“some people should not reproduce” exactly the same words a girlfriend of mine use to say last week.
But then I think, what else can you expect of people in their early twenties full of great expectations having babies.
I certainly will go to that movie.

who decides which people should not reproduce?

Oftentimes, it's the people claiming 'some people should not reproduce' who should not reproduce.

By the way, my girlfriend was talking hypothetical and (not so) ironical about ‘her and my’ parents. But then some people believe it were the babies who choose their parents, the toddlers are the guilty ones if they are beaten or worse. That is exactly what some parents say to their beaten children: ‘You made me do it. You have a free will and you choose not to obey and you knew the consequences’ Exactly the same phrases used in torture and interrogation centres like Guantanamo and worse.

Arnon

Thought you might be interested in this:

Burgemeester Kortrijk wil tanden lijken trekken voor crematie

Burgemeester De Clerck.De Kortrijkse burgemeester Stefaan De Clerck (CD&V) laat de mogelijkheid onderzoeken om de tanden te trekken van overledenen die zullen gecremeerd worden in het nog te bouwen crematorium in zijn stad. "Dit komt de volksgezondheid ten goede, want zo kunnen we de uitstoot van kwik bij het crematorium beperken", zegt De Clerck.

After the Environmentally friendly mud, there will also be environmentally friendly deaths in Kortrijk. The article reminds me of De Asielzoeker, the part where the crematory manageress askes Beck if there was something valuable among the teeth of his wife. I love that scene (and so did the audience in te play).

'[S]ome people' is a very careful statement. In fact i believe that the sentence should have been phrased like that: 'some people should bring children to the world'. Probably the most suitable ones are exactly those who are considerate enough not to cause more pain to innocent victims like their own babies and children.
Each of your novels (from those i have read) is dealng with pain that evolved exactly from a sick relation between parents and children. Although Alice Miller (The Drama of the Giftet Child etc,) and Arthur Janov literary skills are much fallen than yours (especially Janov's) they both offer a very sweeping explanation for how does pain form and how it may be possible to eradicate it (niet met een atoom bom).
At least i found it very interesting.

Some kids might be better off without their (real) parents, but do we really want everybody to be better off?

To Noa, i might have been not so clear in my former comment which was meant also to you; i think that those who refuse to bring children to the world out fear of causing them unnecessary harm (and any harm is unnecessary) are more likely to be the only good parents in this world because they are pained. In itself, this is not good enough but it is already much better than to be so repressed as not sense any pain at all ... but this is a long story
Dens, this is sort of a sense of humor, i hope.

@Neria Biala
Alice Miller has a great site, but maybe you already know that
http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php
Very interesting, I am familiar with a lot of her works.

@Neria, perhaps. But consider this - what of those people who point to others who shouldn't be having children, whereas they're own kids are screaming for attention (in all the various Alice Miller ways)? It's a very middleclass western thing isn't it, to consider having children yes/no and thinking the fact that you are in a position to consider means you'll be a good parent. Good parenting is a very private matter, you can't judge appearances, behind closed doors abuse comes in many forms.

Thanks Jan,
Yes, i am familar with her site. in fact i was surprized she was still alive a couple of years ago because i mailled her, believing i am mailing an assistant and i have got her very warm and concerned reply. The reason i thought she was dead was because i expect wise people not to live among us anymore. Anyway then i was troubled because she shows very clearly how we suffer and why, but not exactly how to get out of the misery. She mentioned though "Making Sense of Suffering" By Stettbacher, and of Arthur Janov's work. Janov for some reason is considered anachronistic but i think he uses Stettbacher steps, and to my own opinion he is very much relevant to in the struggle against pain.
I do not adore pain and i do not embrace it. i think bad therapists wants you to get used to live with pain because they don't have the tools to allow their patients to feel (nor they are capable of feeling too much pain themselves). But i feel like i'm taking too much space of this forum so i'll stop now :)

Coen

Very interesting, thank you!

Neria and others

My father was fond of Alice Miller. Maybe I should read her again. The manager, who hired me to work at the NUHA in Amsterdam, when I was nineteen, was fond of Miller too. I’m not familiar with Janov.
You have an assistant to do what, Neria?
And Noa the fact that the choice not to get children is a middle class western thing is not a very interesting remark. The same can be said about reading novels by the way.
No bourgeoisie, no art.
Besides I’m not sure that there does not exist another culture where people choose not to reproduce.
My comments on reproducing once more were really related to the movie “Gone Baby Gone” and the question that is raised in this movie: what’s best for a child, his real parents or being adopted?
I do think that some people should not reproduce, but at the same time I agree that even these people should have the freedom to choose otherwise.

