Archive for the ‘Behaviors’ Category

Adriana Tanese-Nogueira

Naivety is a natural state of the child’s soul, a spontaneous condition of the beginning of life. Everything is new and has to be explored, because of ingenuity we venture, trust, test and learn. And here lays the final goal: learning.

With the years passing by, naivety should give place to wisdom, which consists in some bitter notes and some sweet ones. It happens though that when ingenuity slips away, it is substituted by sorrow before life and the world, leading to disbelief and misanthropy. This is one of the reasons for people to cling to naivety as a way to preserve their childhood and optimism toward life. In doing so, however, they don’t save the “inner child”, rather they remain childish.

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There aren’t many, but there are people who lie in therapy.  Lie to whom? To themselves, for sure. But who exactly does the therapist represent that it is “necessary” lying to him?

By the best of the hypothesis, the therapist stands for the patient’s consciousness. By the worst, for a mother (or a father). Because the parental figure has always been a child’s reference for good behavior, revealing the truth to a parent is like admitting something and becoming aware of what one has done. Therefore, the therapist is a mother of father’s vicarious.

There are therapist who in fact set themselves as big moms and dads of their patients giving them directions about what is “right” and “wrong”. Thus, these professionals occupy a place already prepared, only Read the rest of this entry »

Generally, a woman is victim of the man who she calls “companion” or “husband”. However, she can be a victim of other people, like employers or parents, friends or neighbors. The “victim” is the person who lives a relationship based on power in which she occupies the weaker position. The unbalance of strengths can be either physical or emotional, financial or sentimental. Usually these aspects go together, although there’s always one that sticks out.

After a certain amount of time, which can go from 1 to 20 years (or more!), she’ll have to get it. She in fact already knew that things weren’t doing fine, and for a quite long time. The question is taking an attitude. She “gets it” when she can’t delude herself anymore saying that “it’s not so bad”, “it’ll change” or “I need to be patient”.

She runs away from awareness because:
1) she foresees that the problem is “enormous”;
2) she believes that’s the only existing reality. Read the rest of this entry »

My daughter finished today her math program. In five months, she did the entire sixth grade, and got an A.

Only seven months ago she felt sick and drowsy when entered the course, read the directions, and gave a look at the lessons. She literally felt dizzy and refused to continue. I didn’t force her for her panic was authentic. Read the rest of this entry »

In times of holidays, kin reunions and joy are expected. Not always, though, the heart is happy. Family life is one of the biggest challenges of our times. Blood bonding doesn’t guarantee likely mentalities and values. As for everything, there are the conservatives who adapt themselves and don’t question, and the restless who look for something more than the shining superficiality of the appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major communication difficulties happens with those people who talk too much. Shooting the breeze is a way to turn oneself impermeable to others and life circumstances.

Words as a shield that bounce the listener off.
Words to disguise, omit and hide.
Words to drown the relationship. Read the rest of this entry »

There are phases in life when we become aware that reality is not the way we thought and, most of all, that we need to decide who we want to be.

The individuation process, as Jung introduces it, is a path of liberation from the external stereotypes as well as from the inner ones that we carry as “impulsive” tendencies, inherited or archetypal. The individuation spiral-shaped movement allows the flourishing of the personality. Now, one needs to fight. Nothing comes easy, much less the realization of oneself.

I’m going to tell two dreams of an adolescent in full process of consciousness and taking a stand in her life. They reflect what has been conquered after more than one year of therapy work on some important aspects of her psycho-social development. It must be said that this person had always had as ideal the sweetness of the good girl, who doesn’t hurt anybody, is never rude or gossiping. She’s afraid of the dark and has had frequent nightmares.

Here’s the first dream:

“Dracula breaks through the window. I’m Princess Tamina (from the Prince of Persia movie), I’m standing at the door and therefore he can’t bite me on my neck for I can scream for help. Realizing the situation, he tries to be ‘nice’ and says he wants to introduce me to a girlfriend of his, named Lidia. The scene changes, I’m walking holding a beautiful black dog at the leash, it’s Lidia. We are at ease and talk in human language. Suddenly the dog opens up lengthwise. The animal’s two halves fall on the soil and from the its empty interior comes out Dracula. He grows bigger and bigger and finally jumps on me. I’m scared and shout ‘no’. But then I think: “I am the Princess Tamina and I can fight!” I kick, I strike, I hit. At last, I wring Dracula’s head. He turns into black smoke that oozes in the air, while a mask falls down.”

