Humanistic Nursing Part 6

Nursing experience taught me that each man, each family, each community was at once alike and different. Hesse, an existential novelist, in _Steppenwolf_, {40} describes each man who has become in family and community as like an onion with hundreds of integuments or a texture with many threads.[4] Then man's differences would be in the quality of his integuments and their development or in his threads in their preponderance. Contemplating the struggles in community regarding mutual understanding, I expanded Hesse's conception of man and found my vision of community to be a salad tossing or a patchwork quilt tumble drying.

Valuing the complexity of this conception of man and therefore of community I find myself smiling at the naivety of the earlier more static frames of order I superimposed on these phenomena. These oversimplifications maintained the shade through which I viewed my world. The shade was: others are knowing places, they are responsible; therefore if I quote authority from outside of myself, I can speak with certainty about what I know and believe and no one can attack me. And yet, my unique knowledge was not given and so my defense, my clutching at security foiled my human need for conceptualization of and expression of my own nurse vision of reality. This defeated the development by me of nursing theory.

Now I realize how I underestimated the potentialities of my nursing effect, of the difference I made, and could make. Just consider the given human uniqueness of each partic.i.p.ant in the nursing situation whose familial potential goes back to an origin of thinking being or consciousness, and forward to his antic.i.p.ation of the future, his eternity.

In the nursing literature, it is rather infrequent that we philosophically share our innermost thoughts, dreams, ideals, and strivings without a strong overlay of indoctrination or conversion.

Nietzsche presents philosophy as autobiographical, such sharing does not offer maps. It could offer relevant resources and stimulate other nurses to influence the shape and becoming of the profession.

This chapter attempts to discuss ideas of community, the macrocosm, by considering man, the microcosm, as he develops in family and community.

The ideas represent my "here and now" as it reflects my past and antic.i.p.ated nursing world, including my hopes and expectations.

Man's Experience

Each human being carries a view of persons, families, and communities shaded by the views of his nuclear family. The past usually is corrected; it is never erased. So in his family of origin man internalizes ideas of "right-wrong," "appropriate-inappropriate,"

"expected-unexpected." Each family's shaded world echoes its procreators' familial, psychosocialeconomic, religious and experiential breadth, closely resembled or distorted. Two persons, perhaps more, usually husband and wife, bring shaded views together in some combination or balance that becomes the "stuff," the authority, of {41} their children's worlds. Thus, children see their early worlds through the complementariness and conflict of this initial home view, acting at times with it; at times against it.

Adults, in response to and through one another, procreate new sensitive beings whom they want and/or do not want and whom they may and/or may not experience as their responsibility in varying degrees. Marcel, a French existentialist philosopher, views procreation and responsible parenthood as quite different. My past nursing experience substantiates this. Marcel expresses my bias about responsible parenthood, and this statement is also worthy of consideration by nurses in positions of authority to others. He says, "We have to lay down the principle that our children (or those for whom we care) are destined, as we are ourselves, to render a special service, to share in a work, we have humbly to acknowledge that we cannot conceive of this work in its entirety and that _a fortiori_ we are incapable of knowing or imagining how it is destined to shape itself for the young will, it is our province to awaken to a consciousness of itself."[5] Think of this statement of responsible authority. How has it been evidenced in families and nursing situations of your nursing world? What are your expectations of your patients or nurses with whom you work?

Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, like Nietzsche, depicts man as lacking a fixed nature with his own mode of being as his fundamental project.[6] Initially, each person takes on a mode of being in his world dependent upon his degree of freedom and the how and what of the world as presented by his family and perceived by him. The world as presented is reflective of the family's culture, their provincial world view, their unique experienced "here and now," and the times. Metaphorically, the family's lived world, how they experience at this particular cross-section of their lives, can be symbolically described as a kaleidoscopic telescoping of its past and antic.i.p.ated future. Now, this would be what was presented at any particular time.

What would a child's perception do to this metaphorical symbol? The child's current human development and his narrow experience would be like a circus house mirror that would interpret the metaphorical symbol distortedly. Witness a three-year-old speaking questioningly and complainingly about her tension headache to her mute, nonperceptive doll, and asking her to please, please stop making such a mess and racket.

