The Psychology Of Aging

A spring meditation

No longer seeking to know the truth nor trying to understand with words

I only sit and listen to the sound of wind in the trees

and watch the shadows of evening lengthen into the night.

“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity – an activity deigned largely to

avoid the totality of death… by denying that it is the final

destiny for “humanity”. Becker, Xi.

The problem of man / woman’s knowledge is not to oppose & demolish opposing views, but to include them in a larger

theoretical structure . Becker Xi

Adler – what humans need most is to feel secure in their self-esteem.

When you combine natural narcissism with the need for self-esteem you have a creature who has to feel them self an object of

primary value. Becker, P.3

Society is… a symbolic action system, a structure of roles,

customs, rules for behavior – designed to serve as a vehicle for

earthly heroism.

A mythic hero – system is one in which people serve in order to earn

a feeling of primary value of cosmic specialness”. p.5

“The hope & belief is that the things a human creates in society is of lasting meaning,

that they will outlive / outshine death & decay, that a woman & a man’s

products count.” Becker P5

“To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his/her feeling of heroism is the main self –analytic

problem of life”. Becker P.6

Feelings Of Heroism

Value What we do $

Worth Relationship

Relative Status

Regard by others Standing in community

Shared Values Accomplishments

Family, Work Education

Heroic imagination is the hardiness to say “NO”.

WINTER’S GRACE What do we do with fear?

The fear of letting go.The fear of hanging on.

Yet with finality There is the not knowing.

The final mystery affecting our fearsLeading us toward acceptance

Leading us toward meaningLeading us away from the question “Why ME?” Leading us toward the question “Why Not ME?”

In that there is hope.In that there is death.

In that there lies transformation. Perhaps that is the definition of transformation.

According to Becker, The essential paradox is the condition of individuality in finitude”. (B. p.26)

Man/woman has a symbolic identity that brings

her/him out of nature. Yet, he/she is a creature with a name, a history.

She/he is with a creator mind that soars out to speculate about atoms/infinity…

This expansion, dexterity and self-consciousness gives woman and man literally the status of a small god.

Yet at the same time woman and man are worms and food for worms.

This is the paradox: We are out of nature and hopelessly in it.

We are dual.

Everything that we experience as a child reflects this dualism. The child uncomprehendingly emerges with a name, family, play world, neighborhood—all cut out for him and her. Yet, its insides are full of nightmarish memoriesof impossible battles, terrifying anxieties of blood, pain, aloneness, darkness; mixed with limitless desires, sensations of unspeakable beauty, majesty, awe, mystery, fantasies, hallucinations which are a mixture of the two. Becker.P.29.

“Nature’s values are human values and though they take the loftiest flights they are built on excrement, impossible without it, always brought back to it.” Becker.

“The anus and its incomprehensible repulsive byproducts represent not

only physical determination and boundedness, but most of allall that is physical—decay and

death. B.31 This is the meaning of anality.

According to Becker, the Oedipal project is not a natural love of

MOTHER, but a product of the conflict of ambivalence and an attempt to

overcome that conflict by narcissistic inflation.p.36.

THE RESILIENT SPIRIT by Polly Young-Eisendrath

To ignore impermanence,

to hang onto things as they are at this moment,

or to try to make them what we want is to create more suffering. (p.100).

Self is a function, not a thing…a function sustained by connection and

compassion.”

To attain wholeness of being,To reside in love rather than fear,We must be able to use pain and suffering to discover a purpose in

being here. P.101.

Ordinary adversity can be the first step on a path that opens the door to

a new way of seeing our selves.

To live with impermanence is no small task. Most of us resist change even if our resistance leads to disaster or a kind of

half-life of envy and self pity.

Yet, there are times when we must die to an old identity.

Adversity in childhood can force us to give up dependence and lightheartedness and perhaps develop

discrimination or helpfulness early.

Catastrophe in adulthood, such as sudden loss or injury, can force us to give up old expectations, or perhaps or be doomed to being a survivor who never thrives.

Most turning points are not welcome. The necessity to change

usually , perhaps even often, feels like an intrusion.

When a situation feels truly unbearable. Some part of our being has to give way.

