Fear of Life: The Wisdom of Failure

Parents as representatives of the culture have the responsibility to inspire their children with the values of the culture. They make demands upon a child in terms of attitudes and behavior that are designed to fit the child into the social and cultural matrix. On one hand the child resists these demands because they amount to a domestication of hi

An inability to cry is commonly encountered among men who complain about a lack of feeling. The person may be depressed and recognize that he is unhappy, but he cannot feel his sadness.

Mothering a man is her way of attempting to overcome her sexual anxiety, for it allows her to deny her fear of surrendering to a man. By acting as a mother, she feels needed and superior.

Struggling against fate only enmeshes one more deeply in its coils. Like an animal caught in a net, the more one struggles, the more tightly bound one becomes. Does this mean we are doomed? We are doomed only when we struggle against ourselves. The main thrust of therapy is to help a person stop struggling against himself. That struggle is self-des

The emphasis in our culture is upon doing and achieving. The modern individual is committed to being successful, not to being a person.

My thesis is that one can't overcome a problem that is part of one's personality. The key word in the statement is overcome. The attempt to do that turns one part of the self against the other; the ego, through the will, is set against the body and its feelings. Instead of harmony between these two antithetical aspects of human nature, a conflict i

The term neurotic character refers to a pattern of behavior based upon internal conflict and represents a fear of life, of sex, and of being.

The neurotic character takes many forms, but all of them involve a struggle in the individual between what he is and what he believes he should be. Every neurotic individual is caught in this struggle.

The distinction can be made clear by using the analogy of a record player and comparing life to the music it sends forth. The active force is electricity, which runs the motor, which turns the record, allowing the needle to follow the grooves. When the record come to an end, the music ceases-the equivalent of death. The latter is not a compulsion b