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By Root 2132 0

an awareness of his own reaction, and thus loses the possibility of a genuine response to that beautiful music. It is implicit in the normal manifestations of the human mind, so far as they are directed to the object, that we should do full justice to the given object and should in experiencing joy and sorrow, enthusiasm and indignation, love and hatred, not glance back upon our own attitude but solely upon the object towards which an attitude is directed. Once this normal rhythm is broken and we squint back at our own behavior, we shall be out of touch with the object; it will cease to address us really and hence our response to it will itself become destroyed. A dramatic work will necessarily fail to move us if we are watching ourselves sitting in the theater or if we consider the actors on the scene as actors, not as the characters they impersonate.

By the same token, we cannot experience real joy if, instead of abandoning ourselves to the joyful event, we are absorbed by our interest in our own psychic state of joyfulness. When we are thus falsely conscious, we are permanently condemned to be our own spectators. We see ourselves from outside and thereby poison all genuine life within us. For all genuine entering into an object requires that in a sense we forget ourselves. Only then do we achieve a real contact with things and with their inherent meaning.

The way in which we become conscious of a mental act is intrinsically different from the way in which we become conscious of an object; to the latter only does the phrase conscious of something properly apply. Our mental movements unfold along two fundamental dimensions: one is the intentional direction to an object, an object we grasp meaningfully, an object which confronts us and reveals its character and qualities to us. This is had when we look at a house, for example. On the other hand, there is the consciousness of a cognitive or emotional act which is in no way our object but which takes place inside us or in which we manifest ourselves—for instance, the act of rejoicing in something.

To be sure, our own attitude can itself be made an object subsequently; it can be apprehended in reflection. Yet, while we are performing a mental act we cannot but destroy that act if we withdraw our attention from the object which has elicited it and make our own attitude an object instead.

Our attitudes depend on their being kindled by the values of the object. These acts are essentially intentional, that is to say, directed to the object and we must genuinely respond without turning back on ourselves. That is the reason why no one who, instead of being fully absorbed in the beloved person and that person’s beauty, is always busied with himself and his own emotion, will ever love in the true sense of the word.

This false consciousness of self will cause us to remain outside of all situations in which we are involved, excluded from participation in their meaning and content. On occasion this anomaly may attain a pathological degree. This omnipresence of reflection results in a nipping in the bud of all genuine contact with objects. This is particularly true of the hysterical, who are incapable of all genuine object-relationship, because they are continually engrossed in their own attitude.

Psychoanalysis is not only unfit to cure this morbid self-consciousness; it is even apt to increase the evil. For it incites its victims continually to dig for the supposedly hidden motives of their thoughts instead of singly attending to the object. It is most important to note that psychoanalysis does not content itself with resorting to that method in the face of abnormal mental reactions but insists on applying it to completely reasonable, well-motivated attitudes, too. Men are thus trained to pry about in their psychic entrails and to divest themselves of all receptiveness to the appeal of the object.

This false super-consciousness has a deadly effect on true inward life. It denatures all response to values and nourishes our pride. For, also in performing a good deed, the person who