I started watching Spanish TV series (not telenovelas 😆, Netflix has quite a good collection of TV series in Spanish) with the purpose to practice the language as only grammar exercises are not enough and I am busy reading… psychology crap as it went far beyond the scope of the research for my new project 🙄🤷
It actually worked while I watched La Cathedral del Mar. However, all I learned from La casa de papel is swearing in Spanish. I guess that is useful…
I just finished reading “The science of living” by Albert Adler. A “wtf did I just read” kind of book. I know I told myself that I will push through books argumenting ideas I am not fond of, but this was something else. I do not fully disagree.
I found a reference to him in Thomas Szasz’s book “The myth of mental illnesses”. Szasz presented Adler as an opposed ideology to Freud. I know and dislike Freud, but who the fuck is Adler? So, I had to read something. I found two books and decided to start with the shorter one, which also had the title of a stupid self-help book. 🤷
Anyway, Adler has some agreeable ideas. Like:
We always do that which we would do even without the feelings, and the feelings are simply an accompaniment to our acts. -> basically the base idea of my new project
As long as a person strives for superiority and tempers it with social interest, he is on the useful side of life and can accomplish good. -> I agree with this but only taken out of the context of his ideas, because what he defines as “useful”, let’s just say I would define what he did with his life as useless, I mean it is too subjective to really matter.
The reader will remember how we described the attitudes of criminals, problem children and neurotics—how they create a certain feeling, temper or mood in order to convince themselves of a given fact. -> another subjective idea as it refers only to “bad” behaviours but feelings creation applies to “good” behaviours too, which serves my documentation 😄. I have one such exemple from this morning:
It was 4 am actually 😅
Anyway, I woke up con una puta migraña because I refuse to dress as if it’s winter simply because there is no snow and I caught a cold again and I am developing this distatste for pills…
My brain decided to focus on the one thing from last night that I do dislike to do – justify myself.
I feel safe with these people. I do not have a problem explaining things to them, but I do dislike most of all to justify myself to me and whenever I answer a question about a decision I took, this is what I do, I justify the decision to myself and the truth is that myself don’t care. Has autre chose a foutre et s’énerve. But I chose than at 4 am, to understand that the problem was between me and me and not with the person asking questions out of curiosity or whatever ( do not care for his justifications either). What I am trying to say is that instead of getting upset on someone who is otherwise very dear to me, I chose to understand that the problem was with me and I could look at things differently. 💪 Adler would have something to say about how I turned my inferiority towards the useful side of life… Bla bla bla bullshit.
Some people do not diserve this effort, pure and simple. This one does, but normally, the only answer I have for why questions is “for fools to wonder”. What is the purose to question other people’s decisions? How does it serve you to understand? See to your own life puta de mierda! (Told you I can swear in Spanish 😁 what would Adler say about this pride of mine with something as “useless” as swearing? But who cares, ay? )
Moving along:
The use of comparisons is one of the best means of deceiving oneself and others. For we may be sure that if a person uses comparisons he does not feel sure that he can convince you with reality and logic. He always wants to influence you by means of useless and far-fetched comparisons. -> bombon 💁
This brings up the theory that we always dream and that we forget most of our dreams. If we accepted such a theory it would put a different construction on the fact that some persons never dream: they would then become persons who dream but who always forget their dreams. The present writer does not accept this theory. He rather believes that there are persons who never dream and that there are also dreamers who sometimes forget their dreams. -> as it was scientifically proven that the brain is never at zero activity ( it’s a no brainier why😅), I would suggest that dreams are most probable for anyone. And he was a hypocrite. I did say this summer too, that I do not dream… What I meant is that I do not remember my dreams and I found meditation before going to sleep to insure I do not remember the dreams. 👍 The brain fails to make sense when awake (at top performance), so I really do not care for it’s bullshit while near death. Adler does not agree to associate sleep with death. Well it isn’t death, I get it, but it’s as close as you get to it while still functioning. Coma is closer, but this isn’t a competition 😆
All that is necessary is that the schools and teachers should be equipped with psychological insight which will enable them to perform their task properly. In the future schools will surely be run more along the lines of Individual Psychology, for the true purpose of a school is to build character. -> I do agree, but of which future is he speaking of (hopefully, one in which people with different life styles are not deviants or sick or insane or whatever else Adler states we are 🙄)
(…) whereas a goal on the useful side of life goes without saying and does not need any excuses in its favor. -> I do find people on the “useful” side of life in need to justify themselves more than us, since they might act that way just to fit in and not because they feel like behaving that way. 💁 And usually their justification is “everyone does this do it must be right” 🙄
Now expulsion from school accomplishes nothing. -> 👍 locking people in prisons and sanatoriums does not accomplish anything either for the person punished, only for the community’s comfort 💁
It seems silly and ridiculous to have the sexual relationship exploited for the satisfaction of an inferiority or superiority complex, and yet this happens very frequently. If we look closely we see that the mate that many a person seeks is really a victim. Such persons do not understand that the sex relationship cannot be exploited for such an end. For if one person seeks to be a conqueror, the other will want to be a conqueror also.
