Does Anyone Really Understand?

What does December 2010 bring up for me? Enlightenment and closure on 2007, from an investigative point of view! If we were to apply a principle in psychology that most things that we think about are influenced by triggers that go back to ‘the previous trigger, then the previous trigger and so on’ (Charcot). I am talking here about related pictures or scenes that we remember, that may take us back to the first operative scene of trauma (Freud). It would be plausible then to accept that all this activity on this blog is normal, even though some might find it a neurotic activity. When did it ever become abnormal to express overwhelming emotions?

Having recently scanned Facebook to find out what everyone else is up to and where I sit in the stream of time, I have come up with “nothing new under the sun ...”, an old bible quotation. However, what I will say is one of the most complicated and sought after thing in anyone’s world is “relationship”. I say this because I happened to be up at 1 am one morning thinking and writing about how relationship has worked out for me since 2007, when I thought that I was in a relationship for life, believing that I knew the person I devoted myself to. I have now since accepted that it is impossible to really know anyone completely, let alone the desire to conduct a personal self-analysis, as we are all on a journey of self-discovery aren’t we. This epiphany has therefore released me from my punitive superego, that is, that moral code, to get every single thing right in the context of relationship; total gibberish.

On the other hand, 2010 had produced many achievements for me, I dare say and yet an awareness of certain failures, that I now have an opportunity to make better in 2011, if I choose to give positive energy to it!

One delightful challenge is to read approximately 24 books this year on Freud’s Complete Psychological works, so where will I possibly have the time to focus on negative energy? On reflection, it seems a futile exercise to go back in my neurology to try to put right what was wrong; therefore, maybe I can do well with remembering Freud’s notion of “forgetting”, even though it might 'trigger' remembering what I don’t want to remember! I put my hands up – it’s a defence, but who cares, we all use defences to some extent don’t we – it’s only human.

I seem to spend some time each day relaxing and pondering on where my brain is going to take me now, as it does have this pattern of exploring the most complex level of thought and contemporary psychodynamic theories of how it applies in the 21st Century, these days. This is one of the reasons for my trips to London every week, for some lively and interesting complex debate and discussions, although there is a deeper quest for understanding conflict in our internal and external world, with a view of finding the key to deeper happiness, which could well be the focus or attention to “now”. It makes sense then to take a look at the comparisons of Freud and Jung on the theories of sexuality, neurosis and Jung’s personal creative thoughts on personality types, creativity; first part of life and individuation; second part of life. Somehow I am beginning to feel that there might have been an unconscious theme of intention to achieve certain aspects of the purpose in life that Jung devoted his life to.

However, I will end today, on ‘what a person thinks they might know about me’, in the context of the art of knowing or understanding which is often pointless without action. We are all good listeners aren’t we and great reflectors when someone says something, as if, perhaps we were the original thinker’s behind the thought, when it was likely something that we have already heard as the facts from “the horse’s mouth”.

There we are, just a little muse on the art of knowing, the use of knowing, and a kind of knowing that produced ‘no action’ and probably an end to relations.

 

 

WHAT IT IS TO KNOW


I wonder if what it is to know

Is to show whether you really

Understand the internal flow



Of the pain, hurt and confusion

That led to the delusion

That later emerged as an illusion.



So, is the art of knowing merely to have

A set of facts based on following

Certain tracks, or were you merely distracted,



Just for a moment, when you

Remembered that I and others as objects existed.

Jennifer Hooper (c) Dec 2010