Do elaborate.

We must develop the "courage to be imperfect."

I wasn't aware it required courage. I thought it was just the way things were.

Not sure how much more I can elaborate -- it's coming out of Adler's theory of personality, which saw us all as becoming rather than being; he seems to focus on how we achieve our goals (and what those goals are) rather than some pinned-down sense of who we are. And there's a sense that we're all psychologically damaged, in some way -- the completely healthy person does not exist -- but we are also all, if we want to be healthy, working to move closer and closer to the unattainable ideal. Success, therefore, is measured in increments, in how well a person can shed large problematic responses to the world (like, I suppose, thinking "I'm a failure") and substitute them with smaller, less destructive responses ("I failed at that one particular thing").

Does that make any sense? I've had about 30min. total exposure to this material; I'm still processing. :)

Oh, and the "courage to be imperfect" thing is the idea that we will never have perfect knowledge of how something will work out, or the perfect ability to make something work the exact way we want it, but we must act anyway; neurosis comes from stalling.

I really like the idea of substituting not-so-good-things with smaller not-so-good-things.

Being imperfect may be a fait accomplis, Jon, but dealing with it is an ongoing issue for many. Admitting to one's imperfections (a healthy ego) without drowning in them (paralysis by guilt and feelings of inadequacy) or excusing them (giving oneself permission to give up or to engage in anti-social behavior) is a lifelong balancing act that few can manage without the occasional hard fall.

Yeah, I guess I could slum it for a day.

Is this is same as owning your shite?

Being imperfect may be a fait accomplis, Jon, but dealing with it is an ongoing issue for many.

Not me. I revel in my impefrectness, wallow in it. I raise it to an art form. I've perfected imperfection.

*realizes what he just said, screams in terror*
*hole opens up in space time continuum, sucking me away*

neurosis comes from stalling.

Ah yes, that I recognize, dealing with that today. I have some big projects on my plate, and part of me just wants to hide under my desk and not do them... but clearly, I can't do that.

That's really good, thanks for posting it. It kind of relates to some stuff I've been thinking a lot about lately.

"I revel in my impefrectness"

Was that intentional? Otherwise - Freud says, "Ha!"

/Not like he thinks it means anything, either. Freud is just kind of a dick that way.

No, Flo, it wasn't but I noticed it on preview and decided to let it stand. Reveling, see?

I really like the idea of substituting not-so-good-things with smaller not-so-good-things.

Yep yep yep. I loved the general idea that we don't have to try to be perfect, just less bad.

Or equally bad, but in small, discrete packets.

how well a person can shed large problematic responses to the world

Amen.

All this sounds like wisdom to me.

I really like this concept. I'll have to chew on this one for a bit.

Yes. The more I consider it, the more I love the goal of being progressively less imperfect, or less damagingly imperfect, as opposed to the goal of being perfect. It is really all we can aim for, and it allows a lot of permission for human foibles and natural weaknesses.

Oh, and that should be fait accompli.

I dunno. Somebody once said that you have to embrace your vices, because they, along with your virtues are what make you you. or something like that.

"Oh, and that should be fait accompli."

Heh. Yeah - a good example of the concept, actually. My spelling sux, so I use spell checkers to compensate; but there are certain kinds of errors that are actually introduced when one relies on them too much. But statistically, it's still worth it to create new, smaller, less frequent errors in an effort to clean up the larger mess.

I like the courage part in this. In other aspects, it's similar to Freud's injunction that the purpose of psychotherapy is to replace neurotic despair with ordinary unhappiness. (Trust Freud to not be too cheerful.)

I don't think that psychological health - whatever the hell that even means - "requires" any particular path, and I'm suspicious of theoreticians who appear to be reducing monumentally complex concepts to tidy little slogans. But it's a nice slogan. It'd be good on a sampler.

Yeah, most of this chapter seems to deal with the intersections with Freud (Adler was a colleague, then they had a big falling out when Freud dismissed Adler as "just common sense"). The distinction mostly seems to be that Adler was much more optimistic about people's ability to change, and less focused on sex. (He also seemed to object to the whole "woman as inferior man" concept, but this particular text doesn't go into that too much.)

I worked on this when I went to counseling several years ago. I had been taught by my parents to strive for the ideal; nothing I ever did was quite good enough, because it could always have been at least a little better. In a way, of course, they were right--there usually is room for improvement, on just about anything. But years of that conditioning had left me feeling like a failure, because I wasn't the absolute best at everything I did. I still fight that insecurity, but I'm doing better with developing the courage to be imperfect--thanks for helping me to put it into words, occhiblu.

He was part of the original circle, later to have a huge falling out with Freud. I don't know a ton about him. His views on women were different from Freud's, although Freud's were not that women were inferior men. His views on homosexuality were markedly less progressive than Freud's. Adler seemed to see it as a real failure, or neurosis, to be cured, while Freud, though not entirely free from the prejudices of his time, saw it as a different object choice among myriad object choices.

