From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: Recurring nightmares
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 02:04:12 GMT

In article <C0IGyL.1BG@twwells.com> anon-1534@twwells.com (Suzanna) writes:
>Nancy writes:
>
>   I don't think it's denying your own memories to change the outcome for
>   a dream....You can remember that the outcome went a certain way
>   in the real world, and still decide that at certain times you'll 
>   let your imagination generate other outcomes.I'm trying to get at
>   an idea that memory has two sides--it's a reflection of the real
>   world and it's also an event in a mind.
>
>That is a splendid idea, that memory has two sides. I think maybe a
>physical and a mental side to describe them? Or are you thinking of an
>objective/subjective differentiation? I'm sorry, those are the only
>two possibilities I can think of.

Yes--a subjective/objective distinction is what I had in mind.

>   You have a model of behavior that's based on "getting things
>   right". I'm going to propose a model that says that a lot of what
>   goes on between people has *nothing* to do with "right", but rather
>   with power relationships. For various reasons, people want to
>   control each other a lot of the time. This can be from fear or
>   anger or for material gain or because controlling people is a
>   rather creepy sort of fun.
>
>Oh. That doesn't sound very nice.

It isn't very nice. However, as far as I can tell, it's true.

I believe that "niceactually means pretending that you don't want
anything very much and letting other people have what they want. This
can sort of work when you're around other people who are also "nice",
though it can leave life a little drab since no one is clear about
what they want for fear of not being "nice".

The dangerous part is that it leaves you very vulnerable to anyone
who isn't "nice".

I believe that anyone who *tells* you to be nice is trying to get you
to give up what you want in favor of what they want--and trying to make
it look to you as though capitulating is the moral thing to do.

>   I believe that the people who raised you (excuse me--I can't remember if
>   you were raised by your parents) taught you to accept a submissive position
>   because it was convenient for them, not because it was good for _you_.
>
>I'm sorry, I should have been clearer with the information I've been
>sending. I was brought up by my parents.
>
>   This is a non-expert opinion, but I believe that you were severely and
>   unnecessarily frightened and bullied when you were growing up and that
>   good families treat their children with more respect. 
>
>Is that why children are noisy? They run around and yell and scream
>and do all sorts of things. I never did anything like that, I wasn't
>allowed, but I didn't think it would be bad not to. 

It's an interesting question how much children can be easy to be around
without having some adult overcontrol them. (I'm an ex-child, but not a
parent.) I suspect that that people need some exuberence or expansiveness
to enjoy life.

>   >You have been very nurturing to me, as have the people who have sent
>   >me email. I thank you. I am glad I found this newsgroup. I am too used
>   >to being lonely.
>
>   Thanks---I don't want you to be in such pain, but I worry that I'm writing
>   to you in a way that reinforces your efforts to be "right". (I realize that
>   trying to be "right" is a strategy you depend on a lot.)
>
>I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by "strategy you depend on a
>lot". I always try to be right, but most of the time I get things
>wrong and that's bad.

I think of trying to be right as a strategy--I think you depend on trying
to be right as a way of feeling more secure. My impression is that you
don't trust your own knowledge/instincts/desires/emotions/perceptions
to get you through life and you want to have an external standard for
everything you do so that you can be sure not to displease people.
My impression is that you're so caught up in "being right" that it
hasn't occurred to you that it's a mental structure and there are
other ways to live. 

I'm not sure that this is applicable to you, but I have a vivid memory
of the moment when I realized that every time I had any chance of living
up to my standards, I made the standards more difficult to achieve. I
was (and to a lesser extent, still am) playing a game with myself of
"Oh, what a failure I am". It's a distraction from actually being alive.

Before that moment, all I saw was that I kept failing. It was quite 
something when I realized that the standards weren't objective reality,
they were just something I was making up--and specifically making up
to guarentee perpetual failure.

Nancy