Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Cleanness (2020)

  The two floors of my cottage had been divided into apartments, of which mine was the loveliest, I thought, on the ground floor with windows facing into the trees. I had moved in less than a year before, tired of taking the bus each morning from my apartment off campus. I hadn’t known how soon I would be leaving, not just Sofia but teaching altogether, it had become unbearable, the drudgery and routine of it, earlier that spring I had realized I couldn’t face another year. A short set of stairs led to my door, four or five steps, and as I began to climb them I stumbled, catching myself with my hands and then falling onto my side against the concrete, where I lay or half lay for a moment before sitting upright on the bottom step. I swallowed hard against a wave of nausea, of nausea and something else, they were indistinguishable, seven years, I thought, seven years undone, a betrayal of vocation. But I rejected this even as I thought it, it wasn’t my vocation, it was just something I had done, a way I had passed the time; don’t be so pious, something said in me, and something else cringed away. I swallowed again, I couldn’t be sick here, everyone would see it, if I was going to be sick I had to get inside. But though I willed myself to stand I remained where I was, barely upright, my hands buttressed at my sides and my torso leaning forward, swaying a little. I was exaggerating or making excuses, it wasn’t so bad or it was worse. You can’t know tonight, I thought, in the morning you’ll know, and I feared what I would feel, how my actions would look in the light of day, those were the words I used, the light of day, I was thinking in old phrases. I tried to stand again, lifting myself a few inches before I dropped back down. I heard a sound then and looked up, and saw coming up the path toward me the fat shape of Mama Dog, her tail beating in the dark. She was the only dog allowed on campus; for years she had kept other dogs away, but now she was too old to guard anything, and she spent most of the day sleeping, on the porches of our houses or beside the guards where they sat in the shade. She was always happy to see me, I gave her treats sometimes, but I didn’t have anything for her now, and I told her this, Nyamam nishto , opening my empty hands. She cocked her head, that look of understanding dogs give, or of wanting to understand, their demand for attention. Obicham te , I said to her, I love you, but tonight I don’t have anything, go away, I said, mahai se , and I made a shooing motion with my hand.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He raised his hand then, signaling for the waitress and signaling too that our talk was over, that he had exhausted all hope of my helpfulness; and I was both relieved and exasperated by this, and exasperated too by what he had said. But this is a story you’re telling yourself, I said, a story you’ve made up that will make you unhappy. There’s nothing inevitable about it, it’s a choice you’ve made, you can choose a different story. But he was already gone, though he was still with me at the table; he was taking out his wallet to pay the check, which I covered with my hand as the waitress laid it down. I’ve got it, I said, and he thanked me, for the coffee and for the talk, as he said. He stood up and put on his coat while I was still counting out bills, and though he stood there willing to wait for me he was clearly relieved when I let him go, saying I would wait for my change. I watched him as he left, walking hunched over just slightly, carrying away the despair he held on to so tightly, and I told myself he would grow out from under it, that he would go to university and discover a new life in England or America, new freedoms and possibilities, a greater scope for love, and with it room in himself for other feelings. The pain he felt now would become a story he told to others, I thought, and of course he couldn’t believe this, of course it seemed impossible, I told myself, of course I had failed to make him see it.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Now among his own people, Adam gave the name he had grown up with, and the names of those whom he believed to be his parents. The man then exclaimed, “No, no, that’s not your real family name.” And he told him the names of his biological parents and how they had both died. Adam remembered being unspeakably relieved to know that the cruel mother he had experienced was not his real mother. While in the concentration camp, Adam witnessed people being brutally beaten, tortured and shot. Many others succumbed to suicide, often by hanging themselves. During his internment, Adam was without any real comfort or support to help him deal with such terror and horror. For most of us, Adam’s experience is unimaginable. If we were to honestly ponder the effect it would have had on us, we would be deeply disturbed by such terrible knowledge. Yet, to observe Adam in his life, he appeared, at least on the surface, little different from you or me, only more successful by modern-day standards. As an orphan from birth and a survivor of the most unimaginable atrocities and human suffering, Adam had risen above this torment. He immigrated to South America at the age of nineteen, hoping “to escape his past.” There he settled and built his business, becoming a powerful, financially successful, international entrepreneur. Yet, when this extraordinary human being was referred to me, he had been reduced to a broken man. He was stooped over and shuffled as he entered the room. His posture and movements reminded me of patients I have seen in the back wards of psychiatric hospitals. His eyes looked blankly at the floor, and he seemed not to notice that I was even present. I had no idea where to begin. On the one hand, he was so shut down that it seemed like nothing I could say or do would reach him; but on the other hand, I feared that if I were able to bring up feelings, they might overwhelm him so completely that he would collapse into a bottomless catatonic despair. How could I reach this man without destroying him? I felt lost and intimidated by the scope and delicate challenge of my task. By rote, Adam went on and on with the litany he had told the psychiatrist. There was not a trace of feeling in his narrative: “That all happened so long ago,” he added with a small tired sigh. I listened, finding myself quite uncomfortable at hearing such horror described without affect.