Inverted Attraction to Suffering

Normally when we have a problem in our relationships, we are accustomed to looking for the reasons outside. It's an intimacy issue, we think, and so we make a commitment to spend more quality time with our loved ones.

Or we think there's some problem because of money. Or stress. Or even toxic attitudes in our partners.

We are not so comfortable trying to see the situation as an internal factor - as something going on inside us. And so, we don't ever really get to the bottom of the thing.

Today on Healing Through Consciousness, we try to shed some light on our Inverted Attraction to Suffering.

And right away, I can feel the reaction to that program title. Our attraction to suffering! Wait a minute there! How could this be true?

And I understand that. But Norberto Keppe's advanced studies in psychopathology - more than 50 years of clinical experience in fact - have led to the inevitable conclusion that we must look within for the source - and resolution - of our problems. Especially our problems in relationships.

To state it clearly, we've gotten all messed up in our worldview. J.P. Sartre, the great French writer, helped point us in the wrong direction with his contention that Hell was the other people, suggesting that others caused our problems. And it seems that modern psychology took a page from that book in so constantly orienting us to look for the source of our difficulties in past problems caused by our parents or other influential role models.

I went through that myself. Embarking on a course of modern psychotherapy back along the way, I arrived at the same conclusions: my problems with ... whatever ... stemmed from those tense experiences with my parents.

Well, my parents, like yours, were not perfect human beings. But since coming to Brazil and undergoing my intense training in Norberto Keppe's Analytical Trilogy, I have come to see that any problems I might have in life have a whole lot more to do with my take on the world than any sort of perceived mal-treatment at the hands of my parents.

Now, this is not a program about issues with parents, but it is a program today about putting a caller in touch with what's going on inside her in her relationship difficulties. And I can't say enough about this aspect of Keppe's work. When we start to understand his advances in the areas of understanding envy, where he has expanded substantially on Melanie Klein's seminal work in this area, we will begin to see ourselves and our fellow human beings much more clearly and completely.

All of Keppe's work will be explored at our psycho-social forum, Healing the World Through Consciousness, May 13 - 15, 2010 here in São Paulo, Brazil. The website is up now ... www.stopforum.org. and Of course, I'm available by email anytime if you'd ever like to know more.

Today, a young and talented spoken word artist named Tijana Bass from Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia joins us to try to understand her toxic relationships. Here's Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco with our Healing Through Consciousness look at the Inverted Attraction to Suffering.

Click here to listen to this episode.