The Hebrew word nabi means either madman or prophet, and it is now admitted that most of the prophets, unquestionably men of genius, gave evidences of insanity as well as genius. The Greeks and the Romans recognized the kinship between Genius and degeneration, and we read in the Bible of a certain Festus, who, when confronted by a man of genius, and being unable to answer his arguments, said to him,
"PAUL, much learning hath made thee mad!"
Saul, the first king of Israel, was a man of genius and, at times, a madman. We read that, before his coronation, he was seized with an attack of madness and joined a company of kindred eccentrics. His friends and acquaintances were naturally surprised and exclaimed: "Is Saul among the prophets?" i. e., "Has Saul become insane?" Again, we are told that he was suddenly seized with an attack of homicidal impulse, and tried to kill David. Before this time he had had repeated attacks of madness, which only the harp of David could control and subdue. David himself was a man whose mental equilibrium was not well established, as his history clearly indicates. He forsook his God, indulged in licentious practices, and was, withal, a very, immoral man at times. At his time, the Hebrews had reached a high degree of civilization. Abstract ethics had become very much developed, and any example of great immorality occurring during this epoch is proof positive of degeneration.
King Solomon, a man of pre-eminent genius, was mentally unbalanced. The "Song of Solomon" shows very clearly that he was a victim of some psychical disorder, sexual in its character and origin. The poems of Anacreon are lascivious, lustful, and essentially carnal, and history informs us that he was a sexual pervert.
Julius Caesar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the field of battle he was stricken down by this disorder. On one occasion, while seated at the tribune, he was unable to rise when the senators and consuls paid him a visit of ceremony and honor. They were offended at his seeming lack of respect, and retired, showing signs of anger. Caesar returned home, stripped off his clothes, and offered his throat to be cut by anyone. He then explained his conduct to the senate, saying that he was the victim of a malady which, at times, rendered him incapable of standing. During the attacks of this disorder "he felt shocks in his limbs, became giddy, and at last lost consciousness." Mozart was the victim of epilepsy; so also was Charles V., St. Paul, Peter the Great, and Dostoieffsky; Schiller, Pascal, and Newton, were the victims of diseases epileptoid in character.
Alcoholism and morphinism, or an uncontrollable desire for alcohol or opium in some form or other, are now recognized as evidences of degeneration. Men of genius have shown this form of degeneration. Alexander died after having emptied ten times the goblet of Hercules, and it was, without doubt, in an alcoholic attack, while pursuing naked the infamous Thais, that he killed his dearest friend. Caesar was often carried home intoxicated on the shoulders of his soldiers. Neither Socrates, nor Seneca, nor Cato, nor Peter the Great (nor his wife Catherine, nor his daughter Elizabeth) were remarkable for their abstinence.
In men of genius the moral sense is sometimes obtunded, if not altogether absent. Seneca, and Bacon were suspected felons. Rousseau and Byron were grossly immoral, while Casanova, the gifted mathematician, was a common swindler. Murat, Rousseau, Diderot and Oscar Wilde were sexual perverts.
Genius, like insanity, lives in a world of its own. Some were celibates e.g Kant, Newton, Pitt, Beethoven, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Gray, Dalton, Hume, Macaulay, Bentham, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Schopenhauer, and Voltaire. These men have neither ancestors nor descendants; they themselves form their entire posterity.
Thomas Paine gave evidences of a lack of mental equipoise. We find scattered throughout his works the most brilliant, irrefutable, and logical truths side by side with the most inane, illogical, and stolid crudities.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Boderlands of insanity
Carlyle, you remember, Thomas Carlyle, himself a degenerate, wrote that nine-tenths of the world were fools, he was much nearer truth than most may think. When we take an introspective view of our sane personality, we shudder to see how near it is to the borderlands of insanity and the bizarre and eccentric world of crankdom. There hardly lives a man who does not possess some eccentricity, or who does not cherish, hidden, perhaps, deep within himself, some small delusion, which he is ashamed to acknowledge to the outside world.
Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. The mental equipoise is kept at the normal standard only by the powerful aid of the will, supported and assisted by extraneous adjuvants, such as fear of punishment, fear of personal harm, and, above all, by the fear of ridicule. Many a man hugs his delusions closely to his heart, indulges them only in the secret recesses of his soul, and, their sole owner and acquaintance, carries them with him to his grave.
Any one with a retentive memory, and one capable of minute analysis, can look back in his life and recall moments when his insane personality got the better of his will, and ran riot in forbidden pathways. He may not have committed an insane act; yet the thought, the impulse, the delusion was there and only outside influences kept it from breaking forth. Who fails to remember certain times in his life when he has had an almost overpowering desire to cry out in church, or to laugh on some sad or solemn occasion; or, having a razor in his hand, has had an impulse, sudden and intense, to draw it across his throat; or, being on some high place, has been seized with the desire to hurl himself downward? This shows how near indeed the healthy mind ever hovers on the borderlands of insanity.
Man stands so close to the portals of insanity that he can look through the gateway, when he takes an introspective view of his psychical being, and can see the phantoms and mental ghosts of his insane personality.
I think there is a vast amount of latent insanity. Taking the tables of our insane asylums, we find a thousand and one causes given as the exciting factors in the mental overthrow. Love, 'religion', anger, disappointment, etc., down through the long list of psychic and aesthetic emotions, until it seems as though even a breath of wind would be sufficient to destroy the mental equipoise.
