Tag: psychology

The Man Whose Life Expresses His Inner Motivation…

Zimmermann already noticed, two centuries in advance, what would be proved theoretically and practically by Frankl:

Une forte résolution et ce désir d’atteindre un grand but peuvent nous rendre supportables les douleurs les plus aiguës.

If, on the one hand, a man seized by emptiness highlights his fragility on a daily basis, a man whose life expresses his inner motivation, whose steps seem to him justified, full of meaning, this man seems of an entirely different kind. It is as if he has, all his life, trained himself for war, for deprivation, and for pain. Nothing seems able to shake him. He has erected, with long and patient effort, an impenetrable psychological fortress. Life has become clear to him, and the same sense of priorities that guides him prevents him from succumbing to the less important. What to the first is the end of the line, to him is a new opportunity for affirmation.

The Human Brain Always Ends Up Humiliated

The human brain always ends up humiliated when it yields to the irresistible temptation to order the irrational. It would be much easier if it accepted it in its unlimited manifestations, and assumed for itself its own limits. One cannot concatenate the spontaneous, the unheard-of, the exceptional, without running an immense risk of falling into ridicule. Error is the fruit of presumption. If reason demands answers, lacks logic, it must be content most of the time with the very process of analysis, with simply reducing possible mistakes through careful observation, and avoiding, as much as possible, hasty judgment. The irrational exists, imposes itself, and does not give a damn about its considerations.

Modern Psychiatry, Invading the Terrain of Philosophy…

Modern psychiatry, invading the terrain of philosophy, is already a kind of doctrine in which eminent Simões Bacamartes are taking great strides toward the end that the original one had. There is a model of normality, and this model is that of the jester. Anyone who does not fit into it is unquestionably sick and should seek professional help. There are judgments about life, about the environment, about others, there are deliberate behaviors that only spring up in an unhealthy mind. All of them, of course, must be treated. A Seneca, a Schopenhauer, fatally suffers from a disorder. So do all saints, all monks, hermits of any kind, poets, dreamers, adventurers, and many others. A Fernando Pessoa, then, is a raving madman, a lunatic to be tied at the foot of a table. And for all these, the most enlightened modern psychiatry has already attributed a mental illness. All this would be funny, if we were not in an age where freedoms are gradually stifled and individuals are increasingly forced to follow a behavioral primer. It would not be long before the State, based on Science, proposes to correct the disturbed, justifying itself by Marketing. And then the mentally ill, those harmful to the common good, are interned. It is possible to perfectly imagine the Ministry of Health that Orwell did not create, operated by today’s very powerful sociopaths, whose taste for control exceeds all limits ever recorded by history. What a catastrophe!

My Disease

It is obvious that I would eventually find my own illness in psychology books. I had already foreseen this myself. But it was not without surprise that I came across it, precise and undeniable, as if smiling enthusiastically at the first formal contact. I analyze its symptoms and conclude: I am sick. The shrewd psychiatrist convinces me: I am suffering from a rare disease, I need help, I must overcome my resistance, accept it, and run to the doctor’s office. If I have humility, if I make a sincere effort, I can be converted into a normal human being. What a thing… I have identified so much with the disease that I would gladly provide a smiling photo of myself to enrich with an illustration the encyclopedia of mental disorders. But how ugly is the name of my disease! how repulsive! I admit that I suffer, that I am very, very sad, but why this nominal insult? Surely, because the term of terrible taste or the terrible taste of the term accurately defines an animal of my species to the specialist.