Catholica: How secondary gain wrecks our lives, and our communities by Cliff Baxter

Today I'd like to put on the white lab coat and the pince nez and talk to you as Professor Curmudgeon about a spinster, and a great source of human prejudice, violence and misery. It's called "The Principle of Secondary Gain".

Secondary Gain (SG) is the term used by Freud to describe the advantage which patients gain by their symptoms — e.g. sympathy, avoidance of a difficult situation.

She looks out of her apartment and spots a handsome man and a beautiful woman making love.

She rings the police.

They send an officer.

He looks out of the window, but can see nothing.

'Can't see nothin', ma'am!'

'If you get up on the table and stand on that chair, THEN you can see them!'

'Whattaya want me to do, ma'am?'

If you asked the woman why she rang the police she'd probably say it was her sense of moral decency, her duty as a citizen and so forth.

She would not say the truth, that she had been denied the Primary Gain of loving and being loved, of all that flows from interaction between a man and a woman.

Of course, she would deny that she was jealous, and that she was obtaining the Secondary Gain of being a spoil sport. If the couple were arrested her sense of righteousness would have enhanced further her secondary gain.

Being a spoilsport and attracting attention, rather than the primary gain of accepting others and enjoying life whatever comes, are common features of the Secondary Gainers.

Living an 'unlived' life — an appalling yet not uncommon phenomenon — can be observed in your nearest doctor's surgery.

Most people appreciate that good health makes life better, more enjoyable. No matter what injuries or illnesses befall, it remains their primary gain — seeking good health.

The hypochondriac ignores the primary gains of avoidance of mental or physical acivity that might be harmful to the self or others, or of strenuous effort to join in the game of life, or to be joyful in appreciation of the happiness of others.

No, he presents himself to doctor after doctor with a string of ailments, seeking attention and making not only himself but the medical practitioners he visits increasingly miserable. You know the sort of person I am describing. When they walk into a room, all of its oxygen seems to dissipate. It's the Secondary Gain again. I am determined not to be happy, and I am determined that you'll stop being so bloody happy and feel sorry for ME!

The primary objective ought to be to make the best effort to enjoy life, not this pathetic second-rater.

I have known many seriously ill people and I have been continually surprised at the way they squeeze the last drop of enjoyment from life. It's their primary, not secondary gain they are concerned about. They find humour at all costs. I remember when a wave of deaths went through the Church hierarchy saying to Jimmy Cardinal Freeman, 'You're a cardinal, do something!' With a delicious grin, he said, 'It's every man for himself, Cliff.' Within a couple of weeks he was gone, too, leaving behind the unfulfilled wish that he be buried under the straight at Randwick. Not only did he enjoy being a cardinal, a boxer and a footballer — he enjoyed the life the Lord gave him.

The late Stan Arneil, author of One Man's War, did not let years of incarceration as a POW and ensuing ill-health diminish his effervescent nature. I spoke to Stan the night before he went into hospital for the last time and he was more interested in what I was doing than his own, as it proved, mortal illness.

Similarly with another pal, Fred Hollows, who sat up with friends with a bottle of the guid stuff talking about his Foundation in between jokes as he awaited his departure.

Weary Dunlop was another Aussie, guts down to his toenails, who was a fund of fun.

Today I learned that three old Labour men, Peter Cox, Ron Mulock and Kevin Stewart are far from well. Yet I am sure to their last breath they will appreciate the gift of life.

Kevin has twenty-four grandchildren. They are his gems. Throughout his political career he never let politics destroy his humanity, his humour that made him the Jackie Gleason of NSW Parliament. We should treasure such people while they are with us.

Why are they treasures? Because they are not thinking about themselves all the time.

Kevin's mother prayed every night for the people of Belmore. With a mother like that how could Kev go wrong?

My late first wife endured shocking health and many disappointments, but this did not prevent her from leading a noble and cheerful life that included many inspiring achievements in opera and Christian singing. Her primary gain was from life itself.

Back to the secondary gainers. Not only do they avoid proper interaction with others, but they are prone to prejudices. It's always someone else's fault. It's the Jews/Aborigines/Bad Catholics/Socialists/Heretics/Whatever.

Stereotyping, typecasting, finding enemies in the dark are food and drink to a Secondary Gainer. The 'enemy' must be dehumanized and given no mercy once the label is applied.

That's why so many Secondary Gainers find their place in politics, in the realms of Power. They are not many pollies who chuckle over life like Kevin, who once, in launching a public health facility, held up his glass of wine and said, 'I do not think I am much of an advertisement for the Ministry for Health!'

The SGs can watch a tragedy such as Lebanon and be totally preoccupied with their own image. They have given up any attempt at a lived life long ago. It's their reputation, their gain that matters. The world is made for them, their speeches, their folie de grandeur.

Socrates said 'the unexamined life is not worth living'. He was right. But the self-critical faculty is usually totally lacking in a Secondary Gainer.

Does not the global SG realize that if Hezbollah drops a rocket in the middle of Tel Aviv Israel could respond with a nuclear device into Syria or Iran? This could spell the beginning of the end — a 'rapture' of death!

Our Primary Gain should be to be very selfish, of desiring a safer world, a fairer world where terror and bloodshed are not on our screens every night. I do not need some political Secondary Gainer who has made a mess of his personal life and is getting his pleasures from twisted use of power to obtain a World That Suits Him telling me it is essential because it is part of the Strategy. Bugger the Strategy. I am selfish. I want no impediments to my enjoyment of life, nor any other inhabitant of Planet Earth.

Secondary Gain can poison domestic life. A man cannot get the love he desires from his wife. So he belts her. Secondary Gain once more.

Someone has said that violence may be a search for identity, and I guess that's true.

You ignore the man. He's a loser, a dropout, a no-hoper, a street person, a drunk, a homeless drifter. When he holds a knife to your throat as a secondary gain, however, you cannot ignore him any more.

Secondary gain not only fills doctor's surgeries, it packs casinos with compulsive gamblers, pubs with alcoholics, and the lines the pockets of drug dealers.

The SGer in the Church is always finding fault, detecting sins or heresies in others, or conniving to frustrate other people. He or she may join up with others as a false 'elect' of a moral police force determined to burn out, root and branch, those perceived as dissidents. Gossip and destruction of others' reputations can be a desirable secondary gain as much as prejudice.

'Loyalty' is hoisted as a flag against the foe. I have discovered that if an SG finds someone to admire it is an immature infatuation that can turn quickly into hatred, or someone to be used and discarded after the use-by date.

For some people age is not a glorious setting of the sun on a well-lived life, of integrity and appreciation. Rather it is a time of bitterness, settling old scores, of despair.

Despair versus integrity is a real struggle for the senior. I'd hope that it is never too late to 'seek a newer world'. As the poet Tennyson says in describing how aged Ulysses or Odysseus decides to hit the waves of adventure once more.

Ulysses — Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known, cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Addiction to the unlived life and secondary gains will mean that we will never be able to set sail with others joyously on the Sea of Life.

Hoist the sail of the good ship Primary Gain! Confine the useless Secondary vessel to the wrecking yard!

If you would like to examine this subject in further detail could I recommend the following online articles as a good place to start: