#gabormate — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #gabormate, aggregated by home.social.
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Shady U.S. Funding Scheme Under Fire As The World 🌏 Sounds the Alarm🚨🚨🚨
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DvRwkIXs5VM
#AbbyMartin #GaborMaté
#AbdulElSayed#Lebanon🇱🇧 #ApartheidIsraeliWarCRIMES
#journalism #journalists #IOF #WestBank #Palestine 🇵🇸
#ChildMurder #FascismA #MustWatchVideo 💔
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Shady U.S. Funding Scheme Under Fire As The World 🌏 Sounds the Alarm🚨🚨🚨
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DvRwkIXs5VM
#AbbyMartin #GaborMaté
#AbdulElSayed#Lebanon🇱🇧 #ApartheidIsraeliWarCRIMES
#journalism #journalists #IOF #WestBank #Palestine 🇵🇸
#ChildMurder #FascismA #MustWatchVideo 💔
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Ex #Zionist Trauma #Expert: The #EpsteinFiles & The Myth of Normal | Dr. #GaborMaté #yt
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Without merely fixating on scandal, and sidestepping the deeper structures of power that sustain it - the ruling class is always historically corrupt, incestuous, self-serving, amoral, and exploitative:
https://youtube.com/shorts/UeGw_Jo1v6s?si=2F6qCRr57NkGXGzm
@gabormate #medianarratives #epsteinfiles #trump #trumpsteinclass #trumpcrimefamily #structuresofpower #TheTeaWithMyriamFrancois #GaborMaté #USPolitics #news #elites #elitism #rothchild #DrMyriamFrançois -
3/3
... , the quote above is a great supplement of gabor's definition of addiction, it explains on a part of the why, shows one of the many illusional beliefs that we tell ourselves to, yes, survive psychologically.
#nightAgent #addiction #psychosomatic #drugs #gaborMate #gambling #netflix
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"If you ask yourself the question of choosing between guilt and resentment - choose the guilt, all the time! Resentment is a poison that slowly kills you from the inside."
Quote by Gabor Maté in yesterday's live webinar on his book "The Myth of Normal" [2024, it's GREAT!!!].
The webinar was hosted by Vera Etkinlik and in part translated simultaneously from Turkiye to English and I have to say, orga/technical broadcast etc. were almost perfect!
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'In this conversation, Dr. Gabor Mate discusses the profound impact of trauma on individuals and society, drawing from his personal experiences as a Holocaust survivor. He emphasises the collective nature of trauma, the importance of truth-telling in healing. Mate critiques Zionism and the hypocrisy of Western politics while addressing the challenges of speaking out against injustice. He also explores the physiological effects of witnessing violence and the necessity of resilience and hope and organising in the face of despair.'
#GaborMate #Hungary #Canada #USpol #EUpol #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Video #Interview
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#Authentizität ist das #Heilmittel gegen den hypnotisierenden #Einfluß der #Normalität.
(Gabor #Maté)
#psychotHHerapie #Zitat #Zitate #normal #GaborMaté -
What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott
-
What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott
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What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott
-
What is a ‘true self’ and what is a ‘false self’?
I’ve always been instinctively suspicious of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘true self‘. Not because I doubt that it’s a frequent experience to find oneself relating in a manner which is in some fundamental way fake, somehow untrue to who we are. To the extent this is a routine feature of human experience it implies as a corollary forms of relating which are in some fundamental sense true to who we are. Likewise it is a common experience that these forms of relating feel good in some diffuse yet profound way. In essence I understand Winnicott to have been saying that relating from the true self keeps us in touch with our fundamental creativity, enabling us to act spontaneously in terms of who we are rather than acting defensively in order to comply with the (imagined) expectations of those around us. In essence the false self acts as a defensive carapace which forms to protect ourselves developmentally when we encounter situations in which we cannot be ourselves in this more spontaneous way. It’s what Gabor Mate describes with admirable clarity as the tension between attachment and authenticity:
The seed of woe does not lie in our having these two needs, but in the fact that life too often orchestrates a face-off between them. The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? What happens, in other words, when one nonnegotiable need is pitted by circumstance against the other? These circumstances might include parental addiction, mental illness, family violence and poverty, overt conflict, or profound unhappiness—the stresses imposed by society, on children as well as adults. Even without these, the tragic tension between attachment and authenticity can arise. Not being seen and accepted for who we are is sufficient.
