The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings—on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river;
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river, the sun half an hour high;
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high in the air, floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest in strong shadow,
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light around the shape of my head in the sun-lit water,
Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward,
Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening,
Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my mast-hemm’d Manhattan,
My river and sun-set, and my scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide,
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter*;
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me;
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you;
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any one’s head, in the sun-lit water;
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail’d schooners, sloops, lighters!
— excerpted from Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
* A lighter is a flat-bottomed barge used to transfer cargo to and from ships in harbor.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
Note: if the Agnus Dei appears to end abruptly, that is because, in the mass, the next and final section, Dona nobis pacem, follows without interruption.
Some people seem to think that the composer Joseph Haydn is almost dated and that his music is best suited for the era of waistcoats and breeches, petticoats, buckles, and silk stockings.
I beg to differ.
Listen to the Agnus Dei from Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli.
The Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War), in C major, is also known also as the Paukenmesse (kettledrum mass) due to the dramatic use of timpani. It was first performed on December 26, 1796 in the Piarist Church of Maria Treu in Vienna. The autographed manuscript contains the title “Missa in tempore belli” in Haydn’s handwriting.
Haydn composed this mass at Eisenstadt in August 1796, at the time of Austria’s general mobilization into war. Four years into the European war that followed the French Revolution, Austrian troops were doing badly against the French in Italy and Germany, and Austria feared invasion. Reflecting the troubled mood of his time, Haydn integrated references to battle in the Benedictus and Agnus Dei movements.
Haydn was a deeply religious man, who appended the words “Praise be to God” at the end of every completed score. As Kapellmeister to the Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy, Haydn’s principal duty in the last period of his life, beginning in 1796, was the composition of an annual mass to honor the name day of Prince Nicholas’ wife, Princess Maria Hermenegild, 8 September, the birth of the Blessed Virgin. In a final flowering of his genius, he faithfully completed six magnificent masses (with increasingly larger orchestras) for this occasion. Thus, Missa in Tempore Belli was performed at the family church, the Bergkirche, at Eisenstadt on 29 September 1797. Haydn also composed his oratorio The Creation around the same time and the two great works share some of his signature vitality and tone-painting.
This piece has been long thought to express an anti-war sentiment, even though there is no explicit message in the text itself, and no clear indication from Haydn that this was his intention. What is found in the score is a very unsettled nature to the music, not normally associated with Haydn, which has led scholars to the conclusion that it is anti-war in nature. This is especially noticed in the Benedictus and Agnus Dei. During the time of the composition of the Mass, the Austrian government had issued a decree in 1796, that “no Austrian should speak of peace until the enemy is driven back to its customary borders.” …
[A] sense of anxiety and foreboding continues with ominous drumbeats and wind fanfares in the Agnus Dei, which opens with minor-key timpani strokes (hence the German nickname, Paukenmesse), perhaps fate itself, knocking seemingly from the depths. This foreshadows the timpani-catalyzed drama of the Agnus Dei in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. The music brightens with trumpet fanfares, ending with an almost dance-like entreaty and celebration of peace, “Dona nobis pacem” (Give us peace).
The Israeli right, emboldened by President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, is not the only faction arguing for a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Palestine Liberation Organization has also begun to ask whether that might not be such a bad idea, though it has a radically different view of what that state would look like.
As momentum ebbs for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both sides are taking another look at the one-state idea. But that solution has long been problematic for both sides.
For the Israelis, absorbing three million West Bank Palestinians means either giving up on democracy or accepting the end of the Jewish state. The Palestinians, unwilling to live under apartheid-like conditions or military occupation, have also seen two states as their best hope. …
Palestinian supporters envision one state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews. Palestinians would have proportionate political power and, given demographic trends, would before long be a majority, spelling the end of the Zionist project. …
Under that idea, the Palestinian movement would shift to a struggle for equal civil rights, including the freedoms of movement, assembly and speech, and the right to vote in national elections.
As noted in a Wikipedia entry, “Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic [italics added] state. Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage.”
