By Fr. Lou Guntzelman
The Community Press & the Community Recorder
January 9, 2008
http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080109/LIFE/801090314
WHO DOES NOT REMEMBER THE PAST IS DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.
It's almost laughable to see how often we do the same thing over and over but expect different results.
We're supposed to learn from our mistakes, yet we often make the same mistakes over and over without learning to change.
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| Father Lou Guntzelman |
Someone has suggested that a second marriage represents the triumph of hope over experience. In this regard it's quite reasonable to ask why second marriages fail much more often than firsts. If we remarry, aren't we supposed to be older, more grounded and perceptive, clearer on who we are and what we need?
Psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell wrote, "We all have a tendency to reproduce our miseries with extraordinary consistency. In love relations, we approach each new relationship as the antidote to the problems of the last one, and, with daunting regularity, each relationship turns out to be a new version of the old."
ONE OF THE CAUSES OF CHILD ABUSE.
There is a great public awareness of pedophilia today. Along with it comes the impression that a valid solution is just to punish the perpetrators severely enough and warn them to stop it - as if it were simply a matter of behavioral choice. How simplistic!
The cause of such heinous abuse lies within the earlier psychosexual development of the predator. As one psychologist puts it, "The perpetrator is fixated in an incestuous libido cycle in which he or she is seeking to reconnect with an earlier aspect of his or her history."
The person's body has grown, but their psychosexual development has not. This is not to excuse a pedophile or pretend that he or she is not responsible for their behavior. It is to shed some light on why some adults seek gratification with children, and find it formidable to become attracted to another person more inwardly developed. Hopefully the psychological field will make significant strides in dealing with people so affected.
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY THAT HAS ELEVATED COMPLAINT TO A PRIMARY FORM ON PUBLIC DISCOURSE.
It seems most of us have given up on thinking and emote instead. We are drowning in information and clever sound bytes but starved for knowledge and wisdom.
As the late Dr. Scott Peck claimed, "One of the major dilemmas we face both as individuals and as a society is simplistic thinking - or the failure to think at all. It isn't just a problem, it is the problem.
THE TRUTH ABOUT INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS IS THAT THEY CAN NEVER BE ANY BETTER THAN OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OURSELVES.
All relationships bear the symptoms of the state of our inner life. What we really are inside affects our choice of another person as well as the quality of the relationships we form with him or her.
When we are a person who is fearful of "knowing ourselves," we sprout various neoroses. We also tend to think that the problems and negative feelings that arise are always the fault of the other person. Rarely does such a person stop and ask themselves in the midst of problems, "How much of this problem am I responsible for?"
Father Lou Guntzelman is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Reach him at columns@communitypress.com or contact him directly at P.O. Box 428541, Cincinnati, OH 45242. Please include a mailing address or fax number if you wish for him to respond.
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