The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 8
Who hath sailed about the world of his own heart, sounded each creek, surveyed each corner, but that there still remains therein much terra incognita to himself? (Thomas Fuller, The Holy and the Profane State.)
Lord, and how some of us do imagine ourselves misunderstood, when the trouble is that we are understood by others, but not by ourselves. (F. P. A., "The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys," New York World, October 30, 1922.)
Were our difficulties as wholly apart from ourselves as a problem in arithmetic the facing of them would be a simple matter. But they are not. Often the most critical fact in a man's life is himself and frequently the diagnosis, "He doesn't know what he's up against," must be accompanied by the equally familiar one, "He's his own worst enemy."
He may be unskillful in handling himself. He may have unfortunate mannerisms. He may say the wrong thing in spite of his desire to say the right. He may have habits that are as hobbles to his efforts toward success. He may not appreciate his own worth. He may lack confidence in his ability. He may be making mistakes in behavior. He may not realize that in order to adjust himself to life he must change himself.
It is rarely that in greater or less degree a man's personality is not involved when he comes to face the predicament that is troubling him. To tell the unemployed man (see Chapter VII) that his sense of failure and of shame was a symptom of his unemployment was in a measure interpreting him to himself. After all, the real cause of his worry was lest there be something wrong with him. To learn that his difficulty was typical of what many other persons had suffered was to be assured that he was not peculiar in this respect and that, therefore, he was as good a man as he had ever been. His concern was himself, but to talk to him in terms of his adjustment was to make his problem objective rather than personal and thus to render it easier for him to grasp.
For, although since our earliest school days we have been reared to believe the maxim, 'Know Thyself,' we find the acquiring of this knowledge through the vehicle of other people the most painful of all ordeals. Few of us can receive the slightest compliment without blushing or undergoing a change in facial expression, and when the truth carries an adverse criticism our suffering is so great that we cannot recall what was said without feeling a repetition of the anguish we endured at the time.
The pain of such experiences causes us to try in every way possible to protect ourselves from a recurrence of them. We will shy with all the timid alertness of a frightened animal from anything which appears to be leading us into this kind of a discussion. Once we are unavoidably in the midst of it we take various means of saving ourselves from hurt. Some people do this by pleasantly admitting everything that they are told, thus shortening and lightening the ordeal and escaping the unpleasantness of any extended thought upon the subject. Others surround themselves with an armour of temper, and through a quick anger prevent themselves from perceiving the truth that may disturb them. Others again guard themselves by unconsciously cultivating such an attitude of certainty about their qualities and characteristics that it is practically impossible for them to apprehend or to believe anything which contradicts their own opinion of themselves. Sometimes people reduce the discomfort of the experience by discounting the capacity of the individual who is presenting the truth to them. What, after all, does he know about it, and what right has he to speak as he does. He has failings of his own—and thus thinking, they avoid or relieve any injury to their feelings.
Some people develop a too great willingness to engage in discussions about themselves and their problems. Just as not infrequently a sick person who has dreaded the thought of an operation comes to like the life of the hospital so much that he acquires what the doctors and nurses speak of as hospitalitis, and will even, for the sake of returning to the institution, complain of symptoms which require a surgeon, so, too, some individuals having had the experience of an exposition of themselves will seek a repetition of that experience at every opportunity. Nothing delights such an individual more than a description of himself as this or that sort of man, even though the criticism be of a derogatory nature. He likes to think of himself as a case to be studied, but in spite of the advice he receives he makes no effort to change. Once the initial sensitiveness to criticism has been dulled, this is a state of mind into which almost anybody can fall. The individual who is thus afflicted becomes so much interested in thinking about himself that he loses the habit of action and becomes an ineffective human being, useless both to himself and to others.
The interpretation of a man should not, therefore, be undertaken without some assurance that he will be able to profit by it. Usually one will do best to wait until the person in trouble asks for this service. His request may be direct or implied. That it is spoken may not, however, necessarily mean that it is intended. A man may ask for advice about himself when he is too overwrought to apprehend what may be said to him. He may urge that he be told the truth when it is not the truth that he wishes to hear. What he desires to be told is that in his attitude and behavior he is being the only sort of person he could be under the circumstances. On the other hand, often those to whom we long to tell the truth know it before we speak, and when we tell them that which we think is new to them we are only confirming what they have long suspected. On every count the burden of proof rests upon the person who feels that he must offer to help a man to face the facts about himself.
What this process of interpretation involves when once it is called for may be seen in part in the story of Salvatore Donato.
