Category Archives: psychology

The Advantages of Being Conventional

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[Written around 2004.]

The world loves the conventional. No one attacks you. No one hates you. No one criticizes you. No one rejects you. No one steps on your toes while at the same time accusing you of stepping on theirs.

But the conventional are dead. They were long since routed out of the best of themselves. They were long since hated and criticized and civilized into soul-numbing defeat. They were long since divorced from the best their potential had to offer. Their now-loving parents once injected poison into their veins. Continue reading →

Dreams and Traumatic Experiences Are Flip Sides of the Same Coin

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[Written around 2005.]

Dreams and traumatic experiences have much in common.

Both involve intense emotion, though in traumatic experiences the emotion results from external stimuli, whereas in dreams it comes from internal flashbacks of the split-off trauma we carry in our psyche.  No surprise that adults and children with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder often have terrible flashbacks in their dreams. Continue reading →

Dissatisfaction is Mentally Healthy

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[written in 2004]

In a world as troubled as ours, dissatisfaction is an excellent sign of mental health. Certainly there is nothing more motivating for growth than dissatisfaction. It is the root of struggle, and thus evolution. No one struggles because he wishes to, but rather because it is his calling in life. His home is the mountainside. Yet some have been granted their wish of a home on the plateau. They are the upholders of emotional compromise, and the “normal” world idealizes them for their beauty and poise. They are the world’s happy people – on the surface. Continue reading →

Genetics Behind Psychopathology: A Convenient Excuse for Parents

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[Written around 2007.]

By and large I do not believe genetics to be behind such psychological “disorders” known as schizophrenia, depression, autism, and bipolar. I believe that psychological trauma and other environment horrors lie at their root far more than most are willing to concede – or even imagine. And yet the psychological field so often promotes – however scientifically flimsily – genetic origins. Genetic arguments serve to protect the parents – and basically let them off the hook for their pathological, traumatizing behavior. This is convenient. Or is it? Continue reading →

What Constitutes Child Abuse?

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[Written around 2005.]

The definition of child abuse is simple: whenever the spirit of the child is disrespected the child is abused. Abuse of the spirit of the child can take many forms, from the overt forms of child abuse that conventional society is able to accept – such as overt sexual abuse, physical violence and the extremes of neglect – to whole realms of abuse that fall below society’s radar and are considered normal and healthy forms of parenting. Continue reading →

Dissociation Mimics Enlightenment

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[Written in 2004.]

Dissociation (being split-off from one’s deepest truth) mimics enlightenment – but it isn’t enlightenment. People who are dissociated live in great peace. But this is only because they have blocked their negative feelings. The enlightened person resolves his negatives feelings, and thus his peace is not false. Continue reading →

The Fundamentals of My Perspective on “Enlightenment” and Healing from Unresolved Trauma

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[Original essay written around 2006.]

[Introduction/addition, March of 2013: I no longer really use the word “enlightenment” anymore.  As a term it is too loaded — too many people equate it with some sort of Buddhist-like dissociative state, which is the exact opposite of what I’m talking about.  Nowadays, when I am trying to express the concepts I define below as “enlightenment,” I prefer to use the terms “being healthy,” “being real,” “being honest,” having “resolved our inner traumas,” or “being fully conscious.”  I ever prefer the term “self-actualization.”  But since I have used the word “enlightenment” a lot in past incarnations of this website and also in my books, I don’t want to remove the word entirely…  So please take my use of this loaded word with a grain of salt!]

What is enlightenment? Continue reading →