Teleconference with Dr. Gilbert Garza

     One of the psychology graduate programs that I am applying to is the University of Dallas.  This is one of of my top five graduate programs of choice of the ten total that I think are worth applying to, considering my concentration and goals.  One of the faculty members at the University of Dallas whose research and interest I found pertinent to my own was Dr. Gilbert Garza.  I initially contacted Dr. Garza via email and accordingly scheduled a telephone conference that took place this morning.  Below, you will find my notes on the 20 minute plus conversation we had.  The first part is a discussion of Garza's various works and interests.  The second part was an interview conducted on my behalf concerning my own current research.  The third part of the conversation, not included here, was a few questions that Dr. Garza asked me regarding my background and interests in the program.  For more information on Dr. Garza you can review his University of Dallas faculty listing here.

Call Log:  11/21/11, 9:58 a.m. 

Part I
     One of the topics Dr. Garza has researched is Neurobiological Reductionism.  I asked him to elaborate on some of his work on the topic.  Garza stated that the Cartesian model of knowledge reduces consciousness to a biological process, this is not accurate.  According to Garza psychology has a problem of heart and this has lead to furthering the study of neurobiology.  Garza mentioned, and I agreed, that one of the problems we face in the world today is the relentless and "unreflective" use of knowledge from natural sciences without thinking things through.
     Dr. Garza has also published material on the meaning of self in a wireless world.  Dr. Garza was quick to cite a study done by Carnegie (Carnegie Mellon University, link provided if detailed review is desired).  Garza summarized the study saying that Carnegie did a study offered free internet service to those who agreed to have their internet usage monitored.  The result was that visits to social networking sites exploded, it was also noted that with this increase, person-to-person interaction was noticeably decreased on campus during  the time of the study.  Garza says that social media is not necessarily a bad thing, however, modern technology has changed how we define words like "social" and "communication".  "It's not the quantitative use (of social media), but the qualitative character of the user that matters", says Garza.
     Garza also served as the chair moderator for a discussion on Heidegger's metaphysics of meaning.  As this was not research directly done by Garza, he only mentioned a few philosophers relevant to the discussion such as Gadamer, Heidegger, and (Garza's primary research target) Lecand.  The importance of intentionality, application, and methodology were also mentioned.

Part II
     [I am currently conducting post-undergraduate/pre-graduate independent research on the importance of philosophy in psychology, specifically psychotherapy.  The primary concentration of the research is existential philosophy, particularly the works of Albert Camus.]
      I asked Dr. Garza what some of the problems that he saw with modern therapy were.  He, almost comically, responded that that was not a short question to answer.  One of the problems mentioned was the delivery and payment of psychotherapy.  Psychotherapy today is co-opted by the medical model.  Thus, the focus of psychological treatment is dictated by the economy and has chosen symptom reduction as its focus.  Garza was critical of the beurocratic procedures associated with clinical psychology.  Garza stated that after completing his doctorate it took nearly a calendar year for him to become licensed.  Given the medical and economic influences on psychotherapy, Garza seemed critical of the current trend of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  [In my own personal and semi-profession opinion I am very skeptical of CBT.  My reason for this is primarily the focus of the therapy.  The essence of being is far more than behavioral practices and the output of neurological functions.  CBT seems to me to be using tricks of the mind to tame psychological symptoms (see above comments with Dr. Garza).  Dulling symptoms is not effective treatment so much as it is economically sufficient.  CBT, in my opinion, is like playing head games with yourself, in effect moderating symptoms of rather than seeking resolution to psychological or behavioral problems.  The economy is awful... and I'm not just referring to the mothballs in my wallet.]  Dr. Garza says that psychology needs to decide if therapy should be defined as a medical practice or not.
     The next thing discussed was the importance of philosophy in psychology and in psychotherapy in particular.  Garza, with good humor, referred to the expression about everyone having an opinion (...and they all stink).  Garza expressed that everyone has an implicit philosophy but only a few choose to make it explicit.  He states that philosophy is not worthless, however it needs to be outwardly expressed and carried out.  According to Garza, we need to take ownership of our philosophical framework.  Garza also commented that our values and beliefs shape our approach to essentially everything.  "There is an implied philosophical underpinning to psychology... that underpinning factors into everything in psychology."  It was specifically expressed that phenomenology, to be more specific, factors into everything in psychology. 
      I also asked Dr. Garza for a comparison of traditional psychoanalytic therapy versus the, relatively new, field of philosophical coaching.  Philosophical coaching seems to be having a rising following but not gaining much of a foothold in the therapeutic field.  Dr. Garza's comments are as follows.  "I would be suspicious of anything called philosophical coaching... a newspaper columnist can give advice, the difference is that a therapist is trained... the goal of therapy is to increase responsibility." 
     The next question was, what makes existentialism so pertinent to psychology?  Garza's response was the emphasis that existentialism places on responsibility for one's actions.  Garza also commented that, however, our culture has set us up against responsibility.  What about existentialism and psychotherapy?  "Good therapy gives the client a sense of freedom, this includes the freedom to continue suffering." 
     The final question, then, was; "Do be people want the responsibility that existentialism offers?"  "No", Garza quickly replied, after brief pause, "absolutely not."  [If you have been following the conversation thus far you will realize that our economy has swayed people towards a quick fix, not only for its immediate gratification, but because results have three defining characteristics.  They can be good, fast, or financially cheap; of the three characteristics your results only get to contain two.]  Garza cited Hiedegger, saying; "living authentically will kill you."  Garza continued to say that no one can bear responsibility for their actions and that therapy should alleviate suffering.  I then thanked Dr. Garza for the interview and he wished me luck on my application. 