Donato was a violinist of fair ability, but a fondness for liquor, unwisely indulgent parents, and a wife whose standards of home-making were below his own, had contributed to his deterioration. For fifteen years he had slipped from one failure to another until at last he was going about the streets seeking alms in return for his music. Even in this he was unsuccessful, and at length his wife and his five children and he were reduced to living in three miserable rooms. They faced a winter without money for fuel and with no apparent means of paying the rent now overdue or of providing the next day's food. Donato's parents had come to the rescue on so many similar occasions that they were unwilling to help, and Mrs. Donato appealed to a social agency.
A social case worker called upon the family in the late afternoon and found Mr. and Mrs. Donato and their children sitting in semi-darkness. There had been no money with which to buy oil. Before entering the house the social worker had obtained from Mr. Donato's father, and from several other persons a general knowledge of the situation and of Mr. Donato's difficulties.
"If I am to be of any help to you," she began, "I shall need certain information." She drew a chair close to one of the windows, and, departing from her usual practice, put her inquiries to Mr. Donato in almost questionnaire form, entering the answers upon a pad. She was as impersonal in her manner as a physician would have been in inquiring about symptoms. She asked the name of his present employer—he had none; his last job—he had had none for years; his vocation; his means of livelihood; his early successes; his membership in an orchestra; and so on through his life. In this the social worker was making a different application of the same method as that illustrated in the interview with Mrs. Gordon (see Chapter VII). Through her questions she was taking Donato back from the present to the past and helping him to tell himself what he had been. She made no attempt to evaluate the facts which were being set forth. She accepted them without comment. Everybody else who had dealt with Donato had berated him, had told him that they were disgusted with him, and in similar ways had expressed their scorn, arousing within him protective emotions which prevented him from appreciating the truth of what they said.
Having led him to recapitulate his life she looked up from her notes: "Now, tell me, Mr. Donato," she asked, "what is the trouble?" Her manner of speaking was one of consideration and respect. The interview thus far had enabled her to recognize in him that which his parents and even his wife had forgotten. Along with the signs of weakness she saw a certain sensitiveness and something akin to fineness. Not for years had any one addressed this side of his nature.
"It is as you see," he replied sadly. "We are at the end." He was seated opposite to her.
She leaned toward him. "It is terrible for you to be living like this," she said in a tone low enough to reach his ears alone. Other people had told him what they thought about him in voices loud enough to inform the whole neighborhood. "You played in an orchestra, and now"—she hesitated—"you beg."
That sentence brought the whole picture into focus.
"The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt," Donato told a friend to whom some months afterward he described the interview. The social worker had succeeded in enabling him to see himself. The remainder of the interview was only a confirmation of her accomplishment.
"But what can I do?" Donato was apologetic. "I have no money. I have pawned my violin."
"You can work."
"My leg," he replied; "I am lame. No one would take me."
"You can get a job here," the social worker told him, scribbling the address of an employment bureau upon her card. "I'll see that you have a better pair of shoes," she added, noticing the condition of those he was wearing.
The effect of the interview was more instant than she had realized. Although she called early the next morning with the shoes, Donato had gone to the employment bureau in a pair of leather slippers—it was crisp winter weather—and had secured a job as a laborer, a place that he held for six months until it was possible for him to return to music as a vocation instead of as an introduction to alms.
There were several reasons for the social worker's success. In the first place, she acted from a well-founded knowledge of the man, obtained from his parents, his physician, and others who had tried to help him. It was this knowledge which made it possible for her to point the interview as she did. There is a vast amount of harm done by well-intentioned people who in a first interview with a stranger give him advice which rests upon nothing but the impression they have gotten of him in the course of this initial conversation.
The atmosphere of impersonality which the social worker cast about the interview was another factor in her success. By approaching Donato objectively, by not evaluating what he told her or commenting upon it until she spoke the critical sentence in which she compared his present beggary with his happier past, she prevented the rising of beclouding emotions. The impartial and unbiased way in which she addressed him took him in a sense outside of himself and enabled him to see Donato as he was.
This attitude of impersonality is exceedingly important. Usually, as with Donato, the person in trouble has passed through that trying stage when relatives and neighbors take sides for and against him, blaming or condoning, chiding or sympathizing, until his feelings have become oversensitized to any discussion of himself. The objectivity of a stranger is like the application of the antiseptic solution that cleans the infected wound.
