Hiranmay Karlekar | The Pioneer | June 3, 2006
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My most favourite bar in New York is The Otherroom on Perry Street
in West Village. The fact that it welcomes dogs along with those who
bring them is no doubt an important consideration. The other is its
easy, seductive informality that dissolves barriers and makes people
connect to one another spontaneously. On the benches and high stools
inside, and benches on the pavement outside, perfect strangers greet
one another, smile, talk and laugh, parting happy and high. The
encounters sometimes lead to lasting friendships. Sometimes they
become memories to be recalled fondly in future as one returns to
The Otherroom or remembers it nostalgically.
This is precisely what makes The Otherroom special. As the world
gets wired closer and globalised market capitalism makes people
increasingly consumption oriented, one finds it more difficult to
establish genuine relationships. Consumption involves the possession
of goods and enjoyment of services. When these, thanks to
advertising, become the central goals of life, people begin to
matter less and less. Besides, the pursuit of consumption at all
cost makes human beings expendable. Those who stand in the way are
pushed aside or trampled upon. Those who are not relevant to the
strategy of enhancing one's consumption level, are ignored. The
process turns people into pawns to be used or commodities to be
possessed. And one does not have warm, mutual relationships with
either. Nor can a person have a relationship with another without
being his or her own self.
But then, what precisely is a person's self? I have always
considered it to be one's autonomous consciousness acting, under
conditions of mental stability, on the basis of cognition and
internalisation, rationality and emotion, and expressing itself
through willed action. Here the word autonomous denotes, as Erich
Fromm says in To Have or To Be?, a consciousness in which commands
for action arise from within itself, based on its own understanding
of, and response to, situations. Unfortunately, individual
consciousness ceases to be so in a society driven by media and
advertising, and constantly seeking to mould human behaviour to
ensure social, political, economic and cultural conformity and spur
consumption.
Erich Fromm further points out in the same work that loss of
autonomy also comes from one perceiving oneself as a commodity for
sale in the employment market. As such, one must always act in a
manner that makes one acceptable to one's potential employer. The
result is emergence of the "marketing personality" - one that
changes in accordance to the demands of the situation. The
projection of one's self in the form of a constantly changing
personality gradually undermines ones ability to be one's authentic
self. For personality, as Dr Yukio Ishizuka, a leading New York
psychiatrist of Japanese origin, points out, comprises the "way one
thinks, feels and acts in three principal spheres of life-self,
intimacy and achievement". A personality that lacks autonomy and
consistency is bound to affect the autonomy, strength and integrity
of the self.
The result, as has been seen, is the failure to establish authentic
relationships. This leads to a sense of isolation and which
heightens the feeling of insecurity that all human beings experience
as they cease to be a part of their mothers' worlds and become
individuals. In his Fear of Freedom, Fromm calls the
process "individuation" and argues that, with its progress, one
becomes increasingly aware of the multiplicity of one's
vulnerabilities in a hostile world. According to him, many people
seek to overcome this feeling of insecurity in two ways. The first
is resorting to sadistic thought and action aimed at achieving a
feeling of power by dominating or controlling the lives of others,
both physically and psychologically. Masochism, on the other hand,
involves the total surrender of one's self to a powerful person,
movement, idea or entity which gives one a feeling of being both
protected by it and of being able to draw upon its power. Neither,
Fromm points out, provides a genuine and lasting way of overcome
one's feeling of insecurity-which can only be done by relating
oneself to the world through love and creative work.
Dr Ishizuka's work acquires a special significance when viewed
against Fromm's assertion. His approach to psychiatric treatment
differs fundamentally from the prevalent mode of diagnosing specific
psychiatric distress or disorders which are considered to
be "dysfunctions and diseases of the brain" and treating them with
drugs in accordance with any of the growing multiplicity of
therapeutic approaches and focusing primarily on providing relief to
targeted symptoms. The result is not cure but, in the best possible
cases, continuous suppression of the symptoms and, in the worst
one's, to intermittent relapses, leading to the collapse of one's
psyche and eventual suicide.
In sharp contrast, Dr Ishizuka believes in a pattern of treatment
that goes down to the roots. Identifying five symptoms of stress-
anxiety, anger, psychosomatic disorders, depression and psychosis,
which he regards as consequences of one's failure to cope with life
and its challenges, he seeks to find a permanent solution by
reinforcing the patient's personality to make him or her better able
to cope and identifying happiness as the ultimate goal. He draws
from the principles of both Zen Buddhism and modern post-particle
physics in his method of treatment. While the latter emphasises the
interconnectedness of the entire universe, the former believes that
a solution to human suffering lies in being one with the universe.
The process becoming one with the universe begins with being better
related to, and experiencing a higher level of intimacy with, one's
partner or wife and requires the latter's active participation. The
four steps to success lie in the patient's recognition of the
problem, seeing it in perspective, resolving to cope with it and
acting on one's resolve. It involves daily self assessment in terms
of 41 parameters of psychological state and personality.
To draw a parallel with the world of television, the psychiatrist
acts as the anchor in the entire process. The essence of "Lifetrack
therapy", as Dr Ishizuka calls his method, is the recovery of the
patient's autonomous ability to cope and the rehabilitation of his
or her personality and self. In the ultimate analysis this must
involve a new way to live, which in turn would require a greater
emphasis on human relations and not consumption. Whether in New York
or New Delhi, a return to human being's quintessential nature holds
the key for coping with an increasingly atomising world.
--
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