Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 322 Editor's Choice: 34
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if you love her, cut her off
[Read the article: My mother tithes 10 percent -- but she can't make her house payments]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW,
Your problem is that you have not differentiated from your mother. A professional may be able to help you with this. You have absolutely no obligations to her, and your behaving as if you did is harming you, your spouse, and her.
Your mother’s problems are that:
1) You have not differentiated from her, but instead rescue her. This has allowed her to avoid problem solving and making difficult decisions, such as downsizing her living arrangements. You are enabling her irresponsible behavior.
2) She is caught up in a (psychological) protection racket. It’s none of your business, and the longer you help her avoid the consequences, the longer she will remain dysfunctional.
If you really care about her, leave her alone. She may do some growing up.
Good luck.
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when the perpetrators are repression and projection
[Read the article: When the perpetrator is the victim]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Julilla: what exactly was wrong or bad about you and your companion touching each other in pleasurable ways when you were an adolescent? I’ll bet it was enjoyable. You may be trying to tell yourself something important when you say, recounting the experience, that you feel “like an old fuddy duddy”.
Anonymous (Body vs. Brains): there is no such distinction, get it out of your mind (so to speak). What you describe in the context of forbidden intimate behavior - young people who have “acquired and processsed enough information from family, church, school etc. to . . . know that . . .[connecting sexually is wrong and forbidden]” is, simply put, pathology. If they have repressed, “for…societal or ethical reasons”, their natural urges to connect with each other in ways that harms no one, they haven’t “processed” anything, but instead have swallowed whole unhealthy introjects (Perls), become “domesticated” (Miguel Ruiz), acquired the vulnerability for neurosis (Freud). They will connect sexually and intimately, or become unhealthy. Your job is to provide them the means for safe sex, not to project fears and discomfort around intimacy onto them.
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phenomena
[Read the article: If you meet the Buddha in Salon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Scientists do measure phenomena, but there are neither “mental” nor “physical” phenomena, only phenomena. In fact, it is difficult to imagine more absurd notions than those of a physical world or of “matter”. If I place my hand on the desk, it doesn’t meld into the desk. Is that because the desk is “matter”? If severed and left on the desk for a million years, they would meld. In both cases, an observer would only experience phenomena, or process, not “matter”. Since there is no material or physical world, there seems little reason to fret over its interaction with "mind", which we construct as non-material.
For some phenomena we have come to greater agreement regarding how to measure and name them than for others. Certain useful ways of interacting with phenomena become privileged as “science”. Some phenomena are experienced as having greater variability than others, depending partly on perspective, perception, scale, and time frame. I can interact with my experiences of a thermometer, a tape measure, an analytical balance, the utterances, behaviors and expressions of a person, or the phenomena we call “inner experience”, all at different times and places, I can collect data, and go from there. There is, of course, no such “thing” as “gravity” or “matter” or a “mental state”, but we use those symbols to work and integrate with the phenomena we interact with and organize. All are indistinguishable in their metaphysical and ontological status, if not in the degree of attention, organization, and valuation we have given them.
We confuse ourselves immensely with our constructions.
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it's about us
[Read the article: So long, Paris]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I’m with Anne (ultimate female empowerment?). I know next to nothing about Paris, Linsdsay, or Britney but I know projection when I see it. Sounds like they misbehave at times, yet their faults and excesses I suspect would be of no more interest to us than those of our neighbors’ if not for their social roles as targets for our anger associated with disowned, unrealized drives. “We want her tamed and domesticated because that’s how we like women to be.” And because we can’t own our unrealized drives to be untamed and liberated.
I get a huge kick out of the flashing. Does anyone think that Britney et al. are not perceptive enough to know that the men who watch them are thinking about fucking them? And that women, at least some disowned part of them, are wishing they could be as sexually free and desired? I like to think that when they flash their stuff, and we pretend to be horrified while we are captivated, they’re laughing inside and thinking, “Whatsa matter you repressed chickenshits? You afraid of what you’ve been secretly fantasizing?”
The joke is on us and we don’t get it.
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start creating your life
[Read the article: I moved to be near my mom but my mom moved away!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW,
You would do well to take Cary’s advice – if you want to remain a dependent, unhappy child, that is.
If, on the other hand, you would like to self-actualize as an adult capable of forming chosen relationships (as opposed to those you unconsciously feel obligated to), then put your creative energy into going out and meeting people. You’ll eventually make relationships.
Get some counseling to check out the depression. Ask about cognitive-behavioral work. Get into couple counseling if things don’t improve with your spouse. And stay away from self-help groups, their purpose is to keep people dependent and to help them avoid growth.
Meanwhile forget about mother and siblings. They never chose you and you never chose them. That’s a hard one to understand and accept. The sooner you do, the healthier you’ll be.