Sunday, March 10, 2024

"How do you solve a problem like 🎵 --" (The Sound of Mucous, starring --) with Addendum


This article is a divertimento about book formatter Word-2-Kindle’s endless chain of snafus perpetrated in the interior production of my book, “I Forgive” and Other Delusions. This post would be twenty to thirty inches long were I to catalog all the indicators of ignorance presented to me by W2K over the past several months. To simplify, following is my most recent email to Nick, principal or assigned torturer of the company.


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Nick –

It’s a fail. And while I hate to sound (or become) paranoid, I have to assume that either your formatting staff are complete morons, or they are toying with me, like fun sociopaths, at your behest.

I told you that starting with the article I mean you, little one, the Index page numbering was off. I gave you a representative list of examples of this: articles on page 105, 114, 115, 175, 198 and 328, which are assigned incorrect Index page numbers.

Well, your pathetic or sociopathic staff apparently manually fixed just those page numbers I cited, when it was perfectly clear that I was indicating that Index page numbering was globally flawed from page 105 on.

Looking at your latest revision file (W2K-_I Forgive_and Other Delusions-Reformat-Rev1.pdf), I checked a few articles at random and their corresponding Index referents:

Bad Supervisor. It’s on page 121 and the Index says 119.

Son of Bad Supervisor. It’s on page 126 and the Index says 123.

Inner child deluxe. It’s on page 324 and the Index says 311.

I hope you are not AI, Nick. If you are a person, then I figure you are either laughing at me (which I assumed during our previous era) or are eye-gougingly exasperated by your staff’s incompetence (not as much as I am, but some).

At this point, Word-2-Kindle’s advantage is that I have too many difficult-to-swallow grievances to put them all in a critical review. I may have to use my writing skills to condense them into an Absurdist play or similar, published at The Pessimistic Shrink blog, Yelp and others.

-- Fred L.

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In fact, W2K has exceeded a dozen revisions to address its own errors. Most errors were small irritations (deleting line spaces above and below indented quotes; inexplicably shrinking the size of running heads, etc.) as opening acts to two major ones that have occupied my psyche since last year. (Here is one of them, the margin disaster, all pages off-center and pressed against the spine):


The present Index numbering fiasco may be the final blow and the final mystery. In Microsoft Word, one embeds codes throughout the book to generate an Index. The result should be a flawless correspondence of book page number to Index page number. And yet somehow, somehow, W2K has managed to dishonor these embed codes part-way through the book. I’m stupefied, and at the end of my energies and patience.

My book remains for sale at Amazon. The ebook, produced by a different formatting service, is serviceable; the paperback by W2K looks amateurish. I would still recommend either for those interested in feeling-centered depth therapy that respects, uniquely, the holistic person as body, mind and time.

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Addendum and finale, March 16

Word-2-Kindle provided me yet another revision file, this one meant to correct the book-wide discrepancy between articles’ page numbers and their corresponding Index page numbers. The revision file looked good: perfect sync between text and Index pagination. They did it, presumably by reactivating Word's Index-generating process. But then I began to scroll through the articles. What I discovered to my stupefaction was that Word-2-Kindle hadn’t corrected the Index. It had reduced the number of pages in the book to adapt to the flawed Index by digitally compressing letters and words, their escapements and the space between words. Articles that had occupied two pages now fit on one.

I revealed my discovery to Nick, the head man, describing it as the apotheosis of "ass-backwards." His response:

“It's important to note that our team does not directly update the index as it requires the use of MS Word, whereas our interior formatting process utilizes different software. Consequently, updating the index must be handled on your end.

“Here's our process: Once you approve the formatted PDF that we will send for the Print interior, we will provide you with a Word Doc version of it so you can update the index according to your specifications. After you have completed the index, you can send the Word Docx of the Index back to us and our team will then apply the index to the Print interior.

“Regarding the spacing of the articles, I understand your concerns about the tight spaces and the appearance of the articles. Please be assured that some tight spaces are intentionally incorporated by our formatting team to ensure proper placement and alignment of the articles within the manuscript.”

I replied:

“If you had informed me of your limitations regarding Word (a program I assumed "Word-2-Kindle" had great facility with) at the beginning or early stages of this labyrinthine and exhausting process, I might have either given up then, or tried to work with those limitations. As it is, you have worn me out. Like Rachmaninoff, who was plied with requests to encore his famous Prelude Op 3 No 2 in c-sharp minor so often that he sickened of the piece, I can't stand to look at my book anymore. As said, it is time to part ways.”

And his rejoinder:

“We apologize for the inconvenience and for the short notice regarding the process we follow on how we deal with indexes.

 

"Should [you] have other concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are always here to help.”

 

Nick has been consistently polite, in a lobotomized and possibly mocking sort of way, from start to end, and as consistently unforthcoming about his company's technical deficiencies and poor quality control. Note that my back-and-forth emailing with Mr. Caya (and for a short while, his Bahamian accomplice “Krizia”) began in November of last year, most of which consisted of my requests that his staff fix their errors.


Friday, February 16, 2024

"This is what I believe!"


43-year-old client says that he has found a way to “defuse” conflicts with his wife. He’ll say: “I see what you’re trying to do. I’m just going to step away.” His ten-year-old daughter is distracted when he is trying to teach her math that she didn’t grasp in school. He believes there should be “consequences for her being disengaged.”

54-year-old client states that he accommodates his mother’s self-centeredness because he wants to be “a good son.” He can’t bring himself to criticize or get angry with his torturously mentally abusive father because “he’s not here to defend himself.”

35-year-old man asserts that his parents had “a very good divorce” when he was five years old.

I described my socially-incorrect ideas about “forgiveness” to a 58-year-old client. He said that “there’s nothing to forgive” because his father’s domestic violence and alcoholism didn’t affect him.

21-year-old Asperger’s client says “I hate myself.”

Let’s pour some acid on these clients’ custom-made beliefs.

The 43-year-old believes he has “defused” incipiently volatile conflicts with his wife by accusing her of being sly and manipulative and walking out of the room (Gottman’s famous “stonewalling”). He’s actually made the conflicts worse. He believes his daughter should be punished for not being able to focus on her math and on him. She may have ADHD, may be depressed because of her parents’ continual sniping, may be turned off by her father’s disciplinary “three strikes” mentality. Punishing a child for being hurt or injured is destructive.

This client's beliefs are just threadbare clothing over feelings of revenge for a childhood which he perpetuates by remaining in thrall to a pathological, authoritarian father. Beliefs are adamant, until they crumble into the greater hurt that formed them.

The 54-year-old believes that he must be his mother’s doormat, her eternal accommodator to be a good son. Does it make him a good son not to have any self-care, to back himself away forever? He has adopted some strangely-derived justice not to criticize a father who isn’t alive to “defend himself.” What can that mean? Do we not condemn Hitler because he can’t argue back? Do I not criticize Trump the sociopath because he’s not in the room with me?

He believes he is a good son. What he means is: He is a good little boy.

The 35-year-old man believes his parents had a “very good divorce.” Can he feel what that divorce did to him at age five, how “very good” it was?

The 58-year-old has nothing to forgive as he has banished his real childhood with a violent and drunk father. Hovering above that, he may believe anything he wants.

The 21-year-old “hates” himself because it’s less painful to grow the callus of self-hate – more an idea than a feeling – than to feel the pain of being an unloved child.

I don't know if other therapists believe their clients’ theories of life. I’d advise them not to. A good rule of thumb is: “The feeling is the fact, the thought is the escape.” People will often cling desperately, time immemorial to a belief which could be some airy-fairy, cockamamie conjunction of words their humiliated inner child came up with. What they don’t want to do is feel. Feel the radical truth that defined their childhood. To go there would be to burn away the bland mantra in black, boiling tar. But the mantra is a straitjacket and the tar can be poured out. That’s when therapy happens.


Sunday, January 21, 2024

Paperback "I Forgive" and Other Delusions


My book is now in paperback form. (The Kindle ebook has been out in the world for a couple months.) I had tremendous difficulty with the professional formatter. The simplified reason is that I paid $149 to Word-2-Kindle instead of the $1,200 that Wordzworth Books asked. I’m a retired typographer and know that a book that’s already ninety-eight percent meticulously formatted at Microsoft Word (for MacBook Air) should not need a thousand dollars-worth of finishing touches.

 

A consequence, though, is that I uploaded the paperback to Amazon from a state of exhaustion not confidence, and I can’t help but fear that I missed some substantive errors in line spacing, indenting, indexing, page numbers, etc. I’m half-afraid to look at the final product.* So I am encouraging readers to purchase the paperback “I Forgive” and Other Delusions in order to look for embarrassing goofs to throw in my face (by email and blog comments).

 

Of course, there are other reasons to own. How can people – including potential clients and therapy students and their teachers – not be sick of the cognitive-therapy fluff that has covered the earth worse than covid? Thinking does not heal wounds; it only burdens them with falseness. Therapy must go to the source of pain and let that pain out by the tools of justice: remembering, weeping, raging in a room where someone finally hears and cares.


