Dr. Fairmont's Way to His Own Self-Understanding

                                                                                   © Paer Fairmont, 2007

Part I of Four Parts

Dr. Edmund Bergler called it “Counterfeit Sex.” Since my latest book is titled, We´re Having Sex Right Now!, I feel comfortable widening the concept calling it “Fraudulent Life.” Call it what you like, it’s all fake.

REAL IS UNREAL—PERVERSE IS WORTHWHILE

If we take into account our so called civilized society I suppose we would agree that some defensive (fake) conduct is necessary for social interaction. However, for some centuries now, the fundamental essence of integrated human energy (sexual energy) has been denied in favor of the likes of wholesale manipulation of behavior, massive dependence on mechanical contraptions with their instructions and maintenance requirements, intellectualizing life without experiencing it, and getting money any way you can (just for the sake of getting it). All of these are accomplished with the background music of deceit, anxiety, hate, rage, fantasies, wishful thinking, insecurity and related self-destructive expressions of the desire to suffer, (see We’re Having Sex Right Now!, by Dr. William E. P. Fairmont, 2004). Those conditions convert the concept of fraud into “the way life is.” The essence of living sexual energy is blocked out. Authentic expression is absent. Fraud is no longer fraudulent. The fact is that those who do it best or who simply get away with it are admired and rewarded. Only perverse superficialities are perceived as “real” and “worthwhile.”

THEY SAID IT BEFORE AND THEY’LL SAY IT AGAIN

“All that is not new,” you say. “Didn’t Shakespeare tell us, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the people are the players’?” “Didn’t Freud try to enlighten us as to the fact that the majority of our instincts and energies are alive in us, but are embedded and stored in a part of our mind that is not within our immediate conscious reach?” “Didn’t he further tell us that we have a very energetic SUCONSCIOUS MIND that wants to do things and does them without our conscious awareness, and that that condition forces us to pretend that we know what we’re doing?”

GLOBALIZED WORSENING

You’re right! They did tell us things to those effects. However, as time goes on the development of modern technologies and other distractions have combined with greed and envy to push and pull people further and further away from their unified-harmonious psychosexual nature, making perversity the order of the day. These perversities manage our lives. In recent times they have proliferated, becoming more refined, more hysterically intense, and more part of everyday life (globalized).

WHAT DO THE “WANTING SYSTEMS” WANT?

As a result, life has become more drab, sick and sickening. Yet, almost nobody appears to be particularly upset about these turns of events. Furthermore, even though an acclaimed series of doomsday predictions backed by solid evidence have become popular, doing something about them seems to be on “hold.” Doesn’t it look like the “wanting systems” of human beings are either incapable of doing anything to prevent the announced disasters or these disasters are precisely what people want? I think that there is plenty of evidence for both of these arguments:

FAKING HAS A COLORFUL HISTORY

Faking life is automatic when authentic life is inhibited, discouraged, and not appreciated because it is not perceived or known, hence; not experienced. This kind of, living without feeling it, became popular around the turn of the last century and gave rise to an increased amount of phony conduct. What happened was that mass production took a lot of importance away from values like the development of good character, the profound significance of the family, and the carefully cultivated acquisition of skills. So when machines, factories, and the objects they produce, suddenly took on tremendous importance, people were sucked into giving up the old values. Little by little the emphasis on money depersonalized day-to-day interchange. Frenetic industrialization drained away the little self-understanding and self-awareness that we had. People were forced to repress their feelings and were left with trying to “figure out” what was going on rather than sensing and experiencing what was happening. Intellectual maneuvering, chicanery, “vocabularic pomposity” in schools and the “professions,” mathematical and scientific gymnastics, religious and political scare tactics, etc. began to receive greater prizes and privileges than hard work. Manual labor was looked on as degrading. On the other hand, putting on certain airs, posing, bullying and other forms of false fronting slithered into vogue. The repressed energies were shoved and squeezed into inhibition and depression, extravagant and outlandish behavior and gangsterism, all of which peaked with the great depression of 1929.

WHY KEEP ON LIVING WITHOUT MOTHER LOVE?

