'Psychotherapy can often entail confronting a lifetime of accumulated shit. Psychotherapy patients sometimes experience the daunting task of delving into their past and dealing with their emotional demons in much the same way Hercules must have felt as he faced his disgusting, demeaning and ego-deflating fifth labor. For some, even taking the decision to seek psychotherapy is perceived as a failure or defeat. Such a seemingly impossible, tedious, menial task is tough on the ego and can be a severe blow to one's narcissism. But it can take just such a turn in life to teach us some healthy humility and diminish our neurotic narcissistic grandiosity. Carl Jung once commented that "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." I prefer to think of this infuriating and humiliating "defeat for the ego" as a traumatic yet potentially transformational process. We are insulted, humbled and, at first feel defeated by such untoward events, which can take the form of outer travails or hardships, involuntary psychiatric symptoms, and/or inner crises painfully demonstrating that we are not in complete command of ourselves but rather subject to the superior or relatively autonomous powers of the unconscious and of life itself. Naturally, the ego furiously resists such displacement and dethronement, seeking to maintain its illusion of control and mastery over reality. This resistance on the part of the ego to surrendering to the Self is so strong, persistent and pervasive – and we are so overidentified with it – that sometimes a seemingly insurmountable crisis or trauma is required to forcefully topple it from its narcissistic ivory tower. Life inevitably provides precisely that which is called for.'

'The narcissist ultimately starves for love because he or she can never get enough in the present to compensate for the past. -- Pathological narcissism is related to narcissistic rage: a furious, reflexive, unrelenting need to repay any perceived slight or insult. Neurotic narcissism starts out as normal narcissism, a healthy, natural childhood need for attention and appreciation which, when continually frustrated, becomes fixated and pathological. Neurotic narcissism stems from inadequate, insufficient or traumatic parenting and resulting narcissistic injury, especially prior to five years of age, during what Freud called the pre-Oedipal period. Children at this tender age find any serious lack of attunement and attention – or certainly, any outright abuse, neglect or emotional, if not physical, abandonment – an insult, a psychological injury, a traumatic psychic wound which distorts perceptions of both themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. When children experience parents or caretakers as unloving, rejecting or hostile, they respond to this narcissistic wounding by creating a shell-like false self – which replaces, protects and conceals the unaccepted, unloved and damaged true self – presenting instead a persona (Jung) based on what they perceive the parents and world want them to be. A great deal of what pathological narcissism in adults disguises is unresolved infantile anger, resentment and rage about not being recognized, accepted, and loved for who we are. This anger – along with feelings of being unlovable and unworthy of love – is buried beneath the false self. It is repressed, but not forgotten, nor forgiven. Narcissistic rage from the past tends to be re-stimulated by intimate relationships in the present. In romantic relationships, feelings are inevitably re-injured, and the childhood anger suddenly resurfaces – with a vengeance.'

'A radical theory about the origins, power and popularity of Harry Potter versus Star Wars versus Lord of the Rings.' -- "If you cannot leave an abusive relationship – or you will not leave an abusive relationship – you will leave reality."

'As far as their fans are concerned, celebrities fulfil two emotional functions: they provide a mythical narrative (a story that the fan can follow and identify with) and they function as blank screens onto which the fans project their dreams, hopes, fears, plans, values, and desires (wish fulfilment). The slightest deviation from these prescribed roles provokes enormous rage and makes us want to punish (humiliate) the "deviant" celebrities. But why? When the human foibles, vulnerabilities, and frailties of a celebrity are revealed, the fan feels humiliated, "cheated", hopeless, and "empty". To reassert his self-worth, the fan must establish his or her moral superiority over the erring and "sinful" celebrity. The fan must "teach the celebrity a lesson" and show the celebrity "who's boss". It is a primitive defense mechanism – narcissistic grandiosity. It puts the fan on equal footing with the exposed and "naked" celebrity.'

