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)

Existential Psychology 201

Please read the previous post before continuing to this one.

There is a nice addition to the end of "Staring at the Sun" called a "Reader's Guide"  which is a long list of reflecting questions posed throughout the entire book.  Again, the citations will be in italic font and my answers will be in "regular text."

Reader's Guide:  Staring at the Sun

-have you too confronted death?  do you share his fear or have such a dark shadow over your life?  do you disagree or agree that such a dark shadow exists for most if not all of us?

I have confronted death.  Many of us fell that we are on "borrowed time."  However, that is irrelevant.  Sooner or later something is going to "awaken" us to the fact that though we are 17, ten feet tall, bullet proof, have the world at our fingertips, and know everything about anything... there is still much work to do in this brief study hall that we call life.  I do not fear death.  I am aware of its inevitability.  I am not comfortable with it, but I know that it will never cease and thus I (and everyone) must find a way to cope with it.  I agree that there is a "shadow of death" for all of us.  If you lead such a blessed life as to not "worry about such things" you are living a life of denial, not one of authenticity, which I firmly advocate.

 

-do you agree that confronting death is like staring into the sun - something painful, difficult, but necessary if we are to go on living as fully conscious individuals who grasp the true nature of our human condition, our finiteness, our brief time in the light?

I would agree that it is painful, difficult, and necessary, etc...  However, I would compare it  more to staring into a dark oblivion.  It is haunting to not know what is out there, when it will consume you, or if there is any hint of brilliance or reprieve on the other side.

 

-Freud believed that much of our mental problems are a result of repressed sexuality.  Irvin Yalom says that much of our anxiety and psychopathology can be traced back to death anxiety.  Do  you agree?  Is that true for you?

I believe that many of our mental problems can be traced back to anxiety and certainly nearly all are exacerbated by anxiety.  This may be from repressed sexuality or from terrors of death or something different all together.  I believe that the genesis of our mental and social condition is irrelevant.  The point is that it is.  The question of concern is not HOW or WHY did this happen, but WHAT are you going to do about it and WHEN?

 

-what is your own greatest fear associated with death?  can you put it in words?  Can you visualize it?  have you ever had anxiety fears that you think are really based on a fear of death?

My greatest fear of death is the uncertainty that it holds.  Paradise or heaven is wonderful thought indeed; lest I be bound for perdition, the serenity flowered by this all too bittersweet life is something that I would garner and cherish for eons to come, even in the midst of hell.  Again, the post-death debate, I feel, is irrelevant because of our inability to know for certain what is constituted after death.  What is certain is that we are going to die.  If you are destined for hell would you want to change that?  If your faith secures you a front row seat to paradise, do you really think those VIP seats come at an easy cost?  If you are going to die and then there will then be nothing, are you satisfied with what you will leave behind?

 

-have you ever had an "awakening experience" in your life?  how has this kind of experience influenced you or not in the past?  do you think such an awakening has the potential to make you appreciate life more or feel differently about death?

I have had many awakening experiences.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that there is not just one of them in a person's lifetime, but several reoccurring events that culminate and manifest the persons whom we are today.  Every experience has the opportunity to slap us in the face and realize how precious life is.  Be it a negative experience to alert us of a need for change or joyous moment to revel in the splendor of what is and how fragile it has become.  How has it (or they) influenced me?  Read this blog...

 

-who do you think you've influenced so far with the "ripppling" in your life?  whom do you think you might influence with rippilng in the future?  "are there any aphorisms, ideas, or sayings that you've repeated to yourself in time of stress or when you are experienceing fear of death?

Given the context of rippling, we influence everyone we come into contact with.  I have heard it said many times that some people are in your life for a reason, some for a season, and some for a lifetime.  I have no doubt that I have influenced many people just by conversing with them, be it small talk in a workplace hallway, a classroom debate, or even an inebriated fever-dream of a conversation as a bar is closing.  I make many efforts to reach other people; through this blog, my personal training, coaching, and most importantly echo my sentiments of life into every person that I come into contact with whether it is for 5 seconds or for 50 years.

