Ambi Oct's Library tagged psychoanalysis →  View Popular, Search in Google

purpose of the story isn't to describe psychopathy, but to entertain a demographic that has nothing else to do on Sundays now that Desperate Housewives has been canceled.

when it's suggested by a deranged Manhattanite with no understanding of who "they" is, but everyone gets all Founding Fathers when George Bush tries it. "What gives him the right?!" Duh, you did.
lets you know it only happens to certain kinds of other people, your patronizing condescension is encouraged. "It is terrible, isn't it, but I guess it's true that other people are different from me."
I will observe that no one feels bad for Michael even though this is supposed to be genetic= "not your fault" and he hasn't actually hurt anyone, which is precisely the kind of psychopathic prejudice I expect from the NYT and its deranged readers.
The kid is nine. You derangetons are 40 and still shamelessly retain the fantasy that your decaying mind and body will someday pull something off, meanwhile you're wrapping up shooting on his movie before puberty even hits.

one of the most significant causes of psychopathy is being told, at age 9, that you are a psychopath, and that the New York Times Magazine wants to do a ten page story about you.

media psychoanalysis humor

"When a media universally misses the point, it's on purpose." -unconsciously deliberate avoidance of the larger issue.
I am so polluted by the world that my reflex thoughts are someone else's.

The real problem with fairy tales is that the protagonist never actually does anything to become a princess. Forget about gerrymandering or slaying a dragon or poisoning her rivals: does she even get a pretty dress, go to the ball and seduce the prince? Those may be anti-feminist actions, but at least they are actions. No. She is given two dresses, carried to the ball, and the Prince comes and finds her. Twice. Her only direct and volitional action is to leave the ball at midnight, and even that isn't so much a choice as because of a threat. (1) The clear problem with this isn't that girls will want to hold out for a Prince, but that it might foster the illusion their value is so innately high that even without pretty clothes or a sense of agency a Prince will come find them. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are worse: they don't even have to bother to stay alive to get their Prince.
Katniss never makes any decisions of her own, never acts with consequence...at every turn is prevented from acting on the world. She is protected by men-- enemies and allies alike; directed by others, blessed with lucky accidents and when things get impossible there are packages from the sky. In philosophical terms, she is continuously robbed of agency. she is "god from the machinaed" all the way to the end...she doesn't choose to kill or not kill-- it doesn't come up...The story goes out of its way to prevent her from having to make choices and especially from bearing their consequences. Events unfold in such a way that it appears she made a choice, but decisions are actually made for her...does not allow her to make irreversible choices, it lets her believe she is making free choices and then negates them, again, just like a five year old girl with terrible parents.

What's fascinating/horrifying is that this fairy tale has managed to convince everyone, especially people who consider themselves feminists, that it represents a form of female empowerment when it is exactly the opposite. What you should not underestimate is how deliberate this magic trick is. This is society successfully pretending to change so that nothing changes. The goal is making the other team contribute to their own oblivion. The goal is status quo.
The classic feminist example of "robbed of agency" is the woman who "chooses" to wear makeup, do her hair, display/hide the right amount of cleavage. Is she choosing this, or is society imposing this false choice on her? Because if she feels she has to do it in order to land the account, then it's not really her choice.
What makes this such an impossible, lose-lose situation for a woman is that this choice isn't about "what to do" but about who she is, what society wants a woman to be: while she must make herself look pretty, if she is observed doing this she is immediately and simultaneously critiqued for being vain. The decision about whether to be or not to doll herself up is thus somewhat up to her, but the judgment about whether she is vain is entirely out of her hands-- it is a judgment imposed on her for doing exactly what is expected of her. Her only hope is that she is can make herself look pretty enough that it looks like it was not on purpose, i.e reveal the results but hide the process. (4) This manipulation of her is all deliberate design-- what society actually wants is that it gets her to be pretty, demarcates her as an object to be gazed upon-- but not bear any of the guilt/responsibility for forcing her into this. If it works and you are pretty I guess that's some consolation, but imagine if you're not pretty but still have to go through all this, suspecting but never admitting that everyone is going to think, "why'd she even bother?" Being pretty is in many ways worse, because you're not only competing with other pretty women but with yourself ("you look tired today") and, as the old saying goes, a beautiful woman dies two deaths. But before you go try some of our Nivea skin care products. That's the system, it wants you to participate in your own marginalization so you don't dare unplug.
It has managed to convince everyone that a passive character whose main strength is that she thinks a lot of thoughts and feels a lot of feelings, but who ultimately lets every decision be made by someone else-- that is a female hero, a winner.
That these "adolescent girl" stories-- Twilight and THG-- have women who are essentially lead by men, circumstance, and fate-- whose main executive decision is "do I love this guy or that guy"-- is a window on our culture worth discussing. When you have a daughter, your first question should be, "how is the system going to try to crush her?" and plan accordingly.

