As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

Erwin Straus, “The Upright Posture,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1942

Social facts > “fact”

Psychological facts > “imagination”

Say I have a dreary feeling (Z) which I want to combat—a feeling which gives rise to something I repeatedly do or say that I wish I didn’t.

If I merely suppress the behavior (if that’s even possible) I recharge the feeling behind it.

Recipe for killing the feeling: Act it out in an exaggerated form.

The chagrin one feels then is far more memorable and therapeutic.

Soft-focus thinking (as in the 4 lectures) whose virtue is aliveness, being improvised, being contemporary to the situation in which it’s uttered;———vs sharp-focus thinking (writing) which is more accurate, complex, unrepetitive, but has to be prepared in advance—like a Greek statue with blank eyes

One criticizes in others what one recognizes + despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.

Underneath the depression, I found my anxiety.

One difference between naming a feeling (“I feel terrible”) and expressing it (“Ohh … .”) is the response you get: “Why?” or “What’s the matter?” By naming a feeling in order to give vent to it—a practice very much promoted by psychoanalysis—you make a co-reasoner out of your consoler.

So much in modern life that can be enjoyed, once one gets over the nausea of the replicate

One must be devout about sex. Then, one won’t dare to be anxious. Anxiety will never be revealed for what it is—spiritual meanness, pettiness, small-mindedness.

Dietrich: clean, solid—movements never weak or floating or petty—sparse
Von S: profuse

[In the margin:] They highlight each other by their differences

Dietrich: clean, solid—movements never weak or floating or petty—sparse
Von S: profuse

[In the margin:] They highlight each other by their differences