An assistant to keep the business runing. Seriously, i tought of Alice Miller in terms of an Institute then, like Goethhe, Jung, Boswell. Think about the commercial possibilities having someone, to answer nowadays, on behalf of Gogol, for example.
Secondly ,i don't agree with you that art exists only so long there's someone who's willing to pay for it. i think that art in first place is a need: the artist's need to express his or her abilities (whether someone's consuming it or not). I think it is more a need in communication/love rather than money. Nevertheless, if love means fulfilling needs and considering the fact that all artists need to eat (apart from Kafka's Hunger Artist) then yes, the a relation between art and money might be inevitable, unless the artist can support herself otherwise.
As to whom should have the right to choose whethe to reproduce or not, i'm Chinese in this regard. i think that there sould be laws who will define who is capable of having children and who is not. Unfortunately, in our very sick world, the definitions of who is (emotionally) sick and who isn't are not well defined, nor anyone cares much about the quality of children's life (and women, and poor people etc).
I may sound provocative but that's not my point here. i think most of the people bring children to the world for all the wrong reasons. i prefer them to abuse substances in their fight against pain rahter than abusing living creatures (among them children which are very easily made).

Sorry, Noa

I missed your reply before. I never said that only people with material means are allowed to reproduce. Mental/ emotional factors are far more important (not that material means aren't). I don't think that workaholics should be parents, for example. But i'm shooting in the wrong direction. What i'm trying to say is that people may be ready to become parents only if they are feeling human beings. It will make them more sensitive to fulfill the needs of their child. If they are constantly having to avoid feeling pain, or getting to the source of it, they are blocking they're own feelings and it makes them deaf to the needs of their child to express her feeling (the results of these blockage s are numerous).

Neria

If we follow your line of reasoning there would be no difference anymore between therapy and art. The mentally ill patient on the corner of the street would be an artist as well.
Art is never limited to the needs of the artist.
Who is interested in the needs of the artist?
I’m not only speaking about money, but also about appreciation.
For whom do you write, paint, compose?
Kafka sold not that many copies during his life, but what does this prove exactly?
Stendhal sold two hundred copies during his life.
Anyhow aristocracy and bourgeoisie have been the big supporters of art.
Your ideas that there should be laws so the state can decide who can have children and who cannot are as convincing as your ideas about art.
But please keep commenting. A new voice is always welcome, or maybe an old voice in a new disguise.

To tell you the truth, i think that in an utopic world there will be much less art going around. I can't test it though. It would be interesting to find out, in small scale, whether Janov patients, who previously to the therapy were artists , are now driven less to fulfill their needs symbolically. I left the academy two years ago exactly because at some point i felt that i read the writers and poets' early traumas again and again in their works. i had very tiring disputes with co-students and teachers. Everyone felt safe sticking to aestethics and were blind to a woven unconscious message that goes throughout the works, messages that intrigue me far more than this and that structure.
I am not denying me pleasure of art, aside from it being a tool that serves the consumer (and the artist) psychological material. However, no matter what form it takes, art for me is almost equivalent for dreams. Do not worry, i admire your genius, and admire Dostojevski's (and very rarely when i have the chance, then mine), nevertheless ,i take freedom to specultate what may be the feelings that weren't felt in the artist's past, that erupt now, covered sometimes brilliantly in other siguise. The idea about dreams serving the same purpose is not mine, it must be Mrs. Miller's or Janov's (and were i so illiterate in psychology i might have add more names now), i mean that if for some reason one is incapable of feeling then at least, some portion of the unfelt feeling is expressed in dreams, often as in art (and when the kind of feeling is forbidden from being expressed) in some fantastic forms. The next stage is psychosis.
In fact, although i truly derive some pure pleasure from works of art , i am aware of the fact that an artist may be a prey to her own genius, if not lost for life then to a great deal of them expressing again and again some unconscious scenes from the back of her mind, to everyones safe amusement, and then i wonder how will her art look if those entanglements were solved.
i think there might be changes in the polificacy of works of art (or clients' cases if you are an attorney, or the number of surgeries you will agree to perform if you're a surgeon...) once you will feel the need to be acknowledged by your own depressed mother of your childhood, not just recalling her verbally, but going through the whole experience as you are actually there. i used 'you' but i didn't mean you personally (although it might be true to you too ;))
Also, i think that people in general are consuming art excessively because it helps them to vent their pressure. Again, venting feelings, even symbolically (abreaction) through art is an idea i like much more than abreacting on baybies and kids. i don't think it makes much difference whether they are yours or adopted.
Lastly, i'm absolutely new to this blog. Till yesterday i couldn't even roll down the page cause i couldn't see the right roller, until a dear friend told me how to change the resolution and now i'm developing headaches because everything is so ellegant and petite and i can hardly see the letters! ;)))

