Reading: Self-Actualizing People: A Study of Psychological Health (A. Maslow)

1. Published in 1950 but written in 1943. He delayed publishing until he had the courage to put the ideas out there.
2. Section: More efficient perception of reality and more comfortable relations with it p 203
   
   1. p 204 fascinating comments on the sick and the healthy: "if health and neurosis are, respectively, correct and incorrect perceptions of reality, propositions of fact and propositions of value merge in this area, and in principle, value propositions should then be empirically demonstrable rather than merely matters of taste or exhortation. For those who have wrestled with this problem it will be clear that we may have here a partial basis for a true science of values, and consequently of ethics social relations, politics, religion, etc.
3. Section: Acceptance (Self, Others, Nature) p 206
   1. Impression: The idea that acceptance of self and others comes from this generation of thinkers and writers. This radical acceptance of self marks a break with the religious past. To be healthy is to be freed from the condemnation of original sin. Evidence of such radical acceptance came in the form of freedom from guilt and anxiety. With radical acceptance as the goal and indication of self-actualization or more generally as self-fulliment, a whole generation turned inward and became preoccupied with the state of the existential self, concerned as they were with freedom from neurosis and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit of happiness highlights one dimension of the americanness of this search for meaning. This search is the individualized form of american exceptionalism.
4. p 2-8 Section: Spontaneity
   1. p 210 Description of the new therapeutic subjectivity: "Their ease of penetration to reality, their close approach to an animal-like or childlike acceptance and spontaneity imply a superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general." Feeling becomes emphasized in the act of perception of reality. Feeling is no longer considered to be irrational per se, but should be incorporated into rational thinking [quote the passions]. The dichotomy between reason and passion in the self-actualized individual finds resolution.
   2. read 211 for a good description of the new subjectivity; I will have to define the "old" subjectivity. What is my data source for this? Religious or economic man. Where can I find descriptions of these?
5. p211 Section: Problem Centering
6. p212 Section: The Quality of Detachment; the need for Privacy
7. p213 Section: Autonomy; Independence of Culture and Environment
8. p214 Section: Continued Freshness of Appreciation
9. p216 Section: The Mystic Experience (William James); the Oceanic Feeling (Freud)
   1. This section reminds me of the criticism that later commentators would make that the search for self-fulfilment was for intense personal experience.
   2. Maslow mentions here the loss of self or transcendence of it.
      1. What is interesting is he is discussing these ideas two decades before the general population begins to experiment with them. How would you measure or track the seepage of these ideas into the culture at large? Hmmm...I guess I could look at popular accounts or diaries of the 1960s to look for this evidence. Who are characters I can use to illustrate how ideas like self-actualization were absorbed into consciousness in the 1960s? Off the top of my head: Abbie Hoffman, Joyce Milton, Rossinow Subjects (should I interview them?). I could also use other psychotherapists like Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Gordon Allport or any one else who expounds on transcendence and self-actualization.
      2. I could follow Cosmos Crumbling in the Body Reformers and portray Maslow as a Lawgiver of psychological health. Methodologically following Abzug, I would need to trace the reforms promulgated by multiple reformers to suggest how society began to focus on happiness, health, healing, and self-fulfilment like never before. So the story of modern reform begins with the advent of psychotherapy. While psychotherapy espouses a secular outlook, it address the questions of life traditionally answered by religion. What was unique about Maslow in this sense? He built his theory of the hierarchy of needs off the therapeutic insights gained through traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy, adlerian psychotherapy, and neo-freudian psychotherapy as they addressed themselves to the crisis of meaning enveloping the modern western world. In a sense the questions of suffering, transcendence and healing that these therapeutic and cultural elite pursued predated the larger cultural questioning that would consume so much energy in the 1960s. At some point in the 1960s the process of secularization reached a tipping point and many critics prophesied the end of religion. Give examples. As traditional forms of worship gave way in the 1960s, individuals like Maslow, May and Rogers searched and taught about new forms of sacred life. Give examples.

