I developed a mistrust of myself and a Perpetual fear of all other people imagine that the people closest to you the ones that you have been taught to love cherish and Trust were instead using you for their own ends that rather than an individual person worthy of consideration and respect they saw you as either an inconvenience or a tool this sort of relationship is the stuff of nightmares and can turn a happy relaxed and confident person into a shell of their former selves the author France Kafka had this in the extreme Kafka had an incredibly difficult relationship with his father Herman from a young age he was emotionally tormented in a way that left indelible scars through his later years in his mid-30s Kafka finally worked up the courage to pen his thoughts about his difficult familial relationship and in classic Kafka fashion delivered not only a masterpiece of emotional resonance but a profound reflection on the nature of socialization itself get ready to learn how a narcissist can break every inch of your mind why Kafka was such a fearful and guilt-ridden adult and why other people can be truly terrifying just to clarify when I use the term narcissist in this video I'm employing it in a looser way than the strict medical definition it's just the clearest term for the sort of manipulative Dynamic that Kafka describes and as always bear in mind that there is a lot more to these texts than I can possibly cover in a single video but let's start with the most straightforward of Herman's dastardly tactics the way he distorted the young cfa's self-image one judge jury and executioner in Jean Paul sra's classic play No Exit we follow three characters who are trapped together in Hell which turns out to just be a nicely furnished room with no mirrors there the protagonists torture one another for eternity merely by using judgment so the man who fears being pronounced a coward is endlessly mocked for his feeble nature and they all become trapped in a terribly unpleasant love triangle which forces them to hate one another there are no torture racks or curved blades their punishment is to endure one another's scorn forever and this unenviable fate is made even more Insidious because of sra's own theories about how we form our self-conception for him one of the main ways we figure out who we are is through seeing how other people perceive us and adjusting our own image accordingly so the judgments of other people will inevitably bleed into how we see ourselves and in the case of the Damned souls in no exit this means that for eternity they will only see themselves Through The Eyes of people that hate them Kafka had his own version of this treatment through the endless tirades of verbal and emotional abuse H at him by his father this primarily came in two forms the first is active condemnation and condescension while the second is simply the starvation of anything positive or affirmative on the one hand kafka's father constantly reminded the young lad that he was a timid shy and unworthy character whatever he did was not good enough it simply did not live up to expectations this stretch from the friends that Kafka chose to his personal characters to his physical frame which Kafka saw as puny and weak when compared to his father's broad shoulders and full figure this air of condescension is run through every aspect of their relationship whenever Kafka showed an interest in something his father was never far behind to heat derision upon it and pepper it with his scorn when Kafka suddenly displayed an active enthusiasm for temple that was mocked despite the fact that Herman was previously nagging him to go to Temple more often when Kafka became engaged his father was angry because he did not approve of the Bride thinking that she would bring shame both to him and the Kafka Legacy ironically none of us would have heard the name Kafka were it not for the writings of this so-called timid runt in all of his dealings with Kafka Herman kept himself firmly in mind and almost seemed to treat his son as a means to his own ends or as a curse that was preventing his happiness Kafka certainly got this impression and in his letter actively apologizes for having been an impediment to his father's Joy this is the most obvious of Herman's sins but it also has a subtler undertone by being the constant judge of on kafka's shoulder from a very young age Herman communicated a simple message kafka's primary job in life was to earn the approval of his Overlord and Le just as satra would have predicted eventually kafka's own mind becomes a sort of surveillance State judging and condemning him even when Herman is miles away this is firmly reflected in kafka's writings which display a general Terror of being observed and of the Judgment of other people in his short and semi-autobiographical story The judgment he even confesses the need to consult with his father either literally or metaphorically on even trivial decisions in his life the adult Kafka lived in this permanent panoptic Nightmare and all because there was not a single aspect of his childhood that passed unjudged there was no room for exploration nothing was beyond the father's proclamations of Good and Evil so by the time he grew up Herman no longer even needed to be present for his influence to be felt it is often said that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time around but it is just as likely that our self-conception is also the average of how the five closest people see us it brings into Stark relief the old piece of advice to choose your friends wisely on the other hand kfka was deprived of a deep emotional need some affirmation from someone that he loved and respected it is clear that despite all the harm Herman has caused him Kafka still values his opinion and is still crying out for