Myth of Normal, pg 147
As Mate later observes, “That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to” (pg 476). In this sense we could think of Winnicott’s concept as a way of describing how this tension plays itself out (or fails to) i.e. the manner in which we learn to pretend to be something other than what we are in pursuit of a sense of safety in our relations with others. In its more extreme forms this issues in a complete compliance with our environment and the demands we encounter within it, even preemptively so such that we are contorting ourselves to demands which no one is actually making of us. This is part of all childhood experience, as I understand Winnicott, with the difference being the degree to which the false self crowds out the true self and how deeply embedded the legacy of this becomes in adult life and with what consequences.
The problem I see is the tacitly essentialist register of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’. Not only does it lend itself so readily to simplification, such that we might simply seek to replace the (bad) ‘false self’ with the (good) ‘true self’, it fails to register the dynamic character of the process which is being captured. As I understand it these are more like psychic sources which become more or less integrated into the structure of our quotidian engagement with the world around us: the source of spontaneous and creative action which keeps us rooted in the present and the anticipatory and fearful action which is orientated to the future. It’s untenable to live entirely in the first mode as an adult so it’s more a question of how readily accessible that source is and how much it infuses our interaction with others and the world around us. Likewise the second mode provides a necessary feature for survival in an unpredictable world but it can squeeze out the possibility for authentic relating such that it makes any relating in the first mode untenable. Everything becomes about projection, performance and preparation rather than simply being and doing. The tension isn’t a one-time trade off, particularly outside of clinical settings, but rather a life long struggle between two modes that are essential to being human and thriving in a complex and open world. This is why I like so much Christopher Bollas who talks about this as an idiom:
Winnicott’s important statement that the true self is the inherited ‘personality potential’. From my point of view, this is exactly what it is: a complex inherited core of personality present at birth, an idiom of being and relating that will evolve and become activated according to the infant’s experience of the mother.
Essential Aloneness, loc 395
The other main quality of the true self is ‘spontaneity’: the gesture made real. We see somebody we would like to talk to, and we approach them and introduce ourselves. This is the gesture made real. If we merely think about doing this but we don’t actually move towards the person, the gesture is accomplished only as an inner mental representation. So one of the ways to evaluate the evolution of an individual’s true self is to note the extent to which their gestures have been made real.
Essential Aloneness, loc 407
It’s this movement from internal towards external gesture which is mediated by caregivers who meet the infant’s developing idiom and support its elaboration. For Bollas our personal idiom is defined through such elaboration as we relate to objects, including crucially cultural objects, in a manner which unfolds a particular sense in which I’m this person relating to these objects in this specific way. I develop my own specific idiom through the objects I select, how I engage with them and the way I’m changed in the process. There are objects which, as he puts it in Being a Character, act as ‘keys’ which unlock elements of our idiom:
Certain objects, like psychic “keys,” open doors to unconsciously intense—and rich—experience in which we articulate the self that we are through the elaborating character of our response. This selection constitutes the jouissance of the true self, a bliss released through the finding of specific objects that free idiom to its articulation.
Loc 208
The people we feel an affinity with. The places we find we belong. The music which moves us. The books which leave us changed after reading. As he puts it in Hysteria loc 100:
So each self will find particular individuals more attractive than others, will find certain actual objects — works of fiction, pieces of music, hobbies, recreational interests — of more interest than others, and in the course of living a life will have constructed a world which, although holding objects in common with other selves, will have shaped them into a form as unique as their fingerprint.
To be a ‘true self’ involves living in a way that is consistent with our idiom. This also means living in a way that calls for the continual elaboration of our idiom because to live with it consistently involves a continual encounter with objects that provoke this potential through their relations. The objects call forth experiences in us, activate potential that were previously latent, leaving us changed in all manner of ways. This I think is what is at work when cultural bingeing is edifying rather than deadening, a sense of being immersed in something that moves you rather than being caught in the circuits of drive to avoid something else. Indeed I’m currently bingeing on Bollas because I’m finding things here which express my idiom, particularly in the intellectual register of the sociological account of psychodynamics I’ve inarticulately groped towards over a long period of time. There is something about how I see the world, as well as how I want to account for what I see, which is being elaborated through reading his work. In doing so I’m changed in a manner which is deeply satisfying.