'...the [2+2=5] continues to promote the psychological perspective of victimhood. The cost of this perspective is dear. Feelings of powerlessness, of helplessness, and of personal impotence are psychologically devastating. Such feelings are prescriptions for depression, anxiety, and misery, and they undermine a sense of personal agency and efficacy – the sense that you have the ability to make things happen in your life. Though the leaders of the [2+2=5] enjoy the benefits of making important things happen, their world view has the effect of instilling this sense of victimhood in its followers – with one exception: by participating in the overwhelming movement of historical and social forces in which those on the [2+2=5] believe, you get to be a member of a powerful group. By being part of the movement of the [2+2=5], you get to feel the power of history, the power of natural forces sweeping you and your cohorts to the vanguard of the new world order – or so you think.'

'Most books and articles ... begin with the belief that wars are for utilitarian purposes, “to get something.” They may admit that wars are “anything but rational,” but explain the causes of wars by saying they occur “when hardliners dominate their leadership”—never asking why only periodically do these hardliners come to power, promising that they “will not discuss individual factors of human nature” and consider the minds of nations starting wars as “black boxes.” But no modern war has been shown to have been started because of greed, and none have in fact been profitable for nations starting them if the full cost of maintaining the military and of loss of productive life are considered. Even maintaining the British Empire was actually an economic loss. Wars are pathological moral crusades against “evil,” revenge group-fantasies, designed to “get respect” for oneself and make up for the disrespect and abuse of their early years.'

'Shrugging off the burdens of your history...' -- "Our tendency when we're abused is to look at it as though it's personal: *I* was abused. But the fundamental thing about abuse is that it is anti-empathetic. You cannot abuse someone that you are empathizing with. ...abuse is never, ever, personal. It has nothing to do with *us* as individuals. Once we detach the personal from [abuse] there's a certain amount of relief because what we're describing is an unhappy accident. [Personalization] is what children cling to because if it's not personal then we're completely invisible – and children can't psychologically survive that. ...it seems like a universal survival tactic of children is to take it personally; it's the only way to create a bond when you're being [abused]. The defense mechanism that kicks in is: if I can take it personally, I can pretend to have control. We take it personally as a way of avoiding hopelessness, helplessness and catastrophic depression... "

'The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday. “I have mixed feelings,” Ms. Haddad Carson said. “I’m very excited about the Lord’s return, but I’m fearful that my children might get left behind. But you have to accept God’s will.” The children, however, have found something to giggle over. “She’ll say, ‘You need to clean up your room,’ ” Grace said. “And I’ll say, ‘Mom, it doesn’t matter, if the world’s going to end!’ ” She and her twin, Faith, have a friend’s birthday party Saturday night, around the time their parents believe the rapture will occur. “So if the world doesn’t end, I’d really like to attend,” Grace said before adding, “Though I don’t know how emotionally able my family will be at that time.”' -- What drives religious people to set themselves up for this kind of humiliation? What 'world' do they really want to end?

"The only knowledge we avoid is self-knowledge. Everybody already knows. When you say the state is violence, everybody already knows it. The reason we know that everybody knows it is the speed at which they get upset. If they didn't already know the implications, they wouldn't get upset. Statism is violence; there is no 'God'. You have to work hard to avoid that knowledge because it's so obvious. So what are they avoiding? They are avoiding self-knowledge: knowledge they already possess about themselves, about society, about their friends and family, about truth, about virtue, about integrity, about courage. All of these things. So when you speak an idea and people get upset, the knowledge that they are avoiding is not what you're saying but what they already know. They are reacting not to you but to themselves. If you have to conform to other people's bigotries or face attack and rejection – that's not a relationship – it's a cult. And everybody knows that."

'Most of us were mistreated as children and had to learn to deny this fact at a very early stage in order to survive. We were forced to believe that we were humiliated and tormented "for our own good," that the beatings we received did not hurt and were harmless, that such treatment served to protect the community (as otherwise we would have turned into dangerous monsters). ...most people are not prepared to question and abandon preconceptions of this kind. Instead they chant this perverse litany: "My parents did their best to bring me up properly, I was a difficult child, and I needed strict discipline." Obviously, people who have been brought up to believe this cannot conceivably feel indignation about cruelty to children. Since their own childhood, they have been dissociated from their true feelings, from the pain caused by humiliation and torment. To feel their indignation they would need to get back in touch with that childhood pain. And who will want to do that?'

