Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Every man dies, but not every man really lives. That's how poet William Ross Wallace put it. That should give us pause here in our hectic, commercialized, and materialistic world. Are we really living? And what would that mean, anyway? Is there more to living than just getting by, as my parents would put it?
Well, that's a lot of questions that don't have easy answers. Which is maybe why we avoid them so arduously. By distracting ourselves with happy hours and blockbusters and diverse entertainments. And perhaps those questions are surging to the surface as I prepare to visit my parents in Canada who are aging noticeably and I think might be asking those questions as they face the end of their lives.
What's it all about, Alfie? Was the song that expressed that existential yearning and is a question for all of us at all ages. There is so much energy spent on just surviving that I'd like to step back today to consider life in a much deeper way, if you'll go with me there. Living a Life of Value, our program today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
I hope you'll enjoy the journey with us today. That rather weighty opening makes the mundane details seem so secondary, but some have said that it's in the details that life happens anyway, so let me get these essential details out of the way.
I would love you to connect with us there.
We have to start using this social networking more effectively. So do join us and let's start sharing that really important information that can contribute to better living. Do that on our Thinking with Somebody Else's Head page. Join us there. It would be great to have you join us. Well, perhaps I'm a little meditative today because I've just returned from a week and a half at our social project in Cambuquira.
That's a small town about 350 clicks from my home base in São Paulo. We had a week with Dr. Keppe in meetings and excursions there, and then I stayed on for a few more days with some students in an immersion course where I and some colleagues led them into a deeper understanding of themselves and the world we live in. I'll be talking more about our social work there over the next little while.
That is a really excellent program that's developing in Kambukira through Dr. Keppe's Analytical Trilogy Science and more to come on that in the next few programs. Dr. Keppe was talking a lot to us about his therapeutical experience with human beings from around the world and how we all hide ourselves from view. We clamp down on our talents and abilities and let just a small part of ourselves leak out through the barriers we erect to stop what we have to contribute in the symphony of life.
And I, too, was stunned by a report sent to me by my good friend Leonard Berg up in New York about the serious mental health crisis going on in the United States today. How antipsychotic drugs are being prescribed in record numbers there, actually surpassing drugs used to treat cholesterol and acid reflux. These antipsychotics are now the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the U.S.
And that got me thinking, there must be a lot of questioning going on, a lot of challenges being faced by human beings that are not being addressed very well through our media, through our work, through our experiences, even through our families. Now, of course, this massive doses of anti-psychotic drugs are being pushed a lot by the pharmaceutical industry. My gosh, what a surprise that is.
Marcia Engel, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and leading critic of big pharma, says that psychiatrists are in the pocket of industry and there's a lot of mental health clinicians with ties to the drug industry. Well, that's very obvious. But I want to come back to this existential problem because I think this is an essential issue that needs to be addressed.
We'll be doing that with Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco more specifically through a caller and her life experience. So you'll get an experience of trilogical psychoanalysis today. But first I want to invite Sherston Arvidsson, one of the trilogical psychoanalysts in Keppe's Clinic down here in Brazil. She's from Sweden, to talk a little bit about the personal issues. That are being faced by human beings today.
Let's do that first, then we'll get to Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco in our second section of our program. If, I'm just thinking now of many of the people who are listening to this program who don't have the benefit of doing analysis with you and Dr. Cláudia Pacheco, and they're locked into this depression, this sense that nothing has value, how can we help these people?
I think it's this question of action, and I always stress this very much, because I have seen it in practice that the moment the client puts herself or himself in action, starts to do something for other people, you can see an improvement immediately. One example, there was one lady, she was very depressed and anguished and had been so for a long, long time.
And she started analysis and she was analyzing many things in her life and the question of envy and projection and inversion and so on. But one day she said to me, do you know what I did? I put a note in the newspaper that I'm going to start to do sewing work because I did it earlier in my life. And I'm going to offer my service so people can give clothes to me that I can mend and sew.
And from that point on, I could really see a big difference. Because she had accepted to put herself in action and to do something for other people. She had understood that she was not losing time by working. And doing something, putting yourself in action, she was gaining time. She was gaining health and more balance and happiness. And this was so obvious. It's so
Richard: interesting to me that the action of helping others is what links us to this eternal energy that that you were talking about at the very beginning.
This is the inner force that we have that resonates with this universal force. It comes from helping, from trying to make an effort to do something for society, for other people. Do you have some more examples from your clinical analysis, Kerstin, of this narcissism and how it blocks us from this inner life that you're talking about so well today?
Yeah, there is one other example.
It's also from a work situation. This is a person that works in a hospital. And she started her session saying that she was so depressed and she felt so down and lousy in many ways. And then I asked her to tell what was happening in her life and she brought up the situation in her workplace. And she said that you know my colleagues they don't care about the patients, they don't take good care of them.
