Thanksgiving has passed, largely unnoticed due to Black Friday that began at midnight on Thanksgiving evening, with lines forming for the 2 AM store openings.  As a result,  we are all focussed on spending for the ‘holidays,’ just like programmed droids. Buy! Buy! Buy!

Bob Herbert of the NYT writes in reference to the Macy’s Parade, “The children come into the neighborhood in waves, holding the hands of adults or riding atop their shoulders, smiling, laughing, playing hide-and-seek among the police barricades. Finally, inevitably, they end up staring in absolute open-mouthed, wide-eyed awe as the mammoth, colorful helium-filled creations of their favorite characters begin making their majestic way down Central Park West.”  

Then Herbert adds, “We have an obligation and an opportunity at this special moment in history to do right by these youngsters, and all the rest of America’s kids. It’s a special moment because we’ve seen so clearly the many things that have gone haywire in the society, and while it may not be easy to articulate, we have a sense of what needs to be done.”

‘We have an obligation,’ he states. Of course ‘we’ do and many of ‘us’ understand that obligation and try to act in ways that will provide all of  the children of America with the basic needs and perhaps just a little extra thrown in for good measure.  The ‘we’ to which I refer are the progressives in society and those ‘churched’ folks who take to heart the command of Jesus, ‘Love one another.’  Yet, it is a difficult task in this nation to attempt to see that all of our children have the basic needs. Many Americans are hardened narcissists.  Their motto is, ‘I got mine, you get yours!’

Herbert writes, “The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government. While Wall Street is handing out billions in bonuses, American families are struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures and rampant debt. The economic woes are exacting a fierce toll on family life, and children are taking a big hit — emotionally, psychologically and otherwise.”

He notes that there has been a big jump in the number of runaway children, many of them living in dangerous conditions on the street. My mind quickly jumps to Bangladesh and scenes of children wandering aimlessly on the crowded, filthy streets. But these streets are in Chicago. Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta and Los Angeles. These are American children.

It is interesting to note how many Americans, steeped deep in narcissism, dismiss this with the infamous ‘bootstraps’ philosophy, with lines that begin, ‘Why don’t they…’ Perhaps that clears their guilt cache. ‘If only they…’  Or, the classic, ‘Well I…’

Over in the Senate, all 40 GOP senators will do all in their power to stop universal health coverage for American children, yet easily vote for more war spending and bailouts for Wall Street. After all, they do need to be reelected- that’s the only game in town.

The parade balloons are now flaccid, the debris from the parade swept away, the barricades removed.   The wide-eyed children have returned to their dingy tenements. In suburbia, the 54″ plasma TV is switched to a new show, or the children are playing their Xbox, Wi, or PlayStation.  Life is good.

Herbert concludes, “The U.S. should be a paradise for young people. We need big changes in this country, approaches that are constructive, creative and fundamentally new, if we’re going to give those smiling kids I saw on Thanksgiving Day the kind of society they deserve.”

Amen and God Bless America.

I got a call from a dear friend this morning.  She was upset, and spoke about a lonely Thanksgiving as her kids were not around to share the holiday with her. I felt her concern and I understood what it is like to feel that desperate sense of lack that accompanies the missing of something that we want so very badly to happen in our lives.

I was fortunate this year to have the full compliment of my family with me for the holiday.  That fact alone, however, does not eliminate the feeling of lack.  As I awoke this morning and the deep grey New England rain was covering everything in a blanket of damp, cold and colorless images, I was aware that I had grown a new dependency in my life.  Like all the other dependencies that I have had to cope with, this one felt warm and seemed to be providing my needs nicely.  But, I was also aware that like all other dependencies in the past, it too had the possibility of de compensating  into a vast sea of emptiness, characterized by fear, worry and a generalized feeling of low-level depression.

I hate that phrase, “low-level depression.”  It makes it seem like a perpetual fever that just will not quit. Like when the fever is not high enough to keep me in bed, but low enough so that I have to work feeling miserable…We have all been there, so I am pretty sure this description will not feel new.   Be that as it may, returning to the new dependency–I have grown throughly dependent on a circle of friends.  I find myself double thinking everything I am wanting and even much of how I am thinking and that doubt seems permanently lodged and the only thing that resolves it is a nod of approval from this circle of friends. two-thirds of the way through my life and suddenly I can’t tie my shoe without wondering if there is a more spiritually fit way to do this.

Having trained as a psychoanalyst has had it disadvantages, the least of which is not that i was educated to feel that i needed to depend on my healthy, well analyzed ego for the right and the next right answer to everything.  Well, that wonderful little formula breaks down at exactly the time in life when one is in crisis.  This wonderfully analyzed ego is worth shit when a situation comes along that requires the self to regress in service of the ego.  ”In service of the ego,” what in god’s name is that.  Just when you need it most, the ego decides to return in time to an infantile stage of development. And, suddenly, you can no longer tie your shoe without a consultation that runs roughly one-hundred and fifty bucks an hour. Or, as I have been discovering recently, I need to be reminded by someone who is Not-Me that as recent as yesterday i had figured out a way to live that was very much in concert with nature, the universe, and my dog.

So, why do I need to be reminded?  From what i have been able to tell thus-far, I need to be reminded because when a circumstance happens that momentarily blocks my view of the sun, I can not remember where the light was coming from. If you were to step down, using a long ladder, and you were to descend into a deep well; the further down you went the smaller the circle of light at the top would become, until it was a pin-hole of light followed by utter and total darkness.  The dark light of the soul is despair.  That mood of discouraging conditions that is characterized by having no hope.  The darkness of hopelessness is despair.

Even the smallest pin-hole of light prevents despair, but once you pass that point in the down ward move just beyond where all light fails, you can not see your way out of emotional, mental, nor spiritual darkness.

The reason that I need my spiritually fit friends is because they are not in the pit or the well, with me at the same time.  So, they can still see the light even though, it is failing to reveal itself to me.  I think what I am discovering is that in the process of becoming spiritually fit the most important dimension is to surround ourselves with other people making the same spiritual journey.  They will hold our hands and they will think for us at moments when we have forgotten that we knew the way out.  While my ego is regressing for some reason that it finds very important, my friends who are accompanying me on this journey through inter-being will guide me up the ladder until, I can once again see the light.

My newest dependency is to my dear circle of people willing to guide me when I lose sight, and in exchange, i am willing to guide them when they lose sight.  We are forming a village, a community with a common mission.  Finally, were I to discover in the future that this dependency on my circle was becoming an addiction, well, all that I would really need to do would be to find a new twelve step program, perhaps, Triple AAA, Addiction to Addictions Anonymous.

Del Potro came back after a nose bleed and losing the first five games of his opening match in the Masters cup in London. He was demonstrating the fierce resolve associated with success, found among top athletes and also among outstanding winners in other walks of life

Del Potro has been tipped as a future World No 1 Tennis player since beating Roger Federer to win the US Open a few months ago.

Juan Martín del Potro has been tabbed as a candidate to be the next superstar in men’s tennis, and his performance in the 2009 United States Open is a good example of why. Del Potro stunned the No. 1-seeded Roger Federer in a gritty five-set match, and claimed the men’s singles title, which Federer had won the past five years. Del Potro moves with surprising grace for a man his size. Very tall tennis players sometimes struggle with their movement, relying instead on booming serves. Del Potro moves with nimble, graceful steps that defy his height. He takes the ball early, and uses the leverage created by his long arms to produce power, especially from the baseline.

The Masters Cup November 2009

This week I watched Del Potro come back from losing his first five games in the opening round of The Masters cup at the O2 arena. He took a medical break to deal with a nose bleed, and then carried on. What happened next demonstrated a characteristic which is probably necessary (although not sufficient) for success as a sports star, political, military, or business leader, and even for entrepreneurs and Nobel-winning scientists. It is sometimes referred to as extreme determination, guts, self-belief, or the ability to tough it out, or even as a will to succeed. Or maybe resilience. In trait theory it also goes under various names such as ego strength and achievement need. Other ‘maps’ refer to the exceptional capacity of exceptional people to achieve exceptional goals. Earlier leadership studies described almost mystically ‘The Right Stuff’, a version of another tautology for ‘having what it takes’. Leadership guru Jim Collins refers to fierce resolve.

Overlapping Concepts

These concepts seem to me to be rather overlapping. They are based on countless studies of leader behaviours. Only a small proportion, such as the work reported by Collins, have been rigorously conducted . Collins suggests that successful business leaders have often combined a personal modesty with fierce resolve. He contrasts this with a more blatant and charismatic style of so-called natural leaders, who may be engaged in a constant battle with egotism and narcissistic delusions.

I Have Seen the Future…

Del Potro was playing Andy Murray, another top player noted for his fierce resolve. Often a top player fights back after a medical break. Nadal, for example, has also acquired a reputation for doing so on the rare occasions he faces defeat, and almost regardless of the ranking of his opponent.

Because of the tournament round-robin design, Del Potro could have conserved energy in face of almost inevitable loss of the first set. Instead he battled and clawed back several games. I scribbled down a headline to myself ‘I have seen the future and it’s called Del Potro’.

As it turned out, Murray squeezed through that match. It did not change the opinion I had formed. Here was someone with that something extra under the pressures of extreme competition.

A few days later Del Potro demonstrated his fierce resolve, winning again against World No 1 Roger Federer. Ironically, his three-set triumph gave him a marginal qualification into the knockout stages of the tournament at the expense of Andy Murray.

There he will face other players of similar levels of fierce resolve and with marginal differences in conditioning, talent and other ingredients which may play a part in the outcome of the tournament. I’m not saying Del Potro is a winner of this prestigious tournament. But I am saying again that ‘I have seen the future and it’s called Del Potro’.

Note to leadership students

This case deserves study as part of any leadership development programme. You will find it worthwhile to go more deeply into the literature ‘maps’ for theories of leadership traits and behaviours associated with excellence and success. Fierce resolve is found in the socially-oriented achievements of a Ghandi and a Mandela, but also in the histories of tyrants such as those catalogued by Jeff Schubert and other leadership researchers.

The film adaptation of The Road opens this weekend, perfect timing for post-Thanksgiving guilt and much easier than a long workout. I’ve never quite been able to take McCarthy seriously, which probably has much to do with an overabundance of road trips: the cowboy, sacred steer of middle class radio listeners was a common form of torture employed by my parents, who’d flip immediately to the Prairie Home Companion, or those utterly unfunny Cowboy Poets.

And then there’s McCarthy’s blatant misogyny. In the Road it comes through with the “Woman,” i.e. the bad mother, who kills herself – a sensible decision in this case – but before doing so spends two pages calling herself a whore: “You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. . Because I am done with my whorish heart and I have been for a long time.”

The Road’s sonorous prose and kiddy pool depth has also been a choice target in the genre wars: bald proof that literary fiction is at a loss for ideas as it rifles through the sci-fi candy bag, scarfing down undeserved critical acclaim. Once you realize there aren’t any actual ideas behind the chest beating, Bunsen burner cannibalism, and miraculous morels, you should rush out to read Canticle for Leibowitz or Parable of the Sower.

Ah, but there are! Maybe.

The popularity of McCarthy’s novel, you see, is not merely another sign that literary taste is a matter of conformity. Forget about climate change, meteor fears, or annihilation via nukes or Oprah, because that’s not what the book is about. It’s not about an archetypal father really either, but rather an archetypal helicopter parent: the “man,” who still finds the time and strength to sensitively minister to his son’s every physical and psychological need, despite starvation, cannibals, and an utter lack of hope. Just look at the guy, slavishly hovering over his child, lovingly scrounging for that Pepsi, and hacking up his lungs in bad weather rather than spending a few extra days in that food-stocked bomb shelter. The son — like two 18-year-old boys I saw being massaged by their mother at the library while they studied (creeped out yet?)  — does nary a lick of work in this bleak landscape.

Then there’s the pop psychology: “What you put in your head is there forever.” McCarthy plops this truism throughout the book, hoping it will magically gain weight, while the father, on top of the physical privation, still manages to shield his child from horror after horror, like some superhuman V-chip, although if he really wanted that kid to survive, he might want to own up to the frakked state of the world.

Leave it to those as naïve and jittery as a helicopter parents, who live in gated communities free from the terrors of working poor to believe it. Only those who trust the mantras of test scores and college resumes, who think that a prestigious degree means that one is “educated” would find depth in this misplaced nugget of therapy culture.

It all falls apart when one confronts the pesky reality outside the book, wherein millions of children in less cushy areas of the world live under not quite as awful conditions, but pretty damn close. Those children do not enjoy the luxury of such assiduous parenting in the form of covered eyes and stories about “carrying the fire.”  Much like kids in those generations muckraked by Dickens, they live and toil away in hellish conditions, without the luxury of someone worrying about what they put into their precious psyches.

There forever? I doubt it. And if so, so what? I much prefer a line from faux suburbanite Donald Draper — once again, TV trumps literary fiction: “It will amaze you how much it didn’t happen.”

I guess it’s not surprising that scads of terrified parents who’ve chosen to battle rather than to engage with their communities would find The Road appealing. The trials of The Road’s starved, embattled superdad provide the perfect ennobling reflection of their own daily squabbles with teachers, principals, and admissions officers, the piecemealing of academic resumes for their infantilized progeny. For as bleak as it gets, the book nevertheless  provides the delusion that even in such horrifying conditions, they might still micromanage our children’s lives, while in the real world protecting  them from the glaringly obvious fact that our progress on social and economic equality, not to mention that pesky climate, are in dire need of a reality check.

McCarthy’s book certainly isn’t one, but it’s popularity is just a sign that many have already given up trying. When I hear the term helicopter parent, the words overprotective and assertive rarely come to mind. Remember that helicopters after all, are a privileged means of escape.

Just watch any pre-Road apocalypse film. You’ll see.

Iranians are amazingly enthralled by the color black. It’s kind of like showing a laser to a dog or a shiny object to a child, they are filled with glee. This may be viewed as a contrast to their loving gold, but not really; they enjoy gold as an accent to all of the black (I wonder if they like the New Orleans Saints or the Washington Wizards considering their jerseys are black and gold).

As you may be wondering I signified “black” the color and not “black” the people because Iranians from the motherland (of Iran) have never seen a black person until they leave Iran, since there are no black people in Iran. There is one story that I heard where a black person showed up in Iran and Iranians asked to touch his skin. Black people are such a novelty that Iranians conceptualized their version of Santa Claus (Haji Firooz) as a black person*.

In any event Iranians love black for many reasons, which include, but are not limited to it going well with gold, it being a slimming color, it hiding sweat stains, it matching all of the hair that falls off their body, it being the default color for going to clubs, etc. As you can see the color black holds a close place to Iranians hearts because it hides all of their inadequacies very well and is the default uniform whenever they cannot decide what to wear to the clubs. So next time you see an Iranian buy out all of the black things at stores now you’ll know why.

*Thanks for that line!

This made me chuckle.

IBD:

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2. Whatever is No. 3 is far behind.

Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians’ money, and in most cases was not even the government’s money.

And it made the liberal, especially, “feel good” that all these people who couldn’t afford it were given houses they couldn’t afford so that when the whole scheme collapsed it was the evil capitalists fault. The same capitalists they used and lauded over to create the mess in the first place.

And these people would vote for them.

They could use that. And they can use the “crisis” also.

Then they got their power dream. Control of the US Government.

So what if they cause the worst crash in generations, they got the power and there main goal now is to hold on to it. Everything else doesn’t really matter.

So how do they fix the problem of Bush running up the deficit?

Why, they SPEND EVEN MORE, but they do it “compassionately”

Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians’ jobs — and jobs in the government’s bureaucracies are increasing.