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Other people have gone through this, I began, finding it difficult to speak. Other people have felt it, they bear it and they get through it, they aren’t trapped in it forever. These feelings, I said lamely, all of them, they will get easier, they’ll stop being the only thing you feel, they’ll fade and make room for other feelings. And then, in time, you’ll look at them from far away, almost entirely without pain, as if they were felt by somebody else, or felt in a dream. That’s what it’s like, I said, thinking I had struck on something, it’s precisely like waking from a dream, and like a self in a dream the self that feels this will be incomprehensible to you, and the intensity you feel now will be like a puzzle you can’t solve, a puzzle it finally isn’t worth your while to solve. I was speaking of myself, of course, of my own experience with love, with overwhelming love that had made me at times such a stranger to myself. But I could see this failing even as I spoke, I could see him recoiling from me, looking at me with an expression first of surprise and then of dismay, and then of something like revulsion. I don’t want to feel it less, he said, I don’t want it to stop, I don’t want it to seem like it wasn’t real. It would all be for nothing if that happened, he said, I don’t want it to be a dream, I want it to be real, all of it. And who else could I love, he asked, his voice softening, we grew up together, in the same country, with the same language, we became adults together; who could I meet wherever I go next who could know me like that, who could love me as much as he could love me, who could I love as much? What life could I want except for that life, he said, reminding me of the question I had asked so long before, he hadn’t forgotten it, his whole recitation had been an answer, what other life than that could I bear?

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  One morning, as the queen’s expiration date was getting perilously near, the unfortunate woman once again found herself standing before the large mirror in her bedchamber. Soon she was uttering the same pitiful plea: “Mirror, mirror, on the wall. How much longer ’til I fall? Was my beauty all in vain? Advise me please, to end this pain!” The mirror had been waiting patiently for her return, and this time it responded with an even more chilling direction: “Your beauty, once beyond compare, Soon will be no longer there. Snow White is one like you once were. Take and eat the heart of her!” The queen whirled from the mirror in a rage and grabbed a nearby chair with the intention of hurling it at the offending mirror and shattering it once and for all. But she stopped short; partly because she believed the mirror offered her the only real hope, and partly because, in her undernourished state, she hadn’t the strength to throw the chair. She sat down on the chair instead. She knew that she would indeed eat Snow White’s heart if that was the only way to regain her beauty. With this realization, the queen resolved to get it over quickly, and immediately sent for her most trusted servant to help her. This servant, however, was really a handsome prince disguising himself as the queen’s servant in order to be closer to her, for he was secretly in love with her and waiting for the opportunity to win her heart. The prince listened to the queen’s request in shocked silence, staring at her with disbelief in his handsome blue eyes. Since true love was the only antidote to the sorcerer’s evil spell, the prince had been completely unaware that the queen was nearing her expiration date. Indeed, in his eyes she was becoming more beautiful with each passing day. But the prince could not refuse the queen anything, his love for her was so great, and so he readily agreed to help her. Recognizing this as the opportunity he had been waiting for, he added the condition that the queen spend that very evening with him, away from the castle. Desperate to have Snow White’s heart, the queen agreed to the arrangement. The prince found Snow White working in the kitchen, but the kind and gentle man had no intention of harming her. Instead, he took her deep into the woods to hide in safety; and then, coming upon a small lamb, he slaughtered it and carefully wrapped its heart. Content that he had done the right thing, he returned to the queen and presented the counterfeit heart to her. The queen wasted no time in cooking the heart in low-calorie, non-saturated, high-omega oil and then tentatively took a bite of it. She could detect nothing unpleasant in the taste, but it nevertheless took every bit of her willpower to swallow it. The cruel spell that held her forced her onward until every last drop was consumed.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Tommy Dukes roared with laughter. "You angel boy! If only I had! If only I had! No; my heart's as numb as a potato, my penis droops and never lifts its head up, I dare rather cut him clean off than say 'shit!' in front of my mother or my aunt ... they are real ladies, mind you; and I'm not really intelligent, I'm only a 'mental-lifer.' It would be wonderful to be intelligent: then one would be alive in all the parts mentioned and unmentionable. The penis rouses his head and says: How do you do?--to any really intelligent person. Renoir said he painted his pictures with his penis ... he did too, lovely pictures! I wish I did something with mine. God! when one can only talk! Another torture added to Hades! And Socrates started it." "There are nice women in the world," said Connie, lifting her head up and speaking at last. The men resented it ... she should have pretended to hear nothing. They hated her admitting she had attended so closely to such talk. "My God!--'_If they be not nice to me What care I how nice they be?