Maravilhoso... If only...

"Então foi a Chicago?

Sim. A licenciatura incluía catorze disciplinas e era possível fazer o exame final de qualquer uma delas à chegada. Quem passasse com um A não precisava de fazer o curso. Fiz todos os exames; passei em dez e recebi quatro E menos — o que é mais do que reprovar — em fisica, química, matemática  e uma coisa chamada (nunca antes ouvira a expressão) "estudos sociais". Portanto tive de fazer esses quatro cursos e diverti-me imenso. Foi uma experiência totalmente nova para mim."

George Steiner, in Entrevistas da Paris Review, Vol.3 [pags 121 e 122]

Pessoa-Balão

O seu dialecto era tal, que deambulava num registo que lhe permitia flutuar acima de todos, oferecendo-lhe a ilusão de superioridade. Um escudo contra os seus fantasmas. 

Não ousava revelar o código secreto da sua metáfora, pensava...

No entanto, o registo desse mesmo dialecto já fornecia todos os ingredientes para uma boa descodificação. 

Is human consciousness creating reality? - Biocentrism

A new study claims networks of observers are responsible for determining physical reality.

The scientists propose that observers generate the structures of time and space.

The paper could help yield insights into the God Equation, which attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity. Here

Biocentrism, Robert Lanza: here

How Decoherence Splits The Quantum Multiverse

A Gente Que Não Lê

Rui Veloso- A Gente Não Lê

Ai senhor das furnas
Que escuro vai dentro de nós

Rezar o terço ao fim da tarde
Só para espantar a solidão
Rogar a deus que nos guarde
Confiar-lhe o destino na mão

Que adianta saber as marés
Os frutos e as sementeiras
Tratar por tu os ofícios
Entender o suão e os animais
Falar o dialecto da terra
Conhecer-lhe o corpo pelos sinais

E do resto entender mal
Soletrar assinar em cruz
Não ver os vultos furtivos
Que nos tramam por trás da luz

Ai senhor das furnas
Que escuro vai dentro de nós
A gente morre logo ao nascer
Com olhos rasos de lezítia
De boca em boca passar o saber
Com os provérbios que ficam na gíria

De que nos vale esta pureza
Sem ler fica-se pederneira
Agita-se a solidão cá no fundo
Fica-se sentado à soleiro
A ouvir os ruídos do mundo
E a entendê-los à nossa maneira

Carregar a superstição
De ser pequeno ser ninguém
E não quebrar a tradição
Que dos nossos avós já vem

in the "year without a summer" of 1816...

Villa Diodati

... a ghost story competition between Polidori, Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley, took place...

more here

What we habitually see confirms us ... / Errante

"... Yet it can happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in half-light-of-glimpses, that we catch sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it."

John berger

Errante

As amarras do tempo sugam-nos para o registo embebido nesse tempo, do qual somos fruto e produto.

Esse registo, como uma marca de água, condiciona e influencia cada percurso de vida, e revela-se nos comportamentos, mais ou menos reactivos, ou mais ou menos complacentes, com o status quo.

Os eternos inadaptados, que sofrem as dores causadas pelas amarras do seu tempo, pagarão com a solidão ou com a deriva compulsiva.

Nadarão em águas diversas numa eterna busca do familiar subjectivo, desse espelho que devolva o absoluto reconhecível.

Deriva compulsiva à procura do íntimo subjectivo.

Águas de diferentes temperaturas, sinestesias... Cenários diversos passarão e roçarão essa existência flutuante, deixando sensações, reconhecimentos fugazes – retalhos de um espelho em construção.

[Escritos, 06/2023]

"Seja o que te rodeia o canto de um candeeiro, a voz da tempestade, a respiração do entardecer ou o gemido do mar - atrás de ti está sempre vigilante uma vasta melodia, tecida de milhares de vozes, na qual o teu solo só tem lugar aqui e ali. Saber quando deves fazer a tua entrada, eis o segredo da tua solidão: tal como a arte do verdadeiro relacionamento é: do alto das palavras deixar-se cair na melodia una e comum.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Whatever works!

