Separating from the Organization: Subjective Desire, Struggle and Social Responsibility in the Life of the Entrepreneur

I. The Struggle to Separate

My business came into being when 1000 copies of my first book, Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology, was delivered to my apartment in twenty cartons in January, 1975. Actually, I didn't know I was in business. All I knew was that I'd been developing certain ideas for sixteen years and wanted to share these with the world.

I'd been in "the system" my entire life. >From 1963 to 1970 I studied psychology and received a Ph. D., earning my living during that time as a college instructor. I'd been programmed for academic life, but felt bored, restless, seeking a way out. I was pontificating theories of how the world worked but never had been in the world. A momentous note on my calendar in the Fall of 1970 read, "Say yes to market research." And so I entered the world of big business. I went on interviews and was impressed by the brightness of the corporate environment. I had three jobs from 1972 to 1975, two at qualitative research firms, one at an advertising agency. I wrote in-depth reports on toilet bowl cleaners, dishwashing liquid, time-keeping and clocks for General Electric, the dynamics of cookie-consumption for Pepperidge Farm. I did a study for a health-food company, for which my firm received $100,000 on "What It Means for Americans to Feel Good." Presumedly if you knew what "feeling good" meant for Americans, then you could develop and promote a product whose promise was that it would create that state of being.

Prior to my first market research job, I'd completed the manuscript for Hitler's Ideology. I mailed it to approximately seventy-five publishers over a two-year period and each of them declined to take it on. During 1973-74 I studied self-publishing and decided to bring the book out myself. A design firm let me use their facility in the evening when it was not in use. This was before word-processing and it took me several months to typeset and paste-up the book. I obtained a third position to earn money to pay for the printing. The firm decided not to re-hire me at about the same time the books were delivered.

My small apartment on West 95th Street was crowded. The goal was to empty the apartment by getting the book into the hands of persons who would read it. I wrote and typeset a one-page flyer, printed 10,000 copies, inserted the flyers into 10,000 envelopes, sealed the envelopes and, using several relevant mailing lists, stuck 10,000 pressure-sensitive labels on them. The exciting part was reading the names of the prospects. Many were authors whose books I'd read during my long apprenticeship in college. I wanted them to know I'd written a book. I learned about third-class bulk-rate mail, tied and bundled the envelopes and delivered them, like Santa Claus with his sacks, to the post-office on 33rd Street and Ninth Avenue.

In the next month I received about 150 orders, many from persons whose names were familiar. My second order was from Abraham Kardiner, the famous psychoanalytic anthropologist. I typed invoices (the book sold for $7.95 and I believe I added 75 cents for shipping), inserted them in Jiffy bags and dropped them into the mailbox. I mailed books to reviewers and a columnist for the Village Voice interviewed me and wrote an article. But what was I to do next?

Fortunately, I discovered or invented a "marketing concept" which made it possible to get Hitler's Ideology into the hands of college instructors and onto the shelves of libraries. My first year in business was spent sending out flyers and trying to get my book into every single college library in the United States. After promoting it for a year, I got an order for 200 copies from the wholesaler, Baker and Taylor. They'd selected the book for its "approval program." I was very innocent then. I called the man in charge of the program and asked him had he read my book. Was it selected because it was such an excellent work? No, he replied, he was simply responding to its recent sales activity.

I soon realized other books could be marketed through the technique I'd developed. My "product" became remainder or "bargain books" which I purchased from Barnes and Nobles. My unemployment checks have stopped coming in and I've no other source of income. I'm mailing out flyers in a modest way. The concept seems to work. I've begun to write my next book but, who knows, maybe I'm in business.

Two consultants visit to give me some hints and improve my cash-flow. They provide a few crucial insights, ones I never would have come up with myself: (1) Send out past-due notices, call your customers, bring your money in quickly. (2) Pay your bills, let your money out slowly. (3) A flyer is not enough. Call the librarians, wake them up, get them to place an order now.