_'-- "No, it's hopeless! I just simply can't vibrate in unison with a woman. There's no woman I can really want when I'm faced with her, and I'm not going to start forcing myself to it.... My God, no! I'll remain as I am, and lead the mental life. It's the only honest thing I can do. I can be quite happy _talking_ to women; but it's all pure, hopelessly pure. Hopelessly pure! What do you say, Hildebrand, my chicken?" "It's much less complicated if one stays pure," said Berry. "Yes, life is all too simple!" CHAPTER V On a frosty morning with a little February sun, Clifford and Connie went for a walk across the park to the wood. That is, Clifford chuffed in his motor-chair, and Connie walked beside him. The hard air was still sulphureous, but they were both used to it. Round the near horizon went the haze, opalescent with frost and smoke, and on the top lay the small blue sky; so that it was like being inside an enclosure, always inside. Life always a dream or a frenzy, inside an enclosure. The sheep coughed in the rough, sere grass of the park, where frost lay bluish in the sockets of the tufts. Across the park ran a path to the woodgate, a fine ribbon of pink. Clifford had had it newly gravelled with sifted gravel from the pit-bank. When the rock and refuse of the underworld had burned and given off its sulphur, it turned bright pink, shrimp-coloured on dry days, darker, crab-coloured on wet. Now it was pale shrimp-colour, with a bluish-white hoar of frost. It always pleased Connie, this underfoot of sifted, bright pink. It's an ill-wind that brings nobody good.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  A couple of times I broke off to try to think up an excuse for my situation—Look, I know you won’t believe this, but I just kind of woke up and there I was, driving the car! —but all of these ideas led me to despair, and I went back to singing songs. I sang every song I knew, and it began to amaze me how many of them there were. And I became aware that I didn’t sound that bad out here where I could really cut loose—that I sounded pretty good. I took different parts. I did talking songs, like “Deck of Cards” and “Three Stars.” I sang falsetto. I began to enjoy myself. I WAS HALFWAY to Chinook when I heard an engine behind me. I faced the lights and flagged the driver down. He stopped his truck in the road, engine running, a man I didn’t know. “That your car back there?” he asked. I said it was. “How’d you do that, anyway?” “It’s hard to explain,” I said. He told me to get in. I started yelling for Champion. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Who’s this Champ? You didn’t say anything about any Champ.” “My dog.” The man peered into the darkness while I tried to call Champion in. He was afraid of what was out there and afraid of me, and his fear made me feel dangerous. Finally he said, “I’m going,” but just then Champion bounded out of the trees. The man looked at him. “God almighty,” he said, but he opened the door for us and drove us back to the car. He was silent during the drive and silent while he winched the car up onto the road. When I thanked him, he just nodded slightly and drove away. I made it into bed not long before my mother came to wake me. “I don’t feel so good,” I told her. She put her hand on my forehead, and at that gesture I wanted to tell her everything, the whole scrape, not by way of confession but in my exhilaration at having gotten out of it. She liked hearing stories about close calls; they confirmed her faith in luck. But I knew that I couldn’t tell her without at least promising never to take the car again, which I had every intention of doing, or at worst forcing her to betray me to Dwight. She looked down at me in the gray light of dawn. “You don’t have a fever,” she said. “But I have to admit, you look awful.” She told me I could stay home from school that day if I promised not to watch TV. I slept until lunchtime. I was sitting up in bed, eating a sandwich, when Dwight came to my room. He leaned in the doorway with his hands in his pockets like a mime acting out Relaxation. It made me wary. “Feeling better?” he asked. I said I was.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  With human posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic sufferers tend to gravitate, over time, toward shutdown. This shows up as symptoms of alexithymia (the inability to describe or elaborate feelings due to a deficiency in emotional awareness), depression and somatization. Pavlov, observing his dogs suffering with their debilitating and intractable symptoms, concluded that they had lost their capacity to make adaptive approach/avoidance responses; they had essentially “lost their purpose.” In summarizing the plight of these poor creatures, he remarked that they had lost the “reflex” or instinct of purpose; they had lost their way. A similar example of breakdown comes from nature. A Galapagos Island guide told the following story to one of my students: “When a volcano erupts, the animals frequently lose their survival instincts, get confused, and some walk straight into the oncoming lava. This includes sea lions and marine iguanas capable of swimming to another island.” It appears that under this form of extreme duress, even animals in the wild may lose their bearings in the chaos. With a rare prescience Pavlov also inferred the natural, instinctive mechanisms by which traumatized organisms could regain their purpose and will to live. In particular he realized that approach and avoidance were aligned with what he called the defensive and orienting response . In his further study of the orientation responses (approach) and defensive responses (avoidance), Pavlov provided us with the key to establishing a healthy encounter between an organism and its environment: an optimal balance between curiosity and the need to defend and protect oneself. Pavlov discovered that when animals are exposed to something novel in their environment, they first arrest their movement. Next they direct their eyes, head and neck in the direction of a momentary sound, fleeting shadow or novel scent (or follow the lead of other members of the group as they go into an arrest and alert response.). During arrest there is a brief deceleration of the heart rate, which apparently “tunes” and opens sensory perception. 