Chapter 53 - Question Marks: Part 3 - Question Marks

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

When would the book be published? Would Crane come through with some money? How to close the Institute money gap in the meantime? And how would the Congress go? With these question marks as background, Korzybski once again took to the road.

First, from May 29 to June 2, he gave an intensive seminar at Dr. Hedin’s Interstate Clinic in Red Wing, Minnesota. He had most of the Institute staff come along since an overwhelming amount of other time-dependent work, especially related to the Congress, continued to need at least some of his direct attention. Korzybski probably would have preferred not going at all. But the Hedins made the situation somewhat more appealing by moving out of their home, staying with the Andersons, so Korzybski and his staff could have their cook as well as the run of their place. Korzybski found the seminar group an interesting one to work with. It included not only the Hedins and physicians from his clinic (and their wives), but also John Anderson and his wife Eugenie, Eugenie’s sister Mary (who would marry Charles Biederman at year’s end), other physicians and educators, as well as Isadore Fankuchin, a pioneer x-ray crystallographer and explorer in what would become known as “molecular biology”. The psychologist Charlotte Buhler and her psychiatrist husband Karl also attended a number of sessions. On June 9, Alfred was still in Red Wing doing post-lecture interviews, and only got back to Chicago a little before the June 16 start of the next intensive seminar scheduled at the Institute. July provided a break from seminars but not from the intense pace of work as preparations revved-up for the Denver Congress on August 1 and 2. 

Kendig arrived in Denver and set up an office on campus about a week before Korzybski got there, a day or two before the Congress began. About 300 attended, including University of Denver students and pre-registered people from around the country. The Program started on Friday morning, August 1, with some opening introductions and short addresses by Korzybski and others. Korzybski also spoke from notes to the entire Congress group in two general sessions, with material taken from his still unpublished “Introduction”. He entitled his first talk, after dinner on Friday evening, “Non-aristotelian Methodology: Neuro-linguistic and Neuro-semantic Factors in a Disintegrating Culture”. On Saturday night after the closing banquet he gave another talk to the general group entitled “Non-aristotelian Orientation: Neuro-social Integration without Regimentation”. Some 70 authors, most of whom attended the Congress, presented around 90 papers during two very full days in four concurrent sessions on: Psychosomatic Problems, Medicine, and Psychotherapy; Education; Speech and Speech Arts; and Public Affairs. 

One notable Congress contributor, engineer and anthropologist Benjamin Lee Whorf, had just died on July 26 at the age of 44. Korzybski had recognized him (and to some extent his mentor Edward Sapir) as an important non-aristotelian formulator. Through studying the Mayan, Aztec, Hopi, and other Native American languages and cultures, Whorf had come to conclusions similar to Korzybski’s about the relations of language, perceptual processes, and other behavior. Whorf referred to his theoretical framework as “the point of view of linguistic relativity”.(14) Whorf’s invited paper, “Languages and Logic: Chemical Compound or Mechanical Mixture, a Sentence Hides within its Structure Laws of Thought Profoundly Important to the Advance of Science”, was read at the Congress and later printed in the Congress papers. Whorf appeared to not have had much exposure to Korzybski’s work except through unreliable secondary sources. Whorf expressed concern to an editor in 1940 about having his work confused “with things like the recent popular stultification of a similar subject by Mr. Stuart Chase...” Earlier in 1941 he had written in a letter that, “For the immediate future, probably the loose-thinking ‘semanticists’ à la Stuart Chase, will introduce many popular cliche’s and make [the] term ‘semantics’ a hissing and byword, so that it will cease to be used by serious scientists.”(15) Korzybski was coming to conclude that too. Whorf’s agreement to participate in the Congress indicated a willingness to make a more direct connection to Korzybski and his work despite his hesitancy about popularizers like Chase. In his paper, Whorf had referred to the “far off event” in linguistic science of “a new technology of language and thought.” Korzybski and his students were already demonstrating that such a technology was not so far off after all. Whorf’s early death at this pivotal point of connecting with Korzybski was a lost opportunity for the work of both men. 

Korzybski felt unwell in Denver’s high altitude but at least one of the questions hanging over him had been answered very nicely: he felt very good about the Congress, which even got national publicity in an article in the August 11 issue of Time Magazine. (Regrettably, the Time article started with a by-this-time common mistake: “Last week 200 sworn enemies of Aristotelian logic gathered at the University of Denver...”) (16)

...The congress was a genuine success, the papers were mostly important and the attendance large. The great psychiatrist Dr. Adolf Meyer of Johns Hopkins attended the Congress, presented a paper and participated in many discussions of medical papers. At the opening of the Congress he introduced me at length in such a way that some of the audience were moved to tears. I admit that the Congress, and the unqualified warm approval of Meyer made this one of the happiest events of my life. (17)

Korzybski probably did not find out until later about the death on July 23 of his friend George E. Coghill, among biologists one of his strongest advocates. Coghill, already an honorary trustee of the Institute, had last written to Korzybski in April when he agreed to serve on the advisory committee of the Congress. 

Korzybski’s work would have figured prominently in Coghill’s uncompleted book, Principles of Development in Psycho-organismal Behavior, “designed to present a psychological and philosophical synthesis of his studies on organismic development and the significance of mentation in these vital processes.”(18) From remaining notes, Coghill’s friend and biographer, the neurologist C. Judson Herrick, paraphrased his views about “...the emergence of the specific human type of adjustment...by the process which Count Korzybski calls time-binding—the conscious blending of the past and future into the now of present experience.” 