The consultants begin planning strategies, inviting me to Fire Island to meet investors. They are doing all the talking. I'm beginning to feel left out. They start telling me what to do and it's like I'm working for them. I decide, abruptly, that their services no longer are needed. They're shocked and angry, how could I be so ungrateful. I almost got into a fight with one of them. But I think they were happy, at least, that I'd learned my lessons: I paid their bill slowly.

At first one does things in a reasonable way. But at a certain moment things begin to heat up. In the Summer of 1977 I began marketing art books because their selling price was three times that of social science books. I did a large mailing to art professors in the Fall and received an excellent response. I began working out of an office on the second floor of the warehouse where my books were now stored. Soon I'm purchasing books to sell from the same companies that supply Barnes & Noble. The jiffy bags are much bigger and the art books five times heavier. The mailman says the corner mail-box is stuffed, I'd better deliver the books to the post-office. I run an ad in the New York Times and hire a young man. I'm moving forward. On my own.

As you separate from the large institutions to which you had been connected, disidentify, you feel you have to be big. You want to grow quickly and feel you need help to do so. You explore bank-loans, venture-capital, investors, etc. so things can happen fast. For most entrepreneurs, however, the idea that someone will give you money is a delusion. But there is a way to capitalize a business and this is through the vehicle of trade credit. This is how the American system makes it possible for persons to separate from the system. It's not difficult to open accounts and receive furniture, office supplies, books, whatever you need to "start up."

There's an abundant supply of books hanging around publishers' warehouses. It's not difficult to press a button on a printing press. The more copies one prints, the lower the unit-cost. Selling these books is another story. Many important books can be purchased for almost nothing. Once I realized how easy it was to obtain product, I began to order more books than needed. I felt compelled to bring material objects into my business. One is traumatized by the experience of separation from institutions. One no longer is "at one" with the massive American breast. One compensates for the sense of loss by bringing stuff into one's private space. Trade credit is the umbilical cord connecting you to organizations, nourishing you as you build strength to survive.

Educated persons often live their entire lives in relationship to institutions so its hard to convey the experience of disconnection. One no longer feels "contained" by society. One feels rejected, ejected. One's small body has been split off from the body politic. One exists within the confines of a private space. But you're past the phase where there's anything to return to. Your only choice is to move forward. But you're not ready to be cut off from the "oral supplies" which only the system can provide. Trade credit is the umbilical cord, infusion of capital, blood transfusion, how you stay nourished though separate. America, you feel, is obligated to feed you. After all, you're the real American son, striving to be independent and free.

II. Hysteria

The need to be fed by organizations leads to the need to escape from them. They provided the credit which helped your business move forward. But now they want to be paid. You need more time, time to figure out how to run a business. You devise ways to shield yourself from creditors. You develop a paranoid stance toward government agencies. You imagine they might come and get you for some infraction. You develop a phallic will in opposition to the institutions with which once you felt connected. You're determined to survive, in spite of your "oppressors." You ask yourself, "Am I strong enough to stay in business in the face of those who might try to put me out of business?"

There's need for activity, movement. "Intellectual," to the entrepreneur, means thought detached from action, ideas without consequence. To escape the introverted state, womb within, requires will-power. You're moving furniture and boxes around, taking objects out of boxes, bringing files and papers into the open. You're beginning to live, not in your mind, but in physical space. The space is one you've created, so it is the externalization or materialization of your mind. You look at the objects in this space in order to perceive who you are.

Hysteria, I think, stems from knowing you are disconnected, a separate entity in a private space, no longer fused with the outside world. You're angry you have to "do it alone," feel hurt, abandoned. The idea of "a job" becomes ancient history, though you envy and resent those whom you imagine are still securely embedded within organizations. The Law provides a boundary, telling what you can and cannot do, protecting you from yourself and others. You learn how the legal system works and devise "repayment schedules," like Donald Trump, often lasting for several years. The system is very lenient. A momentous discovery is the perception of mind within will. You've glorified energy, determination as keys to success. But then you realize that your brain, after all, is in charge. So really it's impossible to "go out of business." If they auction your furniture, they won't take your brain. The fear of being consumed is the wish to return from whence one came.

