At the same time, in practice he was not easily overawed. He used two chief manoeuvres to preserve security. One was an outward compliance with the other. The second was an inner intellectual Medusa’s head he turned on the other, by depleting the other person of his personal aliveness, that is, by seeing him as a piece of machinery rather than as a human being.

- The Divided Self

إستَخدَم جيمس مناورتَين ليحافظ على شعورِه بالأمان. الأولى كانت إذعانًا وامتثالًا ظاهريًا للآخر. والثانية هي أنّه يحملُ—فكريًا—رأسَ ميدوسا¹ ليواجِه به الآخر ويجرّده من صفاته الفردية وحيويته فَيَصير الآخر—وهو إنسانٌ حي—في عَينَيه آلةً وجمادًا بلا روح.

¹ميدوسا هي كائنٌ أسطوري كلُّ مَن ينظر لعينيها يَصير حجرًا (يُجَرَّد من إنسانيته إلى جماد). بعدَ أنْ قطع البطل بيرسيوس رأسَها، إستخدمه سلاحًا ليحجّر أعداءَه.

تذكرت إقتباس ريك اند مورتي اللي يستخدموه الـ edgy teens:
What people calls "love" is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage.

Rick here is using the same "Medusa's head" as the schizophrenic patient. He's rationalizing away the human aspect out of love and creating the false sense of wisdom and the false conviction that he knows what he's talking about.

This is one of the problems with very intelligent people: they externalize their shortcomings and make them look like flaws in the design of the universe. In the world of TV, you can see it with Rick, House, and Chuck (from Better Call Saul). It's also evident in Crime and Punishment's protagonist, and Ivan from Brothers Karamazov.

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This man was married to a very lively and vivacious woman, highly spirited, with a forceful personality and a mind of her own. He maintained a paradoxical relationship with her in which, in one sense, he was entirely alone and isolated and, in another sense, he was almost a parasite. He dreamt, for instance, that he was a clam stuck to his wife’s body.
Just because he could dream thus, he had the more need to keep her at bay by contriving to see her as no more than a machine. He described her laughter, her anger, her sadness, with ‘clinical’ precision, even going so far as to refer to her as ‘it’, a practice that was rather chilling in its effect.

- The Divided Self

The more you learn, the more you can learn.
This is because human brains are not computers. They learn by association, not input. That is: finding a link between new informations and old ones.

The case of David:
His view of human nature in general, based on his own experience of himself, was that everyone was an actor.
His self was never directly revealed in and through his actions. It seemed to be the case that he had emerged from his infancy with his ‘own self’ on the one hand, and ‘what his mother wanted him to be’, his ‘personality’, on the other; he had started from there and made it his aim and ideal to make the split between his own self (which only he knew) and what other people could see of him, as complete as possible. He was further impelled to this course by the fact that despite himself he had always felt shy, self-conscious, and vulnerable. By always playing a part he found he could in some measure overcome his shyness, self-consciousness, and vulnerability. He found reassurance in the consideration that whatever he was doing he was not being himself.

In his mind, he was playing the part of someone else, but sometimes he played the part of himself (his own self): that is, he was not simply and spontaneously himself, but he played at being himself. His ideal was, never to give himself away to others. Consequently he practised the most tortuous equivocation towards others in the parts he played. Towards himself, however, his ideal was to be as utterly frank and honest as possible.
The whole organization of his being rested on the disjunction of his inner ‘self’ and his outer ‘personality’.

The outward appearance could not reveal the fact that his ‘personality’ was no true self-expression but was largely a series of impersonations. The part he regarded himself as having been playing most of his schooldays was that of a rather precocious schoolboy with a sharp wit, but somewhat cold. He said, however, that when he was fifteen he had realized that this part was becoming unpopular because ‘It had a nasty tongue’. Accordingly he decided to modify this part into a more likeable character, ‘with good results’.

As an actor, he wished always to be detached from the part he was playing. Thereby he felt himself to be master of the situation, in entire conscious control of his expressions and actions, calculating with precision their effects on others. To be spontaneous was merely stupid. It was simply putting oneself at other people’s mercy.

Referring back again to David, his actions seem from the beginning of his life to have been in almost total compliance and conformity with his parents’ actual wishes and expectations, i.e. he was a perfect model child who was never a trouble.

آخر بوست والعباس:

It is not uncommon for depersonalized patients, whether or not they are schizophrenic, to speak of having murdered their selves and also of having lost or been robbed of their selves.
Such statements are usually called delusions, but if they are delusions, they are delusions which contain existential truth. They are to be understood as statements that are literally true within the terms of reference of the individual who makes them.

The schizophrenic who says he has committed suicide, may be perfectly clear about the fact that he has not cut his throat open or thrown himself into a canal, and he may expect this to be equally clear to the person whom he is addressing, otherwise that person is regarded as a fool. In fact, he makes many statements of this order, which may be expressly intended as snares for those he regards as idiots and the whole herd of the uncomprehending. For such a patient it would probably be a complete non sequitur to attempt to kill his self, by cutting his throat, since his self and his throat may be felt to bear only a tenuous and remote relationship to each other, sufficiently remote for what happens to the one to have little bearing on the other. That is, his self is virtually unembodied. The self is probably conceived as immortal or made of nearly imperishable non-bodily substance. He may call it ‘life substance’ or his ‘soul’, or even have his own name for it, and feel that he can be robbed of it.

هاهية خلصت الكتاب...

يمكن واحد من أحلى الأشياء بألف ليلة وليلة هو أُسلوبهم بالوصف. مثلًا المقدمة الشهيرة ببداية كل ليلة لما أُخت شهرزاد الصغيرة (دنيازاد) تكول: "باللهِ عليكِ يا أُختاه، حدثينا حدوتةً مِن أحاديثِك الحِسان نَقطَع بها سَهر ليلتِنا،" فتجاوبها شهرزاد: "حُبًا وكرامةً."

أو لما وحدة من الشخصيات تروي قصتها فتكول: "جَرَى لي حَديثٌ لو كُتِبَ بالإبر على آماق البصر لكانَ عِبرةً لِمَن اعتبر"

أو "... وإذا بِشابٍّ نقيِّ الأثواب، بوَجهٍ أقمَرْ وطَرفٍ أحوَر وجَبينٍ أزهَر وخدٍّ أحمر وعِذارٍ أخضَر وشامةٍ كأنّها قُرصُ عَنبر"

أو "... وبَعد ساعةٍ أقبَلَ كأنّه البَدرُ إذا أبدَر أو الصُبحُ إذا أسفَر"

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بالمناسبة، النسخة اللي داقراها هي اللي حققها محسن مهدي.
أكو نسخ ثانية مشهورة أكثر (وهي غالبًا اللي رح تلكاها بالمكتبات أو pdf) بس ذني معدّلين على لغتهن—بشكل سيء—وحاذفين هواي أشياء عود تُعتَبَر "لاأخلاقية."

"بَلَغَني أنّه كان في قديم الزمان، بإقليم مصر سُلطانٌ، صاحبُ عدلٍ وأمان، وجودٍ وإحسان، يُحبّ الفقراء ويُجالِس العلماء، شُجاعٌ مُطاع. وكانَ له وزيرٌ عاقلٌ خبير، ذو عِلمٍ وتأثير، وحِسابٍ وتحرير، وهو شيخٌ كبير، وكانَ له ولَدان كأنّهما قَمَران، أو غزالان مليحان، كاملان في الحُسنِ والجمال، والبهاء والقدِّ والاعتدال. إسمُ الكبير شمسُ الدين محمد، والصغير نور الدين علي..."