     Selected parts of this interview, and others scheduled in the future, will be compiled as part of my current research project to be used as a writing sample with my graduate applications.   My last "research" project was during the spring of 2010, my senior year at Mac Murray College.  As my personal development, academic interests, and career plans evolve, so do the written samplings that are to demonstrate those categories to admissions committees.

As always, thanks for reading!

Back into Action: Your Resident Musing Philosopher Returns with Thoughts on Necessit

Hello again,

I apologize for my time away from this blog (as well as my others).  Over the past few months I have been extremely pre-occupied.  I won't bore you with the details, but lets just say I was only sleeping about 3-4 hours per night.  That being said, lets continue with what this blog was meant to do... philosophize!

During my brief stint as a pre-med student (which I am no longer) I began pondering about what necessity does to a person's psyche.  One of my Facebook status updates in the past few months stated that "Necessity breeds the monster begotten in us all."  I'd like to expand on that concept here.  This is a post that has been long overdue for and has been postponed due to previous circumstances.  Which, as the case may be, is very fitting, considering what you will read below.

What is Necessity:  Two of the definitions found here in Webster's Dictionary depict necessity as "pressure of circumstance" and "physical or moral compulsion."  These two are particularly interesting to me as they have several relevant factors to what I was thinking and feeling at the time that I was mulling over the psychological and philosophical implications of necessity.

Physical and Moral Compulsion:  Here we will focus on the physical compulsion, though the moral compulsion would fit better in this blog, the physical compulsion is what is most relevant to my circumstances.  As some of you may know, I am an personal trainer and competitive athlete.  Diet and nutrition play a tremendous role in what I do both as a hobby and for income.  A paper that I was working on as a pre-med student (though it was never revised to a final copy) focused on the neurological impact and function of the dietary macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat).  Most of the research centered around the effects that these nutrients have on neurotransmitter production.  These neurotransmitters have direct effects on cognition and mood. 
     Prior to my fall enrollment in August of this year, at my last Jiu Jitsu tournament I weighed about 163 lbs at about 6% body fat.  NECESSITY had its way of changing that.  As a result of high stress levels and long hours body weight increased to ~170 lbs over the next couple months.  This may not seem like a significant change, however, uncorrected is exactly the kind of problem that leads to long term obesity.  What was the cause of this?  I believe that the stress factor had a lot to do with it.  It is not uncommon to hear someone talking about stress eating or emotional eating.  This is not (always) an excuse for a lousy diet.  Carbohydrates increase the level of Serotonin in the brain.  Serotonin is often associated with positive emotions and can have a calming effect on the nervous system.  Ever notice how when you're in a foul mood or exceptionally stressed you are not craving a lean steak and green vegetables, but rather a jelly doughnut and chocolate chip cookies?  This is a possible explanation as to why. 
     Given the large amount of stress placed on my psyche via multiple jobs and full time enrollment as as student, the burden placed on my brain was immense.  The solution?  My body told me to eat things that (in spite of health and physique) would benefit my cognitive state and mood.  (The weight gain should not be solely accredited to this, as I was not exercising nearly as much as before due to the time restraints of the previously stated obligations).


Pressure of Circumstance:  This is where I really wanted to post in this blog.  While the above story is also an example of a circumstance imposing pressure to do something out of the ordinary but out of "necessity", there is another direction I would like to go that better suits the intentions of this blog.  I'd like to take a moment and ponder the thesis that I stated in the beginning of this post.  "Necessity breeds the monster begotten in us all." 
     One of the things implied by that statement is that we are all, in a sense, monsters.  That is that there is an insatiable, irrational, unpredictable, vulgar and savage creature begotten (born as part of, and not made from) within us.  There are philosophers numerous and various that will assure you that human beings are inherently evil, ie: "monstrous", and are anything but "humane."  Pessimism of the human condition is not what I am advocating here.  However, whatever view you hold of the state of humanity, it would be intolerably ignorant to ignore the "monstrosities" that have shaped and molded bold society and humanity since their inception.  It is certain, one must admit, that if humans are not innately monstrous than there is at the very least an innate possibility, perhaps propensity, for humans to act as if they were monsters.
      Moving on to the other part of the thesis; does necessity cause this possibility to flourish?  By definition it certainly increases this possibility.  But there is a specific word used in the thesis, it is not increase, or enhance, or strengthen, but breed.  Breeding is a type of artificial selection (to play on Darwin's Natural Selection theory).  It is a forced outcome of offspring.  With that in mind the ideas of this thesis should come together.  Literally the thesis would state; "The pressure of circumstance forcibly propagates the inherent un-human characteristics and potential that is innate to everyone."
     In short, the pressure of a particular circumstance may cause a person to act out of character.  This is necessity's finest hour.  This is where the irrational and emotional override all this is rational and possibly all that is "human."  It should be noted that this does not have to be an impulsive situation.  Necessity can play over a long period of time.  The particular situation I am referring to in my own experience lasted about three months.  If an example is needed, here is one that I find appeals to my humanistic side:
     It has become common knowledge that smoking cigarettes increases a person's probability to develop cancer.  The role of health care providers is to ensure the health and treatment of illness and injury of others.  Yet, many doctors and nurses smoke cigarettes.  Why?  There is an extreme amount of stress associated with working in the healthcare industry.  Cigarettes or binge drinking may be poor choices of emotional outlets, but they are crutches (normally used with a negative connotation) and coping mechanisms that provide temporary relief to a burdening situation.  One could also use the example of a truck driver taking up the habit of smoking to A) keep him/her awake on long drives and/or B) so that he/she does not have to stop, sacrificing time and money, to eat or sleep
  The other part of the thesis that needs to be addressed is the verb usage.  I did not say that necessity can or may or will increase the probability of, I stated that it does.  That is, the result is certain.  I believe that on a long enough time span, our psyche will collapse and give into pressure (of whatever kind).  There is simply not enough willpower or cognitive horsepower available to the psyche to sustain a long-term struggle.  If that is the case, certain behavioral, social, and cognitive dysfunctions are sure to develop.  Hence we subconsciously make a decision (at some point) in a matter of nanoseconds; weighing the benefits/risks of our "crutches" versus the undesirable outcome of whatever pressures we are facing.  What is your crutch?  Is a drug?  Is it psychotherapy?  Or is it simply exercise or hobby?

