I never finished reading this book and I don’t think I even have my copy anymore. But I feel these quotes are worth sharing for further perusal.

On Absurdity: “… as Albert Camus observed, we humans are creatures who spend our lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd.” 

I gave up on trying to convince myself otherwise long ago. Notably I knew about Camus since high school, but it’s interesting that he was brought up here.

On Blind Spots: “The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting delusion that we, personally, do not have any.”

That much is true, but…

“Blind spots enhance our pride and activate our prejudices.” 

I feel like that’s quite a generalization that probably deserves further criticism.

On False Memories: “False memories allow us to forgive ourselves and justify our mistakes, but sometimes at a high price: an inability to take responsibility of our lives.” 

This much I can see.

On Memory: “Confabulation, distortion, and plain forgetting are the foot soldiers of memory…” 

I love that phrase: ‘foot soldiers of memory.’

Also, “… if we were perfectly rational beings, we would try to remember smart, sensible ideas and not bother taxing our minds by remembering foolish ones.” (From Mistakes Were Made)

On Psychotherapy: “Making these decisions requires experience with the infinite assortment of quirks and passions of the human psyche, that heart of darkness and love.”

That’s a beautiful sentence, in any case.

On Skepsis: Even if most therapists are effective (and objectively many are) theres a definite problem with “skepsis” that is, “philosophical doubt as to the objective reality of phenomena.” 

Just because life is absurd doesn’t mean that there isn’t any reasonable logic to it. The fact that therapists and social workers take so many patient stories at face value is appalling and dangerous; a lot of the “repressed memories” are likely suddenly remembered dreamstates, which certainly have meaning but aren’t what they seem.

On Watchdogs: “The watchdogs are being trained by the foxes they were trained to catch.” 

Kind of crazy to think about.

That’s all for now.