Reading: Re-Enchanted Science (A. Harrington) Ch. 5 The Self-Actualizing Brain

1. Harrington mentions that Goldstein had an interest in Neo-Kantianism. Did this have any effect on his work as relates to Maslow?
2. p 142-143 discuss the cultural critique of modernity that animated Goldstein's work. This then means that German holism directly attacked modernity and in turn Maslow absorbed this attack on the dehumanizing trends in modern society. Curiously, Maslow rarely references to the so-called modern social ills of anomie and spiritual desolation. In some sense, he found enough faith in science and progress in psychology to prevent such a confrontation personally with the harsh realities of life in the modern era.
3. p 146 Harrington mentions that Goldstein sought to bring to his study of brain-injured patients a phenomenological approach.
4. p147 discusses the case of schiender
5. p149 Mentions that Brain damaged patients would develop adaptions to avoid existential anxiety. Goldstein developed this formulation based upon conversations with Paul Tillich. So modern religious and existential concerns found their way into biological theory of the operation of the human being or organism. What implications does this have for Maslow's thought? It further places his work with the tradition of existential musing that rose to prominence after the second World War. Maslow only later "discovered" this dimension in his work: see page 56 of Maslow's journal (quote it). This then makes for the argument that Maslow's work should in part be considered in the tradition of German psychological existentialism represented by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Jaspers, Tillich, Heidegger, [who else?]. But not Sartre and French Existentialism as Maslow understood Sartre's writing as "high IQ whining" [find reference] and did not share his emphasis on atheism.
6. p 150 Has an interesting discuss on the concept of how to define health and a return by a patient to having an "essence" that is in harmony with his environment. This clearly connects to the "psychosomatic constitution" that Goldstein refers to in the Organism when discussing human nature. This then marks the idea of having a biological essence, which is anathema to French Existentialists, who view the self as the ultimate project with ultimate freedom. Maslow mis-reads Sartre's existentialism [find quote - What Psychology can Learn from the Existentialist - TPB in regards to the project of the self in that he does not recognize the limits Sartre saw on the possibilities of the self. While the individual has ultimate freedom of to choose his fate and he does not have ultimate freedom from historical and biological realities [find quote-potentially use Myth of Sisyphus]. Rather the individual has the ultimate responsibility to respond to these realities, denying or accepting them at the basic level [Defiance of the gods]. But there is some continuity as Goldstein mentions that health is a "choice" the patient must make to live again.
7. p 153 Harrington discusses how Gestalts are limited in the natural world, and thereby so are the patterns of potentiality. This is important for understanding 1960s culture as the notion of human potentiality dramatically expanded in the popular consciousness of the time because of Maslow and other humanistic psychologists' writings [See Toward a Psychology of Being]. Along with and because of existentialism, a cultural shift in mood took place in which the notions of radical freedom began to shaped how individuals sought out new patterns of living and thinking. Maslow's work had a direct impact on the human potential movement [get a secondary source on the human potential movement - see Maslow Biography p 262-263 for a great quote on the expansion of human potential. This also ties Maslow to Marcuse in the emphasis of new freedom that should be available as a result of technological advance - review notes on marcuse when writing] as has been noted]. Self-actualization mixed with the ultimate freedom preached by existentialism lead to the expansion of notions of human freedom well beyond the limits seen by Goldstein and the Gestalt psychologist. Essential and biological constraints no longer existed as inhibitions on consciousness in the new world described by Maslow and sought by the adherents of the human potential movement [see Wiki for reference on Human Potential movement]
8. p 154-159 has a discussion of Reason (Abstract Capacity), Courage, and Essences. This is great context for understanding Maslow's view of human nature. It makes Goldstein clearly appear as an existentialist who recognized that normal people move through crises in their live with courage and as result develop mastery of themselves while expressing their nature. This connection with Courage then links up with Tillich's Courage to Be. Goldstein also quotes Kierkegaard here "To venture causes anxiety, not to venture is to lose oneself". There is a connection with Fromm and his existential writing Man for Himself. Harrington turns to a discussion of essences: "Organisms must be understood as in terms of their teleological reasons rather than merely the proximate causes" The purpose of life is life itself. Go to Lear in Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of life for a discussion of the problems of teleological reasoning.
9. p160-161 has some criticisms of psychoanalysis; this will be useful when discussing how Maslow misunderstood the implicit criticisms in Goldstein's work of psychoanalysis.
10. p169 makes a small comment on hierarchies: "Goldstein began to lay more emphasis on the hierarchical nature of the relationship between a "primitive" concreteness on the one hand, and an evolutionarily more advanced capacity to detach and abstract on the other"
11. p 170. "Actualization is always actualization in relation to others" - Use this
12. p173 Excellent comments on how Goldstein was appropriated by 1950s american psychologists

Writing Process: How do I approach both reading and writing?

Today I performed a new process in regards to writing the thesis. I organized all the books I believe will be useful in writing the thesis into a spreadsheet (about 120 books in total). Seeing the sheer volume of this I quickly realized that there is no way I could read all these books and meet my deadline of finishing the work by the end of September. Something needed to be done. I quickly created a binary Y/N column that defined whether I absolutely needed the book or not. This eliminated 41 books from my must read list (which is good), but ~80 books remained (still not feasible). So then I created "read" and "summarized" columns with the same binary form of Y/N. This cut the list further down to 65 books. Still not good enough. At this point it became clear that some narrowing of my focus would be needed. With the outline of the thesis in mind, I began creating a priority scheme of ranking each book with a one through five rating, with one being the most relevant to the chapter outline and five being the least relevant. I figured that I would definitely have to read everything with a one priority first, and then worry about everything else later. This cut down the list to 28 books - a very manageable number. But it does highlight that I can't do an in-depth reading of everything. Some books will be to be read in an overview or cursory style while others will need to be more deeply explored. All in all, I know where to focus now and have a plan for moving forward refining the outline and getting ready to write, which I want to start in earnest in August.

