Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We are clearly living in a time of veneration of the individual in Western society. In North America, it's part of our mythology. The strong, independent, self-sufficient person is admired, and you see this reinforced in every area. Paul Simon sang about being a rock, an island against all the rest. The Marlboro man squints against the sun, confident in his capacity to tame that stallion and build that barn single-handedly.
Rambo wins the Vietnam War all on his own. Anything that deep in our psyche commands there unchallenged. There's no option to consider, since all other options get dismissed even before we really entertain them. We might flirt with alternatives like socialism and collectivism, but only when we're young and impressed by challenging the status quo. Individualism, one man, one vote, the democracy of individual rights, obviously has its place as a worldview to govern our lives, but it can stimulate neurosis and even backwardness if not analyzed.
The limitations of selfishness today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Our programs are part of a much larger body of work called Analytical Trilogy, the study of psychosociopathology. That's a mouthful to get your head around, I know, so I always say to people who want to know more to start with a little primer.
Lots of resources there. And Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt-Prosheko wrote a lovely little introductory guide to the expansive science of Analytical Trilogy.
I was talking to a prominent executive down here this morning, a European director of a large multinational company, and he was lamenting the state of the world, as we all do at times, with our friends over wine and discussion.
It is bleak when viewed through the piecemeal approach, which is our modern worldview, where seemingly isolated events are magnified under the spotlights for a while until they're drained of their newsworthiness and the spotlights move on. From that perspective, it all looks pretty bleak because there's always something new and serious bubbling to the surface somewhere. And I was telling my executive friend about the unifying perspective that I have gained from Norberto Keppe's scientific work, how Analytical Trilogy helps us to understand the root cause of all this disturbance and destruction going on around us.
This is really quite difficult to convey in any complete way in a radio program. Keppe has been divulging it and developing it for over 50 years in well over 30 books that apply his cogent analysis to all areas of human endeavor. But one thing to say, perhaps, is that self-interest is one of the themes that runs through many of our issues today.
Me and my group are the ones who got it going on, baby, and the ones who seek to fulfill different needs must be stopped or dominated or even eliminated. But the great engineer Buckminster Fuller noted, shortly before his death that selfishness was obsolete. We are all bound together inextricably on this planet, and we'd better start figuring out how to get along. And I don't mean in the I'm the big dog with the big bite, so you all have to follow me approach that we've tried up to now.
Let's cast a therapeutic eye on self-centeredness and see if we can understand that a little bit better today. Look at its dark underbelly and see if this can't go some way towards helping us to grow up. So the limitations of selfishness, that's coming up when Thinking with Somebody Else's Head returns on the Stop Radio Network in just a moment. Don't go
away.
Since the
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: beginning of all civilizations, they had always manifested an enormous interest and knowledge about the spiritual life and spiritual beings.
Richard: It's a world of ancient wisdom that modern science has eliminated.
The arising philosophy of positivism preferred to base science on material happenings.
Cláudia: So, only what you can see and touch and feel is real.
Richard: Now, spirituality is being put back into science.
Cláudia: Imagine what would happen if people start considering this as a real thing. Not only as a religious thing, but also a real scientific thing. Imagine what would happen.
Humankind's greatest problem is thinking that what we don't see won't hurt us.
Norberto Cappi. Disinverting the human being and society. This is the Stop Radio
Richard: Network. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is streaming on our very own Stop Radio Network. 24-7, we're available worldwide through iTunes, News Talk, radio stations, or to your smartphone or tablet through the free TuneIn app. Well, Sherston Arvidsson is a psychoanalyst at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy. She attends clients from her native Sweden, as well as clients here in Brazil.
She's also a former psychiatric nurse. Sherston, you deal a lot with your clients and in your lectures and workshops. With the issues of lack of motivation, discouragement, depression, let's start there, shall we, and see how we can make the link with self-centeredness and maybe even narcissism. How do you see that?
Sherston Arvidsson: I see it like this, that in our essence, we have, in our inner self, we have everything that we need to feel good, to be enthusiastic, to have motivation, and to feel happy, in fact.
But what happens? This is what we have to see, and what I also deal with in therapy with clients. That we block this contact with our inner essence, with our qualities. And we do this through our pathology that we don't see. When we don't see it, when we don't have consciousness about it, this pathology, our difficulties, our problems, our envy, our theomania and inversion projection etc, they will control our life.
Now you say we
Richard: block and I want to just make a quick distinction between what you work with in integral psychoanalysis and what many psychotherapists in the world work with. This the distinction that we do the blocking in individually. In many schools of psychoanalytical thought, psychological thought, it's believed that this is because of some trauma we had when we were young or because of our parents or because of our upbringing in some way.
So talk just a little bit more about this contact with the inner self before we move a little deeper into
Sherston: this subject. Yes, this is a difference with other therapies. In integral psychoanalysis, we see that the person inconscientizes. It's an action. We blind ourselves to reality. We blind ourselves to our own attitudes. Dr. And Kepa says that we don't know 90%. We are blind to 90%.
So maximum 10% is what we know about ourselves. This is why we get so surprised when someone tells us, you have big deliriums about yourselves and your personality and what you will do. So we get totally surprised.
