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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
These boundary-situations are always intolerable because
they convict us of self-contradiction: indeed the state of
frustration into which they plunge us is the direct consequence of
self-contradiction. Usually, however, we come to a halt before
our awareness of self-contradiction is clear and acute. Our
endeavour is to find a modus vivendi, a compromise with life, by
which we evade the stark issues and yet can convince ourselves
that we have come to terms with them.
These contradictions can be experienced in the emotional life,
which is always bi-polar. The need for pleasure and displeasure,
sadism and masochism, the will to power and the will to
subjection, love and hate, the craving for sensation and the desire
for rest or peace, these always go together as positive and
negative aspects of the one urge, and the existence of the one implies
the existence of the other. No matter, therefore, how
successfully we discipline our lives to express only one aspect of our
primary urges, we cannot without self-deception deny the
existence of its polar antithesis, for it is implicit in what is
dominant; and sooner or later we are thrown into situations that
manifest the working within us of both aspects, and the
tug-ofwar between them convicts us of self-contradiction.
These self-contradictions are sometimes revealed as contrasts.
For example, in the mental life, over-development in one
direction means under-development in others. In the life of feeling,
intense emotion of one kind is followed by the appearance of its
opposite; for example, a sustained experience of grief becomes
at length intolerable and is replaced by mirth or amusement
that will not be denied, perhaps provoked by a most trivial
occasion. Even in the physiological realm the same phenomenon
appears, as when after prolonged gazing at a colour its
complementary will appear as an after-image. Those who seek
pleasure must expect that an experience of satiety and distaste
will follow it. Those who run away from disappointment must
be prepared to deny themselves joy as well. As Jaspers says, there
is an asceticism which heightens desire.
In the character, too, these contradictions appear. As
Nietzsche says somewhere, everyone grows down as well as up.
Those who show the highest development of personality most
clearly reveal the strength of characterological contrasts in
their lives. Again, as our development proceeds we become
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