And she was explaining this and I asked her what do you associate this, your colleagues attitudes, with. And she said nonchalance and lack of willingness to help and laziness. And then she said also that she sees them so very low, low level. And then she continued to talk about herself and she demonstrated clearly that she sees her herself very high above the others and very capable and so on.
But the main point again was that when she was speaking about her working situation, she was only talking about herself and what the difficulties for herself. So what did she say? She said that she had exactly this attitude that she saw in her colleagues, that she didn't want to see in herself, that she was only very narcissistic and self-centered and concentrated in herself and not at all interested in helping the patients.
Richard: Yeah, she was in fact, because she didn't want to see, she was censoring this consciousness, she's projecting it out into the other people, right? Who may also have these difficulties. Of course.
But that's not the question, is it? Exactly. And when she saw this, she immediately admitted that she is very self-centered and egocentric in her work.
Richard: You said to me in your notes that you sent me that all illness has to do with some lie, with some dishonesty.
This must be this not wanting to see that you're talking about, right? Is this the basis of what you're talking about here?
Yes, it's the projection that we do on other people. And this is a dishonesty, because, of course, the other people can have this difficulty, like in this last example. It's not the fact that they might have some of these difficulties that this client is feeling so bad and depressed.
So you see, the core of the whole situation there is a dishonesty that she has. She is lying to herself.
Richard: This must show up very much, this kind of not wanting to see or these patterns of behavior must show up very much in families. Sherston, between, well, I know they do. Because I've experienced them in my own experience, my own family. So talk a little bit about what can happen in this narcissistic issue that we're talking about today in a family.
Exactly. Because I have some clients that bring this subject up frequently. The difficulties with children. And of course, this has many facets. But one point now that I have seen clearly is this narcissistic aspect. And how does it work? Because the mother for example is very much concerned about her daughter, what she's doing and what she's not doing and how she's behaving, if she's happy, if she's not happy, and if she's doing something wrong, if it doesn't function very well at school.
All her attention is on this child. Why is this happening? What we have seen in these sessions is that the mother is seeing her daughter as her possession. She's not seeing the daughter as an own being. She's not seeing the daughter as belonging to life. And I think this is like a very central question for parents, the relationship between parents and children.
The parents sees their children as their belongings and they should act in accordance to what the mother or father has in their heads. And many times they want them to be more perfect than they themselves, also building up a big delirium about how the child should act and should be. As you're fantastic,
Richard: you can be anything, you can do anything, you just need to go and jump into life and all beautiful things will happen.
And and
accomplish what I didn't do. And we have
Richard: a lot of this in Canada with hockey mothers and fathers, you know, pushing their children to be the stars that they wanted to be in their own lives. Let's finish with this question, Kerstin. What happens to us as we begin to access this inner reality, as we begin to diminish the layers of censorship and begin to see what's going on inside us?
What happens? What's the process that happens
with clients? This is very beautiful because there is an expansion and one client explained this very very clear. I think she said you know when I started to see how irritated I am all the day long with many people, with situation, with small things, with big things, okay, she said in fact it was like you know one point only.
But this thing, when I accepted it, it made an expansion in my life that is incredible. Some people even describe it like an inner illumination. And there we come to the point, what is consciousness? It is an inner light.
Richard: A contact inside, right? And also a contact with something higher. Thanks, Kirsten. That is very fertile land to explore. Keppe has suggested, though, that we are preventing ourselves from knowing through corrupting our own minds.
And how do we do that? Well, we corrupt our connection with true knowing by refusing our knowledge of God. And that we explore constantly here on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Well, time for a break. Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco joins us next to help us consider what it means to live a life of value.
We are on the Positive World Radio Network, very happy to be here, and we're back in just a moment. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is on the Positive World Radio Network. Hello, I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and we are talking today about life. Well, we always talk about life, but today we're talking about living a life of value. Today we want to go a little bit deeper. And what I have here is an extract from an analysis that Cláudia Pacheco conducted by phone with one of our listeners to our program named Tiana Bays, who is from the former Yugoslavia, is a spoken word artist.
And she had a question, sort of an issue to deal with about relationships. And this will be kind of a three-parter today and very interesting for you. So, Cláudia.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Hello, Tiana.
Helena Melander: Hello. It's so nice to meet you. You know, I've read... I didn't actually read your books, but I read so much about them, for example, especially Women on the Couch.
Cláudia: It's a difficult experience for average women to read my book.
If you have gone through this experience already, this is a good sign.
Helena: You are definitely not a stranger to me. I really love your work. I admire you as a woman. I admire
Cláudia: you as a scientist as well. So let's try to talk a little bit and see in what way I can be helpful to you. Yes well
Helena: you know um like I said you know uh the topic of the conversation you know I'm very much interested in uh the pathology of a human relationship.