And there are 111 new bureaucracies and counting in the Health Care bill. That’s a lot of bureaucrats.

And when the government has control of 1/6 of our entire economy and you and the decision of whether you live or die. It will be a bonanza for them.

Vote for me or die.

But first you have to pay massive tax increases for 4 years so that we can cook the books to make it look like we’re fiscally responsible when we’re just trying to get more money for re-election by funneling money to phony congressional districts.

But it looks good.

So what if we only have 38% support. We’re going to do it anyways.

It’s all about THEM, not US. You silly little taxpayer.

What every politicians wants, a pliable electorate to abuse.

So who really cares about jobs. Sure, Obama and Co. are going to be “job focused” as one Democratic strategist said once they cram Socialized Medicine down your our throats. But that’s because 2010 is a Congressional Re-election year.

Nothing more.

And I have maintained that if you thought 2007-2008 was the nastiest, most partisan fight ever. Just wait until 2010 and 2012.

Unholy, unethical, total annihilation partisanship is coming to a TV and Newspaper near you in 2010.

And Obama and The Democrats will have their “journalist” in the Mainstream “Ministry of Truth” Media to back them up and lie like Pinocchio never conceived of.

Just like the Housing Crisis, even today.

After the cascade of economic disasters that began in the housing markets in 2006 and spread into the financial markets in Wall Street and even overseas, people in the private sector pulled back. Banks stopped making so many risky loans. Home buyers began buying homes they could afford, instead of going out on a limb with “creative” — and risky — financing schemes to buy homes that were beyond their means.

But politicians went directly in the opposite direction. In the name of “rescuing” the housing market, Congress passed laws enabling the Federal Housing Administration to insure more and bigger risky loans — loans where there is less than a 4% down payment.

A recent news story told of three young men who chipped in a total of $33,000 to buy a home in San Francisco that cost nearly a million dollars. Why would a bank lend that kind of money to them on such a small down payment? Because the loan was insured by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bank wasn’t taking any risk. If the three guys defaulted, the bank could always collect the money from the Federal Housing Administration. The only risk was to the taxpayers.

And they’re suckers.

Just look at the Great Political Prostitute of 2009, Sen. Mary Landreiu. She says she against the Health Care bill. Obama and Reid roll up to her and ask her what it will cost to get her vote. They put down 100 Million. She says $300 Million.

Done.

It’s not their money. They don’t need to care. Because it gets them what they want.

And now she and probably many other Prostitutes are going to pork the Health Care Bill to unimaginable heights.

But don’t worry, it’s all for a good cause in the end.

Health Care for the Uninsured and the Poor?

Hell no, the Government, specifically, the Democrats, win. They get the ultimate Gravy Train of Money.

Money to use to get Re-Elected.

And that’s far more important than silly little ole’ Health Care. Or Global Warming. Or Amnesty.

Anything they do, we pay for it.

But it’s for our own good. Don’t you know.

But not to worry. There will always be taxpayers, not to mention future generations, to pay off the national debt.

And those future taxpayers, your kids and their kids, can’t vote against THEM and and the future is someone else’s electoral nightmare. That is after they spend 60 years in office raking in the millions and the power, that is.

Very few people are likely to connect the dots back to those members of Congress who voted for bigger mortgage guarantees and bailouts by the FHA. So the lawmakers’ and the bureaucrats’ jobs are safe, even if millions of other people’s jobs are not.

Rep. Barney Frank is not about to cut back on risky mortgage loan guarantees by the FHA. He recently announced that he plans to introduce legislation to raise the limit on FHA loan guarantees even more.

Rep. Frank will make himself popular with people who get those loans and with banks that make these high-risk loans where they can pocket the profits and pass the risk on to the FHA.

So long as the taxpayers don’t understand that all this political generosity and compassion are at their expense, Barney Frank is an odds-on favorite to get re-elected. The man is not stupid. What is stupid is believing that politicians are trying to solve our problems, instead of theirs.

As for the FHA running low on money, that is not about to stop the gravy train, certainly not with an election coming up in 2010.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is also running low on money. But that is not going to stop it from insuring bank accounts up to a quarter of a million dollars. It would be stupid for them to stop with an election coming up in 2010.

Sound Familiar??

The comedian Gallagher was right when he said :

There’s a reason “Congress” begins with the word “con”. Because “con” is the opposite of “pro”, so “Congress” must be the opposite of “progress”. 

I was reading an article interview of Jack White of the White Stripes and something he said struck me.  

You can do it [be ambitious] without hubris and you can do it without spitting in somebody’s face. 

My understanding of ambition was that both the narcissism of hubris and “spitting in somebody’s face” was sewn into the fabric of one’s ambition.  Growing up, I had always wanted to find out if ambition could exist without such narcissism.  In trying to live up to that ideal, I found myself broken by other people’s narcissism and my own naiveté.  But here is Jack White, successful and creative (one often the antidote for the other) telling me what reality could not show me–that successful creativity born from ambition does not require hubris or antagonism as a guide towards that destination. 

It’s not that I’m talented or feel entitled to success, it’s just that I wish I could have been able to continue believing in what Mr. Jack White himself continues to believe.  There’s a purity in spirit in what he said and I guess I’m feeling less pure these days. 

