psychoanalysis

What do the Buddhists know that Freud and the psychologists don't? Freud understood that we don't own our minds. He was onto the relative puniness of consciousness in relation to experience. But he didn't see the fluidity and changeability of the internal constellations. He kept trying to pin them down (and that's why his theories kept changing), i

It has been said that man is the only animal that can feel sad after sex. Perhaps what makes money seem sexy is that we can similarly feel sad after buying something.

From “Full Pockets, Empty Lives” -Wachtel, 2003

Money makes us think we know exactly what we are talking about when we do not. It substitutes for self-knowledge, or at the very least delays our inquiry into what we really want. It is a medium to forestall. What money means is “I don’t know yet what I want, but when I do, here is something I can get it with.”

From “Full Pockets, Empty Lives” -Wach

It is this ability to know everything there is about money just by counting it that makes money appear so straightforward and concrete. And yet, almost nothing is more symbolic in its very nature. Money only has meaning as something that stands for something else, as a social phenomenon, as part of a web of interpersonal obligations, and as a symbo

Perhaps the most important product of a well-conducted analysis is increased curiosity. What is dull and settled becomes interesting. As a consequence, what was locked in becomes potentially changeable.