The earliest childhood views of family and community are influenced over time, gradually and abruptly, and grow in complexity. The child's puzzlement is aroused by others' comings and goings, happenings within the family, immediate neighborhood, and adjacent community, and the world presented through books and technologically, on radio, television, and tape recorder. Each child attends these presentations with varying measures of complacency, questioning, bafflement, and involvement.

{42}

For instance, for myself, as a child there was the excitement of the construction of a new house in the woods next door and meeting new neighbors. Initially my parents expressed their differences from ourselves. The differences they perceived were followed by negative projections on these unknown folk. Were these others really humanly different? I investigated; my family investigated. The folk became persons. They expressed themselves differently in volume and sometimes in language. They looked different. Yet they were not fearsome. They felt, cared, responded, and worried much as we did. Mutual knowledge allowed increasing closeness and liking.

Forbidden! This was the neighborhood across the tracks. I cried when an uncle teasingly proclaimed one day that my missing mother was over there. Later I attended school with both white and black children who lived over there. And again, each was different, yet not different; each was knowable, likeable, and loveable.

Adult family members whispered about a neighbor woman from across the street. She was apparently hospitalized permanently. When I inquired as to why, eyebrows were raised and strange looks were exchanged. I was told in a not believable way, "She broke her leg falling off the back porch."

A neighbor husband and wife frequently could be heard fighting both verbally and physically. Family talk at our house depicted the husband as "evil," the wife as a "poor soul." I did not enjoy being in these peoples' house. Perhaps the violence frightened me; perhaps I was uncertain when it might erupt? Perhaps I was concerned that I might one day somehow become part of such a situation? Now, looking back over the years, I would guess that both this husband and wife were "poor souls"

struggling with their humanness as best they could.

An adolescent girl lived down the block. She was labeled as "strange,"

"peculiar," "odd," "crazy." Often one saw her talking to herself, skipping and rotating as she moved along in her always solitary and mysterious way. All expressed great sorrow for her always solitary and mysterious way. All expressed great sorrow for her elderly mother and father on her admission to the "State Hospital." Years later I wondered, and still wonder what happened to that girl, herself? What kind of an existence has she experienced?

During these early years there was also separation from and loss of close loved family members. When I was three and a half a great aunt who always appreciated my side of things moved out of our home due to a family argument. Perhaps most confusing of all during these preschool years, at four and a half, my father died suddenly. "They" said that he went to heaven, that G.o.d called him. Why did he go? Why would he leave us? Most important how could he leave me? What had I done wrong? Was it that I had not loved him enough? Been good enough to him? Was he angry?

What kind of G.o.d is G.o.d, anyway? Is he benevolent, malevolent, indifferent? Is he real: is he believable? What can one expect and how should one act toward authority and power? The world didn't feel like a very safe place nor did persons appear to be dependable.

Then there was school. With additional authorities and peers there arose new wonderment and expectation. The way one was to be in school was {43} different from at home. And what was happening at home while I was at school? Could I depend on things being safe? In kindergarten I made an ash tray of clay for my already dead father.

In my child world there were books, radio, and the movies. Today children experience these, as well as television and record players. For me, books, radio, and the movies brought into my world new aspects of fear, excitement, joy, love, horror, violence, imagination, and suspense. They depicted at times the ideal and at times the abysmal.

Sometimes, despite everything, good triumphed. At other times regardless of the effort invested all was lost. Where was the harmony of logical reason? Is our world absurd? Are we absurd to respond to it with an expectation of reason?

For each child there are very special, long-remembered events: being taught to swim by one's father, family picnics, trips into the world beyond city or country, going to the circus, a world's fair, a zoo or a fantasy land. There, also are the events of being loved and loving deeply, linked somehow with times of feeling unloved and unloving.

More than earlier, today there are multiple community groups for children where activities are guided and supervised. Within these situations and in the free play of neighborhood children, there is always the confusing, enlightening, and frequently distorted information gained through discovering your relationship with both boys and girls.

Exploration by children into their s.e.xual similarities and differences, a healthy pursuit, in the past more than today often aroused parental furor. Furor and different reactions from different involved parents lead to further child confusion and focus.

