“But if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it, because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed, as happens in neurosis. Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is […]
“But I only achieve the feeling of limitlessness when I am extremely limited. Man’s greatest limitation is that ‘self’ which manifests itself in the experience of ‘I am only this’. Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently […]
“When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.” P.D. Ouspensky
“There is, so to speak, a “cold” kind of evil and a “hot” kind of evil. The hot evil is carried, no matter whether by demons or by human beings, by an unquenched emotional affect underneath, like a suffocated fire burning and smoldering all the time, and this kind of repressed affect is highly infectious. […]
The word “masochism” is usually associated with pathology, including its manifestations in sexuality. However, masochism has multiple dimensions and is more often found in forms that we would not call masochistic. Below I outline various manifestations of self-destructive behaviour provoked by an unconscious sense of guilt and the desire for self-punishment. On this occasion, in her […]
In Gestalt therapy there is a well-known text, often referred to as a “prayer,” written by its founder, Fritz Perls. It reads: “I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. […]
For quite some time I have been postponing the presentation of Liz Greene’s work on the types of psychic defenses from her book Limitations and Boundaries: The Horoscope and Personality Defenses. Around election day, however, I decided to publish at least the anal type of defenses, because the way people vote in political elections is […]
After Jesper Juul, I would like to present the perspective of another male psychologist and psychotherapist on the crisis of the masculine role in the family—James Hillman, as expressed in his book The Soul’s Code. According to Hillman, the problem of absent fathers lies in the fact that the pendulum has swung to the opposite […]
“Bodhidharma stands far above the moralists, the puritans, the so-called good men, the altruists. He has gone to the very bottom of the problem. If awareness doesn’t arise in you, your whole morality is bogus, your culture is simply a thin layer which could be destroyed by anybody. But once your morality has come out […]
” An ancient adept has said: “If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.” This Chinese saying, unfortunately only too true, stands in sharp contrast to our belief in the “right” method irrespective of the man who applies it. In reality, everything depends on the man and […]
“He who can follow the small thoughts manages the big decisions.” Small thoughts are like the small pebbles that turn a car around. To notice them, we need uncommon observation and honesty. In terms of self-knowledge, these skills are the same as the microscope in the biology lab. That is why the knowledge that Maha […]
The challenges in the spiritual development of women and men are both the same and different. Now I would like to address the difference in men by presenting the ideas of two male psychologists, Jesper Juul, a systemic psychotherapist and author of the book Being a Man and a Father, and James Hillman, the creator […]
