1. The Risk-Taking Curve
The risk-taking curve is a function of the problematic relations of the Syndrome Individual with success. On a more elementary level it mirrors his difficulties of implementing his Will. A direct approach to what he really wants to do or wants to have is simply impossible for him. He has to work in roundabout ways.
Figure 6.1
The lower right-hand side of the risk-taking curve stands for the Alpha. In practical terms that means the goal is extremely hard to achieve. Put differently, no blame is attached if you have not made it.
The lower left-hand side of the risk-taking curve stands for the extreme easiness of implementing the project. In other words: There is almost no possibility of failure. Since no failure can ensue from landing in that area of the curve, no blame can be attached to activities performed within its orbit.
An example can be relevant. An intelligent woman, an MA in Linguistics works as a helper to an old person who lives near her home. This involves getting up routinely in the middle of the night whenever her employer calls, as well as getting up at six in the morning and at 4 o’clock in the afternoon just as routinely. This Syndrome Individual does not have a stretch of time to herself when she can sleep properly, but at this job she cannot fail.
People interested in success choose as a rule the area close to the peak of the curve. Professor Abramson did, as noted, hit the very peak of the risk-taking curve when he chose Talmud as his profession. Professor Spiegel, in choosing Greek scholarship as his area of specialization, was also not taking undue risks. Having completed a Polish “Gymnasium” (secondary school) with its stress on classic studies, Latin and Greek, he was well equipped to tackle Homer and to devote his life to Greek scholarship.
Dr. M.M. Fitterman — the model Syndrome Individual — chose Medicine (though not in the first place). Medicine for him was an Alpha choice. Nothing in his education prepared him for it. As noted, he did not study in a Polish secondary school though he did pass an external Matriculation in order to enlist as a student of Law. The desire to study Law would seem to place him in the same bracket with Franz Kafka. Law as a choice of profession belongs on the theoretical level with an involvement with JUSTICE and will be dealt with in the chapter on Franz Kafka.
However, the case of M.M. Fitterman is different. In Poland being a lawyer was fairly prestigious. The affinity to Jewish law and the law current in Poland was not, obviously, of the kind to be found in Israel between Jewish law and secular law. Still, to an intellectual there were always comparisons to be made. This would render law as a profession not too far out of Fitterman’s original orbit.
M.M. Fitterman’s success as Chief Rabbi of Argentina stems directly from the position’s being within the natural orbit of a Yeshiva graduate. Of this post we can say that everything in his father’s home prepared him for it. Here he hit the very peak of the risk-taking curve. But basically he was after a more challenging career. As a negativist he wanted a goal that his fellow students at the Yeshiva could not brag of achieving. He would have excelled in his chosen profession, but for the Hidden Blueprint, telling the Syndrome Individual that success is prohibited.
The person with a record of an attempt at assassination of his Will cannot tackle anything directly and on time. This indirect approach permeates matters trifling and important. For example: M.M. Fitterman studies books within the field of Medicine in order to widen his field of knowledge while at the University of Basel, but he does it before giving his attention to required topics. Required material has to be completed on time and it involves the possibility of failure. Additional, unrequired material involves no possibility of failure if not completed on time.
An important facet of his involvement with the risk-taking curve is his ability (and willingness) to work on a project when implementing it is still far away. The reason is simple in terms of success that is forbidden. If the goal is distant, he is going to get returns for his work in the future. Put differently, the Syndrome Individual prefers hope (in the future, however, many mishaps can occur) to immediate implementation and success.
On the theoretical level that means that he works counter to Neil Miller’s experiments with rats and Miller’s findings: the nearer the goal the more attraction it exerts.[1]
A narrow margin for successful action amounts to acting within the area of Alpha within the risk-taking curve. Low margin awakens the Syndrome Individual’s creative powers as it creates a challenge to which he wants to respond.
Generally speaking, the lack of a direct approach is at the basis of not aiming at the peak of the risk-taking curve. The lack of a direct approach in any matter is the direct outcome of the injuries sustained by the Syndrome Individual’s Will. Victor Frankl wrote that the person who has no Will has nothing to lead him in life. The Syndrome Individual has a very strong Will — but as Success is forbidden to him, and this is the Hidden Blueprint — he cannot act directly on his Will or implement it.
On the theoretical level, curiosity belongs with the risk-taking curve. It is a recognized fact that the reason it is hard to get grades in the 90-100 bracket is that we are tempted by curiosity to put on paper a great, novel idea that has not yet passed the crucible of approval and general acceptance.
Curiosity is responsible for many inventions as well as for many hard lives. Kuhn’s study also points to the conclusion that whoever, through curiosity, adopts the novel paradigm before it is accepted, frequently courts disaster on the personal level.[2]
In terms of the Theoretical Nucleus of the Dr. Fitterman Syndrome Individual, curiosity is likely to land him in the Alpha area of the risk-taking curve with chances of success close to nil.
2. Flawed Decision Making
Decision making permeates all actions that the individual performs, whether important or routine. As noted, the root of decision making is Will. The individual who has been bred to suppress his Will is hard put to it when he has to decide what he really wants, even when banal choices are to be made.
Not all choices are banal. What is more — in the course of normal functioning of the individual, decision making is an unavoidable must. When Dr. Fitterman applies for a new job or is given a new opening in the field of medicine (he worked, as noted, for a time in Hadassah Tel-Aviv Hospital in the cancer ward with Professor Stein), there are innumerable decisions to be made. One wrong decision cannot usually be that bad, however, decisions that are postponed for the lack of a clear line of thought — basically because a clear a clear notion of what he really wants is lacking — can seriously impede functioning or wreak havoc, even with very positive planning.