It suggests to me that cultural engagement can be a crucial source of connection to spontaneity. To write because you have the ‘feel of an idea’ (in my favourite phrase of C Wright Mills) rather than because you want to elicit a response in your readers. To read something because it’s gripping you rather than because you want to be someone seen to read things like that or to be someone who has read it. To listen to what moves you and leaves you feeling alive in the immersion. In the jouissance associated with these experiences we connect to something fundamental in ourselves: our personal idiom or ‘true self’. That enjoyment can be rich and generative because it touches something fundamental about who we are. Why am I the person so moved by this music? Why am I the person so fascinated by this author? It follows from Bollas that I think we ought to sit with these experiences, to linger in them so that we can sensitise ourselves to what is at work in them without allowing analysis to substitute for immersion. It’s how to really enjoy cultural engagement but it also has a broader psychic significance as a manner in which we connect with ourselves and what matters to us.
It’s less clear to me though what this means interpersonally. There’s a greater complexity to our object relating with people because they are, well… people. They too have their own idiom. The ruthlessness in object relating which Winnicott argued was essential to our psychic development becomes potential sources of harm in our relating with others. But conversely the fear of hurting others can be a stifling constraint on the possibility of authentic relating. The term which comes to mind here is atmosphere: the space that exists interpersonally and what it means for the possible expressions of idiom in the reciprocal relating that takes place. It’s also the question of what’s energising and what isn’t. How does it feel to be-with a particular person? Do you come across feeling energised or depleted? Do you feel elaborated or diminished? Do you feel sharper edged or somehow blurry? The complexity arises because relating in terms of our personal idiom can be genuinely harmful for the other. Indeed as Mate observes attachment and authenticity often cannot be reconciled. But there’s something here I think about finding who your people are as a matter of converging idioms and the atmosphere which prevails as a consequence of this convergence.
#christopherBollas #falseSelf #gaborMate #objectRelations #relating #trueSelf #Winnicott
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Parenting Does Not Cause ADHD: Dr. Mate' is Wrong Again - Russell Barkley, PhD - Dedicated to ADHD Science+
note: parenting = mothers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xj6H3k9sz0 #ADHD #trauma #RussellBarkley #GaborMate #ActuallyADHD #MotherBlaming
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Why Dr Gabor Mate' is Worse Than Wrong About ADHD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO19LWJ0ZnM #actuallyADHD #ADHD #GaborMate #RussellBarkley
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Why are diagnoses of ADHD soaring? There are no easy answers – but empathy is the place to start
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/06/adhd-diagnosis-society-human-development?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
#GaborMaté -
“El mito de la normalidad”
Lena Pettersson“El mito de la normalidad: Trauma, enfermedad y curación en una cultura tóxica”, libro más reciente del médico y escritor canadiense #GaborMaté
No solo el sistema imperante permite la #contaminación y el envenenamiento del agua, aire, suelo y de nuestros cuerpos con sustancias tóxicas, sino también fomenta la desconexión – la alienación – de nosotros mismos, de los demás y de la #naturaleza.Sociedad traumatizante
https://rebelionecologista.org/lecturas/el-mito-de-la-normalidad/
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My Therapy Session with Dr. #GaborMaté #hasanminhaj #yt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW3Md09-jfc
Always forget that he has a #podcast now 🤦 the patrioact show was sooo good ❤️❤️❤️
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Gabor Maté is as close to a saint as we deserve.
#FreedomFlotilla #flotilla #handala #GazaGenocide #FreePalestine #GaborMate #trauma
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#gabormate sees the big picture behind sanctions to #FrancescaAlbanese
From dropmicmoments IG #imperialism #colonialism #warisacrime #warisaracket
#terrorism #israel #gaza #antisemitism #nakba #genocide -
Gaza – “The earth has no solutions anymore”
Het is ongemakkelijk om op LinkedIn iets te schrijven dat niet te maken heeft met glamoureus werk. En ik zoek werk. Dus de gedachte: “Maakt dit mijn kansen kleiner?” zoemde even in mijn hoofd. Maar hear me out.
