maandag 1 december 2014

PARADISE OR WISDOM

As fetuses and infants we live with subconscious illusions of total comfort, perfection, grandiosity, timelessness, limitlessness, centrality, almightiness and total control. We usually overcome such paradisiacal illusions only to a certain extent and ban, under pressures of the social and physical environment, other parts of those illusions to the back of our minds. Developmental psychology has been demonstrating those features since the 1970s.

Now, when conditions allow, those subconsciously remaining parts of infant illusions can grasp their chances, come back to the fore and infuse our feeling, thinking and acting. Growing wealth, social power, spiritual enlightenment, technology or car driving, for instance, can remobilize our undigested paradisiacal illusions, until real life unmasks our reappeared fantasies.

For quite some prominent people, overcoming the subconscious paradisiacal illusions of early childhood is just too hard. Instead of helping them to deal with reality on the ground, their fame or power inflated their illusions and made them derail, even to a fatal extent.

Exposed rapists such as IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn and American TV hero Bill Cosby, or the  fatally addicted singer Amy Winehouse are recent examples.




Others, on the other hand, are fortunately in a position where they can honestly and courageously confront themselves with early paradisiacal illusions that are still lurking in them. They may even develop real wisdom.



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