Session 40. The Heart of Man


The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, told us that in every human being there are desires that he does not want to communicate to anyone, and desires that he does not want to confess to himself. On this occasion I would like to dwell on the affections that come from the heart of man. Of course we now know that the heart is not an organ from which feelings come, yet such faculties have long been attributed to this ungrateful and foolish life partner. Our lives are oriented towards a double end: to achieve the means that assure us of existence and to extract pleasure from it. Motivational videos or fashions in self-improvement tell us that we should seek to be happy, that for this we have been born (the Ello does not always agree). This is not an easy task, since life is not linear, and along the way we experience deep emotions that do not always tip us the scales on the side of happiness. But is happiness a goal we should strive to achieve? And, once the goal is achieved, is it a static place to go? We think that in our life emotions are positive or negative and that some should exclude the others. That is, love must overcome hatred, gratitude must overcome envy, pleasure must overcome displeasure, etc. The truth is that all these aspects are present in life from birth to death, and life consists in integrating these aspects. Along the way we are looking for ways to defend ourselves against these “dangerous forces” and adapt better to the environment. Aspects such as bad temper, selfishness, lack of good manners, brutality when driving, the typical “get off the #&!”, of the Sinaloans, in short, cause us distastes in daily life. Aspects that come from feelings that are not exactly on the list of the (+), and we must dedicate to them, on many occasions, part of our time and energy to overcome and mitigate the consequences that such attitudes cause us. Whether they are their own or others. And it’s not true that we can just turn the page and go on like nothing just being positive. The unconscious laughs at that because we cannot deny ourselves the desire we get to experience to hit someone, to yell at them, to throw the car at them, to do something to the neighbor’s dog (I mean the pet), and all this is part of us. It would be very exhausting to try to deny it, or to look the other way pretending that only with that those desires disappear. Well, no, they don’t disappear just by being positive and flowing with the universe. It needs to be analysed. Being honest with oneself is the best effort that a human being can make, the father of psychoanalysis will tell us again, but it does not hurt us to have an analyst trained in the matter that leads us in that search for the truth of ourselves. I would like to conclude by turning to Hartmann, who tells us that a healthy person must be able to suffer and feel depressed. A limited dose of suffering is an integral part of health. Typical conflicts are part of “normal” development. Health includes pathological reactions as a means of achieving it. So let’s not be afraid to admit the unpleasant feelings we may eventually experience in life. They say something about us, resonate in our life story and can become interesting analysis material. We will continue next Thursday elucidating this issue. Love and hate come together in the heart of man. Peace and good!



Original source in Spanish

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