#455 Learning to Open Up to & Depend on Others

     "In Roger Ebert’s review of Sean Penn’s poignant movie of Into the Wild, Ebert wrote, 'This is a reflective, regretful, serious film about a young man swept away by his uncompromising choices. Two of the more truthful statements in recent culture are that we need a little help from our friends, and that sometimes we must depend on the kindness of strangers.
     If you don't know those two things & accept them, you will end up eventually in a bus of one kind or another.'"

The Search for Meaning
Science, spirituality, and our desire for satisfaction
by Galen Guengerich PhD
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-search-meaning/201304/roger-ebert-s-secret-success

P1xels   www.dpreview.com

#370 Everyone's Doing the Best They Can With What They Have

     How do we understand statements like: "Be kind, for everyone is carrying a heavy load" or "Walk a mile in his shoes"? Can we give ourselves & others a break? This is how mental health professionals understand how we're able to muddle through our challenging life:

     “The synthetic function of the ego refers to the self's capacity to integrate various aspects of its functioning. This function of the ego involves the capacity to unite, organize, and bind together various drives, motives, tendencies, and functions within the personality, enabling the individual to think, feel, and act in an organized and directed manner. Briefly, the synthetic function is concerned with the overall organization and functioning of the ego in the self-system and consequently must enlist the cooperation of other ego and nonego functions in its operation. Although the synthetic function subserves adaptive functioning in the self, it may also bring together various forces in a way that, although not completely adaptive, is an optimal solution for the individual in a particular state at a given moment or period of time. Thus, the formation of a symptom that represents a compromise of opposing tendencies, although unpleasant in some degree, is nonetheless preferable to yielding to a dangerous instinctual impulse or, conversely, trying to stifle the impulse completely. Hysterical conversion, for example, combines a forbidden wish and the punishment for it into a physical symptom. On examination, the symptom often turns out to be the only possible compromise under the circumstances.”

       Meissner WW. Classical Psychoanalysis. in Sadock BJ, Sadock VA, Ruiz P eds. Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. 9th ed, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009. 

 

Jack Simpson   www.dpreview.com