Mainly about psychoanalysis and life, by John van den Berg

LOVE, AND BEING IN LOVE William James, the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, might have called it The Varieties of Being in Love, while Freud, who, like James, of course also wrote about faith, had a great deal to say about love, observing, for instance, that those who can't love are bound to fall ill. (1)   John Bowlby, in works such as Child Care and the Growth of Love, wrote how the absense of feeling loved is devastating for a young child. I have likewise personally on more than one occasion witnessed just how painful unrequited love can be, such as when one member of a couple who were hopelessly at war with each other tearfully said, "But I love you." In cases of murder one of the first persons who fall under suspicion quite often is a close family member, usually the husband or wife, and detectives do so not without reason. They know very well just how close feelings of love and hate can be to each other. In his famous Wolf-man case history,...

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING? That was the title of a once-popular book, but Freud knew better when he wrote about the vain belief in the "omnipotence of thought," such as in texts like Totem and Taboo (SE XIII), wherein he referred to the unrealistic belief of children and primitives that whatever they wishfully think and say will hopefully come true. The most ancient religion we know of was animism, in which the world was believed to be ruled by gods and spirits. Those spirits could be persuaded, or invoked, those primitive people believed, that by thought and (magic) words, their wishful thoughts would in fact be fulfilled. Children still tend to believe so, as well as people who pray. The ability to think developed, according to Freud, to enable us to visualise the likely outcome in our mind of an intended action or wish, before we physically proceed to carry it out or not. It is then but a small conscious step towards thinking that those thought will magically su...