Richard: We've all experienced that here, haven't we? So the relationship now, to come back to your point, between the blockage of contact with his inner self and discouragement, lack of motivation, lead us through that a little bit more if you would.
Sherston: I would like to go into one point that I think is very important and that is this, how we see the human being. Because the human being was created 90 percent like an eternal being, so 10% we are like, how can I say,
Richard: locked in the temporal life. So 10% of us is here kind of bound by gravity if you will and 90% is in a much more eternal aspect,
Sherston: in a universal and eternal aspect.
And what is that? That is our essence which is good, true and beautiful, that we can manifest through our actions. But what have we done? We have changed it so we are like the opposite. We try to live 90% in this temporary aspect. Which is confusion, fights, just looking for material things in life. And 10% the eternal, good, true and beautiful actions we have just diminished.
Richard: This must be why we like to be around babies so much. Because babies have more of this contact in this eternal world, right?
Sherston: Yes, this is why we feel so happy just seeing a child.
Richard: Why have we done this, Kerstin? In our last podcast on narcissism, Dr. Cláudia Pacheco said that our vital field, our force field of energy inside, only goes to where our interests lie.
So if we're linked only to this material aspect, then our vital field is not functioning as it should. This must be a big contributor to depression, lack of motivation.
Sherston: Yes, because narcissism in practice, I have seen this working so well in the therapy with clients. It's like a key that opens up the understanding. So narcissism is very much linked to this insatisfaction That people who are depressed, who doesn't have any motivation, feel an insatisfaction with life.
And as we know from earlier podcasts that you have spoken about, envy is very much the core of this insatisfaction. And why? Because if I am very narcissistic, just concentrated on myself, me and myself, so what do I do with what I have around me? Other people, the surrounding, friends, contact, work, everything, all the good that I have around it. I sort of like step on it.
I don't give value to it because I see only myself. I'm only concentrated on myself. So I don't give value to what I have around me, which is of enormous value, life itself. And this can only lead to insatisfaction. But when the person conscientizes this attitude of stepping on, like an elephant in a glass shop, you know, smashing, smashing, we can destroy a relationship in one second, a relationship that we had in ten years.
So we can see that this causes great insatisfaction.
Richard: If we're only interested in ourselves, then, Shersten, we're not taking advantage of all of these other resources that we have inside and also outside from other people, from art and culture, from dedication to something, you know, all of these developments that are possible. We just cut that out completely if we're thinking only about ourselves.
Is this a way of saying it?
Sherston: Yes. And I have one example, and I think it's very common in my country, in Sweden, for example, that people isolate themselves very much. They stay at home, they cut the contact with friends, and isolation is a big problem. And one person brought up this situation. She has an apartment and she has a possibility to invite friends and family members, her family also.
But she doesn't do it. Why? Because she just thinks about, oh, my flat is not good enough, it's not so beautiful, it's a little bit messy here and there. And if I do food, maybe I don't do it in the right way. Maybe they wouldn't like it. And she has a lot of questions and even deliriums about what is going to happen when or if she invites people to her flat.
So she doesn't do it. But when she, in analysis, got aware of this concentration only in herself, in her flat, just thinking what will happen with her if she invites someone. And she conscientized, and what happened? She was able to start to invite friends to make a good, beautiful dinner for them, and they got very happy, and she got very happy. This is a very simple example, but this is the way it works.
Richard: You said in your notes to me about this program that doing analysis, the person enters into contact with this eternal part inside themselves that has this link with the eternity, with the creator outside. Even if the person is an atheist, what they're touching is this part of themselves. And this must be what's happening in this case you explained, where the woman suddenly she comes out of herself enough to see the reality of the...
Sherston: You know, one client said like this. When we had, we had been, she had been understanding, started to understand this question of of her narcissism, of her concentrating on herself. She said you know I'm so absolutely totally fed up of seeing my problems and myself as the center of the world. And I think this is exactly a consequence. So when we start to see this concentration, self-centeredness, we start to have a link with reality and with the creator because we don't any longer compete with him.
Richard: This is very different from what our society tries to teach us, right? I don't know so much about the Swedish society, but I certainly know in North America that the whole emphasis is look out for number one. You've got to look out for yourself. You've got to get love for yourself first. You've got to make sure you're looked after and at the minimum your family is looked after.
Forget everybody else because it's a jungle out there and you've got to swim with the sharks. And so the society does not help us in this internal process that you're talking about now, does it?
Sherston: Exactly. And I have one example also from another client which can illustrate this a little bit. Because in Sweden, many people have difficulty with work, working. We have a large percentage of people that are...
Being supported
Richard: by the society, right? A
Sherston: lot of social assistance there. Yes. In Canada, we're starting to cut away that, but we have a similar attitude there. This is a difficulty for the society and for the whole country. And one client brought up, brought this question up. And she said like this, you know, I'm irritated. I wake up with irritation. And this for her was a big revelation because she hadn't even noticed it before.
