Deliverance From the Lonesome Blues

May 16, 2012 By

We can resolve the inner weaknesses that make loneliness so painful.

More people are living alone than ever. In America, forty percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. Many people happily live alone—but others are tormented by the wail of the Lonesome Blues. That oldie can echo in our ears even when we’re surrounded by friends and family.

Loneliness is a common brand of human suffering. Many believe that loneliness is an inescapable fact of human existence, a curse we’re fated to endure from birth to death. The novelist Thomas Wolfe spoke to this idea: “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

Wolfe was famous and admired during his lifetime, which apparently offered little solace or good company for his loneliness. Even “super-famous” Albert Einstein succumbed to the misery. “It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely,” he candidly commented. Being a rich celebrity doesn’t appear to help: “Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool,” observed the actress Liv Ullmann.

Loneliness appears to have infiltrated if not occupied human nature. Impervious to the exhilarations of fame, wealth, and power, it produces assorted misery, ill health, and increased risk of heart disease. [Read more...]

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Our Global Strategy for Self-Defeat

May 9, 2012 By

Is complexity the road to self-defeat?

Is it possible we’re acting out a Global Strategy for self-defeat, creating a world of such complexity that we’re finally overwhelmed and destroyed by it? The possibility makes sense considering the human capacity for folly and self-defeat.

Science fiction has certainly explored the theme of artificially created life-forms acquiring power over us, either through hostile takeovers (cybernetic revolts) or through our passive corroboration with artificial intelligence.

Instead of losing our autonomy to androids and robots, we’re talking here about being defeated by the complexity of global operating systems such as the ones that govern economics and finance. Such self-defeat may already be upon us. The global economic system is dependent on energy sources that produce global warming. It’s a system that’s contaminated by arcane financial derivatives that make up galaxies of debt. We’re also economically dependent on jobs and profits from the production and proliferation of high-tech weapons, which makes the road to world peace increasingly complicated. Complexity is growing exponentially. As Stephen Hawking says, we have entered “the century of complexity.”

What agency representing our common well-being has the power and resources to oversee and understand, let alone regulate, all the offshoots of this labyrinthine activity? [Read more...]

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The Mayo Clinic’s Bogus Psychology

May 2, 2012 By

Forgiveness can be misused.

Many health experts claim that we need to embrace forgiveness if we want to let go of anger, resentment, and thoughts of revenge after someone we care about has hurt us.

Phooey! We don’t have to forgive them at all. Our peace of mind isn’t about forgiving others. It’s about seeing how, in our emotional reactions to the behaviors of others, we’re likely to be replaying our own unresolved issues and stumbling unnecessarily into suffering.

A party to this psychological jabber, the highly regarded Mayo Clinic, a medical institute known for its research and education on health matters, has on its website a misleading article written by its own staff, titled “Forgiveness: Letting go of grudges and bitterness,” that reads in part:

Nearly everyone has been hurt by the actions or words of another. Perhaps your mother criticized your parenting skills, your colleague sabotaged a project or your partner had an affair. These wounds can leave you with lasting feelings of anger, bitterness or even vengeance — but if you don’t practice forgiveness, you might be the one who pays most dearly. By embracing forgiveness, you can also embrace peace, hope, gratitude and joy.

This shallow advice says that letting go of grudges and bitterness depends on forgiveness. Forgiveness is sometimes appropriate, of course, especially when we have been gravely victimized. Yet as a remedy for conflict, it can easily be misused and misunderstood. To understand the bogus nature of the Mayo Clinic’s advice, let’s take a close look at each of the three examples from the institute’s posting. [Read more...]

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The Meaning of Evolved Consciousness

April 25, 2012 By

What knowledge helps us to evolve?

Growing our consciousness is the most direct path out of suffering and self-defeat. Yet a lot of people believe that human nature, like the Ten Commandments, is set in stone. They say one’s human nature is a granite-like formation that resists appeals to virtue and reason, thereby preventing us from evolving beyond our often self-centered, ignorant, or foolish ways.

