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Social Dis-ease
A Journal of Self Therapy



part one
2001
part two
2002
part three





10-7-1a

A guy I know wears a miniature web cam on his lapel with a sign below it that reads: "You're on a 24/7 live streaming webcast. If you do not wish to be on it, do not encounter me." Of course, he is not actually webcasting, but everyone he meets thinks he is. I love the dichotomy that this psychology creates. It's a great way to meet new people who will ask him about it and, on the other hand, it's a great way to ward off those more fearful, hung-up people who do not want to be seen on the net. When I go out with him, I watch people read the sign and suddenly bolt away. If I didn't know him, I'd be one of those people. And, if I were he, I would never want strangers coming up to me to ask about the webcast. I wouldn't want to be constantly put on the spot to create and justify the fictitious practice, especially when those who ask tend to be high tech knowledgeable. But then, so is my friend. He pretends to upload via his cell phone, which he has "wired" to the cam, and he thrives on being put on the spot, such as when he creates fake URLs on the spur of the moment so that they can surf to his non-existent site. He's a performance artist, but not on the www. I do wish, however, that I could participate in the avoidance half of his performance. I'm trying to think of sign I could wear that would repel people, like those who do not want to be on the webcast are repelled. I thought of something like: "Stay away. I'm a desperate axe-murderer" or maybe more simply, "Do not talk to me. I want to be alone." But I don't like the image of myself that those kinds of signs will create in others' heads. [Re the latter, what I'm really saying is that I don't like myself (my self-image). The former, of course, is a fiction, in case you didn't realize it.] A while ago, I made a t-shirt that, among other things, said: "The voice inside my head is telling me to kill you." I stopped wearing it because of the looks I got from people. I don't handle negative feedback too well. I wish I were a lot more like my friend, who doesn't give a shit what anybody thinks of him. But then, do I really? What does it mean when you are not responsive to social feedback? Are you, then, more of a psychopath? Perhaps. After all, it's conscience, prompted, maybe even entirely created, by social feedback that keeps us all aware of other people and our need to fit into a larger whole. I'd like not to give a shit. I pretend I don't. But if I have to tell the truth, I do. A lot. I can't help it. It's programmed into me. Everyone exists along the sensitizer/repressor spectrum. I happen, for whatever reason, good or ill, to exist very near to the sensitizer end. Oh well.


10-10-1a

I haven't had consistent access to the Internet for almost a month, so I haven't been able to post to my websites. My ISP has eliminated all of the local access numbers. I was using an old version of their software when they first changed the access numbers. They had a message on their automated phone-answering system that said that my local area was one of the few (I'll bet) affected by the WTC disaster. So, being the patient and self-effacing guy that I am, I waited--for two weeks, calling each day to see if the message had changed. Then, I decided to talk to a real person and called customer service. The woman who answered informed me that I could use the new version software to get online. I had already downloaded it, but I didn't like the way it worked (at best) and anyway, it had some bugs (that maybe I created when I installed it by not allowing it to overwrite the old software, but installing it into a different folder.) So, I went back to using the new version of the software, despite its limitations, and I was able to again access the Internet--for four days. Then the ISP changed the access numbers to the same one number that the old version was using, the one number that wouldn't work. So I called them back again, and they said to call back early next (now this) week when the problem should be solved and new access numbers should be available. I called them yesterday. They said the problem should be fixed this week. (They're no longer saying early this week.) But I'm not holding my breath. (Actually, I am, metaphorically speaking.) So, to work around this problem, I've been using my brother's Internet connection, but transferring files to floppies and schlepping them across the township is not my ideal of efficiency. And anyway, two days ago his computer went nuts and is now inoperable. So, my next ploy is to go to the library, which I hate to do because it's inconvenient and they put a time limit on Internet usage. But at least it gives me some access. At least I can upload pages to my site. And it's a good test of this strange and persistent psychic atmosphere. If I start going there and, for whatever reason I am thwarted in my attempts to access the net, then I will have gotten (finally) the message: God, or whom/whatever, doesn't want me on the net. I'm beginning to get paranoid again. Elements of the "system" are conspiring to inhibit my free public-self expression. This is pattern that has been slowly escalating since I lost my last publisher earlier this year. Soon, I may have to resort to a soapbox on the street corner. (If I do, I'm going to head downtown to the University of Pittsburgh where in my college days I could always find a willing audience. But I am not that person now. I'd rather write than talk. Ideas are too precious and ephemeral to allow them to drift away into the cosmos unrecorded. (I guess I could always take along a portable tape recorder.) This is all, probably, a part of the conspiracy. Something/someone wants me to redevelop my spontaneity. I remain too isolated now. (Notice how cleverly I am able to project my own delicate insights away from me, attributing them to some conspiratorial cause, when after all, it is parts of my own (semi-conscious) self that are conspiring against the far more limited ego I have more recently become. [At best, in my life, when I examine it with the best sense of reason I can muster, events conspire metaphorically, not people literally, against me.]


10-10-1c

1728, dining room: A kid, a nephew, about six years old, similar to, but not, one of Aunt Kay and Uncle Bernie's kids, is particularly "taken" with me, but his family is preparing to leave and he's upset, not wanting to reveal any attachment to me, because he has to leave. The kid loves me, but because he must be separated from me, he opts for a detached demeanor. At first, I don't understand (it's unconscious), but as I examine the situation, feeling what he's feeling ("introjecting" his feelings, i.e., empathizing, within the dream), I realize what's up: he feels rejected. He doesn't want to feel what he feels if he has to be separated from me. When I awaken, I don't like this dream. I try to ignore it. But then, I realize, the kid is me. Although I know that the way the kid feels is the way I felt as a child, at first I can't remember any incident from my childhood that would correspond to this feeling. I try to think of a time when I had to go away with my parents (as the kid had to in the dream) and leave someone I loved behind. (Maybe my grandmother; hmm. This could be also.) But then I remember the way I felt when I had to go to school. I hated it. I didn't want to go, not at all. That first day of school was miserable. I can't say for sure, but I must have hated my mother for making me go. Or not hated her, but felt separated from her, so that I had to withdraw into myself, away from her and away from the world, because I couldn't be who I was (a part of her?) when I was out in the world alone. (Actually, the incident I'm remembering is not the first time I had to be away. This is grade school I'm thinking of here, and the first time was Kindergarten, for half-a-day--and that was just as miserable.)
More importantly, I, as the kid, am separated from myself. I have to go away with my parents, i.e., I have to join the adult world. I have to socialize, be with other people. I can no longer live in my isolated world. I can no longer be a loner. This applies as much today as it does to my childhood (of course; Why else would I dream about it?) This could be the beginning of the schizoid split, having to go school. Well, probably I started to split a lot earlier than that. I am telling myself, in my dream, that I must heal by bringing the two parts back together again. But how? Not by remaining isolated, certainly, which forsakes the adult self. And not by becoming sociable, which abandons the child. There must be a third way. But I don't know what it could be. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough. (Or maybe I'm thinking too hard.)


10-24-01b

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'
--Erma Bombeck

Based on this criterion, I will surely go to hell. I am the classic underachiever. In high school, the guidance counselor told my mother that I did not work up to my potential. I have the intellect to have been a great person, but not the ambition, nor the temperament. I always feel too put upon. I mean, who needs that entire hassle anyway? When I worked for a living, I lived in a constant state of stress. So, the idea occurs to me that maybe I actually do live up to my potential and have been living up to it all along. Yes, I think so. The guidance counselor was wrong. Duh.
[Guidance counselors are would-be psychologists who did not themselves live up to their potential, or more probably, like me, who did not have the potential in the first place. Or, they are teachers who could not handle the rigors of a classroom and so became "promoted." It must be obvious by now what I think of guidance counselors. This is based on generalizations made about the state of education in this country and, of course, on the experience I had with the one guidance counselor with whom I had direct interaction. In one way or another, this guy was projecting his self-perceptions onto me, a convenient foist.* And, extrapolating from what I have since learned about human nature in general and educators in particular, I can't believe that things are generally any different anywhere else.]
If I could have been better, developed to a higher social level, gotten better jobs, lived a "fuller" life, I would have. We all do the best we can. Very few of us use everything God gave us. Others things he gave us get too much in the way.

