For many of us, a steady stream of emotional self-punishment can feel as natural as breathing. The process of punishing oneself can operate so subtly that people don’t detect its pernicious nature. This is not a discussion of physical self-injury or self-harm such as skin … [Read more...] about Our Compulsion to Self-Punish
Search Results for: psychological defenses
The Hazards of Inner Conflict
For more than 100 years, psychoanalysis has been trying to explain the hazards and dynamics of inner conflict. Yet people still don’t get it. Unconscious resistance and denial hamper our ability to see ourselves more objectively. People are not only unaware of the dynamics of … [Read more...] about The Hazards of Inner Conflict
Inner Conflict Ripens in the Hothouse of Pandemic
We’re stay-at-home people now, seesawing in this historic upheaval between feeling strong and feeling weak. Many of us don’t trust that we have what it takes to be brave and heroic. As if on a ventilator, we struggle for the oxygen of resilience, unable to feel a solid bottom in … [Read more...] about Inner Conflict Ripens in the Hothouse of Pandemic
Access the Genius Within
Genius is ours for the taking if we know where to look. Just ask three geniuses: Vladimir Nabokov, Immanuel Kant, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While these guys were natural-born geniuses, a capacity for genius is available to everyday people. Nabokov, the novelist, said … [Read more...] about Access the Genius Within
How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap
I have long been interested in meditation, and I practiced it on and off for many years when I was a young man. Meditation held me together through my neurotic shenanigans, until depth psychology crossed my path and cleaned out the worst of my inner discombobulations. I used to … [Read more...] about How Meditation and Depth Psychology Overlap