Neria

I appreciate your long explanation.
It is very well possible that in a perfect there would be less need for what we call “art.”
Maybe successful psychoanalysis would seduce artists to be less repetitive or to go into other directions – it’s also possible that this would cause the artists to stop working.
I respect your ideas but I do think that the dream is not a work of art and vice versa. The decisions you make as an author are partly unconscious, partly, other decisions are very conscious, and can be explained.
And are you saying that the next stage after being an artist is being a psychopath? I’m afraid you have romantic ideas about artists, many artists keep producing art because they need the money, or the attention, or both. They are not fighting against demons, they are just showing up at work on a daily basis.
A dream, to go back to the dream, is something you don’t control. And often don’t remember.
What exactly is your profession? And where do you live?

i don't have romatic ideas about artists. i think you came to this conclusion because i wrote that the next stage is a psychosis. Now, what i meant by the art-dream comparisson was this: to the extent where art serves as an outlet to unfelt feelings i think that dreams, career (of any kind), drugs, alcohol, even so called love, protect men from losing their minds. Without outlets, and without the knowledge of how to feel, some strong surge of feelings due to let's say trauma, or pressure in the present , may overwhelm men to the point of psychosis (or heartattack, or stroke). Again, this is not my idea, but it sounds convincing enough that psychosis may start at the point where to much pain cannot be integrated. So dreams help us to delay the break by processing forbidden feelings (you want to shout at your boss and you can't so you dream instead of killing a monster [or of it killing you ;))]) . I'm not saying that art is doing only this: helping us to process forbidden feelings, but it does too. And it does delay or help us to repress feelings so long we succeed, so long we are drowning ourselves in words instead of testing our ability of staying with ourselves alone. A feeling person will not fear of not being productive and alone because feeling aren't a threat to him.
All i do is just serving you Janov in hardly even my own words. I don't think it is easy to like him simply because he writes so simple. I apologize to all the American readers now if my remark is going to sound snobbish, but Janov writes in American, if you get my point. Nevertheless, his bottom line is not something to be ignored of, even if his style is not exactly sophisticated. I can understand why people might not like him but his The Primal Revolution is worth reading after a serious Alice Miller preparation. She , by the way, is a born writer (which makes it very easy to follow her).
A week ago i described myself as a Professional Nietsnut in LinkedIn as i am now an unemployed. I have no profession though i spent years and years studying, literature mostly. Actually, since i have so much free time now i tried making a translation sample for Tirza (to Xargol) and then a Dutch friend told me about your blog. i never thought to make any comment but children and animals are my weakness.
I live in Jerusalem. Israel. And everyday i see kids that were brought to the world because rabbis forbid the use of contraceptives. But these of course are not the only kids who suffer (Noa, i know many kids of wealthy, educated people who suffer too. Wealth is not the point).
Have i covered everything?
How do you have both time to work and daily taking care of this blog?

@Neriaa, but my point is this: show me the first human being who is free of pain and I'll consider your reasoning that some people should not be allowed to have children. Obviously, I've seen and met people and wondered whether this was right. Still, I feel denying our fellow humans - of whatever class by the way - the biological right of reproducqtion is quite a dangerous proposition. Who gets to decide and what would be the criteria. Neria, you say people should only have children if they feel like 'human beings'. Still, that doesnt give me anything. I mean, what are the criteria that define you are a human being?
@Arnon, I only suggested the "middleclass western thing" because I was making a different point, namely that having the time/money/space to sit around thinking 'to be or not to be' doesn't make someone a better person. And I'm fully aware I am one of those people sitting around. But apparenlt my argument wasn't as uninteresting as you said it was as it led you to discuss bourgeoisie and art.
On a final note, it's good to meet you Neria. You look a little like Ilanit. I guess the word that connects you two is: authenticity. Is this something that connects all Israeli? If so, I want to live there.

This discussion reminds me a bit of the book 'Torture the artist' by Joey Goebel in which a mediaconcern choses a child to be raised as a true artist. The logic of this firm being: impose Great Suffering on the boy et voilà, he will make great Art.