There seems to be in the minds of men an instinctive awe of anything that appertains to the insane. In olden times a disordered mind was considered of divine or diabolic origin as it evinced good or evil tendencies. In the US, for example, the infamous Salem trials (remember Tituba) was literally and figuratively speaking a witch-hunt. Witches were executed in England and men burned at the stake in Spain, not two hundred years ago, for the crime of demoniacal possession. Here in Kenya women are still burnt todate for the suscpicion that they are withches.
In the Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was “possessed of a false and lying devil.” She has been recently proposed for canonization by the same church that burned her, and thus, in a measure, had justice done her.
Some of the prophets of the Old Testament presented symptoms which can hardly be interpreted as other than the effects of madness; certainly if they were not mad, they imitated very closely some of its most striking features. Jeremiah takes a long journey to the river Euphrates and hides a linen girdle in a hole of a rock. He then returns home and in a few days makes the same journey, and finds the girdle rotten and good for nothing. Ezekiel digs a hole in the wall of his house, and through it removes his household goods, instead of through the door. Hosea marries a prostitute because he said he had been commanded by God so to do. Isaiah stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people.
Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. The mental equipoise is kept at the normal standard only by the powerful aid of the will, supported and assisted by extraneous adjuvants, such as fear of punishment, fear of personal harm, and, above all, by the fear of ridicule. Many a man hugs his delusions closely to his heart, indulges them only in the secret recesses of his soul, and, their sole owner and acquaintance, carries them with him to his grave.
Any one with a retentive memory, and one capable of minute analysis, can look back in his life and recall moments when his insane personality got the better of his will, and ran riot in forbidden pathways. He may not have committed an insane act; yet the thought, the impulse, the delusion was there and only outside influences kept it from breaking forth. Who fails to remember certain times in his life when he has had an almost overpowering desire to cry out in church, or to laugh on some sad or solemn occasion; or, having a razor in his hand, has had an impulse, sudden and intense, to draw it across his throat; or, being on some high place, has been seized with the desire to hurl himself downward? This shows how near indeed the healthy mind ever hovers on the borderlands of insanity.
Man stands so close to the portals of insanity that he can look through the gateway, when he takes an introspective view of his psychical being, and can see the phantoms and mental ghosts of his insane personality.
I think there is a vast amount of latent insanity. Taking the tables of our insane asylums, we find a thousand and one causes given as the exciting factors in the mental overthrow. Love, 'religion', anger, disappointment, etc., down through the long list of psychic and aesthetic emotions, until it seems as though even a breath of wind would be sufficient to destroy the mental equipoise.
There seems to be in the minds of men an instinctive awe of anything that appertains to the insane. In olden times a disordered mind was considered of divine or diabolic origin as it evinced good or evil tendencies. In the US, for example, the infamous Salem trials (remember Tituba) was literally and figuratively speaking a witch-hunt. Witches were executed in England and men burned at the stake in Spain, not two hundred years ago, for the crime of demoniacal possession. Here in Kenya women are still burnt todate for the suscpicion that they are withches.
In the Middle Ages, cranks, whose eccentricities took a religious turn, were considered holy. St. Simon Stylites was a very pronounced crank, and a very holy man also, because he chose to live the greater portion of his life perched on a pillar seventy feet high. St. Anthony was another holy crank who never, in all his life, washed his feet. Poor Joan of Arc was burned at the stake because she was “possessed of a false and lying devil.” She has been recently proposed for canonization by the same church that burned her, and thus, in a measure, had justice done her.
Some of the prophets of the Old Testament presented symptoms which can hardly be interpreted as other than the effects of madness; certainly if they were not mad, they imitated very closely some of its most striking features. Jeremiah takes a long journey to the river Euphrates and hides a linen girdle in a hole of a rock. He then returns home and in a few days makes the same journey, and finds the girdle rotten and good for nothing. Ezekiel digs a hole in the wall of his house, and through it removes his household goods, instead of through the door. Hosea marries a prostitute because he said he had been commanded by God so to do. Isaiah stripped himself naked and paraded up and down in sight of all the people.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Psychology of Love
It is put upon women the greater part of the burden of sexual reproduction.
Men have imposed, throughout history, their own rule of life on women and their own ideals, and have demanded from women opposite and contradictory virtues, (something not yet antiquated).
Earlier on, the condemnation of sexuality involved the glorification of the virgin; and indifference, even contempt, was felt for the woman who exercised sexual functions. The Jews attributed to women greater sexual desire than to men. This is illustrated, I think, by Genesis, chapter III, V. 16.
In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex. Theognis compared marriage to CATTLE-BREEDING. In love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. In all Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. Euripides emphasized the importance of women; "The Euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all: 'How can I seduce the man I love?"
Research shows that among women, while some are absolutely insensitive, others are so violently excited by the paradise of physical love that, after the sexual embrace, they faint or fall into a cataleptic condition for several hours. Physical sex is a larger factor in the life of the woman. In the female sex, reproduction is a more dominant function of the organism than in the male, and has far larger, if not more intense, relationships to feeling and judgment. In woman the visceral system reacts, if not with greater intensity, certainly in a more general manner, to all the impressions, having a sexual basis, which dominate the life of woman, as related emotions closely dependent on the reproductive instinct.
