What a piece of work is a man; Human potentialities, part 2

The therapeutic value of this is quite clear what the attempt is being made not to dream up materials out of the past but to get people to live in the present neurosis after avoiding one of its aspects can really be defined as a person reacting to present challenges in terms of reactions which were appropriate at some time in the past when you had some traumatic or other experiences but which are really inappropriate now and the standard therapeutic method of course is to dig up these events out of the past and try to every act them and get the person to understand them. But an equally good and probably rather better method is to get people here and now to live in the present. And this is precisely what the biggest fists are trying to do. They propose any number of very interesting exercises for increasing the people's awareness of the here and now of events outside themselves events going on within their bodies their

fantasies their will and so on. Now this of course is by no means an entirely new discovery. It's interesting to note to one of the most successful therapists a man with a European reputation where he was working psychotherapist Dr. vetoes of the peace treaty of neuroses and he treated them. By all accounts even more successful than the majority of his fellows using bridging in the past methods simply by getting people to be aware of what was going on and what was going on. Within themselves of being such a simple act of refusing the hand for example of the external things in a completely receptive way with a

minimum of imposition of ideas apart but to encourage them in the matter of perception was this matter of pure receptivity not merely therapeutic method but he did also as a way for increasing the enjoyment of life teaching people to live better and more satisfactorily. And you summed up his philosophy. When you have learned become more receptive you will have a great mentor and everything will interest you more. Now here let me repeat this thing which I've mentioned before but I would say that it is a categorical imperative in the sense that if we could be interested in things we should be freed from

the temptation of delinquency. Russell has affected chronic boredom in which so many people certainly and probably also even encourage collectors and people still tolerate the idea of war because war is so exciting the relief from the boredom of ordinary life and the extraordinary I think a very appalling fact that the suicide rate regularly for time. To make life sufficiently interesting for people not to kill themselves. And this happens even in neutral countries which are not at war I mean people are so interested to see what tomorrow's people will

put off completely their ideas of suicide and it's a terrible thing that it requires a war to make life seem worthwhile and meaningful to immense numbers of people to the ordinary humdrum life of the truly boring and therefore. Requires some kind of delinquency to liven things up. I think he's probably right that if one has been trained to become intensely aware receptively of the of the of what is going on life becomes extremely interesting and many things which seem seem to be seem to be exciting and this. This I do think is a very important point because other areas in which

awareness can be trained. I mean I think that is one which we do very little to train and it is important. Benteke valuable work has been done in this field. Read creation through art. This is a very remarkable book which shows how the faculties of imagination can be trained in such a way as to foster the creativity of the person who trains them and in Gestalt therapy. We find many recipes for the training of the imagination and there are a number of. The books that I happen to have written I'm sure there are many more that I haven't read the book for example for the training of children it's called games

which is extremely useful. First of all how to get children to get more fun out of life but also to show them how to use their imagination in a preventive and therapeutic so that they can get out trains of obsessive and painful situations. For example a simple device would be in relation to grown up they're frightened but they can use their imagination in such a way that they can make this grownup perform ridiculous acts climb on trees like monkeys. They can multiply them and they can finally throw them into the sea in their imagination. And this is a very variable procedure which will. Which will certainly help a great many children to get out of any of their fears and in the same

way in Gestalt therapy exercises of the imagination designed precisely to de condition oneself to get out of the obsessive ruts which we have been pushed into by our education. This is an immensely powerful instrument which which can be used to help us in innumerable ways but very briefly touch on another exercise another technique of awareness which is a technique which don't do it. Great recommended technique which is a technique of being aware of what Xander calls the use of the self. Being aware of the wrong use of the self. Taking lessons in the right which is just

too complicated to describe but it was so convinced of its one of the prophecies that he wrote to Alexander's books. He says that technique creation what education is to life in general it proposes an ideal means with that idea. This is obviously extremely high praise and the extraordinary fact is that this had an immense influence on education in the minds of educators. Nobody has paid the slightest attention to this and it remains almost no no I'm glad to see that. Alexander ism at Tufts University where some quite interesting research very interesting research is going on in relation to his work but it seems very strange that it is so highly recommended

that this man who after all produced a revolution should have been so totally neglected. Now finally before I leave this subject let me say that the mention of the Gestalt therapy in the work but actually of course these kind of techniques go back to an enormous distance into the past about you know Oriental. Literature for example is an extraordinary tantric text which I suppose goes back I don't know probably to the beginning where text is introduced by a kind of interview between Shiva and his divine counsel. Part of art to the Goddess and the Goddess asks him What is the secret of your kind of light and consciousness

by giving her a list of one hundred eighteen exercises consciousness which will help to go forward into this transforming consciousness into exercises in psychology for the purpose of developing the products of what Coomaraswamy called The Science of the self with the large is the science of the fury of the man. These exercises which methods for becoming conscious of every type of human activity down to sneezing and eating and going to sleep. He anticipates almost everything that we have done and it provides us a complete curriculum actually this

is what can be done in this for developing the mind body for teaching the body although we should state the mind body to become capable of many things. Spinoza put it we have to go on to. The point which is the problem of bacteria. Benevolence actualizing and kindliness and if possible preventing the opposites from being actualized. This of course is one of the major problems which is always confronted in every society how do we encourage love and benevolence. How do we prevent these impulses to violence and