Note that the person who is aware that he has free will feels as though he lacks agency ("it doesn't matter what I do") becomes either depressed or paranoid, or both.

isn't illusion or delusion, he is not imagining what his wife looked like, the single body part is enough to generate arousal, in the same way that any fetish (specific kind of shoe, or a foot, or a piece of lace) is entirely sufficient. The problem is that this doesn't make the woman look hotter, it replaces the woman
anorexic is trying to control an idea. "I can see that my shoulders are sticking out, I know everyone can see my ribs, but yet I know I am horrifically fat." The control, the act of not eating, is the special body part; it is the obsessed-over fetish that exists for its own sake.

psychoanalysis identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"rarely breaks laws so it can't be punished, and there's no God so the immorality of it is debatable, i.e. inconsequential. It must be a disease, that way other people don't want to catch it. All psychiatric treatment of constructed syndromes isn't about cure but about regression to the mean, where mean= cubicle drone. In other words, the point of offering Priapos treatment isn't that the patient gets better-- no one cares about him-- but that everyone else watching understands what he did is deeply whacked, so don't get any ideas."... You can't tell him it's "wrong" to do what you've encouraged him and everyone else to do for three decades, which is why stupid people quickly turn to the default: "well, he lied about it under oath!" Oh, so that's what makes him a sociopath.

When you make behaviors a disease, individuals lose and systems win, this is always true, they benefit in still being able to call something "shameful" without needing to take any responsibility for its creation. The point here is not to be anti-religion, nor to claim that people who feel shame (not guilt) and disgust after their sexual experiences are not suffering. The point is to reveal that any individual's suffering is secretly nurtured to maintain the integrity of the larger system. You're expendable...would want to help them, educate them, elevate them, but it doesn't want to "treat" them, it only wants to "diagnose" them as a warning for everyone else. In other words, the system sacrifices them...being used as means of social control...The point of treatments of "shameful" behaviors isn't to help you (though it might), but to give the system the right to decide what's pathology and what isn't. "It's based on internal suffering." No. No it isn't. When they screen you for alcoholism they ask you about guilt, when they screen you for sex addiction they ask about shame. Do you know why? Because it's not based on internal suffering.

Unless your identity is already well established, known, you can't risk someone "misinterpreting" your liking him, so people try to put some distance between them, which is why every time someone writes anything positive about Tucker Max there's a disclaimer: "love him or hate him..." "he's a rude, disgusting misogynist, but..."
The sad paradox of this system is that on the one hand it hates Tucker Max et al for how they degrade women, but on the other hand hates those very women even more for liking him. He's a human you hate, but you hate them as a group. Surprise: your misogyny > his misogyny. You should hang that above your bed, especially if you are a woman.

a) defining yourself based on who you hate ("I'm not like those sluts"); and b) secretly believing that only you have-- deserve-- free will, other people (Tucker Max, the women who like Tucker Max) are just too dumb to handle it. I could say that that a) and b) are causes of totalitarianism or characteristics of narcissism, but it's more useful to say that a) and b) are why you are not happy, and it's more useful because that's the only thing you really care about anyway.

What Brandon doesn't realize is that his movie is inseparable from the commentary that comes with it, it relies on it. In fact, the movie itself is less relevant than the commentary, the movie is an excuse for the commentary. You lose or gain nothing by knowing that Tree Of Life's brother committed suicide when he was 19, but it is absolutely vital that you-- you who saw it and especially you who didn't-- know that Brandon is a "sex addict", i.e. bad, i.e. not the system's fault for demanding you consume but only the right amount, i.e. don't get any ideas.
If you weren't told he was a sex addict, what would you have thought Brandon's problem was? That he was mean; that he may have had sex with his sister; that he was cold, distant, and infinitely narcissistic; that he watches cartoons; that he had a crazy sister. You would have looked at the sex as a convenient way of escaping those things, as a consequence of those things, and maybe you would have lingered long enough on his furtive attempt at a normal relationship to ask whether the pathology wasn't there and not 15 minutes later with the hooker. But you were told you were seeing a movie about sex addiction, of how sex addiction destroys your life, so the Marianne debacle and the cartoon watching was to be understood as a consequence of that addiction. But "sex addiction" wasn't what wrecked his life at all. Do you believe if he refrains from porn he will be happy?
To make sure you never consider this, they tell you upfront the context in which you are to understand this movie, even and especially if you never actually watch it.

