Sublime

The joy of being observed ran so deep that Breuer believed the real pain of old age, bereavement, outliving one’s friends, was the absence of scrutiny—the horror of living an unobserved life.

By exposing himself to the overwhelming majesty of Nature, the Romantic enters an altered state of consciousness that facilitates connection with the deeper truth behind appearances.

Irvin Yalom, the psychiatrist, wrote that it was “far better that [a patient make progress but] forget what we talked about than the opposite possibility (a more popular choice for patients)—to remember precisely what was talked about but to remain unchanged.”