I am not well informed about Arab-Israeli issues. But, perhaps one might say (although I would disagree) that the so called “Palestinian territories” and “occupied Palestinian territories” — i.e., the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip — since they are occupied or otherwise under the control of Israel, should perhaps be “talked about separately” in this context, meaning, yes, Israel is a democracy, etc., but political issues and solutions with respect to the occupied territories are not the same as those applying to the Jewish state. But, to explain what I mean by “this context,” it seems to me to be worth noting that Palestinians are struggling for (in the words of the Times article) “equal civil rights, including the freedoms of movement, assembly and speech, and the right to vote in national elections.”
Isn’t that what the Civil Rights movement in the US was about? Yes, blacks already had such rights under the US Constitution, but they were struggling to be allowed to exercise and be granted them de facto.
I have — politically naive as I am — been harboring a thought. As follows: That if Israel absorbed the population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and became a true democracy, notwithstanding the fact that Arabs would predominate population-wise, something miraculous would happen. (I have a dream, one might say.) A better, stronger country would eventually emerge. I feel intuitively that diversity is always better. It is what has made the US such a great country, which, sadly, President Trump does not realize.
On Wednesday afternoon, January 3, a bitterly cold day, I was headed home and was waiting for a bus.
No one at the bus stop. I guessed that I probably had just missed a bus and that another one wouldn’t arrive for at least ten to fifteen minutes.
It’s a bleak neighborhood, but there was a “gourmet deli” right there.
I entered and ordered a large cappuccino. There was one customer in front of me. Two young women were behind the counter. I paid $3.95 for the cappuccino.
Through a window, I saw my bus, the Q39, pulling up at the bus stop.
“How long does it take to make a cappuccino?” I said to the woman who had taken my order. “My bus is here.”
I left without a cappuccino or the $3.95. The bus was at the curb, about to leave.
I got on. There were only a couple of other passengers. The driver shut the door.
Then he opened the door again for a “last minute passenger.” A young woman boarded (whom I realized after the fact was the cashier) with cash in hand, arms extended. She dashed to my seat and said, breathlessly, “here’s your $3.95”; handed me the money with a big smile. Then she darted off the bus before it left.
When I first moved to New York (to take a job) after graduating from college, I was overwhelmed by the immensity and seeming impersonality of the place. The anonymity was refreshing and liberating, in its own way. But, the City seemed like an awfully cold place. (And, besides its sheer size, all those high rise buildings intimidated me.)
I went to Eighth Street in Greenwich Village once, when interviewing for the job, and asked a couple of young people if there were any like minded types hanging out there, as I had experienced on Boston Common. “If you walk over to St. Mark’s Place, you will find some,” they said kindly.
On Sundays, I would hang out in Central Park, where Sixties types would congregate, perhaps listening to a guitar player singing folk songs, hoping that I would vicariously feel a sense of belonging or companionship.
One day in a subway station, I asked someone a question of some sort. They answered politely and helpfully. I told a friend of mine from college, Sam Silberstein (son of concentration camp survivors), who had grown up in Flushing, Queens, about this. “Someone was actually nice to me in the subway,” I said.
Yes, New Yorkers are nice. I wonder if it’s the same way in Paris. I don’t think so. Parisians seem to be cold and abrupt. But, I can’t really say, having been to Paris only briefly a few times.
“Even with that sprawl of humanity, New York can be lived as a small town, familiar and compact,” in the words of New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer.
What accounts for this? I am thinking particularly of the way New Yorkers treat one another.
I think there are several factors. People like myself live in a metropolis like New York because they like being amidst other people. They don’t want to live in an ivory tower or, God forbid, a gated community.
The diversity of New York’s population acts as an elixir, a tonic. Immigrants in particular bring vitality and a palpable sense of community to the City. One might think it could be otherwise, that perhaps immigrants would cloister themselves in ethnic enclaves. Perhaps to an extent in the outlying boroughs, but, for the most part, I have found that it’s the opposite: The newcomers, and the recently arrived, or those who have not always lived in New York (which includes a large segment of the population) are full of enthusiasm for everything (and an inherent ingenuousness), including getting to know other people. And the tourists have the same attitude.