Within childhood peer relations there are games, play, and schoolwork that allow the child to come to know personally the meanings and feelings of competing, collaborating, fighting, winning, losing, destroying, building, aggression, pa.s.sivity, constriction, freedom, and choice.

Then there is adolescence with all its moodiness, questions, fears, and experimenting related to adult modes of being. The moods are a mystery and the questions often unanswerable or the answers contradictory.

Norman Kiell in _The Universal Experience of Adolescence_ says that as adults we forget the intensity, turmoil, and concretes of this period and that perhaps we have to.[7] Yet, it is not possible that the instability and discomfort of spirit lived in adolescence does not leave its ingrained tracing as part of our eternal presents.

When the focus of our responsibility shifts from play to work, during these early years of becoming, depends on our particular circ.u.mstances and abilities. For most persons there is a tipping of the balance between these. Hopefully neither extreme is the master. Fortunately, in many instances, as the child's work as been to play; the adult's work world, his world of responsibility is lived, experienced by him, to an extent as play--it gives satisfaction and pleasure.

{44}

Some adults select another and are chosen by this other for a sharing of their worlds. Some go it alone. Some procreate new beings; some create in other ways; some give-take and exist; some just lean. These last appear to be, and yet to not be, "all-at-once."

MAN BECOMES EVER MORE

Buber perceives man becoming more through his human capacity to relate to other being in all forms from the materialistic to the spiritual in "I-Thou," "I-It," and "We" ways.[8] Gestation, with the closeness of mother and child, has left man with an ingrained knowing of the experience of closeness. Thus, throughout man's life his condition of existence is affected by and desires relationship with and closeness to other being. The closeness of the conditions of gestation is never again possible, hence existential loneliness. Yet because of this prenatal experience Buber conceives of man as born with a "Thou"--another--before he is conscious of himself, his "I." With growing consciousness he sorts out his "I" from his "Thou." You can see the late infant doing, acting through, this separation. During this growing phase, often to the care-taking adult's frustration, he repeatedly, intensely, and excitedly throws his toys or bottle out of the crib, carriage, or playpen. Often he runs away from his "Thou," his parental security source, to a safe distance with intense awareness of what he is doing. While internalizing these and subsequent "Thous" as part of his "I," his knowing place, paradoxically, he sorts out who he is, and who and what is other than himself. So with ever more relationship, ever more experience, he becomes ever more the person he has the human capacity to be. He becomes more through his relations with others, never the same as these others, though he does internalize these others as part of himself.

Buber describes "I-Thou" relating, man merging with otherness, as always necessitating an "I," a man, capable of recognizing self as at a distance, apart from otherness. Therefore, his "I-Thou" relating, a merging of beings, is not like the psychological defense, unconscious identification. Buber's "I-Thou" relating emphasizes awareness of each being's uniqueness without a superimposing, or a deciding about the other without a knowing. Such relating is a turning to the other, offering the other authentic presence, allowing the authentic presence of the other with the self, and maintaining one's capacity to question.

It is not then identification or an idealization of the other. Within this mysterious happening of "I-Thou" relating, when both partic.i.p.ants are human, each becomes more. Buber refers to the event of this merging of otherness, of man with other being, as "the between." Humanistic nursing is concerned with "the between" of nurses and their others.

Their others, the {45} microcosms of their communities, would be patients, patients' families, professional colleagues, and other health service personnel.

Buber describes man's ability to come to know and relate in "I-It" as man looking back, reflecting on his past "I-Thou" relations. Looking back these "I-Thou" relations are viewed as an object to be known, as "It". "I-It" relating allows man to interpret, categorize, and accrue scientific knowledge.

Finally man relates with others as "We." This permits the phenomenon of community and of adult unique contribution. So man becomes through relating with family, others, and community, like Hesse's onion or a being who actively moves toward ever more integuments, qualities, threads, and complexity.[9] Many unique contradictory type beings, then, have influenced the becoming of each individual human person. In a sense each unique person might be viewed as a community of the beings with whom he has meaningfully related in struggle and/or complementariness.

In fact Buber talks of thinking man as a dialogue of internalized "Thous."

