Great Thinkers: Simple Tools from 60 Great Thinkers to Improve Your Life Today (The School of Life Library)

by Alain de Botton

Anger is, in the Stoic analysis, caused by the violent collision of hope and reality. We don’t shout every time something sad happens to us, only when it is sad and unexpected.

The rich accumulate money not because they are materially greedy, but because they are emotionally needy. They do so primarily in order to be liked and approved of.

the American poor were no longer able to see their condition as anything other than a betrayal of their expectations.

Individualism ushers in a disinclination to admit to any sort of role for luck or chance in life. Failure becomes a terrible judgement upon oneself. This is the particular burden of life in modern capitalism.

neoliberalism double downs on individualism

underlying principle of so much of religion, education and science: we learn to control ourselves and put away short-term pleasure to achieve greater (and usually more socially acceptable) pleasure in the long run.

so 忍耐的美德 or 延迟满足

A tantrum is a characteristic regressive defence mechanism.

there might be parents who could not tolerate too much bad behaviour and would demand compliance too early and too strictly. This would lead, in Winnicott’s formulation, to the emergence of a ‘False Self’– a persona that would be outwardly compliant, outwardly good, but was suppressing its vital instincts;

Overpowerful superego