Reading: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (C. Jung): Ch. 10 The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man

Jung comments on how the psyche is noticed more often and acutely by modern men: p 201 "There has never, of course, been a time when the psyche did not manifest itself, but formerly it attracted no attention--no one noticed it. But today we cab no longer get along unless we give our best attention to the ways of the psyche." This again is great context for the emergence of psychological man. The psyche became man's problem. Man's existence became his chief problem. How was man to explain himself to himself?

p 202. Jung maintains that the church is essential to protecting man's spiritual life: "But as soon as he has outgrown whatever local form of religion he was born to--as soon as this religion can no longer embrace his life in all its fulness--then the psyche becomes something in its own right which cannot be dealt with by the measure of the Church alone. It is for this reason that we of today have a psychology founded on experience, and not upon articles of faith of the postulates of any philosophical system. The very fact that we have such a psychology is to me symptomatic of a profound convulsion of spiritual life. Disruption of spiritual life of an age shows the same pattern as radical change in an individual..." What makes this any different from the various spiritual crises occurring throughout the ages? The simple answer is there is no difference but rather continuity: to be modern is to be in perpetual spiritual crisis. The two are one and the same. This spiritual convulsion gains it's energy in the process of secularization. In a sense, Maslow was trying to adopt spirituality without having faith in creed or word. The only clear evidence of Maslow having a spiritual experience came in the form of a confrontation with death. After he collapsed from a major heart-attack he writes to his friend and fellow psychologist Rollo May that this near death experience had [fill in details].

There is something new about the age Maslow lived in, some alteration of the spiritual currents in society that his cadre of psychologists were reacting to. In the most basic form they all sought salvation in a secular faith of psychotherapy. Sin became neurosis, grace became cure, savior became therapist.

p 203 Jung points to World War I as the event that lead many to recognize the dark strain in the unconscious.

pp 206-207 Jung supplies some context for the decline of old systems of religion and the rise of other forms of organizing psychic phenomenon. Humanistic Psychology would fit into this context. His chief point is that the psychic energy previously attached to religious strivings now attaches to other movements: spiritualism, Theosophy, astrology, and above all else Gnosticism. These movements evoke the changing spirit of faith and religious practice in the modern era. They pre-date the psychological imaginations of later writers.

Jung sums up the will to knowledge of the psychological type: "Our age is apparently bent on discovering what exists in the psyche outside of consciousness"

p211 Jung makes the connection between social and psychic upheaval: "The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same." - This makes me think of Berger and the secularization of consciousness he mentions. Necessarily this would entail confusion and chaos of mind. I am also coming under the spell of dialectical thinking when considering Berger's approach.

p217 Jung addresses the idea he does not wish to be called a prophet. He then turns to the crux of the spiritual problem. Re-read this section when writing about Jung.

Reading: Cosmos Crumbling (R. Abzug): Ch. 7 The Body Reform

I was looking to this chapter for how to organize comments and interpretations of Maslow in the historical context of the 1960. In some sense, I still don't feel like I know what he was doing. Hopefully with some theoretical signposts I will be able to make sense out to the chaos of his writing.

A key point: p 164. The body reformers sacralized "realms of life usually perceived as profane"

--Thoughts on constructing biography:

1. Note key works encountered in the development of thought - include this in a timeline
2. Discuss problems Maslow was trying to solve (valuelessness, etc?)
3. Explain key theories and works of Maslow
4. Note Key turning points in Maslow's life (intellectually, socially, politically, culturally, psychologically)
5. Observe curious absences of occurrences (i.e., Maslow did not have a crisis of meaning in his life)
6. Follow discussion of main biographical events and key works with analysis and interpretation:
   1. Maslow's development (intellectual and pure biograpy)
   2. Interpretations of SA (other historians and then offer mine)
      
      1. Show continuity with other historians and commentators
      2. Show discontinuity with other historians and commentators
      3. Offer my own interpretation - SA as a search for authenticity; rationalization of the motivation and mind against freudian interpretations
   3. Reflected a search for the ethical

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 7 Secularization and the Problem of Legitimation

p 157. Berger indicates his intention to use the crisis of theology in Protestantism as an indicator of a worldwide crisis in theology. I quote "If the drama of the modern era is the decline of religion, then Protestantism can aptly be described as its dress rehearsal"

p 166 Berger claims that "the dominance of neo-orthodoxy appears as a more or less "accidental" interruption of the over-all precess of secularization, the "accident", of course being the political cataclysms that brought to an end the first liberal era."

Thesis thought: Refer to this chapter when writing about the context for SA. It will help you properly contextualization the details.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 6 Secularization and the Problem of Plausibility

Thesis Thoughts: Bergers work is both an explanation of the crisis of meaning as well as an expression of it.

p 127 Berger cites secularization as the cause of a "crisis of credibility" in modern religious definitions of reality. How does this compare to other competing theory's on man's feelings of meaninglessness and hopelessness in regards to finding a stable definition of reality? Existentialism will have different roots from the process of secularization except that both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard reacted specifically against Christianity albeit in different directions. My sense is that French atheistic existentialism represented by Sartre and Camus came to have the dominate place in american's consciousness as defining existentialism. However, Rossinow shows how important christian existentialism was. So the question is: is existentialism an outgrowth of secularization? My sense is yes. The specific problems of existentialism were: "self-identity, free will, and the justification of values" (Solomon, From Rationalization to Existentialism, p 245). Secularization and loss of cosmological significance for humans lead to these problems as traditional religion no longer provided the answers. But there is also a political context: the emergence of Communism and Marxism as modes of organization of both politics and personality. Maslow had no such expertise with these doctrines. His thought concerned the psyche first, and society and culture second.

p 127 Berger continues on to say that the man in the street "is confronted with a wide-variety of religious and other reality-defining agencies that compete for his allegiance...in other words, the phenomenon called "pluralism" is a social-structural correlate of the secularization of consciousness". I anticipated this: Maslow's theory of Self-actualization is such a reality defining agency.

