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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 13 of 13. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by InsideOut on July 25, 2009, at 17:32:52
I have done nothing wrong. I am guilty of nothing. The abuse I endured wronged me
I can reason those words. The logical sense of the words exists but their existence is evanescent. Logic seems to fall, to disappear into the abyss that is being. The split consumes reason before it arrives at my heart, at the center of my being. Which way does madness find its definition? If a delusion is defined as an all-consuming belief in the untrue despite overwhelming evidence to dispute this, then it is that madness entangles delusions that strangles reason. I am not mad. What though when the delusion does not find definition, confirmation in the faculty of reason and so moves to the heart where it finds acknowledgement. I am mad. (I have done wrong. I am guilty.) The sanity of reason then does not (necessarily) negate the insanity of the heart. Which reality prevails , that of the mind or the heart?
Posted by Sigismund on July 25, 2009, at 20:28:34
In reply to Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by InsideOut on July 25, 2009, at 17:32:52
>The split consumes reason before it arrives at my heart, at the center of my being.
That's the split between your heart and your mind?
>Which reality prevails , that of the mind or the heart?That depends on who you speak to. For me it's the heart.
I've never been clear as to what reason is, although I know what unreasonable means.
Posted by Sigismund on July 25, 2009, at 20:35:03
In reply to Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by InsideOut on July 25, 2009, at 17:32:52
From Burnt Norton
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
Posted by hyperfocus on July 27, 2009, at 0:22:46
In reply to Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by InsideOut on July 25, 2009, at 17:32:52
The heart. I'm pretty sure if you could think and reason with mental illness nobody would be sick. Reason is just of part our faculties. Our faculty to feel and love is separate from reason.
I went through abuse too and while my reason knows that the only thing I'm guilty of is being naive regarding people's capacity for evil, my corrupted heart make me feel like I have done very bad and wrong things.
At the same time, which is better - being mad and knowing it or being mad and not knowing it? I would say anybody who abuses another living thing is mad.
Posted by Sigismund on July 27, 2009, at 19:47:11
In reply to Re: Which way does madness find its definition? » InsideOut, posted by hyperfocus on July 27, 2009, at 0:22:46
Isn't there a famous Dostoyevsky quote about how corrupting it is to have and use the power to humiliate another person?
Posted by hyperfocus on July 27, 2009, at 22:14:58
In reply to Re: Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by Sigismund on July 27, 2009, at 19:47:11
Sounds interesting - I'll have to look it up. Certainly it's a terrible act of abuse, much worse than physical assault. It also insulates the abuser from blame - the victim believes that it's their own flaws at fault. It can take a long time for the victim to realize that the one deserving blame is not herself but the attacker.
Despite the cost in human suffering, I believe in the request to forgive our enemies. Maybe they were humiliated in their life by someone. It's not that they shouldn't have to take responsibility and pay for their actions, but incubating hatred and ill wishes and schemes of revenge against them seems to just perpetuate the evil. I'm not surprised by the theological notion that there is one original source of all evil which spread out and infected humanity like a virus.
Posted by InsideOut on July 28, 2009, at 1:22:51
In reply to Re: Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by Sigismund on July 27, 2009, at 19:47:11
Thank you all for your words for thought - nowhere else does there seem to be as many people that think and feel as I do - truly amazing.
If anyone finds the quote by Dostoyevsky please do share!
He changed my world when he entered me when he forced the outside into the inside. The outside touched me but it was when this entered me that I changed enough to shift the world to shift my perception of myself I was to blame for what happened. I translated the objective (I am not to blame) into the subjective (I am to blame).
He broke my heart. My heart pulsates my living I stand in the center of this - I am broken. He separated me into two. The two separated again. And again, until there was nothing left except for a vestige of a child. Trust, taken for granted, will never be again I cannot trust myself with another. My wish for significance elicited no response or recognition from the world. Yearning for this, I found it with him and too many others. Sadness, left weary by repeated revulsion left the stage. Numbness took the leading role. I left with Sadness. Our part was over. I became absent in my own existence. Numbness allows for no other there is no life left to perceive. He disembodied the child, me, through the violation of my body.Much love to all
Posted by Sigismund on July 28, 2009, at 1:42:56
In reply to Re: Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by InsideOut on July 28, 2009, at 1:22:51
I'm having a look, and so far found this, which is fun....
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
hahaha
Posted by Sigismund on July 28, 2009, at 1:50:53
In reply to Re: Which way does madness find its definition?, posted by InsideOut on July 28, 2009, at 1:22:51
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.
One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions.
The soul is healed by being with children.
There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
To live without Hope is to cease to live.
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
Posted by InsideOut on July 28, 2009, at 14:29:29
In reply to Couldn't find it, but, posted by Sigismund on July 28, 2009, at 1:50:53
Thank you for the quotes distracted me for 5min from the awful day I have had!
Nietzsche referred to Dostoyevsky as "the only psychologist from whom I have something to learn: he belongs to the happiest windfalls of my life, happier even than the discovery of Stendhal."
What is your take on existentialism if any. Just wondering as you seem to know your Dostoyevsky :)
Much love
Posted by Sigismund on July 28, 2009, at 16:03:59
In reply to Re: Couldn't find it, but » Sigismund, posted by InsideOut on July 28, 2009, at 14:29:29
No, I don't know my Dostoyevsky (the print is so small, the translations so bad, my concentration as well) but there is more valuable psychology in a book of his than anything else. I have read half of Crime and Punishment, half of Notes from Underground and half of The Brothers Karamazov. There is an interesting interrogation (what might be one) in Crime and Punishment that I can't get my head around. You mention Nietzche. Ernest Gellner in his interesting book "The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason", said that Freud was Nietzche denatured and made digestable for the middle class.
I only tangled with existentialism many years ago. I liked Camus, although who could forget 'Hell is other people'.
Posted by InsideOut on July 29, 2009, at 1:52:52
In reply to Re: Couldn't find it, but, posted by Sigismund on July 28, 2009, at 16:03:59
I have a tattoo that reads The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world Camus. Adore him reading his work makes me feel sane! There is relief in the knowledge that there is another that experiences the world as you do he, with his words, validates my being in this world, being as I am
Posted by Sigismund on July 29, 2009, at 19:48:20
In reply to Camus...words tattooed on my foot! » Sigismund, posted by InsideOut on July 29, 2009, at 1:52:52
I may have this garbled and you may have heard it, but anyway....
Toward the end of WWII in a village in the south of France, an instruction was given by the occupying power that all Jews were to assemble at a certain place and time.
The priest declined to co-operate in any way, and so did the villagers, and all the Jews escaped with their assistance. Camus was living in the village at the time.Or so I heard on a radio show once.
This is the end of the thread.
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