional human potential, which is, however, the only attractive thing.
These individuals thus played the role of authority in the external reality, where the others (as I also described at the beginning of my thesis) could now project their unresolved authority problems in the form of rational emotion-suppressing theoretical frameworks of understanding, which at the same time excommunicated the emotions and especially the unconscious ones who would have questioned the power structure at the institute. The newly emerged rulers now legitimized themselves with the same arguments (namely the effectiveness and rationality of critical theory!) that the ideologists of bourgeois society used. They simply reproduced the bourgeois "ratio" within their own sphere. But the psychic core and projection mechanism remained unconsciously the same: the repression and exclusion of individual anxiety and the need for love.
Furthermore, it is symptomatic how little space love has had among sociological intellectual workers. They, like Marx in his time, fell for the immediate temptation: the repression of personal problems in favor of the development of the intellectual, which in the commodity-fixated society could be objectified and sold to sustain physical life and at the same time function as a form of acceptance and love. It is so easy to suppress the historically embarrassing and tabooed need for love and escape into the realm of intellectuality, where needs are just as insatiable as capital in all its abstractness.
The bourgeois capitalist society thus welcomes intellectual workers with open arms, because their revolutionary potentials are absorbed in "verwertbare” contexts: the theories are on the physical plane, which, as we know, can easily be materialized and reproduced in commodity form. Intellectual workers are thus bound without perhaps noticing the double: both in their own inner reality and in the outer capital-determined reality (under the state apparatus) and these two mutually influence each other. If one tries to break out of one, it is not only connected with the anxiety that stems from this reality, but it necessarily also releases the anxiety of the other reality. The fear thus becomes doubly determined: fear of loss of both personal identity and social identity.
And since the personal identity, due to lack of psychological development, is tied to the intellectually acquired social identity, which is at the same time life-sustaining and therefore life-affirming, the fear manifests itself in traumas whose solution lies precisely outside the workplace where the intellectual worker produces and reproduces.
He is thus locked in the paradox from childhood, where the same double-binds were inserted. And the essential ideological problem is both perceptual and intellectual - for we learn that reality must be perceived through the intellect.
The scientist clinging to his intellectuality does not embark on a liberation of his inner anxiety if he cannot see a certain form of ”ratio” in this undertaking. In other words: he must have intellectual evidence for the correctness of, for example, psychotherapeutic practice - it is assumed that the intellectual cannot feel or experience the necessity of this undertaking.
And this has also become (this was not intended from the start) one of the results of my thesis. We thus end up again with the problem of the constitution of the subject. The fear of losing. But is there anything to lose? Yes, because that is how it is experienced, and that is how the prevailing Christian ideology says: namely that I am identical with my ego and if I die, it is all over.
So here my epistemological considerations and discussions (whether one has understood them or not) become not only interesting, but radically important. Whether this claim of mine holds, I cannot (-) prove here in theory, but the sales of my book and the book's practical effect will verify that. The value of my theoretical practice will appear in the practical form of living life, and thus we cannot really discuss the practical value of my theories on this theoretical level before this appears.
We can discuss theoretical considerations, but as discussed in the thesis, it is a sham discussion, because thinking and perception are not two separate categories.
The intellectual will immediately cringe at my statements, because they activate unpleasant anxiety that stems from the experience of a reality that is now suddenly denied as real. The learned hypnosis is now so learned that it acts as a safety-giving womb, while anti-hypnosis is experienced as anxiety-provoking, unpleasant elements similar to the prohibitions against pleasure imposed by parents in childhood.
The fear of the dissolution and loss of the ego is the fear of death, which humans have feared for millennia because so-called religious people have transferred their own paranoia to the masses, who have been seduced into everything in the name of God and religion. The USA is an excellent contemporary example of how these hypnosis mechanisms are working with a force that most people would rather turn a blind eye to, but it is not working. Theories (including sociological ones) must therefore be directed towards this critical moment, since it can be seen through thinking that this is precisely the problem. Reich formulated it indirectly in his writings, but unfortunately also got stuck on the physical plane (except for the time after 1952, but it is not really understood by anyone). Intellectuals have never really understood either Adorno or Reich in terms of their work on mass psychology and fascism.
The problem is not solved by (only) writing books. It is not difficult to write books. The difficult thing is always to realize dreams and visions, because such must be contained in theories, otherwise they are just an accumulation of already thought and written thoughts, and there are really enough of those in the world today.
The fact that thousands of intellectuals have been able to read hundreds of pages of, for example, Reich WITHOUT subsequently doing therapy is an expression of the prioritization of the intellect and the enormous anxiety energy, on the opposite pole, which is associated with surrender to the unconscious. Such an example alone shows with what repressive projection mechanisms intellectuals relate to a written text: it is absorbed into the "bio-computer" and remains there as much as possible so as not to wreak havoc in the unconscious. The intellectuals, when reading Reich, have focused on the theoretical aspects and completely overlooked (hm!) the practical statements that Reich constantly makes.
Perhaps the intellectual intellectual workers are some of the most oppressed and so it becomes even more ridiculous (from an emancipatory aspect) if these people come to stand as the vanguard of a liberating movement. But from the point of view of those in power, it is excellent: their ideologists do not need to waste energy arguing against them, because their own person is sufficient. Their bodies and psyches radiate the lack of precisely what the masses long for. The words and theories may be "right", scientific and much more, but if the life energies do not flow in the same people, then others will naturally react in a direction desired by those in power: emotional distancing, regardless of the intellectual rhetoric.
For 2,000 years in Western history, those in power have succeeded in suppressing the masses in one way or another. The subjective side of capitalist history's forms of oppression has become an almost shining example of the effectiveness of this oppression: Marx himself became a victim of it. His authority problems stemming from his relationship with his father and his psychological problems, which he was unable or dared not solve, made Marx an emotionally cold intellectual person in the last half of his life.
And this left its mark on his writings: completely intellectual without human warmth, dreams or love-hungry visions or feelings. And so did his "successors". Marx's youthful writings were not scientific enough, the so-called "manly works" (hm!) were the real essence of Marx's works. They were actually the expression of a sick man's last cry for a little love in the form of acceptance for his intellectual works (all the letters testify to this).