Moritz Nestor
Walter’s grandfather, born in 1920, beat his children on the slightest of occasions, often even without occasion. He came from a poor farming family in central Switzerland and was an alcoholic. His son, Walter’s father, born in 1948, belonged to the working class and had been an alcoholic for as long as Walter could remember. While intoxicated, Walter’s father regularly beat his mother when he came home drunk at night. Walter’s mother was a kind woman, loved her son Walter and went cleaning to save her all in all from misery. Walter loved her. He hated his father from an early age. The people in the village watched the alcoholic’s misery, nobody helped. They despised him. The parson remained silent.
So, Walter grew up hating his alcoholic father. At night, when the time came again, he would listen to the nightly scenes in his room while his sister pulled the covers over her ears and was fearfully indignant at what a bad man their father was. As Walter grew older, he stood protectively in front of his mother and – insensible with rage – took the blows aimed at his beloved, weak mother. Until his father stopped. After that, Walter lay awake for a long time and his hatred for his father ate away at him.
It was not until Walter was approaching forty that he learnt the background to the nocturnal scenes of his childhood days. Back then, he was told, at the regu-lars’ table, where his father’s weekly wages had turned into beer and schnapps, his drinking buddies had made fun of the drunk: “Your old lady has it off with others.” They laughed at the fool, as they thought oafishly. Walter’s father was unstable and believed the mockery. When he came home, he would seethe with anger, rant and beat his poor wife, almost passing out with his jealousy.
At 13, Walter was strong enough. From then on, he hit back, became a bully in general and did not allow himself to be told anything by anyone any longer. It was not just at home that he was unbearable: If he did not get what he wanted, he would use his fists. Lengthy speech-making was not his thing. He was eventually sent to a closed juvenile psychiatric centre for three years because he was no longer able to cope at school either.
That was fortunate for him. Here, for the first time in his life, he felt truly recognised, understood and safe. He recovered and completed an apprenticeship. The “difficult”, opinionated bully became a capable professional who gradually worked his way up in the community, canton, political associations and parties. However, every time he had ambitiously worked his way up to the top somewhere, at some point he suddenly lost interest and looked for another field of activity to start from the “bottom” again. Even though he had learnt to talk instead of fighting in the juvenile centre, he remained opinionated and needy throughout his life, convinced that he had to be the only one, the cock of the walk and the best.
Walter had hated his father since he was a child and had many times felt like killing him. He had never wanted to be like “that man”. This hatred never left Walter. Even when he had long since become successful, he hated himself passionately whenever he discovered behavioural traits in himself that he seemed to have in common with his father. This always caused him to feel under the weather for a long time. For years he didn’t want to admit to himself that he had learnt more than he liked by watching his father’s violence, bossiness and dominance.
At 30, Walter was a successful businessman, married a colleague and had a vasectomy, because he did not want children. He was afraid of being a bad father.
One day, Walter’s father found out about the vasectomy. Slightly drunk and in the heat of the moment, he kicked his son between the legs. Walter, who had worked in security for a long time and had learnt self-defence techniques as well as restraint, threw his father to the ground, unconscious with pain, and hissed into the drunk’s ear: “If you don’t give in now, I’ll kill you.” “I would have done it. Thank God my father gave in. We only narrowly escaped a catastrophe,” Walter explained in a gravelly voice.
His father pressed charges. Walter and his mother testified in court. They made consistent statements and the case was thrown out. “From then on, I no longer hated my father. I only despised him,” he said. “I avoided him for twenty years, didn’t want to see that man again.” He faithfully kept up the relationship with his beloved mother.
Over these many years, Walter, who was constantly striving for the top but never satisfied with his successes, felt, sometimes more, sometimes less clearly, that a “black stain” was his daily companion: “After all,” it occurred to him spontaneously from time to time, “after all he is my father.”
He had already turned fifty when, one day towards the end of the year, a decision matured in him that had been ripening over many years. “It wasn’t out of deliberation,” he emphasised, “it was an intuitive act that had been fermenting for a long time. I knew I would do it now. Before he dies.” He visited his father a few days before Christmas Eve, offered the old man his hand, which he took in amazement, and forgave him. The old man’s tears ran down his face and he said to Walter in a choked voice: “This is my best Christmas present ever.”
“I’ve known for a long time that it was hatred of him that made me angry back then. But you know,” he says, “we’ve talked about everything for so long now, you’ve always kept it in front of my eyes, and I’ve realised more and more: With my hatred of him, I’m putting myself on the same level as him, so to speak, him who was always beating me. I can’t be doing myself what I’ve never wanted him to do. I learnt to hate him precisely because of his violence. And now the black stain is gone.”
Walter worked at his way out of his hatred with admirable mental strength. He had inwardly and inevitably felt himself driven to give up his life’s lie. He could no longer bear his “dark shadow”. Because he knew that it was his “father after all”.
And he had long since outgrown his father and understood how much his father had been incited by his drinking buddies and that he had therefore been violent towards Walter’s mother. The son also learnt with the help of a psychologist that his father hadn’t hit him because he hated Walter or was “evil”. In Walter’s mind, that father that Walter had always thought “bad” had long since turned into an abandoned alcoholic. Nobody had helped him and people had made fun of him and had earned money at his expense. So, Walter decided that he would rather give up his pride and hatred – which were a life lie fuelled by “good reasons” – than continue to suffer as a result. He realised that the person who hates is the first victim of his hatred. In the end, the realisation of the true reasons for his father’s violence prevailed over his old childish, hateful pride. Pushed to honest self-knowledge, he turned round inwardly and began to work his way out of the lowlands of his life, out of his hatred. He wanted to be human, not inhuman. Out of his own personality, he wanted to develop a new direction for his life, and so gave it a new direction.
