Is David Brooks reading Mockingbird? Or is Mockingbird covertly getting its wisdom from one of the 1950s’ lesser known psychoanalysts, Karen Horney? Either way, in a deeply clairvoyant op-ed about the pluses and minuses of cognitive behavior therapy, Mr. Brooks looks at what’s missing from today’s preferred form of self-knowing, which seems to be more focused on “behavior modification” and “identifying distorted thinking habits.” Not that these things are bad–Brooks actually prefers the cognitive behavioral school to Freudian or Jungian analysis–it just means that people are less versed in talking about personality traits and general neuroses. Brooks uses that platform to…
Adam Phillips on Why You Are a Fundamentalist
From the psychoanalyst’s essay, “On What Is Fundamental” from his book On Balance:
And yet, of course–and this is the kind of move that psychoanalysis has made all too available to us–we are all fundamentalists about something. There must be, psychoanalysis might tell us, to put it in as silly a way as possible, a fundamentalist in all of us; we may think of ourselves consciously so to speak as liberals and modernists, but what these relatively new forms of self-description are up against is a more old-fashioned, even archaic inner fundamentalist.
…We are free to speak (as the democrat defends) so…
Populist, Piggishly Nostalgic Do-It-Yourselfers: Our Pictures of Ourselves in 2011
The Atlantic has always done a splendid job with immediate meta-cognition, at taking a few steps back from the cogs of the e’er-turning world “spinning madly on,” and communicating not only what’s going on, but what’s going on behind what’s, uh, going on. It’s hard not to celebrate journalism that is doing this kind of work–and we’re completely unbiased here–the kind that looks deeply into what we’re looking at everyday anyways, and asks what frameworks are at play. The news behind the news, in other words. It’s not always good news, but there’s something good about analyzing what greater narratives…
Fancies of Satisfaction: A Psychoanalysis of Pain, Pleasure, and the Good Life
The New York Times blog snagged a brilliant interview with British philosopher and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on Western culture’s fixation with happiness. According to Phillips, this notion that a good life is a happy life is a detrimental misnomer that consequently drives the individual into deeper dissatisfaction. Insofar as pain happens regardless, the pursuit of happiness is an unachievable end, an ideal unrealized. This cultural philosophy is fundamentally hedonistic, “evacuating pain” and caulking the holes with something more palatable. It sees pain as a privation–an appetite–and in fear seeks to substitute the appetite with an overfeeding of the wrong kind…
Tam: oh man, that last paragraph. I really needed that today. Thanks....
Marianne Brian: Loved it. So, so true! I love Ethanisms, as well!...
David Zahl: Wonderful, wonderful piece, E. I'm almost tempted to call it 'charming...
Rebecca W: I saw this column and loved it too. Thanks for highlighting his book s...
Shawn Smith: Well said!...