Notes

From The Lives and Legends of Jacques Lacan, by Catherine Clément

The unconscious is not directed toward a goal. It plays and then it settles down. (p. 33)

Yeah.

From The Kohut Seminar: On Sslf Psychology and Psychotherapy with Adolescents and Yoong Adults.

Coleridge spoke of “the willing suspension of disbelief,” there is also a necessity for the willing suspension of disbelief when you listen to a particular mode in which a topic is presented to you. I do not suggest the willing suspension of disbelief forever; I suggest only a suspension of disbelief until you have grasped what the other person has to offer. In other words, one does not object before one has first heard the other person out to some extent. (p. 4)

Yeah. Very well said .

From an interview with George Saunders in The Atlantic, where Saunders is talking about admitting to what we have gotten wrong, as opposed to avoiding it in all the ways we can avoid owning up to what we have done or failed to do.

And as they got older, we would have talks with [our kids] where we’d say, You know, we kind of messed that up. Sorry. And it’s amazing how that kind of just takes the wind out of any negative sails, to just admit it.

Yeah.

An association: This reminds me of one of the many 12 step sayings, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

If keep something I’ve really messed up a secret, it can really mess with me a lot… it takes effort to keep something a secret. Admitting to what I’ve done wrong, or poorly, or failed to do, is not fun, but it takes less energy than keeping something a secret.

From Being & Having by Gabriel Marcel.

There is no privileged state which allows us to transcend time

Yeah.

From Disquiet.

Choose a topic that is important to you and start typing, and uploading images, and audio, and video, and code, and whatever other forms your experience of the topic takes. And don’t just cover the topic. Write about your life. Write elements of whatever you would write elsewhere in public — on social media, in comments, in newsletters, on BBS’s, in email discussion groups — on your blog first and foremost. Make everything else — all the places online that you don’t own — ancillary to the central activity of blogging.

Yeah!