Sinibaldus in the seventeenth century, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of passion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat. It has been said of women that "their passions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular object; but when this passion is once rooted in women it is much stronger and more durable than in men, and rather increases than diminishes by enjoying the person of the beloved."
Schopenhauer said that a man's love decreases with enjoyment, and a woman's increases.
Men have imposed, throughout history, their own rule of life on women and their own ideals, and have demanded from women opposite and contradictory virtues, (something not yet antiquated).
Earlier on, the condemnation of sexuality involved the glorification of the virgin; and indifference, even contempt, was felt for the woman who exercised sexual functions. The Jews attributed to women greater sexual desire than to men. This is illustrated, I think, by Genesis, chapter III, V. 16.
In Greek antiquity the romance and sentiment of love were mainly felt toward persons of the same sex, and were divorced from the more purely sexual feelings felt for persons of opposite sex. Theognis compared marriage to CATTLE-BREEDING. In love between men and women the latter were nearly always regarded as taking the more active part. In all Greek love-stories of early date the woman falls in love with the man, and never the reverse. Euripides emphasized the importance of women; "The Euripidean woman who 'falls in love' thinks first of all: 'How can I seduce the man I love?"
Research shows that among women, while some are absolutely insensitive, others are so violently excited by the paradise of physical love that, after the sexual embrace, they faint or fall into a cataleptic condition for several hours. Physical sex is a larger factor in the life of the woman. In the female sex, reproduction is a more dominant function of the organism than in the male, and has far larger, if not more intense, relationships to feeling and judgment. In woman the visceral system reacts, if not with greater intensity, certainly in a more general manner, to all the impressions, having a sexual basis, which dominate the life of woman, as related emotions closely dependent on the reproductive instinct.
Sinibaldus in the seventeenth century, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of passion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat. It has been said of women that "their passions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular object; but when this passion is once rooted in women it is much stronger and more durable than in men, and rather increases than diminishes by enjoying the person of the beloved."
Schopenhauer said that a man's love decreases with enjoyment, and a woman's increases.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Vision and Beauty
The tendency for beauty of clothing to be accepted as a substitute for beauty of body appears early in the history of mankind, and, as we know, tends to be absolutely accepted in civilization. "We exclaim," as Goethe remarks, "'What a beautiful little foot!' when we have merely seen a pretty shoe; we admire the lovely waist when nothing has met out eyes but an elegant girdle."
Our realities and our traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the Greeks represented their statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. The main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among early man was not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more attractive.
Whether among the the poet and story-teller, the educated or the uneducated who seeks to describe an ideally lovely and desirable woman; all always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those characters which appeal to the eye. The richly laden word beauty is a synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so simple, comparatively, and vague are the impressions derived from the other senses that none of them can furnish us with any corresponding word.
To make the article fairly complete must be added at least one other factor: the influence of individual taste. Every individual builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own culture and demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in man.
But its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. It may be said of many a man in relation to the woman he loves, that "he feels himself bound to 'her' by the real qualities of her body". There are no two women who in exactly the same way hold the hand in greeting, and no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement.Among the multitude of minute differences which yet can be seen and felt, the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual selection are effected accordingly.
Our realities and our traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the Greeks represented their statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. The main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among early man was not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more attractive.
Whether among the the poet and story-teller, the educated or the uneducated who seeks to describe an ideally lovely and desirable woman; all always insists mainly, and often exclusively, on those characters which appeal to the eye. The richly laden word beauty is a synthesis of complex impressions obtained through a single sense, and so simple, comparatively, and vague are the impressions derived from the other senses that none of them can furnish us with any corresponding word.
To make the article fairly complete must be added at least one other factor: the influence of individual taste. Every individual builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own culture and demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in man.
But its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. It may be said of many a man in relation to the woman he loves, that "he feels himself bound to 'her' by the real qualities of her body". There are no two women who in exactly the same way hold the hand in greeting, and no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement.Among the multitude of minute differences which yet can be seen and felt, the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual selection are effected accordingly.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Boderline Personality
The last I cover and the stormiest by far! To live a life analogous to a soap opera is to live the life of a borderline personality. Wrought with emotional ups and downs, these individuals are known to be unstable and especially angry. What fuels the chaos are intense interpersonal needs and sudden shifts of opinion about others, who may be painted as loving, sensitive, and intelligent one minute and accused of neglect and betrayal the next.
When left alone, even for short periods, borderline personalities( 'the boderlines') feel INTOLERABLY LONELY & EMPTY. With romantic relations typically stormy and intense, they spend most of their time either making up or breaking up. They make frantic attempts to AVOID ABANDONMENT, including suicidal gestures. In addition, they fail to realize that their clinginess via dramatic and drastic measures drives others away. Plagued by feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, and inferiority, many engage in self-destructive behaviors, indulging themselves impulsively in promiscuous sexual activity or drugs and alcohol. Some even mutilate their own bodies by cutting or burning.
Lacking a mature sense of self-identity, they flip-flop on goals and values,suddenly change jobs on impulse, and REVERSE PREVIOUS OPINIONS WITH INDIFFERENCE. During stressful periods, this incohesiveness makes them susceptible to temporary psychotic states and dissociative episodes. The borderline personality is peppered with many aspects of other personality disorders.
