The Ninth Street Center Ninth Street Center Journal

Preface

At a time after Paul had stopped seeing his counselees, and after various failed experiments, I wrote to him out of a crisis of faith in my further pursuing a creative growth process. I had become very frustrated and disappointed by what appeared to be a dead end participation for me at the 9th St. Center. I had begun exploring alternate outlets, like the East Village Gay and Lesbian Neighbors, now disbanded, the Gay Men's Chorus, various gay bars and the few rap groups available. I was considering leaving the Center altogether to find some place in the world where a person could be himself if he could not make a home among Paul's other students.

Paul consented to communicating with me through letters and those following in this issue of our Journal are part of that correspondence.

I decided to write an essay based upon our letter communications because several explanations for new insights Paul was including in his last monographs were covered in his answers to me. This material clarified concepts regarding parentalism, granting equality to others in a growth process, and simple fun and pleasure among other topics. As these ideas were new and exciting to me, I assumed it would be of great interest to everybody else at the Center. It was my hope that if enough people were stimulated by its ideas, the essay would be a basis for a closed group discussion. This was not to be.

The individuals with whom I share my three dimensional life found the essay very satisfying, and they also knew the larger context of its coming into existence. When I finally made the essay, "An Application of the Mated Mechanism," generally available at the Center to anyone who requested a copy, it was clearly indicated to be a product of Paul's insights along with my own.

In one of Paul's letters he provided an outline describing feminine submission in response to questions about the dynamics of polarity.

As a unit, the feminine submission letters made excellent sense to Kim Mulcahy and Morris Matthews when their experiments in polarized relationships uncovered parallel experiences. Taken out of its context Paul's outline describing feminine submission, along with other insights, made less sense and entirely omitted analogues to give masculines their side of the story. In fact, at the end of his letter about submission, Paul said it would be interesting to write the analogue, but the letter was long enough. These were additional considerations for choosing the form of an essay to work out the problem.

In sending him his copy of the essay, I told Paul my goal was finishing the analogue. I did not ask Paul for "permission" to expand his material since I had already done a similar thing with a section from his paperback, in response to which he gave his unqualified support. "Truth becomes public property," Paul said many times.

As we all know, it is nearly impossible to share perceptions about psychological phenomena without using a common language. This is true about any communication which aspires to the level of the scientific. Paul was a "scientist" of human nature and understood this well. No genuine truth seeker can be wedded unalterably to a language of established insight (nor to its teacher) and pay honor to the incomplete nature of analytic thought, the bounty of a feminine psychological growth process when that process remains open ended. Dominant men who seek to become engineers of the right in human affairs come to a growth process with a comparable challenge to established manipulative techniques or mastery. This becomes particularly obvious when they face the reality of incompleteness in their inventive engineering capacities; they try things they think are right based on old patterns of know how and they get an undesired or unanticipated response.

As an example of the developmental nature of a language of psychological growth, a close reading of his first book uncovers a distortion in Paul's early thinking concerning the formation of the inner identity. He thought inner identity that is either feminine or masculine was a derivative of a submissive or dominant family unit. He later recognized inner identity to be a result of interactions between a parent and child who are opposite in polarity. Thank goodness for all who follow, Paul's submission was to the truth found in experiencing human nature as it reveals itself to be, rather than to some tidy ordering of personal perceptions.

In one way, my essay and the manner in which I presented it, was in respect of the right of each individual who comes to the Center to choose when, where and to who he would look for guidance. I was also curious to see who would be stimulated to read an essay that did not have Paul's name on its cover. It seemed an important distinction at the time, which in the long run yielded no real information, perhaps a surprise or two, and seems somewhat pretentious in its recounting here. Truth stands for all time regardless of its author or its validation by contemporaries.

As an epilogue to this group of letters and the accompanying essay, I have written an unembellished, masculine analogue, following the method Paul describes in his autobiography.

Dear Paul,

Part of your letter recalled this story: There was a bakery shop two blocks from my house in Hamburg called, "Baer's Bakery." It's sign featured a teddy-bear chef carrying a tray of donuts. I thought this was neat!

My brother and I were 6 or 7 years old at the time and on Saturday mornings my mother would allow us to walk unescorted to this place to buy a 1/2 doz. donuts as a family treat. Large, glazed cinnamon donuts cost only 5 cents each. I thought this to be a fantastic bargain and became assured of no future hunger.

Only a year later these same donuts had risen in price to 8 cents apiece. I reported this catastrophe to my mother and vividly recall her giving me a child sized lesson in annual inflation. This was fine as a practical balm, but a deeper me quietly accepted an insight: that my happiness could not rest upon quality as a "more is better" situation of conventional rewards.

On the other hand, I could not accept, for long, my mother's well intentioned, but nonetheless unpsychological formulas for dealing with my anxieties. Her life lacked vision. [I've just noted for the first time a source for my compulsive "instant insight," to avoid the strain of incompleteness; my mother's teaching techniques.]

I was delighted upon reaching NYC adulthood to find in you, Paul, a teacher who reaffirmed a belief I held, namely, the existence of a path to relocating a base for genuine contentment and happiness. A psychological world with an Oz-like message of hope. I firmly believe this to be within the scope of my personality and responsibility.

The path lies increasingly in being able to dwell harmoniously in that very same "vacuum;" a time and place between child-like ignorance with its dependence on formula and the recognition of greater truth with its corresponding growth. Adding to this the work of simultaneously being my own therapist/parent when oppressive forces make this same place appear threatening seems like an enormous challenge at this time.

Recalling that as a child similar although infantile psyche wars were waged with some level of harmony (blissful ignorance?) along side the more mundane battles, like learning to spell, makes the entire process appear inevitably natural. As you once said, "Growth can be as natural as breathing air."