psychoanalysis shame

in list: BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"satisfaction from anything, that thing has to be unattainable, or at the very least it must come with rules. You can get release and pleasure from the attainable, but not satisfaction. There has to be a limit, a line, which defines a transgression which then allows you to bump up against it-- and be satisfied. "

That's what he's spent the most time on, that's what he knows how to do the best. Better than driving, better than speaking, better than Xbox-- he has that mindset down to a reflex. So why would you expect he'd use any other technique for any other life problems that come up? If all you are is an expert hammerer, everything gets hammered. not to refrain-- you can't resist your desires forever. You must practice a new skill, you must become the kind of person who wouldn't turn to porn when they are: lonely; horny; boredy. If you practice a new skill enough times, it will become second first nature, and you will be a different person. Please note that it is that last part, not the giving up of porn, that makes the change difficult. Giving up porn is easy squeezy. Becoming the kind of person who doesn't need to use porn on Thursdays at 11:30p because that's when you have a few hours free is hard.

guilt is omniscient. You know it's guilt because no one else would blame him for what she did, and yet he knows with total certainty that it was his fault, even though it wasn't. Yet he knows it was. What he is actually feeling guilty about isn't that he wasn't there for his sister-- that's too easy to get out of-- but that his commitment to his own life made him not be there for his sister. Anyone who has ever lost someone to suicide knows this feeling, and everyone else does not.
understand your guilt as not coming from the failing but generated by you as self-punishment, so that you can go on with the rest of your life. Have you suffered enough today? Then go have a Reuben, they're tasty. You've earned it. The guilt always stays with you. Always. It never goes away. Never. I'm of course not saying you deserve it, but I know it is your inevitable tormentor. So either you reach some kind of stalemate with it or it beats you down. That stalemate is sublimation.
so when he sees the married woman from Act I again on the subway he doesn't get up to flirt with her. He lets her go, he has decided to be the kind of person who sublimates his sex drive to devote more attention to his whacky sister,. To being a better person.

psychoanalysis insight

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"Absent direct power or wealth, the only thing that keeps us free is information. I believe it is worth the risk of copycat suicides, especially since influencing the choice of the method of suicide isn't the same as influencing the choice of commiting suicide. "

psychoanalysis suicide

The problem isn't the relationship, the problem is you.
drive for novelty- "rather than chase new experiences they close off from the outside world and dream them. They don't end relationships, they stay caulked to the inside of one, unmoving, ungrowing, apathetic; while their minds and DVRs are an imaginarium. The few things they do choose to jump recklesslsy into are obvious go-nowheres: one night stands (for the married man); making a movie; daytrading. They're easy to attempt, and easy to blame on externalities when they inevitably fail. They don't break up with the girl, they ignore her until she breaks up with them."
All opportunities are open to anyone who wants to work, a new car, a big house, a career. But no one told the men that those things were for their families, not for them, that none of this would make them happy, and, indeed, would make them realize how little their lives are really worth-- unless they understood that their lives had value only if it was of value to someone else. So for a while they chased sex, affairs, or took up an out of the house hobby (e.g.golf). Something to give them the temporary illusion that they were free, and that the world had possibilties

psychoanalysis insight career marriage

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"the point was to create a dramatic event upon which to focus energy and thus delay any kind of physical forward motion. By engaging in conflict that is impossible to resolve."
for the purpose of maintaining his ambivalent world so no concrete decisions need to be made. Concrete=loss of potentialities= no thanks. he chose her to get rejected; to get jealous; to get sad over; to obsess over. And then to recruit the rest of his world into this problem. Nothing matters more than ego integrity; nothing matters more than the status quo.
All of that is unconscious, and as soon as I say that word a specific group of people goes bananas. No one likes to think they're not in control of their own lives, that they're saddled with an Abusive Boyfriend that wants nothing to change; but if they are in control, why are they anxious all the time? Why so little progress despite resources, opportunities, and freedom? If they're in control of their own lives, why do they all dress alike?If you're in control, why do these relationships happen to you? Isn't it more likely you chose them?

