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The reason I've gone off on this detour is to get to the point that the intellectual individual tries to live his life and he's afraid of this he's afraid of leisure and is afraid to die as he can't cope with it because always reeling from the impossibility and out of touch with start to come out at that time. And that's scary. So as long as you can stay in a state of activity then he can be relatively distracted. Now relaxation in an innate capacity the whole conscious personality to open freely to stimuli from the inner and the outer world. But there is not a passive thing passive that he would be the inhibition of action. I'm afraid to do anything so that I'm paralyzed which is something else altogether. But what we're talking about is relaxation which is an active thing. OK so relaxation is not just passive but it in action
and in gauging the receptive process. And it has a positive function. It's not just the absence of effort and relaxation exemplified the great use receiving and effort and relaxation are complementary phases of all creative Fike and the duration of each creative cycle and its phases are influenced by outer and inner conditions creative growth is never achieved through effort or relaxation a lot. It's not one of the other vote. Now during thinking this the the systolic phase. Now I'm talking and your thinking is rational. It's deductive. It's logical and it's concerned with the existence of things. But during relaxation which is the other the diastolic part you're thinking is more non-rational like in dream daydream.
It's more inductive. It's more synthesising concerned with similarity. It's an illogical and a concern with the essence of things. These are the true capacity and they're quite different but they're both very forms of activity. Now prolonged subjugation to a work culture imperative. In other words most of us don't write poetry anymore. We did when we were adolescent to get away from that. You know it doesn't. It doesn't make money. And most of us get tied up in the some kind of progression of things that have to do with making a living. Plenty of pressures on us to make a living and raising taxes again. So I mean these nationals are honest and they impair the kind of
relaxation. Effort. And the impairment we can see Eagle individuals you know it would be with the various kind of imports that emerge. OK. So little getting around to the next consequence of the hyper intellectualized and that is where an individual has a weak ego. That when he comes up against an emotion he feels overwhelmed by. Something that would be perfectly ordinary or perfectly susceptible to being integrated in a healthy individual is now a hurricane. They feel overwhelmed by the experience. And a small brush with another individual may be seen as criticism. And any disagreement may be experienced as in the fall. That must be run away from. And that brings us to the second consequence of. This exclusive intellectualized kind of way of life and that suicide
and that that's a pretty kind of malignant consequence. Now I think the best example of hyper intellectualized individual. I should live so long are psychiatrists. You don't find many much more intellectual lives than that. And sort of right in that same arena are other professional individuals businesses dentists lawyers in other words individuals who have to go through a prolonged and rigorous training program and of necessity they have to learn to sit on their ample because they don't get on their impulses they going to get through school they're going to be out in the street and the guys that are able to control themselves and are able to sit in classrooms and are able to write papers and are able to stay in on weekends they're going are going and they're the ones that are going to
pass. So what you wind up with by a process of attrition by a prophetess of natural selection are a bunch of highly intellectual allies individuals. Now unfortunately for many of them the hyper intellectual ization becomes a way of life in their personal life as well as in their work as a documented fact that physicians are more prone to suicide than men and other occupations. And psychiatrists appear at the top of the list. So help me reported this and documented there was a recent study that called through the obituary column of The Journal of the American Medical Association since 1895. And that's up to 1965. The study was made and during the early years I used to come right out and
later on they got a little more cagey about it and they had a cardiac arrest. They didn't say what the cardiac was arrested by cardiac arrest or pulmonary edema. It wouldn't say what the pulmonary edema came from the walk in the Atlantic Ocean you know got a mouthful of water but we know just in the phone area. Saw the family money for these death taxes. Now do the extra will cause a 208 accident. And that included home aside a lot of kind of petulant once in a while for your good sport to kill the guy. It is open season on the characters and there were two hundred eight hundred two hundred active 203 suicides and there is certainly reason to believe that the underestimate the
true number is plenty of a colleague for example who committed suicide in the coronary. As far as everybody knew he was just another. Young physician who had a corner so I mean there probably have been the slip by even though it was a shotgun that caused the coronary and the enamel within the coronary anterior corner now. Also in the study they eliminated anybody who was over 60 years of age these are only individuals now under six years of age and whatever errors there may be in the data. It's the fact that at least two hundred and three psychiatrists commit suicide between 1895 in 1965. And just in the last five years from 1960 to 1965 there were 54 54 and that's more than any previous decade.