House cleaning the mess of the world from the walls of my inner identity makes me impatient. My warmth and blind faith tells me others of your students are newly re-ordering and re-managing their houses because the reward of mental health is the shared goal. This assumption gets me in lots of trouble. You have hit the bull's eye by introducing the concept of "equality".

The alternative to despair in face of the disparity that appears to exist between my personal vision of mental health and the reality of the growth process as I perceive it to effect others lies in cleaning my own house inch-by-inch. And this cannot be a solitary process.

An expanding access to the "adolescent spirit of adventure" and its filling every nook-and-cranny of my life seems to be essential here. Access to this is under-developed in me. This developing pocket promises to be the catalyst/balm for myself and others who especially may recoil. at moments, from the illusion of undue "harshness" and "lonely pursuit" of independence. [You and I know it's not "bleak house", but I forget that when I feel too much for the fact of greyness along conventional lines.] Relying on sources of intellectual wisdom to get out of this "funk" will serve to numb the "spirit of adventure" with certainty if not swiftness as I have discovered.

I'm opening several areas of inquiry here:

My perception of the adolescent spirit was, simply, living life. Paul Rosenfels came along and called mental health: "learning to live life simply in the spirit of an adventure". The concept is mine now.

This has come to mean for me entering experience not from some compulsive "need to know" nor exhaustion fueled "need to escape" the depressing evidence of a crazy world. It's more like: "Let's have a look-see," as my father would say to announce a window shopping adventure. [This is one of my favorite memories of spending time with my father.] Afterwards, I come home to my psychological self and review phenomena to see if I've learned anything new.

This process reads well, but in practice it has the potential to unleash the entire dog pound of feminine defenses as we both know.

On the other hand, many students have relegated this "adventurousness" only to fun and pleasure pursuits where it tends to evaporate if the moment ceases to be enjoyable or the task accomplished.

The implication for the necessity of an ongoing access to this spirit in three dimensional relationships when things get rough and real with problems is obvious when genuine three dimensional dynamics emerge from a two dimensional shared experience:

[Lots of room for partial hate here!]

There remains much confusion about the expansive pursuit of an enriching esthetic life of two dimensional experience versus the search for truth and right.

At an intellectual level, any two dimensional experience can be viewed as a learning event. My experience in this area has often resulted in a good story, but not necessarily insight.

Some of your students are convinced that you have not discussed clearly the mechanisms of entering two dimensional experience. The building of an esthetic life, especially with regard to the value in maintaining non-polarized "friendships" (or polarized for that matter) is relatively undisclosed in your Renegade. The excuse I have heard mouthed is that you chose not to focus on this area. That your early writing is so "mated" in its focus is cited in support of this particular notion.

I think this whole idea is fallacious in the extreme although we never talked about this in counseling to my recall. [And it (sic) (the whole idea) pisses me off, too!] I feel, however, alone and a bit unsure in tenaciously adhering to the following:

It appears to me that relationships that fall outside the given models of potential three dimensional expression, those models being either a genuine mating based upon shared growth as a goal; or clearly defined teacher/student therapy, are certainly valid and a great source of esthetic pleasure, but limited in their psychological implications. Particularly with regard to the deepening of submission and broadening dominance of the individual participants.

This point of view, needless to say, is received by some like a handful of dead mice! I support anyone's right to disagree.

Paul, I cannot believe that you devoted your entire life to the building of a better mouse trap vis-a-vis "therapy divested of conventional rewards" merely because you found such rewards esthetically boring!

The basis of my faithfulness to your truth-speaking has always rested upon this message in Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process:

For me, this singular insight is an anchor in a sea of shifting currents.

My biggest fear is that identity enriching experiences will not happen to me if I move in areas that have already been discovered to be inherently non-residual in substance and therefore simply not worthy of extensive discourse nor analysis. [That work I will gladly pass to conventional psycho-ANAL-istic movements!]

Independence along these parameters is not a frightening vision at all, but the ambivalent alternatives are indeed! It is support that's so difficult to find when the growth process is presented in the above terms or your own life, Paul, is explained as a search for a greater understanding of human nature via the analysis of the nature of dominant, masculine, male beauty; and yet I feel in my gut this must be true or why give up so much conventional support? Some may choose to see your personal process as relative exclusivity (unbusiness), but I term it a highly selective focus that many have not recognized or simply ignore.

I am beginning to feel it incumbent upon me, for the sake of my own mental health, to no longer entertain discussion with any of your former students along these lines in an effort to teach or learn my own process or more about your experiment unless, of course, someone asks me.

From you I would like to hear if my private perceptions of the submission/dominance models (Paul's paradigms) have been established because in them lies thoroughly reliable potential for three dimensional experience so necessary for growth of the inner identity; without cluttering up lives with additional forms that simply won't do the job half as well.

This is a tall order issuing from what little I know, but sense about submission expanding only in relation to idealized beauty or dominance.

I realize this letter is very long and somewhat adversarial in tone. I understand the limitations of your health and what that means. This letter "seems as if" it's been years in the composing room. It contains the tide waters of much feeling and thinking that has not yet found, but will, a reservoir of love deep and strong enough to contain its spill -- which I'm sure you know, but I feel better telling you.

I love you,

P.S. It would pleasure me if you would accept, on a continuing basis, the enclosed $ in lieu of a formal counseling arrangement. If no, say so. (I've made a space re: S. Goldman.)

C.

