A Provocation?
From today's NY times:
“I feel that ‘healthy’ infantile omnipotence is the most important asset for dealing with life’s stresses and potential trauma,” Dr. Krystal wrote in a chapter he contributed to “Living With Terror, Working With Trauma: A Clinician’s Handbook,” edited by Danielle Knafo and published in 2004. “It is the emotional mainspring of extraordinary reserves. It provides a profound, unshakable conviction of one’s invulnerability.”
Henry Krystal, Holocaust Trauma Expert, Dies at 90
This is challenging to me, since I've generally felt that overcoming an infantile sense of omnipotence was good thing, developmentally (not to mention interpersonally). But I am hardly a model of mature and successful adjustment, so perhaps as usual I have had things exactly backwards.
I'm reminded a little of the film, "My Twentieth Century," where the different fates of the two twins seem to reflect random circumstances that either preserved or crushed this visceral sense of confidence. Does anyone -- who may still be reading this from time to time :) -- remember that movie? And the escaped lab dog who faces down a freight train out of pure dumb luck?
Hello to anyone who still has my journal popping up on their flist!
“I feel that ‘healthy’ infantile omnipotence is the most important asset for dealing with life’s stresses and potential trauma,” Dr. Krystal wrote in a chapter he contributed to “Living With Terror, Working With Trauma: A Clinician’s Handbook,” edited by Danielle Knafo and published in 2004. “It is the emotional mainspring of extraordinary reserves. It provides a profound, unshakable conviction of one’s invulnerability.”
Henry Krystal, Holocaust Trauma Expert, Dies at 90
This is challenging to me, since I've generally felt that overcoming an infantile sense of omnipotence was good thing, developmentally (not to mention interpersonally). But I am hardly a model of mature and successful adjustment, so perhaps as usual I have had things exactly backwards.
I'm reminded a little of the film, "My Twentieth Century," where the different fates of the two twins seem to reflect random circumstances that either preserved or crushed this visceral sense of confidence. Does anyone -- who may still be reading this from time to time :) -- remember that movie? And the escaped lab dog who faces down a freight train out of pure dumb luck?
Hello to anyone who still has my journal popping up on their flist!