What do *you* want?
Dec. 30th, 2003 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleCame across a passage I found worth noting... From Queen Maeve and Her Lovers, Sylvia Perera. Perera is a Jungian analyst, and the book is focused on Jungian approaches to addiction and recovery therapy - it's quite interesting so far.
In this passage, she has just talked about Cuchulain receiving three wishes from Scathach, as long as he could name them on the spot, in one breath.
"...the goddess of desirousness...does not seek repression of passionate hungers, but rewards the partner who can appropriately respond to her demands and transform raw need into desires specifically related to time, place and person .... To be able to name three wants suddenly on demand and in expectation of their fulfillment requires freely flowing, spontaneous access to passion, and a clear, articulated sense of entitlement. Such thrice-focused desire is remarkably difficult for modern rational consciousness, which is often too far removed from its repressed libidinous sources or in distorted relation to them through learned fear and addictive patterns. How far removed is easy to see. All we have to do at any moment is to ask ourselves the goddess [Scathach]'s question: what three things do I want most, now and here? Where there is a limp sense of entitlement, asking oneself and seeking to answer the question exercises a necessary psychological muscle."
Having the aforementioned limp sense of entitlement myself, this was of interest...
In this passage, she has just talked about Cuchulain receiving three wishes from Scathach, as long as he could name them on the spot, in one breath.
"...the goddess of desirousness...does not seek repression of passionate hungers, but rewards the partner who can appropriately respond to her demands and transform raw need into desires specifically related to time, place and person .... To be able to name three wants suddenly on demand and in expectation of their fulfillment requires freely flowing, spontaneous access to passion, and a clear, articulated sense of entitlement. Such thrice-focused desire is remarkably difficult for modern rational consciousness, which is often too far removed from its repressed libidinous sources or in distorted relation to them through learned fear and addictive patterns. How far removed is easy to see. All we have to do at any moment is to ask ourselves the goddess [Scathach]'s question: what three things do I want most, now and here? Where there is a limp sense of entitlement, asking oneself and seeking to answer the question exercises a necessary psychological muscle."
Having the aforementioned limp sense of entitlement myself, this was of interest...
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Bah - fevers suck.
Date: 2003-12-30 09:02 am (UTC)Since this is the discussion about Sylvia Perera and not the one about Robert Anton Wilson, let me revise my earlier pronouncement:
"entitlement" doesn't have to have the nasty connotations that the conservatives/libertarians have given it; it's unfortunate that it has been hijacked that way, but I don't think it's inherent in the word itself.