I would say that not just romantic, especially romantic relationship, relationships that are in my opinion the most complex. That's just how I've experienced them and I've been just recently involved with somebody with a narcissistic personality disorder. And you know I seem to involve myself in these emotionally abusive relationships.
Cláudia: Could you tell a little bit of how how did you meet this person, how did you start this relationship, how was the relationship, speak more about this, are you still in the relationship?
No thank god I'm not. Okay so tell me more. Yes
Helena: I'm out of this relationship but before this there was the other one and before the other one there was that one you know. Yes
Cláudia: but in order to understand better how this works it would be important to give more practical information. It doesn't matter that it is the first or the last or
Helena: well you know like I say you know I don't know about which relationship to talk exactly.
I just know how it's it they all have this similar pattern of behavior you know uh in you know playing the role of a victim like but very much consciously.
"I feel like I you know like I know what's going on. I feel like I can define it. Like I said I don't know how objectively I can speak for myself but you know and I still go on head through the wall basically playing the victim and just I guess the fear of abandonment you know which is crucial here, like fear of fear of if I will you know stop stop this kind of relationship that you know he will just you know not not be there anymore."
But Tiana
Richard: maybe it's maybe it's good Richard here maybe it's good for you just to talk a little bit about what happened. What are some practical examples of what happened in this relationship, this most recent relationship? What was happening, the day-to-day experience that you were in with this man?
Helena: In practical terms, there were just lies from his side, but I knew that there were lies, you know.
From practical experience, you know, just like being with him on a daily basis or just being in him, you know, at his place and just seeing the behavior, you know. I could see that he is a man with a parallel relationships, somebody who has many women at the same time. For example I'm thinking that I'm sharing a lot with this person you know we are supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend and he goes out to take his phone call but actually out of the building, not just in a private matter to go in a hallway or something like that you know.
All of these things bothered me. Were you living with
Cláudia: him, sharing your life, how for how long have you been with uh dating him? Yes I
Helena: was involved with this last in this last relationship for two years. Some you know for a while he was in the same country then then he had to go for his work and it became a long distant relationship.
But for um seven straight months we had a uh an intense relationship where he made a lot of promises where he just kind of opened himself up, shared so many information about his childhood and different things. I opened myself up because of my previous relationship before him I was thinking okay maybe something better. Where did you meet him? Just in my country, in my hometown.
Cláudia: Does he have the same profession as you? Are you afraid that he would listen to our conversation? That's why you are afraid to
Helena: tell more things? Yes, he probably will. I am now, you know, you know, no longer with him because, of course, like I said, he has parallel relationships. So um you know so you said that
Cláudia: in your previous relationships this pattern was there all the time.
Well
Helena: you know uh I don't think that the previous guy was uh you know such a serial cheater or whatever you call this but this is what where you know my pathology comes about. I was I attached myself so strongly I was thinking no I will change this person or something like that. I don't know my love will change him. He had again a terrible somebody with a terrible you know um childhood and things like this, we will love each other and it will get better you know.
And this is this is the pattern you know always where I can walk away, I come to the intersection and I can walk away but I'm terrified of abandonment I guess
Cláudia: I don't know. So Tiana the way we approach any therapy, any situation is through the process of interiorization. Yes. This is the way we approach the situation. So in order for you to understand better why you felt always attracted to this kind of situations and this kind of man, it is important to see in what way do you resonate with them.
So what what inside of you makes you feel attracted to those men? So that's why it is now important if you would give a free association with this ex-boyfriend, his attitudes, would you give in one two three words like what do you associate him with? Associate
Helena: him with lying, with manipulation and with fear. Uh so you are
Cláudia: afraid of him. Uh you
Helena: know I do have fear now even now talking about it.
I cannot believe that you know before him uh you know uh there was also a problem you know and these people like to people like him you know of course that he's also fearful. I have no doubt about that. I have no doubt that he's only a human being. But it's just so sad to me you know because I would never do that on that I do certain things to me you know.
I know that I am self-destructive uh through these kind of relationships otherwise I feel I lead a successful life because I do enjoy what I do in life but it seems that it's not fulfilling enough. Maybe I need to heal something inside of me you know
Cláudia: that. So Tiana Tiana now let's try to change the focus from your boyfriends to your inner life.
Yes now it is important that you kind of forget about them and we just use the associations as a bridge to know what is inside of you hidden there that is bringing you so much trouble. So you gave two important associations you said lying and manipulation. So probably you see this person lying trying to manipulate the truth. Yes
Helena: yes. So
Cláudia: this is the consciousness of an attitude that utiana has with your own inner life, with your own consciousness, yes, that you have the tendency to lie to yourself, to create illusions, to manipulate the truth and reality in order to make it look like you would like it to be.
