Meaningful Connections

KNOWLEDGE IS POTENTIAL POWER

       IGNORANCE IS FRUSTRATING NOT BLISSFUL

Significant change is possible but often requires a great deal of effort to make it happen. Change, or the need to make some kind of  change, is largely motivated by feeling quintessentially stuck. Stuckness either takes the form of wanting to do something one can't begin to do; and/or one want's to stop doing something one can't begin to stop doing. Thus we human beings often find ourselves to be slaves to "repetition compulsion" - that is caught on a wheel of positive or negative inertia - creatures of habit - suffering whatever.

THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF POETRY

WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY RESONANT POETRY WILL APPEAR

A CONFESSION

Despite many years of formal and higher education, most poetry I have read has left me relatively untouched. I am uncertain as to whether this is so due more to my own realistic limitations or because of the limitations of the poets I have run across.

TRY, TRY, and TRY AGAIN

         SOMETIMES HISTORY DOES NOT REPEAT ITSELF

It is difficult to know exactly what it is that motivates people to do what they do - including myself. For this reason I liked the concept of overdetermined - meaning that any behavior, when analyzed, has multiple determinants not just one.

OMINOUS SIGNS ARE IN THE AIR

                    Please Pardon My Confusion

I don't know about you all but the news is not exactly clear-cut. Cases in point:

New York City and parts of New Jersey are pervaded by a mysterious, unidentified smell that forces many people to evacuate buidings. For a few hours thousands of birds drop out of the skies in Austin Texas and some city in Australia - dead. Probably poisoned. By who and what for is unclear. A few days ago "objective" professional pilots among others are stunned by sighting what for them was a clear perception of an unidenitifed flying object....

HOW I LEARNED TO TOLERATE MY OWN FRUSTRATION

SIGNIFICANT PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE IS POSSIBLE BUT HARD TO OBTAIN

Between the ages of 19 and 30 I "failed" psychotherapy two different times. Although I tried my best to change, the key to success eluded me. It was only during my third attempt in my psychoanalysis "to get myself together"  that I finally found a workable formula for making significant  change.

A necessary first step in the process of  making  significant psychological changes is to develop an objective {realistic}attitude in experiencing  the inevitability of frustration and other so called 'negative' affects. A list  includes: anxiety, depression, confusion,complexity, chaos, feeling stuck,ambiguity, ambivalence, not knowing, and the likes.

The following summarizes how I learned to tolerate my own frustration.,