* I know that 'foist' isn't a noun, but if politicians can impact an issue, I can be a foist.


10-27-1a

Good Grief

"Soon as my parents are dead, I'll tell you all about it."
--Jody, "Daria"

According to ordinary people with typical social standards and sensibilities, I'm a terrible person. (This is a difficult confession to put into writing, and yet I'm not at all uncomfortable with it in my own private mind; this points directly to the discrepancy between my ego and my superego.) I didn't mind it at all when my mother died. Nor my father several years before her. I felt no need to grieve. Actually, in my own way, I did grieve. That is, I suffered. But by social standards, it would hardly fit the definition of grief. First of all, it was not at all public, and second, it was extended, mitigated by personal circumstance, and entirely selfish. It was more like an identity crisis brought about by the coincidental loss of my last job and the decision to retire very early from public life. It was more like a functional part of my ongoing battle with my own self than anything resembling grief.
But maybe it can be said that we all grieve in our own way. And that's the point: I don't grieve like anybody else, so that my grief, if in fact that's what it was, and I'm not very certain at all about this, was not based upon the fact that I would miss my parents (because I didn't, and still don't), but on how I would adapt to a world entirely on my own. The point can be made that everyone's grief is exactly that, a concern with how the ego will survive without a person, how it will suffer on its own. But in all "sociable" grief, a very strong feeling exists for the missing person, and in my "grief" (which I still don't see as such, despite how it seems to superficially fit the general psychological definition of suffering at a time of loss of someone), I feel no sense of loss, certainly not consciously, and (based on what I'm about to say) I don't think unconsciously either.
If anything, I felt a relief. I found my parents' deaths to be a freeing experience. I felt (unconsciously most of my life) restricted by their presence in this world. Not that, as a result of their existence, I didn't think or act as I wanted to, but that I felt a certain guilt, that what I did might be "wrong," but "dammit," I thought, unconsciously, "I'm going to do it anyway, because it's how I am and their opinions, or anyone's, do not matter." (This is actually more like superego than a result of their actual existence, but what's the difference, really, when you trace your Freudian psychology back to the causal relationships formed in early childhood?) I felt freed, from the burden (yes, I've always felt these dutiful feelings to be a burden, when "normal" "sociable" people see them as blessings) of having to buy presents on their birthdays and on Mother's Day and Father's Day, and Christmas, and whenever else society deemed this activity appropriate, presents I never wanted to have to go out of my way to purchase [it wasn't the money, I didn't mind the cost, if I thought I could have gotten away with giving them money instead of a present, I would have gladly done it], mostly because I had no idea what to get them and all presents seemed inappropriate and barren of sentiment (which they were); freed of having to put up a false front re who I was and what I did, no longer having to pretend I was a relatively "normal" person; freed from having to worry what they (especially my mother) might think of me; freed from feeling guilty about what I might be doing that they would disapprove of. I would go on to feel guilty anyway, a superego function mostly projected onto various aspects of society, but I was freed of the immediate connection. I had become a truly independent person--a fiction, I know, but the feeling itself was very real. So, is this grief, a feeling of relief? I doubt it. But if in my case it is, it's a good thing, I think.


11-3-1a

He was an introvert, but he might trick
people into thinking he is an extravert.
--Foxy Gwynne,
Fred Gwynne's wife,
about her husband.


Everybody's paranoid as hell. I'm starting to feel like I belong.
Let's face it: I'm becoming quite an oddity. Back in the days when I used to pretend to a semblance of normalcy in order to hold down a job, I was continually stressed from too little sleep and too much back pain. But, at least, my social role then fed back to me a self-image of a kind of ordinary person. Now, I work all day in my home, alone, and watch tv all night. My neighbors may not see me for weeks or even months at a time. Even when I do go out, most, if not all of them are never around to see me come or go. Any semblance of a normal self-image has been slowly abraded away over the years by my isolated lifestyle.


11-4-1a

Personal Responsibility


Osama bin Laden has 300 million dollars,
26 kids, and 5 wives. And what does he hate?
The excess of the American lifestyle.
--David Letterman

Everybody has a big but.
--PeeWee Herman
PeeWee's Big Adventure

An electronics store in a mall, but as if the entire mall is the store, i.e., there are no doors and walls between the store and the mall: a salesperson, a young, yuppie-type guy, is half-heartedly trying to help me solve a problem with computer software (that I presumably purchased a while ago from this store.) But we are having no success in solving the problem, which is that the program will not run. The initial graphics come up, but when you try to go further, nothing happens. I keep playing around with it while the guy goes about doing other things. In an old small cardboard box, I find floppies with handwritten labels on them that are apparently either returned software or software that did not work properly (or both.) One of the sets of floppies (about six disks) is labeled with the program I'm having problems with. I install it (no imagery for this) and then continue to try to figure out the problem, and I accidentally discover that if you put brackets (< & >) before and after the program name ("TAX LAW"), a bar menu comes up across the screen that works. I'm elated that I've discovered the solution and I shut the program down by clicking "exit" because I want to demonstrate my discovery to the sales clerk. But when I try to get his attention, he is dismissive of me as he tries to cater to paying customers. Although I've shut the program down, it's still running, but it's not responding the way it had been after I fixed it. Not that it did not actually shut down, it did. But the program I shut down was the one that I'd opened from floppies, and this one still running is the one I was originally having problems with. It's getting close to air time for the David Letterman show[¥] and David is running around demanding that the program be shut down so as not to interfere with his show. (The graphics for the program are running over a background image of his set.) He's being completely disregarding of anyone's feelings, especially mine, as he tries to exit the program. I tell him I know how to do it, if he'll let me explain, but he too is dismissive, and even hostile, toward me. I try several times to explain to David and the clerk that I know the solution, but they don't want to hear it, preferring instead to berate and belittle me. [I knew the "solution" to the work problem at my last job, but everyone was dismissive of me.] So I refuse to cooperate. The end of this interaction is broadcast [my "bad" attitude (i.e., as David) becomes public] as the show starts with the computer program graphics superimposed over it. fai: I arrange with corporate lawyers to reveal the secret of the software before the following night's program is taped, but if and only if I get in writing a guarantee that Letterman will apologize to me for the dismissive and hostile way he treated me in front of millions of people, and that he will do it on the next scheduled program, not on one three weeks from now when everyone will have forgotten, and that he will do it not at all in a joking manner, but with every degree of sincerity and sobriety; and I want a further guarantee that he will not undo that apology on future shows, that he will publicly say not another word about the subject. rai: The penalty for not abiding by this agreement will be two million dollars, cash. I call Edgar Snyder's office to hurriedly arrange for an attorney to be present to guarantee the legality and accuracy of the contract before I sign it.