Alfred Adler, the founder of individual psychology, wrote in 1927 in the introduction to his book “Menschenkenntnis” (English translation of the book “Understanding Human Nature”, 1927, Greenberg, New York):
«With our inadequate education today, real knowledge of man is actually only given to one type of person, that is the ‘contrite sinner’, the one who has either been caught up in all the transgressions of human inner life and has managed to escape from them, or who has at least come close to doing so. Of course, it can also be someone else, especially someone to whom all this could be demonstrated, or who has a special gift of empathy. However, the best judge of character will certainly be the one who has experienced all these passions himself. The contrite sinner seems to be the type that is accorded the highest value not only in our time, but also at the time of the development of all religions. He is the one who stands higher than a thousand righteous. If we ask ourselves why this is so, then we have to admit that a person who has risen from the difficulties of life, who has worked his way up from the mire, who has found the strength to throw all this behind him and rise from it, must know the good and bad sides of life best of all. No one else can equal him in this, especially not the righteous.”
Individual psychology teaches that “the results of experience acquire entirely new values, when the power of self-knowledge and self-criticism is still alive, and remains a living motif. The ability to know one’s self becomes greater when one can determine the wellsprings of his activity and the dynamics of his soul. Once he has understood this, he has become a different man and can no longer escape the inevitable consequences of his knowledge.» (Adler, Menschenkenntnis)
This is what Walter’s living example teaches us: We humans are not “stimulus-response beings”, not genital-controlled “beings of drives and instincts”, not “living systems”, not a “product of neuronal currents”, not a “reflex of economic conditions”, not a calculable “cost-benefit maximiser”. Our psychological problems are not determined by “genes”, “defective” brain structures, synapses or nerve pathways, nor by hormonal or metabolic disorders or economic “production conditions”. Inner change is possible in us, as Alfred Adler wrote, “when the power of self-know-ledge and self-criticism is still alive, and remains a living motif. The ability to know one’s self becomes greater when one can determine the wellsprings of his activity and the dynamics of his soul.” We are capable of recognising our strong natural moral dispositions of charity and mutual help and of shaping our lives in accordance with them, giving them a different, better and more humane direction – if we overcome hatred.
Understanding human nature through depth psychology
Friedrich Liebling (1893 – 1982)
«However, understanding a person’s nature is only possible for those who study people for their own sake; perhaps even a fundamental understanding cannot be separated from the desire or inclination to help the other person, to help him realise his true nature. Knowledge of human nature must not become a parlour game, a superficial amusement in which one points out “faults” to one’s neighbour or pulls the mask off one’s face; still less must it become a means of hubris, where one believes oneself to be superior to one’s own shortcomings through the insight into the shortcomings of others. It may sound moralistic, but you can only really understand human beings if you love them; and you will love them better if you understand them better. The basic feeling of a true connoisseur of human nature must be respect for the other person’s personality, an attitude free of judgemental and moralistic intentions: Nothing is more difficult for a person than such an unprejudiced ability to encounter others, and this is the reason for the psychological context that those who are good experts on human nature are those who have themselves already been caught up in great entanglements of guilt, temptation or inner distress; as Alfred Adler emphasises, “contrite sinners” have played an outstanding role in the development of European morality (for better or for worse). If we take a more objective approach to the problem, it is obviously the case that our own hardship, once it has been overcome, opens our eyes to the great difficulties that human beings have with their lives: an insight that makes us conciliatory and mild and makes us aware of the value of human beings in themselves, regardless of the blemishes they are afflicted with.»
From: Liebling, Friedrich. Tiefenpsychologische Menschenkenntnis (Understanding human nature through depth psychology), in: Liebling, Friedrich. Essays, Zürich 1992, p. 33ff. First published in: Psychologische Menschenkenntnis. (Psychological knowledge of human nature) 1/1964-65, pp. 210-218 (Translation Current Concerns)
Gaining insight into ones own development and thus inner freedom
On the possibilities of understanding human nature through depth psychology
«The method is the free exchange between the psychotherapist and the person who is seeking advice; as conversation partners on the same eye-level, they examine together the hardships and difficulties that hinder the latter in his life and progress. With generous tact and comprehensive knowledge of mental problems, the mind-doctor is able to create an atmosphere during the conversation, in which the conversation partner achieves more clarity about his own life.
From the knowledge of his own reactions and the psyche of his fellow human beings, which can be summarised as “ understanding of human nature”, the psychotherapist’s student achieves an inner superiority that not only liberates him from his disorders, but also makes him in general an inwardly balanced, clear-thinking and feeling person.»
From: Liebling, Friedrich, In der Sprechstunde des Seelenarztes. (In the consultation of the mind doctor) In: Liebling, Friedrich. Aufsätze. Zürich 192 pages 64 ff. First appearing in: “Wir Brückenbauer” (We bridgebuilders) 22/Nr. 43, Page 6. 1963 (Translation Current Concerns)
