Bimbi_Paycheck's Xanga

Cathexis

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 05:26:31 GMT

the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea.

M. Scott Peck

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 05:23:15 GMT

M. Scott Peck's view on discipline. Found it on wikipedia...this guy seems interesting!

Peck defines discipline as the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. These tools are delaying gratification, assuming responsibility, dedication to the truth, and balancing. These are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work through them and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. Most of us do not want to wrestle with our problems because of the pain involved. Yet, it is only in grappling with our problems that life has its meaning.

Delaying gratification is the process by which we learn to meet and experience pain first, and then enjoy pleasure. By doing so, we enhance the joy of pleasure. Most of us learn this activity by the age of five. For example, a six-year-old child will prefer eating the cake first and the frosting last. Children will rather finish their homework first, so that they can play later on. However, a sizeable number of adolescents seem to lack this capacity. These problematic students are totally controlled by their impulses. Such youngsters indulge in drugs, get into frequent fights, and often find themselves in confrentation with authority.

Taking responsibility for our problems is perhaps the most difficult. Only by accepting the fact that we have problems can we solve them. An attitude of ‘It’s not my problem!’ will not take us anywhere. Neurosis and character-disorder are the two disorders of responsibility. Neurotics assume too much responsibility and feel culpable for everything that goes wrong in their life. The latter instead, shirk responsibility, and blame others for their problems. ‘Neurotics make themselves miserable, character-disordered people make everyone else miserable.’ All of us are neurotics or character-disordered at some time or the other. Neurotics must realize that they need not be excessively guilt-ridden, while character-disordered ones must learn to take things in stride, instead of becoming a yoke to the society. The words of Eldridge Cleaver, “If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem”, hold good for all of us.

Dedication to the truth comes next. We all have a certain worldview that must be constantly updated and revised as we find ourselves exposed to new data. If our viewpoint is narrow, misleading and outdated, then we will be lost. The same applies to our life experiences. A bitter childhood can leave a person with the false idea that the world is a hostile and inhuman place. Yet, if the person has to grow, he must set aside this prejudice and revise his worldview. Being true also implies a life of genuine self-examination, a willingness to be personally challenged by others, and total honesty to oneself and others.

We finally come to balancing-the technique of flexibility. Many a time we function with rigid, set patterns of behaviour. Extraordinary flexibility is a must for successful living. Part of this technique is also learning to give up something that is dear and familiar to us. In refusing to suffer the pain of sacrifice, we fail to truly grow. It is in giving that we gain more.

These interrelated techniques of discipline are paramount if we are to cope with the tribulations of life. A person may employ two, three or even all the strategies at the same time. The strength, willingness, and energy to apply these techniques is provided by love. There are no short cuts to happiness. Only by learning to discipline ourselves can we set foot upon the path to contentment and wholeness.

Other interesting bits!

Neurotic and genuine suffering

Scott Peck believes that it is only through suffering and agonizing that we can resolve the many puzzles and conflicts that we face. This is what he calls genuine suffering, the Christian way. By trying to avoid genuine suffering, people ultimately end up creating more causes for suffering. Unnecessary suffering is what Scott Peck terms neurotic suffering.

Scott Peck says that our aim must be to eliminate neurotic suffering and work through our genuine suffering, to achieve our individual goals.

Evil

Scott Peck discusses evil in his book People of The Lie: The Hope For Healing Human Evil. He describes in some detail several individual cases involving his patients. In one, a moderately impaired neurotic patient pseudo-named George, made a 'pact with the devil' to alleviate his symptoms. As a psychiatrist Scott Peck makes an uncharacteristic moral judgement about George's therapeutic pact and was ultimately successful in treating him.

Most of his conclusions about the psychiatric condition he designates 'evil' are derived from his close study of one patient he names Charlene. Although Charlene is not dangerous, she is ultimately unable to have empathy for others in any way. According to Scott Peck, people like her see others as play things or tools to be manipulated for their uses or entertainment. Scott Peck claims that these people are rarely seen by psychiatrists and have never been treated successfully.