 

-do you agree that being connected intimately to another person can help you deal with the fear of death?  Have you ever had such an experience yourself?  have you ever felt the loneliness of isolation from other people?  Have you ever felt what Dr. Yalom calls existential loneliness, when you realize that no one knows how it is to be you except you, and you understand that death is an end also of the world you constructed throughout your lifetime?  Is there a particular film you've seen that demonstrates human empathy as you have known or would like to know it?  can you look forward in your life five or ten years and imagine regrets you could have if you keep doing what you're doing now?  can you imagine living in such a way that when you look back a year or five years from now, you will have built no new regrets?

Intimate connection can definitely sooth the burning terror of death.  The experiences are too numerous to count.  Some call venting emotions drama, but in reality it is the most common, most affluent, and possibly the most affective form of therapy.  I was a very anti-social person growing up, very much what one would call a "loner."  I have been a dedicated student to existential thought, so yes, I have felt existential loneliness in the worst, and best, kind of way.  My favorite film of all time is "V for Vendetta", for its social/political and philosophical implications.  I can only think of where I would like to be in the future and my only fear would be not being there and the only regret not taking the chance to make those "dreams" come true.  I cannot imagine a life without regret.  It is inevitable.  If someone says they don't regret anything, they are lying.  That being said, there are things that if I had my life to do over again I would certainly change.  However, I do not despair or lament over them, in fact, I appreciate them all the more because without them it would not be possible for me to be who I am today.

 

-can  you remember your first experience with human death?  who was the first person really close to you who died, and what kind of an experience wast that for you?  have you been to many funerals?  have you ever had a near-death experience?  what was your reaction?  how do you feel about it now?  do you feel that you've fulfilled  your childhood dreams?  have you fulfilled your potential?  how do you feel about Dr. Yalom's saying that his work and personal beliefs are rooted in a secular, existential worldview that rejects supernatural beliefs?  is faith or religion part of how you cope with death?  what do you feel about Dr. Yalom's lack of belief in an afterlife and his statement that the mind ends when the brain stops functioning?

 I don't think I was even in high school yet when the coach of my junior football team passed after a tragic automobile accident.  He was a family friend and was fairly close to me and our family.  I have been to several funerals and currently work in hospital and (somewhat unfortunately) have become accustomed to seeing corpses.  I do not recall my first near-death experience as there have been several, and each time they (quite literally)  scare the piss out of me.  They make me thankful to still be living and have a little more time to share all that I know and all that I am with the rest of the world, whether they hear those cries or not is not my discretion.  I think that the world could stand to benefit resurging the romanticism associated with existentialism.  Precisely, it would be good for all of us to read a little more Shakespeare and Camus instead of getting bogged down in the techno-science industry or "heaviness" of Schopenhauer and Kant.  Secularism has led us to cynicism, or worse, apathy, and could very well be the cause of the very death anxiety Dr. Yalom is trying to combat.  I do not, or do not want to, believe that the mind ends at death, however, that may very well be the case.  At any rate, as I stated earlier, that is irrelevant because it is unknown.  You are here-and-now and you will someday die.  Those are both garaunteed.  The prowess and sentiment lies in choice.  Whether it is free or not, we act accordingly as if it were.  Make something of yourself.  Have the desire to savor agony, embrace sorrow, cause the tears of, and have the compassion to love and want to be everything that ever lived.

-have you ever been or are you now in psychotherapy?  does your therapist disclose anything about himself or herself?  what's this like for  you?  have you any desire for more disclosure from your therapist?  has your therapy ever dealt with problems that, on a deeper inspection, turned out to be related to death anxiety?  what does Dr. Yalom's advice that "to become wise you must learn to listen to the wild dogs barking in your cellar" mean to you?

 I have never seen a professional therapist, but have, in my studies, executed several self analyzing therapeutic practices.  Most of which are published in this blog.  I would say that many of them are "deep", but this is by far my most personal public posting.  I would say that yes, all of this, could be correlated to death anxiety.  I want to leave part of me behind to "ripple" through the ages.  I think that to "become wise" you need as full a specter on life as possible.  This includes both the sorrow and the joy, the pain and the pleasures of life; inside and out, our good deeds and the darkness inside of us, criticism of our loves, and compassion for our enemies.  My personal aphorism that I have since adopted to after writing the essay with the same title is "only through the  pain."  My only regret at death would be knowing that I did not take every opportunity to learn from the pangs and jots of life or share as much of that wisdom with the rest of the world as I could have.

Thank you for reading.