Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
Lionel TrillingRead
Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.
Interpretation
Neurosis reflects an internal struggle where one holds themselves accountable in ways that prevent others from facing their own judgments.
This quote by Lionel Trilling suggests that neuroses can be viewed as a misguided legal process we impose on ourselves, where we take on the roles of prosecutor, judge, and executioner. This self-inflicted judgment may stem from a desire to protect others from facing the same internal conflict, highlighting the complex dynamics of guilt and responsibility within the human psyche.
In practice
In a psychology class discussing the effects of self-criticism.
Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.
The poet may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.
Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.
There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.
We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
The first stage of this tranquility consists in silencing the lips when the heart is excited. The second, in silencing the mind when the soul is still excited. The goal is a perfect peacefulness even in the middle of the raging storm.
I am always interested in that relationship between outer reality and inner desire, and I think it is important to pay attention to the inner voice because it is the only way to discover your mission in life and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny.
Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't.
They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
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