CHAPTER IX RATIONALIZATION
Having now briefly sketched the birth and some of the possible developments of Narcissism, it may be well to revert to the subject of rationalization, on which I have already touched briefly, before I deal with some of the methods with which we may combat our Narcissistic tendencies. The reason for reverting here to rationalization is this. Already I know that there are few readers who will not have discovered some material in this book which will have touched a tender spot in themselves. And since we know that the great effort of Narcissism is to cover up those tender spots, and to deceive ourselves in thinking that either they are not there, or better still, that they are virtues and really particularly healthy spots, it is as well to examine these tendencies and observe one of the chief methods by which we do produce such disguises successfully. Of these methods of disguise, our greatest comforter, yet our worst enemy, is rationalization. The term means “finding apparently adequate reasons for things.”
One of the qualities which we highly cultured animals possess is that of reason. We have discovered that logic is one of the essential factors of law and order, and that the highest form of intellect possesses reason in a large measure. Among our gods, the god of reason and logic stands high, and our very Narcissism will not permit us to do and accept things which are contrary to logical reasoning. For that means in the first place, that they are contrary to what we have been taught to revere highly as a good quality, and yet more still it means that they are contrary to the magic of WORDS, for logic means words; logic is words which follow one another in irrefutable sequence. And we have already learnt that the infant has early associated words and sounds with magic, since by the persistent use of these he has got what he wanted. So that doubly are logic and reason revered.
Now, the unhappy thing about life is that we are continually wishing to do things or feel things or believe things which do not follow logically upon other things which we have also had to feel or think or believe at some time. Some of our wishes are logically incompatible with other of our wishes. More over, we very often do not wish to believe or think things which do follow logically on actual facts which have gone before. How are we then, as reasonable people, to deal with the situation? By rationalization, by finding a reason which suits our purpose; and this can only be done, as a rule, by leaving out some important factor, by ignoring some truth, and by arguing from false premises. We do not do this consciously, that would be unworthy. Our unconscious censor manages to delete from consciousness the unpleasant truth, as we have already pointed out, and brings forth an array of facts which appear irrefutable, and he succeeds in giving us most plausible reasons so that we may believe that which is most convenient to us.
Let us consider for a moment such a subject as religion. The Roman Catholic will adduce evidences of various kinds to show that his is the only right and proper form of religion to be accepted by any intellectual person. The Baptist will likewise do the same, and will probably hold that Papal institutions, in many instances, spring not from Heaven but from Hell. If you discuss it with either of them, you may be flooded with reasons, logical evidences of the correctness of their views. Obviously, they cannot both be right in so exclusive a manner, and a very little insight will show that the reasons they adduce have really very little to do with their beliefs, although they think they have. Reverence for their parents, early environment, and other factors of this kind, have really induced their present beliefs, but these would not appear to them as logical reasons and so they select others.
So it is with any unpleasant theory which comes into being. At the time of Darwin, a large number of facts were discovered which led unbiassed persons to believe in the theory of evolution. This appeared contrary to many religious beliefs, and the general public did not want to accept such a theory. They could not, however, shut their eyes to facts; what were they to do? By carefully leaving out some of the facts, and introducing speculative material, which they called facts, but which were not facts, they succeeded in producing excellent reasons, or what seemed excellent reasons to them, for refuting the theory of evolution and retaining their old beliefs. In other words, they went through a process of rationalization.
The same thing was taking place a few years ago with reference to psycho-analysis. People did not like their omnipotent feelings disturbed, did not like to find that the superior bricks of which their edifice had been built were originally made from clay, and they found excellent reasons for not believing it. This, fortunately for progress, is gradually passing away, just as the opposition to the idea of the evolution of the body passed away. But rationalization is a process which has been and is still going on continuously. When Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, when Galileo discovered that the earth went round the sun, when psycho-analysts discovered that much which mothers thought kind was really cruel, and when you read a book which tends to point out that some of your cherished virtues may possibly be faults, the same tendency is at work. Your mind sorts out some of the reasons, refuses to look at others of them, and by such careful selection, by this unconscious process of rationalization, supports your belief in yourself, holds fast to that which has been, and attempts continuously to prevent further changes and disturbances. This rationalization, however, is much more widely distributed than I have so far indicated; in order that one fact may be justified by reason, all the lesser facts which come before it must be similarly justified, until even into the trivial details of everyday life the leaven of rationalization has penetrated. Examples of it may be seen every day in the newspapers, in politics, in even trifling arguments. Take for instance the subject of woman’s suffrage. One half of the country produced irrefutable arguments to prove how bad it was, the other half to prove how good it was. In both cases, the arguments were but straws in the wind, they were quite unnecessary, they were only rationalization. Long before the argument on either side came into being, the feelings were there, the desires were there; and desires must somehow be proved right with the magic of words, before we feel at liberty to fulfil them. In neither case in this argument was the root of the matter touched. If some philosopher had come forward and said, “The first question we have to ask before thinking about suffrage, is should a woman wear a skirt?” or some such similar fundamental question, it would probably have been said that it had nothing to do with matter, and yet this question of artificial difference between the sexes is really fundamental to the whole subject. But the rationalist will find that he will not meet me in this statement. The woman who wishes to retain certain privileges, and yet accept certain other privileges, will at once find reasons why she should wear a skirt and yet have the vote. She will tell me all sorts of things about her physical disabilities, things which she believes to be fundamental truths, many of which, in fact, are fundamentally wrong, but accepted as truths because they lead to rationalization being able to support her wishes.
In a similar way, on the much discussed subject of “prohibition” the prohibitionist will rationalise on a certain few facts, in order to support his emotions and desires. A moderate drinker will do exactly the same, in the opposite direction. Neither of them will have the courage to ignore his personal feelings, nor may he have the power to do so, and to take all the facts into consideration and come to a conclusion, irrespective of his wishes on the subject.[7]
Of course, one of the other difficulties in the way of coming to correct conclusions in all these things is that people will insist on arguing upon subjects, when the amount of real scientific knowledge they have on the subjects is extremely small. The newspaper editor will quote a few popular facts, in order to support some theory of his own, having but a limited knowledge of psychology, physiology, anatomy, or of some other science which has considerable bearing on the subject, he will end by producing a series of conclusions probably entirely wrong. This, of course, is inevitable in our limited circumstances; but it should not be equally inevitable that we should hold firmly to our beliefs, when we realise how limited is our knowledge of any one subject. And in order to examine facts and to get rid of rationalization as far as possible, we must try, with the utmost power at our command to refuse that reaction of self-defence and self-pride, which prevents us from looking at ourselves and from realising that most of our opinions about ourselves may be completely erroneous. We must be prepared to accept temporary, not fixed, judgments, based upon the evidence which we have. We must be prepared to reverse those judgments in the light of new evidence. We must be careful not to reject this evidence merely because we do not like it.
It will now be seen how very necessary it is, in dealing with Narcissism in particular, to understand something of rationalization, so that we may be on our guard in examining ourselves, against allowing this to play too great a part in our conclusions. Otherwise, with all the goodwill in the world, we may never succeed in making any improvement whatsoever, in ourselves. The greatest scientists themselves have been amongst those who realised this.
It was Darwin who wrote, as we have quoted in the earlier part of this book, “I had, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once, for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.”
And it was the great scientist, Helmholtz, who said, “It is better to be in actual doubt, than to rock oneself in dogmatic ignorance.”