p 130 Berger makes the argument that there is a "tendency toward secularization of the political order that goes hand and hand with industrialization...and that there is the further global tendency toward the movement of the state away from religious institutions" My immediate reaction in the present is that this assertion is not quite adequate. There was a counter-revolution in Iran that brought religious fundamentalists to power in 1979, as well as the presidency of George W. Bush who rode a wave of evangelical fervor to office in 2000 and 2004. Religion seems to have remained active if not resurgent in the political sphere longer than many intellectuals of Berger's outlook assessed. What does this mean for the theory of secularization? One point of view is that these events represent only a temporary counter-reaction to the process of secularization, that in fact, secularization proceeds the way Berger describes, essentially pushing religion out of the sphere of politics. If a long enough timeline is assumed, religion will be phased out of political life. An alternative viewpoint is that the theory of secularization is fundamentally flawed in that it misapprehends the scope and nature of the problem of plausibility. Namely, plausibility has proved to be less of a impediment towards faith for large masses of people. At the time Berger and Rieff, were writing, the Christian West found itself in the midst of a great crisis of meaning, which found partial resolution in the widespread reassertion of traditional belief systems at least in America and Latin America. Europe, however, continued to moving toward a more secular orientation in terms of its political outlook with the except of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in England, Denmark, and France.

It remains to be seen which view turns into reality, if one allows usage of such a word. However, it is fair to say that intellectuals in the 1960 overestimated the decline of traditional belief systems in favor of alternative modes of organizing personality and reality. One suspects the fundamental issue turns on the dialectic theory of history as promulgated by Hegel and Marx and employed heavily by the 1960s generation of academics. To this point, the materialist theory holds that religion would cease to have an dominating effect on the masses once economic conditions brought about the rise of socialism and eventually communism. In other words, based on this theoretical point of view, the step toward the abolition of religion would seem a short one. Man's attachment to religion has perhaps remained more dispersed and interwoven within the cultural fabric of society. While industrialization moved forward the rationalization of the everyday world, including religion, it seems to not hold that this increasing rationalism lead to wudespread un-belief. Faith has a staying power that remains unaccounted for in man's need for meaning.

p 132 Berger describes the process of secularization as moving from the economic sphere to the political sphere. He highlights that the state ceases to perform religious legitimations under this new economic and political arrangement. He then makes the point again that the key to secularization is the process of rationalization that is unleashed by economic and cultural modernization. He then continues on to make the point that "private religiosity" is alive and well in sphere outside the economic and poltical, meaning limited social contexts and the family. His point is that religion no longer performs its classical function of binding everyone to a common reality. Can Maslow's appeal be traced to the emergence of such private religiosities?

p 134, Berger emphasizes again the tenuous nature of religion's plausibility structure in the modern world. I believe he goes too far.

p 145. Berger uses the analogy of religion as a company competing in the marketplace for believes. Interesting. He continues to elaborate on the ties between religious pluralism and its relationship to a market of competing religions.

P 152. "On the level of theorizing, this phenomenon srves to explain the current linkage of theology with the conceptual machineries of existentialism and psychologism. THese conceptual machineries are ,indeed, "empirically adequate" to teh extent that they accurately reflect the "location" of religion in contemporary consciousness, which they merely serves to legitimate theoretically" Interesting. Reread this page. He continues on to discuss how the Freudian unconscious may be analyzed in terms of sociological analysis

p 153 Great context quote: " These problems together constitute the "crisis of theology" and the " crisis of the church" in contemporary society"

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 5 The process of Secularization

p 107 Berger defines secularization as: "The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols" My emphasis. When did this process begin? What caused it to begin? Who are the chief intellectual architects of secularization? He goes on to mention several historical moments: (1) the separation between church and state, (2) the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority (3) the decline of religious contents in the arts, philosophy, and literature (4) the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular perspective of the world. Each of these moments are associated with specific thinkers that need investigate and can be referenced to build the contextualization I seek.

p 108 Berger mentions that there is a secularization of consciousness - existentialism and Maslow's work would fit directly into this process. How does this compare with the idea of historicity? I should be on the lookout for an overstatement of the case for secularization as Christianity is alive and well in the present. That then may be one of the hallmarks of scholarship on secularization in the 1960s: that it overemphasized the death of God and the decline of Christianity in America and Europe. This would be worth discussing in the thesis.

p 109 Berger argues that the "original "carrier" of secularization is teh modern economic process, that is, the dynamic of industrial capitalism" This is important, but my concern is the secondary effects that this process has on religion, psychology, and philosophy.

p 110 Berger highlights one of the main features of his argument: "We are interested however in the question of the extent to which the western religious tradition amy have carries the seeds of secularization within itself".

p 113 Berger maintains that the roots of secularization began in the old testament, predating Protestantism. He then continues on to make the point that the Ancient cultures such as Israelites were cosmological in nature. Here then is Abzug's argument in Cosmos Crumbling: the cosmos began to crumble in Antebellum reform America. So by the time Maslow had come onto the scene had this process completed? I would maintain that the disenchantment of the world was arrested in intellectual terms: Heidegger left room for religion in his philosophy, Maslow sought to establish a secular yet sacred connection to the world, Levinas argues for the presence of the Other having a divine injunction, Santer makes room for god as well