III. Shrinkage

The "start up" phase is a burst into reality, activation of the phallic will, struggle to separate from institutions and one's introverted self. One feels the need to create something big. One needs an "influx of capital" to compensate for the sense of loss. Eventually one realizes that hysterical activity is based on a fantasy of what business is. The fundamental reality of business is being able to generate revenue sufficient to cover the cost of running the business. You're in a "turnaround situation" when you begin to think about getting rid of what is superfluous, putting an end to the "drain of capital," whittle the business down to a managable size. You realize it's necessary to "lop off" pieces of the monster you created.

I'd brought into the business more than I was able to master. The business was like an omnipotent penis flailing about on my head. I hadn't realized how much knowledge was required. The reality of business, finally, is not stuff, but customers. Business begins, as they say, with a sale. The essence of a profitable business, as Mack Hanan observes, is turnover, repeat sales. You don't need to be big to make money. You don't even need a lot of customers. Profitability means a base of clients who will purchase your product or use your service again and again. So while I was expanding, I also was developing the concentration strategy, which may be described as the shrinkage and focusing of the phallic will. Peter Drucker writes about the principle of "abandonment," which means you have to "lop off" excess stuff. But its hard to do this voluntarily.

By 1979 I had expanded into 3000 square feet of office space.The high point of my large office experience occurred in 1981 when I created a reception area with magazine stands. Somehow I equated being in business with having a reception area so persons who had an appointment could wait for me. The owners of the warehouse, apparently, saw we'd done a good job of converting the storage space. They decided to move their corporate offices into this space. By this time, my employees had gone elsewhere; my invoices were being typed by a free-lancer in the evening. A used office furniture company, in the first week of 1982, trucked away most of the furniture and office equipment I'd accumulated. They paid me $250.00. Was I now "out of business?"

On the contrary, with the help of a few filing cabinets, I was able to do everything from my apartment that I'd been doing in 3000 square feet of office space. I was coming to see that business consists, essentially, of customer files. I listened to the tapes of Tom Hopkins, "How to Sell Anything to Anybody." Willie Loman notwithstanding, selling is a sophisticated skill. My intellect was beginning to fuse with my business will. The concentration strategy meant abandoning the quest for bigness, status and mastering a small domain of reality.

The second loss or involuntary shrinkage of my business was more traumatic. In the Fall of 1982 I conducted an intensive telemarketing program from my apartment (my business now consisting entirely of Art clients) and received a gratifying influx of orders. But the head of my shipping company had died during the Summer to be replaced by his young assistant. Invoices were going out but books weren't being shipped. After a few confrontations with the young man, orders still were not shipped, so a trucker picked up 350 cartons of books and brought them to the warehouse of my new shipping company. My social science books arrived, but the art books, those I needed to fill orders, did not. Apparently the young man had stolen them. I went to his warehouse and demanded an explanation for the disappearance of my books. He assumed an angry, threatening posture when I suggested he might be responsible. He was a body-builder, much bigger than I.

I was profoundly depressed by the loss of my entire inventory of art books. For the first time in my business life, I'd been humiliated, defeated--by someone even more desperate than I. This traumatic experience shattered my omnipotent fantasy of accumulation and strongly modified the ruthless, paranoid stance I'd adopted toward large organizations. After this, books were purchased only to fill orders. The young man at the warehouse often had observed me as I spent hours cleaning my space, reviewing stock, admiring the books on my shelves. He saw I was always surprised when my inventory diminished. He would say to me, "You sell books, you know, Richard." It was gradually dawning on me that I was a book-seller not a librarian or book-collector.