122 Pavlov discovered that these orienting responses served the function of both locating a source of novelty as well as accessing its meaning (i.e., is it a source of threat, mating, food or shelter?). It was likely that Pavlov was aware of this dual function. He called the innate characteristic of the orienting response the chto eta takoe reflex (instead of the simpler chto eta ). Attempts at a literal translation have resulted in its being called the “What is it?” reflex. A more exact translation, however, suggests something closer to “What is that?” or “What is going on here?” or “Hey man, what’s happening?!?” b This labelling emphasizes the amazement and curiosity inherent in the response. This dual response (reacting plus inquiring) is the dominant feature of orienting behaviors.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Accordingly we must unite all the aforesaid modes together, in order to understand perfectly how the soul suffers from a corporeal fire: so as to say that the fire of its nature is able to have an incorporeal spirit united to it as a thing placed is united to a place; that as the instrument of Divine justice it is enabled to detain it enchained as it were, and in this respect this fire is really hurtful to the spirit, and thus the soul seeing the fire as something hurtful to it is tormented by the fire. Hence Gregory (Dial. iv, 29) mentions all these in order, as may be seen from the above quotations. Reply to Objection 1: Augustine speaks there as one inquiring: wherefore he expresses himself otherwise when deciding the point, as quoted above (De Civ. Dei xxi). Or we may reply that Augustine means to say that the things which are the proximate occasion of the soul’s pain or sorrow are spiritual, since it would not be distressed unless it apprehended the fire as hurtful to it: wherefore the fire as apprehended is the proximate cause of its distress, whereas the corporeal fire which exists outside the soul is the remote cause of its distress. Reply to Objection 2: Although the soul is simply more excellent than the fire, the fire is relatively more excellent than the soul, in so far, to wit, as it is the instrument of Divine justice. Reply to Objection 3: The Philosopher and Boethius are speaking of the action whereby the patient is changed into the nature of the agent. Such is not the action of the fire on the soul: and consequently the argument is not conclusive. Reply to Objection 4: By acting on the soul the fire bestows nothing on it but detains it, as stated above. Hence the argument is not to the point. Reply to Objection 5: In intellectual vision sorrow is not caused by the fact that something is seen, since the thing seen as such can nowise be contrary to the intellect. But in the sensible vision the thing seen, by its very action on the sight so as to be seen, there may be accidentally something corruptive of the sight, in so far as it destroys the harmony of the organ Nevertheless, intellectual vision may cause sorrow, in so far as the thing seen is apprehended as hurtful, not that it hurts through being seen, but in some other way no matter which. It is thus that the soul in seeing the fire is distressed. Reply to Objection 6: The comparison does not hold in every respect, but it does in some, as explained above.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Mating in Captivity Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic Esther Perel Dedication To my parents, Sala Ferlegier and Icek Perel. Their vitality lives on in me. Epigraph WILD THINGS IN CAPTIVITY Wild things in captivity while they keep their own wild purity won’t breed, they mope, they die. All men are in captivity, active with captive activity, and the best won’t breed, though they don’t know why. The great cage of our domesticity kills sex in a man, the simplicity of desire is distorted and twisted awry. And so, with bitter perversity, gritting against the great adversity, the young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry. Sex is a state of grace. In a cage it can’t take place. Break the cage then, start in and try. D. H. Lawrence Contents Dedication Epigraph Introduction 1 From Adventure to Captivity: Why the Quest for Security Saps Erotic Vitality 2 More Iintimacy, Less Sex: Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance 3 The Pitfalls Of Modern Intimacy: Talk Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness 4 Democracy Versus Hot Sex: Desire and Egalitarianism Don’t Play by the Same Rules 5 Can Do! The Protestant Work Ethic Takes On the Degradation of Desire 6 Sex Is Dirty; Save It for Someone You Love: When Puritanism and Hedonism Collide 7 Erotic Blueprints: Tell Me How You Were Loved, and I’ll Tell You How You Make Love 8 Parenthood: When Three Threatens Two 9 Of Flesh and Fantasy: In the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure 10 The Shadow of the Third: Rethinking Fidelity 11 Putting the X Back in Sex: Bringing the Erotic Home Notes Bibliography Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Author Credits Books by Esther Perel Copyright About the Publisher Introduction THE STORY OF SEX IN committed modern couples often tells of a dwindling desire and includes a long list of sexual alibis, which claim to explain the inescapable death of eros. Recently, it seems, everyone from the morning news to the New York Times has weighed in on the topic. They warn us that too many couples are having infrequent sex even when the partners profess to love each other. Today’s twosomes are too busy, too stressed, too involved in child rearing, and too tired for sex.