PART 1 A Larger Jurisdiction for Psychology
Introduction: Toward a Psychology of Health
The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling away from species-virtue, every crime against one’s own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious and makes us despise ourselves. (Location 244)
Theologians used to use the word “accidie”to describe the sin of failing to do with one’s life all that one knows one could do. (Location 249)
To oversimplify the matter somewhat, it is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half. (Location 251)
What Psychology Can Learn from the Existentialists
The thing to do seems to be to find out what you are really like inside, deep down, as a member of the human species and as a particular individual. (Location 237)
The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling away from species-virtue, every crime against one’s own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious and makes us despise ourselves. ... If we do something we are ashamed of, it “registers”to our discredit, and if we do something honest or fine or good, it “registers”to our credit. (Location 244)
growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict. (Location 278)
Is growth and self-fulfillment possible at all without pain and grief and sorrow and turmoil? If these are to some extent necessary and unavoidable, then to what extent? If grief and pain are sometimes necessary for growth of the person, then we must learn not to protect people from them automatically as if they were always bad. Sometimes they may be good and desirable in view of the ultimate good consequences. Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of over-protection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual. (Location 298)