As he [Korzybski] so passionately argues, this is the badge of our humanity. Our ability to forecast the future in terms of the past is the secret of our superiority over the brutes in control of the forces of nature, including social forces and, most important of all, the course of our own cultural development. (19) 

Korzybski and Kendig returned home from Denver and left almost immediately for an August 11 to 23 seminar at State College, Pennsylvania, during which Kendig assisted. Emmett Betts, the head of the Pennsylvania State College Reading Clinic, was sponsoring it and even offering it to students as a two-credit Graduate Education course under the title, “Psychology of Reading”. Ora Ray Bontrager, a professor of teacher training at the State Teachers College in California, Pennsylvania, and Director of the Reading Clinic there, helped organize the Penn State Seminar and also attended it—his third with Korzybski. Bontrager had not been able to attend the Denver Congress but had his paper “Re-education in Reading: A Report of Applications of General Semantics in Remedial Work in Reading” presented there. (It remains one of the best analyses of reading problems I’ve ever encountered.) Bontrager, trained in mathematics and psychology and a seasoned educator, had absorbed a great deal from Korzybski and was becoming a friend and ally.

Wisely, Korzybski had agreed to cancel another intensive at the Institute, scheduled to start August 26. Soon after returning home, however, he gave a presentation at the Unity of Science Conference at the University of Chicago in the first week of September. (He had written a complaint to Charles Morris, the Conference organizer, when he saw the preliminary program after coming back from Denver: it bothered him that he had been put in a little section on ‘Language’—and scheduled to speak last, besides. After some back and forth, Morris agreed to at least change the name of Alfred’s section to ‘Language and Personal-Social Orientation’. He also included Adolf Meyer on the program at Alfred’s request.) (20) A week later Alfred began teaching another intensive, with the lectures running from September 8 to 15 (the personal interviews as always extended the actual seminar work for Alfred beyond the final date). For several months, he had intermittently noted to Mira his ongoing sense of exhaustion. By the middle of September, he felt dead tired. 

The Second Edition of Science and Sanity (already printed in July) still hadn’t been issued.(21) Korzybski had held back the official publication date because of the unresolved business with Crane. In the acknowledgements at the end of the “Introduction”, he had wanted to add another paragraph expressing his gratitude for Crane’s initial interest in and financing of the Institute. With Crane’s obligations unfulfilled, Korzybski didn’t feel he could do that. However, sometime in September, he had to make a decision. He simply couldn’t wait any longer. On October 1, the Institute issued an addendum to its publication list announcing the availability for sale of the separately printed booklet of the “Introduction To The Second Edition” with “Supplementary Bibliography”. The notice also announced the availability of the Second Edition starting on November 1. Neither the booklet nor the limited number of books getting bound for the publication date would contain any acknowledgement to Crane. That bothered Korzybski (not just for sentimental reasons) and he was going to use this missing acknowledgement in a final October 28 appeal to Crane. 

...People know that you started to finance the Institute. Suddenly you stopped paying. People know that we are broke, and have been struggling along for two years. Naturally everybody asks the simple question, ‘What is wrong with the Institute or with Crane? I know of course what is ‘wrong’, but could not tell because you were my student...For historical reasons I have to give credit to you in my new edition for your interest and original financial help in starting the Institute. You and I have definite obligations toward the staff for our salaries. Besides, I have definite moral obligations toward the trustees and honorary trustees to carry on the work of the Institute. I feel my obligations very strongly. What I publish must adequately represent the facts of the situation and so depends on your clearing up your relationship with the Institute. In the most realistic way possible it is today a question of your name, Crane, against my name, Korzybski, and my reputation for fulfilling my obligations, which I did and am doing in spite of handicaps. Let us be clear on this subject: it is a question of your name or mine, and I can not damage my work to protect you...Something must be done about it very quickly, so please answer this letter promptly. (22)

Korzybski would have to wait a bit longer to see how this would work. 

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

14. Whorf, in Congress Papers, p. 44. 

15. Whorf qtd. in Penny Lee 1996, p. 16. 

16. “New Kind of Sense”. Time Magazine, 8/11/1941. 

17. AK to Cornelius Crane, 10/28/1941. IGS Archives. 

18. “Biographical Memoir of George Ellet Coghill” by C. Judson Herrick. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs, Vol. XXII: (251-273) 1942, p. 252. 

19. Herrick 1949, p. 215. 

20. Pearl Johnecheck to Charlotte Schuchardt, 8/27/1941. ‘CS Private’ file, IGS Archives. 

21. AK to MEK 7/28/1941. AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 6.349.

22. AK to Cornelius Crane, 10/28/1941. IGS Archives. 

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Chapter 53 - Question Marks: Part 2 - A Congress and a Book

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

In her January 5 memo, Kendig also reported to Korzybski about a long phone conversation she had with Elwood Murray about a Congress on General Semantics they hoped to hold sometime that year at the University of Denver. As early as 1939, Kendig had thought about having a symposium in 1943 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of Science and Sanity. But now it seemed that enough students had come through Korzybski’s seminars—and experienced personal results, made professional applications, and done sufficient research—to justify pushing up the time to the present. The publicity and interest engendered by a Congress on General Semantics might give a critical nudge to Crane and could also lead to new funding opportunities. 

But another more immediate push existed for holding such an event now—U.S. entry into the war seemed more likely than ever. If they were going to have it, they needed to get going without delay. Murray, who had infused the University of Denver Speech department with a strong korzybskian flavor, believed the University would support such an event and could cover the costs—including Kendig’s and Korzybski’s travel and other expenses—from the conference fees. Murray had initially wanted to limit papers to the field of education, but Kendig and Joe Brewer had convinced him to open the Congress to all fields from which they could possibly draw papers. During their phone conversation, Murray asked Kendig to provide names of possible presenters and a small number of invited speakers—besides Oliver Reiser, whom he wanted to have for an opening address on the broader cultural framework of Korzybski’s work. He also wanted Korzybski on the “advisory committee”. Kendig felt assured enough to give Murray the go-ahead over the phone without getting Korzybski’s permission first. Murray had gotten Kendig on the program of the Rocky Mountain Speech Conference in Denver from February 13-15. Once there she would stay an extra day to meet with him and solidify plans. In the meantime, Murray would put together a prospectus. (5) 

At their February meeting in Denver, the plans gelled. By the beginning of March, work had gotten underway on the Second American Congress on General Semantics, scheduled for August 1-2 under the auspices of the University of Denver. As the central theme of the Congress program they chose: “General Semantics and Methodological Foundations For Cultural Integration In Our Time”. Murray, the General Chairman of the Congress, would take care of the arrangements in Denver while Kendig, the General Secretary, would “secure the papers, organize and direct the program, etc.”(6) University of Denver Chancellor Caleb Gates, Jr. agreed to serve as Honorary President of the Congress. A slew of dignitaries (predominantly IGS Honorary Trustees) agreed to serve with Korzybski on the General Advisory Committee. A sponsoring committee from the University and the City of Denver, as well as program and organization committees were also formed. Writing in 1943, Kendig gave a sense of the flurry of activity required to bring it off:

...The decision to hold the Congress at the University of Denver in August, 1941, was not made until March first of that year. The announcement of the Congress and call for papers were sent out in April to some two thousand persons or institutions known to be interested in the subject. 

