2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
- "If you want to become unhappy, think and talk only about yourself." This is how one friend of mine summed up his impressions of the interaction with a respected professor, whom he had not seen for several years. Once, as a young man, he looked at the "luminary" with enthusiastic eyes and eagerly absorbed every word of the master. After a long absence of communication with a pundit, not such a young man felt like a "squeezed lemon", disappointed and tired of endless professors: "I, I, I …" - this is all that the former student happened to hear from the professor years later.
Recently, my therapeutic practice has been replenished with the type of clients whose message of therapy expresses concern for their own "I", which even fits into the popular psychological calls to study, develop, and recognize one's own "I". Many of them do not know that their suffering is associated with just this total concern with their own "I". There are really many such clients today who should be told: “Forget yourself”. Some of these clients, "well-grounded" in popular psychology, seek excessive reflection, the search for their "purpose" and purpose in life, while the tasks of their therapy are de-reflexion and self-transcendence.
A long tradition of Western thought warns against a non-transcendental purpose in life. Martin Buber (M. Buber “I and You”), when discussing the Hasidic worldview, notes that although a person should start with himself, he should not end with himself. Further, Martin Buber said, the question should be asked: - "Why?", "Why should I find my own special path?" The answer is: - "Not for your own sake."
A person begins with himself in order to then forget himself and plunge into the world. Man comprehends himself not in order to become completely absorbed in himself.
An important point, according to Martin Buber, is that a person's life contains meaning, which includes much more than the salvation of one's own soul. Moreover, excessive focus on getting a "prominent" personal place can lead to the loss of this very place. This is well illustrated by the stories of people who are engaged in excessive reflection and are unable to leave their personal orbit.
A similar point of view was expressed by Viktor Frankl (V. Frankl “Man in Search of Meaning”), in whose opinion excessive absorption in self-expression and self-actualization contradicts the true meaning of life.
Viktor Frankl illustrated this idea with the help of the boomerang metaphor, which returns to the hunter who threw him only if he misses the target, in the same way people return to being busy with themselves only if they have missed their meaning in life. In addition, Viktor Frankl attracts the metaphor of the human eye, which sees itself or something in itself only when it is unable to see itself outside. So, in a love relationship, the main thing is not free self-expression, but going beyond oneself, taking care of the being of another.
Thus, without self-transcendence, peace of mind is impossible.
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