My mother told me that I was a colicky baby. No mother (or father) could console a colicky baby when the baby is crying inconsolably. Because I was a colicky baby, I suspect that I have abandonment feelings from my early infancy repressed in my unconscious. As a result, when I experience certain kinds of helplessness in the present, there is always that risk that my experience in the present will tap into the repressed abandonment feelings and feelings of helplessness from my past in my unconscious. When the present does tap into the past in my unconscious, my sense of helplessness about the present is magnified several fold. Think of an inconsolable colicky baby crying and you'll get the picture.
As I've indicated, all of us need to struggle with our inner conflicts. Our feelings of helplessness (a.k.a. abandonment feelings) are scary, to say the least. In a word, they are overpowering.
Think of the rage of Achilles at Agamemnon in the ILIAD and you'll get the picture of just how overpowering such feelings can be. By the standards of the time, Agamemnon is outrageously out of line. The goddess Athena intervenes by grabbing Achilles' long hair from behind and jerking him back from his overpowering impulse to dispatch Agamemnon through violent action. Athena urges Achilles to give Agamemnon a good tongue-lashing instead. Achilles does just that. In this way non-violence wins out over violence.
If you ask me, Republicans in Congress deserve a good tongue-lashing for their efforts in favor of de-regulation, and so do Democrats in Congress for being such wimps and allowing Republicans to advance de-regulation.
The two Homeric epics, the ILIAD and the ODYSSEY, center on mastery and helplessness, and each one shows a way to open oneself to feeling the powerful feelings of helplessness as the way to integrate those very unpleasant feelings into one's emerging and expanding sense of mastery.
In the Homeric epics, feelings of helplessness are understandable threats, but threats that are dealt with through the strivings of the heroes, Achilles and Odysseus respectively, for what Horney terms self-realization (i.e., non-neurotic growth).
Of course Achilles and Odysseus receive a lot of help along the way Achilles from the goddess Athena and from his goddess mother, and Odysseus from the goddess Athena. Clearly the trick is to have a goddess or two on your side to help your strivings with such threats, preferably ones who can influence Zeus to help you.
Today psychoanalysts such as Horney try to play the role that the two goddesses play in the lives of Achilles and Odysseus. But I'm not sure if psychoanalysts today have much influence with Zeus. But I could be wrong. Maybe they do.
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