I've dealt, in therapy, with four "causes" of my "isolation": 1) most recently, primal rejection resulting in a repetition of the same in object relations; 2) previously, over the past seven years, manipulation and social machinations resulting in my discrediting and a subsequent reduction in the positive self-appraisal of my self-image; 3) over most of my conscious and semi-conscious life, social and personal anxiety, which has inhibited me and caused me to be far less outgoing than I otherwise might have been; and 4) least of all, dealt with for only the briefest period of time a few years ago, but felt consciously most of my adult life, scapegoating, a phenomenon that makes it very clear to me that it is not so safe to be among people, that they will cause (either consciously or unconsciously) situations to be attributed to me that they themselves are responsible for, especially when I am having a sustained string of successes, and very especially when I will demonstrate those successes, and very, very especially when I will put an increased demand on people who are responsible to me to perform in a more efficient, more productive manner, or who seek me out to help them with their problems only to leave me to work on them while they go away and do "more important" things, like the salesman attending to paying customers in the dream [because I (now) give my expertise away for free and therefore it can't be worth that much--an unconscious rationalization on their part, being totally immersed in a money economy and divorced from the value of personal relations for their own sake.]
It doesn't pay to be too good in a society of lesser performers. They will get you, in the end. No one is that good. You must take their feelings into account, and I don't mean their very human feelings of inadequacy and lack of self-confidence. Every good manager must take those kinds of things into account if (s)he wants to be successful. I mean those feelings they will act on, mostly unconsciously, to drive them to sabotage your operations because they are jealous of your success. You must, as a good manager, at least pretend that they are contributing far more than they really are. You must never let them see themselves for what they really are, inferior, because if they do, they will deny it and project it away, onto whatever convenient hook is available, or worse, onto the flimsiest hook they can create that will attenuate the pressure they feel put under to perform--and everyone, even the best performers, have small flaws that can be amplified into major concerns that can act as hooks, especially when they come under chronic stress. Anyone can be made to look like an uncaring ogre, especially when an uncaring attitude is a part of the original make-up. If you will be good at what you do, you must share the credit, to the point of self-denigration, even when those who helped you did so only through your own extended supportive efforts as you propped them up, to prevent their own self-inflicted failures. And, more importantly, you must watch every step, calculating ahead of time and countering each negative move they make against you, before it becomes amplified into a movement you can no longer control. I did exactly this for a long, long time, until I became so fed up with it and so chronically stressed by the practice of considering every single alternative that I gave up and let the course of personal interaction go where it may--and, of course, it ran straight at me like a speeding eighteen-wheeler out of control. In the big bad world of business, you can't let up for a moment. (Well, actually, you can. I let up for over six months before anything negative happened, but then, I was well entrenched beforehand.)
This pattern, unfortunately, is not restricted to the world of business. It is only most obvious there because of the concentration of tokens in that area. People apply this same psychology universally, enacted in any social arena. I am happy to be out of it. I've been out of it, privately, most of my life, but I'm happy to out of the public sector now. I am truly happy. I could go on for the rest of my life as I am now, BUT...
I could be a whole lot more than I am, if only...
I don't pay taxes any more. My income is sheltered. I don't believe in the rules that have been established, where the advantaged get all the advantages. The law is made for millionaires (although I do take advantage of it myself in my small way. I may be a hypocrite, but I'm not stupid.)
I was David Letterman, in theory. I have been a demanding boss. Uncaring? Maybe. At times. I needed to get things done, better than anyone else. It's my personal nature. If I can't be better than everyone else, I don't play the game. Much of my isolation is simply not playing. I have taken my ball and gone home, because things were not going my way. I tried, for a long time, to play by the (obscure) "rules." (It takes a long time for most people, even some of the brightest ones, to figure out what the rules are and, by then, they're too used up to take advantage of the knowledge. The few who know the rules early on are the ones who make it to the top. And who knows the rules early on? The children of advantaged people who can be taught them in special schools and by parental example.) I play by my own rules now, and I break them frequently, with impunity. This is the advantage of isolation: you're responsible, most of the time, only to yourself.


12-20-1a

Everybody's so different. I haven't changed.
--Joe Walsh, "Life's Been Good."

The best time of your life is when you
don't have anything except each other.
--Joe Jackson, "Life Is Good."

The world exists on one side of a great divide. I exist on the other.
I've discovered I don't like myself very much. That's why the world is over there. I project it away because I don't like who I've been, which is ironic because I became who I am because I didn't like who I had been before that. But now I think that who I had been before was not so bad. Actually, I became who I am (now, who I was, because to a degree, I've overcome this second self) to overcome that which I didn't like about myself, but (as usual) I overdid it and went too far. I was non-assertive, and now, in times of stress, I overly assert myself. But in (over-)learning to assert myself, I left behind the treasured quality of taking life as it came to me. Obviously, a well-lived life draws a balance between these two states, being neither overly asserting nor overly withdrawing, responding to situations as they occur in a sane and measured way. I've yet to fully learn how to do this.
That part of me that I don't like, my overreaction, my aggressive nature, that part of me that as a child I'd learned to repress and express in a passive-aggressive manner, is the world that I separate myself from. I hate those aspects of the world that represent this aspect of myself, violence, killing, cruelty, modern business practice, greed, selfishness, an uncaring attitude. I label these bad things of human nature and I (try to) relegate them to the other side of the great divide, so that I may be something better here on this side, my side. My isolation is my attempt, not to free myself of those evil aspects of the world, but to project them away from myself. I tend to (re)act in those (other) ways, I want to think, because the evil world influences me, it seeps into me when I am not alone, but rather out intermixing with it. But these evil traits exist within my own self, after all, and I isolate the world in order to pretend to get rid of them. [Lest you decide that I am an evil person, let me point out that we all do this. So don't be trying to blame evil happenings on me. Follow my example and blame them on yourself.] It's an effective strategy, to blame the world. It works. I don't have to experience the negative affects of anger and lashing out when I isolate the evil world--except in dreams:
db and I return home to 640 from a previous dream incident on Rt. 22 and Rodi Rd.[¥] But it's a normal house (i.e., not the esoteric one of the real world.[¥] At first, as we are entering, it feels very homey to be coming home with her, but when we get inside, we find the place completely stripped of all belongings, including stove, sink, etc. It's like an apartment before moving in, but even more bare. It's like the place is being remodeled. [A symbol for my self, being redone (yet again)] In fact, that's what's happening. It's being remodeled for us, because we won some kind of a contest. But I get extremely pissed. I don't want it to be redone. I want it the way it was. I want my old, comfortable things. The colors it is to be painted are swatched on the walls: dark tans and greens. I get angry all over again at this. The place suddenly appears already painted in these dark earth tones, and although I have to admit that it looks good, very tasteful, it's obvious how the colors are negatively affecting my mood. [Society's "tastes" are not so good, for me?] I want my white walls back, and my white stove, fridge, and appliances, an interior that reflects the bright sunlight and bounces it around instead of absorbing it. db tries to console me and I violently push her away. Instantly, I am sorry for doing this. The one thing that is still good about this place is her presence here with me. I look out the windows. There are many large trees around the house, but all of the lower vegetation that prevented a clear view of the house from the street and from neighboring houses has been stripped away. I get pissed at this also. A gangster-type guy shows up (Rocky Balboa's brother-in-law.) He informs us of the contest we have won. I push him around, and up against a wall. Although he could react and overpower me, he benignly allows me to do this, out of a sense of perhaps having acted inappropriately by allowing the remodeling to happen without our approval.
I want people to remain the same as they were when they were young, like db in the dream. I want her not to have changed. I want any (young--or old) person I meet to love me like I loved when I was young--and never change away from that which I love in them, their "innocence," their naive appreciation of life and love. I think I haven't changed in this respect, but I have. I still feel it inside sometimes, when I look back, but I've lost the ability to translate it into real-world terms. I've lost the ability to love innocently. I look at every downside, every hidden agenda that others (will eventually) reveal after the period of time is over when they first feel love toward me, and vice versa. I have changed, as much as others have/will. But I want the old feeling/attitude back, that which I felt before I gave free reign to the anger and the jaded perspective. Life goes on. I want my youth back. Fuck you if you say I can't have it.
But...I get angry because people will not accept me for what I am and what I want to do, the way I want to live. Someone is always trying to influence or threaten (as in the implicit way employers will threaten your job if you are not the type of person they want you to be.) In other words, they reject me. I am hurt and I become frustrated because I can't survive and prosper being who I am. I must be someone else instead. I'm not accepted for who I am. Thus, who and what I essentially am is not the angry person reacting, but the laid-back, non-aggressive being who wants his own agenda, not society's, to dominate his life. This is the way I've been able to structure my life over the last seven years. The past is past, except when it will try to manipulate me in the present, because I am rejected in my childhood by my mother and so every social relationship since then must replay this situation. Retreating from society negates the manipulation (to a large degree; it can never be fully eliminated.) The anger and aggressive tendency only comes into play when I have to relate directly to society for a long period of time (or sometimes for short, intense periods.) It's an overlay to my personality, a reaction. It's not the real me, who is huddled way back in the past, before rejection. It's that part of myself that I love. It's the overlaid part, the reactive part, that I hate. I have to learn to remain back there, before the fall.