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  She tried to be severe. I knew she wasn’t angry, but I also knew she would become angry if I did not produce some mimicry of remorse, so I hung my head and declared that I would certainly think twice before letting myself be goaded into another fight. “You better tell Dad,” Pearl said to my mother. My mother nodded wearily. “You can tell him,” she said. She and Dwight weren’t getting along. They hadn’t gotten along since the night they returned from their honeymoon in Vancouver, two days early, silent and grim, not even looking at each other as they carried the suitcases into the house and down the hall to Dwight’s room. That night Dwight sat up drinking and went to sleep on the sofa. He did this often, sometimes three or four nights in a row, weekends especially. I was always the first one up on Saturday and Sunday because the papers came in early on those days, and when I got up I usually found Dwight asleep on the sofa, a test pattern hissing on the TV. For the first few weeks my mother was utterly cast down. She slept late, something she had never done before, and when I came home for lunch I sometimes found her still in her bathrobe, sitting at the kitchen table and staring dazedly down the bright white tunnel of the house. I had never seen my mother give up. I hadn’t even known the possibility existed, but now I knew, and it gave me pause. It made me feel for a little while the truth that everything good in my life could be lost, that it was all drawn day by day from someone else’s store of hope and will. But my mother got better, and I found other things to think about. She did not give up. Instead, she chose to believe that she could still make a life in Chinook. She joined the PTA and persuaded the head of the rifle club to admit her as a member. She took a part-time job waitressing in the bachelors’ mess hall. She filled the house with plants, mothered Pearl, and insisted that all of us spend time together like a real family. And so we did. But our failure was ordained, because the real family we set out to imitate does not exist in nature; a real family as troubled as ours would never dream of spending time together. Dwight thought that most of these troubles were my fault. And a lot of them were. I screwed up constantly, even when I meant to do well. Every screwup was good for a scene, and this fight I’d gotten into with Arthur Gayle was going to be good for a big one. When the whistle blew at five o’clock Pearl went outside to wait for Dwight. * * * HE CAME STRAIGHT to my room.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Nonetheless, the medical model persists. It (arguably) functions fairly effectively with diseases like diabetes and cancer, where the doctor holds all of the knowledge and dictates the necessary interventions for a sick patient. This is not, however, a useful paradigm for trauma healing. Rather than being a disease in the classical sense, trauma is instead a profound experience of “dis-ease” or “dis-order.” What is called for here is a cooperative and restorative process with the doctor as an assisting guide and midwife. A doctor who insists on retaining his or her protected role as “healthy healer” remains separate, defending him- or herself against the ultimate helplessness that lurks, phantom-like, in all of our lives. Cut off from his or her own feelings, such a doctor will not be able to join with the sufferer. Missing will be the crucial collaboration in containing, processing and integrating the patient’s horrible sensations, images and emotions. The sufferer will remain starkly alone, holding the very horrors that have overwhelmed him and broken down his capacity to self-regulate and grow. In a common therapy resulting from this isolating orientation, the therapist instructs the PTSD victim to assert control over his feelings, to manage his aberrant behaviors and to alter his dysfunctional thoughts. Contrast this alignment to that of shamanic traditions, where the healer and the sufferer join together to reexperience the terror while calling on cosmic forces to release the grip of the demons. The shaman is always first initiated, via a profound encounter with his own helplessness and feeling of being shattered, prior to assuming the mantle of healer. Such preparation might suggest a model whereby contemporary therapists must first recognize and engage with their own traumas and emotional wounds.† The Power of MythMythology is a function of biology. —Joseph Campbell in Myth and the Body Healing has been hindered by a nomenclature and a paradigm that, in separating the healer from the wounded, denies the universality of our responses to terror and horror. The aspiration to reinvigorate a contemporary approach to healing trauma requires each of us to connect to our biological commonality as instinctual beings; thus, we are linked not only by our common vulnerability to fright but by our innate capacity to transform such experiences. In pursuing this link, we can learn much from mythology and from our animal brethren. It is the weaving together of heroic myth and biology (“mytho-biology”) that will help us comprehend the roots and mysterium tremendum of trauma. MedusaMythology teaches us about courageously meeting challenges. Myths are archetypal stories that simply and directly touch the core of our being. They remind us about our deepest longings, and reveal to us our hidden strengths and resources. They are also maps of our essential nature, pathways that connect us to each other, to nature and to the cosmos. The Greek myth of Medusa captures the very essence of trauma and describes its pathway to transformation.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  With human posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic sufferers tend to gravitate, over time, toward shutdown. This shows up as symptoms of alexithymia (the inability to describe or elaborate feelings due to a deficiency in emotional awareness), depression and somatization. Pavlov, observing his dogs suffering with their debilitating and intractable symptoms, concluded that they had lost their capacity to make adaptive approach/avoidance responses; they had essentially “lost their purpose.” In summarizing the plight of these poor creatures, he remarked that they had lost the “reflex” or instinct of purpose; they had lost their way. A similar example of breakdown comes from nature. A Galapagos Island guide told the following story to one of my students: “When a volcano erupts, the animals frequently lose their survival instincts, get confused, and some walk straight into the oncoming lava. This includes sea lions and marine iguanas capable of swimming to another island.” It appears that under this form of extreme duress, even animals in the wild may lose their bearings in the chaos. With a rare prescience Pavlov also inferred the natural, instinctive