Celebrating Life, instead!

I wanted to blog something about suicide because of the blog of Liz about another suicide supposedly attributed to poverty, and because I want to advocate that the media should stop this media-hype because of the possibility that suicide might actually be "copied" and misconstrued that it is cool to commit suicide as what Prudence has mentioned in her blog as Werther Syndrome.

I had to refresh my psychology since it was already eons ago! I rummaged through the net and looked for theories of attribution, cognitive dissonance and suicide itself. But then, discussing suicide is in itself mind-boggling. So, I decided not to discuss suicide for several reasons:

1. If I would stretch my mind just to present an academic discussion into a human interest blog entry, I would turn nuts! One did an anthropological study on suicide in Palawan for years! Plus, there are discussions that range from legal, philosophical, psychological, socio-cultural, anthropological, theological, medical, etc. etc. I only have one hour! I am not that gifted to put all these discussions into 4 paragraphs. Just Google it!
2. I might get disappointed if I cannot write an article because I made a personal promise that I owe my readers, which I can actually count with my ten fingers on my hand (smile), then I become so frustrated, and depressed and....no! I still have my wits intact. Don't worry!
3. Last, but not the least, I stumbled on a website, which I think is the only website in the Philippines (except for the news item) about suicide and support for suicidal persons. This is PRO-Life Philippines website. Actually nothing much is discussed about suicide. What caught my attention was THE JOURNEY OF LIFE.

Isn't this more blogworthy than the horrific and morbid stories about suicide?

....And I remember the day when my wife told me she was pregnant of Gio. The day when he was born and how I exclaimed: "Tatay na ako!" (I am now a father!).

Fatherhood was something I did not fear right from the start. I fully embraced the fact that I have to leave some parts of me behind. There were some trepidations, why not? It was my first time to be a father! But the joy of seeing your son in his nursery crib, holding him for the first time, inhaling his breath each morning, bathing him, feeding him in the middle of the night--would always be 100% effective in erasing the worries. The feeling is simply indescribable!

...and This poem of Robert Browning, Pippa's Song, would perhaps explain how I felt:

The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his heaven---

All's right with the world!

Cross-posted at: Psyche

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I see a lurking devil!

"Tell me what you see in this figure," I once asked when I administred this projective technique test to one of my subjects when I was in college. Yes, we call our participants, subjects, in Experimental Psychology and Psychological testing [and we feel like we are the "Royalty". Smile!].

After the test, I had to put some meanings to what he said, by tagging his responses with some codes that have corresponding meanings. If they see a furry animal, "fur" corresponds to a "tag" and a meaning. If my memory serves me right, a "fur" is either a fear or an affection, depending on the nature of the response--it has something to do with relationships. It is either you have strong affection for your loved ones, or you fear about your parents or someone in authority.

If the Rorschach inkblot test was meant to dig deeper into your personality, they now experiment to make use of this to help us "adjust" in the more mundane tasks, like remembering passwords.

Here is an interesting article about the use of inkblots in remembering passwords.

And you might, as well try the test below the article and come up with your new password.

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Jungianisms

IN MY STUDY of psychology, there are at least 4 psychologists who are influential in my life:

1. Sigmund Freud - because of his id, ego and super-ego concept and that your motivations are actually a function of your physical desires.
2. Viktor Frankl - his concept on man's capability to find meaning in his existence. His book Man's Search for Meaning is just so riveting and at the same time hopeful as he narrated his life in a concentration camp.
3. Carl Rogers - who inlfuenced me about becoming to be I want to become - that I am someone who can make the best out of my difficulties and maladjustments, that I am rational and I can solve my own maladjustments, and lastly,
4. Carl Jung - because his theories are more "rational" and realistic than Freud's. It is something I can touch, taste and feel.

Of the four, I like Jung most. That is why I am dedicating this section for "Jungianisms" or some of the quotations I gathered from the net:

• A shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.


• All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
  
• An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.
  
• Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
  
• Death is psychologically as important as birth... Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
  
• Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
  
• Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.
  
• Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
  
• I cannot love anyone if I hate myself. That is the reason why we feel so extremely uncomfortable in the presence of people who are noted for their special virtuousness, for they radiate an atmosphere of the torture they inflict on themselves. That is not a virtue but a vice.
  
• I have never encountered a difficulty that was not truly the difficulty of myself.
  
• If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
  
• If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.
  
• Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
  
• Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
  
• Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
  
• People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
  
• Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.
  
• Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

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