Back-of-the-Book Indexer
Multilevel disintegration is hierarchical and involves a set of higher and lower aims. It can last for a long time. Conflict and feelings of inferiority and guilt are directed toward oneself (we feel inferior to our own standards). We are active participants in the process, choosing to be self-aware.
The third in a series of Sunday posts about Kazimierz Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. This week’s topic: awakening to self-awareness.
Dabrowskian development is aspirational. We don’t simply wait for changes to happen; we participate in them and strive for something bigger and better, even to the point of overcoming biological and societal forces.
Dabrowskian development is one of learning not to be controlled by social and biological forces. A strong developmental instinct helps us instead to choose a life that is more in keeping with the person we want to be, rather than who we are or who we were, especially when who we should be is in conflict with more primitive instincts.
Yesterday my friend Sheri emailed a link to the Tumblr blog of John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which he describes as “a compendium of invented words” that “aims to fill a hole in the language—to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for.” One of the words …