Work and Pleasure

When children learn English in Germany, they are often taught as one of the first poems they are made acquainted with:

Work while you work, play while you play.

This is the way to be cheerful and gay.

The idea is that by strictly keeping work and pleasure apart, both ranges of activity will benefit: no instinctual aberrations will interfere with seriousness of rational behavior, no signs of seriousness and responsibility will cast their shadow over the fun. Obviously this advice is somehow derived from social organization which affects the individual in as much as his life falls into two sections, one where he functions as a producer and one where he functions as a consumer. It is as though the basic dichotomy of the economic life process of society were projected upon the individual. Psychologically, the compulsive connotations based on a puritan outlook can hardly be overlooked: not only with regard to the bi-phasic pattern of life as a whole but also to notions such as cleanliness: neither of the two spheres must be contaminated by the other. While the advice may offer advantages in terms of economic rationalization, its intrinsic merits are of a dubious nature. Work completely severed from the element of playfulness becomes drab and monotonous, a tendency which is consummated by the complete quantification of industrial work. Pleasure when equally isolated from the »serious« content of life, becomes silly, meaningless an sheer »entertainment« and ultimately it is a mere means of reproducing one's working capacity, whereas the real substance of any nonutilitarian activity lies in the way it faces and sublimates reality problems: res severa verum gaudium.

The complete severance of work and play as an attitudinal pattern of the total personality may justly be called a process of disintegration strangely concomitant with the integration of utilitarian operations for the sake of which this dichotomy has been introduced.

The column does not bother about such problems, but sticks to the well-established »work while you work, play while you play« advice. It thus falls in line with many phases of contemporary mass culture where maxims of the earlier development of middle class society are repeated in a congealed form although their technological and sociological basis does not exist anymore.

The columnist is very well aware of the drudgery of most subordinate functions in a hierarchical and bureaucratic setup and of the resistance bred in those who have to do some work which is often completely alien to their subjective urges, which can be done as well by anyone else and which may have been reduced to so small mechanical functions that it cannot possibly be regarded as meaningful. They are continuously admonished to attend to this kind of work under the flimsy pretext that this is the way to comply with the order of the day.

However, in this ideology there are some subtle significant changes in comparison with the old »work while you work« attitude. What people are supposed to do during A.M. is no longer supposed to be an autonomous activity moulded after the model of the independent entrepreneur. Rather they are encouraged to fulfill little and insignificant set tasks in a machinery. Thus, the admonition to work and not to allow oneself to be distracted by any instinctual interference has frequently the form that one should attend to one's »chores.«

Dismal early A.M. forgotten by plunging into routine chores.

(November 21, 1952, Leo)

Keep plugging at chores ...

(December 19, 1952, Sagittarius)

Stick to attending chores ...

(December 27, 1952, Sagittarius)

Most of the time chores are to be done right away according to such advice, occasionally – and this is characteristic of the column's mosaic technique that brings the same basic categories into various configurations – to be postponed for more suitable times.

It's unnecessary that you fuss so much with routine chores this morning.

(November 10, 1952, Taurus)

The term »chores« seems to conjure up unquestioningly accepting minor tasks as a superior law, guided not by insight into their intrinsic necessity but only by fear of punishment. The column strives to overcome resistance against meaningless routine work by playing upon the compulsive libidinization that increases so often in reverse proportion to the importance of the chores.