Perhaps of greater negative importance; the insecurity produced by the gradual loss of family unity, drove women to abandon in large measure their psycho-biological identity which significantly upped the insecurity quotient. Proof of this abandonment of mother love is registered in the grotesque history of the latter half of the twentieth century. The befuddlement in people, produced by not being adequately loved and cared for in infancy, turned into monstrousness and grand scale unprecedented cruelty, mayhem, and legalized mass murder. Apparently these manifestations which in one form or another are very exaggerated versions of, “I want my Mommy!!”, have had little or no real effect on our understanding of how motherhood influences our lives. On we go with a plan to blot out the essence of women. We numb them, forcing them to become imitators of men leaving us without mother love more than ever. It looks like the goal is to wipe life out altogether.  

Some of the effects of no mother love are furtively demonstrated by everyday rituals that we take for granted. These “obligations” irritate the hell out of us. In spite of that, our resignation to their “necessity” keeps us numb, oblivious to what’s really going on, incapable of thinking creatively, sick (physically and mentally etc.). I’m referring to things like going to school; buying Christmas, birthday etc. presents; paying taxes and all kinds of bills; getting licensed; getting married; serving in the army; looking at the clock at work; standing in line at the bank-movies-check out counter; washing the car-the dog-the front of the house; going to church; cutting the grass; getting the computer-the TV-the swimming pool pump etc. repaired; going to the dentist-the doctor-the lawyer-the courthouse etc. Most people live the major portion of their lives just hoping to “Get those things over with!” From there we drone on into “thing worship,” “money hysteria,” and wars which make the attraction people have to non-life clear to a few of us, but totally unrecognized by the majority.

ALIENATE OR INTEGRATE

by Dr. William E. P. Fairmont

 

Some call it disorder and total confusion. Some call it corruption. Some call it decadence. Others call it our beloved country. The majority, in an irritating monotone, simply mutter:

“That’s the way it is.”

“There’s nothing else to work with.”

“It’s always been that way.”

That’s about all they are capable of saying because most people are alienated human beings.

What does that mean? Alienated men and woman come in a variety of packages. In this article we are concerned with the psychological phenomenon of individuals incapable of expressing themselves in an integrated manner. Their focus on themselves in relation to the world is limited to responding to stimulation. They were “trained” to live that way. They are out of touch with their own thoughts and feelings in that they are caught up in stringent, subconscious patterns of behavior that restrains the expression of energy. As such, in that they are sexual beings, they “like” their restrictions even though these inhibiting, perverse adaptations may be killing them along with the people they “think” they “love”.

The Alienated cannot LOVE. They make “decisions” from their eyebrows up and therefore make no real commitment to anyone. They are like fish that get hooked on practically any bait that dangles before their eyes and since they were formed and have lived that way their whole life long, they have no way of taking real responsibility for any of their actions.

Most human beings never discover that they are sensitive, stimulatable, living creatures capable of generating their own thoughts and emotional expressions. They have little awareness that their tolerance for the kind and intensity of the energy that impinges on them, is limited. Additionally, while over, or under stimulation might not observably affect their intellect, it always affects their emotions. Therefore people can acquire and accumulate factual knowledge, and at the same time inhibit, stunt and nullify their emotional development.

It should be clear that humanity has been receiving increasing doses of extraordinary stimulation beyond their capacity to tolerate it, throughout the past hundred-hundred and fifty years. However, these present times are distinguished from others due to the flood of technology that affects us moment to moment. Our cars, computers, machines, electronic devices, etc. constantly inform us of our personal insignificance. That encourages us to be hysterically dependent on their importance. That’s why we desperately try to acquire and accumulate more of these objects so as to not be “left behind”. In the process the stimulations become unmanageable, converting us into practically immovable, puny, alienated, emotional dwarfs. Only a manageable social circumstance can relieve us of the threatening and depressing pressures that disintegrate our souls.

That being the case, life is becoming more and more absurd. Every day we have to listen to the babbling of alienated family members, “teachers”, “authorities”, and “leaders”. These characters are desperate, purposeless, feelingless, manipulators who need us to assure them that they are not as bad as they subconsciously know they are which makes things worse for all of us. These alienated desperados must assure themselves that we are equally or more alienated then they are. That is to say, anyone who can tell it like it is is a threat, due to the fact that “They know not what they do.”

