Cracking Up - by Christopher Bollas (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Being a Character, Christopher Bollas argued that Freud's vision of the dream process is a model for all unconscious mental experience. In Cracking Up he extends his exploration of the inner world of human experience and suggests that the rhythm of that experience is vital to individual creativity. It allows us to develop what the author calls a 'separate sense', which we use to assess the meanings of our own experiences and also to attune ourselves sympathetically to the lives of other people.

In this original and thought-provoking book, Bollas examines how people educate one another in the idioms of their unconscious lives and considers the nature and consequences of the traumas that inhibit the freedom to do this. He studies what we mean by the past - is it unchangeable or can history be a creative, open understanding of experience? We come to know who we are by giving form and meaning to our past - yet what do we mean by the self? Bollas' answer suggests yet more ways in which the 'separate sense' expresses each person's unique qualities.

From the Back Cover

The distinguished psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas here extends his exploration of the inner world of human experience. Taking Freud's vision of the dream process as a model for all unconscious mental experience, he suggests that the rhythm of that experience - in which we respond to everyday moments of psychic intensity by breaking them up into their constituent factors (remembered, bodily, instinctual) that we then recombine in a new understanding - is vital to individual creativity and freedom. Bollas examines how we learn the rhythmic idioms of each other's unconscious lives, and he considers the consequences when traumas inhibit the freedom to do this. He studies what we mean by the past: is it ominously unchangeable, or can history be a creative, open understanding of experience? In a disturbing analysis of the unfree patterns of a serial killer, Bollas shows how evil may derive from moments in which a person has felt betrayed, with feelings that are brought under control by subjecting victims to traumatic reenactments of the pain. In conclusion, and by way of sunny contrast, Bollas argues that humor and ribald play - the times when we crack up - give us special wisdom and pleasure. His finale, a brilliant summary of his chief themes, offers a fitting, ironic end to this wide-ranging exploration of the measures of man.