I'm not against introspection, I am against masturbation. I'm against edging. The critic wants to be able to contemplate, to go to therapy and discuss and introspect and what he will do there is talk about himself, think about himself, identify patterns in his life, things that have held him back-- and nothing will change.
The therapy becomes an elaborate narcissistic defense, the promise and appearance of progress while protecting an at best artificial and at worst non-existent identity. "I want to learn why I am this way." Then what? Will learning why you made those choices be what changes your choices? You're still eating junk food, aren't you? You're eating it while you're learning how bad it is.

"But... why am I this way?" That question is a narcissistic defense. It doesn't want an answer, it wants you to keep asking the question.
"I'm a good person, I just am making bad choices." Wrong. You're not a good person until you make good choices. Until then you are chaos.
And you know it.

Your problem is not unique: too much freedom. If you were stupid you could plug into the system easy, one talent= one job. But for you there are too many possibilities. Your parents being deceased, being in college, being smart... that's the ether in which a naturally worried, "is this good enough?" young man finds himself. The mistake many with that problem make is thinking that the problem is "themselves" and they need more introspection, or more insight, or more "brain hacks." You need less of those things. What you need are goals with concrete steps that you force yourself to boringly take.

psychoanalysis insight starred

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"When Nietzsche said "God is dead" he meant that God is not necessary for our morality anymore. When he says we killed God, he means that our science, skepticism, education, have pushed us past the point where believing in miracles is possible; but as a consequence of this loss we are lost, have no goals, no aspirations, no values. God was made up, but he gave us a reason to progress.

The resulting nihilism requires us to either despair, return back to medieval religion, or look deeper within us and find a new source of human values."

"Murder is wrong, but in this case...." But of course they're not referring to the penal code, but to an abstract wrongness that they rationalize as coming from shared collective values or humanist principles or economics or energy or whatever. It's still god, it's a God behind the "God", something bigger, something that preserves the individual's ability to appeal to the symbolic.

The absence of guilt is not the result of the justification, it precedes the justification. Like a dream that incorporates a real life ringing telephone into it seemingly before the phone actually rings, the absence of guilt hastily creates an explanation for its absence that preserves the symbolic morality

Rageful narcissists are the most violent not when they are insulted or attacked or hated but when they are abandoned to objective reality, the one that doesn't comply with their mirroring demands. Such a person invariably is backed by an enslaved God, which means all things are possible.

excuses psychoanalysis narcissism

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

every time a therapist writes something down it's a nervous thing. They write to discharge their anxiety of too long looking into a person's eyes and it not leading to either "I love you" or "I'm going to kill you." You're not a detective, you're not looking for inconsistencies or lost time, the patient is there for answers and the structure of your relationship is itself the answers. Why does she like me? Why does she get bored/angry/expansive when I do this? Why did she continue with a therapist who is so uncomfortable around other people that they need a yellow pad as an emotional shield? Seriously, that's not an accident at all, answer that question and the therapy is done, the patient is cured. the point here is to establish that these two people are creating "environments" that are safe for themselves. It may also be safe for the patient, it may be labeled as "for the patient" but I hope it is evident that the real impetus is the comfort of the therapist.

Note the phrasing-- this is good for the kids, which is actual kids, not the adults-that-were-once-kids. Adults' anger gets to remain justified.
And it's a lie anyway. Sure, it is good for the kids, but is there anyone who can't see that the primary reassurance is for the parents who can't handle being hated by their kids?

The old adage that shrinks go into shrinkage to figure themselves out sounds awesomely correct except that it's incorrect and inawesome. They go into it so they don't have to figure themselves out. Best way to avoid judgment is to become the judge. Overruled. I said overruled.The therapist has a sanction to create narratives, and there's nothing better than being able to create a narrative that also defends your ego from all manner of attack.

" "too perfect" parents who coddle and overprotect their kids aren't doing it for their kids, they are doing it for themselves, in defense of their own ego; and that, not the bike helmets, is why their kids end up adrift and confused. The problem isn't that kids are too wussy to go out and play, but that their parents do not trust themselves"
paranoia. Ego vs. reality, and you can't appraise either. And then one day your kid is punched by some bully raised by Nascar fans or baby mommas and you shut down the school because you think the problem is the bully. The problem is you. The bully may have punched your Edward in the belly but you mobilized the school district to DEFCON 2, who has more power? Who is the biggest bully?

More than likely kids overcome all this, everybody finds their own way, but to those who feel stuck the only solution is to forsake all attempts at figuring out who you are, conveying who you are-- because you aren't anybody yet-- and just accomplish stuff, yet be ready to discover in 50 years that the sum total of your life's real accomplishments may be very different than what you expected, and it must be enough.
unhappiness comes not from thinking they are better than they are, and not even from the inevitable future failures, but from not being sure how good they are, if they are good at all. They are not sure what is supposed to define them. "How can you know what kind of a man you are if you've never been in a fight?"

parenting identity psychoanalysis narcissism

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

" What's wrong isn't your lack of feeling, but that you think you have to feel something, that you have to tell this woman, remind this woman, how horrible is her loss. You think the only way to connect with people is to have their emotions. You think she wants to connect with you. You think she wants your help."What you should say is, "I'm very sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?" and that's it. But that feels insufficient. You think this because you think that there is something you can do, that the sadness is not real for you so it must not be real for her and you thus have the power to change it.She's not looking for you to be sad, she's not looking to you for anything, her loss is bigger than you. If she needs anything from you, it's sympathy, not empathy.The problem isn't that you don't know how to connect; it's that when you do connect at all, you don't know what to do next. It's your unrealistic expectations of what connecting is supposed to be. TV is always about beginnings, not middles.
You are so unsure of your own identity that you don't know if you are supposed to be feeling, what you are supposed to be feeling, when you are supposed to be feeling. This is the same trouble actors have when rehearsing a character.
The problem wasn't TV, the problem was the absence of adults, real adults who took seriously their responsibility to the next generation, who lead not by words, but by behavior. Who, even if miserable or unfulfilled or unconnected had the decency to fake it for the next generation, for the people they touched. Who didn't cheat on their wives not just because they loved them, not just because it was ethically wrong, but because what kind of an example would that be to their daughters? try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness.
If the problem was the unopposed influence of TV-- not the TV, per se, but the lack of opposing influence-- then the solution is some opposing influence.Do the opposite of what the narcissists did. They wanted to know enough to fake it. They read just enough to use the book to build an identity, so they read about books, but not the actual books.

If nothing else, reading will keep you out of trouble: every moment reading those books is a moment not doing something your current adults created for themselves that you're stuck with by default.

"Why do you waste your time with pop culture?" Because you may not be interested in pop culture, but pop culture is interested in you.

psychoanalysis identity feel

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

no not exactly this is the reason:"The attention (more reading, more activities, more conversation) is supposed to give the oldest kid the emotional resources to grow."

first,oldest kids get parentified: "go watch your brother and sister!" "Make sure this baby doesn't roll!" Oldest kids may not be smarter, they may just have had to grow up faster; they have to learn to think fast, improvise, etc.

second,You learn fast, lessons your younger sibs don't learn as early in life. And, specifically, you learn a) what adults "do" (because you're often expected to replicate it); b) that you are always under scrutiny-- so perform, don't bother trying to hide; c) that you are under more scrutiny than your sibs-- in other words, that they are "special." Not better, but singled out for more responsibility, more scrutiny than others.
Identity comes easier to the oldest born, because it is reinforced (positively or negatively). "You know better, "you're supposed to," etc. It's pretty easy to see how narcissists are almost always the oldest child. (And borderlines the youngest, or only.)
Depending on why they get more scrutiny and more responsibility, they develop differently.

The result in this situation is that the oldest goes on to succeed-- amazed, really, at how easy the world is and how little is actually expected of or necessary from him, in comparison to what went on at home-- but is simultaneously bitter, resentful of how easy it is for other people to be happy when they want to be, despite their lack of successes. These people can easily become abusers (especially emotionally) ("I hate your emotions!"); they can become alcoholics ("I hate my emotions!"); insomniacs ("I hate that another day has passed and I have done nothing of actual consequence, nothing, nothing, nothing.")

sibling parenting psychoanalysis

"In women, narcissism manifests itself as a greater libido, and in men, a lesser one."Parents spend more time together and with their kids. They are staying together, but they are less emotionally connected than ever. Narcissists cannot connect.

