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“As long as we measure a person's psychological health by the degree to which he or she accepts social conventions, we will fail to see that under certain circumstances these conventions demand a submissive acceptance of of errors and lies.”
― The Betrayal of the Self
― The Betrayal of the Self
“All representatives of the ideology of power, which is based on a false conception of the self, fear people who are inner-directed and have contempt for them because it is a fear that cannot be acknowledged. It makes no difference if one is on the right or left politically. What we are faced with on all sides is an obsession with power, rather than an openness to reality with all its rich and vital possibilities.”
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
“The insanity masking itself as normality is fundamentally different from what is usually meant by that word; therefore, we need to reformulate the concept of insanity. Schizophrenia--the "recognizable" form of insanity-needs to be seen from a completely different perspective: namely, as the struggle against a much more portentous kind of insanity, one that has the semblance of normality. Here, again, we get a sense of the difficulty of my approach: we are all taken in by the outer appearance of normality, since, under the pressures of our upbringing, we have lost contact with what lies behind this facade.”
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
“Autonomy, as I see it, is a condition of integration in which the possibility of living in harmony with one's own needs and feelings is realized. What is meant here are not those feelings and needs artificially produced by the consumer society but those originating in the joy produced by a mother's love for the aliveness of her child or in the sorrow stemming from the lack of this love.”
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
“It is primarily the inability to tolerate feelings that brings about disassociation between thought and feeling. Although this is considered a characteristic of schizophrenic behavior, it is true of us “normal“ people and not of schizophrenics. In the latters’ case, disassociation is an expression of the refusal to produce imposed in the hypocritical feelings. For it is not that schizophrenics are incapable of tolerating real feelings of pain, sorrow, despair, or joy; they simply reject living with the distortions of these feelings. But when “normal“ men and women cannot tolerate helplessness, for instance, they need to seek relief in a “reality“ that is contemptuous of such an experience and that denies its inherent potentiality as a source of genuine strength.”
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
― The Insanity of Normality: Toward Understanding Human Destructiveness
Peter’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Peter’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,966 books
|
5,438 friends
450 books
|
112 friends
337 books
|
63 friends
1,539 books
|
76 friends
239 books
|
32 friends
833 books
|
119 friends
481 books
|
84 friends
205 books
|
203 friends
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