12-22-1a

Although I (repressed) feel primally rejected, paradoxically, I never seem to feel unloved. In any relationship, and even outside of relationships, I feel that people love me--not enough for me to command the inordinate attention I erroneously think I deserve, but loved nonetheless. I know this is true because I don't have to seek, either in the world or in my own mind, the confirmation that others seem to need re people loving them.
We may know people's true psychologies by the way they seek approval, support, or confirmation for that which they (want to think) they are. And, in a less obvious way, we may see the lack of confidence that people have in what they (think they) are by the way they express what they are. Truly self-confident people have no need to express their true natures, except by the example they set in their everyday lives. People who are less than secure in their identities must continually express those identities, especially verbally. There is no better example of this that the man who has made himself an expert at teaching (preaching) self-confidence at one-day seminars. He reveals his unconscious agenda through the zeal he demonstrates for his material, trying to convince attendees that they should listen to him because he is an example of what it means to be self-confident. If he were truly self-confident, he would have no need to express it at all. [I'm not talking necessarily about the day-to-day speakers who are hired to further the agenda of a business based upon the ideas of a person who established such a program, but I am definitely talking about the person who felt the need to establish the program in the first place, the Tony Robbins of the motivational speakers' world. Tony is just too damned self-confident for my taste. He reeks of repressed insecurity.)]
I feel rejected, so that I constantly seek others' approval, not in so obvious a way, especially now--in fact, I seem to avoid seeking approval. And this is another way we may know people's true psychologies, by the way they avoid seeking approval for what they are or how they feel. This is a more difficult thing to determine because it can be confused with simple non-seeking behavior. What people seek or what people go out of their way to avoid seeking reveals their hidden agendas. Behavior indicative of neither reveals that there is no agenda and that the person is truly what s/he appears to be. I appear to be self-contained, needing no one, but this is a reaction to feeling (unconsciously) rejected. I avoid situations where I might feel I am being rejected. But I do not avoid, nor do I seek out, situations in which I feel I am loved. Therefore, I feel loved, without having to seek it out. I feel loved by my friends and acquaintances, even as I often feel (sometimes secretly; paranoia?) rejected by them. I feel loved even by strangers whom I meet for the first time, as I see their appreciation for me in their eyes and feel it in their very beings. Sometimes, I feel loved by total strangers, even though we've never met, when I become aware that they admire me from afar. But usually, I'm completely unaware of this love I feel. I become aware of it only in short glimpses, well after the fact. It's a condition of my ordinary life, an unstated baseline. On the other hand, a feeling of rejection is always just a short way out of consciousness, ready to be called up at the least perceived slight. I want to think that feelings of rejection and feelings of being unloved are the same or very similar motivations, but apparently they are not. They don't feel the same in me. In fact, they feel quite opposite.


1-26-2b

re:direction

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
 
Proverb

Put all your eggs in one basket and then, watch that basket.
 
Mark Twain
I only have this one thing going for me. I only have this one thing left. Everything else has been stripped away. (Or I have stripped it away, to get at the essentials of my life.) Sometimes I pretend this thing is not so important, as when I don't work so diligently at it, when I am suffering in a state of ennui. But this is lost motive, only. The one thing I have is the most (the only?) important thing I know. Even my spirituality, although it shouldn't be, isn't so important to me. This one thing is more important to me than relationships. It's more important than having a lover, even than being in love (although, again, it shouldn't be.) It's more important than God itself, if such a thing exists.
They say you have to love yourself first before you can love another, or even God. I have no problems in this regard. I may find a lot of things about myself that I hate, but when it comes right down to it, I basically love myself. But I hardly take love beyond that level. Sometimes I feel particular love, more often in the past, i.e., after the fact, when it has been present, but I have missed, ignored or repressed it, until I am safe at home and can consider events in a secure and controlled manner.
And I feel love universally, a lot, in the present. But I act only toward this one final purpose. This is what I'm doing now. This is the only thing that I have left. (I could resurrect a lot of things from my past, but I've discarded them for a reason.) This is the way I've planned it all out. It may seem to me at times like I've come to this point in my life by accident, and maybe that's true, in the particular, but in general, I've steered myself here. This is what I want to do. This is what I'm meant (or what I mean myself) to do. This is me.


2-14-2b

I'm in a grocery store on Rte 22 in Monroeville, about where Chi-Chi's and Budget Rent-A-Car is. I'm waiting near the check-out, sitting between it and some shelves, waiting for db, when a guy walks by who I think I know, but I don't know from where. He's a tall guy, European-looking, with jet black hair, a strong jar, clear firm facial skin with a heavy but close-shaved beard--in short, a very handsome man. Independently of me, db also thinks she knows him, and she calls to him or somehow gets his attention and communicates to him as if she knows him. He seems confused and asks her if she knows him. They conclude that she does not. Then, I say that when I saw him, I thought I knew him too. But it turns out I do not.
db finishes checking out, and we carry four bags to the car. She gets into the driver's seat. Inside the car, I suddenly realize that we have only two bags. I ask, "Where are the rest of the groceries? But db ignores me. I say it again and get out of the car to go and find them, but she drives away without me. I am incredulous. "She left me!" I say aloud to myself. I can't believe she did that.
I avoid trying to analyze this dream, but finally I face up to it. The guy is me, a part of myself I try to deny, the rakish part. I thought I knew myself, but I do not. It becomes obvious what "She left me" means. It means just that, literally, she left me. I try to discover what the "groceries" symbolize. Other women? She left me because of other women? Groceries could symbolize love, or attention. I was always trying to attract the attention of other women, not for sexual or even merely flirtatious purposes, but simply to assuage my insecure sense of self. I generalize the image (groceries) to other dreams. Is this why I always dream about grocery stores, are they a symbol for my love/attention-life? Probably. That's why I'm so attracted to women who work in grocery stores.


2-20-2c

My fantasy regime (indicated in every one of my famtasy systems) is a psychic reality I create via which I get attention that I eschew in material reality, even though I crave it. I both crave it and fear it (or am shy of it, or whatever). I desire it, but I feel as if it will hurt me (a la deprived-mother incident [crib incident; to be linked to as soon as I find the place where I wrote about it.] Therefore, I act to negate real attention via withdrawal, sending the message that I want to be alone, and substituting for it the fantasy attention, which I can control, so that I will not have to be hurt and thus withdraw (in fantasy). (But the withdrawal serves also to call attention to myself, which is okay with me, as long as it is attention from afar. In fact, it seems like this is even a part of the ploy: by withdrawing, I call attention to myself in a way I could never demand if I were more sociable.) [And, I call attention, sociably, by "acting out," when I am challenged by personalities who are "like-minded" and set up transference situations--but that's another matter. (Not really, but the extension of the theme is breaking my train of thought here. Afterthought: maybe this is repression.)] I withdraw because the world--or the object--has withdrawn from me. To wit: my mother withdrew from me, early on; having been dismissed from jobs were rejections, the opposite of attention--situations (both the loss of jobs and my mother's "dismissal") ultimately "precipitated" by me via acting out.
Okay. I believe this is the right interpretation, but what do I do about it? Because, when it comes right down to it, I don't really want to change this situation. I'm happy, more or less. Yes, there are some things I'd like to change about my life, but at what expense? I want attention. But I want the right kind of attention. I want a certain distance of attention, where people will leave me alone when I want to be left alone. The problem I've had all of my life with the attention I have gotten is that once it starts, it has been generally unceasing. People calling me up, stealing my time away from me, demanding my attention, to deal with their problems. In order to have a certain amount [as it turns out, I need a lot] of time to myself, I have to keep others at a distance. Or have I got that backwards? In order to keep others at a distance, I create a belief that I have to have a lot of time to myself self. No matter. It works out fine in the end, either way. I'm happy, or at least, relatively content. I have the time, now, to write and publish. This is my compromise formation.