some sort of validation from this man who looms like a giant in his mind in his own words what he lacked from his father was a kind look and a touch of tenderness understandably he wanted to be reassured that his father loved him and truly cared about him but this was something that Herman was not prepared to do he referred to such outward displays of affection as pretending which of course only reinforced the young kafka's anxiety about his father's lack of love in effect Herman was asking kfka to believe that he loved him without providing any evidence for this he was requesting an almost superhuman exercise in faith one that kfka quite reasonably could not perform and I find it telling that in later life and even in this very letter Kafka yearns for the warmth that he never received he tells his father that he longs to have a family of his own partly so that he can go and greet Herman as an equal that they can interact as two fully rounded and accomplished adults meeting of their own accord surely if he did this then Herman would have to congratulate him again we see that Kfar is still pining for his father's approval and it makes sense that he feels this way after all he does mention that his father was not always cold or angry there were these tiny glimmers of affection that broke through his sternness just often enough that Kafka could hold out hope for a total transformation that his father would one day wake up look him in the eye with tenderness and embrace him as his son knowingly or not these little crumbs of Love kept the young Kafka hooked on finally attaining his father's affections there's almost something about this that is even more Insidious than outright malice this cold drip feeding of Love distorting kafka's own sense of hope to maximize his suffering and while this Dynamic reaches its abusive extreme in kafka's paternal relationship many of us can fall into some lighter version of this in our own lives it's one of the things that makes socialization so scary I know that in the past I have found myself trapped in these Cycles where I am Desperately Seeking someone's approval or affirmation and then getting it just enough to keep me going but never enough to become satisfied or relaxed the other person need not be actively spiteful or malicious they could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time and yet this sort of dynamic can be uniquely painful it can feel like screaming into the void and only hearing the echo emanate back out in this way kafka's letter presents an extreme version of quite an everyday social anxiety and so it not only provides a warning about outright narcissists but also a general word of caution about socialization itself and its effects on our own conceptions it is natural to fear judgment and to seek some form of validation or confirmation from others but this means we are constantly teetering on the edge of depending on just a few people to keep us going and potentially the wrong people that is essentially the state kafka's father inflicted on the young writer and it's worth keeping an eye out for this because once we are trapped in this Dynamic it is incredibly difficult to escape we may even choose to stay in Hell of our own accord but next we shall examine how Herman is the epitome of one of the most distressing aspects of social life confusing and contradictory demands if you want to help me make more videos like this then please consider subscribing to either my Channel or my patreon the links are in the description two a crumpled m in one of kafka's other works the trial he gives voice to The elusive yet powerful state of bafflement in the novel our protagonist Kay is arrested and then bombarded with constant contradictory messages he is told on the one hand that his trial is of the utmost importance but also that it won't affect his life in any way he is told to get a lawyer but at the same time all of the lawyers appear to be time wasters he is told that the courts are vital instruments of justice but also that all of the real decisions get made behind the scenes and the contents of the hearings themselves seem to not matter all that much except when they suddenly do in other words nothing makes sense nothing is consistent and yet everyone apart from Kay is pretending that it does and while the trial is fiction it is clear from Reading kafka's letters including the letter to his father that this was just how the world appeared to him Herman would bombard his son with contradictory demands from a very young age he would ask him to take his work more seriously and then in the same breath mock that very work he would demand gratitude and yet at the same time actively Drive Kafka away every opinion that Herman held was law but it could also change on a dime depending on what mood he was in in effect kafka's household was a domain where truth no longer mattered the brilliant philosopher Hannah arent used to use the term defact alized to describe a situation where facts not only no longer mattered but were indistinguishable from what was fiction or lies Herman fenced Kafka in with so many cont contradictions and bewildering statements that he felt there was no choice but to bow to whatever his father said he learned not to trust his own mind or his own senses as his perspective on the world had been proved unreliable in the eyes of the only Authority that mattered as Kafka put it it was almost impossible to act upon any thought completely or continually he was living in a world without facts his own personal 1984 today we might use the term gaslighting to describe this sort of dynamic but arguably that is just a small part of a much wider phenomenon while gaslighting tends to describe the devaluing of someone's perspective in a onetoone relationship this is often a part of