Looking toward human biology I’m informed by my organs. The pancreas for example, changes

all of its cells every 24 hours.

Like the pancreas, the self is reconstituted every day as a new self, and yet it functions are the same: to

help us integrate complexity into unity, to feel that we exist over time,

and to provide us with basic ego functioning of willing, choosing, and

taking initiative. (p.117).

In his autobiography, Jung, re: The Empty Self, said, “ There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and

night,

The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there

has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things and the

eternal in man. .”

THE RESILIENT SPIRITBY Polly Young-Eisendrath

Suffering always involves a fantasy, a fear, a thought, or a commentary interjected between ourselves and

our experiences.

FEAR

THOUGHT

COMMENTARY

This introjection of fear or the disconnect between fear and its meaning, creates a

misery that stagnates us.Through the acceptance and understanding

of actual pain, we begin to develop the knowledge and compassion that are the

unspoken benefits of adversity.

Jung talks of unnecessary suffering.

Unnecessary suffering imposes a “childish” perspective of

hopelessness or powerlessness on an adult experience of stress, frustration,

challenge or difficulty by assuming that life should automatically go our

way and when it doesn’t we feel victimized or doomed or deflatedP.31.

Jung believes that psychology transforms the current conscious

attitude so that the past can be seen differently, so that life can be retold

within a broader context.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Despair, Resentment , Envy and Self –pity

are the 4 “Apocalyptic Emotions” of

self -protection. They are signals of a disruption in the possibility

to discover coherence and meaning through pain and compassion.

RESENTMENT is the bitterness arising from hurt held onto overtime.

A feeling of insult and contempt replaces the desire to connect.

DESPAIR is the loss of hope, trust, and confidence. Rather than let an old self die, a person kills the requirements to change.

ENVY is a form of hatred based on the feeling that one is empty of

the resources desired or needed.

Is a corruption of compassion and sympathy for one self generating an attention only onto what hurts, onto what is missing thus generating suffering and negativity. (p.134-137).

SELF-PITY

ANXIETY, when accepted, is the driving force of enlightenment

in that it lays bear the human dilemma

at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

(P.K.pg.187).

HILLMAN:THE FORCE OF CHARACTER

“Character is characters” that is why we need a long old age: to ravel out

the snarls and set things strait.” P. 32 Fitting these characters in is called by

the Jungians the “integration of shadow personalities.”

This requires: 1. Finding them suitable to your idea of yourself, to your sense of your own character.

2. Creating an integration leads to the integrity of the matured character.

3. The study of these characters and how each belongs to one’s self, is the main activity of a “life review”.

4. What does not fit in requires more scrutiny.

When working with this material, with these characters, stick with the image NOT

the examination of morals

Well –trained eyes

I need well-trained eyes, says Hillman. “ Similarities are NOT

comforting enough with regards to experiences, routines. I need well-

trained, long-suffering eyes to bless the virtues concealed in

vices.”

WHY & BECAUSE

THERE ARE TWO GROUPS OF PEOPLE

THOSE who are satisfied by the tautological reply : Because.

And THOSE who are not.

1st groupThis group easily adjusts to the arbitrary,

irrational character of existence and is typically perceived as the most natural and

healthy.Objectively their lives are simply a

collection of irrationalities.They can experience their existence as

rational as long as its irrationality is congruent with the irrationality of the

world itself.

2nd GroupThis group are those that are less identified with the hazard of incarnational life. They are those who cannot be reconciled with the irrationality of existence. They are typically perceived as more or less neurotic. For them the question of “Why” continues to be an obsession..

EXCHANGE OF TRAFFIC1st group can fall into the 2nd group by some overwhelming, irrational

event disinheriting him/her of the world which had previously seemed straightforward through : ie: injury, disease, death, divorce, war.

PTSD/DISCUSSION

2nd group exchange

2nd group can go in the opposite direction by means of religion—that which can make

the absurditiy of the world stomachable

3rd Optionthe 3rd option: recreation, culture-

making, soul-making: the act of giving our own form to the chaos of existence. Trauma becomes the eye of the needle through which

we can re-engage cultures, body it forth anew, elevate it and

instinctualize it.