One thing I’d be quite amused to see would be a Carlos Santana and Jack White collaboration.  Mr. Santana has collaborated with pop stars seemingly incongruent to his throwback latin-blues style; I’d like to see him hold his own with a fellow blues-fusion aficionado.  It’d be fun to see.

I tried and failed to avoid the family birthday party on Saturday. It occurred to me at some point during the evening that there are no other circumstances under which I would subject myself to that kind of event. The only thing that made it tolerable was the presence of other people who I knew and liked.

My borderline sister gave a speech. Supposedly it was about the birthday boy but naturally enough the main topic was her and how she has grown into such a fabulous person. This happened at her son’s 21st too, where that speech turned into how great she was. Quite what her son was supposed to take from that I don’t know.

For so long I have assumed that this is normal: when around family, to feel constantly stressed, on guard and under attack; to come away feeling abused and manipulated; repeatedly having it pointed out in a million small ways just how “selfish” I am (for not agreeing with them about almost everything); and leaving wanting to break something.  Lots of things.

A narcissistic mother and a sister with borderline personality are, in combination, utterly toxic.

Gratitude and greed occupy the same space in the psychic apparatus.  If the container is filled with greed or envy there is no room for gratitude.  If the container is filled with gratitude there is no room for greed or envy…It is that simple.  It is a law of physics.  Two piece of matter can not occupy the same space and by extension it appears that two pieces of information can not occupy the same psychic space.  The Greek word  ”Psyche” is our word “Soul”.   Contrary to what many think, Freud dedicated his life to the study of Man’s soul.  In this later part of my life, as I begin to have time to open my self to newer 21st century models of mental conditions, I find that the earlier wisdom acquired in the study & practice of modern psychoanalysis have bearing, if not direct implications on these principles.

Our souls are the most important part of us while we are alive and living in form. The soul of man gives us our humanity at the only place where it touches our divinity.  Through religion we have learned to associate the term soul with that part of us that will transcend life and perhaps attains a life everlasting.  But for my purpose in this essay I will use the more generic aspect of the word.  I mean by the soul of man, the very essence of man.  I mean to refer to the totality of the experience of man. My soul is my experience of me at exactly the psychic location where it touches my connection with the cosmic.

Our experience known as the soul is often not experienced directly.  Rather it points to as a location or a phenomenon that is concerned with as Bruno Bettelheim say, ” not just man’s body — but most of all with the dark world of the unconscious which forms such a large part of living man — or, to put it in classical terms, with the unknown netherworld in which, according to ancient myths the souls of men [and women] dwell.”

As human beings we experience ourselves first and foremost by identifying with the part of the psychic apparatus know as the “ego.”  The ego of the human mind  is not directly connected to the soul.  The ego is detached from the field of consciousness that is our more profound existence or experience of being.  The ego, although not discoverable in time and space as a physical entity is a construct that we use to explain a host of primary  and secondary functions of the brain.  We can not open the brain and locate the ego.  The ego, like the soul does not exist in form.

The ego ought not have a bad wrap.  It is a cluster of functions which contribute to our essential humanness.  For example, language is thought to be the highest function of the ego.  The ego is responsible for our being able to develop language. The ego is also responsible for other functions such as perception and motility.  It is a cluster of brain functions rather than a specific location.  And as such remains an important aspect of our ability to function in civilization and society.  Some say it is actually the aspect of man directly responsible for his ability to build civilization and culture.  But again, it is important that we see it for what it is, not a location in the brain as much as the name given to a cluster of functions.

In my ramblings about psychoanalysis and man’s soul, i seem to find myself always contending with a duality.  As much as I acknowledge the oneness of the mind/body matrix, it seems that in experience I am always struggling with a concept that can only be explained by forming comparisons of by juxtaposing one experience against another.

Even in the concept of greed vs gratitude it seems that the experience of one is felt to be one thing and the experience of the other quite another thing.  However, if I were only concerned about the comparisons of two things it would seem logical, (they are different because they are different).  But, what  I am trying to understand  is if the experience of one comes from a different place than the experience of the other.

I have rambled or, if you wish, free associated, to this notion of duality in our experience of ourselves in many of my writings through the years.  I keep doing so because i have experience in me what I would like to call, an exit from narcissism. In my years of practicing my own brand of dynamic psychoanalysis, I have run up against classical conditions in this science that seem to take over the definition and attempt to make it fit the science rather than pursue what appears to me the more logical approach which is to follow the experience into a phenomena that is no longer science, but is nevertheless a direct outgrowth of the science and may point to a newer model or theory of human existence.  And although not science, nonetheless an important dimension of humanness that can only be arrived at with subjective conclusions. The scientific “objective” can only go so far in helping us to understand our humanity.  Poetry, music, & our relation to nature and to animals, for example,  point to a subjective awareness that provides a profound acquaintance with the subjective that can not be quantified objectively.

As I ponder gratitude, I am aware that the very experience of gratitude fills my consciousness with a sense of expansion, with a feeling that is both grand and humbling at the same time.  Gratitude is connected not only with me experiencing myself but with me experiencing a wider sense of connectedness that includes a feeling of well-being and a feeling of inter being with all of creation.  To put it more simply gratitude is a sensation that consequenses a feeling of totality and oneness and well being all laced with that kind of giddiness that one feels as a joyful child.  By comparison greed feels very intra- psychic. I shrink to greed, not expand to it.  Greed is small minded.  Greed worms it way through me and settles into a corner of my life and i experience it as an undigested piece of toxic lead.  I think about it and i can experience the thought as mental, as a calculation, perhaps even as a manipulation of truth.

