Though men have been in a fight about it, I’ve seen through my own life and the men my colleagues and I teach that what a man truly wants from the people he knows is honest criticism, not flattery. Men haven’t known this consciously, and also have been terrifically misled by the false way criticism has been presented in these years by some therapists and the media: as something harsh you should avoid at all costs, something definitely to keep out of romance, something that will hurt you.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The thirst for authentic criticism of ourselves can be seen in the lives of men throughout history, and it is comprehended magnificently by Aesthetic Realism. Because of this my life today is happy and strong. In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, titled “Looking For Criticism,” Mr. Siegel wrote:
Every person who has ever lived has wanted to know what the voice of the world might tell him. Man needed a critic of himself that stood for everything.
Aesthetic Realism sees criticism in a completely new way. It is not, as I once thought, laying someone out with your most scathing observations, telling him everything you don’t like about him. It is an aesthetic, intellectual procedure, impelled by the hope that someone’s life be better. Writes Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss in The Right Of:
While men and women maneuver for flattery and lap it up, they also despise the person who gives it. That is because a friend is someone who cares enough for our life so that he doesn’t butter us or collaborate with us, but really wants what is hurtful in us to be less. When we see someone not care about that…we feel he is our enemy. We may not say so; we may flatter him while he flatters us; but our suspicion, emptiness, and sense of pretense will go on. And so will the ache for honesty.
The Desire for Flattery Comes from a Way of Seeing the World
Aesthetic Realism shows that when a man wants flattery from a woman, his family, his boss, it comes from an attitude he has to the whole world. Our deepest purpose, Eli Siegel explained, is to like the world, to respect it as much as possible. But every man also has a hope to see the world as an opponent he has to vanquish, and this, I learned, is contempt.
In an Aesthetic Realism lesson he gave, Mr. Siegel was speaking about this when he asked a person, “What is a danger, if one feels the world is against one?” And he explained:
You look for a remedy. If a person feels the world is against one, he looks for someone who will be utterly for one…If one feels the world is mean, the anodyne is…flattery.
Growing up in suburban Miami Shores, Florida, though there were many things I liked, such as going down the block at dusk to Biscayne Bay with my friends, often I felt the world was mean. And this feeling began early. At six, when I went to the Honey Bun Kindergarten, I remember feeling that the other children were harsh, they played too rough at recess, and that things seemed much safer and more soothing at home.
My parents made a lot of me. They told me how cute I was and made me feel I was more sensitive and mature than other children my age. “You could charm the wallpaper off the walls,” is something I heard at home, and I loved it.
Once in the 60’s when I was twelve, my parents came home from a trip and gave me a present of the newest high-tech watch—along with the time, it told you the day of the month. But I had found out in advance what the gift was, and said in my most boyish, naive and carefully planned way as I opened the box, “Oh my—what boy my age has a watch like this!” I got just what I wanted when they beamed at me like I was the most adorable thing on earth.
“If you’re looking for flattery,” said Mr. Siegel in the lesson I quoted earlier, “the first order of business is to respect the flatterer. When you get flattery and don’t respect the flatterer, there’s trouble.”
I didn’t respect the flattery or the person giving it, and there definitely was trouble. I knew I didn’t deserve it—I was competitive with my brothers, ambitious to be liked by people, and could be scheming and mean to get ahead. That included my flattering other people in order to get things from them. Years later, when I had my first meeting with a boss who was new on a job and she asked me “So how’s the morale around here?”, I answered in a greasy way, “Oh, I think it’s much better now that you’re here.” I didn’t even know this person, who turned out to be a corporate shark—but I sure tried to butter her so she would like me and give me a promotion.
The way I wanted people to make a lot of me while I had contempt for them had huge consequences: often I felt lonely, empty and like a mean faker who pretended to be a nice guy. I didn’t feel I deserved to be honestly cared for by someone.