Thesis thoughts: On page 123 Berger mentions in regards to the disintegration of the Catholic universe, the secularizing potential inherent in the social formation of the church was released. This potential came from the division of the world into sacred and profane realms. When the sacred realm began to dissolve a secular, profane structure was there to fill the void. So then, what parts of the cosmos were disintegrating during the 1950s and 1960s? How is this reflected in Maslow's thought and writing? Berger has the advantage of a relatively stable constellation of alternatives to Catholicism in the West. The eruption in the 1960s psychological theorizing and thinking largely replaced religious thinking. The dialectic of history swung wildly in the religious realm, oscillating between Neo-Orthodox interpretations of Christianity, Catholic Modernism (Vatican II - Masses in the Vernacular), Radical humanism (existentialism), a turn to toward Eastern religious traditions, expansion of religious cultism(?), and the birth of modern movement of psychotherapies (psychoanalysis, Attachment theory, object relations theory, Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysis, Client-Centered Therapy - Rogers, see Persuasion and Healing). Religion had properly entered into a phase of modernist pluralism of religious thought and experimentation. How can I make this context come alive in intellectual bio of maslow? I plan to look cosmos crumbling to see how abzug constructed his argument in a biographical form. One things is clear: there was a widely felt crisis of meaning, the expression of which came in many forms: existentialism, Neo-Orthodox christianity, a resurgent biblical literalism in the 70s (find source), therapeutic experimentation, drug related experiences designed to chemically bring enlightenment, etc. The arc of the crisis then is an eruption of social discontent not with economic conditions, but with internal states of being.

124 Berger expresses the view of man intellectuals of the 1960s in regards to religion: "Probably for the first time in history the religious legitimations of the world have lost their plausibility not only for a few intellectuals and other marginal individuals but for broad masses of entire societies" This is to some extent overstatement give the religious revivialism that was the reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s (get sources). He then turns on page 125 to the question of the meaning of life being asked by broad groups of individuals, both normal and exceptional. I need to focus on Maslow biographical details and examine where he experienced crisis. Milton theorizes that Maslow suffered from a depression and anomy. Is this in fact true? I guess there is a further question of why did Maslow not experience the crisis of anomy and anxiety that so many others reported? If he didn't that would be remarkable for someone in his field. That he was in psychoanalysis would seem to indicate that he was searching for some sort of salvation or healing. Am I to assume that his psychotherapy worked in the manner in which Freud hoped it would: to strengthen the individual ego against the demands of society as well as to assist the individual in working through conflicts from childhood.

In a broad sense Maslow sought to create a psychology to fill the void left by religion. He embodied this seeking in both his personal and professional life, seeking to create harmony between his personal and professional life. He had the advantage of teh relative freedom of thought and work afforded to he as an independent academic. He shared Freud's hope that a science of the psyche or soul would replace religion. His excitement over the prospect of such a creation animated his life, giving it purpose and meaning. He never lived to see the reaction against the excesses of the 60s (Find sources)

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 4 Religion and Alienation

This chapter is escaping me. My efforts to penetrate its meaning have been unsuccessful. I will know attempt to understand the central points by writing about the areas of my confusion.

p85-87 discusses alienation. Keep in mind the context in which this is being written.

p85. Berger discusses the strangeness of the internalization of both one's social identity and other's being. This contains a parallel thought with Santer's Psychotheology of Everyday Life in which he discusses the strangeness of both the Other and the internal alienness inherent in living. I quote: "What makes the Other other is not his or her spatial exteriority with respect to my being but the fact that he or she is strange, is a stranger, and not only to me but also to him-or herself, is the bear of an inner alterity, an enigmatic density of desire calling for response beyond any rule-governed reciprocity..." The strangeness of the other according to Santer's reading of Freud derives from the strangeness inherent in having an unconscious that desires and wants, that pays no heed to the rules governing the social world, that is raw feeling without regard for the other. In Berger's conceptualization the unconscious is absent. The strangeness of ourselves and other derives from an "internal confrontation between socialized and non-socialized components of self, reiterating within consciousness itself the external confrontation between society and the individual."

In Berger's conceptualization there is no unconscious per se, but there is a non-socialized component of the self. Earlier in Sacred Canopy Berger discusses how the "individual becomes that which he is addressed by others". But it seems then that there is a part of the the individual which cannot be addressed by the social world or others in that world. There seems to be some surplus of selfhood which then remains out of reach: this is what Berger continues on to refer to as alienation. He goes onto to say that "alienation is the process whereby the dialectical relationship between the individual and his world is lost to consciousness. The individual "forgets" that this world was and continues to be co-produced by him." What are the implications of this? This is an interesting form of subjectivity where three parts of consciousness exist: (1) the part produced by the individual (2) the part produced by socialization (3) the leftover part of consciousness that is beyond socialization.

