I was able to make her own dynamics crystal clear to her by quoting Otto Rank, one of Freud’s colleagues, who said, “Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death.” This dynamic is not uncommon. I think most of us have known individuals who numb themselves and avoid entering life with gusto because of the dread of losing too much.
It is extraordinarily difficult to know really what the other feels; far too often we project our own feelings onto the other.
I always say toward the end of the hour: “Let’s take a minute to look at how you and I are doing today.” Or, “Any feelings about the way we are working and relating?” Or, “Before we stop, shall we take a look at what’s going on in this space between us?” Or if I perceive difficulties, I might say something like: “Before we stop, let’s check into our relationship today. You’ve talked.
Am invatat demult ca atunci cand intre doua persoane este un lucru grav si nu vorbesc despre el, nu vorbesc nici despre altceva important.
It was she who taught me that embracing death honestly permits one to experience life in a richer, more satisfying manner.
Oamenii se iubesc pe ei insisi daca vad o imagine iubitoare a lor reflectata in ochii cuiva de care le pasa cu adevarat.
My friend,” he whispered, “I cannot tell you how to live differently because, if I did, you would still be living another’s design.
I only meant that a feeling is merely a feeling. A subjective state can never substantiate an objective truth.
No matter how close each of us becomes to another, there remains a final, unbridgeable gap; each of us enters existence alone and must depart from it alone. The existential conflict is thus the tension between our awareness of our absolute isolation and our wish for contact, for protection, our wish to be part of a larger whole.
While there is no solution to existential isolation, therapists must discourage false solutions. One’s efforts to escape isolation can sabotage one’s relationships with other people. Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation.
I try always to keep in mind that we are all sentenced to an existence filled with inescapable misery – an existence which none of us would choose if we knew the facts ahead of time. In that sense we are all, as Schopenhauer put it, fellow sufferers, and we stand in need of tolerance and love from our neighbors in life.
Hard to think of others when you’re feeling trapped, feeling you’re spinning in a vicious circle.
Do I in any way profit from this misery?” Nietzsche finally responded. “I have reflected on that very question for many years. Perhaps I do profit. In two ways. You suggest that the attacks are caused by stress, but sometimes the opposite is true – that the attacks dissipate stress. My work is stressful. It requires me to face the dark side of existence, and the migraine attack, awful as it is, may be a cleansing convulsion that permits me to continue.
All serious thinkers contemplate suicide,” Nietzsche noted. “It’s a comfort that helps us get through the night.
Whoever seeks peace and quiet should avoid women, the permanent source of trouble and dispute.
Significant problems arise in relationships for the alexithymic individual. Others never know how that person feels; he or she seems unspontaneous, wooden, heavy, lifeless, and boring.
The wish-blocked individual has enormous social difficulties. Others, too, wish to shout at such persons. They have no opinions, no inclinations, no desires of their own. They become parasitic on the wishes of others, and finally others become bored, drained, or fatigued at having to supply wish and imagination for them.
What is immortal is this life, this moment. There is no afterlife, no goal toward which this life points, no apocalyptic tribunal or judgment. This moment exists forever, and you, alone, are your only audience.
But then I think of the old story back at Johns Hopkins of the patients who would come in for years and almost every week the chart would say-patient better, patient better – and then at the end of several years, one sees that there really has been no change.
Amamos mais o desejo do que o ser desejado.