Our level of consciousness is likely to remain stationary only when we fail to explore our deeper dimensions. When we understand our psychological self, we become wiser, smarter, and happier.  Without this self-knowledge, we fall under the influence of inner dynamics that produce suffering and self-defeat.

We’re smart, yet we’re not necessarily sufficiently conscious. We’re able to build complex technological systems—yet the toxic byproducts might be ruining our planet. Our advanced weaponry can also destroy life on earth if our primitive emotions and aggressive instincts prevail. Our consciousness is not keeping up with our cleverness. So what does it mean to be more evolved?

A higher consciousness is ultimately associated with the quality of our self-knowledge. We learn what is precise and true about our unconscious mind, even though we might initially be appalled at what we’re discovering. [Read more...]

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The Hanky-Panky Behind Our Anger

April 18, 2012 By

Knowing the source of anger is important.

A new TV sitcom starring Charlie Sheen, who plays the role of an irascible anger-management therapist, is coming our way this summer. The show, which will be seen internationally, will apparently get its comedic effect from the hot-headed Sheen’s portrayal of a man of wisdom and propriety. I hope he doesn’t make a mockery of psychotherapy. Dare we hope that Sheen’s character will dispense some valuable insights into the nature of anger? That would help millions of sufferers worldwide who don’t understand that chronic anger is a defense covering up deeper issues.

Anger is often a laughing matter on TV, though less so in real life. In chronic form, it can escalate into debilitating misery. That’s when we feel it on a regular basis, in a self-defeating manner, toward an individual, group, or situation that we perceive as unjust or oppressive. Anger can also be produced through past memories and future expectations. Often we hold the anger in, and that of course is unhealthy for our mind and body.

We can also feel recurring anger toward ourselves, allegedly on the grounds that we’re a worthless fool or hopeless failure for lapses in judgment and missed opportunities.

Unfortunately, information from the media and from experts on anger management seldom reveals how anger is often used as a psychological defense. [Read more...]

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Lincoln’s Integrity, Our Integrity

April 11, 2012 By

Integrity is as American as Abraham Lincoln.

Integrity, as American as Abraham Lincoln, has gone missing in the American soul, like Bernie Madoff’s billions. The nation’s future harmony and prosperity may depend on restoring this vital virtue.

We can understand integrity if, through our imagination, we step into the spirit of Lincoln, our secular saint. First, let’s consider what integrity (and the lack of it) means.

The lack of this virtue in American life is like a trillion-dollar campaign contribution to national self-sabotage. Wall Street’s financial follies, as one example, are a study in the art of manifest unscrupulousness. With this fraudulency comes enormous grief and misery.

Corrupt financiers and self-serving politicians must be among the unhappiest people in the world. That’s because integrity is a necessary ingredient in stable, lasting happiness. Integrity is an expression of self-respect. The virtue of integrity develops as we feel our intrinsic goodness and care about our personal honor. Integrity requires that we do the right thing, as Oprah Winfrey says, even when nobody’s going to know whether we did it or not.

We do what’s right for our own sake because our integrity won’t allow us to tarnish that precious feeling of our essential honor and self-respect. [Read more...]

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Stubbornness: The Guts to Fight Reality

April 4, 2012 By

Fighting reality can get painful.

Stubbornness is, essentially, a determination to fight a losing battle with reality, while accepting as a “reward” for the effort the gift-wrapped deadweight of rigidity and resentment.

My apologies to Frank Sinatra fans, but I believe the theme song or anthem for stubbornness is the old favorite, “My Way.” One stanza stands out:

Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew/ When I bit off more than I could chew./ But through it all, when there was doubt,/ I ate it up and spit it out./ I faced it all and I stood tall,/ And did it my way.

Sure—my way or the highway! When we’re smart and wise, we don’t put the emphasis on my way. We’re just pleased and grateful to find a good, sensible, or brave way to travel “each and ev’ry highway.”

