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The patient as a child learned to adapt and shape himself or herself in synch with their emerging understanding of the those objects.
And while it's nice to know how I might act and project with a new boss, that's not going to help the closest I-Thou relationships in my life. It's like studying tennis as a way to learn basketball. Both are played on a court with a ball, both have points, but the similarities end there. I would be grateful if you could respond, either here or in a separate blog post. Your blog is always thought-provoking, and I'm glad it's here on PT.
Half air and half liquid Thank you, Toni, for directing me to your lovely piece. Does every dark cloud have a silver lining? Especially with someone important in your life who is a certain way that you don't like. Can genetics explain why some people are pessimists? Views Read Edit View history. Why do we see the glass half empty, when it is clearly empty?
It IS life changing to realize that you are treating your therapist as you have in the past. I just made a major breakthrough when I realized that instead of facing the fears that a traumatic childhood experience brought up in therapy and overwhelmed my life outside of therapy , I became infatuated with my therapist. I recognized that this was a habit of mine: I don't WANT to know too much about her , I would never have felt safe enough or confident in sharing my discovery and revealing the infatuation.
I think your questions are valid, but they can only be answered through experiencing transference yourself. I find transference to be an uncomfortable subject to discuss, but I'm already noticing great insights into things I'd like to work through in my personal life. I meant to say it IS life changing to realize you are treating your therapist like you have treated other people in your past.
Kunst, about the utility of all kinds of psychotherapy for the client, when done well.
"Is the glass half empty or half full?" is a common expression, a proverbial phrase , generally used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a. Shakespeare put it this way when he said "there is nothing good or bad, see your life as half full and live accordingly, wouldn't it be worth it?.
It is excellent to hear a Kleinian giving props, as the kids would say, to CBT or Rogersian approaches. Would that those in other paradigms gave the same nod to Kleinian analysis! One thing you wrote, though, did not make complete sense. You end up by saying that the experience of psychoanalysis "paves the way for deeper understanding and those aha! Yet you begin by saying strongly that there's no such thing as objective reality, and that everything goes through the filter of our biases and personality.
We ALL see life through the filters of our past experiences. We each have our own stories that help us make sense and relate to the world and the people in it. Ergo, our experiences are subjective.
We may have a habit of interpreting things that our neighbor does to us as being callous and rude based solely on experiences we had with previous neighbors. We're being TOTALLY subjective in our rationale if we were being objective, there would be no problem , but our interpretation is distorted. This is simply MY take on the subject. Your comments are always quite thoughtful and interesting. It's called "Turning Disappointment Around. I think you and your readers would find it helpful. Here's the the link:. Thank you, Toni, for directing me to your lovely piece.
It is both wise and touching. Thank you for your important contributions. I'm so glad that you liked the piece. Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me. Myself, I think a true optimist would see the glass always half empty. The half glass full belongs to somebody else. My rational for this is as follows:. No one really knows how big their glass is.
Despite how one consumes the elixir, when it is gone it is finished. The size of the glass is not a reflection of the quality of life. The taste of the liquid is. For the reason I conclude it is a Half Glass neither full nor empty, but always mine to drink. This also sits with the notion that I am not waiting on someone else to satisfy me. Can't the glass just be half a glass? Half air and half liquid Isn't there a place for pure logic? Forget the emotional, concentrate on the facts. You have a given amount of resources and a certain amount of outcomes.
There is half a glass, half air and half liquid. How are you going to use it? Back Find a Therapist. What Causes Stress Eating? Parenting Adolescents and the Choice-Consequence Connection. Has Gender Always Been Binary? How therapy helps us change perspective. Submitted by Mariah on March 17, - 2: It's a bit of a contradiction, don't you think?
Hi Mariah, I don't see a contradiction at all. But just because they're our subjective experiences doesn't mean that they can't be distorted. Working with a therapist can help us recognize this distortion transference. Hello from a fellow PT blogger who wrote on the same theme!