Although its symptoms are obviously severe, the borderline personality can neverthe-
less be viewed as existing on a continuum with normality. The mercurial style is described as living a roller coaster life. Frequent ups and downs are the rule, and attachment is the central theme in all relationships. Echoing the borderline’s frantic attempts to avoid abandonment is a desire always to be involved in a passionate romantic relationship. Such individuals process experience emotionally rather than logically, showing their feelings with SPONTANEITY & CREATIVITY.
Socially, they are lively and engaging, with an open mind toward experimenting with
various roles and value systems. Exhibiting aspects of the dependent and histrionic personalities, they urgently seek closeness with their partners, like a merging of souls but even more intensely. They expect the same from others and quickly become hurt whenever the same desire is not forthcoming. Anger and resentment follow.
Consider the case of a fictitious 'Jenny'. What is immediately striking about many borderlines, is a specific kind of instability in their relationships. Jenny swings from loving people to hating them and back again, as if she knew only two modes of appraisal: either complete idealization as the best person on earth or devaluation as a demon from Hell. There is, always, sudden and never-ending shifts of attitude.
What Jenny seems to need most is magical fusion with a loving caretaker. Indeed,
feelings of abandonment seem to underlie the intense anger she feels toward some people. Moreover, she seems devoid of life goals or consistent values. Whereas normals develop a solid sense of identity that defines the person and gives direction to life, Jenny lacks a stable identity that might anchor her against the influence of intense, transient impulses that threaten to seriously damage her life.
These include polysubstance abuse and the habit of leaping from moving vehicles to get away from her “evil” boyfriend (replace with anything).
Jenny seems angry AT JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Sometimes, her anger is so intense that she accuses OTHERS of planning to hurt her. Perhaps she cannot imagine how life could become so dissatisfying, believing that the course of events would need to be helped along by some evil agency to be so effective in its misery. Obviously, she feels misunderstood, alienated, and alone. Although everyone feels this way at some time, Jenny reports constantly feeling “hollow inside,” apparent
evidence of feelings of emptiness but probably more closely related to dissociation. Jenny notes, for example, that life sometimes seems to be “moving in slow motion” and that she is “like an observer” watching things “from the outside,” evidence of breakdown in the normally integrated functions of consciousness.
Jenny’s feelings about others swing from loving to hating. Far from being simply experimental and curious in a way that builds self-identity, Jenny seems too Consumed with emotional upheavals to allow for life goals or real values to develop. Finally, SHE is not simply sensation-seeking in ways that add to the richness of life; instead, she is impulsive in harmful ways.
The borderline construct has proven remarkably controversial. Indeed, the very label borderline presages problems of definition. Logically, anything known primarily for bordering something else obviously cannot be its own entity.
When left alone, even for short periods, borderline personalities( 'the boderlines') feel INTOLERABLY LONELY & EMPTY. With romantic relations typically stormy and intense, they spend most of their time either making up or breaking up. They make frantic attempts to AVOID ABANDONMENT, including suicidal gestures. In addition, they fail to realize that their clinginess via dramatic and drastic measures drives others away. Plagued by feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, and inferiority, many engage in self-destructive behaviors, indulging themselves impulsively in promiscuous sexual activity or drugs and alcohol. Some even mutilate their own bodies by cutting or burning.
Lacking a mature sense of self-identity, they flip-flop on goals and values,suddenly change jobs on impulse, and REVERSE PREVIOUS OPINIONS WITH INDIFFERENCE. During stressful periods, this incohesiveness makes them susceptible to temporary psychotic states and dissociative episodes. The borderline personality is peppered with many aspects of other personality disorders.
Although its symptoms are obviously severe, the borderline personality can neverthe-
less be viewed as existing on a continuum with normality. The mercurial style is described as living a roller coaster life. Frequent ups and downs are the rule, and attachment is the central theme in all relationships. Echoing the borderline’s frantic attempts to avoid abandonment is a desire always to be involved in a passionate romantic relationship. Such individuals process experience emotionally rather than logically, showing their feelings with SPONTANEITY & CREATIVITY.
Socially, they are lively and engaging, with an open mind toward experimenting with
various roles and value systems. Exhibiting aspects of the dependent and histrionic personalities, they urgently seek closeness with their partners, like a merging of souls but even more intensely. They expect the same from others and quickly become hurt whenever the same desire is not forthcoming. Anger and resentment follow.
Consider the case of a fictitious 'Jenny'. What is immediately striking about many borderlines, is a specific kind of instability in their relationships. Jenny swings from loving people to hating them and back again, as if she knew only two modes of appraisal: either complete idealization as the best person on earth or devaluation as a demon from Hell. There is, always, sudden and never-ending shifts of attitude.
What Jenny seems to need most is magical fusion with a loving caretaker. Indeed,
feelings of abandonment seem to underlie the intense anger she feels toward some people. Moreover, she seems devoid of life goals or consistent values. Whereas normals develop a solid sense of identity that defines the person and gives direction to life, Jenny lacks a stable identity that might anchor her against the influence of intense, transient impulses that threaten to seriously damage her life.
These include polysubstance abuse and the habit of leaping from moving vehicles to get away from her “evil” boyfriend (replace with anything).