In summary, for better or worse, it seems apparent that necessity does (in fact) breed the monster begotten in us all.

As always,
Thank you for reading.
...and, I do not endorse, profit from, or receive benefits from any of the links provided within this post.

Development of Ego Throughout a Lifespan - Psychology Today

  Another recent article in Psychology Today examined different psychological traits and their development and strength of their influence at different stages in the  human life.  Again, this post is only supplemental.  Please read the the full article for the author's comments and a graph that will make the below descriptions easier to comprehend.

"Researchers from the University of Basel examined  the self-reported emotions of thousands of 13-to-89-year-olds and discovered trends in how we evaluate ourselves over the lifespan. The overall forecast? The older, the happier." —Katherine Schreiber

Shame - Is highest during highest during adolescence and lowest from adulthood through middle age.  There is a sharp decrease from adolescence to post-young adulthood and a sharp increase from post-middle age to old age.

Pride - Is lowest during adolescence and highest during old age with a steady increase throughout the lifespan.

Guilt - Is lowest during adolescence and steadily increases throughout the lifespan from adolescence to old age, thought it begins to decrease as old age progresses.

Hubris - Is highest during adolescence, sharply decreases from adolescence to middle age.  It is lowest during middle age, is fairly constant from middle age through old age and increases as old age progresses.

Well Being - Is lowest during adolescence, steadily increases from adolescence to pre-middle age, and sharply increases from pre-middle age to old age, continuing to increase as old age progresses.

Adolescence - Hubris and Shame are high.  Well Being, Pride, and Guilt are low.

Young Adult - Hubris is high, though not as high as in Adolescence.  Well Being is low, though not as low as during adolescence.  Pride, Shame, and Guilt are moderate and very comparable to each other.

Middle Age - Hubris is as low as Well Being was during Adolescence.  Shame is moderate.  Guilt, Well Being, and Pride as high as Hubris and Shame during Adolescence.  The are comparable thought Pride is the highest, followed by Well Being, then Guilt.

Old Age - Hubris is low but slightly higher than Middle Age and increasing throughout Old Age.  Shame is moderately high, though nearly as high as during Adolescence and increasing through Old Age.  Guilt is as high as Shame in Adolescence but decreasing though Old Age.  Pride is as high as Hubris in Adolescence.  Well Being is very high and increasing through Old Age.

This blog is not sponsored or supported in any way by Psychology Today.  I do not own any part of the magazine nor am I sponsored or benefited by the publicity of the magazine or it's authors.  I do not exclusively endorse, support, or receive benefit from any of the authors contributing to Psychology Today or the magazine's enterprise.

Psychology Today: 6 Clues to Character

     This was the title of a recent article in the magazine Psychology Today.  This post will illustrate my thoughts on the article and may not represent the author's original intentions or ideas.  Essentially, this is my take on the 6 Clues.  For the author's take, please read the full article HERE.  Throughout the following there are selected quotations from the article.

Intelligence - "The biggest boon"  The author talks about recognizing whether a person is able to distinguish the difference between what they "think" about certain topic or issue and how they "feel" about it.  The author also mentions taking note of how a person constructs an argument.  You can gather a lot of information about a person's intelligence by having simple conversation with them and asking them what they think about a certain topic.  The topic does not have to be something that is a "hot" or "taboo" issue, rather, in fact it may be better, if it is something nonchalant and merely a friendly debate or brainstorm session.  The observant listener will be able to determine a great deal about the speaker's personality if by taking note of the importance and influence of various elements such as emotion vs reason, information vs assumption, the organization of their logic, belief systems that come into play, and application of general wisdom as well as knowledge of the subject being discussed.