Citing these dates suggests the conditions under which the program was organized and the papers produced. For both the organizers and the contributors to the Congress, it was a race against time in the midst of world chaos, accelerating insecurity and disintegration of national morale. Our temerity in attempting to organize the Congress in four months, and those the busiest for the majority of the contributors (75 percent were in academic life), has been justified by developments. Had we aimed at an ‘ideal’ program ‘completely’ representative of those applying general semantics and doing allied work, had we taken a year to secure papers and arrange the program as common sense and the experience of others said we should, there could have been no Congress on General Semantics until after this war. By August, 1942, many of the contributors were in the armed forces, or otherwise engaged in war work, and travel conditions alone would have prevented the holding of a congress. (7) 

Korzybski probably felt glad that he didn’t have to do more than advise Murray and Kendig as they planned the Congress. He had enough else to keep him occupied. At the end of January, he started teaching an evening seminar, which ran until February 27. Beyond the immediate exigencies of teaching and the day-to-day business of the Institute, he also had to get out the Second Edition of Science and Sanity, to fulfill the large accumulation of back orders. Having just received the publisher’s proofs of the “Introduction to the Second Edition” in early February, he was editing and adding to it. (He would finish it in March although further correction of proofs would continue afterwards.) He was also working on the “Supplementary Bibliography of the Second Edition”, the new book jacket, and editing the proofs of the rest of the new front matter. A new page of the volumes in the International Non-Aristotelian Library listed one already published (Science and Sanity), those in preparation (including the upcoming Lee and Hayakawa books) and a revised list of the books whose authors would “be announced later”. Of the fifty-seven titles listed on that page only the three noted above ever got published. (Korzybski could be called naive but he believed in aiming high.) 

He also selected a new opening epigraph for the book in place of the ‘Fable of the Amoeba’ he had used in the First Edition. The new epigraph, placed after the dedication page, consisted of several related passages from Chapter II of Part III of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. They described Gulliver’s visit to the flying island of Laputa and his experience with some of its well-to-do but rather odd inhabitants. Although adept in mathematics and music, they indulged so ceaselessly in high-order abstractions and had so little practical sense that they had to hire individuals called “flappers” to remind them to pay attention to what was going on around them. (At least the residents of Laputa had sense enough to know they needed flappers.) (8) 

A Laputian Gentleman Taking A Walk

As with Swift, fierce indignation at human folly had long torn Korzybski’s heart. He probably couldn’t have chosen a better parable to illustrate the message of his book. Whether they recognized it or not, many if not most people (including mathematicians and scientists) seemed more or less in need of an extensional ‘flapper’ to bring them ‘down to earth’. Indeed, as he was finishing the “Introduction to the Second Edition”, the whole world seemed in need of flapping. With this Second Edition, Korzybski was taking another opportunity to flap people and, even more, to emphasize how they could flap themselves. 

In the “Introduction” he sought to cover not only the formulational refinements he had made since 1933, but also aspects of the original text of Science and Sanity he felt needed special emphasis. After the brief introductory section A. on “Recent developments and the founding of the Institute of General Semantics”, he devoted a lengthy Section B. to “Some difficulties to be surmounted” wherein he hoped to clarify some of the formulational blockages that seemed to prevent some people from understanding his work. 

This section concluded with part 5.“Methods of the Magician”. Korzybski had long had an interest in stage magic, employing simple tricks in his teaching to dramatically demonstrate mechanisms of misevaluation to his students. A brilliant young psychiatrist from California, Douglas McGlashan Kelley, who had attended Korzybski’s 1939 holiday intensive seminar, had stimulated his interest in magic still further. Korzybski would come to see Kelley as another of his most gifted students. As an undergraduate Kelley had already developed professional level skill as a stage magician. He had used magic as an adjunct to his psychiatric and educational work. In 1940, in the Journal of Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation, he published an article on “Conjuring as an Asset in Occupational Therapy”. Korzybski referred to it in part 5, while pointing out: “A scientific study of magic with its methods of psycho-logical deception is most revealing, as it shows the mechanisms by which we are continually and unknowingly being deceived in science and daily life.”(9) 

Korzybski would come to see the various forms of misdirection Kelley discussed as a good basis for understanding the psychology of deception the Germans and Japanese had been using so successfully in their war propaganda. And Kelley suggested in his Congress paper that: “At present the most efficient methods which we have of actively overcoming such misdirection are the principles involved in extensional evaluation and Korzybski’s non-aristotelian system.”(10) Korzybski very likely had read this by the time he completed the “Introduction”. In Section D, where he counterpoised “Old Aristotelian Orientations” to “Non-Aristotelian Orientations”, he had added “Methods of magic (self-deception)”, under the first and “Elimination of self-deception” under the second. He considered it important. In later teaching and writing he would often refer to Kelley’s work on magic and other writings of his as well.

The “Introduction to the Second Edition 1941” contains more material than I intend to elaborate here—much of it refinements Korzybski developed in papers published after 1933, which I’ve already covered. Perhaps the most important contribution of the “Introduction” consisted of the fact that Korzybski’s digest of the developments in his work would now be available alongside the original text of Science and Sanity. Those who took the time and effort to read carefully would be able to see the continuing evolution of his formulating. 

In some cases the innovations presented in the “Introduction” consisted of new packaging to clarify what he had already treated in the original text. The prime example of this consists of his discussion of the neuro-linguistic devices (indexes, dates, etc., quotes, and hyphens) that he had used throughout the book. Korzybski held that using them—along with slight hand motions when appropriate—modified the structure of people’s language and could help nudge their evaluating in an extensional direction. Based on the non-aristotelian principles he had elaborated, the devices provided a means of ‘self-flapping’. After 1933, he had explicitly written about the extensional devices in articles, but readers of the “Introduction” of this new edition could now find his filled-out treatment of them in one place in Science and Sanity. Since he hadn’t discussed them in one place in the original text as extensional devices, he considered this summary under one term a development of major significance in his work.(11) 

The “Introduction” also contained extensive discussion of the World War which the United States had not yet entered. Korzybski’s distress and anger about the continuing Japanese army assault against the Chinese and about the madness of Nazi German exterminationism, etc., appeared evident if restrained. The final sentence of the “Introduction to the Second Edition”—followed by his initials and the place and time-signature, “Chicago, March, 1941”—hints at his urgency: “A non-aristotelian re-orientation is inevitable; the only problem today is when, and at what cost.”(12) 

In addition to the new front matter, Kendig had suggested they include as back matter the scientific opinions he had obtained about the First Edition (previously printed as a promotional booklet in 1933). Science Press had to reformat this material which then needed further editing. He also was arranging to have the Front Matter, including the “Introduction” and “Supplementary Bibliography” of the Second Edition, printed as a sixty-page booklet, which the Institute would then be able to sell and distribute separately. Additionally, the Institute was obtaining and editing statements about professional applications from some of Alfred’s students to include in a thirty-two page promotional booklet, which would also contain selections of reviews of the First Edition. With all this to occupy Alfred and the Institute staff—besides the ongoing seminars and the Congress planning (soliciting and selecting papers, organizing the program, writing and editing the program pamphlet, etc.)—he could still write to Marian Van Tuyl, Douglas Campbell’s new wife, on April 6: “All the material for the second edition is already in the printer’s hands, and we expect the book out in two or three weeks.”(13) That was not going to happen. 

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

5. Kendig Memorandum to AK, 1/5/1941. IGS Archives. 

6. “Introduction”, Papers From The Second American Congress on General Semantics, p. xv. 

7. Ibid., pp. xv-xvi. 

8. See Swift, qtd. in Korzybski 1994 (1933, 1941), p. vi. 

9. Korzybski 1994 (1933, 1941), p. xlviii. 

10. Douglas M. Kelley, “Mechanisms of Magic and Self-Deception: The Psycho-logical Basis of Misdirection; An Extensional Non-Aristotelian Method for Prevention of Self-Deception” in Kendig, Papers From The Second American Congress On General Semantics, p. 59.

11. AK to Charlotte Schuchardt, Notes transcribed by C.S., 5/24/1949. IGS Archives. 

12. Korzybski 1994 (1933, 1941), p. lxxxi. 

13. AK to Mrs. Douglas Campbell, 4/6/1941. IGS Archives. 

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Chapter 53 - Question Marks: Part 1 - Introduction

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

On January 2, 1941, Korzybski finished the lecture portion of the Holiday Intensive, a seminar notable not only for the presence of his old friend Joseph Brewer, but also for two exceptional students, Francis P. Chisholm and Harry L. Weinberg, each of whom would become important general-semantics teachers. 

Chisholm, an English instructor at Syracuse University, had already attended the June 1940 seminar with his wife. He had a particular interest in the implications of general semantics for graduate school training in the humanities. Korzybski would develop a high regard for Chisholm and his talents. Within a few years, Chisholm was teaching an introductory course in general semantics at the Institute—a job few people had in Korzybski’s lifetime.

Weinberg—an industrial research chemist from Philadelphia—had first read Science and Sanity in 1939 and as he later wrote, “swallowed it whole—the book, the line, the thinker.” He and his wife Blanche—anticipating imminent U.S. entry into the war and the possibility of Harry getting drafted (as it turned out an accurate prediction)—had quit their jobs in 1940 to take a four month, thousand-mile-long canoe trip together. As Harry wrote:

Neither of us had ever been in a canoe before and so our progress at first was slow. Even slower was my reprogress through Science and Sanity. Each morning I would read a page or two and spend the rest of the day thinking about them while paddling. I like to think that my understanding and my biceps improved at about the same rate. (1) 

Attending Korzybski’s Holiday seminar improved his understanding still further. After the war he began his next career as a teacher of speech communication and GS. Korzybski would declare him one of his most gifted students.

The Holiday seminar had gone well for other reasons. R. F. Hedin, a surgeon who ran the Interstate Clinic, a multi-disciplinary medical practice in Red Wing, Minnesota, attended with his wife. Impressed with what he had absorbed at the seminar, Hedin not only decided to add a psychiatrist to his staff but also invited Korzybski to come to Red Wing to give a seminar. The Hedins and another attendee, independently wealthy Red Wing artist and photographer John Anderson, also donated money to the Institute. Both the Hedins and Anderson probably came to Korzybski at the suggestion of Charles Biederman, a painter/sculptor friend of Anderson, who had spent time in Red Wing and had attended one of the Institute’s earliest seminars in August 1938. (Biederman, profoundly affected by Korzybski, had begun work on a non-aristotelian theory of art and art history, later published in the 1948 book, Art As The Evolution Of Visual Knowledge.)

While Korzybski was giving his final lecture on January 2, Kendig was having meetings and making plans for the coming year. In a January 5 memo to Korzybski, she reported on the two-hour meeting she had with Irving J. Lee, who had gotten very busy. Besides his regular teaching, he had just had an article published on “General Semantics and Public Speaking” in the December 1940 Quarterly Journal of Speech and was in the midst of giving a series of talks around Chicago to men’s and women’s groups. As he told Kendig, he also planned to meet with an official from the Rosenwald Fund, an educational foundation, to see if he could get money for the Institute. He would present GS as a method for dealing with race prejudice and antisemitism.