He gives some identifying characteristics for evil persons. Discussed below are Scott Peck's views.

Evil is described by Scott Peck as "militant ignorance". In this it is close to the original Judeo-Christian concept of "sin" as a consistent process that leads to failure to reach one's true goals.

An evil person:

Projects his or her evils and sins onto others and tries to remove them from others
Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so
Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency
Is unable to think from other people's viewpoints.

Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspection or admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly run away from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the locus of evil on others. Evil is an extreme form of what Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, calls a character disorder.

In a discussion on group evil, Scott Peck talks about the My Lai Massacre tragedy during the Vietnam war:

In the spring of 1972 I was chairman of a committee of three psychiatrists appointed by the Army Surgeon General, at the request of the Chief of Staff of the Army, to make recommendations for research that might shed light on the psychological causes of MyLai, so as to help prevent such atrocities in the future. The research we proposed was rejected by the General Staff of the Army, reportedly on the grounds that it could not be kept secret and might prove embarrassing to the administration and that "further embarrassment was not desirable at that time". (Chapter 6, "MyLai: An Examination of Group Evil")

Scott Peck makes great efforts to keep much of his discussion on a scientific basis. He says that evil arises out of free choice. He describes it thus: Every person stands at a crossroads, with one path leading to God, and the other path leading to the devil. The path of God is the right path, and accepting this path is akin to submission to a higher power. However, if a person wants to convince himself and others that he has free choice, he would rather take a path which cannot be attributed to its being the right path. Thus, he chooses the path of evil.

Peck's writings on evil are to some extent based on accounts of apparent demonic possession and exorcism by Malachi Martin. However the veracity of these accounts has been questioned (see Fr. Richard Woods OP, National Catholic Reporter, April 29, 2005 [1]).

[edit] Love

His perspective on love (in The Road Less Traveled) is that love is not a feeling, it is an activity and an investment. He defines love as, "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Love is primarily actions towards nurturing the spiritual growth of another. Love cannot be sustained by mutual dependence, rather, love between two parties is made stronger when they are completely independent of one another^[1].

Scott Peck seeks to differentiate between love and cathexis. Cathexis is what explains attractions to the opposite sex, the instinct for cuddling pets and pinching babies' cheeks. However, cathexis is not love. All the same, true love cannot begin in isolation, a certain amount of cathexis is necessary to get sufficiently close to be able to truly love.

Once through the cathexis stage, the work of love begins. It is not a feeling. It consists of what you do for another person. As Peck says in "The Road Less Traveled," "Love is as love does." It is about giving the other person what they need to grow. It is about truly knowing and understanding them.

[edit] The four stages

Scott Peck postulates that there are four stages of human spiritual development:

Stage I is chaotic, disordered, and reckless. Very young children are in Stage I. They tend to defy and disobey, and are unwilling to accept a will greater than their own. Many criminals are people who have never grown out of Stage I.
Stage II is the stage at which a person has blind faith. Once children learn to obey their parents, they reach Stage II. Many so-called religious people are essentially Stage II people, in the sense that they have blind faith in God, and do not question His existence. With blind faith comes humility and a willingness to obey and serve. The majority of good law-abiding citizens never move out of Stage II.
Stage III is the stage of scientific skepticism and inquisitivity. A Stage III person does not accept things on faith but only accepts them if convinced logically. Many people working in scientific and technological research are in Stage III.
Stage IV is the stage where an individual starts enjoying the mystery and beauty of nature. While retaining skepticism, he starts perceiving grand patterns in nature. His religiousness and spirituality differ significantly from that of a Stage II person, in the sense that he does not accept things through blind faith but does so because of genuine belief. Stage IV people are labelled as mystics.

Scott Peck argues that while transitions from Stage I to Stage II are sharp, transitions from Stage III to Stage IV are gradual. Nonetheless, these changes are very noticeable and mark a significant difference in the personality of the individual.

Possible Jobs

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:51:12 GMT

I was researching careers....I really don't know what I want to do with my life.