Drive - "the goals you set" You can also learn much about one's personality by examining the their goals and how they plan to achieve them.  Are their goals realistic?  Are they attainable?  Are they ambitious or conservative?  How willing is the person to make sacrifices in order to obtain their goals?  "An unhealthy person rages against bad luck"

Happiness - "the capacity for finding satisfaction"  Is the person content?  Are they content with being content?  Do they seem to be despair over anxiety, misfortune, and struggle?  The great Irvin D. Yalom states in Staring at the Sun that he asks  himself, of his patients, if there is something that they are doing that is hindering their pursuit of happiness or disabling capacity for satisfaction.  Yalom would say, and I agree, that it is largely important to remove these things; much more so than merely attempting to fend them off with supplements of additional happiness.  "How realistic are they about personal weakness?" and "How willing are they to act in alignment with their values at the risk of criticism"

Goodness - "how do they behave in difficult situations?" and "How well do they calm themselves?"  It should be painfully obvious that a person shows their true character when under pressure.  The learning about another human being by assessing their behavior during struggles or debate on controversial topics can be paramount.  The side effect of this is the second quotation.  Once distress has occurred, what do they do about it?  Does pain feed off panic and snowball into a reckless anxiety attack?  Do they, how do they, and how well do they, resolve the distress that may onset during a "difficult" situation?

Friendship - "The capacity for reciprocity"  Not only can you determine a great deal about a person based on the behaviors and personalities of those they call friends, but how they treat, interact with, and behave around their friends is also a key point of their own character.

Intimacy - "The capacity for vulnerability and trust"  Similar to friendship, how does one interact with, behave with, and act towards someone they are intimately involved with?  How passionate is someone about their actions, beliefs, and lifestyle?  How trusting are they of others?  Do they fear commitment?  Are they always defensive in every manner of life?  "Even a person whose early experience was less than ideal will reveal in tone and attitude—anger, wistfulness, regret—whether they've declared a truce with history."

NOTE:  These characteristics are not only beneficial in learning about others, but they are also largely insightful into the examination of our own character sets.  Consider it to be self-therapy.  Each time you use a psychological tool or tactic to examine someone else, use the same method to examine your own conscience and behaviors.  The result will be a greater development in each of the characteristics listed above as well as an increased ability to share the joy and feel the pain of everyone and everything else you come into contact and interact with.

This blog is not sponsored or supported in any way by Psychology Today.  I do not own any part of the magazine nor am I sponsored or benefited by the publicity of the magazine or it's authors.  I do not exclusively endorse, support, or receive benefit from any of the authors contributing to Psychology Today or the magazine's enterprise.

The Stranger by Albert Camus - Notes and Comments

     In the same vein as the previous post on The Fall here are my selected notation from The Stranger by Albert Camus.  There is a much different feel to this novel and that is primarily to the fact that while one can relate to it's narrator, there is somewhat of a disconnection between the reader and the emotions or motivations of the narrator.  Of course, there is probably a reason the novel is titled "The Stranger"!  I did not consider The Stranger to be as awe-inspiring and "life-altering", knock-me-off-my-socks great as The Fall.  However, I think that that is somewhat intentional of the author.  There is a great feeling of love and charisma and compassion that comes from The Fall.  The Stranger  sets us, rather, with an anti-hero of sorts.  Nonetheless we can all relate with "the stranger" as well as the experiences he endures throughout the novel.  With a deep examination of and the utmost empathy for Meursault we can actually find that he portrays the truest parts of ourselves; hose that have become mundane and those that are deeply repressed.  There is much to be learned of human kind and our own selves in the educational, always bitter, and rarely sweet pages of The Stranger.


The Stranger by Albert Camus (Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie)

                “when The Stranger was published in occupied Paris in June 1942 the name Albert Camus meant nothing to the French public… by 1945 Camus was being ranked… as one of the foremost writers of the period and, to judge by recent estimates, which suggest that in French The Stranger has 200,000 new readers a year, it is clear that his reputation has not waned since then” (xi)

                “Meursault, then, is not an automaton, devoid of emotion, incapable of pleasure or reflection.  On the contrary, it is in the name of alternative values that he undemonstratively opposes those of society” (xvii)

                “although Camus owes something to Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger, his true masters are the French moralists of the seventeenth century.  He is classical Mediterranean… the philosophy of Camus is a philosophy of the Absurd, and for him the Absurd springs from the relation of man to the world, of his legitimate aspirations to the vanity and futility of human wishes” (Jean-Paul Sartre) (xix)

                “The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’ stoical anti-hero and devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of post-war Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity” (xxvii)

                “It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed” (23)

                “I said that people never change their lives, that in any case on life was as good as another and that I wasn’t dissatisfied with mine here at all” (40)

                “Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace.  And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness” (57)

                “At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead” (63)

                “When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man” (73)

                “I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison.  He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored” (75-76)

                “A man had left a Czech village to seek his fortune.  Twenty-five years later, and now rich, he had returned with a wife and a child.  His mother was running a hotel with his sister in the village where he’d been born.  In order to surprise them, he’d left his wife and child at another hotel and gone to see his mother, who didn’t recognize him when he walked in.  As a joke he’d had the idea of taking a room.  He had shown off his money.  During the night his mother and his sister had beaten him to death with a hammer in order to rob him and had thrown his body in the river.  The next morning the wife had come to the hotel and, without knowing it, gave away the traveler’s identity.  The mother hanged herself.  The sister threw herself down a well” (76)

                “I can’t say what distinguished one from another.  I had just one impression:  I was sitting across from a row of seats on a streetcar and all these anonymous passengers were looking over the new arrival to see if they could find something funny about him” (80)

                “And they will conclude that a stranger may offer a cup of coffee, but beside the body of the one who brought him into the world, a son should have refused it” (87)

                “Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial:  everything is true and nothing is true!” (88)

                “I couldn’t quite understand how an ordinary man’s good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man” (96)

                “… the emptiness of a man’s heart becomes… an abyss threatening to swallow up society” (97)

                “What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was.  Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet” (104)