the problem with his libido isn't how hot she is. He's a narcissist: the problem is his libido is that it depends on how hot he is.He looks in the mirror, sees a gut-- he doesn't feel sexy, he can't imagine she would find him sexy, so the libido falls.The woman, by contrast, might actually feel better about her deteriorating body because she's attained value in other ways; and so she figures, "we are aging together." A narcissist does not want to hear that, ever. He can still penetrate you if you become old, fat and ugly; he can't do it if he becomes old, fat and ugly. It's a double whammy of feeling emasculated, while his narcissistic personality structure demands that he be hyper-male, ideal male. He can't attain it. So he thinks you see him as less than masculine. So he doesn't bother with you. So the wife asks, "is he picturing himself with other women when he has sex with me?" No; he's picturing someone else with other women when he does you. It's masturbation. It's not sexy if it's his bloated body underneath Sports Illustrated's Marisa Miller.

The online porn; the glances at the younger women around him. It's not (just) that he finds them attractive: their real appeal is that they do not know him, and with them he could be the man he thinks he should be because they wouldn't know it's an invented identity. And the younger and younger ages of the women isn't about pedophilia-- he's just unconsciously dutch auctioning in on the age naive enough to believe his created identity. What's he going to say to the wife she doesn't already know? Even legitimate successes are subdued because they are not at all surprises. The wife is more involved with every part of the relationship-- the money, the jobs-- his and hers-- the troubles, everything-- that the man has no way to construct an artificial identity she'd believe. He can't pretend he's anything

he's home five hours a day; but three of them he's irritable, short, or outright yelling at them. Kids don't think, "what the hell is wrong with Dad? He should get himself a drink." They think, "oh my God, I must suck. I'm going to get a drink." Alcohol use among teens is going to rise substantially, you heard it hear first, because alcohol is the drug of the lonely surrounded by everyone.

Oh, you want a solution? Here it is: have sex. Even if you're not in the mood. It seems like strange advice-- force yourself to have sex-- but it's the correct advice. The problem is unrealistic expectations of yourself, sex, marriage, etc. Instead of fantasizing, pretending, teasing, silly text messages that come to nothing, whatever, just do it. If nothing else-- and this is nearly unimaginable-- you will both feel better that you did it, that there's nothing wrong with your marriage.

By the way, don't think you're not a narcissist because you're 30 and having sex every day; the involution, the self-absorption gets unmasked as natural aging slows you down.

narcissism psychoanalysis marriage

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

a kind of love that substitutes magnitude of emotions for quality of emotions because that's the next best thing. I don't mean this next part as an insult: toddlers do this. They want you to extra love them up, but if you're watching the Radiation King they'll not hesitate to lick an electrical socket to get attention. They would rather you yell at them than ignore them, and that emotional charge they get temporarily sustains them. Spam isn't ham, but if you're starving it'll do. And yes, eventually you will get used to, and even like, Spam. It is repetition compulsion and it is inevitable.
Yes they are afraid but the real fear is abandonment, starvation: this is your whole life, how do you walk away from everything you know? You know it got violent yesterday, but you also feel emotionally full: the contrast between yesterday's anger and today's teddy bear gift is so gigantic that your emotions top out, like cocaine or winning at blackjack. The absolute value of that love may be much less than "a good man's," but he can't provide the differential. That's the toddler problem.
While you're yelling from the outside "get away from him!" from the inside they try to deflect with high emotion substitutes: drugs, pregnancy, cheating. After a while, your life is that cycle. You can break up, sure, but each of you will probably repeat that pattern elsewhere, because the problem isn't the specific partner in front of you but the way you sustain your relationships. And when you both work off the same patterns, you'll be together ten years longer than you should be.
The only solution I have ever seen work is that one of the people has to change the way they respond to the other. one thing I've noticed about the mutually abusive is their clinging to spirituality because when you live by no rules the psyche demands you to impose them from without:

And when the toddler comes ferociously upon you and yells, "I AM TWO AND I AM UNCONTAINED!" do you beat him like a dog? Teach him that the rest of your life will have to wait while you unleash your anger on him-- so central is his existence? Or rather, do you calmly show restraint, neither do you reward his mania with your emotion? They are filled by your love, but they will settle for your attention. He who feeds a Chaos will raise a Demon.

