21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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rationality. By setting up rationality and desire as alterities, indeed as separate functions and attributes, it becomes impossible … to speak of rational desires or desirable rationality. The self is radically fractured into a binary opposition of the rational and the irrational, familiar since Plato. But whereas passion and desire have traditionally been conceptually linked within the irrational (and with the female and the body) … desire also subtends the rational even while [passion and desire] are rationality’s other and its source of danger.’

Grace M. Jantzen — Becoming Divine (author’s emphasis).

In other words there is pleasure rooted and underling our attempts at rationality but rationality itself denies pleasure.

There are various ways then that mind and emotions get confused and with that our understanding of where pleasure might lie. Without resorting to therapy, how are we to uncover these matters and see and understand our reactions to people and events? How do we reach our genuine pleasure?

In The Art of Being, Erich Fromm suggests four ways in which we can help ourselves towards a deeper understanding of our own nature. Paraphrasing, these are:

1. Examining thoughts which occur when you are

trying to remain still.

2. If feeling angry or tired, try to dig down into what

might be the genuine cause of these feelings, rather than their superficial cause. [Jung spoke of the ‘shadow’. Sometimes we have a strong

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