Jenny seems angry AT JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME. Sometimes, her anger is so intense that she accuses OTHERS of planning to hurt her. Perhaps she cannot imagine how life could become so dissatisfying, believing that the course of events would need to be helped along by some evil agency to be so effective in its misery. Obviously, she feels misunderstood, alienated, and alone. Although everyone feels this way at some time, Jenny reports constantly feeling “hollow inside,” apparent
evidence of feelings of emptiness but probably more closely related to dissociation. Jenny notes, for example, that life sometimes seems to be “moving in slow motion” and that she is “like an observer” watching things “from the outside,” evidence of breakdown in the normally integrated functions of consciousness.
Jenny’s feelings about others swing from loving to hating. Far from being simply experimental and curious in a way that builds self-identity, Jenny seems too Consumed with emotional upheavals to allow for life goals or real values to develop. Finally, SHE is not simply sensation-seeking in ways that add to the richness of life; instead, she is impulsive in harmful ways.
The borderline construct has proven remarkably controversial. Indeed, the very label borderline presages problems of definition. Logically, anything known primarily for bordering something else obviously cannot be its own entity.
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Paranoid Personality
From below descriptions, you may identify aspects of yourself that match with the paranoid pattern. Paranoid-style thinking, when appropriate to the realistic demands of your environment, is healthy. Most readers will agree that the world is sometimes a dangerous place and that mistrust, when not carried to extremes, has definite survival value. In fact, there is a period of mistrust that is a vital part of human development. Young children go through a genetically programmed stage of stranger anxiety, during which they become anxious when confronted with unknown others and seek the comfort of familiar faces. Stranger anxiety thus functions as a means of keeping children close to the tribe, or at least to caretakers, and away from those that might do them harm, perhaps members of other tribes competing for scarce territory or food resources in the same area.
Undoubtedly, you have encountered people who question the integrity of everything
said to them. Often, they are fearful that they will be taken advantage of and have no qualms expressing this fear. Distrust fills their lives to the extent that even family members and others who may be considered closest to them are not excluded from this equation. Yet trust and self-determination are fundamental to existence.
We trust others to have our best interest at heart, to come to our assistance in
time of need, to provide helpful advice, to anticipate dire outcomes that might escape us, to inform us tactfully when our judgment is wrong, and to help keep our lives running smoothly. We may, at times, argue vehemently with our family and close friends, but when the chips are down, there is an understanding that those we love will “be there” to protect us and fight by our side, at a moment’s notice, if necessary.
Among paranoid personalities, the, the basic capacity for trust has somehow been destroyed. Most people see some fundamental goodness in human nature. Paranoids, however, usually view sincerity as a DANGER SIGN, a “Trojan Horse” sent to conceal evil schemes and nefarious intentions. Others are the enemy, waiting to rush
in, strip them of their already-questionable safety and security, expose their precious vulnerabilities, and ultimately devour them with sadistic delight. For protection, paranoids wall themselves in to keep others out. Never letting their guard down, they watch vigilantly for any sign of impending onslaught from the deep recesses of their fortress.
Nothing must escape their scrutiny. From the perspective of others, they are guarded, hostile, self-righteous, rigid, black-and-white thinkers, unwilling to consider the objective evidence and draw rational conclusions. Instead, they misread consensual social reality, attribute hidden motives to others, and even ACCUSE LIFELONG FRIENDS OF HEINOUS BETRAYALS. Standing alone against the world at the very precipice of destruction, paranoids BANDAGE THEMSELVES WITH RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION & SELF-PITY, further fueling their anger.
To protect themselves against hidden assaults, paranoids search for information that
corroborates their suspicions. Even the most incidental fact may become a huge brush
stroke and subsequently be used to support sweeping conclusions. Gradually, uncon-
nected facts are drawn together into a fabric that reveals the OUTCROPPINGS OF A DARK CONSPIRACY. Eventually, paranoids fabricate a “pseudocommunity” in which the objective attributes and intentions of real people have been lost, replaced instead by sinister traits and motives imposed by the paranoid mind.
By creating a reality that confirms their fears, their anxious desperation grows ever more intense, fueling circles ever more vicious, leading to retreat behind ever stronger and higher walls, still greater vigilance, and finally, the discovery of new layers of intrigue, which function to keep the cycle going.
Reflect on the hypothetical case of 'Ron'. Because trust and loyalty are such fundamental issues for paranoids, many become obsessed with the notion that their spouse or lover has been unfaithful. Ron accuses his wife of cheating, though he has no solid evidence, and even suspects that his children are not his own, although their ages would require an ongoing affair stretching 12 years into the past. Strangely, Ron is tormented by the fact that both his children and his best friend have brown hair, even though his wife also has brown hair. HE NEGLECTS THE OBVOIUS IN FAVOUR OF DATA THAT SUPPORT HIS OWN MISINTERPRETATION OF REALITY.
Moreover, he deeply fears and resents the possibility that he might be forced by the legal system to supply funds that will be used to raise someone else’s children, and he is determined not to LET THIS HAPPEN. Ironically, the more he is pushed to take responsibility for his children, the more aggressively certain he will become that the children are not his at all.
Like other paranoid personalities, Ron’s concern with deceit is easily generalized be
yond a single forum or relationship. He could reconstruct reality in any number of ways, but he has chosen a path in which HE IS THE VICTIM & OTHERS ARE THE BENEFICIARIES. For example, he believes that his coworkers are manipulating the time clock. He suspects that they not only cheat him out of pay but also add that money to their own checks, thus allowing them to enjoy the fruits of Ron’s toil behind his back. Therefore, his indignation is doubly justified: HIS DEFICIT IS THEIR SURPLUS; HIS AGONY, THEIR JOY.