Dear Noa,

You surely have an Israeli name! :)) (a biblical and feminist in fact) but i can assure you with my Israeli nerve that you don't want to live here!!!!;)))))

I guess my criteria will be low cortisol levels in ones' saliva, some certain length waves in the brain and body temperture. Honestly. These are supposedly scientific measures that Janov and supposedly objective researchers claim can indicate the lack or presence of normality in people. i think there's one Hawaian tribe, and one Eskimo tribe were according to the way they raise children it is possible to find some free of pain people there.
Life are not without pain. But that is not the problem. Once you feel the pain it leaves the system and you can continue to feel other stuff too. I wish i could promiss you from first hand that after Primal Therapy you will be free of past pain and the pain of the present will not be so hard to bear, cause usually what happens is that a pain in the present brings to life all the repressed pain (past unfelt feeling) and in the process of Primal Therapy you get the chance to unload these extra pains from your system. Well, they say it works. I'm sure Alice Miller and her trusted colleagues also help their patient to heal and learn how to feel .

i can only be a witness to the cruelty of raising children without being ready for this task.

And yes, i believe that there are few, very lucky people who relatively live in true peace with themselves and can feel pain, and that this pain does not overwhelm them, and i wish i had them as parents.

@Neria, I share your wish - although recently I have come to a more nuanced opinion about my youth, I share your interest in Miller, I share countless sessions of therapy (both freudian and spiritual). But what makes you think you are not ready for the task of motherhood? Is anyone ever ready, really? Maybe motherhood will release you of a certain pattern you find yourself stuck in. If anything, it gives you a chance to prove you are not only a result of your upbringing.

i will not explore things about myself on the back of my kids. To me kids are not a laboratorium. i still think that if the moment will come in time, i'll know i'm ready. i can gamble on any other thing but not on people's lives. i think that before feeling very rooted in life and without a hint of depression i will not bring children to the world, to do otherwise is the contrary of love.

Noa

I actually think you would love Israel.

@Neria
I do not think an artist will ever stop producing because his ‘problems’ were resolved – although it is a common belief even among artists - , simply because I do not belief that existing ‘problems’ can be dissolved. You can only learn to live with them decently, that is all therapy can provide, I think, from my own experiences. I do not want to discourage you but if you are scarred beyond a certain limit and at a very early age, it is a fundamental change for life: the inability for close relations, inability to cope with violence, nightmares, etcetera. (that is one reason why I do not want to reproduce) But all that is no reason not to try to improve yourself with therapy for example.
I wish you the best.

Thanks Thys,

Not all therapies are so limited in their power to heal. i hope you will not give in to sombody else's idea on that. If your therapist is trying to convince you to accept and to live along with your pain - change your therapist! ;))

Good luck :)

-Neria

@Neria
Thank you too, you are welcome.
In the meantime it is always nice to play, here, in the garden of Arnon.
Thank you too, Arnon.

To Thys,

Plus, i dont think that an artist needs to suffer in order to ceate. Creativity and technique will always be there, whether the artist is paind or not. This is what i was trying to tell Arnon too - i don't have romantic ideas about art. i suggested that pain-free-artist will produse different kind of art, not necessarily fallen, the same way a wounded athlete performs differntly than a non-wounded one.

Yes, i agree with you and i join the thanks to Arnon. It feels indeed like a very enjoyable party (and this comes from the mouth of a very unsocial person like me :))

@Nerra, I'm not saying you should explore things about yourself over the back of your kids, I'm saying you should not be so hard on yourself. To make a long story short: nobody's perfect. No parents are, no kids are. Love and safety are the two key words here. Depression or not, if you're capable of providing those two basic things, you'd be a fine parent.

Whales

Dear Noa,

Depression severely damages the ability to provide love and safety. i am not hard on myself, i'm realistic. i think it's better to be "hard with myself" rather than letting somebody suffer the consequences of my inabilty to provide tools and atmosphere for her to cope with the the inevitable pains of life. i consider myself one of those dolphins or whales, who for (seemingly) no apparent reason, are dying on shores. Not to bring children to the world is also a statement of 'i'm not playing your game'. i don't know if my action is alarming to the point of chabging anything for the better (although i conseder the loss of my genes a huge tragedy for the world ;)) but at least i comfort myself with the knowledge i'm not adding more pain to what there is now.

:)

@Neria, perhaps you could try Thought Field Therapy and/or EMDR. As this is becoming very personal and therefore vulnerable, you can email me for more specifics if you like, but google the two and see what you think. noa.fenenga@gmail.com

@Ilanit, next time you go back to Israel, could I accompany you?

Windows

Thanks Noa,

i will google them.