2-24-2b

According to Klein...the individual...has an unconscious intention to transform actively an event which was suffered passively and which has remained foreign to the experiencing self.
 
Thomä and Kächele, p.309
This is why I fantasize all the time. I should analyze these fantasies to discover the experience(s) that provoke them, so that I can incorporate into my real life the events that I "suffered passively," but this time taking control of them by dealing with them in the same way that I deal with them, successfully, in fantasies. This would be a productive use of the fantasy process; instead of idling my time away, I could make it work for me in my real life. But, after all, I suspect that this would be a further waste of time. I don't want to change my life. I don't really want to be the person that I fantasize I am. I would rather be Walter Mitty. Nevertheless, it would be good at least to know what it is that I avoid facing up to, what events I suffered passively. But they're not so obscure, I suspect. I know who I used to be, so long ago. I know how I overcame that personality to become an even worse one. And I know how I overcame that personality, to become who I am today. What's the sense in going back? To discover what? How I got to be what I already know I was? The fantasies are enough for me right now. And, anyway, they wear thin. They're not so satisfying any more. I've all but ruined them through repetition. I resurrect them after a time away from them, only to discover that they're not so potent, or only potent for the shortest time before they wear themselves out again. This is how I grow, by outgrowing my fantasies and replacing them with new ones. [I can trace my fantasies through my life and see how I've progressed, who I am now being as much a result of fantasy events as real ones, as if I have actually lived the fantasies and benefit from their content as real experience.] But over a shorter time now, newer fantasies become just as lame. I am slowly molding my real life to align with my fantasy one--or maybe more correctly, I am molding my fantasies to align them with my real life. Or somewhere in between. In any case, they are coming together, slowly. By the time I'm ninety years old, I'll be a consistently integrated person, maybe.


2-25-2c
A regression followed forward: I reject my mother (because I perceive that she rejected me--c.f., crib incident to be linked to when I find it). Yet I need her because I'm not yet independent and fear the social world more than I fear expected future rejection by mother-objects (conditioning). Therefore, I develop a schizoid orientation whereby I cannot evolve; yet I must continue on. I force myself to go out into the world even though I fear it [using women as mother-objects to act as a hedge against society. (I see this same motive in my brother.)] I force myself to deal with the social anxiety (fear of rejection by a society filled with object relationships.) I push this facing up to that which I fear to the maximum, until the stress I create (that I want to think that "society" creates; and, in a sense, it does, in that the "cause" is a mismatch between it and me) forces me to abandon the strategy. Thereafter, I relinquish the attempt to conform, I hide away, I become (more) "myself," and thus I avoid the anxiety. But it's always there, beneath the surface, inactive, but ready to pop up when circumstances call on it. Each time I need to make a business-related phone call, I feel it. Although I am well rested now and can deal with it perceptually as excitement, I know that it has not gone away, despite so many years of inactivity. As long as I remain well rested and unstressed, I can easily deal with it. So, is this my (real) therapy then, to remain at peace with the world? Perhaps, but it is definitely my religion.


3-2-2a
Everything I've previously written [silence, et al.; see links below] on this subject, I wrote before I saw Wayne Dyer's program, "Ten Secrets for Success and Inner Peace," on tv:

1. Open your mind and attach to nothing. [paraphrased]
This is my life, theoretically and, as much as I am able, practically. This is what I do, and am--or try to be.

2. "You can't give what you don't have."
In other words, you get what you give. I've known this for a long time. I've been manipulated, I perceive the multiple ways that the world manipulates me, because I've been a manipulator. I've been a victim of scapegoating because I've used scapegoating as a technique to get what I've wanted or, more likely, to protect myself from the effects of my manipulating behavior.
Okay. On this point, although I've long recognized the principle, I've not so much been willing to admit that I am the cause of my own misery. That is, I have and I haven't. I've admitted it, but always with a qualification that points back to my defamers--mostly because they are complicit. [See? I'm still doing it. But, to be fair to me, they'd do it anyway, even if I weren't causing it to be done to myself and projecting it onto them; they'd do it to someone else--because it's what they do. (See? I'm still doing it. But . . .)] There are many, many examples of what I'm writing about here interspersed through my work.
I'm teetering on this point right now. This may be my high water mark of advancement. I've known for a long time that I must become a more giving person, but I don't want to threaten what I've now got. In some way, I've gotten what I now have via these (all ten) principles, and that's a good thing. But once I get what I have, I tend to hang onto it in a very guarded way, which probably inhibits getting even more. If I could let go just a little more and not worry about my future so much, about how my health might deteriorate if I live the way I used to, then I'd be far better off. I have to reverse the process of having thrown the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of the way I used to live was good. I've got to get that back without resurrecting all the negative stuff that went along with it.
Dr. Dyer says that you reverse your negative expectations by asking others (probably mostly silently, as expectation, although it couldn't hurt at all to ask it outright) what you can give them (or what you can do for them), instead of asking, or expecting, things to be given to or done for you--because when you ask for things, the universe asks the same of you, and things you are asking for are also taken away, but when you ask others what you can do for them, the universe asks what it can do for you. As an addendum, I have an even better idea. Instead of asking, just do it. Then, you project doing, and the universe then does, without you having to ask.
This is the point I am teetering on. I've adopted this attitude/expectation in the past on a number of occasions, but I always seem to retreat from it when times look like they're beginning to get tough. I withdraw and hunker down when the psychic weather begins to look threatening. This is how I flirt with success, opening up in the good times, and closing down when things get difficult.

3. "There is no justifiable resentment."

4. "Don't die with your music still in you."
Find that which you like to and want to do, and do it. I have.
5. "Embrace silence."

6. "Give up your personal history."
I've toyed with this idea a lot. I'd like to do it totally, abandon my past, my possessions, my few remaining attachments, and I act to this end from time to time, chipping away at my past, resolving it, and moving on. But it always returns, in thoughts and dreams, letting me know that it's still there functioning. Dr. Dyer tends to present his material as if it is an all or nothing thing, but in fact this is a process, a growth toward detachment via these principles. We grow, we backslide a little, we grow some more, and we progress through life. We never fully escape our pasts--or is that a self-fulfilling prophecy?

7. "You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it." (Einstein)
This is the story of my life: Early on, I disregarded anything that didn't work. I was totally self-contained in this regard. But later, when I felt the necessity to increase my participation in a society I really didn't at all agree with, I made a number of bad choices, which I began to repeat as I fell into a pattern, their pattern, a social pattern. My relationships weren't working. Working for employers wasn't really working (even though I met with many successes) because I wasn't happy doing the work. I did it for the money only, and held my real self apart, never able to satisfy what I really wanted to do. But then, I changed my mind. After what I felt was a calamitous set of circumstances, I resolved that I was done doing what "they" wanted me to do, I took the money I had earned and I started doing what I wanted to do. And I succeeded, modestly, of course, because I still restrict myself in other ways. (see #2)

8. "Treat yourself as if you already were what you want to become."
I do this all the time. I've always done this. It was a big part of my success in business, and it's a big part of my success with people, when I will allow myself to open up to them. I often consciously imagine what I want to be and then act that way. But more importantly, because it's an unconscious agenda and thus can work without so much conscious interference, I naturally adopt others' agendas when relating to them. This can be a negative practice when those others are harboring bad agendas, and I have been caught up in a few of them and luckily was able to extract myself from them in time to avoid major disasters. [This is the reason why we must choose our friends and associates wisely. This is where I am now. I need to start making some wiser choices.] But when the others are experts in their fields, this can be a very positive trait. People often assume that I know a lot more than I do about any given subject, even in their own areas of expertise, because I react to their knowledge base and intimately and intuitively merge it with my own, so that they get the idea that I know what they know--because I do, eventually. I empathize with their expertise so that I appear to be an expert, and I learn as I go along, pretending, mostly unconsciously, to know far more than I actually do in the present, because I reflect it back as I learn it, seeming to have known it all along. I don't do this manipulatively (although I may later use in manipulative ways the information gained), but rather empathetically.

