I did most of a two liter of Coke but I threw the rest away because I felt bloated and woozy from the sugar and caffeine. As far as the psychology stuff, it was a short lived phase and now I’m back to pretty much normal. I think I kind of like Adler still but not Freud and Jung so much. I was brainwashed with Freud in college and then I read a lot of Jung on my own after school ended. Two new slogans I can add to public opinion: “You are what you read” and “No ideas but in people.” After my first episode of schizophrenia I also read tons of Lawrence over ten years, and he got some influence from Freud, though he twisted his message quite a bit. And then, when I got a job in an office, I quit reading altogether for a long time. I only started to question my beliefs and rearrange things when Kate was my friend. I learned from her how to think like a realist and we got into Cognitive Therapy, which is related to traditions like the Enlightenment and the Vienna Circle: very rational and realistic. Finally I stopped drinking and got myself a therapist who emphasized Cognitive Therapy, followed by a second therapist who was similar. I don’t know how I was able to accommodate both CT and Christianity at the same time. And now, currently, I’ve found out that CBT has really watered down the original cognitive formula: two schools of thought have been merged into one, the other one being strictly behavioral. I was disappointed when I got a recent book on CBT. And as for religion, I’ve grown pretty skeptical of the supernatural, or maybe I felt that way all along underneath the surface.
I guess that’s my thumbnail sketch of the development of my mind from the middle of university to right now. I think it’s funny that I could’ve been indoctrinated with Freud without realizing whose ideas they were. I feel a lot better today than yesterday and the day before. Poor Aesop really hates it when I use the phone, especially when it’s my sister and we talk for more than an hour.
For the time being I think I’m done with psychology unless it’s Adler. His theories are both old and new to me. They’ve been floating around in conversation for a hundred years and they remind me of my dad. He took the superiority and inferiority complex and twisted them into his own demented policies toward people. Basically he was an invalidator. He put people down to make himself feel better, to puff up his ego. Of course that’s sick. And as a consequence he had no friends.
robgradens 