Berger continues on to define three features of alienation: (1) it is a phenomenon of consciousness, specifically false consciousness. False consciousness is defined as experiencing social relations as value relations between things (wikipedia). Berger states that on p 86 "man can never actually become a thinglike facticity - he can only apprehend himself as such, by falsifying his own experience." (2) "consciousness develops...from an alienated state to what is, at best, a possibility of de-alienation." (3) alienation is different from anomy in that alienation "serves to maintain its nomic structures with particular efficacy, precisely because it seemingly immunizes them against the innumerable contingencies of the human enterprise of world-building"

So the individual starts out in an alienated state and can only move to a state of de-alienation. How does this occur? Presumably when the individual "remembers" or sees that his consciousness and the social world is produced by him during the process of externalization. The individual must pull back the degree of objectivation prior to internalization and recall his participation, his agency in world creation. So what role does religion or the sacred play in this process? Berger doesn't give much of an answer except to say that these instances are rare.

Berger's work is emerging as a contextualizing piece of scholarship that is describing the deconstruction of religion. His thought represents the modernist view of religion in the 1960s. He views religion as a "projection of human meanings into the empty vastness of the universe - a projection, to be sure, which comes back as an alien reality to haunt its producers" p 100. This haunting occurs because it leads to a state of false consciousness whereby the religious realm is associated with a facticity, an status as a real other world that lies beyond this one. He continues on to make the point that this other realm is not available for empirical investigation and an attitude of methodological atheism must be assumed.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 3 The problem of Theodicy (day 4)

Berger comments on individuality in relation to theodicy: "Every nomos entails a transcendence of individuality and this, ipso facto, implies a theodicy. Every nomos confronts the individual as a meaningful reality the comprehends him and all his experiences.." How does this apply to peak experience and self-actualization?

Thought: Can modern psychotherapy be thought of as a theodicy? As a way of explaining suffering to the sufferer? It is true that psychotherapy seeks both to explain and alleviate suffering or evil. It aims to remove the intrinsic shame carried by most individuals, which is the cause of so much suffering. As opposed to taking action that should lead to guilt, individuals find themselves guilty without reason. This fact highlights one aspect of the irrationality of emotion as opposed to rational emotional response like anger against a perceived slight.

p 60 Berger makes comments on the nature of individuality and its association with collectivities - this is useful in the sense of presenting an alternative vision of individuality.

p 64 Berger discusses mysticism and the annihilation of the self: to what extent does this apply to peak experiences? In PE is there a loss of self? And how is this connected to Theodicy?

p 79 Berger makes some very interesting remarks on the decline of christianity and its relation to revolution. This fits in with Freud's revolution of the psyche that continued on through maslow. The last 3 paragraphs will serve as excellent context. There are good Camus quotes as well. I should explicate the context Berger mentions further as it is the direct context out of which psychotherapy emerges.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 2 Religion and World Maintenance (day 3)

p 43. Berger states that "Other legitimating conceptualizations, such as those of modern psychology, have taken the place of religion." Interesting. Berger is saying that psychology is the integrating force of marginal situations in modern times as opposed to religion. He then continues on to discuss the confrontation with death as the most important radical marginal situation. This then comports with Santer's idea of death driven singularity. Berger then makes mention of mariginal situations as "ecstasy" or stepping outside reality as commonly defined. This then would be similar to the peak experience Maslow describes

p 45 Berger introduces the idea of a plausibility structure: a social "base" for its continuing existence as a world that is real to actual human beings.

p 47. "The less firm the plausibility structure becomes, the more acute will be the need for world-maintaining legitimations." As the Christian plausibility structure loosens in the 1950s then the Neo-Orthodox christian thinkers emerge. Humanistic psychology then would also be a counter-legitimation challenges the christian interpretation and looking to establish a themselves as a social base.

p51 The last paragraph of the chapter is fascinating. He reiterates the definition of religion as "the establishment, through human activity , of an all-embracing sacred order, that is, of a sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos."

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 5 The Process of Secularization (Day 6)

p 107 Berger defines secularization as: "The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols" My emphasis. When did this process begin? What caused it to begin? Who are the chief intellectual architects of secularization? He goes on to mention several historical moments: (1) the separation between church and state, (2) the emancipation of education from ecclesiastical authority (3) the decline of religious contents in the arts, philosophy, and literature (4) the rise of science as an autonomous, thoroughly secular perspective of the world. Each of these moments are associated with specific thinkers that need investigation and can be referenced to build the contextualization I seek.

p 108 Berger mentions that there is a secularization of consciousness - existentialism and Maslow's work would fit directly into this process. How does this compare with the idea of historicity? I should be on the lookout for an overstatement of the case for secularization as Christianity is alive and well in the present. That then may be one of the hallmarks of scholarship on secularization in the 1960s: that it overemphasized the death of God and the decline of Christianity in America and Europe. This would be worth discussing in the thesis.

p 109 Berger argues that the "original "carrier" of secularization is the modern economic process, that is, the dynamic of industrial capitalism" This is important, but my concern is the secondary effects that this process has on religion, psychology, and philosophy.

p 110 Berger highlights one of the main features of his argument: "We are interested however in the question of the extent to which the Western religious tradition may have carried the seeds of secularization within itself".

p 113 Berger maintains that the roots of secularization began in the old testament, predating Protestantism. He then continues on to make the point that the Ancient cultures such as Israelites were cosmological in nature. Here then is Abzug's argument in Cosmos Crumbling: the cosmos began to crumble in Antebellum reform America. So by the time Maslow had come onto the scene had this process completed? I would maintain that the disenchantment of the world was arrested in intellectual terms: Heidegger left room for religion in his philosophy, Maslow sought to establish a secular yet sacred connection to the world, Levinas argued for the presence of the Other having a divine injunction, Santer makes room for God as well.