All right, just that women felt inferior because they weren't men. :)

Then Freud took up bankrobbery under the name 'Pretty Boy Freud.' During holdups people would say, 'Sigmund, why are you doing this?' and he'd cock the hammer and say "Sometimes a gun is just a gun! Now empty the vault!"

"Tell me about your mother...fucking hands being up in the air and nobody moves and nobody gets hurt."

What? You mean I can't be a rockhard coral-like accretion of every mistake I've ever made and will be continually ruled by until I eventually drop out altogether and live under a bridge? You mean...there's hope, measured progress, a way out?

Dare I say it..a liveable, manageable, semi-healthy approach to hard times?

Bosh. Balderdash. Poppycock. I dinnae believe it.

I know that's the standard revisionist line on Freud, but I continue to think it's a mis-reading. I wrote my Master's Thesis on feminist and relational psychotherapies, and the striking thing about all of the critiques of Freud offered (ALL of them), was that they never cited Freud. Seriously, one or two citations across many, many books and articles arguing for how shitty and patriarchal Freud was. For the most parts the citations were to American-style Ego Psychology, a reading of Freud's thought that beggar's description in it's failure to come to terms with his ideas.

Although of course he carried many of the prejudices of his era, I actually think that Freud was radical about gender, introducing and expounding a middle path between essentialism and constructivism that both accounts for sex and recognizes the pervasively societal qualities of gender. This last part is crucial (and seems impossible to me to miss, but it is missed all the time) to understanding concepts like castration anxiety, which are as likely to affect men as women. This idea alone, that everyone is suceptible, more clearly explained by Lacan as everyone being castrated, makes it much harder to argue that Freud had it in for women.

I think a fair reading of Freud is one which admits to his limitations and the limitations of his class and history, without fastening on the stupidly predictable things he said as evidence about his theoretical ideas. It's one which engages his work without accepting the received notion of what he said. Juliet Mitchell reads him positively (on balance) in Psychoanalysis and Feminism; Sarah Kofman does in The Enigma of Woman; Shoshana Felman does in What do women want?. None of those extremely intelligent feminists is known for being half-hearted in the cause of women's equality. To be sure, all of those books contain their criticisms, but on balance think Freud's thought is important for what it has to say about women and men ans psyches.

Three essays on sexuality and Instincts and their viscissitudes are two of the most radical re-appraisals of the kind of pat biologism that Freud is supposed to have favored to be written in the 20th century, and that includes anything produced by second or third wave feminism. I don't mean to suggest that Freud the man was there before those pesky feminist women, but taking the work of 1950s American ego psychologists who called themselves Freudians as a representation of Freud's thought does Freud a severe injustice.

You mean...there's hope, measured progress, a way out?

Yes. I call it alcohol.

I think part of it is just that, after a while, I get sick of forgiving people the prejudices of their era. Yes, doing so is required for a fair reading, but after a point it just seems like too many people saying "It doesn't matter that he's saying many horrible things about you, because everyone was saying those things! He wasn't nearly as bad as other people!"

I know it seems unfair to single out individual works, because one isn't necessarily any worse than another, but when do we start calling people on that shit, you know? When do I, as a woman, get to say, "I'm not reading this crap, I find it offensive, I don't care what the tenor of the times was, I don't want to be told that I'm an inferior human being"?

Not expecting an answer... it's just... I think, for me at least, there's just an accumulated sense of frustration that comes from continually being told to ignore misogyny, or being told the misogyny is not as bad as it could be so that somehow makes it OK, or something, and I'm just hitting a point where it's not OK.

(The above is meant to say: if Freud were the only person about whom I was told to ignore the misogyny, it'd be one thing. It's just that it's a constant refrain from people describing pretty much every piece of fiction, philosophy, and pyschiatry out there, so that's what gets old.)

and I'm just hitting a point where it's not OK.

That's understandable, but there's really not all that much you can do about a dead guy(s), especially when he's pretty inextricably entwined with your chosen profession.

Somebody once said that you have to embrace your vices, because they, along with your virtues are what make you you. or something like that.

This seems to leave no room for changing one's virtues and vices though. I've still got a bunch but thank heaven they're not the same ones I had once upon a time. I would gladly and without remorse kill the me of 12 or so years ago. Utter bastard.

I guess I sorta did, come to think of it.

Also, as a sort of counterpoint to occhublu's quote:

"Life is a problem and human beings are very localized problem solvers. The better you are at solving problems, the bigger the problems you get to solve."

Fuller

The better you are at solving problems, the bigger the problems you get to solve.

When I was in early high school, I had a small group leader once tell the group of us (4 girls, maybe) that you should NEVER ask God for patience, because the trials he would throw your way would make you want to go crazy. I think she said later that she was wrong to say that. Or the whole thing could be a figment of my imagination.

In a vaguely related note, the art teacher version of Adler's concept as first posted is "It's the process, not the product" which I have always found wildly helpful for everything from fingerpainting to my romantic life. It makes a good little mantra.

occhiblu-Well, of course, you can decide that any time it's enough or too much and stop forgiving people the prejudices of their time. My personal position is, by virtue of being a white middle-class man, obviously constrained by my own personal prejudices.

