Tag Archives: negative

Anal

dictionary with letter A

Anal: (n) a stage in Freudian psychosis denoting infantile psychosis as seen by a preoccupation with the anus. 2. Anal-retentive: obsessively preoccupied with details.

Perusing this particular definition, I was struck with a notion.

Even though words do have specific meanings, they gradually assimilate into the culture based upon whether we choose to view a thought as positive or negative.

Freud, with his usual obsession for body parts, was quick to point out that “anal,” from his perspective, had something to do with the ass.

Yet in our society, when we refer to somebody as anal, we are connoting an attention to detail–or if we find that attitude unacceptable, we make reference to someone being “picky.”

But I think if you blend the definitions, it’s quite fun, isn’t it?

Because after all, people who don’t take care of their own bum, cleaning it and maintaining its hygiene, will eventually be considered nasty.

Likewise, without a little bit of fussiness about maintaining order and the dignity of things, we will disappoint those around us and convince them quite quickly by exposing the hole in our ass.

  • What is too much attention to detail?
  • What is being picky?

I think three things are necessary to be considered solvent and of sound mind:

1. I don’t make my problems your problems.

Even though we like to help one another through difficulty, the specific dilemma needs to be complex enough to warrant intervention.

2. Generally speaking, I am a person of good cheer.

After all, to be around efficiency which is grouchy makes you soon forget the quality of the work and only remember the cranky.

3. I’m improving.

In other words, we can get by with being inefficient once or twice, but after that, it becomes an annoying vice.

So there is a certain amount of attention to the caboose necessary to maintain a good train.

And as human beings, without being obnoxious … we can still strive toward adequacy.

 

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Alimentary

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alimentary Canal: (n) the entire passage along which food passes through the body, including esophagus, stomach and intestines.

So much like life.

That which kisses the lips and titillates the taste buds, slides easily down the throat, gains acid in the stomach, is transformed into waste and often ends up looking like crap.

It is difficult for me, as a fat person, to focus on the more negative–and may I say, final–prospects of overeating.

I am completely engrossed in the licking of my lips and the taste buds, and even somewhat intrigued by the swallowing–but avoid the repercussions of digestion, fat accumulation and expulsion.

The alimentary canal is certainly a slippery slope, as it were: everything is heading downhill.

Some people might consider this negative.

Yet maybe it’s a step of maturity–learning to release smaller snowballs at the top of the mountain so as not to create an avalanche.

 

Agency

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Agency: (n) a business or organization established to provide transactions between two or more parties

Every time I hear the word I break out into a small surface sweat.

Maybe someone just tells me I will have to go to an agency to fill out an application or form to gain approval to acquire something I feel I should already have.

Let’s look at the source of my fear. What is the origin of an agency?

1. It was formed because someone was afraid to say yes or no.

There’s a problem right there. We all know the power in life is being able to come up with a positive or negative answer, and let the chips fall where they may. When you decide you don’t want that responsibility, and you spread it over a breadth of people so as to remove guilt from yourself, you create the kind of nasty red tape that makes people suicidal instead of overjoyed.

2. Someone likes to “play office.”

He or she is the kind of person who stacks pencils, puts the stapler in the upper right-hand corner of the desk planner and has a can of air freshener nearby which also acts as a disinfectant for the phone receiver when there is “foreign” use. This is the same person who always volunteered to help the teacher pound the erasers to remove the chalk dust and the kid who wanted to be the hall monitor, to tell on everyone for their bad deeds on the way to the cafeteria.

We didn’t like ’em then; we don’t like ’em now.

3. Lacking power, we imitate power.

Because we don’t think our decisions have much weight, we like to have an acronym behind our points to make them more pointed. It also gives us somebody to blame if there are objections.

4. And finally, it gives us a way to be mean and disappoint others while hiding behind a desk or a series of rules.

After all, we’re not allowed to punch somebody in the nose without suffering the consequences. But sending a form letter of rejection or explaining in boring detail why something cannot work out is the method that an agency promotes, turning its employees into street thugs.

Now, you may think that I’m too critical, but that’s probably because you work for an agency and would like to keep your paycheck.

So the next time someone tells me I have to go to an agency to seek approval or acquire information, I will stop to realize that the BEST I can hope for is a diluted possibility.

Because the only thing an agency can ever muster … is to water down the liquor of life.

Abreaction

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abreaction: (n.) a psychological term for the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion, achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion).

But why do all of our abreactions have to be negative?

In other words, no one ever hypnotizes someone to have them remember all the details of that beautiful day they won the blue ribbon at the county fair. No one sits down in therapy and helps people retrieve the glorious sensations of the first kiss at the door with their date. I don’t think there is any psychologist who puts a shingle out advertising his or her function as helping us retrieve joy, exuberance and victory.

Perhaps there is some value in reliving past memories that are painful or have been pushed deeply into our emotions or soul. I would not question this. But in a negatively charged universe, to further increase the negativity in an attempt to gain positive results, seems to me to be to be both counterproductive and even mean-spirited.

I don’t know what I can do about all the stupid things that happened when I was a kid. I instigated many of them, so to relive them only stimulates my guilt instead of motivating my grit. And those things that were done to me by others might be better drowned in the sea of forgetfulness than excavated as an abreaction in some office of a professional, who believes I will be better off by exposing my terrors.

I am not a professional in this realm. (Gosh, I don’t know whether I’m a professional in any realm, come to think of it…) But what I have discovered in my journey is that the more you can encourage people to find the good in their lives, the easier it is to explain the possibility of a God.

I am sure there is value in exorcising all the demons that may have settled into deep, dark caves in our consciousness, but merely stirring these dark spirits up does not guarantee that they will leave. And once awakened, is there not a danger they will try to gain more prominence than they deserve??

As I say, I’m not sure what I feel about this issue.

But if you want to hypnotize me, I would appreciate it if you would help me remember that one day in my life, when as a middle linebacker, I intercepted that pass that bounced off my facemask, miraculously landing in my hands, and I ran the nine yards in–for my only touchdown.

That would be therapeutic.