Meanwhile, deserve it or not, I thought a woman should praise me, not criticize me. At Syracuse University, when I took singing lessons with Sue Hammill who was very pretty, she told me in a very matter of fact way that I had a pleasant voice, but that no one would know it because it didn’t project beyond about 10 feet from my mouth. It made me angry, and try as I might I couldn’t seem to charm her, and in lessons she kept insisting that she couldn’t hear me. “What’s wrong with this lady?!” I thought—”maybe she has a hearing problem.” But she was right, and the criticism she gave me I was to hear again and again as my acting career continued.
Love Is Criticism
If you asked me years ago whether criticism and love had anything in common I would have said “No way.” I thought criticism was the opposite of love.
To me, love was having a woman in a tizzy about me, and treating me like the prince I was sure that destiny meant for me to be. The problem was no woman would go along with that scenario, and like many men, I had a lot of trouble in love.
Through Aesthetic Realism, I wanted to learn about my motives with women so I could be proud of my purpose in love. In one class, I was speaking about difficulty I was having in love, and Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss asked:
Ellen Reiss. Do you want a woman to be as good as she can be or to serve you in some way? Serving is praise. Do you think a woman would feel you’re more interested in her serving you or you making her stronger?
When I answered vaguely, “A woman would have to worry about that,” Ms. Reiss said:
Ellen Reiss. You’re teasing now. Do you think to have a woman worry about you is a form of praising you? Are you “You’ll-never-be-sure-of-me” Cooperman?
Yes, I was! I tried to have a woman unsure and then took it as flattery that she was in a stir about me. It made me ashamed, and discussions like this enabled me to change.
Flattery and criticism, I learned, are related to opposites that confuse people very much in love: how to be both for and against someone. Good will, Aesthetic Realism teaches, puts these together. It is, Mr. Siegel writes, “a true mingling of kindness and exactness or severity.” And he says:
The first thing…in our attitude towards someone we care for is that our criticism go for the same purpose as our encouragement. What usually happens is that when we criticize a person we are taken to be a different person from the time when we praise…Criticism and love can be one—if when we encourage what is good, we have the same purpose as in discouraging what is bad.
When I began to see Meryl Nietsch, the woman who is now my wife, I was very taken by how beautiful she was and also the way she was a serious student in classes we attended. Meryl made it clear that she wanted my criticism of how she saw things, and she was a critic of me, too. The more we talked, the more I felt I needed her to be myself.
At the time, in my work as an actor I was preparing to play the part of the villain, Iago, in a production here of Eli Siegel’s magnificent lecture on Shakespeare’s Othello. But I was having difficulty getting into the role of this evil man who is called “honest” many times in the play. Ms. Reiss spoke to me about it in a class, asking: “Do you want to take every bit of evil in you and have people see how it maneuvers? What would you get out of showing it?”
Meryl was excited by this discussion. One night she invited me to dinner, and as we sat down she said she had written “A Soliloquy of How Bennett Cooperman is Like Iago”—11 specific points about how I saw things that had an Iago-esque state of mind. Each one was so on target about me, with style and humor, that I was astonished. I quote from three points:
Naivete—When I want to find something out I can be very naive, so naive and innocent, just like I was with my parents, hardly anybody suspects me—I’m so good at it. Then I’ll use what I find out to my advantage.
I’ll pause, and say this is just what Iago does in Act III when, so seemingly innocently, he plants the seed in Othello’s mind that Desdemona was unfaithful to him with Cassio, which is a lie and leads to tragedy:
Iago. Did Michael Cassio, when you wooed my lady, know of your love?
Oth. He did, from first to last. Why dost thou ask?
Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought; no further harm.
Oth. Why of thy thought, Iago?
Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.
Oth. O, yes, and went between us very oft.
Iago. Indeed?
Oth. Indeed? Ay, indeed! Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he not honest?
Iago. Honest, my lord?