Afgelopen donderdag liet Amoorah me een bericht lezen van Said, de kinderarts in Gaza met wie ze veel contact heeft. De angst en de ellende waren voelbaar in het bericht. Said schreef: “The earth has no solutions anymore”. Het waren de woorden van iemand in doodsangst, die de bombardementen hoort en voelt in zijn lichaam. Said had al verschrikkelijke foto’s gedeeld.
“The earth has no solutions anymore”, deze woorden dreunen al een paar dagen na in mijn hoofd. Wat moet ik hiermee? Wat kan ik doen? Wat voor zin heeft het om tegen je toetsenbord te ouwehoeren? Ik weet niet wat jij kunt doen. Het enige wat ik op dit moment kan doen is woordjes aan elkaar rijgen. Vragen stellen. Bewondering hebben voor mensen die dingen doen. Zoals de inzamelacties van Amoorah. Ze heeft inmiddels heel veel geld weten over te maken naar de mensen in Gaza. Bij zo’n inzameling kwam ik even in contact met Waldo Swart, die hieronder schreef over schreeuwen, stil vallen en toch weer door gaan. Omdat je soms iets niet meer kunt zeggen, maar er toch niet over kunt zwijgen.
Niet iedereen zwijgt op dezelfde manier.
Het zwijgen van deze regering over de gruwelijkheden in Palestina is wel schadelijk. Daarom zeg ik samen met heel veel anderen: hashtag#nietInMijnNaam
Niet iedereen is de activist die met spandoeken de straat op gaat. Laat niemand (en zeker Rutger Bregman niet) je aanpraten dat je ‘moreel ambitieus’ moet zijn. Maar doe niet niets; luister, praat, stel vragen.
Zwijgen lukt me niet. Maar verzet begint niet met grote woorden, dichtte Campert.
“jezelf een vraag stellen
daarmee begint verzet
en dan die vraag aan een ander stellen.”Wat zeg jij?
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Waldo Swart Writer on Dutch Foreign Policy on the Middle East | Math Educator | Docenten voor Palestina 🇵🇸 | The Hague Peace Projects 4 dagen geleden“If your eyes are open, and your heart is open… your heart will break every day.” Gabor Maté
Na maanden schrijven over Palestina, raakte ik leeg. Wat is er in godsnaam nodig om mensen wakker te schudden? Ik kon even niet meer schrijven vanuit empathie. Dus ik stopte. Ik deed mee met de Ramadan. Ging meer lezen en wandelen. Probeerde weer te landen bij mezelf.
Ik bleef naar demonstraties gaan, maar deelde er niets meer over. Mijn woorden waren op. Mijn verontwaardiging maakte plaats voor stomme verbazing. In plaats van te schrijven, besloot ik daarom op kleinere schaal iets te doen: op mijn school meer bewustzijn creëren.
Voor Eid al-Fitr werd ik geraakt door Amoorah Fadwa Kartoubi’s actie om geld in te zamelen voor weeskinderen in Gaza met Palestijnse dadels (https://lnkd.in/dvBubhT3)). Ook ik legde twee doosjes in de lerarenkamer. De reacties waren hartverwarmend en tegelijk confronterend: er is zóveel dat ongezegd blijft.
Nog steeds hoor ik: “waar twee vechten…” Of: “overál is het verschrikkelijk: Oekraïne, Myanmar …”. Maar dit is geen conflict of natuurramp. Wat de Palestijnen overkomt is mensenwerk en wordt in stand gehouden door onze stilte en onze genocide-steunende regeringen. Het is geen nobel gebaar om hierover te spreken. Het is onze verantwoordelijkheid. Als burger. Als docent. Als mens.
Ja, het is ongemakkelijk. Het vraagt zelfreflectie en het kantelen van onze blik, weg van een eurocentrisch wereldbeeld. Sommigen willen dit niet, anderen vinden het te eng, maar vaak is het ook gewoon een gebrek aan andere perspectieven. Daarom had ik eigenlijk boeken willen delen, documentaires aanraden. Juist nu is zoveel te leren over wat al lang misgaat. Elke dag is er een kans om iets kleins te doen: je (online) uitspreken, geen producten kopen die bijdragen aan apartheid, organisaties steunen die zich inzetten voor mensenrechten, politici mailen, de straat opgaan …
Morgen (vier dagen geleden red.) is er de kans om deel te nemen aan de wereldwijde staking voor Gaza. Geen werk, geen school, geen stilte. Ik heb me officieel afgemeld met deze boodschap:
“Als docent voel ik een morele verantwoordelijkheid om stil te staan bij de scholasticide in Gaza. Meer dan 50.000 Palestijnen zijn omgekomen, en met de nieuwe militaire aanvallen voltrekken zich elk uur nieuwe tragedies, waarbij niemand wordt ontzien. In deze uitzonderlijke context vind ik het belangrijk om gebruik te maken van mijn recht om te staken.”