This psychological tendency is exploited even more where the idea of minor responsibilities is carried over to private existence. Activities such as washing one's car or fixing some household contraption, inferior though they may be, are still somewhat closer to the subject's own range of interest than the business routine, for those activities pertain to what belongs to him and is regarded as part of his »ego« realm whereas he often feels that what he does in business ultimately serves only others. This observation is fused with the columnist's knowledge of the tremendous and doubtlessly irrational role of »gadgeteering« in the psychological household of many people today. Labor-saving devices, primarily necessitated by objective conditions such as the scarcity of domestic help, are invested with a halo of their own. This may be indicative of a fixation to a phase of adolescent activities in which people try to adapt themselves to modern technology by making it, as it were, their own cause. It may be mentioned in this connection that the real psychodynamics of gadgeteering are still largely unexplored and that their study would be utterly timely in order to gain insight into the emotional ties between the objective setup of contemporary conditions and the individuals who live under these conditions. It seems that the kind of retrogression highly characteristic of persons who do not any longer feel they are the self-determining subjects of their fate, is concomitant with a fetishistic attitude towards the very same conditions which tend to be dehumanizing them. The more they are gradually being transformed into things, the more they invest things with a human aura. At the same time, the libidinization of gadgets is indirectly narcissistic in as much as it feeds on the ego's control of nature – gadgets provide the subject with some memories of early feelings of omnipotence. Since this type of cathexis shifts from ends to means which are treated as though they were things themselves, a close affinity to concretism can be observed. This is given away in the column by occasional, rather eccentric statements such as »buy interesting gadgets.«

Make more happiness there (your home) by more interesting gadgets ...

(December 3, 1952, Aquarius)

As to pleasure, it is, according to the bi-phasic approach, mainly reserved for P.M. and for holidays as though there were an a priori understanding between celestial revelations and the present calendar system. For the sake of variation and in order not to make the bi-phasic monotony too obvious, there are exceptions to the rule.

It would be erroneous, however, to assume that the bi-phasic division of work and pleasure puts both work and pleasure on an equal footing. Since the approach itself, the »division« of life into various functions which are supposed to be more productive if kept apart, is chosen under the auspices of psychological rationalization, the priority of the rational over indulgence, to put it crudely of the ego over the id, is strictly maintained. It is one of the major tenets of the column, possibly the most important of all, that pleasure itself is permissible only if it serves ultimately some ulterior purpose of success and self-promotion. There is a double reason for the conspicuous emphasis on this principle. On the one hand, the prevailing idea of conformity to what one is expected to do as well as the pretense to help people to master their everyday conflicts which often arise out of their resistance to routine work requires a strengthening of traditional working morals – possibly because in the present era, the more technology advances, tedious work seems to become superfluous and is therefore increasingly resented as long as it still goes on. The column has to take care of a specific social irrationality that gradually shows up today. On the other hand, the columnist knows of the guilt feelings frequently induced by pleasure. They are assuaged by making the reader understand that some pleasure is permissible in so far as it is a »release,« that he would, as popular psychology has learned by now, become a neurotic person unless he allowed himself some gratifications, and above all that there are many pleasures which fulfill immediately and directly some economically gainful purpose. Since this concept of pleasure for duty's sake is contradictory in itself, again some bizarreness shows up that sheds light over the whole area covered by the column.

There is above all the monotonously frequent advice to »be happy.« (Cf., for example, November 27, 1952, Scorpio; November 28, 1952, Sagittarius; December 15, 1952, Sagittarius; December 16, Leo; December 23, Sagittarius.) Obviously it is directed at encouraging the reader to overcome what, in popular psychology, has come to be known as »inhibitions.« However, this encouragement becomes paradoxical inasmuch as instinctual needs contrary to the rule of rational interests appear to be commandeered by rational interests. Even that which is spontaneous and involuntary is being made part of arbitrariness and control. It is like a parody of the Freudian dictum that what is id should become ego. The former appears switched on, ordered, as it were, by conscience. One is forced to have fun in order to be well adjusted or at least appear so to others because only well-adjusted people are accepted as normal and are likely to be successful. One should here remember that psychological experiments have shown a high correlation between subjective sympathy with a face that has a happy look and, conversely, antipathy toward people who look unhappy. This aspect of universal externalization comes close to what has been called »fun morality« by Wolfenstein and Leites: »You've got to have fun (whether you like it or not).«²³ Instinctual requirements are freed from threatening aspects by being themselves treated as duties to be performed – the psychoanalytic concept of Genußfähigkeit (capacity for pleasure) already carries this fatal connotation within itself. At the same time, however, censorship is extended. Sexuality itself is being desexualized, as it were, by becoming »fun,« a sort of hygiene. It loses not only its more threatening and ego-alien impact, but also its intensity, its »flavor.« This tendency, clearly shown by the column, was pointed out in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where he describes orgies deteriorated into social functions, while the adage most frequently uttered by the inhabitants of his negative utopia reads »everybody is happy nowadays.«