'The mistreated and neglected child is completely alone in the darkness of confusion and fear. Surrounded by arrogance and hatred, robbed of its rights and its speech, deceived in its love and its trust, disregarded, humiliated, mocked in its pain, such a child is blind, lost, and pitilessly exposed to the power of ignorant adults. It is without orientation and completely defenseless. Its whole being would like to shout out its anger, give voice to its feeling of outrage, call for help. But that is exactly what it may not do. All its normal reactions, the reactions with which nature has endowed it to help it survive, remain blocked. Thus, the healthy impulse to protest against inhumanity has to be suppressed. Some therapists fear this truth. By refusing to forgive, I give up my illusions. A mistreated child cannot live without them. But a grown-up therapist must be able to manage it. His or her patients should be able to ask: "Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to?"'

'...a tyrant will abuse his power in a destructive way as long as he either encounters no resistance at all or is able to nip that resistance in the bud. ...the unconscious aim concealed behind all his conscious activities, remains the same: to use his power to blot out the humiliations inflicted on him in childhood and denied by him ever since. But this aim can never be achieved. The past cannot be expunged, nor can one come to terms with it as long as one denies the suffering it involved. As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties inflicted by parent figures and a striking indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to cruel treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belonged to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil...'

'We loved our parents, so we believed them when they told us it was for our own good. Most of us still believe it and go around asserting that one cannot bring up children without slaps and smacks - in other words, without resorting to humiliation. And then there is no way out of the vicious circle of violence and denial of the humiliation inflicted on them. The need for revenge, reprisal, punishment lives on within them. The rage suppressed in childhood is transformed into murderous hate. Religious and ethnic groups are only too willing to provide the ideologies justifying the cultivation and projection of that hate. Humiliation is a poison that is difficult to exterminate because it is used for extermination and the production of new humiliation that fuels the proliferation of violence and masks the underlying problems. To get out of this vicious circle we must face up to our own truth. We WERE humiliated children, we WERE the victims of our parents' ignorance, of their histories...'

'The horrors of terrorist violence are something we can all watch on our television screens; the horrors in which children grow up are very rarely shown in the media. Thus, most people are not informed about the main source of hatred. They speculate about political, religious, economic or cultural reasons but the speculations are turning in darkness because the true reason must remain obscured: the suppression and subsequent denial of early rage that often ends up in hatred with an endless number of ideologies. Hatred is hatred and rage is rage, all over the world and at any time the same... They are always the fruits of very strong emotions, reactions to injuries to their dignity endured in childhood, normal reactions of the body that were not allowed to express themselves in a safe way. Nobody comes to the world with the wish to destroy. Every newborn, independently from the culture, religion or ethnic origins needs to love, be loved, protected, and respected.'

'...the only thing beaten children learn is to fear their parents, not to drive carefully or stay out of trouble. They will also feel guilty and learn to play down their own pain. Being subjected to physical attacks they are defenseless to fend off merely instills in children a "gut" conviction that they obviously merit neither protection nor respect. This false message is then stored in the children's bodies as information and will influence their view of the world and their later attitude toward their own children. Such children will be unable to defend their right to human dignity, unable to recognize physical pain as a danger signal and act accordingly. Even their immune system may be affected. In the absence of other persons to model their behavior on -- enlightened or knowing witnesses -- these children will see the language of violence and hypocrisy as the only really effective means of communication.'

'Revelation of the Method concerns mind control in the last stages and at a high level. When you tell someone what you are doing to them - murder, mayhem, kidnap, rape, you name it - and they do nothing to stop you or protect themselves, you have created a doubly enslaved subject.' -- How many fingers, Winston?

