2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
“The most wonderful experience we can have is a mysterious experience. It is a fundamental emotion that is at the origin of art and real science. Anyone who does not know this and cannot be surprised, cannot be amazed - he is dead inside, and his gaze is covered with darkness. (Albert Einstein)
Surprise, ignorance, self-interest
The times of the first years of university are the peak of my fascination with space and astrophysics. Equally with philosophy, and both of these interests are straight from childhood. I read everything that had time and understanding. When I came across Einstein's phrase in the epigraph, I thought, “This is it; so clear and so obvious. This quote has become a kind of slogan. But there is one more thing: it was a powerful experience of meeting something inside. Because the phrase of the genius of physics (the physics that is on the verge of philosophy) did not become something new in experience, but rather came across to me as a form of my personal experience. In words that I could not have put together in such a capacious phrase.
I still believe that the most valuable thing when meeting with thought, with art, with history is the personal associations of the one who meets. You can admire and respect different things - and indeed, there are phenomena and inventions that radically change the life of civilizations. But only a great work, and if a person is open to this and is not empty himself, generates an encounter with something unknown in himself (and not only with the creative genius of another); with something not fully known and undeformed. In this sense, surprise is both a sign of life experience and life position, and evidence of the work of the intellect.
Therefore, when everything at the same university came the turn of Jaspers' philosophical concept, and I met the next important phrase, the feeling of meeting something in myself was no longer new. Here it is: “Surprise in front of a secret is in itself a fruitful act of cognition, a source of further research and, perhaps, the goal of all our cognition, namely, through the greatest knowledge to achieve true ignorance, instead of allowing being to disappear in the absolutization of a self-contained object knowledge ". But it was still productive: at that moment I - something inside me - had already decided on the desire to dive into psychoanalysis, and the first step was a kind of cultivation of surprise as a habit of thinking. Asking questions, keeping track of obvious "self-evident" explanations, being surprised.
In psychoanalytic literature, by the way, whoever did not write about surprise as the beginning of knowledge and interest (while highlighting different shades). I just want to note that both for psychoanalysis, and in the future and for various psychotherapeutic practices, surprise - surprise to oneself - is the most striking phenomenon. Sometimes analysis or therapy begins with it, sometimes this dimension appears already in the process of work. But this is an important and valuable dimension, it is a kind of "engine" of psychological work, a constant motivator. What could be more interesting to a person, at least to a person of Western culture, than knowing oneself? And it is endless.
Non-linear time in the psychoanalyst's office
In the process of psychological work, surprise seems to appear from various angles. “I couldn't do that, it's not me”; “I know that I am different!”; “Help, I don’t know how to force myself: I know that I need it, but I don’t do anything,” and so on. Who has not heard this kind of phrases? Sometimes a person is discouraged and even confused by the fact that, it turns out, not everything in oneself can be controlled.
It happens that this kind of surprise is colored with positive emotions: "It turns out that I can do it anyway" - for example, in cases of the appearance or renewal of creativity in a person's life. Someone returns to beading after a dozen years of hiatus, and someone begins to dance for the first time at a very respectable age - and enjoy it, and invent movements, communication options and routes for it to take place …
Interestingly, the so-called self-concept - that is, the image of oneself, the idea of oneself - usually lags behind in comparison with the experience of oneself. First, a person does something, and then he notices it - and talks about it. We are used to thinking that when we come to a psychologist's consultation, we analyze the strategies of behavior, choose the necessary ones and then implement them in life. Sometimes, indeed, this happens, especially with short-term work. But it also happens in another way. It happens that a person at some point begins to talk about some behavior, some form of experience that was previously simply inaccessible. And now it is, it is qualitatively new and fundamentally different. This is surprising. The surprise here is evidence of the changes that have already taken place.
If such a situation occurs in analysis, then one can, for example, rewind reflections back and trace where the origins and outlines of this new experience are. A logical sequence is formed from such points, but it is added exclusively in hindsight. Being at that point, before, a person still did not know where it would lead him.
A similar pattern can be seen in questioning. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, but - thinking psychoanalytically, for example, - if a question is asked, it means that the answer is already outlined in the psyche. It is already known that the answer is possible, and that the question is possible precisely in this form. The question is evidence of a tremendous mental work, the result of which is a certain knowledge, a certain answer, albeit not consciously formulated for the time being.
Cat on the couch
In conclusion, I would like to quote a direct quote. "I am a cat for myself": a monologue of a person going through a turning point in analysis. This is not an illustration or a quintessence of the above. On the contrary, these words just started my reflections on the topic, and do not summarize them. Another part of the mosaic is suitable on one side and inappropriate on the other.
No biographical details, just text. No theoretical generalizations, only sincerity. Permission to publish received.
“For me, a great value (that is, I appreciate it in people and strive for it) is the ability to accept another as another. Not to accept "because" or according to the principle "I am you, you are to me", but to make a decision "to be with": to recognize a person, to accept him. If I want to recognize and be close, I do not hang my frames in advance and do not try to shove a person there. The other is the other. So in friendship, so in love.
And so with cats, which is probably why I love cats so much. A cat is such a creature, living with which you learn to accept the otherness of another. Here he is altogether different. He has his own rhythms, boundaries and needs. And the cat doesn't owe me anything. He just exists in parallel and sometimes allows himself to be taken care of.
The most beautiful thing in love is that it not only reveals to me another person and reveals me to him - this is all clear. The most beautiful thing in love that she reveals to me - me. I do not know what to expect from myself, I am in shock. I am different for myself. When I love, I am radically different for myself. I am a cat for myself."
Afterword
This essay is made up of pieces of a mosaic: it can be assembled and assembled in different ways; but there will certainly be torn edges and gaping voids - although the field of meanings is common (at least in the idea). I deliberately did not end some thoughts or unfold others. Let there be a shortage. If there is a goal in uploading text to the Internet, then in this case it is achieved when a person does not so much get to know me as meets himself. And this is possible just in scraps, voids, incompleteness; in questions and disagreements.
Materials (edit)used in the preparation of the essay:
Einstein A. The World As I See It.
Jaspers K. The meaning and purpose of history.
Lacan J. Function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis.
A course of lectures "Space and time of the psychic." OFF, lecturer Ayten Juran.
Course of lectures "European man in question". Caritas Kyiv, Bila Kava; lecturer Anatoly Akhutin.
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