{"id":3193,"date":"2023-07-05T16:56:57","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T20:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/psychoanalyst-allen-wheelis-on-the-essence-of-freedom-and-the-two-elements-of-self-transcendence-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-07-05T16:56:57","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T20:56:57","slug":"psychoanalyst-allen-wheelis-on-the-essence-of-freedom-and-the-two-elements-of-self-transcendence-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/psychoanalyst-allen-wheelis-on-the-essence-of-freedom-and-the-two-elements-of-self-transcendence-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of Self-Transcendence \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAll that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change,\u201d Octavia Butler wrote<\/a> in her poetic insistence that \u201cGod is Change.\u201d And yet, dragged by the momentum of our lives, we ossify into identities and habit-loops, harder and harder to reconfigure, more and more haunted by the paradox of personal transformation<\/a>. If we are not careful enough, not courageous enough, we may cease believing that change is possible, thus relinquishing the deepest meaning of faith and of freedom; we may forget what Virginia Woolf well knew: that \u201ca self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

How to remember this redemptive truth and live it is what the psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis<\/strong> (October 23, 1915\u2013June 14, 2007) explores in his 1973 book How People Change<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 a field guide to navigating the landscape of the psyche when \u201cthe theories with which we have mapped the soul don\u2019t help.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wheelis captures the universal undertow of our aching longing for change:<\/p>\n

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Sometimes we suffer desperately, would do anything, try anything, but are lost, see no way. We cast about, distract ourselves, search, but find no connection between the misery we feel and the way we live. The pain comes from nowhere, gives no clue. We are bored, nothing has meaning; we become depressed. What to do? How to live? Something is wrong but we cannot imagine another way to live which would free us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n