So they're doubling up the carpet. You better get there quick. They're dropping off like flies not anyone or nearly a third of these lads. Were small in their 20s and 30s. In other words they just finished their training. Out of all the expensive kind of educational process you know medical school and all that kind of thing they're very young. And an aside ladies in the audience three of the psychiatrist killed their wives before they killed themselves. And this is then what you all love we're talking about. It is always where because once you get out of touch with your feelings you are having some crazy thought and a thought for all you have to guide you.
You can get way way out never realized there were you need to be in touch with your feelings because some of your feelings are so preserve it or some of your feelings are concerned with survival. And once you get out of touch with your survival feelings then your intellect can make you look like a pretty caging thing to do you know Schopenhauer made all sorts of rational exposition of the futility of life and what are reasonable kind that would be for a man to destroy. Well you know once you take intellect and use that alone you get way way out in left field. And also the other thing is that when you become this hyper intellectualized kind in that you get out of touch with people and people are a good counterbalance to you if I get out of the Army Navy store and get a good buy on a surplus overcoat. A beautiful army overcoat for two but I take it home I show it off. Not great and I wear to
the office. My wife reaches the rafters. Look it's a great overcoat. You know I love it but don't wear it to the office. You worried all weekend you wear it down the cellar but don't wear it to work. Oh I found somebody that keeps me in line. I want you that you can go way way way off. The folks you see you carrying the flag in the subway. They have nobody to tell and leave the flag home. What happened to the neurotic consequence of the unhappy country. When you start going on intellect alone it will take you way way way out. Now. As far the attempted suicide among the taxes there are no figures on that but on other individuals it seems that
five or ten to one. An individual five or ten of the Jews who attempt suicide who don't succeed. I mean there are probably many more attempts. There are actually two hundred three. But by and large who intend to kill and do it very violent and there. They're very thorough in their in their effort. There's another explanation they get into this too and that frequently is the choice of the specialty in the first place. And that's one of the explanations for it that the individual may have been hyper intellectualize been having problems with before he ever started to go into the training or to be a physician for that matter and he may have been looking for an intellectual answer.
He thought that if I learned all about it that'll solve everything. I won't have to have any of these feelings are so messy and so difficult to deal with and so contrary and so conflicted I can get rid of all that I can just find out the answers and everything will be just fine. When I came home from the service and I told one of my colleagues that I had decided to take a psychiatric resident his observation wasn't as when you got to be some sort of recruit to get along in the orchard he figured I'd get along just fine. Now. Not only was the. Psychiatrist however who are the kind with vine you can say well naturally there they were all messed up when they went in to call me and of course they're going to have this kind of the outcome.
But that's not so that's not so. Because out in Oregon you know where according to New Yorkers life is tranquil. You know everything's great they have a great climate. They have the time. They did a study of two thousand six hundred seventy four suicide. Twenty six hundred during the years 1950 to 1961. And they relate to the occupation. And long behold. They found that positions were being logged into an attorney and the attorneys led the pack. And physicians and engineers were third and fourth. And this study stressed the importance of depression in professional people. Now we were talking before about the training and about the work
culture and about the pressures for using intellect primarily and getting rid of feelings and the way this causes depression. So you can see that the professional person is predisposed to depression. And many personality traits that characterize a good attorney or a good physician are good dentists are also traits that predisposed to depression for instance. Careful control of emotion. Control of emotional expression of attention to detail conscientiousness and prolonged before all of gratification. If you're picking an attorney these are two these are good for him to have. You want a guy who can deal with these feelings and not the showing that you know if he's really trying your case phoria you don't want him to overlook something you want him to have attention to detail. You want him to be conscientious.