The next night, she dreams:

“I’m in a grey city, it could be any big city, kind of New York. I see people moving ahead in masses as robots, gray and dull, their stare fixed in front of them. There’s a bomb on the floor, its wick is lightened up. It explodes. The people transform little by little, each piece of their body, into clowns. Their big red mouths is twisted in a grotesque smile, showing  sharp fangs, they wobble into me. They want to eat my head. I grab a metal bar that was on the floor and start hitting them. I wake up.”

Dracula is the seducer who sucks vital energy (the blood) from another person. Vampirism is one of the most common forms of relation: it includes dependence and power. Dependence, because Dracula needs the other person to survive as a vampire (there’s no death and rebirth in this story); power, because to obtain what he needs, he controls the other person and, finally, reduce them to what he is.

Vampires are people without own energy who cling to the others, pleasing or perturbing them, in order to fill the emptiness they feel inside. Irritating or seducing, there’s always a form of manipulation. The entire behavior consists in manipulation and domination. The psychic and spiritual energy is obtained only by these mean: with gifts or threatening, the result is the same.

Realizing that he can’t suck the dreamer’s energy because help is close by, Dracula uses the subterfuge of the dog. This animal is universally known as friend of the human kind. In this case is a female dog, adding the quality of sweetness that also matches with the dreamer’s ideal. On top of that, Lidia means “the joy of life”. Dracula’s perfidy is highlighted in the choice of the elements that he knows can seduce his potential prey.

The dreamer finds out the imbroglio, empower herself and fight. The dog is just one more lure. There’s no joy, no friendship, no sweetness: it’s all a lie. Wringing Dracula’s head is revealing the truth that makes the mask fall.

The following night, the problematic continues. Now is not a single figure, but the collective itself, that is, the mentality. People walking as automatons are the ones who live without really thinking, following the given main road that they didn’t shaped for themselves. The internal flame of the creative life is burned out in them. It remained the gray of the lack of grace and meaning. Actions and obligations are daily replicated because “it is what it is”.

The opposite of this is the clown. The bomb explodes, the masses of automatons turns into a bunch of clowns. Again, there’s a reference to joy and laughter, but the dream reveal who they are: ridicule and evil figures. They want to destroy the head of who is not like them, that same head they have giving up. In fact, who is an automaton doesn’t use his own head but the groups’ stereotypes; who is a clown makes himself ridicule to have people laughing.

The wisdom of the dream shows that the forced laughter and being part of a group to model one’s personality it’s not the solution for when one searches for a meaning or feels the lack of it. Merging in the group or into a fake diversion is a form to hide, sabotage oneself, running away from reality. That’s kidding, right? An evil kidding.

We know ourselves through people, things, and situation we like and dislike. Projection is the way the psyche interacts with the outside and distinguishes itself from it. It can be positive and negative; above all, it’s a general and perfectly normal psychic mechanism (Jung).

We projects the traits we admire (but believe they don’t belong to us) on heroes and public figures, or simply on the classmate, the neighbor or the friend. We create idols and shining potent people from our own psychological “blood and flesh”. We empower them with our own power, because they are “what we, unfortunately, are not”.

The thing about worshiping idols is that we don’t need to get up and go for it. It takes a lot of effort to make a dream come true, to change a pattern, or be whatever one wants to be. Idols, like stuffed animals, are likable, they can stand on a shelf and remind us that a beautiful life does exist… But let’s now go back to the couch, to relax and munch popcorn!

The same applies to negative projections. We get rid of what is unpleasant to face throwing it onto somebody else. We literally wear the other person with our own fantasies. That’s another way to create a comfortable world: we have the idols on one shelf and the evil on the other. And what about us? We can comfortably stretch our legs out on that same sofa and…!

To turn projections into a resource of self knowledge one must do the sweaty process to look at oneself and enact a psychological work. The less self conscious a person is the more their projections will be like giant balloons, floating far away from reality. However, there’s a hook. The objects of our projection do have something to do with it.

We are not crazy people who see a horse and project on it a monkey. The idols do have some of the qualities we give them. The evil person does have a bad character. The point is that an unconscious projection creates absolute. Thus idols become The Idols, and a bad person turns into The Evil. This is the childish part of this story.