Near the end of the play, when Iago’s wife, Emilia, tells the truth about his villainy, he tries to shut her up, saying: “What, are you mad? I charge you get you home.” Meryl’s next point was:
Criticism From Women—Who does she think she is criticizing me? I’m Bennett Cooperman and I don’t take this from any woman…I’m the one that’s in control here! I am the lecturer, the scolder. I like putting a woman in her place…
And about another way of both Iago and me, Meryl wrote:
Changing the Subject—This is a very good way to get out of something that doesn’t make me look good, and I do it so well. I can act very concerned about something and just slip right out of the hot spot. This is where my casual manner comes in very handy.
As Meryl read through the points, I never experienced anything like it. It was clear that she really wanted me to do well, and to have a good time knowing myself. I was tremendously affected, head to toe, and when she finished I jumped up and hugged her. Some weeks later, with everything I was learning, I was able to get to a portrayal of Iago that I’m proud of.
I came to feel I could count on Meryl to be a real friend—not to schmooze me, but to be honest—and I wanted to do the same for her for the rest of our lives. We have been married for twenty years, and I love her more with every year. And I’m so happy we can learn more each day what real love is.
Consultations—the Criticism Men Are Thirsty For
Eli Siegel wrote:
According to Aesthetic Realism, a person is critical of himself all the time, and one of the things which would be success in life for him, would be if he could put that criticism in conscious, sober, non-complaining language and be proud of how he expresses it.
That is what men learn to do through Aesthetic Realism consultations, and one such man is Gary Bauer, a 29-year-old musician living in New York City. Mr. Bauer wanted to understand a deep change that occurred in him when he was about 14.
Before that, he said, he was a good student and had a sense of humor. But then, as he told us, his parents began arguing a lot and, “sometimes I thought they would break up.” At the same time he became ill, and also had to begin wearing very thick glasses. He said:
Gary Bauer. So I didn’t really like myself. Actually it was very, very bad—I didn’t like myself at all.
He said he felt other children were making fun of him.
Gary Bauer. At school I never raised my hand because I would just think if somebody mentioned my name, I got so tense and I thought everybody was looking at me…I thought the whole world was against me.
In time, Mr. Bauer became more withdrawn and had, as he said, “zero confidence.” Clearly he had suffered, but we knew Mr. Bauer needed to understand and criticize what Aesthetic Realism explains—the victory a man has feeling the whole world is out to get him. “Why did you made that decision,” we asked, “to feel everybody was out to make fun of you? What in you leapt to that?”
Gary Bauer. I think I wanted to protect myself.
Consultants. Aesthetic Realism says there is a relation of contempt and respect in everyone—it’s a ferocious battle. And do you think if there’s a hope to find the world a filthy, evil mess, and then you get a little evidence, you go “Aha!” You’re miserable, but do you think you were also triumphant?
Gary Bauer. Yeah, I was—right!
Then Mr. Bauer saw something he had never seen before. We said:
Consultants. You felt everybody was looking down on you. But did you look down on everybody?
Gary Bauer. Yes, I felt people were superficial.
Consultants. Aesthetic Realism shows we have an ethical unconscious, and when we are not fair, we punish ourselves by being unsure, being nervous because we don’t think people should like how we see them. Doesn’t that make sense?
Gary Bauer. Yes, it does!
Mr. Bauer’s life is blossoming, he is getting more sure of himself, and it’s a privilege to see. He told us:
Gary Bauer. I feel much better about myself because of Aesthetic Realism. I started a new job and usually I would feel inferior to the other people, my boss or something, but I’m much more relaxed.
Consultants. Why do you think—is there a principle here?
Gary Bauer. Yes. Aesthetic Realism taught me to look at people more deeply.
Criticism, Stanislavsky, and the Art of Acting
I am going to discuss briefly two passages from the book My Life in Art by the great 19th century Russian director and theoretician of acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky. He developed what came to be known as “The Method,” an approach that encourages an actor to get within the inner life of the character he is portraying, using his own life experiences to do so.
