It can be destabilizing to change long-standing ideas about ourselves, others, and the world, which is why, even as evidence contradicting a belief should lead us to adjust the belief to accommodate reality, many people will bend the evidence before them to keep their thinking intact—the fundamental maneuver marking perverse thinking.

like the map that comes to stand in for the territory, as philosopher Jean Baudrillard describes it: a simulation that takes the place of the real.

We are our choices, Sartre says; “an individual chooses and makes himself.” Our choices determine our identity.

“Indeed, a work of art,” writes composer Arnold Schoenberg, “can produce no greater effect than when it transmits the emotions which raged in the creator to the listener, in such a way that they also rage and storm in him.”

The “development of an ability to think,” in Bion’s words, occurs as a way of coping with the thoughts that crystallize from frustrated feelings: in philosopher Emil Cioran’s terms, “Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.” With the breast—or its metonym—in the mouth, however, there’s no need for thinking. You are free to feel.

For Winnicott, creativity, aliveness, and feeling real—the hallmarks of a healthy individual—are accessed through play. By behaving spontaneously, in line with our instincts, we have the potential to provoke ourselves—and others—into possibility, whether it’s personal, poetic, or political.

is immoral is what you feel bad after.” Perhaps Hemingway’s thinking can be extrapolated to poetry.

“So far, about morals,” writes Ernest Hemingway, “I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what

To live by formula, according to Emily Dickinson, leads to feeling closeted: They shut me up in Prose— As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet— Because they liked me “still”—