And that you are very much afraid to see that you do that. That you are afraid of focusing the true reality that you know and that you lie to yourself. And even about man, about any about other things you lie to yourself. You try to manipulate your perceptions, your perception of reality, so uh things would turn out to be what you would like them to be and not what they really are and that you deep down you know they are.
So um
Helena: I very much know that, I very much know that, I feel like um there's nothing new what you told me. This is the the biggest fear, the biggest fear is this that I like I said I don't know I'm not perfect I'm not god I don't you know but this is the biggest fear. It cannot be a yet another such a bad story you know.
But it happened this this is what is kind of scary that even though with information you know I can only maybe make an excuse here to say okay everything is just inversion what what you guys at Analytical Trilogy call you know maybe I'm just inverted you know I don't know. Well
Cláudia: you are inverted because you think that the truth will hurt you and that lying and illusions and manipulating the reality is good for you will be less painful I guess you
Helena: know.
"I went through war in ex-Yugoslavia you know so when since I was very little maybe that kind of helped you know all of this pathology because since I was a little girl I've been told lies not by my family but by the government and you know um we were Serbs living in Croatia but we were um how do I say this we were Serbs from Croatia we were ethnic um minority there you know."
And when the war came there were there there was ethnical cleansing from the side from from the side of Croatian government and we had to leave. So from from early on I had to be kind of under undercover wherever I went I was undercover because being a Serb was very bad you know in war everything is bad there is no good in war you know.
But uh from early on I had to kind of live my life undercover you know when because from age 10 I've become a refugee so wherever I went I had to lie about who I am because they would not take us or feed us or whatever you know. So
Cláudia: you see the world as an enemy of yours
Helena: maybe
Cláudia: I do you know.
And the danger Tiana is that you don't see anymore when you are being enemy of yourself, when you are acting against your life.
Helena: Exactly exactly. I can give you know to some kind of when I feel that something is neutral or something is outside of my life. I can even give a smart advice. I can even write a smart song, what you called call a smart song you know.
I'd like to like to at least use this artistic side of me as something good you know. But what do
Cláudia: you do now for living, where do you live, what do you do
Helena: Tiana? Uh right now uh I live in uh one other ex-Yugoslavian country it's called Slovenia. We we own a restaurant here and a coffee shop uh is where I help my family.
But uh just recently my album came out it's called uh Playground and I'm very much involved in the process of um just as you know making as many shows as I can uh live. This is what makes me extremely happy to be um you know to perform live in front of the audience or um yes I would say that this is the the biggest fluid that I get you know.
Um just being closed in the studio or just write a song in my um apartment. It's also very much like a therapy. But to really share this live on the stage you really feel the energy of people is uh. If I didn't do that I don't know where I would be today you know. And
Cláudia: so you you compose and you sing songs.
Yes I
Helena: do spoken word style and singing something similar rapping spoken word uh yes I write lyrics uh I write melodies I sing I do spoken word.
Cláudia: And what what do you think about music and what do you want to express through music to people, what in general do you say in your songs, what do you want to do with arts? Yes
Helena: with arts uh this is like my sanctuary.
This is where I'm most, most honest. I would like to express just my anguish and my, my feelings. I wouldn't say that there is one, one specific topic. I've been talking a lot about war in my songs, but there are many different topics that one woman experiences through her life, you know. And
Cláudia: do you have any like uh wish or ideal to bring a message to your fans and to your listeners, to humanity, for instance, yes, to
Helena: help, to
Cláudia: help them somehow with your music?
Yes, I
Helena: would love that. I would love that. I mean, help, it just, it's just, it makes me also feel not lonely. You can maybe touch another person, you know, by your story, because maybe this other person has a A similar story to yours, you know.
Richard: We have to take a break now, Tiana and Cláudia.
Thinking with Somebody Else's Head on the Positive World Radio Network. Back in a moment. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is on the Positive World Radio Network. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Very happy to have you with us today.
And I know, I think it's here that the analysis really picks up speed and has a lot to say about how all of us think of our lives. Through Tiana's awareness, we can learn more about ourselves, too. So let's return to that analysis now. And
Cláudia: when you get involved with these relationships, do you think that these situations drain your energy that are important for your music and for helping the family and the coffee shop and your writing songs and singing?
Yes, yes,
Helena: but after the storm, you know, I guess, you know, I have to say artists are also selfish in a way, you know. They stay in certain situations because after that they can be very inspired, you know, inspired by pain, or, you know, you are stuck in one situation and you don't, sometimes you don't just see yourself drained out from this. But maybe you see that somebody close to is also suffering by seeing you in a certain way, or maybe you cannot be as helpful to them, you know.
