"It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found", D. Winnicot

Μου αρέσει η προσέγγιση τoυ Winnicot όσον αφορά το 'γιατί' και το 'πώς' της ζωής μας. Γιατί είμαστε πολλά περισσότερα από όσα φαινόμαστε.

Donald Winnicott

Άγγλος παιδίατρος και ψυχαναλυτής (1896-1971), μέλος της Βρετανικής Ψυχαναλυτικής Εταιρείας, που ασχολήθηκε κυρίως με την ψυχανάλυση των παιδιών. Επί 40 χρόνια, παράλληλα πάντα με την ιδιωτική του πελατεία, δέχτηκε στο Paddington Green Children's Hospital του Λονδίνου περίπου 60.000 περιπτώσεις παιδιών, παραμένοντας για αρκετό καιρό ο μοναδικός άντρας παιδοψυχαναλυτής στην Aγγλία. Μεταξύ 1931 και 1970 έγραψε παραπάνω από 600 άρθρα με κύρια θέματα: τη σχέση μητέρας-βρέφους και περιβάλλοντος-παιδιού, την ανθρώπινη δημιουργικότητα (creativity) και τις έννοιες του μεταβατικού αντικειμένου (transitional object) και του εαυτού (self). Γιατρός, παιδίατρος, ψυχαναλυτής, έγινε μέλος ως αναλυτής ενηλίκων στη Bρετανική Ψυχαναλυτική Eταιρεία το 1934 και την επόμενη χρονιά ως παιδοψυχαναλυτής.

Η φαινομενικά καλή οικογενειακή ζωή του ως παιδιού έκρυβε μια παιδική ηλικία που χαρακτηριζόταν από μια διαρκή προσπάθεια 'να κρατήσει ζωντανή την καταθλιπτική μητέρα του', όπως ο ίδιος έχει πει. Αυτού του είδους η αυτογνωσία τον έκανε να ασχοληθεί με τα προβλήματα της παιδικής ηλικίας.

Έδωσε μεγάλη σημασία στο δεσμό που αναπτύσσεται ανάμεσα στη μητέρα και στο παιδί, στη σημασία του παιχνιδιού, και στη διάκριση ανάμεσα στον Αληθή και στον Ψευδή Εαυτό που αναπτύσσεται για να ανταποκριθεί στις προσδοκίες των άλλων.

"Το ν' αγαπάς χωρίς να ξέρεις πώς ν΄ αγαπάς πληγώνει το πρόσωπο που αγαπάς".

Το κείμενο προέρχεται από τη διδασκαλία του βουδιστή δασκάλου Thich Nhat Hanh και το αναπαράγω (αποσπασματικά) από εδώ.

What does love mean, exactly? [...]

Learning to meet this mystery with the full realness of our being — to show up for it with absolute clarity of intention — is the dance of life.

That’s what legendary Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and peace activistThich Nhat Hanh (b. October 11, 1926) explores in How to Love (public library) — a slim, simply worded collection of his immeasurably wise insights on the most complex and most rewarding human potentiality. [...] To receive his teachings one must make an active commitment not to succumb to the Western pathology of cynicism, our flawed self-protection mechanism that readily dismisses anything sincere and true as simplistic or naïve — even if, or precisely because, we know that all real truth and sincerity are simple by virtue of being true and sincere. At the heart of Nhat Hanh’s teachings is the idea that “understanding is love’s other name” — that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. (“Suffering” sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction — be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) The question then becomes how to grow our own hearts, which begins with a commitment to understand and bear witness to our own suffering:

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

[...] Real, truthful love, he argues, is rooted in four elements — loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity — fostering which lends love “the element of holiness.”

Supplementing the four core elements are also the subsidiary elements of trust andrespect, the currency of love’s deep mutuality:

When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love.

 The essential mechanism for establishing such trust and respect is listening — something so frequently extolled by Western psychologists, therapists, and sage grandparents that we’ve developed a special immunity to hearing it. And yet when Nhat Hanh reframes this obvious insight with the gentle elegance of his poetics, it somehow bypasses the rational cynicism of the jaded modern mind and registers directly in the soul:

To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen.


Βέβαια, υπάρχει και το "Πες το όπως θες, αρκεί να είναι αγάπη", του Ελύτη νομίζω. Καλό είναι κι αυτό και συμφέρει! 

For our well being ... People have the power!

