Posted by pegasus on October 10, 2005, at 10:15:55
In reply to I WANT to be good. I WANT to be bad????, posted by muffled on October 9, 2005, at 17:59:08
Oh, yeah, isn't this so painful to work out? In my opinion, we all have times that we want to be bad, because there is something appealing - and probably *good* - that we get out of being bad at those times. So, it's not just that there is this badness coming out of us in an arbitrary way. It's that we have something to gain, or something we need about being bad sometimes, so of course it becomes appealing.
Here's an example: Whenever I say anything to my mom about any negative experience from my childhood, my mom goes into hysterics about how I'm saying she's a bad mother, and how can I do that to her, etc. So, she's behaving "badly". But what she gets out of it is that she doesn't have to face any hard truth about my childhood, which might actually be more deeply painful to her than the surface "hurt" of feeling insulted by my comments. Does that make sense? She's choosing to behave in a hysterical manner, sure, but she does it (unconsciously) to protect herself. Which isn't inherently a bad thing, right? Although I sure wish she had the strength to actually talk about the way things really were.
peg
poster:pegasus
thread:564971
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051008/msgs/565212.html