I've experienced that being so selfish and just being stuck inside of the cycle of my abusive relationships, and then, you know, of course that, you know, many things suffer from that. Maybe
Cláudia: you think that being stuck in these relationships is is even good. Maybe you think you can
Helena: get inspiration from these neurotic relationships. I don't want to look at it that way, but like I say, I would like to know the root cause of this, you
Cláudia: know.
Maybe you think, maybe you don't realize, but you think they are a source of enormous inspiration, and not that this inspiration comes from other sources, not from the relationships, but from your heart, from your loving feelings, not from the other, that man or the other man, or this relationship or that other relationship, but from your inner feelings of love that you have despite having these guys or not, that they are inside of you.
Maybe you would have even more inspiration without them. Yes, because this is an inner source of inspiration, you and linked to transcendental life.
Helena: Yes, beautifully said, beautifully said. I would like to believe that, maybe I feel, you were, you were so right. Maybe I feel that without them, whoever they are, like them, maybe I feel like I wouldn't have anything to share, or I would feel empty all of a sudden.
I would just have to be happy, and all of a sudden I would just have to feel
Cláudia: love, you know. Being happy would be boring. You get, you got used to suffer since your childhood. Yes, I'm
Helena: used to
Cláudia: suffering, I'm addicted to suffering. Yeah, so you have to
Helena: continue always a kind of war, being anguished. Yes, the war, the war came. This is why I called my album a playground, because this is the last moment that I remember I was happy on my playground, because I didn't know about death and hatred in that way, were people being divided in, you know, by nationalities or religions or just stupid things like that.
It's just amazing. I'm bringing
Cláudia: you some concepts that were not in your field of knowledge or in your field of perception, that are deep questionings for you to reflect about, and you being an artist, I'm sure you can get a lot from these reflections. You're not a superficial woman. No, I hope not.
Richard: You know, I was just thinking as you were speaking, you guys, this is a fascinating conversation to listen to.
But Richard Wagner said, Cláudia, something I think is very related to what you're bringing now for Tiana. Richard Wagner said, I'm convinced that there are universal currents of divine thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired. And this puts this whole thing of artistic expression in a completely different league.
Cláudia: It seems that artists, they need a kind of symbol.
So when they choose or when they pick up some people, it's like Dante Alighieri with Beatrice. So he was never with Beatrice, really. So she was just a means or a symbol for him to reach his inner inspiration and vibrations and universal vibrations, transcendental vibrations. So it seems that, Tiana, that you think you need a guy to do this, but in reality they are sometimes even disturbing you from this contact.
Um, and that the true inspiration comes from your inner life and reflecting about war and and this attitude that you have, that you got used to be anguished and suffering and being in an inner war most of the time. This you learned, this is a pattern you got from your country, the time you spent there, and from the mentality of people around you. But you are still to discover the true, like healthy sources of inspiration in life, in the universe, and in yourself.
So you may even develop your art in this sense, to bring more hope and loving feelings and hope and peace to your listeners, to your fans, who all
Richard: feel this uh trauma, this, yeah, even if they've never been through war,
Cláudia: we've all, we all feel this trauma of being out of place and not being in our true home, you know. Something, Richard, here we never had any war, yeah, but our uh composers have the tendency to sing for depression and anguish and sadness and unresolved loving situations and And so it seems that we have an attraction to, in other words, to evil.
So evil attracts us. It has like a taste, a special taste, sometimes even intense pleasure of being hurt. And this is manifested by many means. So we are inverted, Tiana. We are really inverted. You can
Helena: see it on every corner. You can, I, I, you know, I don't want to see that just because my relationships weren't successful, I don't want to see pathology in another's, but it is sad.
I, when I see one happy case, which I don't remember when I heard about one or so one, unfortunately, I'm very very happy. But you see this inversion everywhere, in institutions, in in just in societies, or just in, you know, in pubs, you know. People drink, they feel that there is this limit where they will get drunk, but they love it. And so many people smoke in Slovenia.
Here the people love cigarettes. People love to destroy themselves. You
Cláudia: are very right, Tiana, you are very right. Why
Helena: don't you try to pass this into your songs?
Richard: This would
Cláudia: be an incredible means of conscientization, to write this in your songs. And
Richard: you'll be such an important artist in this sense because you'll be bringing art therapy through rap music because
Cláudia: rap is the voice of the street.
And if you could bring the voice of the street, only this true voice, not just the voice of misery and pain and suffering, but of hope and possibility. And how people are attracted to misery,
Richard: death, pain. We are
Helena: really attracted to that. All of us. Well, I gotta have to say I already did do that, thank God. This is something that I cling on to, just as something, you know, a hope.