As to personal and vunerable i'll tell you something about the windows in Holland and in Israel. If you'll put the light factor aside for a minute (because you get too much of it during the summer in Holland), the windows in Israel are very small in comparison with the Dutch ones. I think it has to do with the gereformeerden (Reforemed/Presbyterian/Calvinistic) spirit that whitens even the Ghana cleaning ladies, if they want to become Dutch. Think about a decent American Cosby. Dutch windows are open to the public so that everyone can monitor your decency. If you're into American literature you can read Jonathan Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to learn why in this thinking one should hide his depression or vulnerability from the eyes of the public. It places a threat to the whole community.
Anyway, maybe i'm taking it too far for this forum. Laura Fraser made a wonderful definition in her book 'Losing it' when she talked about the transition from an outer corset to an inner one (discussing body fat acctually). But i meant to say that when you live with supposedly large open windows, you might find yourself developing an inner corset.
Maybe Israelis with their tiny windows' mentality are like elephants in a china shop and i'm used to getting these alarm ques all around me when my openness is way out of decorum. Arnon's Hofmeester did his best not to be a burden to anyone.
Yeah, maybe i shoud consider adopting a little of Hofmeester's attitude (but honestly, only because my conduct only makes people wriggle and then it's pointless).
ok, i'll keep on silence for a while :)

@Neria
Indeed, sometimes a comment too personal can make one wiggle. Your ‘Whales’ comment made me feel slightly uneasy, simply because your words came so close to my thoughts, as if you read my mind.
I hope to see more of you on this blog. Have a nice day.

Thanks Jan :)

Neria

Thank you for summarizing Janov in your own words. Now I understand better why you compared art to dreams.
But following this comparison there would be no real difference between the soap “The Beast and The Beauty” (that’s a soap isn’t it?) and Crime and Punishment. Or do you disagree?
For somebody who studied literature your on take on art seems to me very therapeutical.
This is not meant to be a judgment, just an observation.

Margot

I have to activate your comments manually. This is getting annoying.
Could you contact Sander, I believe you have a technical problem. Or you are just not following the procedures. In which case you might need to contact Sander as well. He will explain to you loud and clear why commentators on this site should follow the procedures.

Noa

I'm in Tel Aviv at the moment. Will be here 1-2 weeks. You can come!

@Neria, I wasn't telling you not to be personal (or vulnerable), it's just something I noticed. I suppose we could argue if one has nothing to hide, one has nothing to fear. Art/writing in itself is an act of vulnerability - this was discussed and accepted before on this blog (or am I remembering wrong Arnon). But it's up to the audience to decide what they want to read/see/hear and what not.

Arnon,

As i told you, i left the university exactly because of that. My interest in the psychological aspects of the texts were not so popular at the Hebrew U (funny, but in Utrecht i was given much more space [but i couldn't afford staying in Holland]).

i am not dismissing altogether the need for aesthetic (intellectual) stimulus. This is a need, and art indeed is a way to fulfill it. If i seek to fulfill this need i will not find it through watching soaps. Nevertheless this need is much less dramatic than babies and kids' needs. We may all feel dull not fulfilling our intellectual needs but it is not a matter of life and death for us. If one feels it is, i will suspect she uses art-consumption as means to help her repressing feelings around other needs.

i'm not sure i have answered your question.

Neria B

Psychosis does not start out of too much pain. It is not true that the more pain one keeps inside, the faster this person is heading for this 'situation'.

I strongly feel the need to telling you that i as an artist embrase loneliness and that to dream doesn't mean repression but to dream.

For the rest: during pregnancy i felt as rooted as one can be and in the time before conception i felt rooted in my relationship and my consciousness, in my dreams and in reality. I suffered from deep deep depression in the first year of my child's life.

Neria

Have you considered the possibility that dreams are meant to confuse people?

Neria

What is your relationship with Xargol exactly?

Dear Anna,
i accept the idea there's no such thing as post delivery depression. Depression was there before conception. Neurobiological studies show that during pregnancy , the mother's mind secretes anti-depressants hormones in high dossages (although i know at least about one of my friends that took SSRIs throughout her whole pregnancy and i'm afraid her baby had a period of hard time after birth, because, how crazy, her mother couldnt breastfeed her cause the SSRIs find there ways to the breasts (and not to the womb?!...). If i understood the mechanism of depression right, it evolves from repressing feelings. Let's say your mother was depressed after she gave birth to you, was lifeless and couldn't laugh, and couldn't hug you enough, or at all tune herself to your needs, and as a baby you are only a bundle of needs, then, at a certain point, when your crying doesn't bring to any change - you stop crying. In other words, you stop expressing your feelings. But this doesn't mean you stop having needs and that those needs are not met. To make a long story short (if it at all possibble) an unconscious memory of this unfelt/ unexpressed pain does noet simply leave your system, it is stored in your brain and body and is waiting to be resolved. Later on in life, in stress situations you may find yourself overreacting because the old lurking pain uses any opportunity to be discharged but since it is a symbolical discgharge (you're no longer a baby) all you get is a relief but the memory doesn't leave the system. It might be possible that without being coverred anymore by those natural anti-depressants secreted during ther pregnancy, the arrival of a new bundle of needs to your life only reminded some you of your own unmet bundle of needs, and that was too much. No one expects a baby to take care of a baby.
i do think that often dreams serve as healing inner apparat, like mental white blood cells. If you are relatively free of pain, your dreams will reflect your present and will be very simple. If you are loaded with pain they will try to tell you the story of your pain, symbolically, using all the images and information your mind collected during the years. i mean it is possible that the horror a baby feels in what resembles a cage, in a dark room, far from being carassed and comforted and being all alone without abilities and means to change his situation may come back in an adult dream that uses the ellements from Spiderman wrapping that old feeling, before one could focus his gaze on anything (not even Spiderman) but yet already could suffer.
When i write all thiis stuff i feel i'm making a disservice to everyone and every cause because i'm not being fluent enough.

