Ben Cole @Bencool89

1/There is actually a fascinating history of this process. Ties to Barry Goldwater and Ralph Ginzburg and the evil lawyer from Oppenheimer. It may as well start with Walter Charles Langer, born in 1899 he traveled to Vienna to study psychoanalysis under Anna Freud for some reason

@proud_penelope Thats great!

@KemtrupTweets I would die if I were not on medications. Modern medicine had doubled life expectancy in our country. I agree with you! There's no need to make these false distinctions.

@the_mel_jar Are you sure it isn't worksheets?

Rousseau → Attachment-oriented therapy: You’re born good and harmed by others. Hobbes → Klein: You weren’t born so innocent—you have destructive (vs. selfish) impulses that need to be survived and integrated (vs. contained).

@the_mel_jar I'M GONNA GET IT THIS TIME!

It’s 3:14pm PST on a Friday. How are you planning on enjoying your symptom both now and then throughout your weekend and then your life?

@the_mel_jar I look forward to reading it! I have enjoyed your posts on here for the past couple years and it has really given me a lot of think about in psychoanalysis!

@the_mel_jar You are very welcome! It really provided a great perspective to re-examine it. Perhaps you will write a bit on this(I hope)?

Why we love the idea that anger is masking the deeper issue: 1) because we are uncomfortable with our own anger and wish to believe that we are neither ruled or defined by it, or that we have mastered it; 2) because we are uncomfortable with others’ anger, as it is unattractive and repellent to us, and it is difficult for us to remain compassionate and understanding in the face of true rage, unless we can make meaning of the deeper pain involved. Of course, deeper pain IS involved. It’s just that a natural reaction to such pain is, in fact, anger. So “anger” is very often the exact thing we should learn to be capable of experiencing for ourselves, and experiencing in others, when it’s finally accessible and feels safe to admit to feeling, and to share this feeling. The entire process of “civilization,” particularly in Western civilization contexts, has been predicated on us recognizing our anger and its potential for destruction, and so “channeling” it in “appropriate” outlets so that we do not destroy our own families, communities, and selves. For women, this process has been even more repressive. Hundreds of years of women’s socialization in particular has resulted in “rage” itself — despite being one of the first expressions of affect that is clearly seen in any newborn human being or in any primate species — being categorized as unfeminine, unattractive, and often indicative of deep pathology, in women especially. Women intuitively understand that to be called “angry” is not only a deep insult in terms of our character, but it is also an insult in terms of our gender conformity and identity. It is saying that we are unwell. Though this is true for when men are accused of being “too angry” as well, the bar is much lower for women. Being called a “bitch,” or “cunt,” or “hag,” or “witch,” all communicate the same thing: “you are an angry woman.” Women’s violence is felt emotionally, subjectively, and irrationally, by men and women alike, to be maybe ten or a hundred times more upsetting than men’s violence, no matter what the generalized results of the different forms of violence happen to be. This is perhaps because of the fact that a woman’s anger would have led to our deaths as infants, had mother given into her rage. So we are primed to be especially fearful of women’s rage all the rest of our lives. We should not trust ourselves to be objective judges of our anger. If you feel compelled to say, “I was once very angry, but I worked through this,” or “I don’t really feel anger, as I feel ____” then you are either still in the dark about this one, your primal feelings, OR you are participating in the ongoing required social norms and rituals of civilization — which is fair, as we can’t really escape these, we can only become more conscious of them. We don’t need to continue to deny our compulsion to deny anger. But confrontation sucks. After all, Freud, Klein, etc. were not actually rejected simply because of their insistence on using sex and biology as ways to make sense of human psychology. It was because they would not say what people most wanted to hear, which is that humans are primed MORE towards love and cooperation in the collective, rather than destructive rage. Love and cooperation must be taught beginning in one’s infancy via the experience of nurture and care, but even this experience does not make rage go away. It does not diminish our capacity for rage, it just tempers it and allows us to control it more effectively, at best. Without this experience, then we will still have our rage. No one needs to teach us any innate emotion that we must have the capacity to feel in order to ensure our survival. Without the experience of love and nurture as a means to ensure our survival, then it is not seen as something to our advantage. It is instead seen as a weakness. Ensuring that one is cared for and loved is often the survival strategy of dependency. And this, too, is why women may deny our anger.

@proud_penelope Great post!

@the_mel_jar Ahahahahahaha

@the_mel_jar I never really knew what to make of that feeling until Lacan.

"I live in the bay" oh cool, like the one where the watermelons grow?

Here's the danger of social media. It allows people to publish their internal monologues. Our internal monologues and fantasies are often incredibly ugly. People go to therapists because they feel so guilty about them, and one of the tasks of a therapist is to explain that 1/

“… Winnicott discusses elements of psychoanalysis that we have neglected, that we have allowed to escape our attention. The story of psychoanalysis, from its beginnings to the present day is, in part, the history of movements of people who have suffered persecutions. It is…”

@JayceLong Beautiful!

@the_mel_jar @jesusrglez @FieryKittyPie @MockClay Fantastic book. A good one to go back over from time to time!