I've already done that through my songs, and it's also on my album, and right now I'm working on one project called Face of Freedom, where Mr Chagdi, this legendary activist and a person from the legendary group Public Enemy, he joined me on this song. So we've combined also many different um um, how do I say, these cultures with this, because we have Serbian trumpets and we have this American based, how do I say, hip-hop beats, and him as an American and me as an ex-Yugoslavian, you know, we are together rapping on this song, like I said, Face of Freedom.
So I'm very excited about this project and about uh we should soon be working on this video, so I'm very much involved in that. And it's just such a shame that when it comes to my personal life, this is why I've decided to openly talk about it. I'm such a different person when it comes to especially my intimate, my personal life. And for a while I was thinking that there is a double Tiana, you know, that there is a double me because it's just amazing what I can do someplace, you know, else.
And then when it comes to my personal life, I am somebody completely different. I am a different person. I am a coward.
Cláudia: Yes, and it
Helena: seems... I don't know how else to say it
Cláudia: than a coward, because I can walk away. I know that I am my own prisoner, but I stay, you know. Because when we speak about human relationships and loving relationships, Tiana, pathology is more clear, pathology is more on the surface.
The the closer we get to feelings of love, the closer we get to pathology as well, because only where is love, beauty, truth, goodness, pathology can be manifested, which is inversion. So if you are not that involved, emotionally involved, inversion does not manifest so much. So that's why probably in among relationships and like between women and men and parents and children, where there is a lot of love, then a lot of inversion comes to the surface as well.
So that's why it is so important to be free to speak about this and to see, because here it's like this is the nucleus of sanity and pathology. Yes, very much
Helena: so. So when you thought,
Cláudia: oh, I'm going to correct him and to fix him and to help him change.
Helena: Yes, yes, I was
Cláudia: thinking that. We all
Richard: want to do that. But it's like a
Cláudia: lack of self-deception, because people don't change if they don't want to.
Helena: Yes, but I was thinking I'm God. I was telling myself, Tiana, please, but you are not God, pleased, and part of me was saying God is love, God is everything, my love will cure this person magically, you know. And I was saying to myself, yes, but look how much you are wasting your career and your time, you can be more efficient, look how much money you're wasting on this relationship.
This is amazing, and this guy is, the more he was far away from me, further away and afraid, the more I wanted him, you know, and the more, you know, I wanted truth for him, from him, the more, you know, he was um, it's just uh amazing, it's just it's it's amazing. I'm like Anna Karenina, you know. Tiana,
Cláudia: when you are able to recognize that you find a healthy happy beautiful life as boring, a square, then you are reaching more to the inner core of your pathology, as we all have, all of us.
We have the tendency to see a happy, healthy, constructive, truthful, beautiful life as boring as a squared life.
Richard: It's just so incredible, Cláudia, because I remember when I first came here, Tiana, I first came to Brazil and we were doing a teleclass with Cláudia and we were talking about inversion and inversion in the arts, I think. And I was saying, but wait a minute, Cláudia, I have the text somewhere, so I can't deny that I said this.
I said, but you need conflict for drama. You can't have, what would theater be? What would films be without conflict, without one person wanting the other to change or wanting the other to stay and they want to leave? And
Cláudia: you know something, this is true in the sense that arts should bring consciousness to people about pathology. The drama we live, the drama we create, The inversions we live, the envy, the hate, there will always be this in human nature.
Helena: Yes, it's utopian to think that sometimes maybe everything will be without this pathology. This is impossible, right?
Cláudia: Maybe in heaven, maybe in heaven, but here it's impossible. So arts should be always focused, not as seeing drama and death and unhappiness as the ultimate answer or the only choice, but being our pathology. And this is our real reality, that we are pathological beings and no exceptions.
So this doesn't take away the need to deal with these emotions, strong emotions of jealousy, envy, competition, depression, death. Everything is present, sickness, everything is present in our lives. And the need of arts should be to show this duality, as Tiana said, that we have this duality. This was not like this in our origin, in our creation, but now we are like this.
And if we don't want to deal with both sides in conscientizing, we destroy ourselves, and this is not fun.
Richard: Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is on the Positive World Radio Network. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. We are back with our continued analysis in just a moment. Don't go away. The program is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We're coming to you from the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil.
My name is Richard Lloyd Jones. When we left off last time, Cláudia was talking about the true purpose of art and artists. Our fascinating discussion about living a life of value continues.
Cláudia: As you said, Tiana, you were wasting time, money, important time of your career. Creative
Richard: energy. Creative
Cláudia: energy. And this is not fun. This seems
Richard: to be
enjoyable, but this is not fun.
In the end, you end up with nothing. A destroyed, so this is not fun in the end of the run, so it's important to to show this.
