fantasy of growth in therapy
the fantasy of growth that you find in therapy, and also in New Age thought, doesn’t include this awkwardness ... when we look at people going through that, we usually don’t say they’re growing, we usually consider them out of it ... during such a time one certainly doesn’t feel more powerful in the world ... it is a romantic, harmonious fantasy of an ever-expanding, ever-developing, ever-creating, ever-larger person—and ever integrating, getting it all together
if you don’t fulfil that fantasy you see yourself as failing ... an idealization that sets you up to fail ... you’re constantly comparing yourself to the fantasy of where you should be on some ideal growth scale.
the fantasy of growth, the fantasy of the everexpanding, ever-developing person—which is a very strong fantasy out there right now, especially among the educated, and among all those buyers of self-help books — doesn’t take changelessness into account at all ... fed by many sorts of therapies, can’t help but make people feel more like failures in the long run ... in turn, can’t help but increase the general feeling of powerlessness ... a pretty vicious circle.