                “I just couldn’t accept such arrogant certainty” (104)

                “there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in” (105)

                “But everybody knows life isn’t worth living.  Deep down I knew perfectly well that it doesn’t matter whether you die at thirty or at seventy, since in either case other men and women will naturally go on living – and for thousands of years.  In fact, nothing could be clearer.  Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the one dying” (108)

                “Since we’re going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter” (109)

                “Have you no hope at all?  And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?’  ‘yes,’ I said.  Then he lowered his head and sat back down.  He told me that he pitied me.  He thought it was more than a man could bear” (112)

                “Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that.  I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish.  But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness” (113)

                “I know that at one time or another you’ve wished for another life” (114)

                “…he stopped me and wanted to know how I pictured this other life.  Then I shouted at him, ‘One where I could remember this life!’” (114)

                “He seemed so certain about everything, didn’t he?  And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman’s head.  He wasn’t even sure he was live, because he was living like a dead man” (114)

                “Everybody was privileged.  There were only privileged people.  The others would all be condemned one day” (115)

                “I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a ‘fiancé,’ why she had played at beginning again” (116)

                “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.  Finding it so much like myself – so like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again” (116-117)

                “For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate” (117)

The Fall by Albert Camus - Notes and Comments

     Camus is one of, if not my all-time favorite author.  My comments could never suffice to replace or substitute his works which is why this blogpost is not, and should not be considered, an essay or a book report or any kind of analysis.  It is merely brief commentary.  For a works such as those of Camus, there can be no Sparqnotes or thinking that reading these selected notations would suffice reading the primary text itself.  Such a substitution without the proper context would never be able to deliver the ambiance, emotion, inspiration, or the majesty that is commanded by each of the pages Camus has written. 
     With that said this The Fall is beautifully written, and that is a severe understatement.  It is a brief 147 pages that tells it how it is, pulls at your heart strings, makes you think, and will undoubtedly inspire you to more deeply consider and reconsider the world you live in and the people you interact with as well as the way you interact with them.  There is not an adjective in the English language that can express my praise for this book so a simple verb/predicate will have to do... "Read It"
 

The Fall by Albert Camus

“an irresistibly brilliant examination of modern conscience” – The New York Time (Cover)

“Some were dreadfully insulted, and quite seriously, to have held up as a model such an immoral character as A Hero of Our Time; others shrewdly noticed that the author had portrayed himself and his acquaintances … A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of an individual; it is the aggregate of the vices of our whole generation in their fullest expression”  - Lermontov (inside cover)

“when one has no character one has to apply a method” (11)

“…those islands where men die mad and happy” (14)

“the avidity which in our society substitutes for ambition has always made me laugh” (20)

“to tell the truth, just from being so fully and simply a man, I looked upon myself as something of a superman” (28)

“I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing” (29-30)

“may heaven protect us… from being set on a pedestal by our friends!  Those whose duty is to love us – I mean relatives and connections (what an expression!) – are another matter” (31)

“…he can’t love without self-love” (34)

“something must happen – and that explains most human commitments.  Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death.  Hurray then for funerals!” (37)

“If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent… and in my opinion… that’s what must be avoided above all.  Otherwise, everything would be just a joke” (41)

“when the body is sad the hear languishes” (42)

“every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air… the essential thing, after all, is being able to get angry with someone who has no right to talk back.  ‘One doesn’t talk back to one’s father’ – you know the expression?” (44-45)

“we no longer say as in simple times:  ‘this is the way I think.  What are your objections?’  we have become lucid.  For the dialogue we have substituted the communiqué:  ‘this is the truth,’ we say” (45)

“yes, hell must be like that:  streets filled with shop signs and no way of explaining oneself.  One is classified once and for all” (47)

“their guilt made me eloquent because was not its victim” (56)

“after a certain age every man is responsible for his face” (57)

“true love is exceptional – two or three times a century, more or less.  The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom” (57)

“our feminine friends have in common with Bonaparte the belief that they can succeed where everyone else has failed” (59)

“but a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: ‘don’t love me and be faithful to me!’” (63)

“the act of love, for instance, is a confession.  Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself” (65)

“no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures” (66)

“I have no more friends; I have nothing but accomplices” (73)

“martyrs… must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of.  As for being understood – never!” (76)

“…punishment without judgment is bearable.  It has a name, besides, that guarantees our innocence:  it is called misfortune” (77)

“I realized that there was in them an irresistible vocation for judgment” (78)

“Then you know that Dante accepts the idea of neutral angels in the quarrel between God and Stat.  And he puts them in Limbo, a sort of vestibule of his Hell.  We are in this vestibule” (84)

“your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.  But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others.  Consequently, there is no escape.  Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched”  (80)

“each of us insists on being innocent at all costs, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself” (81)

“wealth… is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking” (82)

“above all, don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be sincere with them.. they merely hope you will encourage them in the good opinion they have of themselves…” (82)

“a liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists” (83)

“what we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others” (84)

“a ridiculous fear pursued me, in fact:  one could not die without having confessed all one’s lies” (89-90)

“’true love’ stories, though they taught how to talk of love, did not teach how to make love.  After having loved a parrot, I had to go to bed with a serpent” (100)

“but truth… is a colossal bore” (101)

“at a certain degree of lucid intoxication… the mind dominates the whole past, and the pain of living is over forever” (102)

“bourgeois marriage has put our country into slippers and will soon lead it to the gates of death” (106)

