The Detached Person: A Discussion with A Phenomenological Bias

This paper attempts to describe some characteristic features of the detached person with what might be called a bias toward a more phenomenological approach. This is preceded by a discussion of certain psychoanalytic concepts which provide the background for this bias. It points to the trend in psychoanalysis that plots human existence against an ideal norm and thus conceives the human being mainly in terms of pathology, distorting the total picture by underestimating his vital, though hidden, humanness.

Inadvertently, but steadily, concepts of neurotic phenomena have encroached upon our image of normal man, man as he is, has been, and probably will be. It has become a tacit assumption that we are all “neurotic” in one degree or another. Our refined ideas of neurosis and character have quietly pathologized all men. Far-off primitives are sometimes given the halo of wholesomeness, but one suspects this is due to distance that will not reveal details.

Our inquiry into and discoveries about human nature fanned out from the vantage point of psychopathology before we knew much about normal psychology. Thus our insight into human nature became fused with psychopathology. This was a dilemma. There arose a need to define “normal.” But then a worse dilemma was encountered. Was “normal” to be equated with “average?” To do so seemed to be to apply social criteria rather than scientific ones governed by laws of human behavior. An attempt was made to establish norms out of existing hypotheses about human nature and the experience gained from the study of individuals. Thus, what was created as a norm was in fact a hypothetical ideal. The emphasis on the destructive potentiality of neurotic mechanisms lead logically to philosophical considerations concerning the relation of ethics and neuroses. The problem of psychic health and neurosis was seen as inseparably linked with that of ethics. At its extreme, neurotic dynamisms were equated with destructive forces and evil, and self-reali