To sum up this point: bad decision making can and does cause incalculable harm even in the course of the normal life. It is a major factor in Dr. Fitterman’s barriers to success.
If you possess Will, you know what you like and what you want. Decision making on uncomplicated matters need not be difficult. (There are, however, difficult decisions to be made by CEOs that will determine the direction a company is to take, and involve a great number of complicated factors. These are not our concern at present.)
The Syndrome Individual is not to be guided by his Will because Will is forbidden. If faced with a decision, therefore, the Syndrome Individual is likely to involve logic, a set of principles and the conflicting opinions of friends, which he sometimes makes an effort to unite.
We know, however, that the chief factor in the decision making process is feeling. This is true for an aesthetic, as well as for any other choice. In the field of management, as far as corporate choices go, the emotional ingredient of the requisite choice goes by the name of “gut feeling” which should never be outvoted by “logical” considerations. Let us once again quote the most important dictum of the Killing Will ideology: “What you want is an indication that you should not do it (or have it).”
It is little wonder that for the Syndrome Individual the decision-making process is extremely painful, whether in small matters or important concerns. The outcome, after much deliberation, is, very often, a wrong choice. It may go as far as that the Syndrome Individual needs someone to tell him what he really wants. The book Don’t Say YES When You Want to Say NO has been mentioned. What the Syndrome Individual needs is a book to instruct him: Don’t Say NO When You Want to Say YES.
The problem of stunted decision making that Dr. Fitterman faces is further aggravated by his need for secrecy. He has few real friends to whom he wants to divulge his planned course of action.
3. Secrecy
The Syndrome Individual possesses some of the characteristics of R.D. Laing’s Divided Self. For one thing, he cannot allow himself to feel that he is naked of achievements. He also is afraid that he will be sucked dry of his knowledge.
There is a much deeper layer of his need for secrecy. If he divulges his plan (or plans) even to a loving friend, this friend is likely to say something concerning implementation. If the plan is very far-fetched it can fall within the category described by Bleuler: “[Autistic thinking] mirrors the fulfillment of wishes and strivings, thinks away obstacles, conceives of impossibilities as possible, and of goals as attained.”[3] (It is this kind of thinking that precedes scientific inventions, any creative thought in any realm of human endeavor as well as artistic creation.)
Now, if this hypothetical friend lets drop a negative word, he can easily destroy the Syndrome Individual’s dream. (We should not forget that the Syndrome Individual is extremely sensitive and suggestible.) If the friend is persuaded to the given course of action and says “yes, do it,” this course of action is simply out (or if not completely out, postponed indefinitely), since the Syndrome Individual cannot do as told. (See Chapter II)
For a suggestible person, secrecy is important despite the enormous harm that it causes. In a way, it is a double bind situation. If he keeps his plans secret from his real friends, he loses all that has been enumerated above: indispensable information; how to; experience of others; ideas; the influence of discussion on his own thinking and the creation in his own mind of novel ideas. I do not include moral support because for the Syndrome Individual, moral support is likely, in extreme cases, to be anathema. Still, it is very much needed.
Lack of secrecy, however, can be equally bad, or even worse, for the project in hand. A word or idea, an appraisal of the situation, no matter how objective or true, can wreak havoc with the project, as the Syndrome Individual can be easily influenced to take a corrective course of action. In other words, to work on the project through the means of a reaction formation.
4. Impulsiveness
(a) A Functional Tool. For the Syndrome Individual impulsiveness is a functional tool. This, however, in no way means that the decision made on the impulse is the right one, given the circumstances, but it can act as a Force Majeure which he imagines himself powerless to resist. In the area of decision making he is as rigid as possible. Once a decision is made, it is as good as irrevocable. Novel information is simply disregarded.
(b) A Will Surrogate. Acting on the impulse can create a feeling of elation and freedom of having one’s Will. It acts as a Will surrogate — but in effect it is not. On the contrary, impulse can act in the service of the Negative Zigzag and spoil best plans. The Negative Zigzag is also aided by what Sigmund Freud had discussed in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Important letters are mislaid. The most significant item of negotiations is forgotten, and the like. As noted, Impulse can spoil best plans.
5. Documentary Victory
Documentary Victory was treated fairly exhaustively in previous parts of this study. Two further cases might be relevant.
There is the case of a beautiful divorced young woman who intimates that she does not want to marry again. Her parents had ruined her marriage and she wins the Documentary Victory with its compensations. Incidentally, at present it is she herself who ruins her life. She has a good case against her parents, indeed, but it is she who suffers for the sake of Documentary Victory.
Documentary Victory apparently offers very strong compensations and is responsible for many suicides. An unfortunate example is Dr. Pepita Haezrahi of the Hebrew University, Department of Philosophy, who was a tenured lecturer at the University of Cambridge in England as well. She was fluent in eleven languages. She committed suicide over the professorship, long overdue; she told the Head of her department at the Hebrew University what she was going to do, but he did not believe her. She won a Documentary Victory, at the cost of her life.
The Hidden Blueprint that counters and spoils success is not a Heaven ordained document. Once the Syndrome Individual can read it, he can monitor his/her actions to undo its workings.
[1] Neil E. Miller, “Analytic Studies in drive and reward,” in American Psychologist, vol. 16, pp. 739-54.
[2] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago UP), 1962.
[3] Eugene Bleuler, “Autistic Thinking,” in Organization and Pathology of Thought, ed. D. Rappaport. New York: Columbia UP, 195 (chapter 20, pp. 399-437).