WE can easily imagine Ron lying awake at night, recycling the injustices done to him again and again, becoming angrier and angrier and more and more determined to avenge himself or at least catch them in the act. Like other paranoids, Ron holds grudges and seldom forgives an injury. He can’t, because he is always reconstructing reality so that others have self-consciously exploited or attacked him. Nothing is accidental.
Moreover, the putative attacks on Ron made through the time clock go beyond simple
exploitation. Instead, they are attacks on his character. If successful, they will prove something to the world: Ron is a person of low moral quality, and he is
unable to provide for a family, apparently a characteristic essential to his self-respect and one he believes is essential to the respect of others. Thus, in addition to deceiving Ron, his enemies are now waging war on another, even more malicious front: They are attempting to deceive the public about him. Of the two forms of attack, Ron may fear the second even more than the first. He can potentially thwart attacks against his person, buthe cannot as easily control the perceptions of others.
Such distortions of reality could give way to further, more severe paranoid developments, perhaps the notion that others are talking about failures and inadequacies behind his back even though they may have no foundation in truth. In Ron’s mind, others might be saying, “Yeah, I heard his take-home pay was so embarrassing his wife couldn’t take it anymore and started screwing his best friend.”
Undoubtedly, you have encountered people who question the integrity of everything
said to them. Often, they are fearful that they will be taken advantage of and have no qualms expressing this fear. Distrust fills their lives to the extent that even family members and others who may be considered closest to them are not excluded from this equation. Yet trust and self-determination are fundamental to existence.
We trust others to have our best interest at heart, to come to our assistance in
time of need, to provide helpful advice, to anticipate dire outcomes that might escape us, to inform us tactfully when our judgment is wrong, and to help keep our lives running smoothly. We may, at times, argue vehemently with our family and close friends, but when the chips are down, there is an understanding that those we love will “be there” to protect us and fight by our side, at a moment’s notice, if necessary.
Among paranoid personalities, the, the basic capacity for trust has somehow been destroyed. Most people see some fundamental goodness in human nature. Paranoids, however, usually view sincerity as a DANGER SIGN, a “Trojan Horse” sent to conceal evil schemes and nefarious intentions. Others are the enemy, waiting to rush
in, strip them of their already-questionable safety and security, expose their precious vulnerabilities, and ultimately devour them with sadistic delight. For protection, paranoids wall themselves in to keep others out. Never letting their guard down, they watch vigilantly for any sign of impending onslaught from the deep recesses of their fortress.
Nothing must escape their scrutiny. From the perspective of others, they are guarded, hostile, self-righteous, rigid, black-and-white thinkers, unwilling to consider the objective evidence and draw rational conclusions. Instead, they misread consensual social reality, attribute hidden motives to others, and even ACCUSE LIFELONG FRIENDS OF HEINOUS BETRAYALS. Standing alone against the world at the very precipice of destruction, paranoids BANDAGE THEMSELVES WITH RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION & SELF-PITY, further fueling their anger.
To protect themselves against hidden assaults, paranoids search for information that
corroborates their suspicions. Even the most incidental fact may become a huge brush
stroke and subsequently be used to support sweeping conclusions. Gradually, uncon-
nected facts are drawn together into a fabric that reveals the OUTCROPPINGS OF A DARK CONSPIRACY. Eventually, paranoids fabricate a “pseudocommunity” in which the objective attributes and intentions of real people have been lost, replaced instead by sinister traits and motives imposed by the paranoid mind.
By creating a reality that confirms their fears, their anxious desperation grows ever more intense, fueling circles ever more vicious, leading to retreat behind ever stronger and higher walls, still greater vigilance, and finally, the discovery of new layers of intrigue, which function to keep the cycle going.
Reflect on the hypothetical case of 'Ron'. Because trust and loyalty are such fundamental issues for paranoids, many become obsessed with the notion that their spouse or lover has been unfaithful. Ron accuses his wife of cheating, though he has no solid evidence, and even suspects that his children are not his own, although their ages would require an ongoing affair stretching 12 years into the past. Strangely, Ron is tormented by the fact that both his children and his best friend have brown hair, even though his wife also has brown hair. HE NEGLECTS THE OBVOIUS IN FAVOUR OF DATA THAT SUPPORT HIS OWN MISINTERPRETATION OF REALITY.
Moreover, he deeply fears and resents the possibility that he might be forced by the legal system to supply funds that will be used to raise someone else’s children, and he is determined not to LET THIS HAPPEN. Ironically, the more he is pushed to take responsibility for his children, the more aggressively certain he will become that the children are not his at all.
Like other paranoid personalities, Ron’s concern with deceit is easily generalized be
yond a single forum or relationship. He could reconstruct reality in any number of ways, but he has chosen a path in which HE IS THE VICTIM & OTHERS ARE THE BENEFICIARIES. For example, he believes that his coworkers are manipulating the time clock. He suspects that they not only cheat him out of pay but also add that money to their own checks, thus allowing them to enjoy the fruits of Ron’s toil behind his back. Therefore, his indignation is doubly justified: HIS DEFICIT IS THEIR SURPLUS; HIS AGONY, THEIR JOY.
