acheron

Response:

Thanks for the comments. And yes, I know that many psychoanalysts admit the inherent problems with their field. Believe me, I wasn't claiming that I somehow had a hold of truth and "they" didn't. I was just talking for the sake of "hearing" myself talk.

As for your question regarding pain and attachment to the world -- of course the world brings pain! But the point, for me, isn't that we are supposed to maintain a balance. Rather, the world is everything -- there is nothing else. And since it is everything (as far as my ego is concerned) I better come to grips with it. Like Wallace Stevens once said, the world is lost to the poet; the great poems of heaven and hell have been written. But the poems of the earth remain to be written, and that is how the poet will regain the world.

Love the Hamlet lines. You may have noticed from my profile that Hamlet is one of my favorite works. Almost everything in it is quotable: "Oh, if this too, too solid flesh would but melt and turn into a dew . . ." Speaking of which, have you ever read Shel Silverstein's "Hamlet, As Spoken on the Street"?

Take care.

your mother was a appetizer.