Friday, December 21, 2007

The Destructive Culture of Narcissism

What’s in it for me? Looking out for #1. Blow your own horn. If you want a job done right, do it yourself.

North American culture is full of sayings like these, and they reveal something pretty clearly about our philosophy of life, don’t they? One we are spreading all around the globe. Human beings really do look out only for themselves … and this is killing us.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, the Destructive Culture of Narcissism.

It’s a appropriate time of the year to do this program because it’s a time of the year when we are maybe (although it’s debatable whether we really do this or not) a little more open to thinking of something other than me, me, me. And it’s this opening we’d like to exploit today on our program.

As you must know if you’ve been listening to Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head at all, our association here in Brazil - the International Society of Analytical Trilogy - and our sister organization, the STOP the Destruction of the World Association, have a large objective: to make human beings more conscious of the problems in the human psyche which have never been adequately addressed and which lie at the root of our inverted society and feed all the destruction we are doing to our beautiful planet.

We offer Norberto Keppe’s TV programs in many languages to community TV stations all over the world, we have books and publications available, we give lectures and classes. And there are two other important things to tell you about:

1) We’re holding an International Congress on Keppe’s science of psych-socio-pathology in July of 2008. Write me for more information on that … rich@richjonesvoice.com

2) We’ll also be starting a new program very soon where you can learn more about our work and how it can help your life. We’ll be offering monthly newsletters and teleclasses and Q&A sessions so you can really begin to penetrate this world of the human psyche defined by Keppe. Again, just write me at rich@richjonesvoice.com and I’ll make sure you get the information about this. We’re pretty excited about it and are hoping many of you who are regular listeners to Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head will take advantage of it. After all, we need to build a community of more conscious people, and that means understanding ourselves and our difficulties more completely.

Which is what all of our work, and this radio program, are all about.

Today, narcissism. Dr. Claudia Pacheco joins me again to look at this volatile subject.

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Friday, December 14, 2007

Resonating with God

Questions. We ask a lot of them in our lifetimes. From, "Why is the sky blue?" to "I wonder if Mary Jane likes me," to "How am I going to pay the mortgage this month?" We dream away our days and lie awake at night with millions of questions in our minds. But in our increasingly materialistic world, we don't usually even broach the essential ones.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, Resonating with God.

The essential stuff of life. What is that? We can look around us and be confused, right? It's all so ... mundane. Jeans ads that take up the entire side of a building. Companies throwing credit cards at us. Newspapers full of stories we have difficulties putting into context. We're overwhelmed with the sheer pressure of living in our highly materialistic and competitive societies. So we don't ask very often - we're not encouraged to ask - the essential questions.

And then, suddenly, there's a crisis in the family or the community, with our health or livelihood, and it all comes flooding in. Who are we? Why are we here? What is it all about, Alfie? And those are sobering questions in those wee, small hours of the morning.

Many years ago, I was walking through Gastown in Vancouver - in those days a lot rougher than today. It was close to Christmas, and a street person - a woman - was begging not for money, but for hugs. It was a strong reminder to a young student that humanity has missed the boat completely. We're so far from the essential elements of life that we're not even considering them much anymore. We just default to surviving, to getting by from one day to the next, and blotting out the uncomfortableness of the nagging unhappiness we feel with booze or pills or sex or TV or the line score of the Mets and the Phillies.

This strikes deeply to the core of Norberto Keppe's work, which he has stated is to lead the human being back to the goodness for which we were created but have rejected out of our strong psycho-socio pathology. This school of study is well developed here in Brazil, and in fact, we are training professionals (psycho-socio therapists) to treat these inverted conditions in schools, churches, community organizations, etc. Our 19th International Congress of Analytical Trilogy, July 4 - 6, 2008 will address Keppe's science of psycho-socio pathology directly, and provide an excellent base for you if you'd like to learn to work with this essential level of human problems. Just write me for more information on that: rich@richjonesvoice.com

Today, Dr. Claudia Pacheco, vice-president of Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy, joins me to talk about God, and man, and healing ourselves.

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Friday, December 07, 2007

The Power of Problems

They can be small, or enormous. They can have innocuous, even insignificant beginnings, but if untreated, become major headaches. Optimists like to see them as opportunities in disguise as a way to change the negative definition. And still, we generally avoid them like the plague.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, The Power of Problems.

Well, problems we have. Loads of ‘em. From the serious social ones like the dangerous and psychotic behavior that passes for leadership from people like Bush in our world today, to the more close-to-home difficulties like how to get Uncle Bob to quit drinking, to the personal, like, “why do I find it so difficult to speak in public?”

The issues can be personal, but there is something universal in the treatment of them. And that is: we try to hide from our problems. This can be seemingly well intentioned like the usual advice to stop dwelling on our problems and think positively, as Ronald Reagan counseled as his way of overcoming the trauma of the Vietnam War. In this case, sort of a political sing along - Don’t Worry Be Happy. And just as superficial and even dangerous.

A friend of mine ignored the lump in her breast for over a year, and by the time she finally got around to treating it, it was too late.

When it comes to problems, by the time we get to, “Houston, we have a problem,” we’re usually only seeing the problem we’ve had for a long time.

We need to get to the source of the problem and what’s behind it, and that means … seeing it. This is what Dr. Norberto Keppe’s work is all about: helping us to diminish our censorship to seeing our problems - both personally and, perhaps even more importantly, socially - through his science of psychosociopathology.

We’ll be looking at many of humankind’s problems through the lens of Keppe’s science at our 19th International Congress of Analytical Trilogy from July 4 - 6, 2008 here in Brazil. Write me for more information at rich@richjonesvoice.com

Today, psychoanalyst and philosopher Leo Lima joins me to look at how we treat problems in Keppe’s Integral Psychoanalysis.

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