The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, told us that in every human being there are desires that he does not want to communicate to anyone, and desires that he does not want to confess to himself. On this occasion I would like to dwell on the affections that come from the heart of man. Of course we now know that the heart is not an organ from which feelings come, however, such faculties have long been attributed to this ungrateful and foolish companion in life.
Our lives are oriented towards a double purpose: to achieve the means that ensure our existence and to extract pleasure from it. Motivational videos or trends in self-improvement tell us that we should seek to be happy, that we were born for this (the It does not always agree). This is not an easy task, since life is not linear, and along the way we experience deep emotions that do not always tip the balance on the side of happiness. But is happiness a goal that we should strive to achieve? And, once the goal is achieved, is it perhaps a static place to which we must arrive?
We think that in our life emotions are positive or negative and that one must exclude the other. That is, love must overcome hate, gratitude over envy, pleasure over displeasure, etc. The truth is that all these aspects are present in life from birth to death, and life consists of integrating these aspects. Along the way we are looking for ways to defend ourselves against these “dangerous forces” and better adapt to the environment. Aspects such as bad temper, selfishness, lack of good manners, brutality when driving, the typical “get off the #&!”, of the Sinaloans, in short, cause us trouble in daily life. Aspects that come from feelings that are not precisely on the (+) list, and we must dedicate, on many occasions, part of our time and energy to overcome and mitigate the consequences that such attitudes cause us. Whether their own or someone else’s. And it’s not true that we can just turn the page and carry on as usual just by being positive.
The unconscious laughs at that because we cannot deny ourselves the desire that we come to experience to hit someone, to yell at them, to throw the car at them, to do something to the neighbor’s dog (I mean the pet), and all this it is part of us. It would be very exhausting to pretend to deny it, or to look the other way pretending that only with that those desires would disappear. Well no, they don’t disappear just by being positive and flowing with the universe. You have to analyze. Being honest with oneself is the best effort a human being can make, the father of psychoanalysis will tell us again, but it doesn’t hurt to have an analyst trained in the field to lead us in that search for the truth about ourselves.
I would like to conclude by turning to Hartmann, who tells us that a healthy person must be capable of suffering and feeling depressed. A limited dose of suffering is an integral part of health. Typical conflicts are part of “normal” development. Health includes pathological reactions as a means to achieve it. So let’s not be afraid to admit the unpleasant feelings that we may eventually experience in life. They say something about us, they resonate in our life story and can become interesting material for analysis.
We will continue next Thursday elucidating this theme. Love and hate converge in the heart of man. Peace and good!
#Session #heart #man