أصلًا الجاحظ وأُسامة بن منقذ كل واحد منهم ألّف كتاب إسمه 'كتاب العصا' 😂

ما عدا عركات الطفولة بالعودة مال الماسحة والسيوف البلاستك

مِن كتاب العصا (جزء من البيان والتبيين)، للجاحظ

*bot*

It is indeed an important achievement for the child to gain the assurance that the adults have no means of knowing what he does, if they do not see him; that they cannot do more than guess at what he thinks to himself if he does not tell them; that actions that no one has seen and thoughts that he has ‘kept to himself’ are in no way accessible to others unless he himself ‘gives the show away’. The child who cannot keep a secret or who cannot tell a lie [...] has not established his full measure of autonomy and identity. No doubt in most circumstances good reasons can be found against telling lies, but the inability to do so is not one of the best reasons.

- The Divided Self

For the few upcoming days I'll be posting things mostly from a curious book I've been reading: 'The Divided Self' by R. D. Laing

It's about schizophrenia, hallucinations, and weird shit

The term schizoid refers to an individual the totality of whose experience is split in two main ways: in the first place, there is a [rift] in his relation with his world and, in the second, there is a disruption of his relation with himself. Such a person is not able to experience himself ‘together with’ others or ‘at home in’ the world, but, on the contrary, he experiences himself in despairing aloneness and isolation; moreover, he does not experience himself as a complete person but rather as ‘split’ in various ways, perhaps as a mind more or less tenuously linked to a body, as two or more selves, and so on.

- The Divided Self

Depersonalization is a technique that is universally used as a means of dealing with the other when he becomes too tiresome or disturbing. One no longer allows oneself to be responsive to his feelings and may be prepared to regard him and treat him as though he had no feelings.

Another patient behaved in the following way: he maintained himself in isolated detachment from the world for months, living alone in a single room, existing frugally on a few savings, day-dreaming. But in doing this, he began to feel he was dying inside; he was becoming more and more empty, and observed ‘a progressive impoverishment of my life mode’. A great deal of his pride and self-esteem was implicated in thus existing on his own, but as his state of depersonalization progressed he would emerge into social life for a brief foray in order to get a ‘dose’ of other people, but ‘not an overdose’. He was like an alcoholic who goes on sudden drinking orgies between dry spells, except that in his case his addiction, of which he was as frightened and ashamed as any repentant alcoholic or drug-addict, was to other people. Within a short while, he would come to feel that he was in danger of being caught up or trapped in the circle he had entered and he would withdraw again into his own isolation in a confusion of frightened hopelessness, suspicion, and shame.

المرضى اللي بالكتاب يبدون كلش غريبين بالبداية وقد تتوقع أنهم ما يشبهوك بأي طريقة، بس الكاتب يبذل جهد جبير حتى يحاول يوصّل صورة المريض نفسه عن الذات والعالَم ويخليهم مألوفين وقابلين للتعاطف وياهم.
And I think he did a good job. With a little imagination, of course. And a willingness to let go of your sanity, at least in your imagination.

فكرة الكتاب أصلًا هي أنْ يسولف عن إنفصام الشخصية والذهان psychosis والهلوسات مو مِن منظور علم النفس والأعصاب، بل مِن منظور المريض نفسه وشلون هالشخص يشوف العالَم والذات ويتفاعل وياهن. أُسلوبه بالكتاب يسميه existential phenomenology اللي هو مصطلح فلسفي بالأساس، معناه أنْ نحاول نفهم ظواهر الوجود مثلما يشوفها الإنسان و "أنْ نحط نفسنا بمكانه."