Dear Carl,

You begin your letter with a discussion of your relationship with your parents, especially your mother. This is a good place to use the concept of equality. I won't discuss this matter at any great length because it is covered in my new monograph which will be available for distribution in about two weeks. Unless parents are willing to learn to be parents in relationship to the growing child there is no basis for equality. The parent who looks upon his parental function as a finished product can only create a superiority-inferiority axis with the child. Actually the child has a fresh and alive access to the search for truth and right, although it comes readily to the edge of exhaustion. When the parents have given in to social rigidities in this area, the child's effort to use his capacity for comprehension and enterprise is met with blunting opposition and condescension, as well as ostracism and punishment, and the child gets no reinforcement from the parent in using these capacities constructively. As I point out in the monograph, the child is very vulnerable to overstimulation, and in the case of a submissive character, this means he dwells on the edge of a feeling overload in his search for independent understanding. The parent's remedy involves throwing out the baby with the bath water. To get the child out of the feeling quicksand, the parent puts up signs saying, "Do not think for yourself, smooth out your reactions, be less emotional, give up the best in yourself, accept my view of the facts of life if you want to get along in the world." If the child rebels against this numbing of the life process, he must enter a state of warfare with his parents. There can only be one outcome, because the child is too immature to stand on his own feet in choosing his human environment. If he withdraws from significant communication with the parents, an uneasy peace will be established which is temporarily welcomed, since the child cannot profit from an ongoing battle. There come crisis moments, however, when the child cannot resist the challenge to think and act for himself. When he does so, he proceeds without parental support and guidance. In this situation, overstimulation becomes a certainty for him. Having been thus abandoned in the development of his highest faculties, his need to develop his individuality is seen by others as a manifestation of mental illness, and he has little choice but to adopt this picture himself. Shame and guilt enter where they do not belong and the child must regret his inability to be like other people.

      "Country of hunchbacks! - where the strong, straight spine,
Jeered at by crooked children, makes his way
      . . . Till out of loneliness, being flawed with clay,
He stoop into his neighbor's house and say,
'Your roof is low for me - the fault is mine'
      . . . Since who amongst you all would lift a head
At a god's radiance on the mean door tree,
Saving to run and hide your dates and bread,
And cluck your children in about your knee?"

      ["Sonnet to Gath", Edna St. Vincent Millay]

Your report a struggle with your understanding of the relationship of two and three dimensional experience. The mechanisms of entering the esthetic life appear to some to have been inadequately discussed, according to your letter. This view is a product of the kind of conceptual excess that so often accompanies the search for new insights in a scientific undertaking. It is hard to believe sometimes that a simple explanation carries more weight than a complicated one. In Psychic Exhaustion and the Growth Process a great emphasis was put on the simple status of warmth and pride. I searched for appropriate adjectives such as mundane, ordinary and commonplace. I even went so far as to use the image of the village idiot. Two dimensional feelings and events have roots in universal things. All men have the potential of sharing such phenomena. The way novelty comes into the picture is through recognition and anticipation, conferring a surface sense of individuality which is different from three dimensional identity. The person is able to endow the same old things with freshness and aliveness out of his own flexible resources. His ability to bring romance and adventure into focus rests on magical and miraculous mechanisms. He declares various states of being to be complete and unalloyed with oppressive stress because this approach brings great pleasure and enjoyment. Of all the animals, man has the most access to these esthetic rewards because his cortical endowment provides him with rich capacities for fantasy and play. As in the Emerald City of Oz, he puts on green glasses and dwells in a world made of emeralds.

Two dimensional satisfaction has biological roots. The capacity for it is dictated by the organism's genes. It is an accomplishment of the evolutionary process. There are two basic instincts of importance here which the individual does not have to find because they are a fixed part of his inheritance. These are the cohesive instinct, out of which warmth develops, and the experiential instinct, out of which pride comes. I discuss these concepts at greater length in the upcoming monograph. The lower animals give clear examples of these instinctual drives in a simple form. This is one aspect of why many people like to have animal pets. Their access to elemental things is right on the surface, unalloyed with man's problem of those embellishments which seek to establish false inner identity in universal things. Puppies and kittens snuggle together, and they also explore and play. The cat, which has basically a dominant personality, invites sensual pleasures, and the dog with its submissive personality reaches for adventuresome enjoyment. Their wholehearted participation in such things as their satisfaction with food, their physical comfort, and their playful chasing of imaginary prey is an example to men of the acceptance of simple basic things in the here and now. As you know, the problems with human beings is that they fail to separate two and three dimensional phenomena. They are raised in a society that treats the search for truth and right as either nonexistent or a great mistake, leading to social maladjustment. Both the adaptive and esthetic life are asked to give psychic rewards of which they are not capable. When the individual faces three dimensional challenges unwillingly, as a kind of rare occurrence, he becomes readily exhausted, because he has not developed the tools to handle these potentially overwhelming stimuli. In our world we recognize that the compulsive and obsessive defenses stand in the way of establishing the search for truth and right. As these defenses are gradually discarded, the personality is threatened with overloads which can only be dealt with through the safety valve of the esthetic life. There is really no inevitable conflict between two and three dimensional phenomena. As the individual gradually removes the distorting influence of false identity in esthetic areas, his biologically rooted capacity for pleasure and enjoyment will blossom on its own. It is a garden that will grow if it is not crowded out with weeds.

As far as the possibility of deterioration into sanctimoniousness and smugness is concerned, this is not a serious problem in our world when the value of an independent access to growth is firmly established. Anger at the slowness of the growth process in a feminine is just another compulsive symptom, and it undermines the ability to value simple experience and the pride that goes with it. There is no atrophy of three dimensional capacity in individuals who give themselves over to a full and satisfying two dimensional life. On the contrary, freed thus from overloads and exhaustion, their ability to monitor the development of their self-knowledge and self-control increases many fold. The roots of the search for truth and right lie in the capacity of the individual for reducing the unknown in himself, as well as his expanding ability for control over chaotic impulses which lead him to fire off mastery efforts in inappropriate situations. A successful esthetic life must be protected by a monitoring process which requires the best efforts of the three dimensional self. False and useless seriousness must not be allowed to undermine states of psychic rest. This disharmonious intrusion takes the form of unrealistic concern, recognized as worry, and the keeping of this intruder at bay requires that the individual use his full inner resources for the serious purpose of promoting and protecting his esthetic life. Those who depend on good luck and fortuitous circumstances to find contentment and happiness become mere victims of life, cut off from the ability to find the life principle within themselves. It is true that exposure to the needs of others in three dimensional ways will bring new challenges into focus, but this can only occur when both parties are open to the struggles and frustrations of shared growth.