When I go into retail establishments, restaurants, and the like, the staff seems to be for the most part friendly, eager to relate with you, the customer. (Perhaps a bit less so in chain stores.) I seem to get a welcoming reception and a friendly hello or goodbye over half the time.
If you are in distress, incommoded, or someone perceives they can help you, it’s quite remarkable how often people are ready and eager to do so. When I tripped and fell flat on my face crossing Third Avenue a couple of months ago and within seconds several people were clustered around me, helping me to get up, asking if I was okay, and (one woman) offering to call for medical assistance.
When I was taking photographs on Fifth Avenue near 59th Street last summer and someone with a foreign accident, a man who seemed to be Hispanic with several children, noticed that I had dropped my wallet on the pavement and alerted me to the fact. (I was already walking away and was halfway down the block). Same thing if one drops something or gets up and leaves one’s hat or gloves or one’s MetroCard on their seat on a bus. People including myself swiping their MetroCard for someone who needs a fare, and frequently giving handouts.
Re niceness. Of people in general, that is. And Good Samaritan-ship (aka altruism). I prefer to encounter it “in the raw,” so to speak, spontaneously, from average people whom one encounters ad libitum. To witness it bubbling up from the ebullience of good hearted types. Prefer this to organized charity and welfare, to do goodership of the institutional form.
Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, Chapter II:
Mr. Pickwick and his companions visit the towns Stroud, Rochester, Chatham, and Brompton:
“The principal productions of these towns,” says Mr. Pickwick, “appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine stores, hard-bake,* apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military. It is truly delightful to a philanthropic** mind to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits;*** more especially when we remember that the following them about, and jesting with them, affords a cheap and innocent amusement for the boy population. Nothing … can exceed their good humour.”
“The consumption of tobacco in these towns (continues Mr. Pickwick) must be very great; and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt which is their leading characteristic; but to those who view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it is truly gratifying.”
* hard-bake — a sweetmeat of sugar or molasses and almonds
The story is based upon the conviction of and sentence of ten years in federal prison given to Terrence Byrd, a black man from Pennsylvania, for dealing in heroin and illegal possession of body armor.
Byrd’s arrest and conviction occurred in 2014. State trooper David Long said that he began following Byrd’s vehicle on a Pennsylvania state highway because “he noticed the driver’s seat was heavily reclined, and he said Byrd violated a law that prohibits drivers from using the left hand lane of a roadway except for passing maneuvers” (Courthouse News Service, September 28, 2017).
Byrd was driving a rental car. His fiancée, Latasha Reed, had rented it, and he was using it with her permission. But he was not listed on the rental agreement as an authorized driver. (Seems like a minor detail? Not in the eyes of the law.)
Trooper Long testified that Mr. Byrd had aroused his suspicion by holding the steering wheel, as driving instructors recommend, at the “10 and 2” position and by sitting far back in his seat. The effrontery! Can you imagine such audacity? Such lawlessness? Why, it’s almost as bad as __________ (can you think of something?).
As noted in the Times article, Trooper Long pulled Mr. Byrd over for failing to move into the right lane fast enough after passing a slow-moving truck.
To quote from the Times: “At that point, the car rental company’s boilerplate contract collided with the Fourth Amendment, which bars unreasonable searches. Because Mr. Byrd was not listed as an authorized driver, Trooper Long said he was free to search the car without Mr. Byrd’s consent. He found body armor and 49 bricks of heroin in the trunk. After a judge refused to suppress the evidence, Mr. Byrd was convicted of federal drug charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.”
Mr. Byrd and his fiancée have five children and were engaged to be married. None of this matters in the eyes of the law, to the architects of the criminal “justice” system, which is designed to inflict maximum pain and cruelty on ordinary people and which is actually barbaric. (It hasn’t advanced since less “civilized” times.) The law does not really weigh the scales when it comes to ripping apart families and destroying lives. It does worse harm than a “perpetrator” such as Mr. Byrd would be capable of.
Which is worse? A stash of heroin in the back seat of a van or a family of seven (minus one) without a father?
As is sometimes said when arguments get out of hand, that’s enough! I didn’t really need to read any more.
The case has gone to the Supreme Court, which will take it up again next week. It should go into the dustbin, and Mr. Byrd should be freed.
