no prophylaxis for the normal neurosis

This wonderful phrase appears in "Constructing the
Sexual Crucible" by David Schnarch. This is the
most sensible psychology book I've read in some
time. (Perhaps because it's neither self-help nor
pop psychology nor French philosophy, but, apparently,
a text book for practicing therapists.)

The idea of "no prophylaxis for the normal neurosis"
is that modern psychology (for the most part) does
not try to prevent the problems that people in our
society are inevitably going to face. There's a
degree of circularity there -- but what we're talking
about are things like "money stress" or "no common
ground with people who you meet on the street".

The main theme of the book is that most people
are the 'walking undifferentiated'. As a whole we are
not what you would call mature and well-balanced
adults; rather, according to Dr Schnarch, most people
are dependent, anxiety-ridden, and, in particular,
incapable of sustaining a 'healthy' intimacy.

But, per usual with these things, there may be hope.
The idea in this book (I think -- I'm only 136 pages
into it) is to use intimacy -- situations where you
know yourself in and through the presence of another
person -- to build your sense of self. This is as
opposed to mere 'closeness' in which you form
part of a physical system with another person.
Knowledge and learning are key.

The challenge suggested in this book is that
people generally resist growth (as much as some
of us might say how much we love it); they find it hard
and otherwise objectionable. On the hopeful side,
Schnarch's model of intimacy does not demand
reciprocity, trust, or any of the typical fuzzy "pop"
notions of intimacy. It just requires what I
said above -- and when put that way, it appears
that we have many opportunities to try for the
kind of growth that we're sort of sluggish about
effecting.

This seems to be an intimacy without easy
answers. And, until we get more comfortable
in our own skins, with a considerable amount
of frustration and pain.

As for "relationship advice" or how to make this
work, at this point in the book, Schnarch quotes
Gibran:

"Love one another, but do not make a bond of
love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the
shores of your souls."

(I think this quote is quite a wonderful challenge
to the notion of fixed links or relationships between
things... it seems like a good way to express a
connection A<-B->C when all of the terms may be
changing.)

report on crisisology

Wikipedia suggests the following meanings or properties of the word
"crisis" (cf. Tim's one-earlier post):

(1) A crisis (plural: crises) (from the Greek κρίσις) may occur
on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or stressful
change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social
situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a
large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an
impending abrupt change.

(2) More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency
event'. [1]

I wonder if successive revisions to the definition or etymology
of a word might reflect a sort of *crisis of meaning*. In saying
this, I'm attempting to bring these two words (crisis = *selection*
and meaning := *selection process*) into a mutually-defining
relation.

My off-the-cuff notion can be expanded thusly:

"Meaning" is either personal or social; it is how we identify things
we call "dangerous" or "unstable" (by building models that tell
us how THIS implies THAT); it is, further, how we assimilate
('passively') or negotiate ('actively') the events that we're
party to; but more importantly,

*what we call 'crises' are (or precipitate) changes in the
selection process, in other words, changes in meanings.*

On the personal level, what this suggests is that "identity"
or "sense of self" is challenged in a crisis situation. For
example, if you think that "I'm not the kind of person who..."
but subsequently find yourself exhibiting the elided behavior,
this is a personal crisis. "I always thought I was such-and-such,
but *now I realize I'm the one who*..." -- from cases like this,
we see that identity can be changed or even created out of
crisis.

On the societal level, a crisis is (or precipitates) changes in
"the way we do things". It is thus inherently anti-conservative,
but it need not therefor be "progressive".

On these understandings of the word "crisis", it is neither
"healthy" nor "unheathy" but in point of fact essential.

The new science of crisisology might be of use in both
manufacturing and defusing crises, in selecting *useful*
crises over non-useful ones, or perhaps in smoothing
certain transitions (which does not eliminate the crisis
but *merely makes it continuous as opposed to discrete*).

The "radical" claim of this author is that crisis should be
embraced as not merely the touch-stone but in fact
the very engine or essence of meaning. Crises, which
simultaneously curtail an individual's decision-making
ability and yet force a decision, are the events that
define the boundary of "self".

"Choose or forfeit your choice" is the crisisologist's
paradoxical version of the Cartesian "cogito", along
with the alternate, equally viable and equally
paradoxical "Choose and forfeit".

On this view, crisisology is (cf. 1st paragraph above)
a sort of "quantum philology" and holistic detection
technique all rolled into one. I close this report with
a call for further study.

[1]: I'm reminded here of "The Test Drive" by
Avital Ronell which (ha ha) is available for trial
purposes at

http://books.google.com/books?id=bwgn0agWkyQC&dq=the+test+drive+book&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=LLE6SoTkKYuUMqL_wbAF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

(This essay seems to be on a very Ronellish theme.)

I've noticed on wikipedia that an accepted etymology or other such explanation is often preceded by an anecdote, often demarcated as unreliable. For an example of the form just look up teetotalism, which illustrates the form nicely.

"One anecdote attributes the origin of the word to... / A more likely explanation is that teetotal is..."

I suggest that this convention is largely an effect of the "accretion environment" where the accepted fact or truth often acknowledges the imperfect predecessor which possibly inspired the more knowledgable editor to correct the article. Of course it's also partly just the desire to appear erudite, by dismissing a spurious theory before presenting the truth.

In either case, it's an interesting form for a repository of knowledge and might be worth some further study. Does the discussion, dynamic over time, almost literally stratify into a sort of fossil record, in a consistent and predictable way? What about erosion?

(Note of course my complete lack of scholarly rigor as I'm not even testing the hypothesis on the case I cite. It's Sunday & I'm lazy.)