Lipton’s Journal/February 14, 1955/603

From Project Mailer

But another revelatory contradiction in my communicative chain appears: From the outside something Enters (We’ll skip the Rests) and is Taken and is Made and is Given. And in giving, in the act of giving something is lost which must be replaced which is where the faculty of entrance asserts itself again, for if something new does not enter (something other than the previous material available in the compulsive for entrance) then the compulsive must use some of his own material

(Two centuries of thought)[1]

some of his vital body substance in order to keep the chain of life within himself functioning. (One cannot remain the same; one must either continue to grow or else carry more for the same trip). Which is why compulsives shrink and harden as they grow older until they crack, their very sensitivity (the entrance, the hole) narrowing unless they are capable of widening it.

So it is with all the others. If the malfunction in the chain with its special crippled sensitivity is not widened, relaxed, stimulated, or controlled (Enter, Take, Make, Give) the phallic narcissist becomes wilder, less imaginative, less healthy, more destructive until he erupts into a dangerous accident, uncontrollable power urges, lack of compassion, ruthlessness sadism, etc. The hysteric becomes able to make less and less, drinks, “scenes,” destroys self-destructively (rather than sadistically) that it is dynamically masochistic, plays with violent suicide, enters it, deteriorates. (Every hysteric is an artist manqué.) So the dependent-mystic if they are able to give less and less become more and more private, more cryptic, more “paranoid,” more hostile, more misunderstood, more despised and isolated until insanity welcomes them.



note

  1. Mailer has reached page 200 in the journal.