9. "Treasure your divinity."
This is a bit harder to understand than the other points. He means it in all it's spiritual glory, for sure, but he uses the more down to earth example of seeing your thoughts, which you may have disregarded previously, appearing in the works of great writers and thinkers. In other words, they think the same thoughts you are capable of thinking, thus you must be as great as they are/were. Seeing my ideas echoed in Dr. Dyer's eloquent explication confirms this point.

10. "Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you."
This is because thoughts that weaken you project onto the world and are reflected back to you. In other words, you get what you give. If you think negative thoughts, you get negativity from the world. If you think positive thoughts you get positive feedback. I am where I am today because I think the way I do. This is both positive and negative. I'm happy where I am, so I must be doing something right, yet I am also stuck where I am. If I weren't happy, my life would be a disaster. But then, everyone can say that, no matter what the circumstances of their lives are.


3-4-2a
How can you let go of your past when your past won't let go of you, when dreams continue to occur along recurrent themes, with recurrent images and characters in recurrent places that are your past? Should I ignore my dreams, adopt a conscious, present-friendly attitude, pretend that nothing is going on beneath the surface? Dreams are communications from the unconscious self. They require attention, that you may learn about what you really are. By ignoring them, you do not transcend the problem. In fact, you may be compounding it. Any possibility of a solution will come from attending to the dreams and dealing with them in the best way that you know how. Then, you can put them aside until the next dream sequence and enter present life as fully as you can.
I had another dream about old atc with the usual cast of characters, except that a part of the dream was not atc, but Photronics, a place I had worked at much earlier. What is this dream trying to tell me? Maybe that the problem is not with old atc so much as it is with employment in general, which seems appropriate since I do have an issue with employment and employers. Maybe I'm supposed to be accepting the world the way it is instead of getting down on it for being so . . . unChristian, I guess. But I do accept it the way it is; otherwise I wouldn't think to hide away from it. If I entered out into it freely, then I wouldn't be so accepting of the facts of it, then I'd be blinder to what it can do to people who do not guard themselves so closely--and even then . . .
But it's not the world in general that's the problem, it's business in particular. I don't accept the inevitability of capitalism. Maybe I'm fighting an inevitable process. Of course I am. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't. Maybe Wayne Dyer, after all, is wrong.
I saw an ad on tv the other day: something about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It listed all of the symptoms. The only reason it caught my attention was because I noticed it was describing me. Otherwise, I would have ignored it like I ignore all commercials on tv. I went right down the list with the announcer, saying, "Yep, that's me" to each item. So, I suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress. Not so much any more. In fact, hardly at all. But six or seven years ago, I was near to being a basket case [the final event in my work career, my dismissal, being not the single traumatic event, but the symbolic incident crystallizing years of very small events at various companies], yet never wanting to fully admit it, knowing I was suffering and in need of a lot of rest, but at the same time convincing myself that the course I was pursuing (retreat) was the proper way to live--always. I still believe this, to a certain degree, not out of a sense of need (at least not conscious need) any more, but more because the world is, in fact, fucked up, and we need to measure our involvement in it if we are to act intelligently. Sure, if you have a lot of money and can insulate yourself from the world in that way, you can measure out your response to its caustic nature intelligently and still fully participate, taking advantage of all kinds of therapeutic services, which you can purchase. But for most people, the world wears you down and you never quite get back to your youthful vigor. (It wears the rich down too, but in a nicer way.) Conclusion: Ordinary (workaday) stress, experienced chronically, is no different than a one-time stress event where victims suffer post-traumatically. Post-Traumatic (or Ongoing-Traumatic) Stress is a modern condition. A lot more people suffer from it than the capitalist world is willing to admit. Our workplaces induce it. Modern (i.e., since the industrial revolution) work is trauma, spaced out over many years in order to disguise the effects that we attribute to mere aging. We should be farther along by now as a society. Corporate capitalism is a stone-age discipline.


3-8-2b
We're non-violent with people who are non-violent with us, but we are not non-violent with anyone who is not non-violent with us.
 
Malcolm X
I am what I am only in response. When people accuse me of being a certain way (and they have accused me thusly), they don't see the whole unfortunate picture. I am responding. I have always been a responder. Left to my own devices, I remain alone, isolated within my own realm of being. It takes others acting, almost always actually toward me, to provoke me into action, via response, and almost always in like manner (except when I can summon the wisdom to retrain myself). This is both an asset and a flaw, often at the same time. Many incidents I regret, I also see the unconscious wisdom in. I am taken in directions I would not choose to go by the automatic action of response, and they have almost always turned out for the better, at least in the long run. Life has a built-in wisdom, if only you can prevent the conscious mind from interfering with it. This is a very satisfying realization, in retrospect. In the present, it can be a disturbing trait. [This doesn't seem like therapy, verifying what I am without a view to change it. But maybe it is, at that, therapeutic. I must accept who it is I am.


3-11-2a
1) In the alley at old atc. Small cat-like animals are producing babies, assembly-line style, by regurgitating them in precise rows about ten long by five or six wide along the wall of the building. O-kay. Scene shifts to an unknown place containing large beds of these animals. db and I are "tending" these rows of embryonic slugs, which mature quickly (in a matter of minutes) into small fur balls about four inches across, much like the Tribbles in the Star Trek episode. We call our supplier (of the "seed" stock)/buyer (of the grown product) to sell what we've produced, but the guy (an Afghani-American type) tells us that the price for these things is way down. We will hardly make back our original investment, if that. But we have to get rid of them, even at a loss. [Awakening, I recognize these things as my writing, relatively worthless on an open market, but prolific beyond utility. I must do something with this stuff, or else, why do it?
2) Old atc: I exit the building to the back. All of the cars are gone except two that I don't recognize. Mine isn't there. I decide that I'm waiting for someone to pick me up, and then I decide that it's db. I experience a profound sense of being stuck where I am. [The meaning is obvious. I am stuck, not only in my present life, but back at old atc.]


3-16-2a
He who grooms, gets groomed.
(from a Discovery Channel program)
The common feature of all mammals is that they are nurtured by lactation, which creates an affectionate bond between mother and child. This bond forms the basis of the family. (The female instinctually seeks affection from the male in order to better assure affectionate family bonds for future offspring; this is a more advanced development in mammals and probably does not apply so much to the earlier/lower forms.) The family is the basic social unit.
What happens, then, when the mother-child bond is broken early on in life by a perception of rejection on the part of the child? The child fails to develop adequate social bonds. It perceives (or feels) that it is not properly nurtured, and it transfers that expectation to the greater world. Even when otherwise properly socialized, it lacks an affectionateness or gregariousness (a sense of social affection) that more fully assures its integration into, and success and prosperity within, the social structure.
Because I am less socially integrated, because I don't groom others well and, so, do not get groomed, I am led (lead myself) to the conclusion that I am different, which further excludes me as I feel socially isolated. Thus I'm driven to provide for my own sense of self-grooming, driven to satisfy my own needs, or to eschew needs in favor of "spiritual" experience, thus valuing and striving for even more "independence." It's a vicious circle.
[Either I remember my mother telling someone, or me, that she wasn't ready to be a mother when I was born or I concluded that fact from my research/therapy a long time ago. Add this to the crib incident [to be linked to as soon as I find where I wrote about it] as further "evidence" of rejection/isolation.]


3-19-2a
When I think about being excited, that is, about experiencing excitement, I can get excited, that is, I can allow myself to become excited.
When I read what I've written about having been excited, such as here, I can re-experience the feeling.
This is what I miss most as winter deepens; this is what I regain when spring returns. This is what I should feel all the time.
This is maybe not so much caused by problems of early adaptation as much as by a physiological response to cold and a reduction of light.
But, I guess, the exact opposite causation could be true: the early problems could have conditioned my response of winter ennui.