“I had to submit and admit my guild” (109)

“we cannot assert the innocence of anyone, whereas we can state with certainty the guilt of all” (110)

“religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments.  God is not needed to create guilt of to punish.  Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves” (110)

“Don’t wait for the Last Judgment.  It takes place every day.” (111)

“in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.  And he was not superhuman, you can take my word for it.  He cried aloud his agony and that’s why I love him” (114)

“the unfortunate thing is that he left us alone, to carry on, whatever happens, even when we are lodged in the little-ease, knowing in turn what he knew, but incapable of doing what he did and of dying like him” (114)

“too many people have decided to do without generosity in order to practice charity” (114)

“he left forever, leaving them to judge and condemn, with pardon on their lips and the sentence in their hearts” (116)

“but the keenest of human torments is to be judged without law” (117)

“what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am?” (119)

“a hundred and fifty years ago, people became sentimental about lakes and forests.  Today we have the lyricism of the prison cell” (123-124)

“empires and churches are born under the sun of death” (127)

“no excuses ever, for anyone… I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance… I am for any theory that refuses to grant man innocence and for any practice that treats him as guilty” (131-132)

“at the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear” (133)

“for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.  Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style” (133)

“they cannot keep themselves from judging, they make up for it by moralizing” (134)

“they rush out to build piles of faggots to replace churches” (135)

“death is solitary, whereas slavery is collective” (136)

“I show it with great sorrow:  ‘this, alas, is what I am!’  The prosecutor’s charge is finished” (140)

“I was the lowest of the low… this is what we are” (140)

“I was wrong, after all, to tell you that the essential was to judgment.  The essential is being able to permit oneself everything, even if, from time to time, one  has to profess one’s own infamy” (141)

“only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming repentance” (142)

“I pity without absolving, I understand without forgiving, and above all, I feel at last that I am being adored!” (143)

“you would be flabbergasted if a chariot came down from heaven to carry me off, or if the snow suddenly caught fire.  You don’t believe it?  Nor do I.” (146)

“O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving both of us!”  (147)

“the water is so cold!  But let’s not worry!  It’s too late not.  It will always be too late.  Fortunately!” (147)

"Love and Will" by Rollo May

The following are my  notes from Rollo May's book Love and Will.

Love and will … are conjunctive processes of being – a reaching out to influence others, molding, forming, creating the consciousness of other (9)

                Will without love becomes manipulation … love without will in our own day become sentimental and experimental (9)

                … man … is called by his consciousness to transcend the eternal return (10)

                It is an old an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way (15)

                “love” is simply the name for the way more powerful members of the family control other members (16)

                “if there were not some new possibility, there would be no crisis – there would be only despair(18)

                Break down the customary pretenses, hypocrisies, and defenses behind which we all hide in “normal” social discourse (19)

Does not every human conflict reveal universal characteristics of man as well as the idiosyncratic problems of the individual? (19)

                The neurotic is the … artist who can not transmute his conflicts into art (24)

                I believe it is a state of feelinglessness, the despairing possibility that nothing matters, a condition very close to apathy (27)

                …the human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long:  if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities (28)

                I do believe that there is in our society a definite trend toward a state of affectlessness as an attitude toward life, a character state (29)

                (apathy is)… want of feeling; lack of passion, emotion or excitement, indifference (29)

                Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is (29)

                Something worse than mediocrity – and that is absolute indifference (30)

                Sexual intercourse is the human counterpart of the cosmic process (Proverb of Ancient China) (37)

                There are four kinds of love.  One is sex... libido.  The second is eros, the drive of love to procreate or create…. A third is philia, or friendship, brotherly love.  The fourth is agape ro caritas as the latins called it, the love which is devoted to the welfare of the other, the prototype of which is the love of God for man.  Every human experience of authentic love is a blending, in varying proportions of these four (38-39)

The challenge a woman used to face from men was simple and direct – would she our would she not go to bed? – a direct issue of how she stood vis-à-vis cultural mores.  But the question men ask now is no longer, “will she or won’t she?”  but “can she or can’t she?” (41)

                The battle against censorship and for freedom of expression surely was a great battle to win, but has it not become a new strait jacket? (42)

                Questions typically asked about love making are not, was there passion or meaning or pleasure in the act? … how well did I perform? (44)

                Is it not this intimacy that makes us return to the event in memory again and again when we needed to be warmed by whatever hearths life makes available? (45)

                They are more wary of the tenderness that goes with psychological and spiritual nakedness than they are of the physical nakedness in sexual intimacy (45)

                It is argued in some books on the counseling of married couples that the therapist ought to use only the term “fuck” when discussing sexual intercourse, and to insist the patient use it; for any other word plays into the patients’ dissimulation. (47)

                The new Puritanism brings with it a depersonalization of our whole language.  Instead of making love, we “have sex”; in contrast to intercourse, we “screw”’ instead of going to bed, we “lay” someone or (heaven help the English language as well as ourselves) we “are laid.” (47)

                It is not surprising that the new puritanism develops smoldering hostility among the members of our society.  And that hostility, in turn, comes out frequently in references to the sexual act itself.  We say “go fuck yourself” or “fuck you” as a term of contempt to show that the other is of no value whatever beyond being used and tossed aside (48)

                The possibility of finding a new lover makes it more necessary for us to accept the responsibility of choosing the one we do have if we stay with him or her (52)