WE can easily imagine Ron lying awake at night, recycling the injustices done to him again and again, becoming angrier and angrier and more and more determined to avenge himself or at least catch them in the act. Like other paranoids, Ron holds grudges and seldom forgives an injury. He can’t, because he is always reconstructing reality so that others have self-consciously exploited or attacked him. Nothing is accidental.
Moreover, the putative attacks on Ron made through the time clock go beyond simple
exploitation. Instead, they are attacks on his character. If successful, they will prove something to the world: Ron is a person of low moral quality, and he is
unable to provide for a family, apparently a characteristic essential to his self-respect and one he believes is essential to the respect of others. Thus, in addition to deceiving Ron, his enemies are now waging war on another, even more malicious front: They are attempting to deceive the public about him. Of the two forms of attack, Ron may fear the second even more than the first. He can potentially thwart attacks against his person, buthe cannot as easily control the perceptions of others.
Such distortions of reality could give way to further, more severe paranoid developments, perhaps the notion that others are talking about failures and inadequacies behind his back even though they may have no foundation in truth. In Ron’s mind, others might be saying, “Yeah, I heard his take-home pay was so embarrassing his wife couldn’t take it anymore and started screwing his best friend.”
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Psychology of Love
The sacraments of GOD are everywhere woven into the texture of men's and women's bodies. Lips good to kiss with are indeed first of all chiefly good to eat and drink with. So accumulated and overlapped have the centres of force become in the long course of development, that the mucous membranes of the natural orifices, through the sensitiveness gained in their own offices, all become agents to thrill the soul in the contact of love; it is idle to discriminate high or low, pure or impure; all alike are sanctified already by the extreme unction of God.
Ultimately the worth and loveliness of life must be measured by the worth and loveliness for us of the instruments of life. The swelling breasts, for example, are such divinely gracious insignia of womanhood because of the potential child that hangs at them and sucks; the curves of the hips are so voluptuous because of the potential child they clasp within them; there can be no division here, we cannot cut the roots from the tree. The supreme function of manhood—the handing on of the lamp of life to future races—is carried on, it is true, by the same instrument that is the daily conduit of the bladder.
It has been said in scorn that we are born between urine and excrement; it may be said, in reverence, that the passage through this channel of birth is a sacrament of God's more sacred and significant than men could ever invent. Our attitude towards the naked human body is the test of our attitude towards the instinct of sex. Love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover must be shameful. However illogical it may have been, there really was a justification for the old Christian identification of the flesh with the sexual instinct. They stand or fall together; we cannot degrade the one and exalt the other. As our feelings towards nakedness are, so will be our feelings towards love!
“Man is nothing else than fetid sperm, a sack of dung, the food of worms.... You have never seen a viler dung-hill.” Such was the outcome of St. Bernard's cloistered Meditationes Piissimæ. Sometimes, the medieval monks would admit that the skin possessed a certain superficial beauty, but they only made that admission in order to emphasize the hideousness of the body when deprived of this film of loveliness, and strained all their perverse intellectual acumen, and their ferocious irony, as they eagerly pointed the finger of mockery at every detail of what seemed to them the pitiful figure of man.
St. Odo of Cluny—charming saint as he was and a pioneer in his appreciation of the wild beauty of the Alps he had often traversed—was yet an adept in this art of reviling the beauty of the human body. That beauty only lies in the skin, he insists; if we could see beneath the skin “women would arouse nothing but nausea”, he said. “Their adornments are but blood and…bile. If we refuse to touch dung even with a fingertip, how can we desire to embrace a sack of dung?”
But we have emancipated ourselves from such vile. It is possible to say, with Henry Thoreau, that “THE GODS HAVE REALLY INTENDED THAT MEN SHOULD FEED DIVINELY, AS THEMSELVES, ON THEIR OWN NECTAR & AMBROSIA”. Clement of Alexandria, with all the eccentricities of his over-subtle intellect, was yet the most genuinely Greek of all the Fathers, and it is not surprising that the dying ray of classic light reflected from his mind shed some illumination over this question of sex. He protested, for instance, against that prudery which, as the sun of the classic world set, had begun to overshadow life. “WE SHOULD NOT BE ASHAMED TO NAME,” he declared, “WHAT GOD HAS NOT BEEN ASHAMED TO CREATE.”
There are many who seek to conciliate prejudice and reason in their valuation of sex by drawing a sharp distinction between “LUST” & “LOVE”," rejecting the one and accepting the other. It is quite proper to make such a distinction, but the manner in which it is made will by no means usually bear examination. We’ve to define what we mean by “LUST” & what we mean by “LOVE”, and this is not easy if they are regarded as mutually exclusive. It is sometimes said that LUST must be understood as meaning “a reckless indulgence of the sexual impulse without regard to other considerations.”
So understood, we are quite safe in rejecting it. But that is an entirely arbitrary definition of the word. LUST is really a very ambiguous term; it is a good word that has changed its moral values, and therefore we need to define it very carefully before we venture to use it. Properly speaking, LUST, I think, is an entirely colorless word and merely means desire in general and sexual desire in particular; it corresponds to “HUNGER” or “THIRST,” & to use it in an offensive sense is much the same as though we should always assume that the word “HUNGRY” had the offensive meaning of “GREEDY”.
The failures to find love are often remarkable and unexpected. WE MAY FIND IT WHERE WE LEAST EXPECT IT. Sexual desire is idealized even by some animals, especially birds, for when a bird pines to death for the loss of its mate this cannot be due to the uncomplicated instinct of sex, but must involve the interweaving of that instinct with the other elements of life to a degree which is rare even among some of us.
