Sat 05 Oct 1996 12:07
lauren slater
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs.
We all want to actualize ourselves, but only a few of us are able to do so.
Before we can focus on higher level need- core components of which like emotional
insight, love, and connections with others, we must first be
free from hunger, htirst and illness and then from threats that endanger either
psychological or physiological survival.
Slater;s relationships come into conflict with Maslow's theory.
early on she notices higher level needs despite her patients inabilty to tell stories we can
understand.
beautiful moments in which the delusions fall away and the space between them is shared.
each one staring into his own square of air, Crazy or sane, we all know the desire for skin
touching skin, or brain rubbing brain
She nods in recognition of shared experiences, learning to respond empathically yet
humanely to desturbing or funny or tragic circumstances. Inthis way she subverts the
psychotheraputic paradigm of detachment and reflection. Remaining detached and
disconnected, refusing to use her own emotional responses would keep both patient and
therapist in "unalterable images of bondage."
my job is not to sit and listen, but to go with you as your coworker and codiscoverer into
the issues that make your life difficult so we can work them out together. I am also a
woman and the way you talk about gender disgusts me. (this is helpful, right)
for the first time, he has accepted her as a person with feelings, not just a function of his
fantasy.
My panic came from real failure, but more from being overwhelmed. Who wants to witness
hurting in another? <kalled kr> Who wants to stand by and watch blood? Better to
bandage it up. Now I think I know -- although I didn't then--that sometimes all we can do is
align ourselves with the wound, respect its oozings and witness its colors. Sometimes all
we can do is keep company with the person who hurts. I did not know then that this in and
of itself might constitute help.
don't focus only on the schiz's , everyone.
i have learned that the only way to enter another's life is to find the points where my self
and another self meet. vector points.
AD:
I am a frayed an nibbled surviror in a fallen world, and am getting along.
I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.
I am not washed and beautiful,
in control of a shining world in which everything fits,
but instead am wandering awed about on a splintering wreck I've come to care for,
whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air,
whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions,
whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections
but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind rent clouds, upstream and down.
Simone Weil says, "Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to
love."
from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
vol 3 #9 Real Change
p19
when you're down to your last candy bar, kill and eat Bambi.
--
210pm
the sun,
the bright.
I have discovered a new level of complexity not much discussed by HD thoreau. The lack
of simplicity of interpersonal interactions.
What are the needs and what is required to meet them.
The same thing thoreau did for the body, I can do for the mind.
What an idea.
a belief structure.
to keep the world of physical interactions simple has been done,
and the world of interpersonal interactions.
to understand the basic needs and fill them in the simplest most fulfilling way.
living the good life
and the balance
remember I did not always think balance best
that is all
I have lost touch with a part of my conscious awareness, I am not sure what it is, and I can
be careful
let's walk around greenlake you guys go one way, I and Janet, the other.
and what else did yousay.
call lise sometime
I do think that's it. And maybe I will be a neuropsych or any psych
filing
the places we
I am way off, way out and out of touch,
what is going on here?
I think I need to sleep more
so do I.
--
family is good
--
10.5.96 sat 853 p.m.
My construction is having difficulty,
I thought I had lost it, I thought I had found it I have lost it.
The new regime is: eat luncb, homework, swim 5-7
after that see rebecca or whomever, then sleep.
In order to be
just need to swim/run in afternoons as well to be fine.
ech
what is rbec, Like a friend,
what is it I want?
what is it I need?
what is the difference.
there are endless questions.
today it was,
why should rbec not destroy her dairy pages if she thinks the content might hurt a person
who might see them.
why should we record and why should we not record.
the implications of being able to selectively stimulate any part of the brain.
the rat pedal effect.
there are endless questions, but by focusing on a few, I can perhaps feel
she is a whole lot,
I am not right to continue like this because physically not haveing exercised, I do not feel
fine,
-
condoms? sex at certain times after certain highs
safety pins for sheets
mechanistic
biologic
perhaps I did say no to her, and now I wish I could be with her more, but when I am with
her I feel less, I just don't know,
all takes time,
and I want perfect all the time,
intensity all the time,
and how can I have it.
Must I be laying in the grass with her?
love is fine,
but in
in
in
in
in
in
in
intensity
fuck,
where to find it,
how to create it.
seems it requires desire and health
neither of which I have right now,
and she needs it too,
how can we both have it all the time?
if one has it a lot of the time (I don't, but I'm working) and another has it most of the time
that means more of the time you both have it ,
and both experience intensity etc, etc,
this is her first in a way ,
so you know,
yeah,
you're not so old
kind.
-
.