People Cannot Make Proper Use
of Self
YOUTH: I should start?
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Without regard to whether other people are cooperative or not.
YOUTH: All right, I’ll ask you again. “People can be of use to someone else simply by being alive, and have a true sense of their worth just by being alive.” Is that what you are saying?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes.
YOUTH: Well, I don’t know. I am alive, right here and now. “I,” who is no one else but me, am alive right here. But even so, I don’t really feel that I have worth.
PHILOSOPHER: Can you describe in words why you do not feel that you have worth?
YOUTH: I suppose it’s what you’ve been referring to as interpersonal relations.
From childhood up to the present, I have always been belittled by people around me, especially my parents, as a poor excuse for a little brother. They have never really tried to recognize me for who I am. You say that worth is something one gives to oneself. But that’s just an impracticable theory. For example, at the library where I work, for the most part my job is just sorting the returned books and putting them back on the shelves. It’s routine work that anyone could do
once they’ve been taught. If I stopped going to work, my boss would have no trouble nding someone to replace me. I am needed only for the unskilled labor I provide, and it doesn’t actually matter at all if it is “I” who is working there or someone else, or a machine, for that matter. No one is requiring “this me” in particular. In such circumstances, would you have condence in yourself?
Would you be able to have a true sense of worth?
PHILOSOPHER: From an Adlerian psychology point of view, the answer is simple.
First of all, build a horizontal relationship between yourself and another person.
One is enough. Let’s start from there.
YOUTH: Please don’t treat me like a fool! Look, I have friends. And I am building solid horizontal relationships with them.
PHILOSOPHER: Even so, I suspect that with your parents and your boss, and with your junior colleagues and other people as well, the relationships you are building are vertical ones.
YOUTH: Of course, I have dierent kinds of relationships. That’s how it is for everyone.
PHILOSOPHER: This is a very important point. Does one build vertical relationships, or does one build horizontal relationships? This is an issue of lifestyle, and human beings are not so clever as to be able to have dierent lifestyles available whenever the need arises. In other words, deciding that one is “equal to this person” or “in a hierarchical relationship with that person” does not work.
YOUTH: Do you mean that one has to choose one or the other—vertical relationships or horizontal relationships?
PHILOSOPHER: Absolutely, yes. If you are building even one vertical relationship with someone, before you even notice what is happening, you will be treating all your interpersonal relations as vertical.
YOUTH: So I am treating even my relationships with my friends as vertical?
PHILOSOPHER: That is correct. Even if you are not treating them in a boss-or- subordinate kind of way, it is as if you are saying, “A is above me, and B is below me,” for example, or “I’ll follow A’s advice, but ignore what B says,” or “I don’t mind breaking my promise to C.”
YOUTH: Hmm!
PHILOSOPHER: On the other hand, if one has managed to build a horizontal relationship with at least one person—if one has been able to build a relationship of equals in the true sense of the term—that is a major lifestyle transformation. With that breakthrough, all one’s interpersonal relations will gradually become horizontal.
YOUTH: What nonsense! There are so many ways I could refute that. Think of a company setting, for example. It wouldn’t really be feasible for the director and his new recruits to form relationships as equals, would it? Hierarchical relationships are part of the system of our society, and to ignore that is to ignore the social order. Look, if you heard that a new recruit at your company, who’s only twenty or so, had suddenly started buddying up to the sixty-something director, don’t you think it would sound pretty far-fetched?
PHILOSOPHER: It is certainly important to respect one’s elders. In a company structure, it is only natural for there to be dierent levels of responsibility. I am not telling you to make friends with everyone, or behave as if you are close friends. Rather, what is important is to be equal in consciousness, and to assert that which needs to be asserted.
YOUTH: I am not someone who can mouth o to my seniors, and I would never think of trying. My social common sense would be called into question if I did.
PHILOSOPHER: What is “senior”? What is this “mouthing o”? If one is gauging the atmosphere of a situation and being dependent on vertical relationships, one
is engaging in irresponsible acts—one is trying to avoid one’s responsibilities.
YOUTH: What is irresponsible about it?
PHILOSOPHER: Suppose that as a result of following your boss’s instructions, your work ends in failure. Whose responsibility is it then?
YOUTH: Well, that’d be my boss’s responsibility. Because I was just following orders, and he was the one who decided on them.
PHILOSOPHER: None of the responsibility is yours?
YOUTH: No, it isn’t. It’s the responsibility of the boss who gave the orders. This is what’s known as organizational accountability.
PHILOSOPHER: You are wrong. That is a life-lie. There is space for you to refuse, and there should also be space to propose a better way of doing things. You are just thinking there is no space to refuse so that you can avoid the conict of the associated interpersonal relations and avoid responsibility—and you are being dependent on vertical relationships.
YOUTH: Are you saying I should disobey my boss? Sure, in theory, I should.
Theoretically, it’s exactly as you say. But I can’t do that! There’s no way I could build a relationship like that.
PHILOSOPHER: Really? You are building a horizontal relationship with me right now. You are asserting yourself very well. Instead of thinking about this or that diculty, you can just start here.
YOUTH: I can start here?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, in this small study. As I told you earlier, to me you are an irreplaceable friend.
YOUTH:…
PHILOSOPHER: Am I wrong?
YOUTH: I appreciate it, I really do. But I am afraid. I am afraid of accepting your proposal.
PHILOSOPHER: What are you afraid of, exactly?
YOUTH: The tasks of friendship, naturally. I have never befriended an older man like you. I have no idea if a friend relationship with such a dierence in age is even possible, or if I had better think of it as a student-teacher relationship.
PHILOSOPHER: Age does not matter in love and friendship. It is certainly true that the tasks of friendship require a steady courage. With regard to your relationship with me, it will be ne to reduce the distance little by little. To a degree of distance in which we are not in very close contact but can still reach out and touch each other’s faces with our outstretched arms, so to speak.
YOUTH: Please give me some time. Just once more, I would like some time to try to gure things out on my own. Our discussion today has given me much to think about. I would like to take it all home and ruminate on it calmly on my own.
PHILOSOPHER: It takes time to gain a true understanding of community feeling.
It would be quite impossible to understand everything about it right here and now. Please return to your home and give it some careful thought, while checking it against everything else we have discussed.
YOUTH: I will. In any case, it was quite a blow to be told that I never really look at others, and I only have concern for myself. You’re really a dreadful fellow!
PHILOSOPHER: Ha-ha. You say it in such a happy way.
YOUTH: Yes, I enjoy it immensely. It hurts, of course. It’s like a sharp pain that shoots through me, as if I were swallowing needles. But still, I enjoy it immensely. It’s habit-forming, having these discussions with you. I realized a
little while ago that maybe I don’t just want to take apart your argument—I want you to take apart mine, too.
PHILOSOPHER: I see. That’s an interesting analysis.
YOUTH: But don’t forget. I told you that I am going to take apart your argument and bring you to your knees, and I haven’t given up.
PHILOSOPHER: Thank you. I’ve had a good time, too. Come by whenever you’re ready to pick this back up.