mechanisms by which traumatized organisms could regain their purpose and will to live. In particular he realized that approach and avoidance were aligned with what he called the defensive and orienting response. In his further study of the orientation responses (approach) and defensive responses (avoidance), Pavlov provided us with the key to establishing a healthy encounter between an organism and its environment: an optimal balance between curiosity and the need to defend and protect oneself. Pavlov discovered that when animals are exposed to something novel in their environment, they first arrest their movement. Next they direct their eyes, head and neck in the direction of a momentary sound, fleeting shadow or novel scent (or follow the lead of other members of the group as they go into an arrest and alert response.). During arrest there is a brief deceleration of the heart rate, which apparently “tunes” and opens sensory perception. 122 Pavlov discovered that these orienting responses served the function of both locating a source of novelty as well as accessing its meaning (i.e., is it a source of threat, mating, food or shelter?). It was likely that Pavlov was aware of this dual function. He called the innate characteristic of the orienting response the chto eta takoe reflex (instead of the simpler chto eta). Attempts at a literal translation have resulted in its being called the “What is it?” reflex. A more exact translation, however, suggests something closer to “What is that?” or “What is going on here?” or “Hey man, what’s happening?!?” b This labelling emphasizes the amazement and curiosity inherent in the response. This dual response (reacting plus inquiring) is the dominant feature of orienting behaviors.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  This went on for some time. As we baited him Kenneth smiled in a secretive way and sucked on an empty Yellow-Bole pipe with which, he later told me, he strengthened his will power by tempting himself to smoke. Norma was mute. She sat next to Kenneth on the sofa and stared at the floor while he absently rubbed his hand up and down her back. Every time he touched her I felt despair. At last my mother came in from the kitchen and suggested that Norma take Kenneth out and show him around Chinook. Norma nodded and stood up, but Kenneth said he didn’t want to leave now, just when things were getting interesting. Norma implored him with her eyes. Finally he left with her. In the wake of his going we exchanged looks of exultation and shame. A fidgety silence came upon us. One by one we drifted away to other parts of the house. But at dinner it started up again. Kenneth couldn’t stop himself. Even when he was quiet you could feel him preparing his next charge. The only thing that could shut him up was the TV. When the TV came on Kenneth went silent, staring and still as an owl in a tree. Over the next couple of days my mother talked each of us into spending some time alone with him so we could get to know one another as individuals. This proved a mistake. Some people are better left unknown. Our walks and drives with Kenneth ended early and culminated in shouts and slamming doors. Years later my mother told me he’d made a pass at her. WE COULD ALL see that Norma didn’t love Kenneth. But she stayed next to him, and submitted to his demonstrations of passion, and refused to say a word against him. She even, in the end, married him. But not before Dwight had nearly killed himself trying to stop her. He drove down to Seattle almost every weekend, sometimes bringing us along, more often by himself, always with some new scheme for luring her away from Kenneth. Nothing worked. He returned late Sunday night or early Monday morning, eyes bloodshot from the long drive, too tired and baffled even to quarrel. Norma married Kenneth, and had their baby, and they moved into a duplex near Bothell. When we came down for visits she acted happy and never complained about anything. But she was pale and angular, all her lazy lushness

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  * Recall the discussion in Chapter 4 of Beatrice Gelder’s work demonstrating how attuned we humans are to the survival-based postures of others. These findings also relate to research on mirror neurons. A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when it observes the same action performed by another animal. Thus, the neuron mirrors the behavior of the other, as though the observer herself were performing the very same act. Such neurons have been directly observed in primates and are found in the premotor cortex and in the insula and cingulate, suggesting their importance in communicating internal bodily states and emotions. The neuroscientist Stephanie Preston, the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal and other neuroscientists have independently posited that the mirror neuron system is centrally involved in empathy and that since it is the body that is being mirrored, intimate moments are nonverbal in nature. In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex and the inferior parietal cortex. See Chapter 4 for specific references to this research.† I do this to help her keep connected with me as she goes inside, as well as to feel more grounded.‡ This is an important difference between “talk therapy” and body-oriented therapy. Rather than trying to help patients make new meanings or understand their problems, body therapy creates a space for the “body story” to unfold and complete. When this occurs, new meanings and insights emerge spontaneously, generated by the patients themselves, as an integral part of this process.§ The sense of a foreshortened life, of wordless despair, is a central characteristic of severe trauma. The person is in a fundamental way stuck in the horrific imprint of the past and thus cannot imagine a future different from the past.