You can complain about who is glorifying what and how someone is being represented as whatever, but in doing so you ignore the millions of people-- kids-- who are feeling neglected by you and represented only by Eminem et al. If you focus on Domestic Violence and miss their internal struggle, then you will neither stop Domestic Violence nor affect their lives, and they will abandon you. They already have.

psychoanalysis marriage parenting insight identity

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"Like any woman wracked by SELF-DOUBT, when it FEELS LIKE A SCENE, u feel COMPELLED TO FOLLOW THE SCRIPT. No means no, but yes is what it says on the page. Hence yes to the boss's extra work; yes to letting your friend vent on the phone even though you're late; yes to being in a threesome because your boyfriend wanted to. But later, when you're done shooting for the day and you have a chance to be yourself, you finally say"
If she thinks that the ring is a symbol of what a guy thinks of her, then the small ring is what he thinks of you. Upgrading the ring after the fact won't upgrade his feelings towards you. Which is the problem. RATHER THAN COMMITTING TO HER OWN MAXIM-- it's a symbol of love-- she DOWNPLAYS it, LETTING HIM OFF THE HOOK TO MAINTAIN THE APPEARANCE THAT ALL IS WELL.
The ring isn't a just a symbol of love, but RESTITUITION.Prove to me you think I'm worth it. If it sounds bitchy you aren't listening: you prove to me I'm worth it. Give me something you don't give the other girls, can't give the other girls. You, who can get any girl he wants, make me know how valuable I am. Because I don't have any idea, otherwise I wouldn't be shaking you down for a bigger ring and I certainly wouldn't be trying to get you back.Happiness is not the goal, what she's hoping for is AFFIRMATION. She wants the kind of guy who is a symbol of the value she thinks she wishes she had.typical of so many women: anything that tells me I'm worth it cannot tell me who I am.
thappiness is out so the only objective scale you have to measure value is energy and emotion. Is there passion? Is there drama

hypotheticals like this can only be answered because you're controlling for the most important and limitless variable, the other person. So the point of these hypotheticals isn't to determine a code of behavior but to broadcast to others something about yourself.
The kind of man whom you're going to have to nudge towards a bigger ring, to cajole into being more selfless, to whip into settling for you-- is the kind of guy you are hypothetically attracted to. And you know who that kind of guy finds attractive? You.
These hypotheticals are dreams. The lesson isn't what you would do; but how did you construct the fantasy? That tells you who you are, and it's telling you to you think you should leave your Wednesdays free. He might come over...if you refuse a ring from a guy which is less than what you wanted, thinking it's a symbol of his love but HOPING IT IS NOT a symbol of his love, then the problem isn't the ring, the problem is you.

psychoanalysis insight marriage

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"The truth is that you knew when you bought it whether the ring was what she wanted. What you were banking on is that she'd accept it anyway. It was a kind of test of her love. "
But if your patent/stock/novel/horse comes through and you later do indeed get her that bigger ring, are you going to spend a greater proportion of your wealth on it, or just more money? If not, then you haven't properly understood what that ring represents to her-- crazy or not-- which means that you don't understand her, which means, importantly, that you do not care to try. The point here isn't that she's right, the point is you two are not connected.
Save your money. You'll lose it in the divorce anyway.

hypotheticals r dreams.The lesson isn't what you would do; but how did you construct the fantasy to allow you to do it? That tells you who you are.
if you spring a ring on a woman which you already know is less than what she wanted, hoping that she'll be satisfied but not sure if she'll be satisfied, then the problem isn't the ring, the problem is you.

psychoanalysis marriage

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"Idiocy can overwhelm everything but death, and death can overwhelm everything else but denial. "

He wouldn't have tried this on the Princess, or his parents, or some stranger with a beer gut and an ankle monitor-- no, he tried this on the boy because he had a feeling he would fall for it.

Which means that the correct lesson the boy's parents could have taught him was what it is the boy does to make Superman think he can manipulate him, or even what it is about Superman that makes him act that way; but the one they went with, the one that will make him neurotic for the rest of his life, is that he's a winner.