Of course, stubbornness can sometimes be a virtue, as when we adhere bravely to a sound principle in the face of opposition. This post, though, is about the self-defeating expression of it.

Stubbornness and denial are two rotten eggs in the same basket. The former tends to be a conscious expression of opposition—as in stubborn denial of global warming—while the latter is likely to refer to an unconscious form of the behavior—as in denial of one’s buried anger toward a parent.

Stubbornness is usually a reaction to underlying emotional issues. If we can make these issues conscious and keep them in focus, we have a good change of letting go of our mulish attitude and the suffering it brings on. Basically, obstinacy is a symptom of three different emotional issues in our psyche. [Read more...]

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A Participant in National Self-Sabotage

March 28, 2012 By

We need to keep a lid on the id.

Who dares suggest the American dream could be thwarted by an indistinct entity a mere two letters long? The CIA certainly doesn’t have a dossier on it. Yet one ingredient of personal suffering and national self-sabotage is the id. Yes, I know that’s an odd, whimsical word, one that many of us, should it zip across our mind, dismiss as harmless jargon.

Yet psychoanalysis has taken the id very seriously. The discipline defines the id as the primitive, unconscious part of our mind that induces us to pursue self-centered gratification, often at the expense of wise self-regulation. For reasons I’m about to discuss, the id appears to be particularly virulent in the American psyche.

The id is like a virus or bug of the unconscious mind. And it can wreak as much havoc on the national scene as swarms of computer viruses. We have an impressive national-security apparatus in place to block out hackers. But in blindness to the enemy within, nobody’s minding the id.

Civilization and national life are extensions of our consciousness. Despite that direct correlation between the inner and outer world, the media hardly ever talk about the psychological dysfunction of our leaders or write about the mental-emotional components in everyday political and social conflicts. To give them some due, the media are beginning to explore the psychological dynamics of family life and to look deeper into the roots of the 2008 economic crisis. [Read more...]

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Underlying Dynamics that Breed Bullies

March 21, 2012 By

Self-doubt concerning personal value influences both the bully and the victim.

If we want our society to put a stop to bullying—an excellent goal, of course, one embraced by President Barack Obama, educators, and celebrities—we can help the cause by better understanding the underlying psychological dynamics of bullying and by teaching this knowledge to our kids.

What are these underlying dynamics? The bully—girl or boy, man or woman—appears bold and confident on the surface. But this person is emotionally entangled in substantial self-doubt. All of us grow up with some degree of self-doubt. This feeling can be quite conscious and intense, or it can be repressed and inconspicuous. Our self-doubt produces uncertainty concerning our value, significance, strength, goodness, and worthiness. Even more so, it can produce deep emotional convictions that we are lacking in value, are deeply flawed, and are deserving of disrespect.

Self-doubt is a universal condition. We compensate somewhat for the painfulness of it when others give us recognition, acceptance, praise, and validation. The existence of self-doubt is evident in the human passion for fame, glory, power, and wealth, all of which bestow an illusion of value and superiority. Self-doubt is also evident in bullies who belittle and abuse others in their desperate need to feel superior and more powerful in themselves. [Read more...]

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Deliverance from Low-Level Anxiety

March 14, 2012 By

We can trace anxiety back to its source in our psyche.

Many people suffer from low-level anxiety, which produces, as one sufferer said, “a frequent feeling of dread, a sense that I’m not up to the challenges that face me, a fear that I won’t make it, that everything will crumble.”

I had this distress and tension in my mind and body for many years, starting in my early teens. The feeling ebbed and flowed through my twenties and thirties, and often it was painfully intense, particularly when I felt blocked in my efforts to be creative. I tried one “expert’s” advice, but it didn’t help: “Don’t worry about the future: Take each day one anxiety-attack at a time.”

Kidding aside, I now live for the most part in a state of considerable inner peacefulness. Though my anxiety lingered on until I was in my forties, more than twenty years ago, depth psychology provided me with insight into the source of this anxiety and relief from it. [Read more...]

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