Helena: It's unbelievable, you here, you know, you you take the, you look at the package, the pack of cigarettes, and it says clearly, I don't know if you have it in, you know, Brazil or I don't know in which part of America also, but we have it here, you know, because the law is very strict.
Each pack of cigarettes has the saying, you know, um, smoking kills, or smoking uh can get you cancer, or smoke, you know. But you know, with huge letters it says smoking kills. And people go and they read this and they buy this and they open this box of cigarettes
Cláudia: and they smoke. Yes, and and when they have cancer and when they have, they are like in the end of the line uh so they don't feel that is fun anymore.
The pain is crucial pain. This is really like that incredible artist that did The King and I. Yul Brynner. Yul
Richard: Brynner. He said,
Cláudia: if I would have the slightest idea of how painful, how horrible it is to have a cancer, I would never, ever have smoked just one cigarette.
Richard: Because we want to have the pathological attitude without the consequences. This is our real craziness.
Helena: We want to do everything crazy, inverted, and have good consequences somehow. This is very delirious. I feel like cats. Like we have, I don't know how many, nine lives or so.
Cláudia: So they invented reincarnation because of this.
Helena: People invent many things, especially the governments for the pharmaceutical companies. They give many things, labels, you know, in order to give humanity many different drugs which only sink, you know, which with the help of these drugs people only sink deeper and deeper into the hole of...
Cláudia: Now I'll ask Richard to read to you an email I just received from a friend. Read this, it's not too long. Just
Richard: the first page, Cláudia? No, just read it. Okay, so the
Cláudia: number of physicians in the
Richard: United States is 700,000. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000. Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171. Wow. Statistics courtesy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Now think about this. The number of gun owners in the U.S. Is 80 million. The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
Cláudia: So compared to the deaths caused by doctors.
Richard: Doctors, yeah, 120,000 by doctors, 1,500 by guns.
Cláudia: Yeah, look at the difference.
Richard: The statistics courtesy of the FBI. So statistically, now here we get to the crux of it.
And statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Cláudia: And we look for them, and we see them as gods, and we don't stay without them. And we pay enormous amounts of money in order to have health insurance and health care. But it's not health care at all. As you said, they are deceptive.
Richard: There are so many topics here that you
Cláudia: could wrap.
Helena: What I, what I, um... Wrote to you about AIDS and I'm sorry to forget what is your dear friend's name, doctor, what is his name? Hidalgo.
Richard: Dr. Roberto Giraldo.
Helena: I am so thankful. I would like to say this again because for me it was, it really started changing after reading Dr. Hidalgo's email because it made so much sense. He was so very brief and so clear to me.
I couldn't believe it. To this day I'm thankful. So now
Cláudia: you cannot torture yourself anymore with these ideas. Yes. So he took
Richard: this excuse from you. Now let's take the excuse of toxic relationships.
Helena: We have to take that one away. You know, because of my, not just the recent one, but the one before that, after that relationship, I've developed this fear, this fear, obsessive compulsive disorder in a way of thinking that I have AIDS.
I had no logical explanation why I would think that. I didn't take any drugs, nothing, but I was thinking that I have AIDS and that I'm dying. And I've read everything that you can possibly read about AIDS, everything you can possibly read about HIV, everything um. And I've tortured myself with reading about this, meaning that I, because I was so afraid to go and take this test, and then I've discovered something amazing.
At this point I'm sure about this as much as I'm sure about music, I, this is going to be a shock for many people, but I personally believe that this virus does not exist. AIDS is just a man-made disease, it's something that in my opinion is just an illusion. And you know that was a metaphor for me, it was a big metaphor for me. And I know it's the same, similar should probably go for a toxic relationship, because I am all the time afraid of something that doesn't even exist.
Richard: Okay.
Cláudia: Yeah, you're right.
Richard: Exist only inside of us and this is the big danger. My big thanks to Tiana Base for volunteering her pathology for science, as we all must do, really. I want to continue our discussion a little bit, not with Cláudia this time, but with my good friend Fabrizio Biliotti, who's an Italian journalist and musician to talk about the role of arts a little deeper.
This is a fascinating discussion we had about a year or so ago. So Fabrizio will finish our program today. In the preparatory notes you were giving to me, Fabrizio, for our discussion today, you talked about that we have a big difference in the way art and music is seen today from the past. And I don't want to sound like I'm an apologist for that everything of the past is better, but this aspect, I think, is better and was better in the past, that art and music should be linked to a transcendental life in some way.
So maybe we should start there, talking art and music. What was it? What was it used for? What was the purpose of it?
Fabrizio Biliotti: Yeah, you know, Richard, we don't know very much about the Greek music because there is no written music.
Richard: Didn't have
Fabrizio: a lot of CDs in those days, did you? No, not so many cities and so on. But what we know is that, for example, music was considered by the Greek very, very important because of two factors.