But, the profound difference is not in the verbal attributes that i can ascribe to the difference between gratitude and greed, but rather in the felt location from which each experience comes.  I want to give one more example of the experience of the objective vs the experience of the subjective:

Charlotte, my youngest granddaughter,  is falling asleep in my arms… That is an objective statement of a experience I might be having in a given moment.

However, the experience of having my beautiful, angelic, sweet and loving granddaughter in my arms being so comfortable that she is soothing herself to sleep, is a subjective experience that comes from an entirely different location in my experience.  And no amount of objective verbal data or description can convey the experience.  In other words my human experience in that moment can not be objectified.  It is as if my soul, the aspect of me that is closest to the divine is activated and a flood of emotions and sensations converge on me and provide me with a feeling not representable through the ego.

As I write my free associations, I am conscious of my intention.  I am hopeful to find a verbal way of describing the long, slow and at times painful way for an adult to emerge from the condition of narcissism.  Having spent the bulk of my career specializing in the treatment of narcissistic disorders, I am interested in the specific manner in which one can successfully emerge from this human condition.

As I begin to write more seriously about this topic, I keep on returning to Freud’s works and specifically to his treatment of the psyche in his writings.  Of great concern is the notion that Freud meant for the entire backdrop of his science to be understood as an ego growing in a field of consciousness that he understood to be the soul of man.  But when his translations to english took on a more generic term than “soul” Freud did little to challenge this mistranslation.

As a result we have been seeing the ego as a mental construct that was to have some kind of physical, brain-like antecedent. When we attempt to locate the ego in the brain, of course, there is no such organ.  But if instead we were to consider the ego as an outgrowth of the soul, then the entire apparatus of the ego could be worked with as a metaphor for a seed found in a large, wild, field of cosmic consciousness that every human being has access to.  This line of thinking has many possible ramifications including its intersection with eastern philosophy.

Despite a multitude of efforts on my part, my day to day sanity remains fragile.  I wake up in the morning needing to ask myself what it was that just last night seemed to make so much sense.  I rub my eyes with my fist and slowly the glimpse returns: What is my relationship to the current moment?  What is my relationship to Life?

If I were to ask about how I felt about what was happening in the current moment, I might feel very different.  After all anything can be happening in the moment and we have so little to do about that particular destiny.  I am tired, I don’t want to get up, I don’t feel like going to work, I don’t want to get out of bed?  I feel miserable.  I can’t wait until I do not have to do this crap anymore.  Tomorrow the moment will be better and tomorrow I will be able to have a better relationship with Life .

But the question, “What is my relationship to the current moment?”  Well, that bring about another aspect of consciousness.  My relationship to what is happening at any given moment is different than the content of the moment.  What is my relationship to the idea that I am tired, what is my relationship to the idea in my mind that I do not feel like getting out of bed?  These questions remove the immediacy of the response or the immediacy of my reaction to what is happening in the moment.  This slight variation in perception allows me to have distance from my reactivity which in turn allows me to experience the moment instead of experiencing what i am thinking of the moment.

Eckhart Tolle tells us that we ought to be experiencing the moment rather than identifying with the thought that we are having about the moment.  I am on my third re reading of his New Earth and it remains difficult for me to experience the Now as emphatically as he would have us do.  In truth, I find the intellectual or the mental activity of locating the now to be relatively easy; but it is attempting to remain in the location of the Now, the present moment, that I find hard to accomplish. I think that I have arrived at a place in meditation or in contemplation that allows me to experience the moment, but the stringing of the moments together is elusive.  Nonetheless, the portal that the moment gives us remains the most profound way that I know of experiencing the consciousness of life..

Consciousness as opposed to egoic consciousness is a more stable way of extinguishing an inflamed ego.  Egoic consciousness is concerned exclusively with time and as such the feeling of fullness or the experience of enough is not available.  Feeding the ego as a way of emerging from narcissism just does not work.  The idea that we are aiming for an egoic sense of adequacy or self esteem within the ego has always left me embracing concepts such a grandiosity, arrogance and even greed.  It is as if I was chasing after a healthy ego as a way to unseat a dysfunctional ego, but even a healthy ego only gave me a bigger more inflated sense of egoic self when what I was needing was to emerge from the ego and stand in the wider field of consciousness and observe my ego.

It is only through emerging from the ego that we can establish for ourselves a sense or inter-being.  By that I mean a feeling of belonging to a universal consciousness that is interwoven with threads from the natural world.  We can experience a feeling of connectedness with atoms and molecules that were once part of a sun or particle in some cosmic explosion.

Self-importance diminishes in the face of belonging to a universal cosmic event that is really not governed by “clock” time.

And, when self-importance no longer becomes important to us, we are able to focus on the elements of compassion and empathy that give us a feeling of being united in our suffering and engaged with each other in joy.

The idea of ego binds us to a mental construct of ourself as solitary in the world.  The history of the study of the ego began formally as a science with Freud over a hundred years ago.  His contribution to the understanding of the human condition is probably second to none in the western world.  Yet, there probably has not been many men who have been as misunderstood as he has been.