If we accept that only individuals with an integrated capacity to express themselves can bring us to life and happiness, then the manipulative lying that The Alienated try to impose on us has to be recognized as a death force. That is to say, a force for life impels us toward creative, exciting sexual expression that produces a beneficial liberation of energy that can be perceived and felt as uplifting and a relief of tension. On the other hand, a death force has a stifling, suffocating tone that restricts sexual expression and encourages humiliation and perversity. The Alienated have no choice but to identify with their familiar, like kind. They want to suffer, to experience misery and create a death like atmosphere. Sound familiar? Is that something like what you are experiencing? Can there be a democracy made up of the Alienated? Who will they elect? What will be their “choices” in general?

Unless each of us resolves to discover our real nature and the degree to which we have become distorted, can we hope to intervene in the wholesale decomposition of ourselves and those around us. If no such a resolution takes place we are destined to become weaker and increasingly incapable of attaining self-respect and the ability to act in the quest of better outcomes. Only the integrated expression of sexual energy emanating from all of us can produce a successful and happy social milieu.

For more information read, WE’RE HAVING SEX RIGHT NOW! by Dr. William E. P. Fairmont.

In about a week Costa Rica will be conducting elections for president and members of her parlament (Asamblea Legislativa). I interviewed nine of fourteen presidential candidates on my television program; two hours on each occasion; three candidates at a time...Tedium. Tedium.

 

Alienation is upon us. Here, as well as in the U.S.A. and company; the issues, goals, promises, etc. are all air balls...expensive air balls. They drain us all. Meanwhile the obvious is obvious: They want to do what they want to do without knowing what that is. They want to do that in a hurry to compensate for not having what it takes to experience their infantile fears.

 

We need to help our women to love themselves, their babies, and all of us. We need to be members of a family. We need to feel a sense of trust. If not, the air balls will continue to explode in Iraq, etc., on our highways, in our beloved crime rate, etc...which leads to making us into zombies--no feeling, no love, just credit cards, things, going numb and faking it.  

Years ago Dr. Georg Groddeck observed that human beings don't live, they are lived. If we buy that observation, and I surely do, then "living" depends on getting as much control as possible over the energy force that lives us. How? By calmly, gradually, developing a thinking-feeling acquaintance with those underlying energies. That means maintaining an ongoing, ever-present, relaxed vigilance regarding your thoughts and feelings.

 

That ain't so bad! What you get for your vigilance is ever-growing awareness of your subconscious preferences. That makes you stronger and wiser. My experience tells me that if you have no desire for and no method of accessing your real passions; you'll get weaker, sicker and ever more numb, in a stupor, and "stupid."

 

Am I in trouble with your are we jiv'in? Oh yes, "The Method"! Was it Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington who said, "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing!" My interpretation of that is that self-discovery can't be faked. You gotta do it right or you'll be letting that energy fester and eat you alive. The second alternative sounds awful, doesn't it? Which one are you into?

The other day one of the candidates for the presidency of Costa Rica who has read my book, told me I am little understood in this society. I replied, "Thanks for the compliment!" After forty or so years of practicing psychotherapy, writing about human psychology; and talking about it on the radio, TV, and to live audiences; I am convinced that the barriers that most people erect inside themselves to prevent understanding (both self and otherwise) are underestimated. Understanding is a priviledge that isolates an individual from the "bass akward" hullabaloo that passes for living nowadays. The remaining "klunko life" continues to rub out what enables the organism to interact reasonably with its envirmonment.

 

I'm sure that you already know this in your own special way. If I'm right about you and me then the "frustration quotient" in millions of us has to be inmense.

 

What is ever more provoking is that people like me think it doesn't have to be this way. The alternatives however require a certain quantity of calming down. For me ain't no sign of that on the horizon. Nevertheless, these alternatives are documented and can be implemented, as soon as the will to have a decent life shows up.

 

For me, solving something of this quandry is worth thinking about, talking about, and working on. And you?