Voor Nederland is er geen beter moment. Morgen is eindelijk het langverwachte gesprek met minister-president Dick Schoof over de Niet in mijn naam-actie:
- Is de premier bereid te luisteren naar de overgrote meerderheid van het land die vraagt om een koerswijziging?
- Hoe wil hij later herinnerd worden, als politicus en als mens?
Weet je die actie nog? Heb je je toen uitgesproken? Spreek je dan nu weer uit! Laten we nu handelen en staken. Staakt voor Gaza!
hashtag#NietInMijnNaam hashtag#StaakvoorGaza
Docenten voor Palestina, Oxfam Novib
Tekst Paul van Buuren en Waldo Swart, bron LinkedIn.Dit is een automatisch geplaatst bericht via ActivityPub.
#AmoorahFadwaKartoubi #Campert #GaborMaté #Gaza #geenNatuurramp #genocide #kinderartsSaid #PalestijnseDadels #Schoof #WaldoSwart
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@sheislaurence
Thanks, much needed.And I'm now following #GaborMaté.
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Some comforting words for a #Sunday for all #activists out there, from Dr #GaborMaté. He posted yesterday on the concept of "moral injury", as we are bearing witness to the #genocide in #Gaza #Palestine. It resonates all the more that Maté is himself a #holocaust survivor and #trauma specialist. Have a good Sunday everyone!
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#gaza #genocide #palestine #israel #CrimesAgainstHumanity #warcrimes #conversation #GaborMate #FrancescaAlbanese
A #webinar from the Society for the Study of #Peace, Conflict, and #Violence with #trauma expert Gabor Mate, MD, and Francesca Albanese
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Malému dítěti, uvězněnému ve stařeckém těle ulétl mozek :-(
Bohužel toto dítě sedí v trůnu ředitele zeměkoule.
Držme si klobouky, bude to hustá jízda.#trump #trumpism #capitalism #kapitalismus #trauma #gabormate #tomashajzler #peoplecomm
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#gabormate #lifeboatacademy #climatecrisis #polycrisis #metacrisis #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction #societalcollapse #permaculture #regenerativeagriculture #communityorganizing #sociocracy #relocalization #placebased #queerfarming #diversity #doughnuteconomics #gifteconomy #decolonization #climatejustice #resilience #reciprocity #cosmolocal
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY3T_woRxT8
#GaborMaté : Surviving The Holocaust made Me a #Palestine Supporter
Halper is in #Europe, working on a #documentary about survivors of the Holocaust who are speaking out against genocide in #Palestine and who are critical of #AparthediIsrael.
#JewsSayCeasefire🇵🇸 ✡️
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik2zuQWo5P8
#AfshinRattansiGU #GoingUnderground
'The Darkest Thing I've Seen'', Dr. #GaborMaté on Western Countries Supporting #ApartheidIsrael's #Gaza Slaughter
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#MiddleEastEye
Dr #GaborMate on The #NewYorkTimes: ‘Where the hell were you?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0MNjJwnqgY#GENOCIDESickOfThisShit
#JewsSayCeasefire✡️
#CeasefireNOW
#EndTheOccupationNOW🇵🇸 -
@luke understanding dosage now makes sense Luke, alongside solid research from the likes of #gabormate #traumainformedcare
For at least 5 decades, I had no idea of what consistently feeling safe felt like. I’ve doing some phenomenal therapeutic work, and reckon I’m getting closer to experimenting with psychedelics, in a supported environment. Paranoia was one of my worst experiences, linked to trauma, fear and anxiety, and all threaded back to attachment styles. Thanks for sharing your experiences, it’s been really helpful