I see some obscurities in the understanding of polarized relationships in your letter. I am not surprised by this for it is a difficult subject. Clarification depends on the understanding of inner identity. When an individual is submissive, this human characteristic constitutes the permanent core of being himself. He does not submit unless it is in his interest to do so, but the readiness to submit never leaves him. He adheres to this position because it is the basis of his expanding awareness of life, conferring on him his sense of independent individuality. The world in general thinks this submission is like that found in an animal pecking order, where the same individual is yielding toward some and assertive toward others, but this formulation fails to recognize the significance of inner identity. When a feminine individual glories in his submissive nature he does not have to be experiencing submission in any particular situation. It is his way of relating to life. His ability to develop submission throughout a lifetime adds tremendously to his resources for finding wisdom and using it constructively.

When the feminine personality is involved in various activities where no dominate force is manifesting itself, the individual still knows he is a submissive person. As he addresses himself to the search for truth in the human scene, he treats the objects of his probing inquiries as if they had a dominant nature. He endows the unknown with dominance, because in this way his ability to find truth enters an entirely new level of effectiveness. He becomes the servant of the truth seeking process, because this is the relationship with problems which really produces the insights he wants. On the other hand, when he interacts with a masculine personality, he does not have to supply all the submission out of his own resources. There is an actual force, motivated and energetic, impinging on him from the other person. Obviously such relationships can be very useful in refining and deepening his submissive capacities. However, he remains submissive within himself when the masculine individual is in an obsessive, masochistic, or withdrawn state. Then the force coming from the other person fades out of the picture, and the feminine individual, supplying submission entirely out of his own resources, deals with him as a problem situation, comparable to his relationship with life itself. The obsessive or masochistic state of the other is not allowed to become a false kind of force through the neutralizing feminine mechanism of the partial withdrawal. This ability to deal with another person as a segment of the problem world, or as part of the unknown, is an irreducible necessity in purging the personality of compulsive and sadistic symptoms. It lays a firm basis for the parental position, which the other person may welcome or reject, depending on his openness to growth in that particular situation.

The feminine personality learns to use power as a tool of love. He finds power through the mechanism of the power surrender. His use of power is subservient to his pursuit of truth and to his need to be of service to others. This mechanism can been seen in the lower animals when the female limits her power activities to the domain created by the dominance of the male. The feminine individual enters a world of expanding experience only when more experience is necessary for the pursuit of truth and the avoidance of feeling overloads and phobic reactions. When he perceives his ability to understand is trapped in a world of insufficient human data, he must temporarily stop trying to understand and invite a wider experience with life. He does not allow himself to abandon his basic world of inner security. He rejects entering a world of freedom where experience is sought as an end in itself. This masculine pattern belongs to those dominant individuals who are at home in the independent building of the modalities of mastery as a way of life. If he tries to alternate between the two, neither one will provide genuine access to growth. The power surrender furnishes the means to bring the feminine reservoir of wisdom into relationships with others through the workmanship of love and its many levels of service activities. When two feminine individuals interact at the three dimensional level, they bring greater submissive capacities to each other through empathy and the sharing of understanding. When one of them is operating on an excessively defensive level, the same analysis of impersonal submissiveness applies, and he is dealt with as a segment of the problem world. In the two dimensional area, the ordinary instinctually based need to enjoy experience has no goal structure except enjoyment itself. As long as simple pride guides experience, it can perform its function of bringing an elevated happy mood without overflowing into residual phenomena. As you know, the presence of brittle pride in feminine personalities is an ongoing problem for growth.

In writing monographs I always followed a discussion of feminine mechanisms with their masculine analogues. It would be interesting to do that here, but this letter is long enough.

Love,

Paul

P.S. I will accept gifts from my students as long as they feel they have a surplus which they wish to share with me, provided it is understood that there is no commitment to continue such offerings on any kind of regular basis.

P.

[Copyright 1980 Dean Hannotte]

A personal drive to be important or influential in the human scene can only be realized when an individual accepts the challenge to become a truth seeker concerning human nature or an engineer of the right, or morality, in human affairs. From either position he attempts meeting the psychological needs of others whose lives he intersects who are able to share a creative growth process. The uncovering of truth and right requires an unassailable, lifelong commitment to developing either a submissive inner identity oriented by love or a dominant inner identity organized by the integrity found in responsible power commitments. These two great emotions, love and power, shape and direct an individual's participation in the human scene.

Psychological maturity is a self-generated goal. There always exists room in the personality for more understanding and responsibility when the search for truth and right become goals in themselves and the basis of this maturity. Since truth and right are expanding entities, reaching toward greater self-knowledge and self-control becomes an incomplete or open-ended process. A creative growth process requires of an individual that he chooses to make the effort to find for himself new experiences and opportunities which expose the unknown and chaotic in the human scene as well as the inner world of his personality. It is this relationship to the life process itself that promises to generate genuine problems and obstacles and overcoming them brings the truth seeker the kind of insights he really wants and the man of action the kind of mastery he needs. The goal is developing love or power capacities through increasing self-knowledge and self-control.