Once you become conscious of your projections idols and evils continue existing, but you are not so much bothered by them. You stop being a pious follower of new idols or a gossiper of the bad guys. Growing out of projections is a form of freedom. Now you understand why those people are what they are while you learn something important about yourself. Then you simply move on.

“The goal the collective sets for itself it is always to produce a life and a common life style that are the less possible disturbed by the individual active forces, not caring if these forces have low or high values.” (Erich Neumann, Deep Psychology and a New Ethics, p. 19).

We long to be normal and accepted, for thus we fit in the pack. That’s a human value and necessity. As Aristotle said, “humans are political animal”, where “political” means social. We need to gather, to be together; we are important to one another more than we’d like. Everyone wants to have friends and good neighbors and harmonious family. Yet it is so difficult.

The “normality” we look for is a cracked image of an idealized human being who not only does not exist but is crafted on a disputable model. The individual uniqueness smacks into the collective standards, and many people can only keep being grouped because they lived in a kind of continuous trance. Their physical presence doesn’t really mean their agreement, as their willingness to belong to something strains their souls to forget itself.

Any society to survive as a whole establishes a pattern of humanity and forces individuals into it. That’s the nature of societies (see Durkheim for a sociological reflection). Individual’s nature if it needs a stable and safe environment to develop, it also roots into evolutionary movement. “Individual” means not divisible. A person is a unity that stands alone although needs companions and group. Plus, human beings are historically defined by their ability to transform their lives conditions and thoughts, which is in straight opposition to the collective expectations upon its members.

Thus, if we think from the collective point of view “normality” means the average John Smith. Thanks to many John Smiths we have a stable society (not on civil war) with its own identity and characteristics. However, to fit into John Smith’s pattern one has to sacrifice a certain amount of one’s personality and originality. In each society there are many variations of John Smith’s ID but the essence is the same, therefore many people think they are “different” when they actually are wearing just a modified version of the same paradigm.

The John Smith’s paradigm has its own amount of values and potentiality, and it’s not necessarily bad. But on the long run it will become tight and suffocating for its own nature is dumb. Society is not an alive entity, it depends upon the individuals, the only ones able to makes changes. But since they have been raised in the social “John Smith’s normality” they feel wrong when doing of even wishing anything different. Wrong and guilty.

This conflict blows up during adolescence. That is an atrocious period of human life, because it is in here that the most dramatic battle between uniqueness and standards, originality and pattern, individual and collective is fought. As any adolescent knows the collective harasses unmercifully. No pity is bestowed to the young soul who doesn’t fit. Who dares to be and speak differently and agaisnt any of the John Smith’s variations will be stoned.

On the other hand, if we look at “normality” having the human history as a backdrop we realize that “normal” is the movement toward change, defined as:

• more knowledge
• more individual independence towards social roles
• mode individual independence towards religion’s dogmas
• more enlightened political views
• more consciousness
• more sensitivity

Therefore, in the human history revolutionaries are the normal ones and the passive John Smiths are the abnormal. However, what is good for the big picture means hardship for the non-John Smith person in their daily life. We nowadays thank Einstein and Newton, but the first was a bad student looking goofy and dumb, which must have been a heck of a childhood; the second one was almost considered autistic, a solitary young man, bullied at school and moving away from places and people. That was not a fun life.

In the present as in the past we live the same conflict between the individual and the collective. The latter only changes, opening up and evolving, because of the effort and struggle of the new individuals, which to obtain their place in society must overcome battles and deal with their own suffering and misunderstanding.

Today this fight is spread around in multiple little and big troubles. We live shifting times. Like millions of ants busily working, there are many people wrapped up by their own inner voices claiming for new paths. They need to know that it’s on their blood and sweat that a new road will be open for everybody. And also that being aware of the big picture will give them strength and courage. That’s being psychologically enlightened.

One of the first things the feminist movement questioned was women’s chaining to the four domestic walls. They wanted to work outside, acquire a profession, make money and be autonomous. Some say that the movement for women’s liberation was the major event in the XX century.

Gender roles moved to the accused side of society and were, finally, disputed: everyone wanted the main role, the man’s. Equality of rights is an unquestionable value, an unstoppable achievement in the history of human consciousness. We all agree that women cannot and shall not be chained to the house. But the revolution is not finish.

