Patrick Watts

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8 infirmities [beware of men]

8 infirmities by Isaac Watts 1600-1700

1) Beware of one who appears  reserved, silent and withdraws from difficult topics, who appears to have no inclination to discourse, no tolerable capacity of speech and language for the communication of his sentiments.

2) Beware of one who appears haughty and proud of his knowledge, imperious in his airs, and is always fond of imposing his sentiments on all the company.

3) Beware of one who appears positive and dogmatical in his own opinions and will to dispute to the end; who resists the brightest evidence of truth rather than suffer himself to be overcome, or yield to the plainest or strongest of reasoning’s.

4) Beware of one who appears always to affects to outshine all the company, whilst rest must be silent and attentive.

5) Beware of one who appears whiffing and unsteady turn of mind, who cannot keep close to a point of controversy, but wanders from it perpetually and is always asking to say something, whether it be pertinent the question or not.

6) Beware of one who appears fretful and peevish and given to resentment  upon all occasions; if he know not how to bear contradiction or is ready to take things in the wrong sense; if he be swift to feel a supposed offence or to imagine himself affronted and then break out into a sudden passion or retain silent and sullen wrath.

7) Beware of one who appears to affect wit on all occasions and is full of his conceits and puns quirks and quibbles jests and repartees; these may agreeably entertain and animate an hour of mirth, but they have no place in the search after truth.

8) Beware of one who appears to carry always about him a sort of craft, and cunning, and disguise and act rather like a spy than a friend.  Beware, for such a one will make an ill use of freedom in conversation, and immediately charge upon you.

When Christ said, “beware of men”, I wonder if that warning did not imply this: “beware lest through men, that is, through perpetual comparison with other men, through habit and externalities, you allow yourself to be defrauded of the supreme good.” [Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, pg. 293]

malicious interviewing

One trait that I dislike in people is malicious interviewing, which is a type of interrogating that involves asking questions that have no respectable answer, the questions are not designed to produce insight and clarity, but rather, to activate fear. In a malicious interview what they essentially want to know is how big is your dick, what terrible deeds have you done, why you look so weak, how many trophy’s do you have for what, and how much money do you have. Everything else is superfluous. It’s like, “Just tell us that, now.”

Maturity sees that there are no literal answers, and that personal and private knowledge is precisely that, personal, and therefore such knowledge is easily abused.

So, from a universal and impersonal view, we might say that we want to reinforce a curiosity that goes beyond the individual, as Marie Currie said, “be more curious about ideas, and less curious about people.”

the scholar’s gown

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology.

He would be better advised to put away his scholar’s gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.

There, in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, Socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with real knowledge of the human soul. ~Carl Jung, CW 7 Para 409, ‎Lewis Lafontaine‎ to Carl Jung Depth Psychology

[Carl Jung on “Therapist” from: Lewis Lafontaine‎]

From: Lewis Lafontaine‎ to Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Wisdom never forgets that all things have two sides, and it would also know how to avoid such calamities if ever it had any power. ~Carl Jung, Mysterium Conjunctionis, Para 135

As therapists we are subject to the unavoidable destinies of our patients. ~Carl Jung; Conversations with C.G. Jung, Psychotherapy, Page 113.

Dreams are often anticipatory and would lose their specific meaning on a purely causalistic view. They afford unmistakable information about the analytical situation, the correct understanding of which is of the greatest therapeutic importance. ~Carl Jung; “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy; Page 312.

There are analysts who believe that they can get along without self-analysis. This is Munchausen psychology, and they will certainly remain stuck. They forget that one of the most important therapeutically effective factors is subjecting you to the objective judgment of another. As regards ourselves we remain blind, despite everything and everybody. Carl Jung; “The Theory of Psychoanalysis”; CW 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis; Page 449.

All religions are therapies for the sorrows and disorders of the soul.” ~Carl Jung; “Commentary to The Secret of the Golden Flower”, 1929.

One has to remind oneself again and again that in therapy it is more important for the patient to understand than for the analyst’s theoretical expectations to be satisfied. The patient’s resistance to the analyst is not necessarily wrong; it is rather a sign that something does not “click.” Either the patient is not yet at a point where he would be able to understand, or the interpretation does not fit. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols. (1964) Essay retitled “Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams” In CW 18: P.61

The new attitude gained in the course of analysis tends sooner or later to become inadequate in one way or another, and necessarily so, because the flow of life again and again demands fresh adaptation. Adaptation is never achieved once and for all.…In the last resort it is highly improbable that there could ever be a therapy which got rid of all difficulties. Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health. What concerns us here is only an excessive amount of them. ~Carl Jung; CW 9; The Transcendent Function.

When I was working on the stone tablets, I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Pages 233-234.

He [the psychotherapist] is not just working for this particular patient, who may be quite insignificant, but for himself as well and his own soul, and in so doing he is perhaps laying an infinitesimal grain in the scales of humanity’s soul. Small and invisible as this contribution may be, it is yet an opus magnum. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, par. 449.

…as a psychotherapist I do not by any means try to deliver my patients from fear. Rather, I lead them to the reason for their fear, and then it becomes clear that it is justified. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 398-400.

I think that if you immerse yourself in my thought-processes without regarding them as a new gospel, a light will gradually go up for you about the nature of psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 455-456.

The psychotherapist must be a philosopher in the old sense of the word. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 455-456.

It is of course essential for the psychotherapist to have a fair knowledge of himself, for anyone who does not understand himself cannot understand others and can never be psychotherapeutically effective unless he has first treated himself with the same medicine. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 455-456.

The psychiatrist understands nothing of psychotherapy in principle because he is never in the position of having to practice it. One could just as well subordinate internal medicine to surgery. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 163.