You know what the “crime” was, what alerted the trooper’s suspicions? Driving while black. Mr. Byrd moved into the left lane to effect a passing maneuver and did not immediately get back into the right lane — in other words, not fast enough. I see drivers do this all the time (have done it myself) without being followed or stopped. Have you ever seen the video of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old black woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas in July 2015 being pulled over by a state trooper? Same thing. She was driving at moderate speed on a road with what appeared to be no other traffic, did not pull over to the right fast enough for the trooper’s satisfaction, and was tailed, whereupon she pulled over. Most people have focused (not wrongly) on how Ms. Bland was treated after the trooper gave her a citation, but the reason for the stop was incomprehensible.
To return for a minute to the case of the notorious drug dealer (meant to be taken sarcastically) Terrence Byrd. Is he, was he, really a menace to society? What harm had he done up to that point? Does it deserve a sentence of ten years? He would have potentially been more of a menace if he had been driving while high or intoxicated.
Say, for the purposes of argument — to use an almost ridiculous example; I am exaggerating to make a point — that I am driving in a car with ten cases of beer or bottles of liquor in my trunk and I am stopped for some absurd reason. First, the police are supposed not to have the right to stop me and search the car without probable cause. (Or some such thing. I am not a lawyer.)
Well, what of it? Would this be worse than having heroin in my vehicle? If it were alcohol, nothing would have happened, because our society tolerates alcohol abuse. But drug users and drug pushers are regarded as vermin, as the lowest of the low. Because someone decided that drugs are a scourge that must be eradicated thorough incarceration of all and sundry and draconian sentences. (Lock ’em up and throw away the key!)
What if I had loads of chocolate bars in my back seat, intending to sell them at a discount? Or cigarettes for sale on the black market? Should I be indicted (very unlikely) and punished, it would be a slap on the wrist. (Of course, I wouldn’t be penalized for the chocolate bars.) My point, which may seem absurd, is that there are all kinds of things that are deleterious to human health and wellbeing that are craved by some and that, when they are illegal, there will always be an underground or black market for.
Think my rant is crazy? The premises underlying my argument are no more wild or crazy than the points upon which law enforcement and lawyers base their case and over which they contend like medieval theologians, points so offensive to common sense that there is a Swiftian quality about the whole arrest and courtroom scenario (in TV parlance, “drama”). Supposedly, cool headedness, sober mindedness, and logic are what underlie the outcome of court cases. Right will prevail and the wicked will be punished according to the dictates of reason (oops, the law, and who can make sense out of it?). Would that a Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens were still around. They would see the absurdity and unfairness plainly and know how to convey a sense of it.
The criminal “justice” system and the prison system are God awful institutions designed to perpetuate human misery rather than ameliorate the human condition. The law is anything but fair. I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about driving while black.
me (R) and my Cambridge friend Eddie Rizzo (L), Provincetown, MA, mid-1950’s
“Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (Chapter 24)
“The startling change in preadolescence is that egocentricity, [the] concentration on one’s own satisfactions and securities and the wonderful techniques at one’s disposal for obtaining them, now ceases to be the primary goal in living. The thing that seems most important now is the using of all these techniques to draw closer to another person. It is what matters to this other person, the chum, that is of the utmost importance. In other words, here is the first appearance of the need for intimacy–for living in great harmony with someone else. … When [the preadolescent] discovers that life cannot really be complete without an increasing closeness and harmony with someone else, he begins to develop quite rapidly a personal interest in the larger world.
Below, following some introductory remarks of my own, are excerpts from the writings of the psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan.
A gifted writer who is a pleasure to read. A psychiatrist with great acumen and insight.
I do not pretend to any particular or special knowledge. The reason for this post is that I find what Sullivan says hits home and conforms to my own recollections and impressions of my preadolescent years.
A word or two about my own experience of childhood, in terms of, and related to, what Sullivan says.
The preadolescent stage of development seems to have begun for me at around age nine or ten. Prior to that, I was very attached to my mother.
When my preadolescent phase began, without my being aware, consciously, of what was happening, I suddenly became very interested in “guy things,” which is to say things that boys are supposed to be interested in. Baseball, for example.