The very intimacy of our relations with the members of our families and with other friends makes it difficult for them to help us to face the facts about ourselves. We are too cognizant of their limitations and their weaknesses to give weight to what they say. It not infrequently happens that the more dearly we love them the more animus we seem to find in what, with every good intention, they tell us about ourselves. This is not to say that often the best person to reveal the truth to a man isan intimate friend, but it does mean that the chances for success rest with the individual whose relationship with him is distinctly an impersonal one.
In such a relationship stand the psychiatrist, the teacher, the physician, the social worker, the lawyer, the clergyman, the employer. In varying degree and under different circumstances these occupy a position of authority. Their place, their experience, and their special knowledge give us confidence in them. Their opinions have credit with us. With them we can develop a kind of oblique objectivity. We can receive the truth from them with less hurt because we feel that it is not our whole selves that we are presenting for review but only that part of us which is student, employee, parishioner, patient, or client.
There is also that in our relationship with them which in our minds seems to vest them with the right and the duty under suitable circumstances to tell us that which we need to know about ourselves. Donato did not specifically ask the social worker to show him the facts about himself, but he instinctively recognized the appropriateness of her doing this. In seeking medical advice the patient realizes that the state of his health may make it necessary for his physician to discuss with him his most intimate habits. It is taken for granted that a teacher may discover in the quality of a student's work a need for helping him to perceive mistakes in behavior, and it is generally understood that at the time of employment, of promotion, of discharge, and in many other situations an employer may find it important to give an employee an estimate of his personality and work.
It is a question whether often under such circumstances the employer does not owe his employee this service, provided, of course, he recognizes in him an attitude of mind which will enable him to accept what he is told. For to be able to receive the truth requires the capacity for impersonality in the person who is being helped as well as in him who is helping. There are few tributes to character that are higher than that which is paid a man when an employer takes his open-mindedness for granted by telling him why he is not offering him the position for which he has applied or why he is not promoting him. Some executives go farther than this, and as a matter of routine give each member of the staff an opportunity once or twice a year to learn how he and his work are regarded. This practice, applying as it does to everybody, throws an atmosphere of impersonality about the whole process and smooths the way to a reception of the truth.
The truth is as important as the impersonality. This is frequently forgotten. Too often we are inclined to speak in the spirit of Mrs. King, of "Old Chester Tales," who told people things flatly and frankly for their own good out of a sense of duty. To interpret a man to himself is to set forth not merely that which is unfavorable. This sort of half-truth only hurts and blocks him. It is the balanced presentation that wins a hearing.
The social worker told Donato the whole truth. She referred to the unfortunate elements in his character but she also recognized his strengths. That she herself was a musician helped her perhaps the more quickly to sense his possibilities, but to use one's every resource is part of the art of helping people and does not vitiate the principle that in explaining a man to himself it is important to set forth his assets as well as his liabilities. Emphasis at the start upon his positive qualities strengthens him for learning about his weaknesses. The consciousness that he is appreciated for his successes enables him to consider his failures in a hopeful and constructive spirit.
This method of interpretation prepares the way for the next process which is exemplified in the interview with Donato. Having, through the recognition of his ability, aroused within him the desire to change, the social worker offered him an opportunity to act. She made the concrete and practical suggestion that he take a job. Without something definite to do, something to work toward, any discussion of a man with himself is likely to encourage a morbid introspectiveness that defeats the very end we would accomplish. The way men change is by following thought with action, and in offering opportunity for the one it is important to offer opportunity for the other.
Action, a balanced presentation, impersonality, these three things underlie the process of explaining a man to himself. They apply also to the interpretating of his adjustments to him and to many other phases of the art of helping people out of trouble.
In one respect the story of Donato is not typical. His change was far more immediate than usually happens. Most people arrive at an understanding of themselves only gradually. It is a slow dawning rather than a sudden flash.
Self-knowledge is a triumph of intelligence over emotion, but such victories do not come quickly. Human beings surround themselves with such a network of sensitiveness that any close approach to their personalities is often impossible. Frequently one must try to accomplish by indirection what one would prefer to bring about through more direct methods. One must explain adjustment after adjustment, in the hope that at last by implication the individual may come to realize that the fundamental difficulty lies in himself. Sometimes he can be helped to self-understanding through an interpretation to him of those who are involved in his adjustment. Sometimes one must give up hope of interpretation by any means and must rely instead upon quickening his desires and extending his interests and upon other phases of the art of helpfulness. It must be remembered that the facing of a man with the facts about himself is a method, not anend, a method fraught with difficulty and to be adopted only when there is good assurance of success. The surest way out of trouble is the recognition of the truth, but those that achieve this are exceedingly few.