recover your appetite, and appetites

from adam phillips’ interview in the paris review:

PHILLIPS

Analysis should do two things that are linked together. It should be about the recovery of appetite, and the need not to know yourself. And these two things—

INTERVIEWER

The need not to know yourself?

PHILLIPS

The need not to know yourself. Symptoms are forms of self-knowledge. When you think, I’m agoraphobic, I’m a shy person, whatever it may be, these are forms of self-knowledge. What psychoanalysis, at its best, does is cure you of your self-knowledge. And of your wish to know yourself in that coherent, narrative way. You can only recover your appetite, and appetites, if you can allow yourself to be unknown to yourself. Because the point of knowing oneself is to contain one’s anxieties about appetite. It’s only worth knowing about the things that make one’s life worth living, and whether there are in fact things that make it worth living.

a whole bunch more bullshit

more about rich people

“Intern, get me a photo showing women, kleenex and beige tones, on the double”

BUT FROM THE ARTICLE:

Wealth gives people the “freedom to focus on the self,” he said. In a series of 12 studies, researchers found wealthy people don’t read emotions well, hoard resources and are less generous than they could be. In one study, for example, people were given the opportunity to share “money” with a partner, MSNBC reported. Participants from the lower classes gave more. In another, researchers observed wealthy people were more likely to appear distracted, check their cell phones, doodle or avoid eye contact during conversation than their less-well-off peers. … The rich tend to gloss over the way family connections, money and education contribute to their lives, resulting in less empathy, Keltner told MSNBC.

terrifying, possibly accurate

from the nytimes:

Why does power leave people seemingly coldhearted? Some, like the Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske, have suggested that powerful people don’t attend well to others around them because they don’t need them in order to access important resources; as powerful people, they already have plentiful access to those.

We suggest a different, albeit complementary, reason from cognitive neuroscience. On the basis of a study we recently published with the researcher Jeremy Hogeveen, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, we contend that when people experience power, their brains fundamentally change how sensitive they are to the actions of others.

found this in an old email

apologies for publicizing a mastercard commercial:

not old and yet

i just made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to look at my leg/back problems. somehow baby yoga and the thrice yearly massages have not alleviated the problem??? WHY

years of bad posture

+

20 years working a desk job

+

no desire to create ab muscles

=

THE CURRENT STATE OF ME

AGREED

talking about fitness = ultimate bore:

Amid the flurry of gossip surrounding the most hyped nuptials of our new century — the Kimye Wedding — I noted a disturbing parenthetical written by André Leon Tally regarding the rehearsal dinner:

(Conversation between Valentino, Kris, and Kim was all about Pilates. Valentino shared he does it every day with trainers in New York, London, and Paris, while Kris was questioning and seeking advice on where to put her new Pilates equipment at home. Kim discovered Pilates during her pregnancy with daughter North.)

The joke is on me for experiencing a wave of disappointment that Kim Kardashian was discussing athletic stretching routines on the eve of a monumental commitment. It was not the instance of small talk that rankled me, but rather the type: Why is it always fitness classes now?…At best it seems to invite competitive comparison, at worst it begs for a gold star. (The trendiness of certain fitness classes only adds a bougie factor.) Exercise is self-care. It has inherent rewards by virtue of its completion. It’s something for your health that you should be doing regularly. It’s like mentioning flossing as a suitable conversation starter.