It is essential for growing individuals to maintain the kind of character imbalance and incompleteness that can only be resolved by expanding interactions with others in mated and creative ways. From this vantage point, we greatly increase the potential for any relationship to contribute to the growth of its participants. The growing security and self-confidence acquired in increasingly experimenting and exploring the many avenues for mutual psychological growth guarantees an individual's contentment and happiness. We employ creatively the surpluses of our biological heritage to develop our psychological capacities for effective love and responsible power in these involvements.

Creative character specialization which results in either a feminine or masculine inner identity and the mated mechanism are psychologically the same. While it is obvious that the development of feminine submission is increased greatly and refined through a mated union, the use of the mated mechanism is not limited by the presence or absence of such a union. In fact, when men form mated attachments each must be free to dissolve it if it does not makes its proper contribution to the independent growth of both partners. The same alternative is available to any creative involvement. A man is accountable only to himself for such a decision.

Creative submission is to a subject outside the feminine individual as well as to internal responses generated by his involvement with his subject matter. It is always guided by love for the subject matter and involves a problem solving relationship to the world of experience. When that subject is human nature, his reaching of insight fulfills his inner character and creates that expanded consciousness which enriches reality for the man of action. Truth seeking, along with many service oriented activities, is the primary workmanship of creative love. Insight can be valued as a product of human goodness worthy of being possessed and encouraged.

The mated mechanism influences the search for insight in one way that is comparable to its influence on the sexual and celebrative surpluses in that fulfilling creative love capacities through the arrival at insight in response to the needs of a loved object releases pride in the feminine personality. This pride parallels, but is not the same thing as, the pride underlying healthy feminine celebration released by the influence of the power surrender when one submits to the sexual needs of his dominant partner in a mated union. It is a pride unalloyed with the brittleness characterizing either intimidation or feminine aggression because of the influence of the power surrender mechanism. Submissive inner identity is not permanently organized by this pride in the way that masculine pride organizes the action patterns of dominant men. If this were the case, feminine inner identity would become balanced and polarity would go unrecognized in the human scene or be misunderstood.

When no external force is directly stimulating submission, the feminine individual's submissiveness remains as the core of his personality and his warmth is maintained through awareness of his submissive relationship to the life process itself. His pride is attached to his ability to increase depth of character for its own sake through the accumulation of insight. This undertaking involves his use of the mated mechanism directed toward the human scene. Through character specialization the feminine individual's world takes on a corresponding and opposite identity. He treats the objects of his probing inquiries as if they had a dominant nature worthy of his idealization and understanding. He endows the unknown with dominance.

Positioning himself in relation to the world of experience in this way is not a rag-doll kind of submission. Rag-doll submission involves an indiscriminate, automatic reaction to anything that comes along stimulating a warmth response. Analytic thinking is never undertaken as an end in itself. The multiplication of ideas or images for their own sake is not creative thinking in a psychological sense, but an esthetic exercise which characterizes good story writing or poetic expression; not the search for truth. Any advance into the unknown must bear some significant relationship to the problem solving activities of the personal psychic life of the thinker. It is his search for truth in the human scene and he maintains the same orientation as if he were in the presence of an ideal. He takes dictation from the chosen object of his probing inquiries recognizing what it is; not imposing the form that he wants it to be. He accomplishes this using the power surrender mechanism that he also employs in a mated union.

Creative analytic thinking requires this approach, guided by love for its subject matter. When a thinker contemplates a concept such as parentalism using the relationship a father has to his son, for instance, he need not actually be involved in a father/son relationship. He uses recall of experiences with his father and many resources including the related experiences of others as well as observable examples from every day life. This thinking activity involves a healthy expending of feminine energy and manipulative capacities. While it is true he is not serving morality embodied by particular individual in this moment, he is serving morality found in the human scene in general; as if the life process were an entity in itself. It is another way of stimulating the feminine retreat mechanism with its potential for deepening understanding by adding to the reservoir of insight. An increasing flexibility in recognizing experiences that hold potential for personal growth along with a growing security from the reliability of one's own insights and the peace of mind these insights confer are entirely reliable signal mechanisms of the presence of truth.

When the feminine individual is interacting with a masculine personality, he does not have to supply all the submission out of his own resources. There is an actual force, motivated and energetic, impinging on him from the other person. However, he remains submissive within himself when the masculine individual is in an obsessive, masochistic or withdrawn state. Then the force coming from the other person fades out of the picture and the feminine individual, applying submission entirely out of his own resources, deals with him as a problem situation, comparable to his relationship with life itself. The obsessive or masochistic state of the other which produces a hate reaction in the feminine individual is not allowed to become a false kind of force through the neutralizing feminine mechanism of the partial withdrawal.

This ability to deal with a person as just another segment of the problem world, or a part of the unknown, is an irreducible necessity in purging the personality of compulsive and sadistic symptoms, including recourse to punishment or ostracism. It lays a firm basis for the parental position, which the other person may welcome or reject, depending on his openness to growth in that particular situation.

When two feminine individuals interact at the three dimensional level, they bring greater submissive capacities to each other through empathy and the sharing of understanding. When one of them is operating on an excessively defensive level, the same analysis of impersonal submissiveness applies and he is dealt with as a segment of the problem world.

The feminine individual ceases any further three-dimensional communication in situations where the fulfillment of his inner identity is temporarily blocked or in the face of continuous resistance to his particular insights. He allows surface two-dimensionality and the simple pride that comes with it to become the boundaries of his submissive responsiveness. Thus freed of feeling-overloads, it becomes possible for him to continue learning to like and enjoy individuals or situations he cannot take seriously, while he begins looking for new experiences that can aid in further developing his insights. A redoubling of effort to teach truth or inject warmth where it is neither needed nor wanted can only result in effacement of his inner identity. Compulsive reaching for relationships and compulsive thinking only distorts the truth seeking process and leads to exhaustion.