And then I asked her to tell, well what is happening, why are you irritated. You know I think I always have been like this. I wake up with an irritation, I don't want to wake up, I don't want to get up, so I have a resistance to get up. But what do you associate the day with, waking up to the day, a new day.
And then she said work. And so what do you associate work with. You know she said it's something that takes me out from the the time that I want to have for myself. It's only a lot of must, must I have to do this and that and that and I cannot like spend the time on myself, so the work takes time from me.
What can we deduce from this, that she is irritated to be dragged out from her self-centeredness. So we can see that this has also to do with narcissism. And it's totally the opposite. Because work is something that gives you health. Good action, work, is furnishing health for you and equilibrium. That was very, very helpful for her.
Richard: Yeah, exactly. And she's not the first I've seen to be benefited from this perspective.
I've got a friend in Toronto, actually, who noted the healthy emphasis that Norberto Keppe puts on action as a way to sanity. Okay, we just have to take a quick break here.
We're back in just a moment to continue our conversation with psychoanalyst Sherson Arvidsson about the limitations of selfishness.
We'll do that when Thinking with Somebody Else's Head returns in just a moment on the Stop Radio Network. Thank you for
listening to the most relevant conversations in the world about selfishness. Stopping the Destruction of Ourselves and the Planet.
Richard: The most original, contemporaneous writer in the world today, says the National Scientific Research Center in France. A genuine contributor to the intellectual treasury of civilization, says former U.S.
Ambassador Joseph Gugassian. For these times of uncertainty and conflict comes a work of extraordinary vision, hope, and moral clarity. Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist Norberto Keppe writes with wisdom and authority about the things that really matter. How to heal illness. How inverted science is leading the destruction of nature and what to do about it. Finding spirituality within. Structuring a truly just society.
There are more than 3,000 books published worldwide every day. None are more important than these. The Books of Norberto Keppe. Trilogical science, leading us to a new world. A key inversion in science.
Always we are trying to extract energy from a material element.
Richard: And its negative consequences.
We provoke serious imbalances in nature.
Richard: Corrected now with the Keppe Motors disinversion of physics.
And we developed a way to have mechanical power with very little electricity.
Cláudia: This will make a big change, not only in energetic efficiency, but also it will bring better energy in homes because it's magnetic energy.
Richard: The Keppe Motor, new technology for a new world. Illness lies in our resistance to consciousness. Norberto Keppe.
Disinverting the human being and society.
Richard: We're back Thinking with Somebody Else's Head is on the Stop Radio Network.
Listen, if you're resonating with our conversation today and thinking, maybe this school of psychoanalysis that Sherston is describing and illustrating makes some sense for you, let me let you know that trilogical psychoanalysis is available by phone in your language, in English. It's very effective that way, actually. I know a number of people who do psychoanalysis regularly by telephone, and it works very well.
But, Sherston, those who don't have the benefit of doing this type of analysis And, you know, they're locked into this depression, this sense that nothing has value. How can we help these people?
Sherston: 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 I can, 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 herself in action. She was gaining time. She was gaining health and more balance and happiness and this was so obvious. It's
Richard: so 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, Sherston, of this narcissism and how it blocks us from this inner life that you're talking about so well today?
Sherston: 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 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 level. And then she continued to talk about herself and she demonstrated clearly that she sees 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
Sherston: 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?
Sherston: 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. But 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. This
Richard: must show up very much, this kind of not wanting to see, or these patterns of behavior must show up very much in families, Shareston. 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.
Sherston: 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 is not seeing the daughter as an own being. She is 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. Yes,
Richard: you're fantastic. You can be anything. You can do anything. You just need to go and jump into life and all beautiful things will happen.
Sherston: And accomplish what I didn't do.
Richard: And we have 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, Cherston. 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?
Sherston: 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 describes it like an inner illumination. Yeah,
Richard: that is an expansive way to see ourselves and the world. Keppe has reminded us that eternity is actually the greatest of all reality for we human beings.
That really does expand the view out, doesn't it? We've replaced that fundamental spiritual part with materialism to our great detriment. That is our program for this week. Our program is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We are proudly streaming on the Stop Radio Network. We're a product of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, and we're back next time on our program.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. We'll talk to you next time on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and welcome to the Stop Radio Network. We broadcast from the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil. And our programs, Thinking with Somebody Else's Head and Healing Through Consciousness, offer the most relevant conversations around about the state of our world and what we can do to make it better.
Cláudia: I remember the book Glorification that Dr. Keppe wrote. I was with him many of the nights or days where he got those inspirations from God. And it was a necessity for him to write what he received. So the book was totally written under inspiration. But it's not only a theological book. It's mostly a scientific book. Very therapeutic book.
Very beautiful, by the way. And he used to wake up during the night, two, three in the morning. And he said let's go to the top of the mountain and we were watching the sky in this dark night with no interference so you could transcend the sky and see heaven through it. Oh my god you could adapt the writings that he did with the music of Beethoven and this would be a trilogy of his writings and the music would be heaven.
Richard: Norberto Keppe's Glorification.
Hi,
my name's Thorne, and I love listening to the Stop Radio Network. It helps me to start off my day in a really good mode.
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