I was dreamin' in my dreamin'  

Of an aspect bright and fair   

And my sleepin' it was broken

But my dream it lingered near

In the form of shinin' valleys

Where the pure air recognized   

Oh, and my senses newly opened

And I awakened to the cry        

And the people have the power

To redeem the work of fools    

From the meek the graces shower

It's decreed the people rule

People have the power  

              

Vengeful aspects became suspect

And bending low as if to hear

Well, and the armies ceased advancin'   

Because the people had their ear   

And the shepherds and the soldiers

And they laid among the stars

Exchanging visions, layin' arms  

To waste in the dust

In the form of shinin' valleys         

Where the pure air recognized     

And my senses newly opened           

And I awakened to the cry

People have the power

Where there were deserts,   

I saw fountains            

                     

Like cream the waters rise

And we strolled there together   

With none to laugh or criticize    

There is no leopard and the lamb

And lay together truly bound    

                                             

Well I was hopin' in my hopin'

To recall what I had found

Well I was dreamin' in my dreamin'

God knows a pure view

As I lay down into my sleepin'

And I commit my dream with you      

People have the power

The power to dream, to rule

To wrestle the earth from fools

But it's decreed the people rule

Listen, I believe everythin' we dream   

Can come to pass through our union    

We can turn the world around       

We can turn the earth's revolution    

We have the power

People have the power

The power to dream, to rule

To wrestle the earth from fools

But it's decreed the people rule

We have the power

We have the power

People have the power

We have the power

Ancient greek neuro-linguistic programming: Brain format by ... Epictetus

Neuro-linguistic programming is a series of techniques designed to help individuals (and more) change behaviors that prevent them from achieving their goals. These techniques focus on the study of behavior patterns and way of thinking from which these patterns are motivated, in order to help the individuals improve the quality of their life and reach their maximum performance. 

The word's components reveal how our mind "names" things and "programs" us to have certain attitudes and behaviors that are often costly. 

The good news is that just as a computer can be cleaned of any "virus" or be formatted, so we can "rewrite" our "computer-mind" when its neuro-programming does not produce the results we want (and deserve).

Doesn't this theory remind us of Epictetus who said that people are not troubled by what is happening but by their view of what is happening? [Ταράττει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα].

Greek antiquity alive and kicking!

The kindness of strangers

I doubt if a Greek,  anyone of us, could answer so concisely and well documented the question "what is the contribution of Greece to world culture?" Partly ignorance, partly our self-censorship because of Greek malfunctions, will be responsible for an answer that is not fair for the country.

The way Pedro Olalla, the Spanish Hellenist, sees things is  as detached (since he is a foreigner), as well as loving and "affectionate" needs to be in order to crouch with devotion and gratitude on the country that is the cradle of the European civilization.

I had the good fortune to meet him personally and I was impressed by his deep knowledge and worshiping love for Greece, which he has explored stone by stone following the footsteps of Pausanias. A proof of this is the video under the title "Por qué Grecia?" [Why Greece?] including his audiovisual lecture at a conference about Classical Culture, held in Sagunto, in November 2012, to mark the abolition of Greek language courses from Spanish education within the general underfunding of studies in humanities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=16&v=U9NeWHJ3yw8
(Choose English subtitles by clicking the "Settings" icon on the right and then "Subtitles", "English")

Olalla continues the cultural action of hellenists / philhellenes, such as e.g. J. de Romilly, who with the same question / title of her book Pourquoi la Grece? becomes another "Socrates" who with an appropriate question awakens us...

These foreigners bring to my mind the words of Blanche Dubois in T. Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, who, collapsed by the cruelty of those close to her, in the boundary between reason and insanity, finding solace to the doctor that came  to take her, says: "Whoever you are ... I always relied on the kindness of strangers ..."

It seems like these foreigners, with their kindness,  give in return the grace given to them generously by the Greek spirit.

Travel to Kythira

F-R. de Chateaubriand, in his Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris, en allant par la Grèce et revenant par l’Égypte, la Barbarie et l'Espagne (1811) [English translation by S. Frederic, 1814: Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, during the years 1806 and 1807], says: " In Greece everything is sweet, everything is smooth, everything is peaceful in nature as in the texts of the ancients. [...] In the homeland of the Muses, nature does not advise derogations at all."

Kythira is the ultimate confirmation of these words.

This unique island, lying opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese  peninsula and the larger island of Crete, is traditionally listed as one of the seven main Ionian islands, although distant from the main group. Administratively, it belongs to the Islands regional unit, which is part of the Attica region (although at large distance from Attica itself).

For this multiple ( geographic-cultural-admistrative) "claim", I'm sure,  Kythira's beauty is to "blame"...

My intention is not to give another "must-see" guide for the island. A Google search will reveal many. My motive is to share the joy I as a traveler shared with another traveler of his time, Chateaubriand, this great philhellene and man of culture. I was impressed to realize that his description of Greece' s places he had visited (though not Kythira), a mixture of accuracy, deep knowledge and literary sensitivity, gave me, as a Greek, a perfect perception of my own country.

This summer my philological and travel interests - plus the need for aesthetic satisfaction - were absolutely met. Thank you Chateaubriand! Thank you Kythira! Aphrodite definitely was born there. There are proofs.