If we were to compare Freud’s idea of the ego with Tolle’s idea of the ego we would find, I think,  similarity in understanding the function of this mental apparatus.  Freud would go on to devoting 23 volumes of brilliant observations discussing the intricacies of this invisible organ.  Tolle will simply acknowledge that it is there to be observed and proceeds immediately to discuss methods for helping us to disentangle ourselves from the grip that it has on us through the narration that it produces.

The value that the ego has to an individual organism and the value that it has had on the evolution of our specie is nearly incalculable.  At the same time it has produced a situation in which the more primitive instincts have been regulated to a corner of consciousness that finding our instincts requires setting aside the very ego that has produced all the knowledge that man has acquired about himself and the environment.

Science and knowledge belong to the realm of the ego.  Art and spirituality exist as products of our instincts and as such may not pass through the realm of the ego.  It is not that they can not work together.  Indeed, I think that we work best in all circumstances when a fusion of the right brain and the left brain work in tandem.  It is just that in order to contact or make know our instincts we must exit the ego. An instinct is a phenomena of consciousness that implies depth while the thought processes of the ego seem to require breadth.  We speak of the breadth of ones knowledge and the depth of ones instincts or wisdom.  Although these are only metaphors for the types of consciousness, I think they imply or at least point to the fact that these two values of human existence are not discovered in the same way.

Greetings, internetland!  I am looking forward to telling you what I think about…well, about lots of things.  I’ve blogged before, but after a while, always fail to post consistently.  With this blog, I hope for that to change.  I’m fixing a number of things that have been prohibitive to frequent posting, like:

1. Planning to stay completely anonymous.  Let’s say this will be a quasi-anonymous blog, in that you probably won’t figure out who I am unless you know me from somewhere already, or try really hard to track me down.

2. Having a set theme that I adhere to religiously.  Previously I’ve tried to run a high-minded operation where I discuss science feminism (i.e., why it sucks not to be an old white d00d if you’re in hardcore research), science politics, and suchlike.  Unsurprisingly, it’s kind of restrictive, to always have something smart to say about a specific topic, so you can expect this blog to be about all sorts of things relevant to my life…science, feminism, queers, poly stuff, awesome backcountry gear, dogs, grad school, mental and physical health, ACC basketball…you name it.  I promise to be good about tagging, so you can skip the ones that you don’t give a shit about.

3. Worrying about having no readers.  Who cares?  Hopefully someone will read this, but I find it useful regardless to organize my thoughts and disseminate them into the internetland.  Even if it does effectively become talking to myself.  Who ever said blogging wasn’t a narcissistic exercise?

Anyhow, hope you’ll check back here every so often and find what I have to say at least entertaining, and occasionally enlightening.

Ah, school conference half days are here and the kids are getting dismissed from school a whole three hours earlier than normal.  Yippee!  I get a whole three extra hours of fighting and disagreement among my loving children.  You don’t really know the joy of parenting until you heard the click of the car door shutting and the immediate start-up of the bickering and fighting.  The whining…let’s not forget the whining.  Music to a deaf man’s ears!

Now my darling wife insists that I am being punished for all my misdeeds and minor disagreements I had with my sister and brother over the years.  At least I didn’t sit on little brother and try to squeeze the last breath out of him, almost ending his life but I digress to a simpler time.  A simpler time of attempts to kill your sister with a well placed shove or a minor psychological torture of your brother warmed your heart.  Wasn’t it fun to tell your younger siblings that they were adopted?  The look of panic in their face as they realize they might be returned to the orphanage at anytime.

Hmm, such fond memories come flooding back whenever I hear the fighting in the backseat (remember young folk can’t sit in the front because of air bags.  Some might say I’m a bit of an airbag but let’s get back to the topic on hand).

Whoa, not another whining blog about my whining kids or my whining about them or me being a whiner…let’s stay positive..it’s an upbeat blog, right?

Now Cyndi (my former imaginary stalker but now appears to be real stalker) would probably agree that kids are the best part of parenthood.  Well, unless your son grows up to be a loser, can’t hold down a job, doesn’t know how to flush a toilet or use a toothbrush, and lives in an alterative reality where lying is an acceptable form of communication.

Parenthood, the breakfast of the narcissistic man!

Coworker 5: “Thank me!”

Coworker 4: “I’m welcome!”

And, finally, the third installment of a three-part post on my capability.  Thus far I’ve been able to link my fears to my narcissistic parents, to the way they parented me as a highly sensitive child, and the way I parent myself now as a highly sensitive adult.  My goal for this post is to inject those thoughts into the issue of the day which is the decision we’ve made to have another child.

The way I’ve been talking thus far, you may have reasonably concluded that this post is no longer relevant, and that I’m back on the fence.  That really isn’t the case.  We’re still trying because I still have faith in the answer we received to our novena last year.  The part of me that is wavering is my confidence in myself.  How I feel on any given day, does, of course, effect how gung-ho I feel about trying, but all in all we haven’t given up.

