Jay Matthews

In the spirit of its time, traditional psychoanalysis consisted of an authoritarian analyst–patient relationship and promulgated values such as a scientific approach to human affairs, the affirmation of paternalistic gender roles, individual achievement, personal responsibility, and a strongly bounded self.

5. repair as above, or allow to decay

One month ago I quit my corporate job... I did it now because I realised that I had been sleepwalking through my life. I did it now because the alternatives were so much worse.

The most interesting part of this sort of research is, for me, the meaning that participants make, the stories they tell as a result of experience. These stories are evidence in themselves. It is through embodied experience, reflection and explanation that cultural knowledge systems are determined. Our ‘participation’ in and through these knowledge... See more

Starts with explaining how in the 1980s and 1990s, in elite schools (e.g. Harvard), there was a shift in focus from producing good corporate employees to the following:

In particular, the choice to valorize disruption and innovation sits uneasily with both the actual process of university education and the needs of careers that people will actually have. It’s also bad for society on net.

“All that is known. It proves nothing; its demonstrative value is destroyed by the habit of thinking in terms of advantages and disadvantages, the most evil of all ways of looking at life. “Everything has its advantages and disadvantages.” Once that is said, the unbearable becomes bearable—a mere disadvantage, and what after all is a disadvantage... See more

The problem here, Fromm emphasizes, is not whether or not the beliefs are correct—the problem is whether or not the beliefs are a result of one’s own thinking. It is certainly possible that someone, through their original reasoning, can arrive at the same beliefs as the person I described above. The difference is that they came to these beliefs... See more