General social life as well Friedrich ner observed that systems could become so in mesed with the fabric of a community that they become unquestionable Dogma he saw Christian ethics as just one example of this for him social interaction is at least partly a struggle for control over which values the community has and when one group has more power than another they will not just dominate them physically but psychologically as well in effect they will change the philosophy and accepted truths of the community until their domination is not just achieved but deemed good and just then anyone that stands against them are not just resists or Rebels they are actively evil this is one of the reasons why n priz Solitude so highly he thought it was the only way to rip yourself from this influence and finally think and question freely in effect n and Kafka share the same fear of other people they are both concerned that their particular views and perspectives will be devalued and Scattered for the sake of venerating whoever has power in the moment and they are concerned with the threat posed by confusion to the sovereignty of their own minds there are two distinct points being made here the first is about straightforward interpersonal relationships particularly with people we would deem as Loosely narcissistic kafka's father represents a very pentious sort of undermining that we can very easily fall prey to or inadvertently carry out ourselves through his unjustified self assuredness and the instability of his views he turned Kafka into a fearful and bewildered person unable to trust in the continued existence of facts this is partly an artifact of the kind of power struggle based interactions that many of us fall into if someone like nature is to be believed then much of socialization is about the relative power of the people involved and they often turn into little displays of domination and submission nich may think this is inevitable because of his idea that we are driven by the will to power but we don't have to agree with him nonetheless it is worth being aware of these underlying power dynamics even if we attempt to minimize the extent to which they interfere with our own interactions at the very least Kafka is warning us about people who will use socialization as just a crude status game and who are more than willing to run rough shod over our own minds to achieve their aims if like me you are naturally filled with self-doubt and just not that confident in your views this is a caution that's well worth heeding it can be depressingly straightforward for someone to convince us that our own minds are defective or inherently deceptive but on the other hand Kafka touches Upon A broader point about the dangers of becoming too ined in Social Fabrics to the extent of losing our individuality the Danish philosopher sain kard used to express concern about the public which was an amorphous mass of people social structures and opinions that we are all broadly expected to hold and agree with for him this public will do anything in its power to make us conform with its view of the world up to and including using slander violence and social rejection and this is very close to the kind of fear cathar Expresses in his novels in the trial or the castle the protagonists are not stood against a single individual but rather at the mercy of whole societies that they can neither understand nor really fight against kafka's particular complaints about his father are mirrored in his warnings about the Dark Side of socialization but this becomes even more complicated because very few people want to be totally alone not even Kafka desires this in his letters to Melena and to his friends he expresses a profound wish to be amongst people who love him but at the same time he says we should not be fooled into thinking that there are no dangers that come with being too enveloped by the groups we interact with just like Herman communities themselves can be capricious changeable unmerciful and domineering and unlike with a single individual we have little hope of standing against them the human dilemma here is to be caught between a rock and a hard place very few people could enjoy total isolation but complete immersion comes with its own really troubling dangers Kafka has no solution here he simply draws our attention to this delicate threading of the needle that we undergo every moment of our social lives it may go some way to explaining why so many people including myself get so stressed about social interaction and social relationships but next I want to go a step deeper and focus on the long-lasting effects of kafka's Parental troubles and how it can teach us an important lesson for our own relationships and interactions three permanent scars one of the few parts of Freud's research that we have hung on to is the idea of trauma that is that an event or series of events can V ly influence our later ideas or behavior almost irreversibly in some cases from the postor war I phenomenon of shell shock to the modern conceptions of complex PTSD we have become increasingly aware of and sympathetic to the ways in which particular experiences can leave their mark on someone this goes doubly so for children who have no prior conception of what the world is like making every single impression significantly more important but within this idea is an implication that we don't normally think about we probably have a far greater impact on the people around us than we realize one of the most striking and heartbreaking lines in kafka's letter is the following I could never understand why you were so insensitive to the sorrow and shame you inflicted on me it was as if you didn't sense your own power this becomes a real theme over the course of the letter Herman clearly does not grasp how