Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned
defect very clearly. He says: "Many people are seized by one and
the same affect with great consistency. All his senses are so
strongly affected by one object that he believes this object to be
present even if it is not. If this happens while the person is
awake, the person is believed to be insane. . . . But if the greedy
person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one
only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but
only as annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But
factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity,
although usually one does not think of them as 'illness."'
These words were written a few hundred years ago; they still
hold true, although the defects have been culturally patterned to
such an extent now that they are not even generally thought any
more to be annoying or contemptible. Today we come across a
person who acts and feels like an automaton; who never experi-
ences anything which is really his; who experiences himself
entirely as the person he thinks he is supposed to be; whose
artificial smile has replaced genuine laughter; whose meaning-
less chatter has replaced communicative speech; whose dulled
despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements can
be made about this person. One is that he suffers from a defect of
spontaneity and individuality which may seem incurable. At the
same time, it may be said that he does not differ essentially from
millions of others who are in the same position. For most of
them, the culture provides patterns which enable them to live with
a defect without becoming ill. It is as if each culture provided the
remedy against the outbreak of manifest neurotic symptoms
which would result from the defect produced by it.
Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios, television,
sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four
weeks. With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be