 “Perhaps the only thing that can be confidently said about treating psychosis is that there has to be a fit between the patient’s metaphor for the illness and the method used. For Frieda and Joanne, the treatment was a quest, a search for the answer to a tangled problem that could be revealed only by collaborative work. For Mary Barnes, who regressed almost to the point of infancy because she was convinced she had to “go down and come back up again,” living in Kingsley Hall, a Laingian therapeutic community, was the only way to get better. As Greenberg once remarked, “Her metaphor was not mine. But it worked for her. For other people, the metaphor is that it’s chemical, and therefore you’re absolved… You don’t have to have any part in the process. … Some people say, ‘I don’t want to weave my own rope, I want it done for me. I want doctors to do it for me the way they did my appendix and my hernia.’ “

For Carol North, kidney dialysis “removed some unidentified substance from the blood, presumably a chemical responsible for producing schizofrenic symptoms.” North and her physician had a very specific image of what this toxic substance was and used a filter with tiny pores “because the molecules that are thought to cause schizophrenia are much smaller than those in kidney failure.” Psychologist Norman Endler, whose psychotic depression felt unconnected to any life event, insisted that ECT was the only effective method. For Marie Cardinal, whose uncontrollable menstrual bleeding and hallucinations reflected a desperate struggle for “the words to say it,” classical psychoanalysis was what worked. Paula Perlstein repeatedly sought psychosurgery because “cutting the medial tracts between the portions of the frontal lobe and the thalamus” was the “miracle” that relieved her suffering.

It may well be, as has long been suggested, that there are many different kinds of schizophrenia or manic depression, each with a different cause, and differences in patient response reflect this variability. But since no one has ever come up with a reliable way of telling which patient is likely to respond to which treatment, such a claim has no practical import. Thousands of research studies and decades of work can still be summarized in one phrase: no treatment works for everybody, and every treatment works for some.”

Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World [pags 389/390]

Talking therapy vs chemicals

"The doctor–patient relationship, which the Lodge viewed as an enchanted bond, was remade by the language of corporate culture. Psychiatrists became “providers” and patients were “consumers” whose suffering was summarised with diagnoses from the DSM. “Madness has become an industrialised product to be managed efficiently and rationally in a timely manner,” wrote the anthropologist Alistair Donald in his 2001 essay The Wal-Marting of American Psychiatry. “The real patient has been replaced by behavioural descriptions and so has become unknown.”"

O artigo: aqui 

Alan Stone: aqui

Dr. Harold F. Searles - Case Study - Borderline Part 1 of 2

Dr. Harold F. Searles - Case Study - Borderline Part 1 of 2

George Fullard

"The power of the survivor is the power of the presence in contradiction of what was possible."

[George Fullard]

Mais, aqui

Loneliness

"Struggling to articulate the experience of her psychotic patients — "the history of the lonely ones" — Frieda was painfully aware of the obstacles that faced her: "People who are in the grip of severe degrees of loneliness cannot talk about it; and people who have at some time in the past had such an experience can seldom do so either, for it is so frightening and uncanny in character that they try to dissociate the memory of what it was like, and even the fear of it." Psychiatrists, she admitted, "must resign themselves to describing [loneliness] in terms of peoples defenses against it," like physicists portraying invisible particles in terms of the residual trace of their movements. Actually, Frieda noted, it was worse than this: defenses didn't appear until the "all-engulfing intensity" of the feeling decreased; the "naked horror" of real loneliness, "beyond anxiety and tension," made even defenses "seem out of reach."

Faced with the irony of trying to write about something that, by her own admission, couldn't be described, Frieda did the best she could, relying on accounts by polar explorers, shipwrecked sailors, inmates in solitary confinement, and subjects in sensory deprivation experiments. In each of these situations, she noted, psychotic disintegration occurred if relationships weren't reinstated.

(Frieda argued that many of the phenomena categorized as "anxiety" (e.g., separation anxiety) were better described as loneliness or the fear of it. She saw psychiatrists as being so overwhelmingly focused on anxiety as to neglect the systematic study of the important emotional states, including grief, hope, pain, and envy, as well as the loneliness to which her own attention was drawn)."

