Adam Blatner

It may take a century or more before even a moderate number of people become moderately psychologically-minded. Freud set this back a few decades, I fear. But even if Freud didn’t give people excuses to hate the machinations of the mind as viewed through his distorted lens, people would still avoid looking at their own minds because it’s just too messy. I am hoping to make just a dent in this avoidance by offering a more user-friendly language based on a more neutral unit, the role. More about this is on my website.

Basically, I argue that we need language that’s not so shaming, a language of psychology and interpersonal relationships that’s more neutral. Most psychological language or sets of terms tend to imply that you’d be more “together” if you weren’t so “messed up.” That’s shaming! It tends to shut people down, turn them off. Instead, we need language of psychology that is more supportive, more encouraging that everyone can grow, refine, and focus their role playing. Everyone can expand or trim their repertoire. I keep doing it and I’m in my upper 70s.

What if it becomes a norm for psycho-social maturation to continue through to dying. Each lesson is a new phase, and vice versa. More, there’s no “right” way to learn, to do it, and there are no “exams”—because there’s no one who knows whether you’ve done it right. Even your guardian angels—let’s say you have some, as does everyone—don’t know. You played it as you could play it given what you knew.

Maybe there’s a little give, a little edge where you could reach, but who talks that way? We’re just emerging from bad and good, reward and punishment. This has been a dominant world-view, so the whole species is evolving towards integrating greater nuance into their evolving paradigms. It takes time. The angels know this. They try to prod you to think, but people can only go so fast and so far and then it’s overload. So they’re very, very understanding and forgiving.