I hadn’t paid any attention to baseball before, didn’t even know the rules of the game. Suddenly, I was totally interested in it on every level, as a would be player and a zealous Boston Red Sox fan.
Where Sullivan’s writing strikes home for me is that he seems to be right on target when he talks about the importance of having a preadolescent friendship with a child of the same sex, a “chum.”
I actually had four chums, all of whom lived within a block of me in Cambridge, Massachusetts: four boys the same age as me. Three of them were of Irish ancestry; the fourth was of Italian ancestry.
They all came from Catholic families, whereas my parents were Protestant.
The friendships that we formed were very intense. They seemed to mean everything to me at the time — to rival and almost surpass the importance of my family relationships.
We had great freedom of intercourse, by which I mean discussion and sharing of ideas.
No topic was out of bounds. We were too young to be discussing sex or sexual topics. But we talked and argued about all sorts of things and nothing was considered to be out of bounds. This freedom to talk and share was very important to my mental development.
There were frequent arguments among us, about religion, for example. My friends all seemed convinced that I was going to go straight to Hell, eventually.
Once, we argued over whether a white man should be allowed to marry a black woman. I held liberal views, which — prior to getting into this argument — I barely knew I had. My friends ridiculed my views. A nice thing was — although we disagreed vehemently and although I was taken aback to see how contemptuous they were of my views — no grudges were held. The arguments of this nature which we had, constantly, were forgotten almost immediately and that was the end of it.
We debated about the 1956 election. My friends were all on the other side.
We shared all kinds of stories and information. Sports lore, snippets of knowledge about miscellaneous and sometimes arcane subjects, tall tales, baseball cards, comic books, and other hobbies and interests.
I was learning all the time, as an ongoing thing, to share with others, to care for others, to consider their views. (All of these are things Sullivan discusses.)
To value friends. To appreciate their strengths, their good points. To learn to put up with their shortcomings, pigheadedness, occasional stupidity, intellectual limitations, and prejudices.
Since this time, I have always greatly appreciated people, placed great value on friendship. Don’t forget friends, try not to neglect them. Make it a point not to overlook or underestimate them.
Try to be fair in evaluating them as persons, trying to see them in the round and not overlook their good points when something about them annoys me.
With longstanding friends, including those from the past, I tend to never forget what I owe them.
These preadolescent friendships also gave me the opportunity to set up another, alternative “belief system” different from that of my parents, to be able to look at things differently, to perhaps overcome and reevaluate things that I needed to think over and evaluate for myself. (Sullivan comments briefly about this.)
Though I have long since lost contact, I have never forgotten these four core friends of mine.
All of these are things that Sullivan, with uncanny perception, knew and wrote about.
At the end of the juvenile era, another great developmental change appears. This may occur anywhere between the ages of eight and a half and ten, or even later. … The change which ends the juvenile era is rather startlingly abrupt–that is, it is a matter of weeks. … The change is this: One of those compeers of the same sex, who has been so useful in teaching the juvenile how to live among his fellows, begins to take on a peculiar importance. He is distinguished from others like him by the fact that his views, his needs, and his wishes seem to be really important: he begins to matter almost as much, or quite as much, as does the juvenile himself; and with this, the juvenile era ends and the phase of preadolescence begins. This person who becomes so important is ordinarily referred to as a chum, and he matters even when he isn’t there, which is quite unlike anything that happened in the juvenile era.