When partial withdrawal is working well, it affords a feminine individual with the psychological space and time in which to utilize the feminine mechanism of retreat, or period of introspection. Here the difficulties and frustrations of attempts at serious communications with others can be objectively analyzed with the potential for new understanding which then can be tested in future involvements. In using the mated mechanism in this way, guided by love and the search for truth in human nature, a feminine's submission enters a higher level of psychological responsiveness, and insights coming from his experiences with particular individuals as well as from his understanding of the human scene in general are stored up through tension bearing mechanisms for use in creative relationships as they develop throughout his lifetime.

When he has ordered all the psychological phenomena of which he has chosen to be aware he may find no use for his insights in a particular relationship or contexts which he has created for their influence on his growth process. His experiences may have failed to stimulate any new insights or he may have overlooked some aspect of reality that is needed for his thinking to reach the status of truth. The feminine individual accepts the fact that his three dimensional capacities are not being called upon by others or have been insufficiently stimulated to reach insight. The compulsive need to understand it all, now, is rejected. He temporarily stops trying to understand and invites a wider experience with life and the simple pride that comes with it, guided by the inner security of his established insights. If he attempts to force artificial changes in the established patterns of his involvements or imposes some arbitrary and magical order on his thought processes in a driven effort at manufacturing insights, he can only undermine his inner identity.

This state of affairs is not allowed to become a crisis or a source of worry. Nor is it allowed to become an excuse to justify compulsively entering experience looking for opportunities in which to be responsible for others' welfare. The pattern of freely entering experience belongs exclusively to the growth patterns of masculine individuals who are at home in developing modalities of mastery.

Partial withdrawal from aspects of the self which are recognized as undeveloped is another way of dealing with the unknown. Recall or new experiences will eventually provide information for new insight. Partial withdrawal is the only corrective needed and feminine pride is further developed by its use. Continuity of submission is guaranteed by use of this tool. This is just another aspect of utilizing the mated mechanism in submitting to the life process.

During this period of transition, the feminine individual accepts the two-dimensionality of the moment engaging in ordinary and often busy activities which stimulate the alternation of simple warmth and pride in his personality. Esthetic goals of simple pleasure, companionship that stimulates affection, and hobby pursuits are the only things that matter at this moment. It is his well-earned resting phase from a truth seeking process. He uses his three-dimensional surpluses to monitor his participation in his adaptive and fun and pleasure undertakings with the goal of maintaining his mental health. As his two-dimensional pride expands from successfully maintaining a simple relationship to the surface of his world he waits, employing patience and faith in his ability to recognize new experiences and the person or persons with whom he can share the mutual expansion of their psychological lives. It is only from such a position that he can judge the psychological importance of experience. Feminine pride grows and the submissive capacities arising from independent warmth are protected from the potential of undermining exhaustion and effacement.

Use of the mated mechanism to fulfill feminine inner identity in this way parallels its application in a mated union and provides the basis for an interplay of creative warmth and pride in the submissive personality necessary to his psychological contentment and to maintaining an open-ended growth process throughout a lifetime.

Creative character specialization which results in a masculine inner identity and the mated mechanism are psychologically the same. The development of dominance does not accept confinement to the domain established by a mated union as the only condition of its self-expression and expansion, as rich an opportunity to refine mastery as such an involvement affords him. In fact, he must be free to give-up a mated union when it becomes clear to him that either his growth or his mate's is no longer being served by continued interaction at this level. The same holds true for any of his creative involvements. He answers only to himself for such a decision.

Creative dominance is directed toward material separate from the masculine individual as well as toward developing control over his internal processes. His activities are always guided by the constructive exploitation flowing from personal integrity and involves the overcoming of obstacles in his reaching for a broadening attitude of power and the freedom it bestows. When the domain of the man of action encompasses opportunity of resources found in human relationships his attainment of mastery satisfies the power drives of his inner character organization and creates that expanded willfulness which enlivens the ideal for the thinker. Along with the articulation of his many dominant needs and interests, the development of modalities of mastery becomes the end-product of creative power. Mastery, which is the demonstration of the right or morality, is perceived as beauty embodied in human nature which is to be appreciated and loved.

The mated mechanism influences the productivity of power in one way that parallels its influence on the sexual and celebrative surpluses in that satisfying creative power drives through the development of mastery techniques releases warmth in the masculine personality selectively directed toward those elements which freely choose to be under the influence of his possession and constructive exploitation in the advancement of his interests. This warmth is parallel to, but is not the same thing as, the warmth underlying healthy dominant sexuality experienced during the sexual and celebrative phase of a mated union. It is a warmth that is neither seduced nor made passive because of the operation of the domain mechanism. A masculine individual is not permanently oriented by this warmth in the way that access to deep feeling orients a feminine individual's submission. If this were the case, masculine inner identity would become balanced and sensitivity to the influence and value of polarity would not develop as a resource of opportunity in the human scene.

When no external responsiveness is directly stimulating dominance, the masculine individual's dominant attitude remains as the core of his personality and his pride gains expression through this attitude of dominance being directed toward the life process itself. His feelingfulness, or masculine warmth, is anchored in the expansive tendencies inherent in the power attitude. Under the influence of the right, he broadens the area of his operations searching for opportunities which stimulate his sense of responsibility and manipulative inventiveness leading to mastery; nothing he does has destructive implications. His exploration involves the utilization of the mated mechanism directed toward the human scene. Through character specialization the masculine individual's world takes on a corresponding and opposite identity. He chooses to interact with aspects of his world as if they possessed qualities of human responsiveness, or submission, which he can value and which are worthy of his constructive manipulation and control.