Who does take care of the house then?

The space we live in has a greater meaning than just being a roof over our heads, the comfort of a couch in front of the TV, a dinner table and a soft bed. Home is the physical ambiance in which we build our identity. It’s at home that a person in her beginning of life finds the conditions to flourish (or not). Home is the backdrop over which we create the people we are and want to be. A home’s atmosphere reflects the personality of the people who inhabit it, as well as the work they do, the relations they have, and the choice they make.

Nowadays, many times homes look abandoned. They are occupied but heartless. Expensive or cheap furniture doesn’t make any difference, neither being small or big houses. Televisions and refrigerators, square yards and art pieces may decorate it and supply it with foods and diversions. But no soul.

A home’s soul gains life through the hands that take care of it. It comes from the love blown in through dedication and physical work. A magic happens when we put our productive energy in what we do, things acquire a kind of light and looking at them we breathe snuggling and gratitude feelings. They become inviting, they nurture. The heart acknowledge these things by instinct.

The shelter a home offers nourish our dreams and bodies. The home quietness feed our soul and renew our energies, allowing to slow down the tension, getting ready for a new day. The house cleaning supports the dignity of living, promotes self-esteem and self-value. The house order organizes our thoughts, helping to select and distinguish, stimulating mental clarity. Finally, the house silence restore tired bodies and minds, caressing ears and hearts.

This is so true that who feels bad about himself can’t appreciate his own company and is not able to take care of his own home. Who, whose ghosts cry out loud in his own inner ear, can’t stand the home’s silence, using TV, guests and agitation to muffle the captive heart.

When we have children in the house these issues are screaming. Children need a home for sure. But a safe place is still not a home, if so, we would call home a vault. Home must also be relaxing, welcoming and organized, so that children can open up their eyes over the world and themselves following their own rhythms, having the chance to see and discover, to understand and grow. Noise and diversion at any cost are born from the agony of confused and restless adults, unable to deal with quietness and silence, acceptable only by who is master of himself. Many activities, parties and uproars are in fact easy ways to avert the attention, hiding and distracting one’s mind in order not to think and feel.

Being run over and without understanding, children grow up thinking that this is the normal way of living, and loose the track of their own inner path. They may look they are having fun and even ask for more mess, but only because are became addicted to it. To know if they are really well, it’s enough to take a look at how many times they get sick, how they are in school, if they are “spoiled” and  cantankerous, if they can’t entertain themselves and need a ready activity coming from the outside. Exactly as a baby plant becomes stronger in a protected and quiet place of our garden, human babies develop when they have the external environmental conditions that allow their flourishing as well as their pruning.

Women, righteously, want to be more than housewives (or even the masters of the house). Therefore, it’s needed to define what to do with the house. If a man got tired of being the only provider and decided to simply abandon his job and to go to study Geophysics or Space Technology, he would be considered an irresponsible. Because of “feminist prudery” women are not charged with the pending question of the house. This leads to neglecting and pretense. Nonetheless, as well as the man would have to discuss his new projects with his wife and/or put limits to his expenses, the woman will have first to solve her responsibility inside the home when she decides that she wants to work, study or pioneering a new professional path.

It’s up to them to educate their family to a fundamental issue: that mugs don’t levitate to the kitchen sink, that a plate after being used need to be washed, that beds don’t make themselves up, that the floor must be kept clean, and that many times a homemade food is better than a frozen or restaurant’s one. It’s up to them to start to “unspoil” the children who believe the world is like a infinite Disney World with no responsibility, limits and commitments. Instead of the pattern: electronic games, TV and sports, what about some domestic responsibility and teaching them what is to be part of a collectivity (the family)? It’s up to women to shake the consciousnesses and show that winning the resistance against domestic chores is rewarding, because no home is more appealing than the one loving and diligent hands took care of. And even when there is a cleaning lady who clean it for us, this doesn’t mean we don’t take care of our own things.

Women, couple and families’ malaise is revealed by the scrum and disarray of the houses and their rhythms, by loud voices and cries, by the shadows under the hyper and evasive children’s eyes, by the TV dominance, and the absence of real relationships. This picture denounces an upside-down home, and the uncompleted revolution. Would it be women’s fault? Not only. However, it’s up to them to light up the spark for the change of the family paradigm, and then it will benignly spread over the entire family.