I mentioned to Jodi that I was going to bring God back into the discussion with this post, so here goes:  God knows how much I question myself.  When I had my son and the whole hospital incident happened, I had huge doubts about whether I was capable of keeping this baby alive.  My biggest fear was that he was going to choke and die.  In an attempt to bring me down a notch, the post-partum nurses even had me, my parents and my in-laws watch a video on choking to boost my confidence in being able to care for him.  So when my son was about a year old and he came down with croup in the middle of the night  – without a single symptom of sickness during the day – I felt like the time I had been dreading had come.  My husband was asleep in our bedroom with the baby monitor.  I happened to walk into the room right when I heard my son’s strangled little cry.  I ran into his bedroom, saw him on all fours, trying to cry, with thick liquid dripping from his little mouth.  I lifted him out, saw that his lips were blue and unzipped his pajamas.  His little chest was heaving so deeply, I could count every rib.  I yelled to my husband to call 911 as I yanked down his pajamas, carried him into the bathroom, and stabbed his outer thigh with his epi-pen.  By the time the paramedics arrived, he was breathing a little better but had a wicked cough.  We rode to the Children’s Hospital with adrenaline and anxiety running through all three of us.  The aftermath of that day involved apathy and selfishness from my mother, an outpouring of support from a dear friend, and a slightly higher sense of confidence because I had taken the steps I needed to to keep him alive.  Was I cured of my doubt?  Hardly.

So, when the same thing happened less than a year later, I was ready.  I had taken him to the pediatrician THREE times in the days leading up because I knew his cough was bad.  My doctor was out of town, so I saw a new woman who was a NEW doctor (who also doesn’t happen to be in the practice anymore).  She treated me like a hysterical mother and told me to feed him chicken soup.  When he had stridor again, I moved much faster and much more confidently this time.  My husband knew his role was to call 911 while I administered the epi-pen.  This time the paramedics arrived and were like, “Weren’t we here for this same thing another time?”  But this time I wasn’t shivering with fear.  I started ranting on my driveway like a madwoman:  “YES!  AND I TOOK HIM TO THE DOCTOR THREE TIMES BECAUSE I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.  SHE FUCKING TOLD ME TO FUCKING FEED HIM CHICKEN SOUP!  I KNEW I would be in the ER tonight!!!”  They took his vitals and as we walked to the ambulance, I apologized for my foul mouth and the men just chuckled saying they had heard worse.  The aftermath of this one?  I was now confident.  I had predicted it.  I had managed it.  I had lived through it.  Whatever you need to throw my way life – BRING IT ON.

God knows what I can handle and he knows to throw me tests when I need to grow.

Here’s what my Highly Sensitive Person book says about HSPs having children:  “Children seem to thrive when their caretakers are sensitive.  And I have met many highly sensitive caretakers who were at their happiest tending to their children… I have also met some who have not had children or who limited their family to one child entirely because of their sensitivity…  No one can deny that children do greatly increase stimulation in life.  To a conscientious HSP, they are a great responsibility as well as a joy…  Sometimes it’s smart to see our limits.”  (Feel free to buy some copies of the book from Amazon in case Dr. Aron has a problem with me quoting her in my blog…)

So my overriding question is:  Do I know my limits?  The really great thing is that I can’t guarantee that I get pregnant, only God can.  And, like I said, I trust that He knows my limits.  And when He thinks those limits need to grow, He’ll test me.  So maybe my job now is to stop questioning.  Stop analyzing my capabilities.  And start trusting.

I realize that Fox News protocol is pretty much to attack and advance half-truths and falsehoods against President Obama at any and every turn.

This video of Charles Krauthammer, a right-winger zealot disguised as some kind of a political analyst for the network conservatives trust, shows this man’s hatred for the president. This guy, Krauthammer, talks about narcissism (an all too familiar theme for him) with regard to President Obama, but that is code for the president being a little too “uppity” and not knowing his place. He clearly sees President Obama as overstepping his bounds. Considering the way that Krauthammer attacks the president, it seems more than fair to wonder if this is merely politically motivated or if perhaps there is something a little more sinister at play.

Obviously, the Fox News talking point is to try and portray President Obama as being a weak man (hence it’s tired emphasis on the fact that he is greeting fellow world leaders in customary forms). To Fox News, the bow is a sign of weakness (as long as it comes from a Democrat president and especially if it comes from President Barack Obama). To normal human beings, it is a sign of respect for the customs of a culture.

Listen closely in this video. Is Krauthammer now advancing preposterous birther conspiracies with this line of talking:

KRAUTHAMMER: “… Presumably he grew up in and spent some of his childhood in Hawaii and in Indonesia.”

Then, Krauthammer goes on to bash the president for apparently saying he is “the first Pacific president.” Lets see, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia, but apparently that doesn’t count to Charles Krauthammer. This point clearly pisses off the sensitive Krauthammer who goes on to talk about world leaders in one way or another were in the pacific during war-time or were involved in the building of the Panama Canal, etc. He mentions Roosevelt, Taft, Bush and Kennedy.

At one point, in childish fashion, Krauthammer mocks the fact that President Obama had ice cream in Japan with his mother. 

Is Krauthammer really that stupid? Is he really that much of a far-right nut? President Obama was likely speaking about being born in Hawaii, in the Pacific, and was perhaps trying to inspire others. Instead, the far-right Krauthammer tries to paint President Obama as slighting these other men. That is just flat-out insane, but it is very Charles Krauthammer.

Then the nutty Krauthammer (with no resistance from the host or fellow panelists) refers to him as “baby Jesus” too in a joking fashion (you could hear laughter among panelists). Yet, more childish antics from a grown man Charles Krauthammer is, presumably. It just shows the hatred that Krauthammer has for our leader of the United States of America and the Commander-in-Chief.

Were George W. Bush still president such talk might be considered anti-American.