Creative manipulative activity of this nature is never employed as an automatic kind of caring for everything that presents itself as stimulating a pride reaction, nor is it taken up as an end in itself, disregarding constructive responsibility toward the materials being exploited. Otherwise strong and moral individuals have undermined their potential as leaders of men through dissipating creative vigor in competitive sports, building career empires, even to the extreme of isolated explorations of wilderness survival, for lack of information to guide them in developing the ability to discover opportunity found in human resources which can welcome their creative activities. Dissociated, physical activity has a play-like structure and its variation and repetitions may lead to skill in sports or new forms of art, as in painting or dance, but it does not lead to new instrumentalities of the right. The manipulative capacities, developed in attempts at controlling the chaotic, must bear some significant relationship to the over-coming of obstacles in the personal psychic life of the man of action. It is his search for right in human affairs, guided by integrity, and he organizes himself as if he were interacting with a fully responsive, living entity. This is made possible by an extension of the domain mechanism he uses in a mated union.

The development of creative engineering methods requires this type of interaction with the things being manipulated, guided by integrity. When a man challenges his regulation by social rules purported to be standards of normal behavior, as in the case of automatic, parental responsibility of a son for the welfare of his elderly father, he does not need to actually explore such an involvement in order to discover the right. On the other hand, the development of mastery cannot be reached through intellectual analysis. Right is discovered by active manipulation of the concrete in the human scene. To accomplish this he can use or reject action patterns learned from past, similar interactions with his father as well as related involvements, the insights of others, and clearly observable data from daily living. Masculine growth depends on continued discovery of opportunities wherein selective mastery attempts, with their potential for developing responsible behavior and control, can be explored and expanded. A growing sense of spontaneity, with the self-confidence and freedom resulting from each attempt at mastery become signal mechanisms of the right.

By trial and error, without self-consciousness, he uncovers the true nature of materials he has chosen to manipulate. Inventive manipulation is one area in which applying healthy masculine tension bearing with its heightened awareness of the substances manipulated is very appropriate. While he is not actually committed to exploiting the love he values in particular individuals in the moment, he is constructively utilizing goodness in the human scene, developing new skills by which to extend his sense of personal responsibility. These accumulated skills can be utilized in future responsible commitments to individuals and in situations chosen by him that benefit growth.

When a masculine is interacting with a feminine individual he is responding to an actual invitation by the other for utilization as a vehicle in the expansion of the masculine's awareness of his personal world. Because this resource is offered freely, the masculine individual does not have to supply all of the dominance out of his own resources to obtain the meanings and security he seeks. There exists an actual human reality, borne in tension bearing, shaping responses from its idealization of dominant activities.

However, he remains dominant within himself when the feminine individual becomes compulsive, sadistic or indifferent. Then the manageability of the other temporarily fades out of the picture and the masculine individual, utilizing all of the dominance available entirely from his own resources, handles the other as an aspect of an obstructive situation comparable to his handling of any refractory situation in his personal world. Through the masculine mechanism of selective indifference, he does not allow the compulsive and sadistic energies of the other to provoke an anger response, accompanied by a firing off of a mastery attempt in an inappropriate and undermining effort at control.

This ability to handle an individual as just another aspect of an obstructive situation, or the chaotic in human affairs, is an irreducible necessity in purging the personality of obsession and masochistic symptoms, including recourse to ostracism or punishment. It is the only sound basis for a parental position which the other individual may recognize or reject depending upon his openness to growth in that particular situation.

When two masculine individuals interact at the three-dimensional level, they bring greater dominant capacities to each other through identification and emulation of mastery techniques. When one of them is behaving out of an excessively defensive state, the same application of impersonal dominance is utilized and he is handled as an aspect of an obstructive situation.

The masculine individual adopts an attitude of indifference ceasing any further three-dimensional intervention in refractory situations where satisfying the power drive inherent in his identity is temporarily blocked. He allows surface two-dimensionality and the simple warmth that comes with it to become the boundary of his dominant self-expressiveness. Thus freed of motor-overloads, he learns to develop an ability to like and enjoy individuals or situations he cannot take seriously, while he expands his interactions to include new opportunities that can stimulate the growth of his mastery techniques. Simply reapplying leadership capacities in an effort to demonstrate what is right, or substituting vanity found in pride of possession for genuine control, where it is neither appreciated nor loved, can only result in undermining inner identity. Giving in to obsessive thought processes in an independent search for insight, or clinging to relationships only for the gratifying sense of belonging is rejected.

When selective indifference is working well, it provides a masculine individual with the psychological time and space needed for entering a state of enlistment. Here the difficulties and frustrations from attempts at responsible exploitation of his world can be evaluated against their actual effect on reality with the potential of developing new experimental techniques and skills for broadening control. The skills derived from this exploration can then be selectively exercised in responsible commitments with other growing people. In using the mated mechanism in this way, masculine dominant exploitation reaches a higher level of self-expression guided by the right, and his respect for human nature in general. All mastery techniques developed from interacting with the human scene are stored through energy bearing mechanisms for application in specific human involvements which present themselves as opportunities throughout the lifetime of a masculine individual.

When he has organized all of the psychological patterns from his interactions with phenomena which have freely submitted to his manipulation and control, he may not be able to demonstrate mastery to the benefit of particular individuals or certain situations. His explorations may not have led to new techniques or some information may be missing that is required to reach mastery. The masculine individual accepts the fact that his three-dimensional capacities are not being called upon or have been insufficiently stimulated to reach the right. The obsessive drive for instant know-how is rejected. He temporarily ceases his mastery attempts and undertakes a broadening of his areas of operation and the simple warmth that accompanies it, guided by self-confidence found in already acquired mastery techniques. Demanding that people or situations change in order to satisfy self-serving needs or exercising conventional control in the form of manipulative tricks to get the things he wants not freely being given can only undermine inner identity. This state of affairs is not granted an emergency status, nor are feelingful sensibilities used to analyze the moment in a search for insight. Conceptual analysis of psychological phenomena is exclusively the work of feminine individuals.