But, to be clear about what I'm saying about Freud: I think he's one of the least misogynistic major male thinkers of the 20th century. My point is that his personal prejudices are distinctly at odds with his theoretical writings, which are radical on the nature of gender. It isn't that I think Freud should be forgiven about his stupidities because the rest of his (non-gender related) thought is worth paying attention to, it's that he should at least be read because his theories abotu gender provide a startingly egalitarian and radical way to think about psychological gender formation--something of particular moment to clinicians who want to engage in progressive practice.

And, further, the prescriptive normativism at work in the writings of feminist psychotherapists who dismiss Freud out of hand, without providing evidence of having read his work, is truly shocking. This is mostly because their position seems to be that women therapists can't be authoritarian with their patients because they're women, which anyone who has observed mothers and daughters together knows is poppy-cock, but which is largely authorized by wildly optimistic notions of women's interactions. It is, perhaps perversely, Freud's writings about gender, coupled with his thoughts about transference, which provides the truly egalitarian response those crappy theories.

Of course you're free to be fed up with anyone you like. I think, however, that Freud actually provides theories about gender and psychology more suited to your particular world-view (from what I know of it from reading your comments on the various Me- sites) than any other major psychological thinker that I know of.

occhiblu: the whole "woman as inferior man" concept
omiewise: Freud's views were not that women were inferior men.
occhiblu: yeah, but the whole "woman as inferior man" concept
omiewise: I happen to have studied this at length, here's what I mean ...
occhiblu: yeah, but I don't want to be told that I'm an inferior human being.
danostuporstar: *rolls eyes*

Yes, well, if you remove words from my writing, the nuance does change.

I yam what I yam.

Although it's been said better upthread: becoming less imperfect (rather than striving for perfection) seems doable. I'm workin' on it.
:^)

Yes, of course, I summarized the conversation based on my imperfect and prejudiced point of view. It just seems that omie went out of his way to contribute to this conversation and you are stubbornly dismissing it. You often make pleas for men to consider carefully what (you|women|anybodywhoisnotastraighwhitemale) are trying to say, but sometimes bluntly refuse to meet us halfway.

becoming less imperfect... seems doable

Yes, but it also sounds like work. I'd rather drink beer and look at porn.

dano, I was saying explicitly that my dismissal of Freud was neither fair nor open-minded, but based on an emotional reaction. I was not dismissing omie's arguments, and I think all of them are well-founded and I completely agree with what he's saying and probably would find the theorists he mentions fascinating, I just choose not to read Freud right now because there's just simply no way in hell I could approach it with an open mind.

Also, the analogy would be if omie were arguing that a male theorist had really great perspectives on male psychology, and I was saying that he didn't, or dismissing those arguments. Saying that Freud's perspective on women bugs me is not quite the same thing as refusing to meet someone halfway.

I actually think I did a bad job of presenting my argument the first time, and so had to re-present it. I, too, get mighty tired of the "Heidegger was a Nazi but also wrote great philosophy" line, as it seems to suggest that I'm a fool for caring about his Nazism (and I fucking hate Nazis, even more than Indiana Jones did). But, my point wasn't that Freud is a misogynist but otherwise interesting, it's that Freud's misogyny is of a prosaic nature, while his theory is radical and very useful for feminist practice. A very different point which I articulated poorly in my first extended response.

On preview: Fair enough.

Hmm, I missed that, occhi. You're definately living up to the concept, then.

Me, I apparently need to go work on my reading comprehension skills (among other things...like pre-associating ideas with with names, but I already knew I had that problem).

It's that Freud's misogyny is of a prosaic nature

Yeah, I believe that, I just think I'm so sensitized to that that it would still get in the way of much else for me.

I'm still proud of myself for not immediately jumping down the throat of a professor going on about evolutionary psych, and how it proves women talk more than men. I figure that's my baby-step Adlerian improvement for the semester. :)

Oh, don't even get me started on fucking evolutionary psych!

Spencer knew you'd say that.

Anyone who thinks women talk more than men needs to sit in on one of our board meetings here.

I stand with those who are seriously critical of EP. Your restraint is admirable, occhi.

Anyone who thinks women talk more than men needs to sit in on one of our board meetings here.

I stand with those who are seriously critical of EP. Your restraint is admirable, occhi.

Miko talks twice as much as...

/shutting up now

Anyone who thinks women talk more than men hasn't EVER been to our house. I rule the school with cool communicado.

It's the process, not the product

I love how short and sweet that is, mygothlaundry. I will try to remember that from now on because I tend to sweat the small stuff more often than not.

dano, I was saying explicitly that my dismissal of Freud was neither fair nor open-minded, but based on an emotional reaction . . . I just choose not to read Freud right now because there's just simply no way in hell I could approach it with an open mind.

You own your own shite!

(The above is meant to say: if Freud were the only person about whom I was told to ignore the misogyny, it'd be one thing. It's just that it's a constant refrain from people describing pretty much every piece of fiction, philosophy, and pyschiatry out there, so that's what gets old.)

Strictly speaking these people are right, but I've noticed that a lot of these people are also closet misogynists.