I'm rereading my posted entries from last summer, and I'm beginning to discover that my SAD theory and/or my "spring depression" theory are maybe not so true. It seems I experience ennui in the summer, too.


4-1-2a
addendum to thoughthistory entry 3-25-02

I started telling people what I really thought, after so many years of monitoring my feelings and telling them what they wanted to hear. (Actually, I'd been telling in them short bursts all along, mediated by long bouts of politic behavior, which they ignored, choosing to see the brief outbursts of vitriol as being indicative of my character) But they didn't want to hear the truth (any more than they wanted to hear the short bursts). I got fed up with the false self I had been portraying. And, since I tend to tell the truth with a bit of vehemence and even vengeance, people tend to feel threatened by it. This is the real problem. People misunderstand--or rather, they don't, but rather misinterpret my motive. I'm not attacking them when I tell them the truth about themselves. I'm merely stating my opinion, albeit often somewhat authoritatively. I have (always had) the right to express my own opinions. But I have always felt that I do not (necessarily). So when I do infrequently express them verbally (I'm much freer with the written word), often it is after a long bout of holding them in. And they come out more forcefully, under a pressure of long repression, than they otherwise might. And if they are opinions (repressed truths) about the person I am telling them to, they are easily and readily denied, and I am made the bad guy (kill the messenger), because I present an agitated hook onto which they may hang their projections. It's my fault they are the way they do not see they are. I'm the one who has the problem. But, whatever the case, I have every right to express myself. It's just that, often, I've not done it in so nice a way, especially when it comes to the jobs I've held. Well, fuck 'em, anyway. I don't need them any more. If I ever need that kind of social world again, I'll know better, maybe. Maybe I'll have learned a lesson. Maybe. If the stress doesn't get in the way again and cause me to blurt out the truth when otherwise I might have kept my big mouth shut. Hopefully, that phase of my life is entirely over.


4-3-2b
This was not who I was; it is what I became, under the influence of stress, a part of which they created--and only then was it a part of what I was. But I did become it. And now, I embrace it. I am, at least to them, what they have expected me to be. That image of me has fed-back to become a part of my self-image, which I now embrace. So, look out. Having dismissed me, you have no reason to fuck with me any longer. If you do, the "me" you helped create and sustain may act in his expected manner against you. You see how you create your own worst nightmares? I never wanted to be this person. I fought hard for a long, long time against becoming him. But now, it's too late. It may be in the past, but it's still what you expect. And we all get what we expect, sooner or later. If not by my more perceptive self, then by others, who are less conscious of what they, in collaboration, do.


4-14-2b
6023: Aunt Grace is visiting. She's feeling not so good, distracted. Everyone is running around doing a lot of different things. Neither Grace nor I is involved with all of this. We stand apart, aloof. Grace has been asleep and has just awoken. Everyone else has eaten except she and I. I start to make myself a sandwich out of the leftovers from a meal that everyone else had that we had been excluded from. But I get sidetracked, and although I managed to get something to eat, I didn't finish Grace's sandwich, even though she knew I was making it for her. I tell her I'll finish it for her. She asks me for something to drink. I get it for her, but I fail to get back to finishing her sandwich. When I do, I see that she is already finishing it herself. Someone comes into the house and announced that he has found a wallet and other personal material at the bottom of the street. Identification in the wallet indicates that it belongs to Jerry Schmidt. The guy wants to know if any of us know him. I say yes, I do, and I take the wallet and set it on top of the tv, intending to give it to him when I next see him.
Upstairs in Jim's bedroom, Dustin Hoffman shows up. He has the wallet, etc. and announces that he has found it. I take a closer look at the wallet. Jerome Schmidt is printed in gold leaf on the inside. I tell him I know him. The wallet name turns into Jackson, James D. I tell Hoffman that the wallet belongs to my brother and I ask my brother why he's using that name. (His middle initial isn't D.) Jim and a friend of his are looking out the window at the house next door. Women are in the rooms, and they are trying to see if any of them are in various states of undress. I pretend I'm not interested.
Everyone is leaving the house, preparing to go out for the evening. They get into Jim's truck (old Chevy van). Mom is, at first, driving, but when I come out, she gets into the back as I ask where they are going. No one wants to answer me; everyone ignores me. Jimmie comes out of the house and gets into the van. Apparently they had been waiting for him. I ask them why they weren't including me in their plans, but no one will answer me. Eventually, I figure out that they're going out to dinner. I accuse them of intentionally leaving me out of their plans. I feel slighted and extremely hurt. Halfheartedly, they ask me if I want to go along. I tell them no, and I go back inside. I don't want to be with anyone who doesn't want me.
bai: During the time they are gone, I pack up everything I have of value in the house, and I leave.¥ I call work and tell them I need to take a few weeks leave of absence for an emergency, and I leave town and apply for another job elsewhere. I gradually drift across the country, moving from job to job, advancing my career as I go. A few years later, I am in California. I never contact any of the members of my family again. [This feeling of abandonment (my family of me, causing my same reaction) is a fundamental motive in my psychology. I don't consciously feel this motive, except in dreams. I feel, instead, a need to be apart, to be isolated and independent. But I know from my past feelings (childhood into early adulthood) that the real reason I feel I need to be like this is because I have been rejected. This is a reaction against my perception that the world rejects me, which is an extension of the perception of being rejected by my mother early on. I respond in kind, meting out the same behavior that I experience. I reflect my world. I am accused of rejecting my family (of ignoring them) when they (my mother) reject me. It's a family dynamic, initiated before the rest of them were born. (I am the first child.) The entire family plays out my mother's unconscious motive.