The fact that women now feel inferior proves that, in this particular, our culture has failed.
Szasz did not present Freud and Adler in opposition for nothing. While Freud absolved people of responsibility for in his view their actions were due to uncontious impulses, Adler put too much strain on responsibility, denying any inheritability for sexual behaviour or any kind of behaviour for that matter as he stated above that people create their temper and mood. I became a big fan of taking responsibility, not making excuses for our behaviour and owning our actions, but let’s not go to the extreme where we put too much pressure on us unnecessarily since we are made after a certain pattern that is somewhat flexible and that we should strive to understand to be aware of our limitations otherwise we will not be able to own our actions and we will blow a responsibility fuse.
I am only sorry, Szasz did not state clearly a disagreement with Adler’s point of view, but since I haven’t seen one single homofobe idea in his whole book, I retain hope.
I will share some quotes from Adler with no comment. You make your own opinions… Best read the book since quotes are out of context, I promise you context won’t help in this cases…
The normal man is an individual who lives in society and whose mode of life is so adapted that whether he wants it or not society derives a certain advantage from his work.
But there are some useless attitudes, as when a girl wants to be called by a boy’s name and not by the name of a girl. Such girls get very angry if others do not call them by the boy’s name which they have chosen. This attitude is very dangerous if it reflects something below the surface and is not a mere prank. In such a case it may appear later in life as a dissatisfaction with the sex role and a distaste for marriage—or, when married, a distaste for the sex role of woman.
They are usually cowards, since they lack interest in all the problems of life.
In school he is not the center of attention, and so he fights. Or it may be the other way around.
Few parents are inclined to learn and to avoid mistakes. They are not interested in questions of psychology and education. Either they pamper the children and are antagonistic to anyone who does not regard their children as perfect jewels, or else they are not interested at all. Not much can thus be accomplished through them.
We do not marry for our private good only, but indirectly for the social good. In the last analysis marriage is for the sake of the race.
Thus if a child happens to be more interested in his own sex than in the opposite sex, this is considered an inherited disability. But we know that this disability is something which he develops from day to day. Sometimes a child or adult shows signs of sex perversion; and here again many persons believe the perversion to be inherited. But if this is the case, why does such a person train himself? Why does he dream and rehearse his actions?
I do want to read another book from Adler though*. I feel that if I would have read Adler in highschool I stead of Freud I would have been miserable since I would have been even more convinced to act against my nature which I was quite determined to do and did anyway. Luckily I am ok now… As much as society would allow me ( ofc, you do not need permission from anyone to be who you are, but let’s face it… We live in this society 😕). Anyway, I am glad that Freud is the more popular one. For as much as I hate him for using his ideas only to profit from psychology, his extremist view is not nearly as damaging as Adler’s. And the most important thing is that neither was 100% wrong.
We should take responsibility for as much as we can, but some things are out of our hands when it comes to our own biology and temperament.
However, knowing and owning who we are is on us.
PS. Me: “Mental diseases do not exist, if there is something wrong with you it is bilogical, therefore a bodily disease.”
Her: “Post partum depression is a thing, it is caused be the disbalance of hormones in your body ontop of your daily issues.”
Me: “I see you are planning to suffer from this.” ( I do hope she isn’t planning though… 😕)
*meanwhile I am reading “An unquiet mind” by Kay Redfield Jamison, because the autobiography of a manic depressive seems like a good way to relax 😆
The joy of creating 