These are all excellent traits but one they all focus together and they all impinge on the guy. Frequently is incompatible with life. Will it all play with another professional people who. As well a psychiatrist who didn't have these kind of problems that would cause him to go into the field of psychiatry in the show. Now we've talked enough about the neurotic and I thought about with healthy stuff and sort of cheer you up before you leave. If we define healthy electoral law as an enlightened sustained interest in the welfare of ourselves and those around us. I think that might be a useful kind of working definition that is usually in a feeling say of mutuality and reciprocity. I got that from a student of mine who comes from the line.
They talk over there. I think that's kind of a poetic way of putting it a feeling of mutuality and reciprocity. They're part of this thing which is the type of love from the other varieties such as sexual you know which predicate the physical attraction or romantic which predicate an overestimation of the partner. But again. Anything healthy is not a movement for healthy intellectual love does not occur alone. It will always be found in the context of other varieties of love as well because a healthy personality is a versatile person and this will be one of the capacities that the individual is capable of this in light and interest in others and oneself with a feeling and mutuality and reciprocity. And I think that one area where the value of intellectual love can be demonstrated most clearly in the area of child rearing.
So let's turn our attention to some of the current child rearing practices and explore these in the meaning and the impact of intellectual love. Or to compare what happened to a kid today with what happened to kid when I was a kid you know. That I think there have been quite significant changes. There were children used to be brought up by their parents. And while the families don't have the moral and legal responsibility to do the job. Frequently they are no longer in a position to do so because the parents and children no longer spend enough time together. In those situations where the training is possible this isn't because the parents don't want to spend the time there. It's just because situations of life and change. To begin where the family used to be bigger are. Not in terms of more children necessarily but in terms of more adult. There used to be
grandparents that used the uncle used to be and used to be cousins. And those relatives who didn't live with you they live nearby. And you often went to their house or they came to Europe and they stayed for dinner. And you know them all. You know the old folks in the middle age you know the older cousin you know the baby and they knew you. And they had a good and bad side. You recall. On the grad side some of these routers were interesting you thought well at the time. Remember my aunt to come to my house every week and she was a professional cook. Now man she could cook and cook and cook pies and she could cook homemade bread you could cook baked beans it was a real treat. Look forward to Friday when Ann would come and do the cooking.
It was sensational. And then there were don't go well we'll on the stationery store. He'd come once a week invited or not. Oh here it comes. Move on will come. And he always have some kind of a toy or some kind of mechanical pencil some kind of a little package you have bank or some kind of thing. And all cool never knew when to go home. Well you take out a blanket and put it down the living room to the next morning when you wake up there'd be uncle will under the blanket. And they don't do that you know uncle will all be warmed up and sent to I think he was still around the day virtually died before psychiatry got to him. And I don't ever talk to Morgan now. He was always a treat because he got a new convertible
every year you know and he also had a beautiful girl the boy with him and I got to talk to the girl now which is why I always wrote it gave you a Christmas present. Of course there are some bad side to it too. You recall you had to give them a Christmas present as well and they all wanted to mind your business on you know what you've been doing where you began who you've been with and where you were going and why. But there was somebody there to stimulate somebody there who was working on. And if they didn't like your answer when they told you thought if you told him the truth. Truth is not always with that kind of experience. And not just a relative of mine. Your neighbors also love to find out what was going on. So they talk to you.
What was doing. Not if you compare this with the lives of the children now they live in the big cities or live in the suburbs. The contrary. And then all the children in the small town knew a substantially greater number of adults than children do now that and now that your children know primarily their own age mates they know their own peers. They know kids of their own age of their own intellectual level of their own financial level. They're sort of like looking in a mirror. They don't get the extensive view that we got to play in a small town. And the stable world of the small town has been absorbed in the suburbs. The children are growing up in a different kind of environment and the extended family is now reduced to a nuclear family. There's two adults in
the child. For maybe a couple killed in this ritual. And the functioning neighborhood. Has shrunk and now they have a small circle of friends and most of these friends are accessible only by car or by bus. Well you have to put them in the car and take them over to play with their friends. That isn't usually acceptable the way it used to be so they don't have the diversity of settings and the diversity of people that we had and all the people now about the same income in the same way of life. And as it turns out the child doesn't see much of that. Because in the neighborhood the adopter sell them there all the adults who would come home late at night have a drink eat dinner mow the lawn watch TV go to bed.
That's about it. And today's housing project they have no stores there's no shops. There's no services and no adult that work or play. You don't see a fall and this is a sterile world in which many of our children grow up and it has quite an impact on the. The children can rarely watch adult working at their trade. They don't see mechanics work and they don't see tailors or shopkeepers either they're unapproachable they don't have time for this sort of thing a child can listen the gossip the post all the way that there are no abandoned houses or barns or attics break into from a child's point of view it's a doll world. Now hardly with any math really matters though because children aren't home much anyway. They leave the house early in the morning frequently on a school bus and it's almost never a
time when they get back. And there may not be anyone home when you get there because of his mother isn't working at least part time why she's more than a third of mothers do work part time. She was out of social obligations or doing things for the community when the child's father leaves home in the morning before the child does and I think the father an hour and a half to get to work and the father is often away on weekends not to mention absent during the week. And in short we're as American children used to spend more of their time with parents than with other grown ups. Now more and more their waking hours are spent with their peers or in front of television. And it's better observe the children who report their parents away from home. Rates significantly lower on characteristics his responsibility and leadership. And perhaps it was more pronounced. Because absent from the father was more
critical on the boy than the absence of the mother picking on boys or girls and similar results have been reported in other studies that were done during World War Two in homes with Norwegian sailors whalers in negro households with missing fathers. In general the father absence contribute the low motivation for achievement and an inability to defer immediate for later gratification and low self-esteem and susceptibility to group influence. Juvenile Delinquency and all these are facts are much more and more marked for boys and girls. So now we get back to intellectual love I use this as sort of a preliminary thing and then once you know what the answer to all of the what can be done to sort of an antidote can we come up with.
So and I think the first thing that we have to begin by the segregating the age group. To get back some of the Uncle Will some of the and some of the kind of interaction between the age group. And then this is being done this is not just my theory or my hope in this is actually being done being done here in the in Europe. And. The context that is being done in terms of child care where they're getting older individuals who are healthy enough and aware and rigorous enough to be able to participate in this sort of thing they're getting them to interact with the young people and the young child needs the care and attention of his health and the difficulty is that we haven't yet produced enough opportunities for this kind of interaction.
But that is where the intellectual honesty. It's a recognition of the need and. Initiating the step that will make it possible to pursue a realisation of this sort of goal. You heard psychoanalyst Claude h Miller as he spoke on the topic intellectual love. This was another program in the series. Peace love and creativity the hope of mankind. On our next program author and radio TV panelist will discuss the age of our discontent. These programs are recorded at the Cooper Union in New York City by station WNYC. The series is made available to the station by the national educational radio network.
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Series
Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind
Episode
Intellectual love, part two
Producing Organization
WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-cr5ndq6w
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Description
Episode Description
This program presents the second part of a lecture by Claude H. Miller, psychoanalyst.
Series Description
This series presents lectures from the 1968 Cooper Union Forum. This forum's theme is Peace, Love, Creativity: The Hope of Mankind.
Date
1968-03-07
Topics
Psychology
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:08
Credits
Producing Organization: WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Producing Organization: Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Speaker: Miller, Claude H.
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 68-10-14 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:28:55
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Citations
Chicago: “Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Intellectual love, part two,” 1968-03-07, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-cr5ndq6w.
MLA: “Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Intellectual love, part two.” 1968-03-07. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-cr5ndq6w>.
APA: Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; Intellectual love, part two. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-cr5ndq6w