First of all, because music was considered as a means to link the human being to God, to the transcendental life, to a superior level of life. And the second, because music was considered as something therapeutical. And the therapeutic value of music
was well known from the ancient Greek. So they had an idea of art for other purposes than just
Richard: to fulfill the artist's needs, right?
And today we seem to
Fabrizio: have moved away from that a lot, haven't we? No, we don't have anymore. The music today doesn't have this aim anymore, we can say. Then there is a big difference. If we consider, for example, that until the 19th century, all the musicians had this purpose to express something coming from a superior level, because they said from that transcendental life.
And they tried to transfer these feelings, what they feel and what they capture, for example, like Beethoven from nature. Beethoven, he said, for example, that he captured these elements from nature, these universal elements from nature, such as Johannes Brahms too. And their aim was exactly this, to reproduce with notes what they felt about nature, music, and the world. And also to glorify God, like Johann Sebastian Bach.
He wrote music for the glory of God. Then it seems that for example the musician, the artist in general, they had this purpose to help human beings to reconnect themselves with this dimension of life, this is the transcendental life. And as we know by the science of Dr. Keppe we know that for example aesthetics are something very important in human life because aesthetics are one of the pillars of the inner self.
And not only because we are not talking about beautiful museums, beautiful paintings, or beautiful music. Or even great furniture.
Richard: Yeah, or
Fabrizio: even great furniture. Or shoes. Or beautiful palaces also. This is an expression,
Richard: of course. But first of
all, this beauty is something inside a human being as a balance between, for example, two important aspects of our inner self that are
Fabrizio: love and reason.
And the beauty is a harmony coming from inside the human being. Then all the actions the human beings do in their life, they must be a kind of mirror. They must reflect this aspect. This is why the main preoccupation of this musician in the past was that, to reflect this beauty coming from inside and which was linked to the transcendental world.
Richard: With always this purpose, as the Greeks talked about, of having a connection again, the human being, with something transcendental and also for healing purposes.
And so Dr. Cláudia Pacheco has been talking a lot about this because you guys are developing a lot of courses in the arts. And she's been talking a lot about how we don't... The purpose of art is not for self-fulfillment. It's to do something for society. Art has value if it provides something for people. And so these sort of, I don't want to say ancient, but these older artists in older times, they had this concept, didn't they, of trying to do something for the good of humanity.
Fabrizio: Trilogical science gives us a light in this sense, because beauty is a pillar of our inner self, of our inner reality, makes the music or art an important element to awaken this inner part that we have always, we are born with this part, with with this inner structure. And then music is not only a means of entertainment, for example, but is a means of awakening this, the existence and the Consciousness of the existence of this part inside of ourselves.
If music is capable to awaken this consciousness of beauty, of love, and of reason inside of ourselves, this helps us to get in touch with our same part. This is why music is therapeutical. I
Richard: want to just address this one aspect, because this comes up a lot with artists, that art should be whatever the artist wants to portray. And it can be whatever it is.
And Mozart had such a great thing to say about that, this quote you sent me, that the passions, he said, whether they're violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust. Music, even in the situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear, but should flatter and charm it and thereby always remain music.
They made a very clear distinction that music had a link, a direct link, with beauty and aesthetics, that it was something beautiful. And this is, although we can differ on, well, I like this kind of music and you like that, we still know if music is beautiful or if it's not beautiful. If a singer sings out of key, everybody knows that, whether they know anything about music or not.
So do cats and dogs and children, you know. So there is something about this that I think is really important to link with aesthetics, harmony.
Well, even
Fabrizio: our physical structure reflects the perfection of nature. And for example, there are, Dr. Kepes in his book Sociopathology, he shows that what are the most important elements of music? There are melody, then rhythm, and harmony.
These three elements are indispensable to have a good music, a good result, not only in music, but in every kind of art, of course. But, for example, our physical structure reflects exactly this perfection. Because, for example, we know through the science that, for example, the right brain is responsible for the part of feelings. And when we think about music what is the part of the music that really really awakens our these feelings is the melody but music must We have a logical part, too, that is rhythm.
This corresponds to our left brain, which we know is responsible for the logic part, the intellectual part, the
organization. Yeah,
Fabrizio: analyzing.
Analyzing, yeah. But
Fabrizio: these two parts, melody and rhythm, must be in harmony. Then the harmony is the result of these elements together. This is a balance. And this is according to our inner structure. And
Richard: that's our program for this week. My thanks once again to Tiana Bass, Fabrizio Biliotti, and of course, Dr.
Cláudia Baron-Harper-Sheiko, and not to forget you. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head on the Positive World Radio Network returns next week.
Bye-bye for now.