Oscar Wilde, i'm smiling when writing to you. I love you! :) i think what they did to you back then was horrible (and i will stop myself now from delving into your pained childhood and why i think it has resulted in shaky relationships with women and confused relationships with men, and i am sealing my lips as how did your childhood found itself being told in numerous ways in your stories). You are a great story-teller and i thank you for enabling me getting in touch even with thing i tried to forget. Not everyone can do it.
All this, still doesn't change my conviction that dreams wrap repressed feelings, and let's be honest, we usually repress only pain (although at some families you must repress your happiness too...).

And Arnon, i gave Jonathan Nadav a translation sample and he forwarded it to Dan Daor. This is my first translation and i have many questions (not concerning the language). I'm not even sure the result is good enough. In the meantime i made a connection with Aminadav Dykman, who is a genius translator and i hope that in the case i have something to offer, he will agree to give me his bless. i need to be an apprentice. If any of the three above mentioned guys will be my mentor i might learn alot. If not, then i may focus myself on something else.

Artits, dreams, psychosis and children

I am a bit late with my reaction but I cannot follow this thread of comments any longer without commenting.
I have daily contact with an artist, almost weekly with a person that suffers from psychosises and I dream every night and I can tell you that allthough these three may have something in common, they are completely different. Okay, some artists may have gone mad if they didn't have their art but if you go mad, you go mad, art or not art, work or not work. There are different factors that can cause a psychosis.
To me interpreting texts and art in function of psychology (or the psychology of the artitst) only, is not very interesting.
If depressive people cannot have children, a big part of the western population should not have children. Does this mean depression cannot be cured?
I do agree that some children would be better of without their parents. But they should know their parents as they are part of their history. And hey, most people would be better of without their stressy job, does this mean their life would be better without this job?
I think adults have a big responsability for their on life. They can make choices. (Of course I don't speak about people living in a war zone or in other life threatening circumstances) The more I think about it, the more I like Arnon's quote of Brodsky. Okay, people have trauma's, people have suffered (or suffer), but once you're an adult you can choose.

It is a lovely idea to think we are choosing. If you are a repressed person your unconscious has the upper hand in many of your actions. You can only choose when you are free. There's no speaking of choosing anything if you are not free. A person who is activated by forces which he has no idea what shipe and size they have, when the only eappear coded (in sympthom, let's say) is a marionette.
We may have adults' bodies, and we breed beyond our capacity to take care of our children, but rarely we deserve to be called adults.

As to art, every person is entitled to take whatever he or she wants to take from it: an aesthetic gratification or simply to erase oneself in it (like in work, with alcohol,with drugs).

i don't see the relation between the very true observation that most peole should not become parrents and the question whether one can heal. i got the impression that one can heal (one, literally ;)) If your question was if a whole culture can heal then i will surprise you with my optimism and tell you that yes. Through legislation. Once it was ok to force your kids to work and no you can't. Once it was ok to beat your kids and now you can't. Let's hope that legislation will be fast and extensive enough before it will be too late. Our consumerism is a real threat to the world but we can't stop it cause we no longer know what are true needs are and how to fulfill them. You learn to know what your needs are if they are met at a crucial time of your life, namely your childhood. Once this knowledge will be taken seriously we might survive to enjoy the aesthetic aspects of art forever and ever.

:)

Lila

Maybe depressed people should join the army and travel to a war zone. They will be cured. (Or killed.)
I apologize to depressed readers who find this statement offensive.
I also apologize to members of armed forces who are offended by this statement.