‖ This is an effect of dissociation. It is as though Sharon is describing what happened to another person; it is as though she is outside of her body, observing, but not really being present. She lives back at the moment of shock where dissociation is what allowed her to survive the unimaginable horror and terror. In the Hollywood, Hitchcock version of trauma, the sufferer is barraged by flashbacks. In real life, though, the numbing or shutting-down phase is often more significant and is generally characteristic of severe and/or chronic trauma. These are the people who become the “walking dead.”a Frequently, people will make exaggerated gestures as a way of avoiding feeling the underlying sensations.b I believe that this is because these very slow (“intrinsic”) movements, when done mindfully, operate through the gamma efferent system. This system is intimately connected to the brain stem–autonomic nervous system and involves the extra pyramidal motor system. Voluntary movement, on the other hand, is controlled by the alpha motor system and is independent of the autonomic nervous system.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  The sheriff came to the house one night and told the Bolgers that Chuck was about to be charged with statutory rape. Huff and Psycho were also named in the complaint. The girl was in my class at Concrete High—one of a pack of hysterically miserable girls who ran around in tight clothes, plastered their faces with makeup, chainsmoked and talked in class and did their best to catch the attention of boys who would be sure to use them badly. Somebody had knocked her up. She’d kept her pregnancy secret for as long as she could, and she was so fat to begin with that this deception came within two months of bringing her to term. Her name was Tina Flood, but everyone just called her The Flood. She was fifteen years old. The sheriff had talked to Tina, and on the basis of what she said he’d persuaded her father to hold off awhile before filing charges. Tina had said she didn’t want to charge anyone with anything, she just wanted Chuck to marry her. Mr. Flood, on the other hand, wanted to send the whole bunch of them to jail. But he must have known that this would do nothing for his daughter, and he must also have known that for Tina to marry into a family like the Bolgers would be a piece of luck wilder than anyone could have sanely imagined for her. So he had taken the sheriff’s advice. He was just waiting for Chuck to say the word. Chuck came back from the house that night and sat on his bed and told me everything. He also told me that he had no intention of marrying Tina Flood. He’d said this to the sheriff, too, said he’d spend the rest of his life in jail first. The sheriff told him not to make up his mind too fast. He would keep Mr. Flood at bay until Chuck had a chance to think about it and talk things over with his folks. But he left no doubt of the outcome if Chuck turned Tina down. He would go to prison. The charge was serious, and the case against him and the others was rock solid. Chuck said he wouldn’t do it. I told him I wouldn’t either. I encouraged him, but in my heart I was glad he was in trouble, and not just because it would take the heat off me. I was still hurt

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  5. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. iii. 7.) The Evangelist had above brought down his history, of what was done to the Lord as far as early morning; he then turned back to relate Peter’s denial, after which he returned to the morning to continue the course of events, When the morning was come, &c. ORIGEN. They supposed that by His death they should crush His doctrine, and the belief in Him of those who believed Him to be the Son of God. With such purpose against Him they bound Jesus, Who looses them that are bound. (vid. Isa. 61:1.) JEROME. Observe the evil zeal of the Chief Priests; they watched the whole night with a view to this murder. And they gave Him up to Pilate bound, for such was their practice to send bound to the judge any whom they had sentenced to death. RABANUS. Though it should be observed that they did not now first bind Him, but before, when they first laid hands upon Him in the garden, as John relates. (John 18:12.) CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxxiv.) They did not put Him to death in secret, because they sought to destroy His reputation, and the wonder with which He was regarded by many. For this reason they were minded to put Him to death openly before all, and therefore they led Him to the governor. JEROME. Judas, when he saw that the Lord was condemned to death, returned the money to the Priests, as though it had been in his power to change the minds of His persecutors.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  There was never any gate- crashing on the ward. An upper-level patient would not be caught dead in the communication group. Occasionally some confused lower-functioning patient would stumble into the agenda group meeting, but once he learned where he was fear would glaze his eyes, and no one would have to escort him out. Although it was technically possible to graduate from the lower- to the upper-level group, few patients ever stayed in the hospital long enough for that to happen. Thus was the ward covertly stratified: everyone knew his or her place. But no one ever talked about it. Before I began to lead groups in the hospital, I used to think outpatient groups were challenging. It is not easy to lead a group of seven or eight needy outpatients with major problems in relating to others, and at the end of a meeting I would feel tired, often depleted, and marvel at the therapists who had the stamina to lead another group meeting immediately afterward. Yet once I began working with groups of hospitalized patients, I looked back with much nostalgia to those good old outpatient group therapy days. Imagine an outpatient group—a cohesive meeting of cooperative, highly motivated patients; a quiet, cozy room; no nurses knocking on the door to yank patients out for some lab procedure or medical appointment; no suicidal members with bandaged wrists; no one refusing to talk; no one zonked on medication falling asleep and snoring in the group; and, most important of all, the same patients and the same cotherapist there for each session, week after week, month after month. What luxury! A therapist’s nirvana. In contrast, the landscape of my inpatient groups was nightmarish—the continual rapid turnover of members; the frequent psychotic outbursts; the conning, manipulative