The Method was an important new point in theatre and a criticism of the more formal, declamatory style of acting that had been fashionable.
When I went to Syracuse University as an acting major, I had four years of training based strictly on Stanislavsky’s Method, and I loved it.
In the book, Stanislavsky tells one criticism after another he heard as a young actor—and he does it with such relish, depth and delight. I believe it is because he wanted to criticize himself so trenchantly and with pleasure that he was able to come to something new and more honest in acting technique. Mr. Siegel said in his lecture “Aesthetic Realism as Beauty: Acting” that the Stanislavsky way “puts together opposites again and again,” and is in behalf of liking the world.
I give two examples from My Life in Art, both of which illustrate this Aesthetic Realism principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
1) The first is called “dropping tone,” which is like what my teacher, Sue Hammill, had criticized me for. A technical matter in acting is how to maintain a volume loud enough so you can be heard throughout the theatre, while not screaming or seeming unnatural. Stanislavsky tells about acting in a play called The Lucky Man by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko:
I would flame up and then suddenly die down. This made my speech and action become energetic and then my voice could be heard, the words sounded clearly and reached the audience—or all would grow dull and I wilted, my voice would begin to murmur, my words could not be heard, and the spectators would cry “Louder! Louder!”
In actors’ parlance this is called “dropping tone.” Of course I could force myself to speak loudly, to act energetically, but when you force yourself to be loud for the sake of loudness…without any inner meaning and inspiration, you feel ashamed on the stage…And side by side with me were real true-to-goodness artists…Something seemed to hold them at the same temperature of heightened energy and prevented them from sinking.
Here, Stanislavsky admirably criticizes himself for a bad relation of loud and soft, and this has ethical meaning for men in our lives, too—in our marriages, at work. We want to meet the world with energy and also be thoughtful; we want to affect and to be affected. But a man can either be pompously assertive with his wife, or, feeling he’s too good for the world, retreat and be aloof from her. Both arise from contempt, and in order for a man to change as he hopes to, he needs criticism, not flattery.
2) Stanislavsky also speaks about how he would, as Hamlet warns the actors not to do, “tear a passion to tatters.” Sometimes, he says, “I made as much noise as an unconnected belting in a factory while the machine which it is supposed to run is stationary. The belting works, but there are no results.” For instance, in a comedy he played a man who leaves the room and comes back more drunk each time. He writes:
I learned…to copy drunkards to perfection, and I felt myself to be so good…on the stage that I could not restrain the inner joy and palpitation which I mistook for inspiration…With each of my entrances I tried to give stronger and stronger expression to what boiled within me. But the audience criticized me.
The more excited [I was], the more the audience criticized my rapid patter, my incoherent diction, my hoarse voice…my strained and exaggerated efforts.
At a third performance I was reproached…for grimacing and the absence of a feeling of true measure, without which everything I did seemed inartistic and unnatural.
This is about the opposites of passion and then control—which is what I believe Stanislavsky means by “a feeling of true measure.” And these, too, are opposites every man wants to do better with in his life. We all want to be able to let go, be unrestrained, and also have a sense of reason, control. Being told we’re wonderful will never get us there.
In one passage, as Stanislavsky writes about actors, I believe he is talking about the deepest hope of every man. He says:
The actor is caught in the quicksand of flattery and praise. That which is pleasant is always victorious, because one wants to believe it. One listens to the compliments of charming admirers and not to the…truth. Young actors, fear your admirers! You may pay them attentions, but…learn in time, from your very first steps, to hear, understand and love the…truth about yourselves. Find out who can tell you that truth.
The education of Aesthetic Realism does just that for a man, making his life happy, educated, rich and strong. It has done that for me. That is happening, too, to Gary Bauer in his consultations, and I close with something he said recently: “I feel very grateful for my consultations. Every time I come, I feel 50 minutes—every minute is valuable to me. I know I am in the right place.”