The semitolerant integration of pleasure into a rigid pattern of life is achieved by the ever-recurring promise that pleasure trips, sprees, parties and similar events will lead to practical advantages. One will make new acquaintances, build up »connections« that prove helpful for the career if one walks out with business associates. Relations may become smoother and as implied indirectly one's position may become firmer and better remunerated. Sometimes there are even hints that if one takes out one's romantic interest one might benefit from the sound business intuitions of the woman one loves.

... enjoying congenial amusement with serious comrade clears path for successful association.

(November 19, 1952, Cancer)

... entertain recent new influential acquaintances.

(November 24, 1952, Virgo)

... woman comrade introduces, praises you to influential friend able to push you ahead.

(November 26, 1952, Cancer)

Much conversation with an official or associate, especially at a social function or sporting event, reveals your talents so that real support is quickly given.

(January 3, 1953, Gemini)

It's your day to have fun; so contact very active associates, take them to amusement places, and discuss practical goals in these surroundings for excellent results.

(January 9, 1952, Cancer)

In all these respects the image of the influential decision-maker is more or less subtly substituted by the reality of the salesman.

It may be suspected that the columnist and his readers know in the depth of their hearts that the pleasures ordained are no longer pleasures at all, but really the duties as which they are rationalized, the rationalization containing more truth than the supposedly unconscious wish. In other words, more and more leisure time activity officially serving the purpose of fun or relaxation has actually been seized by rational self-interest and is attended not because anybody really likes it but because it is required in order to make one's way or maintain one's status. In one instance, a slip of the column gives this away: the addressee is advised to »accept all invitations« (Cf. November 17, 1952, Libra; also January 27, 1953, Pisces), obviously without caring whether he likes it or not. The consummation of this trend is the obligatory participation in official »leisure time activities« in totalitarian countries.

The pleasures themselves are divided by the column into two classes, the simple ones and the unusual ones. It goes without saying that sympathy is with the simple, but sometimes the unusual ones are also encouraged, either merely for the sake of variation and »color« or possibly as a cautious means of admitting unorthodox or at least more expensive desires among the readers. What the unusual pleasures are is never hinted at: it is left up to the addressee whether to think of foreign restaurants or sex variations.

Enjoy unusual amusements and outlets.

(November, 10, 1952, Cancer)

The simple pleasures are again integrated within the prevailing pattern inasmuch as they are mainly characterized by inexpensiveness. The reader is constantly reminded that while it is all right to have some fun and to restore his balance, this should never be allowed to interfere with the well-planned budget. But the columnist's favorite pleasures are not only simple, but also »proven« (January 29, 1953, Aries and Gemini) and defined as radio and television (January 25, 1953, Scorpio). Gratification seems tolerable if it bears the stamp or social confirmation, if it is channelized through mass media, in other words, if it has become subject to a preconceived censorship before it even enters into the subject's experience. Thus, even in the realm where one is supposed to »let oneself go,« adjustment is promoted. Pleasure itself, if admitted, has to be predigested and somehow castrated. While the column seems broadminded enough to allow the addressee some »outlets,« they have to be essentially of a spurious nature in order to obtain the blessing of the columnist. Even where the reader is authorized to get away from the routine of his life, it has to be assured that his outbreak will lead him finally into some repetition of the self-same routine he wants to get away from.