members; the patients burned out by twenty years of depression or schizophrenia who were never going to get better; the tangible level of despair in the room. But the real killer, the ball-breaker in this work, was the hospital and insurance industry bureaucracy. Every day surveillance teams of HMO agents would swoop through the wards, nose through hospital charts, and order the discharge of one or another confused, despairing patient who had functioned relatively well the previous day and whose chart had no MD-signed note stating explicitly that he or she was suicidal or dangerous. Was there really a time, not so long ago, when the care of the patient was paramount? When physicians admitted the sick and kept them in the hospital until they got well? Was all that only a dream? I no longer talk much about it, no longer risk my students’ patronizing smiles by prattling on about that golden era when the administrator’s job was to help the doctor help the patient. The bureaucratic paradoxes were maddening.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And I need you. Surely ninety minutes a week isn’t too much.” “No, I can’t do things piecemeal. I need a clean break. Besides, the group isn’t where I am anymore. It’s too superficial. I need to go deeper—to work with symbols, dreams, and archetypes.” “I agree, Paula.” By this time I was very sobered. “It’s what I want too, and we’re just now breaking that ground in the group.” “No, I’m too tired, too drained. Each new patient forces me to relive my own time of crisis, my own Calvary. No, I’ve decided: next week will be my last meeting.” And so it was. Paula never returned to the group. I asked her to call me at any time if she wanted to talk. She replied that it was also possible for me to call her. Although she wasn’t being malicious, her comment shifted the frame and stung me sharply. She never called me again. I phoned her a few times and twice took her to lunch. The first lunch (which was so painful that it was many months before I called her for another) began ominously. Finding the restaurant of our choice crowded, we went across the street to Trotter’s, a huge, cavernous structure, utterly without grace, that had had many previous lives: an Oldsmobile dealership, a natural-foods grocery store, a dance parlor. Now it was a restaurant featuring a menu of “dance” sandwiches—the Waltz, the Twist, the Charleston. No, it was not right; I felt it wasn’t right when I heard myself order a Hula sandwich and knew it wasn’t when Paula opened her purse, extracted a rock about the size of a small grapefruit, and placed it on the table between us. “My anger rock,” she said. From this point on, my memory is uncharacteristically spotty. Fortunately, I took some notes after our lunch—my conversations with Paula being too important to me to be entrusted to memory. “Anger rock?” I repeated blankly, transfixed by the lichen-covered boulder sitting on the table between us. “I’ve been buffeted about so much, Irv, that I’ve been swallowed by anger. Now I’ve learned to put anger away. Into this rock. I had to bring it today. I wanted it here when I met you.” “Why are you angry with me, Paula?” “I’m no longer angry. There’s too little time left to be angry. But I’ve been hurt; I’ve been deserted when I needed help most of all.” “I’ve never deserted you, Paula,” I said, but she didn’t acknowledge my comment and went on. “After the workshop I was shattered. Looking at Dr. Lee standing there tossing that chalk in the air, ignoring me, ignoring the human concerns of all patients, I felt the whole world give way under me. Patients are human.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. But when the Devil leaves any one, he watches his time for return, and having taken it, he leads him into a second sin, and then watches for opportunity for a third deceit. (1 Cor. 5:1.) So the man who had married his father’s wife afterwards repented him of this sin, but again the Devil resolved so to augment this very sorrow of repentance, that his sorrow being made too abundant might swallow up the sorrower. Something like this took place in Judas, who after his repentance did not preserve his own heart, but received that more abundant sorrow supplied to him by the Devil, who sought to swallow him up, as it follows, And he went out, and hanged himself. But had he desired and looked for place and time for repentance, he would perhaps have found Him who has said, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (Ezek. 33:11.) Or, perhaps, he desired to die before his Master on His way to death, and to meet Him with a disembodied spirit, that by confession and deprecation he might obtain mercy; and did not see that it is not fitting that a servant of God should dismiss himself from life, but should wait God’s sentence. RABANUS. He hung himself, to shew that he was hateful to both heaven and earth. PSEUDO-AUGUSTINE. (Hil. Quæst. V. et N. Test. q. 94.) Since the Chief Priests were employed about the murder of the Lord from the morning to the ninth hour, how is this proved that before the crucifixion Judas returned them the money he had received, and said to them in the temple, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood? Whereas it is manifest that the Chief Priests and Elders were never in the temple before the Lord’s crucifixion, seeing that when He was hanging on the Cross they were there to insult Him. Nor indeed can this be proved hence, because it is related before the Lord’s Passion, for many things which were manifestly done before, are related after, that, and the reverse. It might have been done after the ninth hour, when Judas, seeing the Saviour dead and the veil of the temple rent, the earthquake, the bursting of the rocks, and the elements terrified, was seized with fear and sorrow thereupon. But after the ninth hour the Chief Priests and Elders were occupied, as I suppose, in the celebration of the Passover; and on the Sabbath, the Law would not have allowed him to bring money. Therefore it is to me as yet unproved on what day or at what time Judas ended his life by hanging. 27:6–106. And the Chief Priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. 7. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.