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David Smail Books

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“Nowhere is the necessity for courage and good faith more evident than in the search to establish the truth about relations between people, for in this process lies the threat of annihilation. As A struggles with B to lay bare the meaning of their conduct towards each other, bravely trying to stay clear of the slide into self-deception, to confess and accept his fear and vulnerability, to acknowledge his defensive strategies, his meannesses and malignancies and desperate cravings, so B can with a single act of bad faith betray the reciprocity of this process, perhaps by 'closing down' A with some sort of objectifying label which sends him spinning like a deflating balloon into the distant, icy, sterile reaches of isolation.”

RelationshipsHonestyAuthenticityVulnerabilitySelf Deception
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“On the whole, people deceive themselves through lack of courage rather than lack of clarity about the predicament in which they find themselves-- one may deceive oneself because one lacks the courage to face the implications of one's experience, or simply because that experience is so confused and puzzling that one opts for a relatively non-threatening interpretation of it.”

AnxietyExperienceConfusionUncertaintySelf Deception
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“Once all the technical mystique has been stripped away from psychotherapy, it does seem that a likely explanation for its almost explosive expansion over the last few decades is that it provides something which is otherwise in very short supply in a world in which a kind of watchful defensiveness against our vulnerability has replaced any kind of spontaneous generosity which people may more often once have felt for each other.”

KindnessGenerosityPsychotherapy
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“In order satisfactorily to function, we depend, throughout our lives, on the presence of others who will accord us validity, identity, and reality. You cannot be anything if you are not recognized as something; in this way your being becomes dependent on the regard of somebody else. You may be confirmed, or you may be disconfirmed, and if the latter is the case, often enough and pervasively enough, you simply cease to exist as a person.”

AnxietyTraumaRejectionShynessValidationDepersonalizationDerealization
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“If, on the other hand, you insist on your knowledge of the emperor's nakedness, you may not find the ready assent from others which could confidently be expected only if you assume their good faith toward their own experience; In fact, their strenuous denial that they share your experience may leave you in such isolation that ultimately not only they but you yourself begin to question your sanity.”

RealityAnxietyIllusionExperienceConfusionUncertaintyPersonal Experience
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“Even for physical science, the ultimate test of whether or not something is true lies in the individual's experience, not in some objectified, dogmatic set of rules. The sensory experiences which are predictable from natural scientific 'laws' permit agreement between individuals because those individuals share very similar physical structures, are persuaded by the same kinds of logical reasoning, and operate with a similar set of values.”

RealityScienceResearchDogmaObjectivityAcademia
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“Science is thus not the creation of some kind of mysterious contact with or insight into ultimate reality, but the upshot of our own very human, and even culturally local, interests, concerns, and values. I suspect, also, that we are ready to give particular weight and credence to the 'evidence of our senses' because it is not in our interests to deceive ourselves about its nature (although it is certainly possible to do so).”

RealityScienceResearchEvidenceSensesObjectivitySubjectivity
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“To stand for something, whether in child-rearing or any other sphere, is of course to risk error; it is also to become conspicuous under the gaze of the Other, to give away one's position and to invite rejection. But it is also the only way through which social evolution can take a truly moral direction; it is the inescapable consequence of recognizing and taking seriously the fact that it is we who make the world, not 'it' or 'them'.”

SocialRiskMoralityAnxietyActivismSociology
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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“For there would be no point in painful struggle, in heroic battle against injustice, in the painstaking achievements of culture and learning, in courageous stance against cruelty or adversity, in loving self-sacrifice for others, if in fact the experience gained by just one tortured and despairing individual could simply be 'adjusted' or 'modified' by the appropriate expert.”

DepressionAnxietyAdversityInjusticeTraumaActivismExpertsPsychiatryPsychotherapy
Book:Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety
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