Donnay, in his play L'Escalade,(translated into English) makes a cold and stern man of science, who regards love as a mere mental disorder which can be cured like other disorders, at last fall desperately in love himself. He forces his way into the girl's room, by a ladder, at dead of night, and breaks into a long and passionate speech: “Everything that touches you becomes to me mysterious and sacred. Ah! to think that a thing so well known as a woman's body, which sculptors have modelled, which poets have sung of, which men of science like myself have dissected, that such a thing should suddenly become an unknown mystery and an infinite joy merely because it is the body of one particular woman—what insanity! And yet that is what I feel”
Ultimately the worth and loveliness of life must be measured by the worth and loveliness for us of the instruments of life. The swelling breasts, for example, are such divinely gracious insignia of womanhood because of the potential child that hangs at them and sucks; the curves of the hips are so voluptuous because of the potential child they clasp within them; there can be no division here, we cannot cut the roots from the tree. The supreme function of manhood—the handing on of the lamp of life to future races—is carried on, it is true, by the same instrument that is the daily conduit of the bladder.
It has been said in scorn that we are born between urine and excrement; it may be said, in reverence, that the passage through this channel of birth is a sacrament of God's more sacred and significant than men could ever invent. Our attitude towards the naked human body is the test of our attitude towards the instinct of sex. Love craves the flesh, and if the flesh is shameful the lover must be shameful. However illogical it may have been, there really was a justification for the old Christian identification of the flesh with the sexual instinct. They stand or fall together; we cannot degrade the one and exalt the other. As our feelings towards nakedness are, so will be our feelings towards love!
“Man is nothing else than fetid sperm, a sack of dung, the food of worms.... You have never seen a viler dung-hill.” Such was the outcome of St. Bernard's cloistered Meditationes Piissimæ. Sometimes, the medieval monks would admit that the skin possessed a certain superficial beauty, but they only made that admission in order to emphasize the hideousness of the body when deprived of this film of loveliness, and strained all their perverse intellectual acumen, and their ferocious irony, as they eagerly pointed the finger of mockery at every detail of what seemed to them the pitiful figure of man.
St. Odo of Cluny—charming saint as he was and a pioneer in his appreciation of the wild beauty of the Alps he had often traversed—was yet an adept in this art of reviling the beauty of the human body. That beauty only lies in the skin, he insists; if we could see beneath the skin “women would arouse nothing but nausea”, he said. “Their adornments are but blood and…bile. If we refuse to touch dung even with a fingertip, how can we desire to embrace a sack of dung?”
But we have emancipated ourselves from such vile. It is possible to say, with Henry Thoreau, that “THE GODS HAVE REALLY INTENDED THAT MEN SHOULD FEED DIVINELY, AS THEMSELVES, ON THEIR OWN NECTAR & AMBROSIA”. Clement of Alexandria, with all the eccentricities of his over-subtle intellect, was yet the most genuinely Greek of all the Fathers, and it is not surprising that the dying ray of classic light reflected from his mind shed some illumination over this question of sex. He protested, for instance, against that prudery which, as the sun of the classic world set, had begun to overshadow life. “WE SHOULD NOT BE ASHAMED TO NAME,” he declared, “WHAT GOD HAS NOT BEEN ASHAMED TO CREATE.”
There are many who seek to conciliate prejudice and reason in their valuation of sex by drawing a sharp distinction between “LUST” & “LOVE”," rejecting the one and accepting the other. It is quite proper to make such a distinction, but the manner in which it is made will by no means usually bear examination. We’ve to define what we mean by “LUST” & what we mean by “LOVE”, and this is not easy if they are regarded as mutually exclusive. It is sometimes said that LUST must be understood as meaning “a reckless indulgence of the sexual impulse without regard to other considerations.”
So understood, we are quite safe in rejecting it. But that is an entirely arbitrary definition of the word. LUST is really a very ambiguous term; it is a good word that has changed its moral values, and therefore we need to define it very carefully before we venture to use it. Properly speaking, LUST, I think, is an entirely colorless word and merely means desire in general and sexual desire in particular; it corresponds to “HUNGER” or “THIRST,” & to use it in an offensive sense is much the same as though we should always assume that the word “HUNGRY” had the offensive meaning of “GREEDY”.
The failures to find love are often remarkable and unexpected. WE MAY FIND IT WHERE WE LEAST EXPECT IT. Sexual desire is idealized even by some animals, especially birds, for when a bird pines to death for the loss of its mate this cannot be due to the uncomplicated instinct of sex, but must involve the interweaving of that instinct with the other elements of life to a degree which is rare even among some of us.
Donnay, in his play L'Escalade,(translated into English) makes a cold and stern man of science, who regards love as a mere mental disorder which can be cured like other disorders, at last fall desperately in love himself. He forces his way into the girl's room, by a ladder, at dead of night, and breaks into a long and passionate speech: “Everything that touches you becomes to me mysterious and sacred. Ah! to think that a thing so well known as a woman's body, which sculptors have modelled, which poets have sung of, which men of science like myself have dissected, that such a thing should suddenly become an unknown mystery and an infinite joy merely because it is the body of one particular woman—what insanity! And yet that is what I feel”
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