brutality from breaking out and doing their own. It's interesting to find out where all the great world religions have been. I have provided me these. The actualized built into the charter and it's a very curious fact that it has remained extremely obscure tribe described by Margaret Mead to develop a strong effective method for an attitude into the during infancy. Margaret Mead describes this unfortunately admirable but they were

sloppy out of the ability to do things fairly well but I don't think there is any incompatibilities between. I think to combine the two but the methods which she describes are extremely interesting the infant is its mother she talks to it plays with it caresses it periodically brings them into physical contact sometimes with other members of the family other members of the tribe sometimes with the domestic animals as she does so the good but the child doesn't understand it. But of course it means something and learns to speak. The significance of the word good will in a

conditioned reflex of an extraordinary and Margaret Mead record how extraordinary it was to discover children these children. When she came into the house to me she was of a different color. She was dressed in a totally different way she was came from somewhere right outside the tribe and for a moment to be very frightened the mother would just go and the child would immediately run to be picked up and the general attitude towards other human beings was one of trust affection and benevolence and the pattern of life. Sure it was influence early training. We should certainly not be too proud to learn

however primitive and extraordinarily brilliant and heaven knows we have enough of love in the loveless world which we live in. Converse of course is the problem of how do we deal with the aggressive tendencies towards violence and brutality which are apt to be very strong. And this is something which is certainly preoccupied people from time immemorial. It is of course quite useless to be good and so on and this one offers some means whereby tendencies can somehow be worked off. This way we can probably learn quite a lot from

the violent dancing of the Greeks. Undoubtedly all of these things are great to get read of a great deal of aggressive tendencies. The problem of course is that when Gordon porters talked about the extreme difficulties of getting read critically I mean he's written on this subject that the things which have been done for example to create prejudice against racial groups have come to a rather pessimistic conclusion that probably the only really effective one is some kind of individual

obviously millions of people that obviously must find some way in which these kind of of the violent drives which evidently give a profound psychological pleasure to people I mean. The kind of violence is to say the high psychological did it Blake said years ago relaxes people like being braced and relaxed. He's a real satisfaction to be got out of this and I understand quite well what the physiological basis of this is that there's a release in which many people find very satisfactory in fairly small quantities I mean I think there are many people who are

genuine and. They fly into things because they get a real kick out of it. And we have to discover with this kind of desire for having lots of read up in the past after it was all very simple because we lived in an extremely dangerous world running away from animals running away from from other savage me and we got rid of it in that way but in a world where everybody is virtually sitting in cars. Present problem we quite clearly have to discover ways by which this kind of physiological product of violence which is also the cause of all kinds of tendencies can be worked off years ago. William James wrote an essay which is still really interesting called the

moral equivalence of the way he laid out some ideas for finding some kind of equivalence which would satisfy people instead of war. But his suggestions I don't think go nearly far enough. I think I'm a Christian and we have to work out agree to getting rid of these disturbing factors in me as I see it. I think there are plenty of precedents in earlier civilizations some of them primitive people some of them quite highly civilized people which we could probably examine and reinterpret in the light of what we now know about the hormones and other physiological aspects of the body. And I think it is perfectly possible that we could develop means we have a lot of S..

What seems to be now quite normal drives towards violence and cruelty could be got rid of without doing much harm to other people. Well I think I've said enough to show that there is a great deal to be done and actually been able to touch only on a few aspects of this enormous subject. But I think I've said enough to show that it would be a very good case for a systematic examination of these various fields touched upon and no doubt with other fields too to see where we could find material which sure would be a very new to us in this task of potentialities. I could envisage one of the big foundations for example setting up a research

project and I don't think it would be really very expensive for the simpler for examining lot. Getting to work in these various fields they would have to be prepared to look into material which wasn't exclusively scientific Some of it would seem rather quick and primitive but after all truth lives at the bottom of the well and the well is very often and we mustn't be put off by them because the truth may be sitting at my own feeling is that if this were looked into all the medical findings from afar and general principles were determined because undoubtedly there are general principles underlying these different methods of helping people to realize their potential as it is and then if assistance could be worked out

experimentally these findings could be applied on every level education from the kindergarten up puts to the grave. I think a revolution not merely of children but of adults could be achieved. And my own view is that this is merely utopian fantasy that it is. I mean Utopia means no place. The opposite of that is took place. I mean that it is conceivable that it would work here and know the sort of place we live in. I don't see any reason why this sort of thing is carefully investigated and experimented with should not be something which would be extremely helpful which would once it got started would probably develop in all kinds of ways the standards I see

in attempted were extremely optimistic about what could be done if we if we would only pay attention to what has to have attention to it systematically try to discover what has been and what may be done how it could be applied on a large scale in this way. I do think we should be able to be of great help in making. Better for us making it possible for more people to realize more of the potentialities which I'm totally still practically practically everybody. Everybody me thanking everybody for the great kindness which only thing I have to complain about here is the tears.

One should never talk excessively or in from time listening than talking that this is a function here but I think goodness had many opportunities of listening to extremely interesting people both undergraduate manage the faculty and I'm very grateful very grateful. As for Doctor Lampson said for these people that sense of quiet. But I thank you. For who. Called as Huxley has just concluded the seventh and final lecture in the series. What a piece of work is a man. He says lectures were recorded at present auditorium while he was Carnegie visiting professor of humanities at MIT.

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