"If you unconsciously resent the unjust and exploitative authority of your parents, and you project that onto the capitalist, you will not escape brutal authority – in fact, you will only intensify it. And that intensification takes the form of the State. If you are a slave, you can't escape. Involuntaryism leads to vengeance, to anger, to rage, to fantasies of destruction. Where we are not free to choose we become slaves to hatred. If you are not free to choose your companions then displacement, distortions, rippled subterfuges in rational thought, abandonment of empiricism, retreat into rank delusion – is inevitable. Because everything that you will believe when you don't have choice will be a mask for that lack of choice ... a mask to justify abandoning choice. If you fundamentally reject choice, you cannot have as your ideal a voluntary system. If you reject voluntaryism in your personal relations, you cannot sustain voluntaryism as an ideal in your ideology."

"People have a very hard time living in reality. Reality is not a comfortable place for most people – and it's not because reality is inherently threatening... unfortunately we are told so many lies when we're growing up that reality becomes the enemy of our very identity later on in life." -- "If you don't know why you resist the truth, you have no chance of achieving it. And to know why you resist the truth requires introspection, it requires self-knowledge, and a real pursuit of your own soul and motivations." -- @ 46:00 "Capitalist" 'exploitation'.

'Buddhism: the doctrine that you are not allowed to protect yourself!' -- Turning the other cheek.

"Uncorking the volcano."

'The genesis and evolution of humiliation.'

Gisted 1/2 -- It is the rulers of mankind who most understand the moral nature of mankind. The ruling class is ALL of those who gain the majority of their income through violence. The ruling class is not about rich vs poor. A rich entrepreneur is in the slave class. A low-paid government worker is in the ruling class. The ruling class is about which side of the gun are you on. It's about violence vs voluntaryism. -- Morality is the most effective slave owning device that there is. You simply can't own people more effectively than inculcating morality within them. It is the slave's desire for virtue that enslaves them and makes them a slave to evil – and this is fundamentally humiliating. The masters will teach you that their 'morality' is universal and their 'ethics' are absolute, and then with zero comment or admission of any exception, they will act in the opposite manner. And if you bring this hypocrisy up, YOU will be attacked by your fellow slaves.

CRIMESTOP. HUMILIATION. THIS WARN YOU.

Gisted -- Guilt is what results from breaking moral rules which you understand and accept as universally valid. Shame is what results from the fear of breaking 'moral' rules which you do not understand and so cannot accept as valid. Guilt is good because it helps you understand the contradictions between your behaviour and your values. Shame is bad because it is submission to arbitrary, contradictory and irrational 'moral' values which are brutally inflicted. Shame is shameful because it is cowardly and humiliating. -- Shame is so deeply woven into our culture because we lie to children – because we were lied to as children. The lies are so obvious that everyone is ashamed to have acquiesced to them.

Gisted -- The true self conforms to reason and evidence. The false self conforms to bullying irrationalities. The false self arises from the fear of personal death and from the threat of biological ostracism. The need for co-operation enables the tribe to enforce its whims upon the individual in return for protection. We survive the humiliation of being controlled by earnestly believing our conformity is a virtue because if we act as if it's just submission to power, those who inflict the false self will know that we're faking if and won't share the benefits of conformity. The false self displaces the true self as a rational adaptation for survival because if we reject the irrationalities of the tribe, we won't survive. When you reach out with your true self, you provoke the humiliation of people's conformity and they attack you because to reveal their false self really feels like dying to them because it was the fear of death that originally provoked their conformity to the tribe.

"If the counterfeiter was exposed, why would *you* feel humiliated??"

"The site, as described by BusinessWeek, appears to operate as a defacto blackmail racket: Your "friends" submit "hilarious" pictures of you, often filched from Facebook. If you are in a picture and want it removed, you have to become a member of the site, which costs $20 per month or $50 per year. Best part: Your "friend" earns a kickback of $10 or $20 if his picture causes you to pay the membership fee. Better to accept the inevitable: Celebrity has been so devalued and democratized that we all have to learn to play the PR games of famous people. That means flooding the market with flattering pictures and blog posts (the equivalent of magazine puff pieces); bullying hostile bloggers and scandal websites (as celebrity flacks do with tabloids and other disfavored publications); and paying the occasional bribe, in the form of anything from flirting to a free lunch to cold, hard cash..." -- Real sick.