4-22-2c
Very long and complex dream: I'm with Rita in Swissvale. She has a new motorcycle. We're going to work at old atc, and I ask her to give me a ride. She says okay. But first, I check the bike to see if it's big enough to carry the both of us. I see by the lettering on its side that it's a 350, so we start out with me on the back, but I tell her I want to drive, so she lets me reach my arms around her and control the handlebars. But I tell her this isn't going to work, so I get on the front and she climbs on behind me. Everything is different, the atmosphere, the surroundings, the mood. Rita's home is different. On the way to work, the parkway has hills and valleys in it, instead of being flat. We have a hard time getting up the first steep hill, and I have to push with my feet to help us along. We slow to almost a stop. I check the bike again to make sure it's really a 350, but this time the nomenclature is too hard to read.
CUT TO an auto repair shop off to the right of the highway, in the Squirrel Hill area. We're trying to verify the engine displacement of the bike, with the help of a young mechanic and his mechanic-supervisor. The numbers on the side of the bike are now cryptic, almost impossible to read, and keep changing every time we look at them. They are some kind of a code that's not directly intelligible. We look through the manual that Rita tells us is under the seat, but we don't see anything in it that specifies the engine size. There are no specifications in it at all, just prose-like text. I complain that the manuals aren't like they used to be. I try again to determine the engine size from the nomenclature. At first, I think it's a 125cc. Then, 120. Then 128. Finally, the young mechanic sees some small lettering stamped into the frame of the bike. It says 12 cu. in. I try to calculate the conversion to metric to compare 12 cu. in. to a system I'm familiar with. I know that there are 2.56 cm in an inch, so I try to convert it by creating a formula (2.56 cm/in = 12 cu. in./x). But I can't do the multiplication. It's too complex. [The right brain functioning of the dream state won't allow the calculation.] I convert the formula into x= (12 cu. in) (in.) / 2.56cm, and I know I have to cube 2.56 and "in.", but I can't do it. I know the answer is somewhere between 8 and 27, but I can't do the math. I can do the algebra, but simple arithmetic eludes me. I then [erroneously, because it's already cubed] try to cube 12. I can get 144, but I can't do the math to get 144 x 12. [I can do math that I have memorized, e.g., 2x2x2=8, 3x3x3=27, 12x12 =144, but I can't do any math that requires logical operations. Yet I should have known this, because 1728 is the address where I grew up, and I knew that this address was 12 cubed. But, for some reason, I didn't remember this in the dream.] At this point, I am almost lucid. I try to do these calculations, without success, as I redream (bai) over and over and over again this segment of the dream.
Repair shop transitions into old atc, but much different, especially in atmosphere. Jeff is working there, as if it is Photronics. Steve has hired me back, and even Roger has a different attitude toward me, because of my "changed" attitude toward the responsibility for my past. {It's not really all that changed. I've always accepted responsibility, in theory, and although I see more of my responsibility now, I still place a lot of blame on them, especially Roger--because of his general incompetence and his inability to properly manage me, and for his failure to face up to problems and, instead, avoiding them and relegating them to his subordinates or working around them. This is partly projection on my part. I did this same thing, mostly a long time ago, before I learned how to manage more effectively. In fact, when I learned to stop doing this is when my problems began. I'd had a long-standing aspect of my personality that dealt directly with problems, but it had been lying dormant and used only in the service of what I wanted, and never for on-the-job issues. But I learned how to make the transition. And then, people didn't like me so much any more, because I'd learned how to demand that they do the work by negating their excuses. (I admit that my demands sometimes caused caustic situations. But, too bad. Do your fucking jobs, for Christsake and stop whining.) Roger never did this, never made demands that people do their jobs. He accepted the excuses people made (probably not in his own mind, but tacitly, by not objecting to or countering them), and they went away feeling they had "won" their battle with him, until years later when he'd had enough of their "problems" (the problem was really his, in letting them get away with what they did) and he'd act, mostly behind their backs until the final blow, to get rid of them, figuring he'd given them enough chances, which they never thought they got because he'd failed to make them see their errors, or even that they were being reprimanded when he talked to them in such a nice and sweet and "caring" way. (It's not really caring if it's not to their ultimate benefit.) It was for this reason, a kind of vengeance dismissal [I made a lot of mistakes in my last job. (So, who didn't?) Some of them were related to having become intimately involved with women who worked for me. But that was earlier on. I recovered from them and corrected my behavior--and no one called me on it, anyway. But long-term consequences persisted. And those people who did the persisting were wrong. This was not fair behavior on their part. It was mere vengeance. And it fed the other stuff, the stress, the bullshit, that finally caused my dismissal] or later change of mind based on facts that Roger kept mostly to himself, that Steve Campbell used to call him a "snake."}
Anyway, the upshot is that Steve S. has hired me back. It's a friendly and warm attitude now, one that I like. [Steve S. may have learned something too, at least unconsciously, from the experience of having to deal with me, i.e., how to be not so demanding, how not to let your Freudian personality permeate the workplace so much so that your business becomes your extended psychology, with key employees acting as objects in a big object relations game.] I leave work out the Second Ave. entrance. Steve is leaving at the same time. [Steve and I are aspects of the same self? Of course. My self. It's my dream.] Mark Copeland is waiting for a bus. He asks Steve if he has a job for him. Mark means a permanent job, but Steve says, "Yeah, I can give you something to do." And he gives him a temporary job washing the windows of the empty first floor storefront. I go back in with them, assigned by Steve the task of making sure they get started right and have what they need to get the job done. We look for squeegees, but we can't find any. I head off to look somewhere else, but at the last minute, Mark finds some old printing Squeegees with the Old Svecia press that has been stored there. These squeegees are very large, but Mark manages to attach them to handles to make them usable. Mark has two girls working for him. One of them starts going through things, looking for stuff she can steal. This pisses me off, because that's what I had been planning to do and she's going to get to the stuff before me. I had been picking coins up off the floor when I saw her going through a desk. I kept picking up the coins, first pennies, then nickels and dimes, then quarters. I wanted to check her out to see what she was doing, but I was getting a lot of money in quarters and I wanted to get them all before anyone else noticed they were there. Finally, I go over to the desk where she is, and we both go through it together. It's a huge desk, about ten feet long, and it has all kinds of good stuff in it. We find a lot of large packages of expensive cheese, which she starts taking for herself. She asks me if I want any, and I tell her no. But then I change my mind and take a few packages of expensive baby Swiss. I say goodbye to Mark and start to leave, but an undesirable sort of guy is trying to get in the door. [Me. My shadow self, that aspect of me that will steal, when my ego will allow it.] I tell him to go away, he doesn't belong here. A young guy shows up who is some kind of a minor supervisor in a retail outlet on the first floor toward the east immediately adjacent to the alley. [Also me. The superego, that role I played when I worked for atc, a supercilious character who insisted that he and everyone else tow the company line.] This guy starts to give us strong indications that we shouldn't be doing what were doing (stealing) because this is company property. He talks to us like we are friends, and yet he maintains his supervisory employee attitude. [Obviously, this is an idealized version of what I think I should have been, trying to blend performance and a personable demeanor together, but this is a much more developed me, doing this successfully, that is, being friends with workers and a dedicated supervisor at the same time.] At first, he works for a different company, but then the company becomes a subdivision of Steve's company, a retail outlet. This place is fixed up very nicely (in contrast with the empty storefront we were in.) I wander through the retail outlet (which could be a cleaned-up version of the place we were starting to clean, i.e., a future version, after the clean-up, because the two places occupy almost the same space). The retail outlet has all kinds of "cubicles" that are sectioned-off retail areas with different types of products displayed. The sections are not laid out squarely, but are offset and resemble a maze. I'm trying to find my way out of the place, but everywhere I go is a dead end. [Work was a maze that I had to find my way through each and every day.] Finally, I find a door that takes me out into the alley. I look for my motorcycle in the back parking lot, but I can't find it. I decide to cross the bridge and catch a bus from the South Side that will take me to Penn Hills. [In reality, there is no bus to Penn Hills from the South Side. (I was lost for a long time with no way home. Cf. recurrent dreams where I can't find my car after work in the parking lot.)] I have to walk down the middle of the bridge because water is flowing across the bridge down the walkways. It's a gigantic double bridge with walkways on the far sides and two two-lane roadways of two-way traffic adjacent to each other down the center. There is very little traffic on the bridge, so it's relatively easy to walk down the roadway. But water begins to flow down the roadway too. A few other people are walking on the roadway--in different directions, along the length of the bridge and laterally and diagonally across it. Some of them are trying to get to the walkways (because the water is starting to flow in the middle of the bridge), although they know they can't walk on the walkways because of all the water. [It's a natural reaction to want to get off the roadway and onto the walkway where you are "supposed" to be.] Water begins to rush in torrents down the middle of the bridge, interspaced with gaps where there is no water. I work my way between the torrents over to the opposite (upriver) side of the bridge and I find a gap in the concrete abutment where steps ascend to a higher place where water cannot reach. But there's no railing up there and even though it's a very wide concrete abutment, I'm afraid to walk along it because it's too dangerous. So I go back down onto the bridge. I walk along the side of the wall when a huge wall of water rushes at me and I have to tread water. I try not to lose ground in the swells. I try to see the gap in the wall where the steps went up, but I keep losing it amid the splashing water. I think I'm going to end up back where I started, but when the water relents a bit and I can get a foothold on the bridge, I see that I'm still near the gap in the wall. I walk to the other side of the bridge. Water rushes down the roadway that runs perpendicular to the bridge, parallel to the river below. I climb up the jagged rock wall on the other side of the road to get up out of the water. But water even cascades down that wall, but not so much as on the roadway. A woman climbing down the wall says that she's never seen it rain this hard before. I agree. I mention that I'm trying to catch a bus, or she brings up the subject of buses first and I tell her that I'm trying to catch one. Another woman nearby says that I can go upriver and catch a bus at a local shopping area. I say, no, I'm going to the other side of the river, and I have to go down river to a specific place I know of to catch the bus I want. [I was working way over my head (torrents of water) when I worked at jobs for a living. I was swept off my feet. I still am, by the world, by information, by my own active (often unconscious) mind, but I'm no longer floundering because I can protect myself by staying "inside." Then, I was always "out" and had to suffer whatever elements came my way.]




This format (part three) has been abandoned in favor of the more journal-like presentation. (See the menu at the top of the page.)



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