During preadolescence, certain dramatic developments, which are probably necessary to elevate the person to really human estate, move forward with simply astounding speed. During this brief period, which may precede puberty by a matter of only weeks, or, more commonly, months, there is an acceleration of development, which, if one likes to think physiologically, may reflect the oncoming puberty change. Be that as it may, in the new-found importance of another person, there is a simply revolutionary change in the person’s attitude toward the world. Thus far, regardless of his parents’ fond belief in his utter devotion to them, and regardless of his ability to get along with his compeers, it is measurably correct to say that the young human has been extraordinarily self-centered. The startling change in preadolescence is that this egocentricity, this concentration on one’s own satisfactions and securities and the wonderful techniques at one’s disposal for obtaining them, now ceases to be the primary goal in living. The thing that seems most important now is the using of all these techniques to draw closer to another person. It is what matters to this other person, the chum, that is of the utmost importance. In other words, here is the first appearance of the need for intimacy–for living in great harmony with someone else. Because the need for intimacy makes the other fellow and living in harmony with him of such importance, a great deal of attention is paid to how he thinks and “feels,” to what he likes and dislikes; and from this more careful observation of the other is gathered a great deal of data on the rest of the world. … When … he discovers that life cannot really be complete without an increasing closeness and harmony with someone else, he begins to develop quite rapidly a personal interest in the larger world.
I believe that the best grasp on the problems of life that some people ever manifest makes its appearance in these preadolescent two-groups. Such comprehension is often horribly unlettered and in woefully undocumented form, but it includes a remarkable awareness of another person and a quite astonishing ability to reveal oneself to that other. … [T]he brief epoch of preadolescence very often represents the maximum achievement of a particular person, as far as a constructive interest in the welfare of the world is concerned.
— Harry Stack Sullivan, The Psychiatric Interview, pp. 135-37
In the … phase of preadolescence, in the company of one’s chum, one finds oneself more and more able to talk about things which one had learned, during the juvenile era, not to talk about. This relatively brief phase of preadolescence, if it is experienced, is probably rather fantastically valuable in salvaging one from the effects of unfortunate accidents up to then.
Just as the juvenile era was marked by a significant change–the development of the need for compeers, for playmates rather like oneself–the beginning of preadolescence is equally spectacularly marked, in my scheme of development, by the appearance of a new type of interest in another person. These changes are the result of maturation and development, or experience. This new interest in the preadolescent era is not as general as the use of language toward others was in childhood, or the need of similar people as playmates was in the juvenile era. Instead, it is a specific new type of interest in a particular member of the same sex who becomes a chum or a close friend. This change represents the beginning of something very like full-blown, psychiatrically defined love. In other words, the other fellow takes on a perfectly novel relationship with the person concerned: he becomes of practically equal importance in all fields of value. Nothing remotely like that has ever appeared before. … [I]f you will look very closely at one of your children when he finally finds a chum-somewhere between eight-and-a-half and ten–you will discover something very different in the relationship–namely, that your child begins to develop a real sensitivity to what matters to another person. And this is not in the sense of “what should I do to get what I want,” but instead “what should I do to contribute to the happiness or to support the prestige and feeling of worth-whileness of my chum.” So far as I have ever been able to discover, nothing remotely like this appears before the age of, say, eight-and-a-half, and sometimes it appears decidedly later.
Thus the developmental epoch of preadolescence is marked by the coming of the integrating tendencies which, when they are completely developed, we call love, or, to say it another way, by the manifestation of the need for interpersonal intimacy. … Intimacy is that type of situation involving two people which permits validation of all components of personal worth. Validation of personal worth requires a type of relationship which I call collaboration, by which I mean clearly formulated adjustments of one’s behavior to the expressed needs of the other person in the pursuit of increasingly identical–that is, more and more nearly mutual-satisfactions, and in the maintenance of increasingly similar security operations. … In preadolescence not only do people occupy themselves in moving toward a common, more-or-less impersonal objective, such as the success of “our team,” or the discomfiture of “our teacher,”* as they might have done in the juvenile era, but they also, specifically and increasingly, move toward supplying each other with satisfactions and taking on each other’s successes in the maintenance of prestige, status, and all the things which represent freedom from anxiety, or the diminution of anxiety.
Because one draws so close to another, because one is newly capable of seeing oneself through the other’s eyes, the preadolescent phase of personality development is especially significant in correcting autistic, fantastic ideas about oneself or others. … [I]n preadolescence we come to the final component of the really intimidating experience of loneliness–the need for intimate exchange with a fellow being, whom we may describe or identify as a chum, a friend, or a loved one–that is, the need for the most intimate type of exchange with respect to satisfactions and security.
— Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, pp. 227, 245-62, 264-65, 268
* This is funny. — editorial comment. Roger W. Smith