Here are careers that seem OK to me:

Journalist/writer for PETA (animal ethics course)

Lawyer for Animal Rights (major in animal ethics/law)

Psychiatrist

Psychologist

Holistic medicine?

Therapist

Counselor

Librarian—major in library science

Dietician/nutritionist

Social worker

Translator/Interpreter

Animal caretaker

Special Ed teacher

Probation officer

Education

Preschool/kindergarten teacher

college and crap :(

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:48:46 GMT

Ugghh...14 days left till I go to college. I want to die. I never imagined living this long anyway. I really never expected to make it this long, so I'm feeling pretty shocked.

I've been having nightmares about college too. Like last night, I moved into a strange dorm and there were three cats living there. They had purple faces, apparently they had "cat disease." It really makes no sense...but they killed a pig and three girls a while back so no one wanted to stay in that dorm. Also there were ghosts and I was terrified. I had a meal ticket and other things about college seemed normal...except the library. There were so many levels and they were all pitched black. If you wanted to see, you had to rent out a flashlight. I bought a textbook (that had Gwen Stefani as the cover), but mine was streaked with juice stains...so I traded it with the library version and kept the nice one...Then there was an earthquake and my school becomes my house and there's strange people I've never met...I run downstairs to safety and all the people are evaporating and I hold on to this ladies leg with a cast, but she disappeared too...I then woke up, pretty startled!

I'm researching study tips/methods and such. In highschool I never studied (my school was really easy), so I'm sure adjusting to college is going to be tough. Oh well, I won't be socializing much and so all I will have to do is just study. I want to be the best, I want to get better grades then the others, but that'll probably be impossible. I'm pretty sure I'll be the dumbest one at my school.

But seriously....14 days, its too quick!!! T________T

On the tips I've been reading, they all say "make friends in everyclass b/c then you have someone you can ask for help if you don't understand something....blah blah." This really bothers me. I don't want to go to college and strike up conversations with random people not because I'm interested in them or b/c I'd like to get to know them, but because they might be of some use to me in the future. I'm probably just being really negative, but that's the way I feel.

I can't be excited about college, I only feel dread. I dull, dead feeling in the space between my stomach and heart.

I hope September 2nd never comes...

Okay, I'm going to quit thinking about college!

I've been watching a bunch of dramas lately.

Resurrection, Soulmate, Hotaru no Hikari, Coffee Prince, First Kiss....I love them all! I like watching the character's lives and observing their personalities. Watching dramas is my idea of fun! Not going to parties, not hanging out with friends, but watching dramas. Its the only thing I like to do.

I'm going to go...

~Bimbi

Monday, August 13, 2007

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:58:58 GMT

These are my boys!!

Abner is the white maltese, and Cosmo is the gold lhasa apso. Cosmo is smiling in his pic! :D

They are both the sweetest things and I love them more than anything!!

Cosmo, or Cozy (sounds like cozzy) is a little toddler who likes to cause trouble. But, he's so full of love and happiness <3 Abby is the mature one who doesn't like to be bothered :D But, he's a sweety too. He prances around all the time and is very refined.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:50:46 GMT

I have no ambition.

College is quickly approaching and I don't know why I'm even going.

I was talking with my mom and she agreed that the only way I could ever feel complete/satisfied was if I dedicated my life to helping animals. So, I've been looking up careers dealing with helping animals and there isn't much out there.

I could major in journalism and animal ethics and write for PETA or another animal rights organization.

Or, I could go into law and work in animal rights that way. But I really don't want to be a lawyer. -___-;; Public speaking isn't my thing!!!!

There isn't much else out there. (And no, I don't want to be a vet.) These jobs don't appeal to me at all.

I could do animal rights work as hobby and volunteer, but then what career would I do? I'm interested in Asian cultures; I'm interested in anything that has to do with Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea. But what kind of career options are there for that?

I'm going to study Japanese, so I could always go into translation or teaching or international business. But again, these jobs don't appeal to me.

I'm just sick of not knowing. I want to find a goal that I truly want to reach; I want to find my purpose in life. I want to have some ambition.