For example, a glass full of liquid feces that is half emptied will be perceived as slightly more positive than a glass that already was half empty. Have a look at the difference:. Note that when the manner in which the scenario came to be is taken into consideration, an even more nuanced image emerges:. It is fascinating how language can be used to describe exactly the same scenario in polar opposites—how we fool ourselves into believing they are different scenarios, or perhaps the way in which we relate to the scenario really does make it distinct. After all, an optimist will have a different way of relating than a pessimist, and is thus inclined to have different thoughts.
Furthermore, it is interesting how our word choice gives an indication of our optimistic or pessimistic nature—and even, how the language we utilize can influence the way in which we relate to the world. We are still talking of a water vs. What is the difference between half-empty and half-full?
Why are they not the same?
They are the same, but the aphorism points out an interesting psychological feature of human personality types. They are not necessarily extroverts, though I believe most of this type are.
Even when good things happen, they can imagine some negative situation occurring later. The are generally perceived as whingers, folk who seem to whine most of the time. For them life is often a tragedy. Most folk are a combination of both types, and are more balanced in their sumnation of events.
Early Western attempts to catagorise human types came up with the four humors:. See Wiki -Four humors: Four temperaments is a proto-psychological theory that suggests that there are four fundamental personality types, sanguine enthusiastic, active, and social , choleric short-tempered, fast, or irritable , melancholic analytical, wise, and quiet , and phlegmatic relaxed and peaceful. Most formulations include the possibility of mixtures of the types where individual share two or more temperaments.
How something occurs to you is at least as important as how things are. Because people often relate to how things occur as if that is how they are. This makes you a victim of the circumstance. You have no control. But you do have control over how things occur, so you can choose whether it is half-full or half-empty depending on which of these most empowers you. Or whichever most disempowers you. The point is, it is your choice, your responsibility. Especially with someone important in your life who is a certain way that you don't like.
It is very easy. It means the one needs to not drink and suffering waiting for a better result. It is said that once in the desert, a skeleton was discovered. Next to the skull was a glass empty of course - because it's a hot weather in desert. But optimists say that since the skull was smiling, then obviously the person was positively enough attuned to life.
Just it was not his day probably. Both facts literally mean the same thing, if you have half full cup that means it is also half empty. Focusing on one of the tow facts, however, reflects the bias in the attitude of the person; - Optimistic people in general have half-full attitude. Optimistic people are biased to focus on and appreciate what they already have the full half , and that makes them generally HAPPIER compared to the pessimistic people who are busy focusing on what they are missing the empty half to the extend that they are distracted from appreciating and being thankful for the full half they have.
Positive attitude and positive thinking is believed to have effect on the way one views the world, and the choices one makes, which in effect affects the results they get. It may have worked as a foundation to apply the concept to pessimism and optimism, but when you think about it:. Or it has a little bit of water in it. No one, not even pessimists with whom I am a member would say that the cup is half empty to themselves, let alone Out Loud.
Because it IS half full. It is a container. Honestly, if you saw someone pour out half, you may still be inclined to say it is half full, because it started as full and we think of it as something that Needs to be full. Because it is a cup. Cups are filled up.
They start out empty and then they are filled up. Our expectation is for that cup to get full. That fucking bottle is half empty. Because our mind is used to bottles looking like this:. Full to since the beginning.
So just to reiterate, half full and half empty are the same, just worded differently, but no one really thinks what Science-type people would have us believe that we think. Optimism and pessimism mean nothing. This perceptive dilemma is irrelevant to reality. In actuality the glass is half full. Because I don't remember ever asking for a half empty glass of water, that's why. It is really obvious, and to ask for a half empty glass of water is unheard of. Now you may argue endlessly, and yet even if let's say the glass is half empty, what do I do with it anyway? Do I drink air because it's half empty?
The empty half is filled with air, but it is of no concern. It does not matter. No one cares if it is half empty when it's the half filled water that will be drunk. It's not an empty glass certainly, and objectively it's half filled with water, because I don't remember drinking air.
And what does it matter, if there's water just drink it already?