much he has truly hurt Kafka and in kafka's attempt to make it Vivid to him he reveals just how deep his wounds go as we touched on in the first section Herman's Behavior towards Kafka left an indelible mark on his self-image he says that he never regained his sense of worthiness or confidence in fact he became racked with self-doubt for his entire adult life as he put it the older I was the more solid was the material with which you could demonstrate how worthless I was he even wanted his own books now recognized as masterpieces of philosophy and literature to be burnt upon his de it is only because of the Disobedience of his best friend that we have access to them at all if he could not even be confident of these works of Genius that goes to show just how neurotic Kafka had become and the shadow of his father had a large hand in this anxiety Herman's second gift to Kafka was an overwhelming and unbearable sense of fear when it came to other people since Kafka had been convinced that he was fundamentally unworthy and unlovable he never came to trust that people liked and accepted him he often suspected that they secretly found him revolting and wanted nothing more than for him to crawl into some hole and die he expected cruelty from almost everyone he encountered and so each one of his friendships and relationships was tinged with fear this even comes across in some of his love letters where he seems just as petrified at the prospect of falling in love as he is happy that he's done so I'm sure that we have all met someone like this or even felt this way at some point I know I have the message that we are nothing worth considering sinks in and we start to believe it so in every one of our subsequent relationships we think we are deceiving the other person fooling them into believing that we are more than we are and dreading the day that they discover we are an ugly disgusting worm beneath anyone's consideration let alone their love we become convinced that we are rotten on an almost metaphysical level the parallels to kafka's later story The Metamorphosis are evident in that Nolla the protagonist Greg turns into a beetle and becomes physically repellent to everyone around him Kafka already believes he is that Beetle and if anyone truly likes him it's just because they haven't figured that out yet and again the Striking thing about all of this is how confused Herman seems to be he truly does not grasp the impact he has had on kafka's development even though he is literally kafka's father you can almost sense kafka's desperation coming off the page as he tries again and again to communicate his suffering to the one person he might expect to understand yet by the end of the letter he predicts Herman will react by calling him ungrateful spoiled and churlish the letter ultimately never reached Herman's hands so we will never know if this prediction was accurate and I want to dwell on this point for a little bit when we are reading works like kafka's letter or anything else that examines the destructive nature of narcissistic relationships or public condemnation or being an outcast we tend to empathize with the person suffering we put our self in their shoes and we share in their upset at the unjust people who have made their lives a living hell but very rarely do we consider how we might be perpetuating the same sort of behaviors which create this kind of pain through the sheer unfiltered vulnerability of his letter Kafka reminds us of the impact that we have on other people if we were to truly stop and examine our own behavior when have we torn someone down or insulted someone or just not bothered to stop and think about how our actions would would have impacted that person's mental state Where Have We Become mini hermans completely unaware of the way that we are making other people suffer I know that there must have been numerous times where I have made someone's day that bit worse when I didn't have to just because I was in a bad mood or had a moment of weakness most of the time we just move on with our lives or maybe trick ourselves into thinking that our behavior is ultimately reasonable but a testimony like cathus can quickly throw this idea into question by reminding us just How Deeply we can affect others how a passing interaction can ruin another person's day while a moment of care can reassure them of Humanity's kindness and for the people closest to us we can have the greatest impact of all since the enlightenment many people in Europe and the USA are very used to thinking in individualist terms we are philosophically speaking very much I don't owe you and you don't owe me but this is something of an anomaly for most of our history thinkers as varied as Aristotle aquinus and cant have argued that we have fundamental duties to one another kafka's suffering serves as a partial recommendation that we do not forget these duties entirely after all we might be making a far bigger Splash than we realize it is all well and good making sure that we do not become like Kafka in this Dynamic but it's arguably even more important to ensure that we don't become like Herman but finally I want to look at the underlying complexity in kafka's relationship to Herman and how it mirrors the double-edged sword we all face in the Terri terrifying domain occupied by other people four gratitude fear and guilt from what we have talked about so far you might expect kafka's letter to have an angry defiant or even judgmental toe but if anything the complete opposite is true over the course of his writings he reaffirms how grateful he is for everything Herman has done for him how he would be nothing without him and how he is forever in his debt sure he doesn't pull his punches with the criticism but he also oscillates between condemning Herman and thanking