Thesis thoughts: On page 123 Berger mentions in regards to the disintegration of the Catholic universe, the secularizing potential inherent in the social formation of the church was released. This potential came from the division of the world into sacred and profane realms. When the sacred realm began to dissolve a secular, profane structure was there to fill the void. So then, what parts of the cosmos were disintegrating during the 1950s and 1960s? How is this reflected in Maslow's thought and writing? Berger has the advantage of a relatively stable constellation of alternatives to Catholicism in the West. The eruption in the 1960s psychological theorizing and thinking largely replaced religious thinking. The dialectic of history swung wildly in the religious realm, oscillating between Neo-Orthodox interpretations of Christianity, Catholic Modernism (Vatican II - Masses in the Vernacular), Radical humanism (existentialism), a turn to toward Eastern religious traditions, expansion of religious cultism(?), and the birth of modern movement of psychotherapies (psychoanalysis, Attachment theory, object relations theory, Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysis, Client-Centered Therapy - Rogers, see Persuasion and Healing). Religion had properly entered into a phase of modernist pluralism of religious thought and experimentation. How can I make this context come alive in intellectual bio of maslow? I plan to look cosmos crumbling to see how abzug constructed his argument in a biographical form. One things is clear: there was a widely felt crisis of meaning, the expression of which came in many forms: existentialism, Neo-Orthodox christianity, a resurgent biblical literalism in the 70s (find source), therapeutic experimentation, drug related experiences designed to chemically bring enlightenment, etc. The arc of the crisis then is an eruption of social discontent not with economic conditions, but with internal states of being.

124 Berger expresses the view of many intellectuals of the 1960s in regards to religion: "Probably for the first time in history the religious legitimations of the world have lost their plausibility not only for a few intellectuals and other marginal individuals but for broad masses of entire societies" This is to some extent overstatement given the religious revivialism that was the reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s (get sources). He then turns on page 125 to the question of the meaning of life being asked by broad groups of individuals, both normal and exceptional. I need to focus on Maslow's biographical details and examine where he experienced crisis. Milton theorizes that Maslow suffered from a depression and anomy. Is this in fact true? I guess there is a further question of why did Maslow not experience the crisis of anomy and anxiety that so many others reported? If he didn't that would be remarkable for someone in his field. That he was in psychoanalysis would seem to indicate that he was searching for some sort of salvation or healing. Am I to assume that his psychotherapy worked in the manner in which Freud hoped it would: to strengthen the individual ego against the demands of society as well as to assist the individual in working through conflicts from childhood.

In a broad sense Maslow sought to create a psychology to fill the void left by religion. He embodied this seeking in both his personal and professional life, attempting to create harmony between his personal and professional life. He had the advantage of teh relative freedom of thought and work afforded to he as an independent academic. He shared Freud's hope that a science of the psyche or soul would replace religion. His excitement over the prospect of such a creation animated his life, giving it purpose and meaning. He never lived to see the reaction against the excesses of the 60s (Find sources).

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 4 Religion and Alienation (Day 5)

p85-87 discusses alienation. Keep in mind the context in which this is being written.

p85. Berger discusses the strangeness of the internalization of both one's social identity and other's being. This contains a parallel thought with Santer's Psychotheology of Everyday Life in which he discusses the strangeness of both the Other and the internal alienness inherent in living. I quote: "What makes the Other other is not his or her spatial exteriority with respect to my being but the fact that he or she is strange, is a stranger, and not only to me but also to him-or herself, is the bear of an inner alterity, an enigmatic density of desire calling for response beyond any rule-governed reciprocity..." The strangeness of the other according to Santer's reading of Freud derives from the strangeness inherent in having an unconscious that desires and wants, that pays no heed to the rules governing the social world, that is raw feeling without regard for the other. In Berger's conceptualization the unconscious is absent. The strangeness of ourselves and other derives from an "internal confrontation between socialized and non-socialized components of self, reiterating within consciousness itself the external confrontation between society and the individual."

In Berger's conceptualization there is no unconscious per se, but there is a non-socialized component of the self. Earlier in Sacred Canopy Berger discusses how the "individual becomes that which he is addressed by others". But it seems then that there is a part of the the individual which cannot be addressed by the social world or others in that world. There seems to be some surplus of selfhood which then remains out of reach: this is what Berger continues on to refer to as alienation. He goes onto to say that "alienation is the process whereby the dialectical relationship between the individual and his world is lost to consciousness. The individual "forgets" that this world was and continues to be co-produced by him." What are the implications of this? This is an interesting form of subjectivity where three parts of consciousness exist: (1) the part produced by the individual (2) the part produced by socialization (3) the leftover part of consciousness that is beyond socialization.

