"Fourth Semester Classroom Talk"

Re: Things, bodies, and sounds in our space have impact.
Posted by Douglas on June 10, 1999 at 20:40:26:

In Reply to: Things, bodies, and sounds in our space have impact. posted by John on June 03, 1999 at 20:25:39:

Hi Coach:

I laughed when I read this, how I laughed, so it took a long time to write a serious reply.

The realization of the non-substantiality of the self is at the base of what is probably the most radical and transforming experience in
“therapy”, the experience of the essential irony at the centre of some of the most agonizing personal predicaments one may get into.
The two levels that define this mode of irony are, firstly, the level of a full, suffering recognition of “the problem” and, secondly, that
what matters is only this recognition of the problematic and not the immateriality of the self that afflicts itself with the problem. The
problem has to be seen, but inextricably bound up with the seeing of the problem is the seeing through of the self. And so one laughs.
Certainly one can be painfully affected by another person, but in a sense this is straightforward enough, and in another sense, it is no
problem — at least one knows where one is.

I suppose while I am on the subject, through some ironic recognition, however, one can ask the question: “Who is the self afflicted by
the problematic and who is the self that afflicts itself in this manner?” and then one may ask a further question: “And what is the
difference between these two selves anyhow?”

My own question here is: “Are we even remotely in the same territory?”

Douglas