                Egalitarianism is clung to at the price of denying not only biological differences – which are basic, to say the least – between men and women, but emotional differences from which come much of the delight of the sexual act (54)

                Another motive is the individual’s hope to overcome his own solitariness.  Allied wit this is the desperate endeavor to escape feelings of emptiness and threat of apathy:  partners pant and quiver hoping to find an answering quiver in someone else’s body just to prove that their own is not dead; they seek a responding, a longing in the other to prove their own feelings are alive.  Out of an ancient conceit, this is called love (54)

                The excessive concern with technical performance in sex is actually correlated with the reduction of sexual feeling (54)

                Something significant in American society… the repressed fear of involvement with women (Cox) (58)

                I don’t raise the question in advocacy… I consider some of the possibilities horrifying (Garth) (62)

The purpose of our discussion in this book is precisely to raise the questions of the alternative possibilities for good and evil – that is, the destruction or the enhancement of the qualities which constitute man’s “humane, life-giving qualities” (63)

                We are in flight from eros – and we use sex as the vehicle for the flight (65)

                We fly to the sensation of sex in order to avoid the passion or eros (65)

                She took LSD – the kind of person who cries out to the world to give her some passion (68)

                What of the anxiety which comes precisely from this new freedom? (69)

                Anxiety which places a burden on individual consciousness and capacity for personal choice which, if not insoluable, is great indeed; anxiety which our sophisticated and enlightened day cannot be acted out like they hysterical woman of Victorian times and therefore turns inward and results in inhibiting feelings, suffocating passion in place of the inhibition of actions of the nineteenth-century woman (69-70)

                Alienation is felt as a loss of the capacity to be  intimately personal (71)

                Social norms which promise virtue without trying, sex without risk, wisdom without struggle, luxury without effort – all provided that they agree to settle for love without passion, and soon even sex without feeling (71-72)

                Eros seeks union of new dimensions of experience which broaden and deepen the being of both persons (74)

                Eros is not a god in the sense of being above man, but the power that binds all things and all men together, the power informing all things (78)

                There certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies – conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain.  And what are these conceptions? – wisdom and virtue in general.  And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor (79)

                Their tragic view itself enabled them to delight in life.  You can’t outwit death anyway by “progress” or accumulating wealth; so why not accept your fate, choose values which are authentic, and let yourself delight and believe in the being you are and the Being you are part of? (80)

                The course of mental event automatically regulated by the pleasure principle … is inwardly set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a  lowering of tension (Freud) (85)

                The aim of all life is death (85)

                To feel, then, makes their loneliness more painful rather than decreasing it, so they stop feeling (90-91)

                Our feelings … are ways of communicating and sharing something meaningful from us to the world (91)

                …the war between eros and technology.  There is no war between sex and technology (96)

                The lover, like the poet, is a menace on the assembly line (96)

                The confrontation with death – and the reprieve from it – makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it, to embrace it, and to let myself be overwhelmed by it.  My river has never looked so beautiful … death, and its ever present possibility makes love, passionate love, more possible.  I wonder if we could love passionately, if ecstasy would be possible at all, if we knew we’d never die (Maslow) (99)

                Death and delight, anguish and joy, anxiety and the wonder of birth – these are the warp and woof of which the fabric of human love is woven (100)

                To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive – to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before (100)

                If we can have sex without love, we assume that we escape the daimonic anxiety known throughout the ages as an inseparable part of human love.  And if, further, we even use sexual activity itself as an escape from the commitments eros demand of us, we may hope to have thus gained an airtight defense against anxiety (105)

                We preach a psycho-religious gospel that says the less grief the better (106)

                An appreciation of the tragic not only can help us avoid some egregious oversimplifications in life, but it can specifically protect us against the danger that sex and love will be banalized also in psychotherapy (109)

                If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well (Rilke) (122)

                The daimonic is any  natural function which has the power to take over the whole person.  Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples (123)

                Happiness is to live in harmony with one’s daimon (125)

                To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul.  to write is to sit in judgment on oneself (Ibsen) (127)

                And in my heart the daemons and the gods wage an eternal battle (Yeats) (127)

                When we read in newspapers or history books of the atrocities committed by man upon man, we know in our hearts that each one of us harbors within himself those same savage impulses which lead to murder, to torture and to war (130)

                The denied par of you is the source of hostility and aggression, but when you can, through consciousness, integrate it into your self-system, it becomes the source of energy and spirit which enlivens you (133)

                Without rebellion, no consciousness (139)

                No  one who, like me conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that  inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed (Freud) (144)

                To be able to experience and live out capacities for tender love requires the confronting of the daimonic.  The two seem opposites, but if one is denied, other also is lost (149)

                The moral problem is the relentless endeavor to find one’s own convictions and at the same time to admit that there will always be in them an element of self-aggradizement and distortion (158)

                To be human means to exist on the boundary between the anonymous and the personal (163)

                Yahweh, or Jehovah, means “no name” and is a device used to refer to God without pronouncing his name (168)

                Thus we move from an impersonal through a persona to a transpersonal dimension of consciousness ( 177)

                Victorian “will” did, indeed, turn out to be a web of rationalization and self-deciet (183)

In our understanding of human nature we have gained determinism, lost determination (Wheelis) (184)

                The gift of freedom, yes; but the burden placed on the individual is tremendous indeed (187)

                Philosophy, in its academic sense, is reputed to be “dead” … philosophy in our day – with the emphatic exception of the existentialists – concerns itself with formal problems rather than these critical life questions (188)