Lee also told Kendig perhaps his most exciting news: he had just signed with Harper & Row to write a book based on the material from the “Language and Thought” course he’d begun at Northwestern in the Spring of 1940. (Kendig and Alvin Weinberg, among others, had served as guest lecturers.) He’d contracted to deliver a manuscript to the publisher in April. Lee showed Kendig the chapter outlines of the book, to be called Words Are Not Enough!: An Introduction To General Semantics.(2) (It seems unfortunate he later changed this catchy and quite fitting title to the more academic and restrictive one of Language Habits In Human Affairs.) He would write it in less than five months while teaching his regular course load. Along with Hayakawa’s Language In Action, Lee’s book would for many people provide an entry to Korzybski’s work more easily accessible than Science and Sanity. Korzybski unhesitatingly promoted the work of both men in private letters and in Institute announcements, although it seems clear that Lee had especially impressed Korzybski. He read Lee’s manuscript and Lee asked him to write the foreword, which he did in August, commenting that,

...Its theoretical foundations are solid, presented in a common-sense practical language. Besides, from his long study the author gives a wealth of examples which are very illuminating and important. For years I have been hoping that a student of general semantics would write just such a book. I am satisfied that Dr. Lee has done it. In my own work I shall have to keep his book on my desk as a handbook that I may benefit from his erudition and examples. (3) 

After the book came out in December, Korzybski told Mrs. Dewing, “It really is a very workable and remarkable book. Lee is one of my best students, and for the time being, if I coagulate he is the best man at present we could have as the head of the Institute.”(4) 

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

1. Weinberg, p. xii. 

2. Lee’s book was listed as Words Are Not Enough! in preliminary ‘Front Matter’ page proofs of the Second Edition of Science and Sanity. IGS Archives. 

3. Korzybski, “Foreword” Language Habits In Human Affairs, p. x. 

4. AK to F. Dewing, 12/11/1941. IGS Archives. 

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": Part 4 - "Do You See Red?"

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

As Alfred was putting the finishing touches on his presentation in early May, grim news continued to come out of Europe. Poles who had escaped to the West had already told of the widespread destruction inflicted on their country by both Nazi and Soviet invaders.(12) In Scandanavia, the Germans were wrapping up a spring offensive against Norway and Denmark and moving into Luxemburg, Holland, and Belgium, which soon fell. In June, Alfred got his U.S. citizenship and may have quietly celebrated by going out to eat at a fish and chips place with Mira.(13) As the month progressed, when he was not teaching or writing, the news of the fall of France absorbed him. In an astonishingly short period of time, the Germans—moving down from Belgium—had simply gone around, and to some extent through, the major portion of the “Maginot Line”, the extensive series of defense fortifications the French had built along the German and Italian borders with great confidence that they could hold back the Nazi advance. By the end of June, Germany occupied the northern half of France while a collaborationist French puppet government was establishing itself in the south with its capital in Vichy. Korzybski expressed his disgust in part 1 of section H of the “Introduction” which he entitled ‘Maginot Line Mentalities’:

Present day scientific researches and historical world developments show there is no doubt that the old aristotelian epoch of human evolution is dying...I doubt if in the whole of human history there is a more accentuated illustration than the tragic and sudden collapse, in the summer of 1940, of the French government and army, and eventually of French culture and ‘democracy’...We test the freshness or deterioration of fishes by smelling the head end, and as we know at the date of this writing, the head ends of the French ‘democracy’ have a putrid odor...The ‘Maginot line mentality’ will become a historical classic, and will be applied quite appropriately to other than military fields. It means a thoughtless, self-deceptive, etc., ‘security’ in antiquated systems as matched by modern methods of 1940. (14)  

However demoralized he may have felt, he didn’t mope. His typical style of coping consisted of staying busy and getting busier, working as hard as he possibly could. He was teaching an Intensive Seminar and trying to finish his “Introduction to the Second Edition”. In June, one of his tasks in relation to that included writing to a number of scholars, luminaries, and others whom he knew, for examples of over/under defined terms in their fields. In July he started an evening seminar and in August another intensive. By the end of that month, he finished the first draft of the Introduction and began editing it with Kendig, Charlotte, and Pearl. Meanwhile, the main text for the new edition of the book was being printed.

With all this activity, he only saw Mira occasionally, talked with her on the phone perhaps once a week, and wrote an occasional letter (she wrote to him more often). Pearl and to some extent Charlotte, had become significant intermediaries between the two of them. Mira was becoming quite friendly with them. While she found the infrequent contact with Alfred unsatisfactory, she kept busy with other things. She was living and painting in her studio apartment on the Near North Side. In July, she had gone to Kansas City to visit her sisters. Minnie now had a room in a rest home that seems to have functioned much like an “assisted living facility”. Amy was thinking of giving up her farm and joining Minnie. When Mira returned from her trip, she busied herself with elaborating her notes from the IGS seminars she had audited with Alfred’s permission. For years, she had had a tremendous involvement with Alfred’s work. She had always given it the highest importance. Now despite the troubles of recent years between them, despite her promises to not involve herself with the Institute and with his work, she had gotten re-engaged.

On August 16, Mira sent a blue presentation folder to Alfred. The first of the twenty-six collated pages, obviously the title page, had the following in large type at its center: “When Where and How do you see RED? ask ME one of the Million”. The word “RED” was printed in red. As she later explained to Alfred, she was not presenting this as anything more than her rough ruminations. In a note to him that accompanied the manuscript, she wrote that a wealthy woman she had met in the course of her work had gotten interested in GS through discussions with her and had paid to get Mira’s crude typing neatly mimeographed. Mira also gave copies to one or two friends, besides this woman and Alfred. On the bottom right of the title page was typed “Copyright 1940” with “Mira Edgerly” below that. On the bottom left, was typed “Witness:" with a blank line below it.

