EN

14.05 Human, far too human

The story is well known. For decades Greeks spent more than they produced. The bubble of their prosperity burst upon the reality of their limits, upon what the Ancients called ANANKE.

It is a law, that whoever exceeds the measures falls upon the wall of his presumptuousness. That's the way we live, all of us, that's the way we suffer and that's the way we sometimes learn.

In Psychiatry and Psychology the "pathological" is often the psychologized expression of some exceeding of measures and suffering is often the psychologized expression of the impact upon the limits of reality.

Answer to the comment of a colleague:

My dear A,

"Free Gaza" did not intend at some political context. There were two things that moved me.

One was verses from the "Waste Land":

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passes the stages of his age and youth

Entering the whirlpool.

Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

The second moment, not altogether separate from the first, was a glimpse saying that the two images, the noisy exaltation of those coming home alive and meeting their beloved ones on the one side, and those in the coffins bringing a vast silence along on the other side, somehow belong together in a way that there is a primordial intertwining between them. The photos were for me a figure of the insight that life is not exhausted in life. That was the meaning of the phrase "They all came home".

Among the numerous relative sayings, here a haiku by Sora. It is not about life and death, but about mountains and shallow waters. No big difference!

Gulf of the Pine Islands

Lend yourself the form of the crane

you mountain cuckoo

Warm regards,

04.06 "If we take man as he is, we make him worse"...

Viktor Frankl: Why believe in others

Frankl says that for him "the most apt maxim and motor of any psychotherapeutic activity" is: "If we take man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be, we make him become capable for what he can be."

I never grasped questions like "How is somebody?" "How should he be?" - unless they are posed under some criterion. Frankl's criterion seems to be the dimension good / bad.

There follows the claim of being able to "make" somebody "better" or "worse". I never found out how that would be possible.

His tone: he is speaking like a politician.

All these things lay burdens upon the communication, restrict it and violate it.

26.06 By the sea

By the sea I use to go rowing. It is often an experience that brings to my mind some verses from Seferi's Argonauts:

They were good, the companions, they didn’t complain

about the work or the thirst or the frost,

they had the bearing of trees and waves

that accept the wind and the rain

accept the night and the sun

without changing in the midst of change.

They were fine, whole days

they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes

breathing in rhythm

and their blood reddened a submissive skin.

This experience could correspond to Heidegger's apostrophe "Das Seiende entzieht sich" [beings withdraw], referring to his experience of Being called "Angst" ["authentic" anxiety] in "Being and Time".

The common element:

Nothing is an issue, neither in the realm of knowledge nor in the realm of feelings, nor in any realm whatsoever.

The difference:

There is nothing heroic in all this, there is no awareness of any "authentic Self", there is no horror of any kind of "Unheimlichkeit" [homelessness].

31.07 Τhe Alien

From the Prologue of Byung-Chul Han's book Ab-sence [Abwesen]:

It is curative to reserve by oneself a place for the alien. That would be an expression of friendliness, which also renders possible that someone becomes different himself.

A decisive feature of somebody coming for psychotherapy is often a strange experience. This is the case when something happens which did not belong to the microcosm he has been living in till now.

The matter would be here that this man "reserves by himself a place for the strange", "becomes different himself", that his microcosm widens up so that it may welcome what was previously strange.

13.08 Summer and Winter Vacations

For the vast majority of at least the western world, summer and winter vacations have one thing in common: Swimming in the water and gliding on the snow relieve from the burden, not only of the body weight, but of existence itself - for those, the vast majority, who experience their existence as burden

DE

14.05 Menschliches, Allzumenschliches

Die Geschichte ist bekannt. Für Jahrzehnte gaben die Griechen mehr aus, als sie produzierten. Die Blase des Wohlstandes platzte vor der Wirklichkeit ihrer Grenzen, vor dem, was die Alten ANANKE nannten.

Es ist ein Gesetz, dass wer die Masse übersteigt, gegen die Wand seiner Vermessenheit prallt. So leben wir, alle, so leiden wir und zuweilen so lernen wir.

In der Psychiatrie und in der Psychologie ist das "Pathologische" oft der psychologisierte Ausdruck irgendeiner Übersteigung der Masse, und das Leiden oft der psychologisierte Ausdruck des Aufpralls gegen die Grenze der Wirklichkeit.