IV. Discovery of the Self

Themes of separation, hysteria, struggle and paranoia characterize the survival dimension of business, struggle for independence. Now I turn to the issue of entrepreneurialism and subjective desire. In a large organization, individuals subordinate themselves to the requirements of the firm. The individual works "for the company," not himself. His own aspirations are secondary to the goals of the institution.

An entrepreneurial business, on the other hand, reflects the aspirations of the owner. One develops one's own business, not only to make money, but to fulfill one's hopes and dreams. The entrepreneurial experience means being conscious that one is free to shape one's own destiny. No longer obligated to work for others, one may create activities and events which represent the fulfillment of one's wishes.

Entrepreneurialism is a world-view, way of thinking and being. It is a mode of consciousness, articulated in many books, audiotapes, etc. which encourages persons to take control of their minds and thereby shape their futures. My own exposure to this thinking was through the tapes of a pioneer, Earl Nightingale. He proposed the radical idea of taking the idea of freedom seriously, embracing the will to fashion one's destiny. This way of thinking is a powerful counterpoise to ideas fashionable in the academic world which view individuals at the mercy of forces which cannot be resisted. In the Sixties, "economic determinism" was the fad; now we are yanked around by "discourses."

I went into business to publish my book, Hitler's Ideology. My aspiration was to share my ideas on the psychoanalysis of culture. I was particularly anxious to reveal the sources of societal destructiveness, i. e., the causes of genocide and war. Thus, my subjective desires were intimately bound with a sense of social responsibility. However "free" I felt I was, I was "employed" by the large group. My employer was the nation, Western Civilization or the human race, my job to understand and reveal the meaning of collective destruction.

Apart from this overriding sense of responsibility there is, however, a genuine freedom within the space of private enterprise. It is possible to function with self as master. One can structure one's day, rest and sleep when one feels like it. If you don't wish to work, you don't have to. From 1983-1987, subsequent to shrinking my business but prior to getting into the book-exhibit business, I spent a great deal of time organizing my record collection, meditating, going to movies, working out and returning to writing. It seems that, having become disconnected from society, I needed to grow a new self, one rooted in my consciousness and body. Of course, to experience this kind of freedom, one must abandon the feeling that one is obligated to make money all the time. The entrepreneurial business provides a space where one does not have to be pushed and pulled by the values and pace of the surrounding society. One can slow down, recall one's inner self.

Through the experience of meditation, I was able to perceive that being is not equivalent to doing. I discovered that action cannot be separated from subjectivity. Western Civilization has specialized in objectivity, productivity, mastery of reality. Americans, particularly, focus upon results. Every civilization, in my view, has a tendency to become unbalanced by devoting its energies to one mode of consciousness at the expense of others. Western persons become unbalanced by focusing exclusively on production at the expense of the self. An entire discipline, psychology, evolved in America on the assumption that only behavior, what can be perceived and measured, counts.

The idea of self or subjectivity means what you do is not only for the world, but also for your own growth and development. Action is undertaken, not only to accomplish some effect or result, but to actualize the self. When first becoming a social scientist or writer, one dreams of making a great discovery, writing a great book, doing something for the betterment of the human race. The idea of self, as articulated in the writings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and in Zen Buddhism, is to never forget the subject, the one who produces and creates; always recollect the experience of being which underlies action. In such a mode of consciousness, everything one does reverberates back upon the self. Am I presenting this paper because I wish to contribute to your knowledge or because I wish to consolidate parts of myself by articulating them in public? If I contribute to your development by suggesting certain paths for growth, does this also contribute to my own development? Perhaps the purpose of communication is to transform the being of both sender and receiver.

