THE INFERIOR MAN

      "The inferior man in a high position" - the embodiment of all those ways in which he has been unconsciously identified with his father - is still with him today. But he knows him now. He's a part personality, a semi-autonomous content of the psyche. When he doesn't watch out for this inferior man, he takes over and trashes whatever he does.

      Today, the inferior man wakes up and immediately begins to worry about work, about how to undo all the courageous things he did at work last week, standing up as he did to the clinic's director on behalf of his patient and all.

      "Well and good," this scared and inferior part of him says, "to be so brave, but you must think about your job. You do need the money."


      He does need the money, but more than the money, he needs to be himself. But the inferior man within him gets scared when he is being himself. He counsels manipulation and deceit instead. The inferior man is obsessive-compulsive, always planning and controlling, always concerned with what others might be feeling, never with what he's feeling. The inferior man acts to please others, never him. He realizes that he has to stop him or he'll never be himself.

      What Nikos Kazantzakis writes in The Odyssey is relevant here. "Whoever says salvation exists is a slave, because he keeps weighing each of his words and deeds at every moment. 'Will I be saved or damned?' Whomever hopes is afraid both of this life and the life to come: He hangs indecisively in the air and waits for luck or God's mercy."


      He dreams that the conservatives are starting a war so they can declare martial law and imprison people like him. A barber is telling him this and that he won't be allowed to cut his hair then. The barber says that they're going to be in control soon, and they'll put him away if he still has long hair. He tells the barber he'll never cut it.


      The inferior man in a high position is not without psychic resources and cunningly creates conflict so he'll feel this ambivalence about his long hair and then project it outwards, so he'll be afraid to let his "freak flag fly," as the song goes. He's becoming conscious of this self-hater though, as he's come to call this inferior aspect of himself.

      He owns his fears now, trying always to be conscious of them without being taken over by them. Now that he's no longer running from them, they'll soon lose their power over him.