Here Is What Is So Strange About Us Humans

A lot of you are writing in about justice and seeking justice in your lives, just as I, when younger, read police stories where there was always justice at the end. But, but, though I did this for years I never knew what I was doing.  My life was unjust but I had no words for it nor any conscious awareness of it.  My life, like yours, is just that: my life as I lived it.  I never knew about any alternative. I never knew what life should be about since all I saw was how my life was.  I never knew I should be treated with respect, that my parents should know and call me by name.  I never knew that  I had a right to do nothing without feeling "lazy".  I never knew that children should be hugged and kissed because it never happened.   How was I to know?  You don’t know what is missing until you first get it; then you know.  Or if you begin to feel your life in Primal Therapy and you feel what you needed, what was missing and why it hurt.  You finally find out what was missing through your feelings, not your top level cognition.  That won’t tell you doo-doo about yourself.


Too often we put ourselves in a replica of our early lives, trying to provoke a different ending but it never happens.  We get involved with mean people or critical ones hoping for a smidgen of love, appreciation and approval.   We never think it out; we are just attracted to those who will give us nothing.  One woman patient told me that immediately when she saw a tough looking guy she was attracted to him.  She wanted a strong father who took charge very unlike who her father was.   Another woman was attracted to a strong man who would lead and guide her like her father never did. So what did she get?  A man who took control, dominated her and ordered her around.  She obeyed like a little child.  She got part of what she needed but did not want the other domineering part, which she also got.

Some men want a mother for a wife and want her to do everything around the house.  The little girl complies and does it all because “daddy” says so.  The problem is that this can drift into the husband’s paranoia:   where did you go today? Who did you meet, what did they say? What time did you come home?  “Never do that again without my permission.”   This man over the years becomes dangerous. Until he stalks and follows.   She is in danger.  They almost never escape until it is too late.  Look for the warning signs and do not hope for the best; it is not to come.

What is behind all this? So many things but basically an absent mother, or mother who left for someone else, or an indifferent cold mother.   He needs her close NOW, and has to make sure he has her.  She is now his mother and he, and she, cannot differentiate what is real and what is not.   Watch out for someone suddenly showing up, as if by accident.  You are being followed.  And if you do not act like an obedient child, violence ensures.  He will beat you up.  And even when he does, you will go on hoping for something different and stay around.   She and he are trapped in the past and cannot distinguish the present.  It is all acted out.  She needs a father who helps and guides her; while he needs a mother who is always there for him.  Getting our needs from the past fulfilled in the present seems natural, and the way it should be.  Alas, it can only happen during the critical period when we are in the womb or in our infancy. There is a time limit for fulfillment and only then can it happen.  After that, we act-out, trying to get fulfillment in every way we can.  It is never enough.  How can we get over that?  Only one way:  go back to the critical period and feel the need during the critical period again; with it the pain and then you will be free to stop the act-out.

What is so diabolic is that we never know we are acting symbolically.  We keep on doing it  because the deprivation of need during the critical period keeps it alive.  Need is eternal.  It only dies with us, not before.  The need is often so distant and alienated that it is like from a strange country.  We act on it but never know we are doing it. So we are squeezed at birth and suffocated and we keep on keeping windows open; or we keep on moving there and there because to stop means (back then) being helpless and hopeless.  And guess what?  When we stop we slip into depression: hopeless and helpless. So here we see manic depression.  Keep on moving till we can’t and then feeling depressed—hopeless.   We remain in the grips of history, of our past even though we never understand that simple fact.

We keep on gambling because “lady luck” is going to help us win.  We have compulsive sex because we have so much pressure inside that we do not know exists.  In the case of sex it is understood:  it rises from deep in the brain, long before we have words for sex.   And often long before we can have a relationship that includes sex with another person.  It is called onanism.  You relate to yourself only because you lack the social skills that could combine love and sex.  You are no more than a pressure cooker.  Others are but a relief valve for pains that have no emotions, only impulses.   There was some guy who once called this an impulse neurosis.   A prisoner of Pain (Oh I remember who he is).  Impulsive people are loaded with preverbal pain that comes from the time we were preverbal.  Daah