Inside were the results of Mira’s ponderings as she had studied her seminar notes and considered the war in Europe and Asia. GS, for her, gave a new and important slant to the age-old theme, “the pen is mightier than the sword”. The opening page shows a deep and heartfelt understanding of her husband’s work and a clear talent for expressing it, albeit in an amateurish way:

“The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”

“Whose Pen?”

Read and see for yourself.

This pen, with which my hand is making these dark marks on this white paper; these word-marks, as objects, or as recorded language is of no living-value to any living-being. For, what is under my hand is neither edible...clothable...sleepable...sit-onable. I ask you to eat, to dress, to sleep or to sit-on this piece of paper: What then is it, in any pen that is mightier than the sword?

It is in the fact that when, and only when these pen-marks are taken as tools for communication, these tools which I now am using and with which I am now trying to convey what is going-on inside my skin to inside your skin; namely, their living-value to you depends entirely on how much alive you are to the neurological processes involved. These pen-marks are an extension onto this paper of what is going on inside my skin and its living-value to you, inside your skin, is entirely in proportion as to how your living nervous system reacts to those pen-marks and what you make out of them, inside your skin...(15)

When he read the manuscript, Alfred ‘saw red’ alright. On August 18, he wrote to C.B. Congdon:

Dear C. B.,
I am deeply distressed by my wife’s latest episode in mimeographing. It looks to me very similar to the episode she had around 1936. ...This episode lasted for a pretty long time, and as you know, did endless harm to me and my work. 

After her South American trip she seemingly recovered. Now seemingly she has another episode which most probably will be more harmful to our work and me than the first one. 

The enclosed latest verbalistic outburst I am afraid shows clearly the symptoms of another forthcoming episode. I am afraid I made a mistake to let her attend my seminars, in spite of the fact that I insisted on her attending as a student, not as a wife. It seems that it only supplied her with material for some worthless verbalism. By now I know that my direct dealing with her leads nowhere. 

I did my best for 21 years and I admit I see no results. 

I will be very grateful to you if you would see her, diagnose her case, and give her some stern advices which perhaps would be more effective than whatever I may say...

...I telephoned to my wife, roughly telling her the content of this letter, asking her to stop distributing her mimeographed episodes, and I am sending to her a copy of this letter. My seeing her personally would do no good and I believe should be avoided. (16) 

Alfred not only phoned Mira, he apparently visited her the previous day. Neither conversation could have been a happy one. In a note dated then—Saturday, August 17—Mira wrote: “Doubtless you had a taste of the flood – I had over the phone – after you left – today.” Above this she had copied down the following limerick, which seems easy to read, in this context, as a testament of the shame she must have felt:

“How happy is the moron,
he doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My gosh, perhaps I am.”(17) 

Alfred finished his letter to Congdon with further complaints about Mira’s spending habits and the trouble her ‘episode’ had caused him. He already had a mixed reputation in the academic/scientific community around Chicago and was not totally unconcerned about what people might think.

Allen Walker Read could testify to the academic resistance of many at the University of Chicago. An English language scholar and lexicographer, he would not attend his first Korzybski seminar until the 1941 Winter Intensive, but he had already become one of Korzybski’s most solid students and supporters. Born in Minnesota in 1906, Read grew up in Iowa where his father worked as the one-man science faculty of Iowa State Teacher’s College in Cedar Falls. With a love of the English language inspired by H. L. Mencken’s The American Language, Read had decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and take up an academic career studying English as a scientist. With a 1926 M.A. in English from the University of Iowa, he taught English at the University of Missouri before being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford University from 1928 to 1932 where he specialized in descriptive linguistics and lexicography. His extensional attitude and down-to-earth interest in how people talk had already led him in the late 1920s to collect material, i.e., men’s room graffiti, that others did not consider suitable for academic study in English. His resulting book on ‘nasty’ words, Lexical Evidence From Folk Epigraphy In Western North America: A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary had to be privately published in Paris in 1935 in a limited edition of 75 copies. (It was reprinted in 1977 by Maledicta Press under the title, Classic American Graffiti.) In 1932, Read had come to work at the University of Chicago as a research associate and as an Assistant Editor of the Dictionary of American English. He first heard of Korzybski in 1936, read Science and Sanity at that time, and found that Korzybski’s system provided a congenial, scientific orientation for his own studies. “It struck me as exemplifying the rigorous intellectual discipline that I was looking for.”(18) Read had left Chicago for England in 1938 on a Guggenheim fellowship. Unable to stay there when the war started in the fall of 1939, he returned to the U.S. where he finished out his fellowship in 1940 by studying at the New York City Public Library. He returned to Chicago in 1941, to become a colleague of S. I. Hayakawa at the Armour Institute of Technology as an instructor of English. He would also come to know Korzybski and become friends with Kendig, and Charlotte Schuchardt (whom he would marry in 1953).

Allen Walker Read Photo by Charlotte Schuchardt Read, 1954(19)

Even before his return to Chicago, Read had had a chance to observe the responses to Korzybski in the academic community there:

...Intellectual interests were very much polarized by the new young president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and by his henchman Mortimer Adler. They espoused the “Great Books” movement, which seemed to many of us to be backward-looking and in opposition to experimental science... (20)  

Korzybski...was not much accepted by the University community. There were several reasons for this. He was regarded as “over-eager”—pushing his own worth too zealously. Then he used the word “non-Aristotelian” to describe his work, and the defenders of Aristotle’s greatness took offense. Any amount of explaining that Korzybski respected and even venerated Aristotle did not suffice. Furthermore, Korzybski did not come up from a specialized discipline, as one is supposed to do, but burst forth as a full-blown generalist. And he was scornful of the traditional philosophers. I have even heard him use the callow word-play “foolosophers,” and no wonder the foolosophers boycotted him. (21)

Mira certainly did not want to give ammunition to the ‘foolosophers’. She had not intended her missive to be taken too seriously—even with her mention of ‘copyright’ on the first page and of the ‘publisher’ in the text. She had only given copies to a few interested friends and to Alfred. But Alfred did have a certain point in believing he couldn’t afford to have her playing around like that. People would tend to judge her—as his wife—by different, more stringent standards and would, in turn, be likely to judge him by her behavior.