Berger continues on to define three features of alienation: (1) it is a phenomenon of consciousness, specifically false consciousness. False consciousness is defined as experiencing social relations as value relations between things (wikipedia). Berger states that on p 86 "man can never actually become a thinglike facticity - he can only apprehend himself as such, by falsifying his own experience." (2) "consciousness develops...from an alienated state to what is, at best, a possibility of de-alienation." (3) alienation is different from anomy in that alienation "serves to maintain its nomic structures with particular efficacy, precisely because it seemingly immunizes them against the innumerable contingencies of the human enterprise of world-building"

So the individual starts out in an alienated state and can only move to a state of de-alienation. How does this occur? Presumably when the individual "remembers" or sees that his consciousness and the social world is produced by him during the process of externalization. The individual must pull back the degree of objectivation prior to internalization and recall his participation, his agency in world creation. So what role does religion or the sacred play in this process? Berger doesn't give much of an answer except to say that these instances are rare.

Berger's work is emerging as a contextualizing piece of scholarship that is describing the deconstruction of religion. His thought represents the modernist view of religion in the 1960s. He views religion as a "projection of human meanings into the empty vastness of the universe - a projection, to be sure, which comes back as an alien reality to haunt its producers" p 100. This haunting occurs because it leads to a state of false consciousness whereby the religious realm is associated with a facticity, an status as a real other world that lies beyond this one. He continues on to make the point that this other realm is not available for empirical investigation and an attitude of methodological atheism must be assumed.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 1 Religion and World Construction (Day 4)

p18 Berger has an interesting discussion of the psychosocial development of the individual. This reading should be consulted when writing on different conceptions of the individual emerging in the 1960s. His fundamental argument comports with existentialism in one sense: the individual has choice in his identity. But I suspect there are serious divergences.

p 19 Berger ventures a definition of what the social world is and does: "It may now be understandable if the proposition is made that the socially constructed world is, above all, an ordering experience. A meaningful order, or nomos, is imposed upon the discrete experiences and meanings of individuals." He continues on to make the point that not all experiences can be included in the totalizing social nomos and some will necessarily exist outside of it. That makes sense. This is the marginal situation of great thinkers.

p20. Berger makes interesting comment on how language stabilizes the meaning things: by naming something it no longer lives in a state of flux. Berger keeps using language as a case example for how objectivation operates: any criticisms of linguistic theory in the sense that he is using it may open up new interpretive possibilities.

p 21 Interesting comment on subjectivity: "Society is the guardian of order and meaning not only objectively, in its institutional structures, but subjectively as well, in its structuring of individual consciousness." So if society structures consciousness in a dialectic fashion, shifts in consciousness could lead to shifts in society.

p22. Berger begins to describe the consequences of the deconversion experience and the threat it poses to the individual mind. He continues on to discuss the marginal situation and it's threat to the nomic function of society. p 23.

p 23. In other words, the marginal of human existence reveal the innate precariousness of all social worlds. Every socially defined reality remains threatened by lurking "irrealities" - My guess is that "containing" these marginal situations will be one of the functions of religion.

p 24. Again madness if Berger's liminal point: "Subjectively, then, serious deviance provokes not only moral guilt but the terror of madness." He makes clear later on in the paragraph that this terror is that of non-being in front of one's fellowman.

pp 24-25 Very important turn in the argument: He states that nomos become equated with cosmos: in archaic society, the nomos appears as inherent in the universe. In contemporary society, nomos takes the form of the nature of man rather than the nature of the universe. This has a direct implication for what the psychological reformers of the 1960s were doing. He calls it a projection of humanly constructed meanings onto the universe. And here he makes the turn to religion p25-28

p 26 "On a deeper level, however, the sacred has another opposed category, that of chaos" In this sense, Berger is discussing the chaos of nihilism and the weightlessness of it. Nihilism is chaos of meaning, values, beliefs, morals - it is the ultimate nihilism that religion defends against.

Reading: The Sacred Canopy (P. Berger): Ch. 1 Religion and World Construction (Day 3)

p18 Berger makes an argument against determinism: "The process of internalization must always be understood as but one moment of the larger dialectic process that also includes the moments of externalization and objectivation. If this is not done there emerges a picture of mechanistic determinism, in which the individual is produced by society as cause produces effect in nature"

p 18 Berger turns to an analysis of the individual: "The individual is not molded as a passive, inert thing. Rather, he is formed in the course of a protracted conversation (a dialectic, in the literal sense of the word) in which he is a participant. That is, the social world (with its appropriate institutions, roles, and identities) is not passively absorbed by the individual, but actively appropriated by him." Again, Berger's liminal point is madness: a refusal to appropriate the social world would make leave the individual in a solipsistic conversation with himself and thus no one. Having this conversation with oneself in this sense is absurd, and leeds to a senseless rendering of the individual. But I digress: this conception of the individual will be useful to compare against Maslow's, Marcuse's, Heidegger's, and Foucalt's conceptions of the individual. And back on p 15 Berger discusses the process of appropriation of the social world by the individual. He describes it as the process of socialization where the individual begins to take the available institutions, roles and identities as his own. This process is a psychological one. Socialization then is a key point on which berger's analysis of the individual rest. Any misunderstanding of socialization will open the argument up to criticism. He continues on: "No matter how small his power to change the social definitions of reality may be, he must at least continue to assent to those that form him as a person". Or risk the penalties: madness, isolation, and alienation. To risk a social revolution is then to risk not only death but death in madness. And what of this small power? Should the individual's agency hang only on the ability to assent? Berger does say that the individual must only assent to the social definitions that form him as a person, meaning other social definition not related to the individual's identity can be dissented against.