him he makes it clear that he still deeply admires his father and even compares himself unfavorably to him where he describes Herman as tall and strong he is skinny and weak where Herman is industrious kafer is lazy where Herman has a family Kafka is a failure even in this regard even at this moment where he is attempting to make it clear to Herman why he fears him so much he clearly still feels love and admiration this is partly what transforms the letter from simple pmic to a brutally honest exploration of how we can become trapped in Vicious Cycles in our own relationships for one thing when we're looking at other people we have a tendency to slot them and their relationships into boxes marked great or evil this saves a lot of cognitive efforts but is ultimately still a simplification one of the great pieces of wisdom we find in many religions is that there is no such thing as a perfect person but also no such thing as a holy evil person either we often recognize this from a firstperson perspective Ive we see the good and bad in the people we have connections to this is often what makes it so hard to leave relationships that are really awful because some aspects of them are not awful some aspects of them are great and that blinds us to the bad parts because we are so used to either seeing caricatures of horrible relationships with no redeeming qualities or happy marriages of 75 years part of kafka's Brilliance but also his suffering is that he is painfully aware of both the good and evil in his relationship with her on the one hand this is some admirable honesty but if anything it makes kafka's dilemma all the more painful it is the glimmers of warmth and Care in his father that keep his hope alive they never became close within kafka's lifetime but he seemed to always hope that one day Herman would soften up it would be easy for us to recognize that a person is not good for us if time spent with them was always bad but it is the good mixed in that makes it so hard to let go from the outside it is clear that Herman has been awful for CF and has been a major destructive force in his life and Kafka can see this too but he can also see just enough light that keeps him attached it's a real caution about viewing relationships in caricatured terms in practice the people that harm us are not outright villains and the people that do good for us are not Saints and if we expect them to look like this then we are going into a social life on dangerously false premises but this does not just go for Herman it reflects a general theme in kafka's writings Society itself is not presented simply as a demon despite kafka's anxieties around it it is rather that there is good and bad in abundance making it difficult to decide what to do and what to think in the trial we see our fair share of corrupt judges brutal policemen and sleazy lawyers but we also see the kind couple just scraping to get by or the flawed but friendly landl or the confusing but well-meaning defendants how does this extreme mixture of the Great and the terrible compare to Solitude if anything kafka's works are almost lovecraftian in the way that they depict societies and the realm of the other it is not that other people are generally malicious it is more that as a group they are so big in comparison to us as individuals that we are always at their Mercy to some extent it is this power imbalance originally found in kafka's childhood that lends his Works their particularly helpless tone other people are not depicted as out to get us imp particular but rather as terrifyingly indifferent Kafka seems to see himself less as a prisoner of other people and more like a timid lion tamer he is at once yearning for connection and at the same time terrified of the consequences of doing so he wants to be loved but is terrified of going through the process of someone knowing him but this perfectly highlights the mess of challenges that we face in our dealings with others every time we venture outside of ourselves to connect with other people we run the risk of profound hurt we may become the victim of a horrible crime or of social judgment or of an extended abusive relationship yet at the same time Kafka agrees with Aristotle we are social animals who require some form of connection to not end up miserable through the Absurd situations in his stories Kafka reminds us of the high stakes game human companionship can be will we end up straps to a Herman someone who condemns us damages us and sends us back into the world a fear and guilt-ridden mess all while expecting gratitude for their troubles or will we instead find find a friend a lover or a loyal partner when it comes to socialization suffering and Joy are on offer in equal and extreme measure each of us is a bit like our own Kafka protagonist we are thrown into the world and into communities that we know nothing about and are expected to sink or swim every second we are in public we are playing a game where we only partly know the rules and where the winnings are as high as love and the losses are as low as misery and death and we don't even have the option of not playing since permanent isolation is its own form of nightmare I think that one of the reasons kafka's novels have endured for generations and will continue to do so for centuries is because he lends a sympathetic and articulate voice to some of our deepest anxieties especially when it comes to the treacherous realm of other people and all it took is a childhood that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy but if you want to explore kafka's ideas about the dark sides of socialization and specifically of social morality then click here to watch my video on his incredibly disturbing short story in the penal colony and stick around for more on thinking to improve your life