Selective indifference toward aspects of the self discovered to be undeveloped is another way of dealing with the chaotic. Reconstructing patterns of action or exploring new opportunities for responsible exploitation will eventually provide the information for new mastery. Selective indifference is the only corrective needed and masculine warmth in his ability to choose responsible commitments, suited to his needs, is expanded by its use. Masculine integrity with its patterns of constructive exploitation is guaranteed by this technique. This is just another aspect of utilizing the mated mechanism to dominate the life process.

During this period of transition, the masculine individual accepts the two-dimensionality of the moment engaging in ordinary, lazy pastimes that stimulate his affectionate and sensual nature and can result in an alternation of simple warmth and pride in his personality. Esthetic goals which include an awareness of simple enjoyments which stimulate his sensual nature along with cooperative endeavors and a multiplication of interests are the only things that matter at this moment. It is his well-deserved resting phase from attempts at mastery. He uses his three-dimensional surpluses to monitor his participation in his adaptive and fun and pleasure undertakings with the goal of maintaining his mental health. As his two-dimensional warmth expands from successfully maintaining a simple relationship to his surface world he employs vigilance and hope in his ability to discover a new responsiveness in situations and in a person or persons who can share with him the mutual expansion of their psychological lives. It is only from such a position that a man can discover the true nature of opportunity and its psychological importance to his growth. Masculine warmth expands and the dominant capacities arising from his independent pride are protected from the potential of undermining exhaustion.

The use of the mated mechanism to satisfy the needs of masculine inner identity in this way parallels its application in a mated union and provides the basis for an interplay of creative warmth and pride in the masculine personality necessary to his psychological happiness and to maintaining an open-ended growth process throughout a lifetime.

When an individual is dominant, this human characteristic constitutes the permanent core of being himself. He does not dominate unless it is in his interest to do so, but the readiness to dominate never leaves him. He adheres to this position because it is the basis of his expanding control of life, conferring on him his sense of independent individuality. The world in general believes this dominance to be like that found in an animal pecking order, where the same individual is assertive toward some and yielding toward others, but this formulation fails to recognize the significance of inner identity. When a masculine individual exalts in his dominant nature he does not have to be experiencing dominance in any particular situation. It is his way of relating to life. His ability to develop dominance throughout a lifetime adds tremendously to his resources for discovering mastery and demonstrating responsibility.

When the masculine personality is involved in various activities where no submissive responsiveness is manifesting itself, the individual still knows he is a dominant person. As he addresses himself to the reaching for the right in the human scene, he treats the objects of his probing inquiries as if they had a submissive nature. He endows the chaotic aspects of his world with qualities of human responsiveness, or submission, because with this attitude his ability to discover the right enters an entirely new level of effectiveness. He becomes the engineer of the development of the right in human affairs, because this is the relationship with obstacles which really produces the mastery he wants. On the other hand, when he interacts with a feminine personality, he does not have to supply all of the dominance out of his own resources. There exists a submissive responsiveness, based upon idealization, from the other person. Obviously such relationships can be very useful in refining and broadening his dominant capacities. However, he remains dominant within himself when the feminine individual is in a compulsive, sadistic or indifferent state. Then the responsiveness coming from the other person fades out of the picture, and the masculine individual, utilizing dominance entirely from his own resources, deals with him as an obstacle, comparable to his relationship to life itself. The compulsive and sadistic energies of the other is not allowed to become a false kind of responsiveness through the neutralizing masculine mechanism of selective indifference. This ability to handle an individual as an aspect of an obstacle-strewn world, or as part of the chaotic, is an irreducible necessity in purging the personality of obsessive and masochistic symptoms. It lays a firm basis for the parental position, which the other person may welcome or reject, depending upon his openness to growth in that particular situation.

The masculine personality learns to use love as a tool for the expansion of power. He finds love through employing the domain mechanism. His use of love is guided by his integrity in his search for the right and by his drive to take constructive responsibility for the welfare of others. This mechanism can be seen in the lower animals when the male, by various displays, circumscribes his love capacities to clearly designated territory containing his mate and a willingness to protect that submissive female and young within the domain. The masculine individual accepts a deepening of his feelings only when more awareness and sensitivity is needed in his reaching for the right and the avoidance of motor overloads and rage reactions. When he sees his effectiveness at control is stymied in a world of insufficient human data, he must temporarily stop trying to control and invite a deeper awareness of life. He does not allow himself to abandon his basic world of inner self-confidence. He rejects submergence in a world of self-conscious awareness where feelingfulness is sought as an end in itself. This feminine response belongs to those submissive individuals who are at home in the independent searching for truth as a way of life. If he tries to alternate between the two, neither one will provide genuine access to growth. The domain mechanism provides the arena in which to bring the great wealth of masculine integrity and strength into relationships with others through modalities of mastery with their many levels of constructive exploitation. When two masculine individuals interact at the three dimensional level, they bring greater dominant capacities to each other through identification and emulation of mastery techniques. When one of them is operating on an excessively defensive level, the same analysis of impersonal dominance applies, and he is dealt with as an aspect of an obstacle-strewn world. In the two dimensional area, the ordinary instinctually based need for simple sensuality has no goal structure except sensual feelingfulness itself. As long as simple warmth guides feelingfulness, it can perform its function of bringing an elevated happy mood without overflowing into residual phenomena. As you know the presence of fragile warmth in masculine personalities is an ongoing obstacle for growth.

-- reprinted from The Ninth Street Center Journal 7, Winter 1987

See a 1990 interview with Carl about Paul