We can imagine a society in which no one could survive as a social being because it does not correspond to biologically determined... perceptions and human social needs. For historical reasons, existing societies might have such properties, leading to various forms of pathology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred... in the psychic landscape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must learn to differentiate between fears and anxieties. Fears are states of apprehension which focus on isolated and recogniza...ble dangers so that they may be judiciously appraised and realistically countered. Anxieties are diffuse states of tension (caused by a loss of mutual regulation and a consequent upset in libidinal and aggressive controls) which magnify and even cause the illusion of an outer danger, without pointing to appropriate avenues of defense or mastery. These two forms of apprehension obviously often occur together, and we can insist on a strict separation only for the sake of the present argument. If, in an economic depression, a man is afraid that he may lose his money, his fear may be justified. But if the idea of having to live on an income only ten times, instead of twenty-five times as large as that of his average fellow-citizen causes him to lose his nerve and to commit suicide, then we must consult our clinical formulas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual.... There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us consider the polarity of love and hate.... Now, clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularity... accompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in many circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That primitive head So ambitiously vast,... Yet so rude in its art, Is as easily read For the woes of the past As a clinical chart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »