dissonance of maximum amplitude

• Leon Festinger, who in 1957 invented the theory of cognitive dissonance, named this a dissonance of maximum amplitude. The mind creates stories to overcome its own contradictions. Anthropologists call this a myth, and we know from a wealth of work in anthropology that rituals are likely to provoke shivers down the spine.
• desperate attempts to touch the common ground? Every symptom is a compromise, as Freud saw. Symptoms attempt the right aim but accomplish it in the wrong way. The heights seek the depths; one way or another they want to come down, even if by suicide, by ruinous contracts and bankruptcy, by entangling emotional messes
• nothing seems to hold against the drop. All the networking that has interlaced our extension outward and downward into the world—family, friends, neighbors, lovers, little routines, and the results of years of work—seem to count for nothing.