To embrace the self as source of action and meaning means studying productivity cannot be separated from studying the producer. That which we bring into being reflects who we are. We've been moving for many years, in the United States and perhaps throughout the world, from a sacrificial psychology to what I call a counter-sacrificial psychology. Americans are no longer willing to die for a cause, even a good one. It is probable that J. F. K. was the last American President who could say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

V. Symbiotic Fantasy

I've developed the concept of symbiotic fantasy to conceptualize how human beings exist in a state of unconscious connectedness to symbolic objects such as "government," "big business," etc. In this state, we feel linked to a magical world "out there" containing events larger and more significant than those experienced in concrete existence. The depiction of "American life" in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television is a fantasy about human existence. Each of us exists, on the one hand, in our concrete world. We exist, on the other, in a state of connectedness to the "mass media." We partake of another world, one seemingly bigger, more significant and real than everyday life. This "dream of culture," as Howard Stein calls it, surrounds us, embraces us, an omnipotent object with which we strive to connect. The umbilical cords of radio and television, through the magic of electricity, feed our private domain with sounds and images from the public domain. We feel we need to suck on the American breast for nourishment. But also we are sucked into this world and deprived of our own existence.

There were times in the course of my business career that I lie in bed reading Fortune Magazine or Business Week, imagining a glamorous, grandiose world of American business which made mine seem insignificant, trivial, dull. The fantasy of "another world" made it difficult for me to tolerate the prosaic life of organizing files, calling customers. I longed for the seemingly more abundant life depicted in magazines. The key to entrepreneurial success is breaking the spell of the fantasy of a corporate life richer and more fulfilling than one's own.

Entrepreneurialism means limiting effort to one's own life-space, mastering one's domain. They say the business-owner has to sweep his own office. That's 1% of it. What this statement conveys is that running a business means abandoning the dream of being a "big shot," business as source of status. The counterpoise to omnipotent fantasy is risk. If one has fifty clients, fifty customer files, one can make a decent living. But at some point, one has to get on the phone and persuade someone to buy something. You're never assured of an income. You never know, in advance of an action undertaken, that you'll get a result. On two occasions, I trained persons for several months, but the day before they were scheduled to call prospects, they quit.

Dealing with the world means overcoming the resistance of reality. An important concept in contemporary thought is that of narrative, how persons create their lives and worlds through language, conversation. It's good to be the author of one's life, creating one's own script or plan. It's another thing, however, to bring your vision of yourself into reality, get others to take your narrative seriously. The entire contemporary focus upon language, Thomas Ferraro points out, may be a defense against risk, a way of attempting to evade the psychosomatic pressures which inevitably accompany the testing of one's aspirations or narrative against reality.

VI. Revolution of the Self

Since the Sixties, in my view, America has generated a continual cultural revolution. At the core of this revolution is movement away from large cultural institutions and toward the idea of self or self-fulfillment. The wish to experience the desires of the self required intense struggle in the Sixties, as persons battled deeply internalized super-egos. In the Seventies, the power of social structures and strictures began to dissolve in an outpouring of libido or lust. Soon, the "me generation" or "culture of narcissism" evolved. These terms were used in a pejorative way to describe activities which focused on the self as contrasted with social involvement, activities such as running, body-building and making money.

The culture of narcissism, I hypothesize, correlated with the breakdown or deconstruction of American culture, representing a struggle to evolve a new locus for the self once the self defined in terms of relationship with society began to break down. As leaders and social institutions lost their lustre, as norms and morality no longer provided guidance, it was necessary, as George Sheehan put it, for "each person to become his or her own hero." I hypothesize that it was precisely the struggle for separateness, individuality which was the source of the "breakdown" of social institutions. Persons sought liberation from culture in order to discover and act upon inner desires.

The ideology of "doing one's own thing" unites the Sixties with today's world and is the core dynamic which has worked to change American society. Ideas such as "alterative life-styles," "new age," "multi-culturalism," etc. express the notion that there is no longer a single "American way of life," a mode of being or behavior which is "given" by culture. Rather, each person is responsible for "following his bliss," discovering or creating his or her own consciousness and way of being in the world. The entrepreneurial life-style is part of this trend toward individuality, suggesting the will to develop an enterprise which will permit one to make manifest one's being.