psychoanalysis parenting

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

BPD is not a description of behavior exactly, it is a description of an adaptive coping strategy. In other words, people persist with BPD because it works."Works" has a limited definition for borderline: prevention of abandonment. Narcissism protects the identity at the expense of everything else, Borderline will do whatever it takes to avoid abandonment, including giving up one's identity. Abandonment isn't loneliness or isolation, a person can run away to the woods for a year if it preserves the connection to the other person, even in a terrible way: "I'm hiding out because he's out there looking for me to kill me."
The currency of borderline is affect. Energy. The analogy is the kid who doesn't get enough attention, so acts out: he would rather have hugs and kisses, but he'll settle for the same amount of affect in any other form of attention, including anger and yelling. Negative affect has long term consequences, duh, but short term no affect is completely intolerable.
"This is set up in childhood 100% of the time. The kid learns what works, learns what gets him the affect he needs. If the parents are loving all the time not much "work" is necessary."
easiest way to get sucky parents to give you affect is to enrage them.
"crazy" behavior is more tolerable to other people when you are young.
abusing herself =she's setting up, well, a pattern of intense, unstable relationships because she needs the intensity and will thus tolerate the unstability. A relationship isn't one sided, or bi-directional, it's a dialectic. They are very much in it together.
If you wanted to help (someone like) her, you have to take the focus away from her, put some objectivity into it. So start with her strengths. What is she good at? Raising her kids, for one thing. She may have doubts about her methods or her attention span, but ultimately she takes it all into account and creates an environment that is best for them. Okay, so a good place to start is: how she runs her life, how she runs her relationship, will be inevitably mirrored by her kids. She probably knows this. What she may not know, however, is that the mirroring doesn't mean her boys will grow up likely to hit their women, but that it is more likely her boys will grow up falling for women like her. Or picking someone in reaction to her.

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in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too

""Good" parenting, apparently, is trying techniques on your kid that were never used on you, even though you still turned out just fine. "
no lawyer ever says, "Your Honor, my client saw every episode of Bosom Buddies and McHale's Navy, I move for dismissal." Which is why I am telling you: TV is bad for the kid, but that thinking is much worse. thinking that they will be worse for your kids than they were for you is the fundamental, narcissistic error of parenting. "My kids are weaker than me." Then humanity is doomed.

parenting psychoanalysis starred

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: psychological law

"it isn't the beating itself that molded the kids, but the very clear rules and consequences, which requires an awesome level of energy, vigilance, and self-control on the parent's part"
As long as the kid can make sense of the story of his life, if he understands its narrative structure-- even if it is made up (Life Is Beautiful)-- he can make it. The amount of beating had no relationship to her behavior, it was entirely dependent on how he was feeling that day, not what she did. As a judge he had sentencing guidelines for different crimes; as a father he freelanced, and terribly. phrase that accompanies all abusive relationships: "I never know what kind of mood he'll be in." The beatings come from rage, which makes them sound like hate.

they put them in language classes, they try to saturate them in their heritage, but it's fake and it doesn't stick. How can you expect to make your kid more Chinese than you are? We're back to the fundamental error: why, if the parent got through life without much of the old ways, do they think their kids desperately need what they didn't? And the answer surfaces: it's not for the kids, it's for them. teaching them traditions is in itself positive; but they are utter wastes of time when it is for the parent.

The true temptation of education is how to raise your child by sacrificing your reputation.the typical pedagogical trap, which is, apparently you want to help your son, but the real goal is to remain the ideal figure for your son - you must sacrifice that.
[exact opposite;sacrificing her child's reputation, subjecting him to potential ridicule and god knows what else, not for his benefit but in order to promote her own identity.It's not the gender neutrality that's going to mess this kid up, though it might; but being raised by parents who are using their kid as something other than an end in himself.]

parenting psychoanalysis mentee starred

in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too, BUILD SOCEITY: pedagogical education system

"When a person sees their life as a movie, that means they're the main character and everyone else is merely supporting cast."

if the point is about getting the kid to do homework, what difference does it make how she looks or what she's cooked? It doesn't. But the writer cannot grasp this, because the main character in the movie is the mom, the story is about her. Surely, how she looks must have some importance. I hope it requires no elaboration that had the writer chosen to see the clip as a story about a curious but bored child tormented by a descriptionless gadfly, this would have been a very different article indeed.

your kid doesn't want to be around you that much. No one does. This isn't because you're a bad person but because you're an ordinary person. You are not such a unique, creative, intelligent or even interesting person that the kid benefits from constant exposure to you. When you have something to offer, maximize and concentrate that time, and then get the hell out of the way.

Can you be vaguely dissatisfied, unfulfilled and possibly even resentful of your marriage, yet fake it enough that your spouse thinks you love them more than anything? So why do you think you can fool your 8 year old? Because he's 8? He smells it on you, it reeks, like sepsis. And yes, it will spread to him eventually.

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in list: how to be an adult & be great at it too