Neria

Could you ask Xargol when they are going to publish The Asylum seeker – I believe the translation has been finished a long time ago already.
What’s going on there?
Now this is something that depresses me.
Between you and me, what do you think of Xargol?
What do you think of the Hebrew translation of The story of my baldness published by Babel of Bavel. A novel I wrote under the pseudonym Marek van der Jagt.
After you have answered these simple questions feel free to continue your discussion about psychosis, art and children.

Honestly i'm tired of the discussion over children art and psychiatry. To tell you the truth, i'm very sad to hear somebody else translated 'De asielzoeker'. I'm reading it now, and i wanted to translate this book too. Ok, i am still left with 'De joodse messias' ;))
I read 'De geschiedenis van mijn kaalheid' in Dutch but i promise to look for it tomorrow morning in Hebrew. It was published by Babel. I didn't like the Hebrew title but when i metioned it to Jonathan (anyway, he's from Xargol and not from Babel) he said something about editoial decisions (though i don't know how 'The Story of my Baldness' sells better). Anyway, i don't mind calling Xargol and find out what's going on with 'De asielzoeker' for you, i just want you to know that i don't work for them yet (they might find my translation insufficient...). It is interesting though to make this little spionage and read 'De geschidenis' in Hebrew. Nice task :)

Bavel.

Saying what i think over Xargol in this arena may be misinterpreted, especially since it is obvious that i want to work for them. All i can tell you is that Xargol got the reputation of a very good publication house. Some people confuse that with a picky repertoire, a very careful collection. But the fact is that i got the impression that they simply do a very good and serious job with the material they choose to publish. They work with the best of the best people in the industry (writers, poets, etc). In fact, were i one of the big publication houses in Isarel i would buy them. Maybe it has already been done, but i'm new to all that, and only very slowly i learn that i also have to pick up my head from my work and look around, and that i should know better how everything is organized. Bottom line - een uitgeverij 'op stand'. When we discuss quality of work , i know i should trust them with my eyes shut. Whether they know how to run a business or not, i cannot tell. i'm not in the business, i don't know how to run one, i'm absolutely green.

Oscar

Have you ever been confused by a dream?
Were you confused when you saw Laura the first time?

Neria

I'm glad you like Xargol.
I like Bavel as wel. By the way. They have a nice list of authors: Houellebecq among others and also Jelinek I believe.
Do you live alone or do you have a roommate?

Gee, that's too personal already.

Depression and the army

@Arnon, if the army were to cure depression, then why do so many soldiers suffer from it in the aftermath? Fighting against something in your opinion most likely gives purpose and a sense of family, but first of all it's temporary (war always is) and it's a bubble (war always is).

neria

I doubt psychological diseases in general. They are very contextrelated phenomena. I did not state that i suffered from pps but thank you anyway for your long answer.
I wanted to say that one cannot wait with having children untill one became painfree. Life doesn't stop after the conclusion of being painfree. Do you know which white rabbit will occur to tomorrow?

Noa

Some soldiers miss the war zone.
And PTSD is not the same as a depression.
But in general: it's terrible not to be threatened.

To Neria

To make choices, you don't need to be free. Even prisoners make choices. Psychotic people make choices. Depressive people make choices even if deciding can be very difficult for them. Even you make choices. It's these choices that make people interesting or not. You can replace 'choices' by the word 'decisions'.

Lila

How exactly would you define freedom?

Lila

You always need to have a certain freedom to be able to make choices. Having a choice means to be able to choose between at least two (or more) different possibilities. But you are not able to make a choice, that means to choose between different possibilities, without a certain freedom.But sometimes you are forced by circumstances to make a choice you don´t prefer. And: the bigger your freedom the more possibilities you have when making a choice.
And being depressive (sometimes) means not being capable of making any choice.

And you can not replace the word choice by the word decision. What having/making a choice means I have mentioned above. Making a decision means to take one of the possibilities you have. First you may have a choice, then you make a decision and the choice is gone.

Arnon

I believe that I have once been mistaken for Laura by a dream.

Neria

Thank you for your kind words. But please be aware that the more you search for the meaning of dreams, the more they will confuse you.

Oscar

For once I fail to understand you.
Should I think of a dream as a being with a conscious mind?
Today I scribbled in my diary: Laura has become an obsession. If I cannot have Laura, I will seduce her mother. Or her grandmother.

Arnon

What I meant to say is that I once had a dream that I believe was intended for Laura.
Did I mention that Laura has two grandmothers?