                What we do when we unchained this Earth from its sun? … whither do we move now?  Away from all suns?  Do we not fall incessantly?  Backward, sideward, forward, in al directions?  Is there yet any up and down?  Do we not err as though an infinite naught?  Do we not feel the breath of empty space?  Has it not become colder?  Is not night and more night coming on all the while?  … God is dead! (Nietzsche) (189)

                But if will remains protest, it stays dependent on that which it is protesting against (192-93)

                Is there possibly something going on in myself that is a cause of, or contributes to, my paralysis? (193)

                Freedom to make choices experienced by a human being… has nothing whatever to do with free will as a principle governing human behavior but is a subjective experience which is itself casually determined (Robert Knight) (197)

                An illusion is most significant in effect on personality change; that truth is not fundamentally (or is only theoretically) relevant to actions (198)

                Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response, falls the shadow (TS Eliot) (202)

                In the very raising of these questions, and by taking the energy to pursue them, he is exercising some significant element of freedom (203)

                “will power” expressed the arrogant efforts of Victorian Man to manipulate his surroundings and to rule nature with an iron hand, as well as to manipulate himself, rule his own life in the same way as one would an object (205)

                N one needs to remind us of the great stores of resentment, inhibition, hostility, self-rejection, and related clinical symptoms which can develop as a result of this repressive kind of will power (205)

                If wish is only a force, we are all involved in an abortive pilgrimage which consists of simply moving back to the state of the inorganic stone again (209)

                Wishes are never merely needs, nor merely economic (210)

                It is the symbolic meanings that have gone awry in neurosis, and not the id impulse (211)

                Love and do what you will (Augustine) (216)

                One characteristic of the creative experience is that it makes for a temporary union by transcending the conflict (217)

                Will tries to take over the work of imagination (Yeats) (217)

                Will is the capacity to organize one’s self so that movement in a certain direction or toward a certain goal may take place.  Wish is the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring (218)

                The paralyzing effects of Victorianism, (are such that) the goal becomes twisted into a self-centered demonstration of one’s own character and th real moral issue gets entirely lost in the shuffle (222)

                Learning is not the accumulation of scraps of knowledge.  It is a growth, where every act of knowledge develops the learner, thus making him capable of constituting ever more and more complex objectives – and the object growth in complexity parallels the subjective growth in capacity (Husserl) (223)

                Intentionality (is) the structure which gives meaning to experience (223)

                Intent is the turning of the mind toward an object (229)

                Meaning has within it a commitment (230)

                The patient cannot permit himself to perceive the trauma until he is ready to take a stand toward it (231)

                Free association is a technique of going beyond mere conscious intention and giving one’s self over to the realm of intentionality (235)

                (comprehend and apprehend both stem from the Latin word prehendere, to seize with the hand (237))

                But then begins the journey in my head, to work my mind, when body’s work’s expir’d; for then my thoughts – from far where I abide – inted a zealous pilgrimage to thee, and keep my drooping eyelids open wide (Shakespeare) (241-42)

                Descartes was wrong in his famous sentence, “I think, therefore, I am,” for identity does not come out of thinking as such, and certainly not out of intellectualization (243)

                Hatred and desire to kill, when present in adult life, generally turn out, in my experience, to be expressions of dependency on the father (261)

                (consciousness comes from the words “con” and “Scire” meaning “knowing with”) (266)

                Freedom can never be an abnegation of law, as though our “will” operated only in a temporary margin of relief from determinism (269)

                Freedom is the recognition of necessity (Spinoza) (269)

                Lacking external guides, we shift our morality inward; there is a new demand upon the individual of personal responsibility.  We are required to discover on a deeper level what it means to be human (279)

                (fantasy comes from the word “phantastikous” meaning  “able to represent” “to make visible” (281))

                We cannot will love, but we can will to open ourselves to the chance, we can conceive of the possibility – which, as patients testify, sets the wheels in motion (282)

                This is the separation between self and world, the split between existence and essence (284)

                Human will, in its specific form, always begins in a “no” (284)

                The “no” is a protest against a world we never made, and it is also an assertion of one’s self in the endeavor to remold and reform the world (284)

                Only the truly kind man knows how to love and how to hate (Confucious) (287)

                This is a simply illustration of care… identification of one’s self with the pain or joy of the other; of guilt, pity, and the awareness that we all stand on the base of a common humanity from which we all stem (289)

                (care is) the basic constitutive phenomenon of human existence (Heidegger) (290)

                Sentimentality is thinking about sentiment rather than genuinely experiencing the object of it (291)

                The old gods retained their temples and their sacrifices, but had ceased to inspire a living faith (293)

                Whatever happens in the external world, human love and grief, pity and compassion are what matter.  These emotions transcend even death (302)

                The need is physiological in origin … the desire is psychological (310)

                For human beings, the more powerful need is not for sex per se but for relationship, intimacy, acceptance, and affirmation (311)

                At what moment do lovers come into the most complete possession of themselves, if not when they are lost in each other? (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) (311)

                (Humans are the only creatures on Eath that procreate face-to-face) (312)

                We believe that the role of affection in the socialization of primates can only be understood by conceiving love as a number of love or affectional systems and not as a single emotion (Harlow) (319)

                It requires our participation in the picture itself if the painting is to speak to us (322)

                The only way out is ahead, and our choice is whether we shall cringe from it or affirm it (325)