Men Encounter Research Articles

DREAMING--A CREATIVE PROCESS.

1. Dreaming is not merely a reactive phenomenon, reactive to instinctual pressure, inner or outer stimuli, a traumatic past or a disturbing present. Dreaming is an active, creative process. 2. Dreaming is not an irrational, regressive, libidinous phenomenon, but a dynamic biological function of the human organism. It reflects the striving for self-realization whether it is fully expressed or blocked by anxiety-charged neurotic needs. 3. Dreaming is characterized by a widened scope of perception, particularly of self-awareness. 4. Dreaming occurs in a state of lessened self-alienation and can become a “door to the larger self”. 5. Symbol formation in dreams is not a reductive process, characterized by perceptive insufficiency, regression and censorship. It is a creative act in which the dreamer's strivings, conflicts and attempts at solution are crystallized. The past enters the dream as a dynamic symbol of the present. 6. Dreaming is the latent phase of creative insight and self-realization. It is man's encounter with himself, his life (past, present and future) and his world. 7. The dream becomes a creative force in therapy if it is permitted to speak for itself, if the therapist does not become a killer of the dream by reducing it to preconceived stereotypes, and if the patient learns to “own” his dream.

Editorial comments: As we read

Problem-solving, the ultimate goal of most education, is not limited to arithmetic nor even to the whole of mathematics. As arithmetic teachers, we profess to deal with the quantitative and spatial aspects of the common problem that man encounters in his effort to adjust to or to control his environment.

Government Ownership and Trusteeship of Water

A recent issue of the Harvard Law Review carried an article with the strange title of Tu-tu.' This eye-catching title leads the reader to a fable about a tribe of south-sea islanders who have a tabu against having anything to do with one's mother-in-law. It appears that if one of these islanders accidentally encounters his mother-in-law, he becomes what is called and is subject to some dangerous force or infection which attaches to him and threatens the whole community with disaster. For this reason a person who has become tu-tu must be subjected to a special ceremony of purification. Civilized Americans, of course, know that there is no such thing as tu-tu. As the prevalence of mother-in-law jokes testifies,2 people encounter their mothers-in-law often and nothing like this happens. Therefore, tu-tu does not exist in fact, it has no reference to reality. While it might be argued that tu-tu has reality to the islanders, it can be demonstrated that even they can get along very well without the concept. They say If a man encounters his mother-in-law, he becomes tu-tu. When a man is tu-tu, he must be purified. But all reference to tu-tu may be eliminated and the same result reached by simply saying If a man encounters his mother-in-law he must be purified. The reader will think, this is all very amusing, but what is it doing in the Harvard Law Review? Reading further, he will find an exploration of the semantics of legal reasoning, an investigation of the meaning of legal phrases, pointing out that many of them have no more reference to any actual thing in existence than does tu-tu. An examination of the legal concept of ownership shows that it falls into this pattern. bought this watch, therefore I have ownership of it. I have ownership of this watch, therefore I may recover it from one who takes it from me. Just as we eliminated tu-tu, we can eliminate the middle concept entirely: bought this watch, therefore I may recover it from one who takes it from me. The author suggests that we may substitute for ownership, or, if we prefer, green cheese, and the logic is unimpaired. This is somewhat disturbing. No matter how carefully we follow the argument, nod our heads, and say Ownership is nothing, it does not exist,

God's Heavenly Kingdom and his Servants the Angels: An Account of Kirchliche Dogmatik III/3 §51 by Karl Barth

Modern exponents of the doctrine of creation skate as lightly as possible over the thesis that God is Maker of heaven as well as of earth. And St. Matthew's habit of referring to the Kingdom of Heaven does not commend itself as important to most scholars in their elucidation of the Kingdom of God. For Barth, whose doctrine of Providence was outlined in the last issue of this Journal, “God's Kingdom which comes to us on earth is the Kingdom of Heaven; and when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, that is not only a divine event, i.e. one established, governed, and consummated by God, but also a heavenly event, i.e. one worked out in the presence, power, co-operation, and co-revelation of heaven on earth” (p. 558). Though this is a secondary aspect of the event, a theology which ignores it is gravely impoverished. And a proper recognition of this aspect entails a further recognition that man's encounter with God in His saving act is also an encounter with the angels of God, the creatures who inhabit heaven. Schleiermacher wrote a notable appendix Of the Angels (§§42–43 in the Second Edition of The Christian Faith) which dismissed the topic from Protestant theology for 150 years, but now it has come back in a treatise which will surely rank with the other two great monuments of angelology, the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Summa Theologica of Aquinas (1.50–64, 106–114), both of which are sympathetically evaluated.

The Lives of Water Works Structures

This subject is more or less familiar to all water works men. The operating and construction men encounter it when additions to plant are in prospect and a decision has to be made involving consideration of relative cost and probable length and reliability of service. It is one of the most important elements in the financial side of the business where the useful life of the various component parts of the plant is expressed in the depreciation reserve, affecting the rate which must be charged for service as well as the value of the plant at any given time. The financial aspect of the subject while equally important to both publicly and privately owned utilities receives more attention and discussion in the case of the privately owned companies because depreciation is one of the controversial factors in the fixing of rates, and in determining values either for a rate base or for sale purposes. The expression of useful lives of structures in financial terms has developed several accounting methods for recognizing depreciation. All are based on assumed lives presumably derived from experience. The more prominent, because most used, are the so-called straight line method which presupposes that the structure in question deteriorates at a regular annual rate requiring setting aside the same percentage of cost each year which will at the end of the assumed life period, without interest, equal the original expenditure; the sinking fund plan which provides for the annual setting aside of a sum of money which at a predetermined rate of compound interest will amount to the original cost at the end of the life period. Obviously either method will give the same result if carried through to completion, and from an accounting point of view both would be equally satisfactory for a plant in continuous ownership. It should be definitely recognized however that at any given time during the life of the structure, the deduction of such accrued depreciation funds from either original cost or present reproduction cost, does not necessarily

Notes on The Elizabethan Elegie

In modern English usage, the term elegy bears a distinct connotation of threnody: broadly, it indicates any funeral poem or lament for the dead; more precisely, it describes a lengthened, dignified poem which either mourns reflectively for a deceased person or broods with a more inclusive sorrow over the tragedy men encounter in living. In this narrower sense, the elegy is a reflective lyric, suggested by the fact or fancy of death. The emotion, personal or public, finds utterance in keen lament, to be allayed, however, by tranquil consideration of the mutability of life, the immutability of Something which justifies life and death;or, in the words of Edmund Gosse, it is a poem of lamentation and regret, called forth by the decease of a beloved or revered person, or by a general sense of the pathos of mortality…. It must be mournful, meditative, and short without being ejaculatory.