[pags 306 e 434]

Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World 

Loneliness

"To Heinz Kohut's classic question, "How does analysis cure?" Frieda had a clear answer: the relationship with the therapist heals the loneliness that lies at the root of all mental illness. A person can't act like others if he feels completely isolated. [...] The loneliness of mental illness, Frieda emphasized, is nothing like the solitude people seek at the ocean or to do creative work. It is a state of extraordinary anguish in which a person ceases to be able to imagine, much less experience, anyone else being able to enter his experience.

[...] Frieda called loneliness "one of the least satisfactorily conceptualized psychological phenomena" and noted that it wasn't even mentioned in most psychiatric textbooks (a fact she found astonishing). Among the few analysts to write anything on the topic was Melanie Klein, and like Frieda, she had done this work late in life. Klein emphasized the unsatisfied longing for "an understanding without words," rooted in the earliest relationship with the mother. Frieda stressed the "incommunicable, isolated core — the corollary to our need for interpersonal intimacy."

Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World [pags 305/306]

da veemência

Ele há gente que afirma certas coisas com tanta veemência que parece mais estar a negar a si própria o acesso à possibilidade de estarem enganadas.

Addiction

Addiction I Full Documentary I NOVA I PBS

I am not your negro

James Baldwin: Great Writers of the 20th Century

There is no meaning - Before thought arises, what are you?

Awakening: It Ain't What You "Think" – LIVE

The six sense gates: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste, Thought

 

Outros links:

Jim Newman

Angelo Dilullo

Suzanne Chang

Douglas Harding

As Terças com Morrie

 Morrie Shwartz, sociólogo, que trabalhou durante vários anos com Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, morreu na .sequência de uma esclerose lateral amiotrófica.

Resolveu partilhar com quem quisesse, o seu processo de morte.

Mitch Albom, um seu antigo aluno, publicou o livro, As Terças com Morrie.

Ted Koppel também o foi entrevistando regularmente até ao fim.

"Identify the way in which you want to die. With fear, sorrow, rage, gentleness, acceptance, welcoming, denial, with awe or serenity.

You may go through each of those responses, but try to dig deep for your courage and stick with the one you want most..."

Morrie Shwartz

(Tuesdays with) Morrie Schwartz: Lessons on Living, Ted Koppel Nightline...

On poverty

Right Wingers Are Lying to You About Poverty (Mark Rank Interview)

About Mark Rank: here

Intuição e teoria

"Rules of technique in Psychoanalysis are invented at points of ambiguity, to help therapists feel their way along the edges of the unexplored. A patient who can tolerate the precariousness of such a place can sometimes help to show the way, much as moonlight, striking at the right angle, can guide a lost traveler through dense woods. This is what makes Anna O. and R. N. such powerful models: they were courageous enough to work right at the edge of the darkness.

Patients like this are desperate to have therapists who can bravely accompany them into the depths. Mental illness is exhausting. Having to add the burden of the therapist's fear can make it unendurable. Patients know they can't cure themselves. They need doctors who can bear witness to the terror and reclaim them from its power.

Many really gifted clinicians, like Ferenczi and Frieda, are unable fully to explain why they do certain things; they can only say what they tried. This is why Ferenczi's most important work is his 'Clinical Diary' and Frieda's is a text, 'Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy', a diary of a different kind.

Like people with exceptional skill of any kind, therapists like this do what feels right at the moment, making subtle adjustments as they go along. Attending simultaneously to many levels, they trust their intuitions, letting the patient's unconscious mingle with their own. They allow themselves to be guided "by instinct," whether or not they can explain what this means. Freud was just the opposite — better at describing his method than using it. But his descriptions were so brilliant and seductive that analysts have come to value theory over clinical accomplishment.  Frieda may have helped to heal her patients, sometimes even the sickest ones, but she couldn't explain how she did this, which is why Freud has followers and Frieda doesn't."

Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World [pag 158]

The body keeps the score - Polyvagal theory

Stephen Porges - Polyvagal Theory: how your body makes the decision

Stephen Porges: about

Vagus nerve: here and here

Neuroception: here

Polyvagal Institute: here

The gut-brain axis: here

Frieda

"Every time Frieda rotated closer to Klara [mother], she would occupy a bit more of the central sphere. When their combined intensity threatened to overwhelm Adolf [father] completely, Frieda would float over in his direction and temporarily balance things. Her alliances with her father, although infrequent, provided an essential counterweight to Klara's power, creating a degree of harmony in the family that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. In later life, Frieda's colleagues would wonder how she managed to be on everyone's side and get what she wanted at the same time. They didn't understand that having mastered the art of wrapping her father around her little finger while embracing her mother with the other hand, Frieda could endear herself to people at cross purposes without even noticing what she was doing. No one in her family had the slightest idea that this would prove ideal training for a psychiatrist "

Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World [pag 15]

of patience

"For Frieda, treatment of mental illness was like physical therapy after stroke: a painstaking exercise in hope. Improvement was unpredictable, and was often followed by relapse or deterioration. Recovery, to the extent it was present, proceeded at an agonisingly slow pace. It was natural for the doctor to have periods of discouragement, even real despair, but he couldn't afford to give up, no matter how many setbacks there were. A patient had to have at least one person who could imagine the possibility of his getting well. Frieda thought the reason most psychiatrists failed at their work wasn't because their methods were ineffective, but because they gave up too soon."

Gail A. Hornstein, "To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World, The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann [pag xvii]

About Chestnut Lodge: here

escritos

De estados adultos em construção... / reflexões de uma confinada

Ou... As emoções enquanto âncoras...

Enquanto uns aguardam que a física quântica venha dar sentido às suas vidas, ocorre-me que a poesia, os contos de fadas e a arte, em geral, ajudam a nossa persistente criança interior a conviver com o facto de que a verdadeira condição de ser adulto é comparável a flutuarmos no espaço cósmico enquanto tentamos evitar colidir com objetos que passam voando aleatoriamente. A segurança e o conforto de um cordão umbilical já eram...

While some wait for quantum physics to give meaning to their lives, it occurs to me that poetry, fairy tales and art, in general, help our persistent inner child live with the fact that the true condition of adulthood is comparable to floating in cosmic space while trying to avoid colliding with objects that fly by randomly. The safety and comfort of an umbilical cord is long gone...

Imagem de Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison: "suspended field"

da familiaridade

Fui ao YouTube à procura dum clip do filme Smoke, em que William Hurt conta a história do escritor russo, Bakhtin, que escondido dos nazis no seu apartamento, usa, uma a uma, as páginas do manuscrito de um ensaio ao qual tinha dedicado dez anos de trabalho, como mortalhas para enrolar os seus cigarros.

Não encontrei esse clip. Encontrei outros em que, entretanto, me perdi deliciada.

O filme, Smoke (guião de Paul Auster), é um dos que, sem sombra de dúvida, levaria comigo para uma ilha deserta. William Hurt e Harvey Keitel são gigantes. 

O que adoro neste filme, neste grande 'conto' feito de pequenos contos — histórias partilhadas, episódios de vidas, registos de momentos que, por sua vez, contam outras histórias — é o subtil fio condutor daquilo que nos é familiar enquanto espécie humana.

Nada melhor do que uma tabacaria de esquina onde o 'disfarce'/denominador comum é o fumo. O 'fumo' reúne diversidade. Uma amostra de diversidade numa tabacaria de esquina (claro!).

 #avidadebairroéfixe #nãoSomosUmBandoDeDesconhecidos

 

Smoke. Escena álbum de fotos. (Subtitulada)

Platão no Matrix

"No interior de uma gruta, uns indivíduos permanecem acorrentados de costas para uma fogueira chamejante. Os reclusos só vêem o movimento das sombras projectadas sobre as paredes da caverna, e essas sombras constituem a sua única realidade. Finalmente, um deles liberta-se da clausura e aventura-se a sair da caverna, rumo ao mundo que se estende para além das hipnóticas projeções. Neste relato há um belíssimo convite à dúvida, à não conformação com as aparências, à quebra das amarras e ao abandono dos preconceitos para olhar para a realidade de frente. A saga cinematográfica Matrix adaptou a mensagem rebelde desta alegoria ao mundo contemporâneo da realidade virtual, da aldeia mediática, dos mundos paralelos da publicidade e do consumismo, dos boatos da Internet e das autobiografias maquilhadas que fabricamos para as redes sociais."

Irene Vallejo, O Infinito num Junco [pag 209]