Mira regretted what she had done. But Alfred’s severity disturbed her. She felt he was making too much of the whole thing—to the point of gross unfairness. She felt, as she told him, that he had still not acknowledged his own part in their ongoing vicious circle. Since she had returned from South America at the end of 1938, Mira had felt increasingly cut off from Alfred by his request not to involve herself with his work and with the Institute. Since the founding of the Institute, and especially with the beginning of that year’s financial crisis, he had become even more single-focused on his work. As a result he had almost no time left for her and she yearned for more contact. Besides, his request for her to not get involved with his work had become impossible for her to follow. She had always felt interested, and her attendance at the seminars (with his permission) had awakened her interest still further. She had also felt unduly constrained by his request for her to avoid communicating with people at the University of Chicago and others whom she knew, who were somehow connected to his work. Now, Alfred trusted her even less.

Mira felt she couldn’t win. When she tried to explain and to document her side of things to Congdon, Alfred accused her of broadcasting their private life again. (Congdon may have talked to Mira a few times and received some letters from her but otherwise seems to have wisely avoided getting himself caught in the middle of the dispute.) Alfred also complained about her spending habits over the last year. In 1939 he had agreed to her spending extra money in order to set up her painting studio/apartment. This amount was over and above the regular amount Alfred was giving to her as a monthly stipend for her rent and daily expenses. (She got extra money as well from Alfred’s book royalties, which he considered her due.) She had intended to pay back this ‘loan’ within the next year and she did. She felt Alfred had no right to complain.

With all their problems, they didn’t stop communicating. When Mira wouldn’t answer the phone for fear of a tirade from Alfred, he would write to her. Pearl would also call or come by to take her to the bank, give her news of the Institute, or drop off something Alfred wanted her to see. In the first week of October Pearl dropped off a draft of Alfred’s “Introduction” for Mira to read. Alfred wanted to rub in the point, as he wrote in a letter to her then, that she had very little understanding of what serious writing entailed. He would not dare to publish anything he had not painstakingly edited first. This, the tenth draft, still didn’t satisfy him. (By this time, the text of the Second Edition was already printed and the “Introduction”, the manuscript of which he finally sent off to Science Press in mid-November, remained the chief thing to be done.)

Mira could admit that Alfred had some reasonable points to make about her behavior. But did he have to be so hard on her? He threw up to her things she had previously said and done that he might better have forgiven and forgotten. He blamed her for other things too. For example, he wrote to her that her 1936 ‘broadcast’ had been responsible for their current financial mess by planting a seed of alienation in Campbell and—through him—in Crane. But did responsibility for what happened in 1936 lay solely on Mira’s shoulders? And how could he know that Crane’s withdrawal from the Institute had anything much to do with that whole sorry episode? Worrying about money and how he was going to keep a roof over either of their heads, Alfred seemed too distressingly busy as 1940 came to a close, to be able to hear Mira’s side of things. It didn’t help that he wasn’t feeling well. What seemed like a bad cold turned into pneumonia. It laid him low and lingered on into the spring of 1941, though for the most part he kept on working.

The Institute’s problems at the end of the year were not due to lack of recognition. The response of the psychiatric and mental health communities had been outstanding. New university courses incorporating GS continued to get organized. Articles about Korzybski and his work were being published in professional journals, magazines, and the daily press. The 1940 version of Hayakawa’s Language in Action had gotten favorable reviews. 

In June a short book by Aldous Huxley, Words And Their Meanings, had come out which gave more attention to Korzybski’s work. Huxley, a resident of Los Angeles, had first read Science and Sanity in 1938. He wrote then to his brother Julian:

“Have you read Korzybski’s Science and Sanity? If not, I think you shd—in spite of the fact that the author is maddening and his book 800 pp long. For he does seem to have said things about ‘Semantics’—the relation of words to things and events—which are of the highest importance. And incidentally he seems to have read practically everything.” (22) 

In Los Angeles, the movie world had also discovered Korzybski. In 1939 screenwriter and producer Robert Lord had read Science and Sanity, written some articles about it in Rob Wagner’s Script, a Los Angeles-based magazine along the lines of The New Yorker, and had attended the 1939 Winter Intensive seminar. Lord was helping the Institute with a monthly donation and, along with some of Korzybski’s other Los Angeles students, may have been one of those responsible for getting a number of Hollywood actors and actresses interested as well. 

Korzybski’s work figured prominently in Oliver Reiser’s book The Promise of Scientific Humanism, published at year’s end. Topping the 1940 publicity for the Institute, the national magazine Newsweek published an article “A Healer of Mental Muddles” with a photograph of Korzybski in the “Education” section of its December 30 issue.

Unfortunately all this publicity had so far not translated into adequate funding and Korzybski was struggling just to keep the Institute afloat. As he wrote to Mrs. Dewing, “...we have got more recognition than could possibly be expected, except that most of the people we are dealing with are of very limited means, so we have recognition but very little money.”(23) As for the muddle between him and Mira, it seemed anything but healed. By the beginning of 1941, Mira wanted no more of her no-win situation with Alfred. She decided to leave Chicago. 

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

11. AK to Cornelius Crane, 6/3/1939. IGS Archives. 

12. “Poles Gather Data On ‘Pillage’ By Foes”, New York Times, Jan. 19, 1940. 

13. MEK to AK, 6/13/1940. AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 6.491. 

14. Korzybski 1994 (1933). “Introduction To The Second Edition 1941”, p. lxix. 

15. “When Where and How do you see Red?” AK Archives, Box 22, Folder 4. 

16. AK to C.B. Congdon, 8/18/1940. IGS Archives. 

17. MEK to AK, 8/17/1940. AK Archives, Box 22.6.467. 

18. Allen Walker Read. “Changing Attitudes Toward Korzybski’s General Semantics”. General Semantics Bulletin 51, p. 12. 

19. Allen Walker Read having tea at “The Honeypot”, Pevensey Bay, England, July 11, 1954. Photograph by Charlotte Schuchardt Read. IGS Archives. 

20. Allen Walker Read. “A Personal Journey Through Linguistics” in Allen Walker Read 2002, p. 307. 

21. Ibid., p. 309. 

22. Aldous Huxley to Julian Huxley, July 22, 1938. in Smith 1969, p. 436. 

23. AK to F. Dewing, 9/10/1940. IGS Archives.

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Chapter 52 - "Recognition But Very Little Money": Part 3 - Sanity Update

Korzybski: A Biography (Free Online Edition)

Copyright © 2014 (2011) by Bruce I. Kodish 

All rights reserved. Copyright material may be quoted verbatim without need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder, provided that attribution is clearly given and that the material quoted is reasonably brief in extent.

He considered his conference paper an important project. Entitling it “General Semantics, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Prevention”, he managed to get an extra ten minutes to present it (over the usual twenty minute allotment for such papers). Douglas Campbell, also presenting a GS-related paper, and Adolf Meyer were picked to discuss his paper afterwards. Korzybski had already been working on the various changes and additions to the front matter for the Second Edition of Science and Sanity. With new copies of the book no longer available, back orders were accumulating. Getting out a new edition seemed urgent. His paper for the psychiatric conference would serve as a prototype for the main job he needed to do for the Second Edition—a new Introduction.

In both, he would present an updated picture of his work with the refinements and sharpened formulations he had developed since 1933. In the psychiatry paper he would include more detail about the preventive, educational work he and his students had done with groups and individuals, giving a number of examples to show the application of his evaluation-oriented epistemology to personal problems that psychiatrists were apt to view as strictly medical. (These, as well as a number of other illustrative examples, plus a couple of diagrams, and a table showing the differences between aristotelian and non-aristotelian orientations all got deleted from the abridged version of the paper published in the September 1941 American Journal of Psychiatry.) He also addressed the role he thought psychiatry and general semantics should play in the developing war-related complex of world problems.

Only a few days after the invasion of Poland the previous September, Korzybski had sent letters to the Polish government-in-exile, and to British and U.S. government officials—including President Roosevelt—explaining that role:

Today newspapers everywhere, except in Germany call Hitler a mad man, etc., ...Name-calling, to which politicians and newswriters are making us so accustomed, will, of course, be ineffective in the long run. The Institute of General Semantics suggests that the respective governments stop calling names, and call experts. By experts, in this case, we mean competent professional psychiatrists...to sit as a sanity tribunal. After studying all the available data, furnished by the governments, this psychiatric tribunal would, without doubt, technically speaking, unanimously establish the ‘insanity’ of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, etc. ...We in the Institute feel that if such a professional verdict of psychiatrists would be published and distributed by governments, it would stop the ‘insanity’ of the present situation. This would become the most powerful verbal weapon to break the spell of Hitlerism. It is not realized what a profound psycho-logical effect such a diagnosis would have on the people, particularly in Europe...The Institute of General Semantics is willing to offer all the professional help eventually needed, but we are not in a position to undertake such activities on our own. (6) 

As he later noted he “received only two polite acknowledgements” to these letters.(7) Still, he would repeat the suggestion and elaborate upon it throughout the duration of the war and afterwards.

One of the things he would emphasize both in the psychiatry paper and the “Introduction to the Second Edition” was the importance of “New factors: [and] the havoc they play with our generalizations.”(8) If medicine and the behavioral/social sciences needed psychiatry, then psychiatry, in turn, needed GS. In particular, the new factors—as he had formulated them—of “our neuro-semantic (neuro-evaluational) and neuro-linguistic environments as environment”(9) seemed to him crucial for psychiatrists and governmental leaders to take seriously.

In his paper for the psychiatric conference, Korzybski recommended the expansion of the sanity tribunal he had suggested in his earlier letter to leaders. The Germans under Hitler showed a notable ability to use “pathological verbal distortion” and other propagandistic and psychological methods as part of its ‘war of nerves’ against the allies. (Korzybski would soon refer to this in his “Introduction to the Second Edition” as the Nazi ‘war on nerves’.) The ‘sick’ Nazi, Fascist, and Japanese governments at least intuitively understood the importance of shaping the neuro-linguistic and neuro-evaluational environments, even if they didn’t formulate exactly in those terms. To this end, the Nazis, et al, purposely employed psycho-logical methods against their enemies. As he saw it, the governments of the so-called free world needed to marshal their psychiatrists and other experts in human behavior—including advisors in GS—to consciously counteract these methods and fight back with their own explicit neuro-evaluational, neuro-linguistic means.(10) 

Korzybski estimated that something like five hundred people attended his talk and he felt happy with his reception at the conference. As he wrote to Crane soon afterwards, he found the people he met there “very warm and friendly and interested.” Despite this, the bad war news weighed painfully upon him, though it also seemed to goad him to continue his hard work. As he noted to Crane (trying to goad him as well):

The first World War ruined me financially, very considerably, and I was also injured physically, for which I am still paying the price. The recent annihilation of Poland deprived me of the rest...I have seen too many dead and dying, too much destruction and suffering, not to realize what it all means for the future hence my investigations of factors of proper evaluation, predictability, sanity, etc., ...You may understand at present, judging by facts, why the work of the Institute is now, more than ever, of such extreme human importance.(11)

Notes 

You may download a pdf of all of the book's reference notes (including a note on primary source material and abbreviations used) from the link labeled Notes on the Contents page. The pdf of the Bibliography, linked on the Contents page contains full information on referenced books and articles. 

6. AK to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 9/7/1939. IGS Archives. 

7. “Introduction to the Second Edition 1941” in Korzybski 1994 (1933), p. lxxvii. 

8. Ibid., p. lv. 

9. Ibid., p. lvi. 

10. “General Semantics, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy And Prevention”, American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 98 (2), September, 1941. p. 213. Reprinted in Alfred Korzybski Collected Writings, p. 306–307.

11. AK to Cornelius Crane, 6/3/1939. IGS Archives.

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