Oscar

i didn't realize that this sidcussion went on. Anyway, it's a metasomething to be so close to a person as to dream his dreams. It actually bring tears to my eyes, and i am not cynical.
i've spent 13 years in a stupid Jungian therapy, and if you give indeed too much weight to symbols you get lost in this world indeed, and what it does is to enforce your repression mechanism in a new way (you get so absorbed in this activity, you simply get lost [like with Wim Wenders' machine in the 'Until the End of the World']) . However, when you somehow try to look for the feeling beneath the story of the dream, you've got the key. If you have the chance to feel it all the way, to feel horror for examle, and it goes all they way back to the terror a parent or a teacher inflicted on you, you also get the chance to feel a real basic need - to be taken care of kindly and with respect. Dreams are wonderful gift of nature, i think they are giving you a hand and show you maybe the worse truths, but exactly those you need to feel in order to be more free in your present (free of unnfelt past feeling with heavy presence in your life now).
i would do a wonderful intellectual job analysing Arnon's dreams in his work, but no matther how impressive my speculations may be, only Arnon (or the characters) may identify and feel the feelings behind Let's say, murdering your own kids in a dream. It is not enough to say that my parents were so incapable of loving me, i had to kill my needs to survive (reflected in a dream where i have drowned my puppies), the healing comes from feeling it , both the act of murder and being murdered and the longing for recognition and warmth etc.
It isn't simple but it is very powerful, and from my small experience, it is effective too.
Dreams are not the only key. Take sex for example: i suspect each time our admired writer senses tension, he automatically tries to shed it off, if not by actually doing it then by discussing it (the same thing is true to alcohol and fantasies, over Laura sometimes). If, instead of focusing on the sympthoms, our admired writer could have the chance to feel the exact feeling he's trying to avoid, he will be able to get it finally out of the system, and though i'm pretty sure Laura is charming, he might less and less need to run for her like a baby (i also think about a child's length when Beck is caressing the Vogel's benen. I think repressed feeling therefore started there...)
:)

Anna

This is tragic that we may not be ready to have children in time, it is especially tragic for women. However, i wonder if one's looking for one's child good when bringing her to the world knowing one's not ready for parenthood. The next question is whose good is it therefor. Unfortunately it is no good for the world to bring children to it in order to comfort the parents.

Lila - To outlaw babies' circumcision

Regarding legislation. You can't walk to a man on the street, remove his clothes and circumsize him, and chew a burekas (or beschuitjes met muisjes). We all agree that this is butal. However, with kids you babies you can do everything.

To Neria

I totally miss your point.

Lila,

i'm quoting your sentence: "If depressive people cannot have children, a big part of the western population should not have children. Does this mean depression cannot be cured?" which semantically doesn't make much sense to me, or maybe i'm having my own pesronal problem with understanding what i read. Anyway, i did try to shoot in the darkness, guessing (maybe wrongly) what was actually your question, and in my answer moved from the particular to the general, suggesting there may be a possible cure to depression through legislation. And then i gave two examples of what was legal in the past and no longer is, and now added the circumcision example as to what else should be done. Circumcision to many, and me among them, is symptomatic to cultures where babies and kids are considered as their parents property. Property is something that has no wills (might have, let's say it is a slave, but slave is not free and his will is not usually respected). Depression might develop right there, when an entity with needs (and later, wills) is shrunken to a state of an object (subject has will, object - not). If you prepare yourself ahead in time you make sure not to make an object from a subject.
i'm having a headache, so i'm afraid it indicates, i might again failled making my point clear. Sorry if that is the case.

Neria

Okay now I understand you were reacting to an older post of mine!

Oscar W

This happens to me often: having dreams that are meant for Laura.
Yes, I know Laura has two grandmothers. One of them is blind.

Neria

Thanks for your 467 words.
I apologize for bringing tears to your eyes, unless you enjoyed those tears.
Would you recommend Mr Wenders's movie?
You seem to believe that the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield it. This is an idea that I strongly sympathize with.

Dear Oscar

I. One of my favorite teachers at the Hebrew U, Ruth Kolani, made an observation on my writing and said i suffer of 'wordiness'. She is still right (and apart from that is a great loss of editor to the world).
II. i don't enjoy crying, i enjoy the fact that i let myself express feelings rather than choking them. Your report of dreaming a dream that was meant for Laura made me remember stuff.
III. No, i don't recommened this film. Apart from that very short fragment i mentioned in my former reply to you, the film is long and tiresome. But you have to remember that aesthetics is not my cop of tea and it is very probable that i missed something. i do recommend all Tom DiCillo films, on the other hand...;))
IV. Not at all, i don't think that if you are a pedophile and a murdered you should whatsoever yield to your temptetions. What i was trying to say is, that when you feel the urge, it may be secondary to a feeling you try to avoid. And then, if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity not to immediately liight a cigarette, for example, and instead look for the feeling you were trying to avoid, distructing it by this activity, you can slowly train yourself to feel.
:)

'cup'