To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Pages 399-403.

There were and there are simply not enough doctors who have any reliable training in psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 542-544.

Hence I am all for the psychotherapist calmly acknowledging that he treats and cures neither with diet nor pills nor with the surgeon’s knife. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 178-180.

He[A patient being referred] is desperate for therapy, and needs it too—as he basically consists of an intellectual halo wandering lonely and footless through the world. ~Carl Jung to Erich Neumann, 11Sept1933.

Music is dealing with such deep archetypal material with boots as swift as and those who play don’t realize this. Yet, used therapeutically from this level music should be an essential part of every analysis ~Carl Jung, J.E.T., Page 126.

Music is dealing with such deep archetypal material and those who play don’t realize this. Yet, used therapeutically from this level music should be an essential part of every analysis. ~C.G. Jung Speaking, Page 89.

I maintained that psychiatry, in the broadest sense, is a dialogue between the sick psyche and the psyche of the doctor, which is presumed to be ‘normal.’ It is a coming to terms between the sick personality and that of the therapist, both in principle equally subjective. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 110.

In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality. ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 117.

One has to remind oneself again and again that in therapy it is more important for the patient to understand than for the analyst’s theoretical expectations to be satisfied. ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 61.

I practice psychology in the first place as a science, in the second place as an instrument of psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 56-57.

I have had a number of TB patients in my time and some really excellent results with psychotherapy, but it is true that the average somatic case generally has a resistance to a psychological approach, particularly the TB patients, since TB is, in a way a “pneumatic” disease, that is, affecting the life-giving breath. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 100-101

Altogether, you are practising on me an extremely beneficial Psychotherapy of a special kind, giving me the valuable experience of what I can only call “meaningful collaboration,” a working together in spirit and in deed. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 360.

In some cases of psychotherapeutic treatment, contact with the sphere of the archetypes can produce the kind of constellation that underlies synchronicity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 498-500

I also observed that a large number of my neurotic patients who were tubercular were “freed” from their complexes under psychotherapeutic treatment, learnt to breathe properly again and in the end were cured. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 533-534

I don’t see where you get the impression that I might be discouraged in this respect, since I was the first to emphasize the enormous role religion plays particularly in the individuation process, as I was the first to raise the question of the relation between psychotherapy and religion in its practical aspects. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 566

It was actually through my therapeutic work that I began to understand the essence of the Christian faith. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 631-632

The theologian, the only person besides the psychotherapist to declare himself responsible for the cura animarum, is afraid of having to think psychologically about the objects of his belief. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 628-630

It [Individuation] is not a therapy. Is it therapy when a cat becomes a cat? It is a natural process. Individuation is a natural process. It is what makes a tree turn into a tree; if it is interfered with, then it becomes sick and cannot function as a tree, but left to itself it develops into a tree. That is individuation. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking; Interviews and Encounters, Pages 205-218

But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and in as much as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 377

On the contrary, when I began my career as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I was completely ignorant of Chinese philosophy, and only later did my professional experience show me that in my technique I had been unconsciously following that secret way which for centuries had been the preoccupation of the best minds of the East. ~Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 10

Freud rightly recognized that this bond is of greatest therapeutic importance in that it gives rise to a mixtum compositum [composite mixture] of the doctor’s own mental health and the patient’s maladjustment. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 358.

The therapist must be guided by the patient’s own irrationalities. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 82.

A therapist with a neurosis is a contradiction in terms. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 179

The great healing factor in psychotherapy is the doctor’s personality. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Para 198.

Therefore our Lord himself is a healer; he is a doctor; he heals the sick and he deals with the troubles of the soul; and that is exactly what we call psychotherapy. ~Carl Jung, CW 18, Para 370

Hence the optimistic assumption of psychotherapy that conscious realization accentuates the good more than the overshadowing evil. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 253-254.

Depending on the peculiar nature of the case the most primitive therapeutic methods can achieve even better results than the most refined. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 324

But the task of the Church is not the same as that of psychotherapy. The Church means serving the community, therapy serves the individual. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Page 235

 

From: Lewis Lafontaine‎ to Carl Jung Depth Psychology

Primitives are more honest

Primitives are more honest: everything which comes to them unexpectedly from within they call spirit; not only that which is bad and which possesses one, but anything of which they would say: ”My ego did not make it, it suddenly came to me” that is spirit. In the latter case, when the spirit is still outside, when I get possessed by having to say or do something which seems not to belong to my ego, then it is a projected aspect of my unconscious; it is a part of my unconscious psyche which is projected and then experienced as a para-psychological phenomenon.

That happens when you get into a state in which you are not yourself, or into an emotional upset where you lose control of yourself, but afterwards wake up completely sober and look at the stupid things you did during your possessed state and wonder what got into you: something got hold of you, you weren’t yourself, though while you were behaving like that you thought you were it was just as if an evil spirit or the devil had got into you.

http://carljungdepthpsychology.blogspot.ca/…/on-divination-…

Unknown Soldier

Not many people know of this person. He is not really the best at anything, and he has some despicable and silly habits. I often find myself laughing at him affectionately. He doesn’t ask me too many questions, and he can ramble quite wildly. Sometimes he shows up drunk, talks too loud, and walks with a lack of grace and coordination. If he starts to demand access to too many of the available resources in the room, I will sometimes threaten to throw him out. He has some charming hobbies that I admire. If he’s ever unpredictable, it’s because he’s doing what he always does. That’s just who he is. He doesn’t make me feel very important.

This person is a friend.

Conduits

Should we treat people like reference points within our own narrative?

Should we see people as conduits?

Is it ever appropriate to seek an expectation from this particular conduit we call “someone?”