COMMUNITY: NURSING

If each man can be likened to a community of his internalized "Thous,"

logically think of the outcome of many men struggling together supposedly for a common purpose. Since time began, man in community has been experienced by man as chaotic. Thus Plato wrote _The Republic_.[10]

This presentation depicted an impossible scheme for developing an ideal community. As a cla.s.sic, _The Republic_ continues to be a thought provoking thesis. Its antiquity makes one realize that this desire to control, our continued concern with genetic planning, is a part of the very nature of man. And yet, considering man's ever existing recognition of the chaos of community how naive we often behave, for example, enraged at experiencing _another_ communication break.

Plato envisioned regulating and controlling almost every dimension of the individual's existence in accordance with his particular potential for development to fulfill the needs of his ideally conceptualized community. Today Heinlein, a science fiction novelist, still writes of breeding for longevity in man, as we breed animal stock for the greatest amount of meat and profit.[11] Giving Plato his due, he recognized at the end of his book concern and doubt as to whether men so carefully mated and reared would fulfill their designated responsibilities. He wondered if things could, would, or would not go in accordance with his plan. He then logically indicated the process and kinds of community deteriorations which could ensue. Plato had a concept of an ideal community, of ideal types of necessary men, and of ideal male-female breeding relationships. He viewed our present-style family as one that saps the {46} strength of community and does not support this concept.

He conceived of communal living more like the communal living of our present-day communes. However, Plato's communes would have been regulated by the plan as he conceived it. Existence in these communes was to be predetermined and very determined.

Nursing, though not generally the ruling force of this type of planning, certainly is involved in control measures a.n.a.logous to Plato's. Nurses do influence who gets the hospital bed and who does not, who gets the specialized treatment and equipment, who is discharged and when, and what goes into the education and planning for post-hospital health care.

Also, how do our biases influence our teaching regarding family?

Innuendoes are frequent in the areas of birth control, abortion, and family size. So nurses can make a difference regarding community thought, purpose, and action.

Nietzsche put forth a concept of community of a more indefinite nature than Plato's.[12] Two major themes dominated the nature of community in his conception: (1) the legitimate purpose of community was the total support of its elite men and (2) the criterion for determining the elite was to be based on those who selected their own values with a "will" to say, "yes" to life. He referred to his elite as supermen. He questioned the realization of such a community because of the preponderance of conforming nonquestioning mediocre men. This complacent majority fearful of the different or strange would subdue the possibility of his supermen. Nietzsche did not seem to trust man; he spoke of him as "human, all too human." Unlike Plato, Nietzsche viewed "good" and "evil"

as arising from a common source. Man in his humanness, Nietzsche felt, denied his animal heritage and animal qualities. Recognition of these, of one's Dionysian nature, as a source of both "good" and "evil" was necessary for becoming superman.

To me it is wondrous to ponder my own conscious purposefulness and unconscious purposelessness, my quality of force as a member of the nursing and health communities, viewed through the deep extensive conceptualized thought Nietzsche bequeathed. I offhand consider our communities as egalitarian, part of a larger egalitarian society. Are they really? Does the citizen affect the quality of organizational structure in accordance with his existential needs while in our commonplace--the health-nursing world? Whose values set and direct on this stage of life? Do I, nurse, search out the values on which I want to base my nursing practice? Do I look for direction and values from others? Did I take on values during my initial nursing experience--values never to be reexamined?

Within the nursing community are there nurses eagerly noncomplacent and desirous of looking at, of sharing their explorations, and of determining and choosing the values that they want to underlie their nursing practice? {47} Would supernurses be allowed to be the mediocre many? Who would determine the elite of the nursing community? Could supernurses survive without approval of their being different? Would they be strengthened by the fruits of suffering in their struggle within the profession? Would these fruits of suffering contribute constructively to the strengthening of the nursing community?

Buber, like Nietzsche, sees man-in-community with possibilities for evolving, being, and becoming more. Buber trusts each man as a unique potential involved in an ongoing struggle with his fellows directed toward a center.[13] His nonstatic, nonselected community where men become in and through ongoing struggle with each other expresses the reality of my nursing world. Who would expect a community without struggle if they accepted each man as his history inclusive of antecedents that go back to beginnings of man's consciousness and of antic.i.p.ations that go forth into this man's notions of eternity?