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* Follow-up: I purchased two copies of the book and have found two blatant flaws. The text blocks are not centered on the pages but are shifted toward the inside of the book (the spine: too little white space) and away from the open end of the book. To me it's an eyesore and necessitates almost cracking the spine to read easily. Also, the type, which should be black, is a washed-out-looking gray. Despite my haranguing everyone, neither the book formatter, nor Amazon Customer Support, nor Lulu (the publisher that apparently sometimes prints Amazon's books) has accepted responsibility for the flaws. I continue to email these sources in search of an adult.


Sunday, January 14, 2024

Know thyself before it's too late


I’ve encountered many, many people who do not know what it means to understand themselves. They believe that if they have a feeling as a reaction to something that happens, or as companion to a thought or a belief, that feeling is “who they are” and has no deeper cause or reason. The feeling says what it is and all that it is.

 

This error is understandable by the nature of feeling. It seems like identity. But if we cry at a happy moment, or rage at a tangled computer cord or a slow driver, or get anxious if our fourth-grader brings home a “C,” we should wonder who we really are.

 

Of course, people also believe that their assumptions and convictions, as well as their feelings, are who they are. They are often disabused of that notion in therapy where mantras like “I love my mother to death” and “my parents did their best” and “I’m never good enough” evaporate in a bleak epiphany.

 

It is rare for a parent to say to herself: Why do I want to punish my child? What is this feeling inside me that wants to deprive or hurt him? It is rare for an adult to ask himself: Why do I enjoy being sarcastic, even when I can see that it hurts someone’s feelings? It is rare for a person who says “I don’t trust people” to ask himself: What is going on inside me that makes me think that most people are untrustworthy? It is not quite so rare, but still rare for “people-pleasers” to wonder if they really care about the people they serve, if there may be something self-serving and self-preserving behind their altruism.

 

These and countless other feelings should be explored. They may not be what they seem.

 

Right now I am most concerned about all the people, millions of them, who feel good when they think about the psychologically disturbed and morally malevolent Trump. It is rare to nonexistent that any of them wonder what makes them glad about violence; why their intelligent discernment is not embarrassed by Trump’s fatuous ignorance; why a hating person makes them feel redeemed. If they could look inward, they would find the life they had to bury in their adolescent years if not earlier: injustice and unhelped loneliness and a need for some kind of revenge. This would still be boiling and churning deep below, a turbulence that they cannot see through. Were it to subside, by the gifts of care and self-compassion, their vision would be cleared and they would see a sick man whose medicine is hate and delusion.


Thursday, January 4, 2024

Comments to bad news


In response to a recent George Will article in The Washington Post.

 

What a silly George he is. I recently told a Trump-defending client the following: If Biden manipulated the economy in such a way that I got an extra dollar, and Adolf Hitler manipulated the economy in such a way that I got two, I’d still opt for Biden. Psychopaths aren’t a good bet, regardless of the ephemeral prize. Everyone who claims to prefer Donald Trump over Joe Biden because of a given policy or ideological principle is showing the world that he prefers a narcissistic psychopath over an imperfect though normal person. He is revealing a special wound: that the bottommost part of his soul is retaliation pain.


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In response to a New York Times article.

 

In this poisonous Trump climate, a paradox has emerged: The mentally healthiest among us have anxiety, verge on “learned helplessness,” and suffer the insidious trauma of crazymaking (as sociopathy and delusion gain great status), while those  – the Trump Republicans of today – whose fragile balance requires projection, delusion, hate and infantile dependency feel powerful and “happy.” How, The Times asks, do we support our mental health? Go to therapy. Preach to the choir. Know sanity and know that any individual MAGA child-in-adult's-clothing could be undone by a simple Socratic dialogue, that it’s only the epoxy of the masses that makes them strong.


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In response to Maureen Dowd's New York Times article, "Here Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowman."


Maureen writes: "I'm puzzled about why his devoted fans don't mind his mean streak." They don't know it now, but on their death beds, today's Democrats will say: "I'm at peace. I loved life as best I could." Today's Republicans will say: "I'm angry." At the seat of people's souls is – reaching into the quiddities here – what good was given in their childhoods and what pain was never healed. It becomes a turn of mood. "I made it work" versus "I remained a victim seeking revenge."


Saturday, December 30, 2023

The Mundanity Defense Mechanism


People who can’t accept a compliment, or feel a strange badness inside when they receive a compliment. People who feel they “don’t deserve to be happy.” A man I know who feels unworthy of his spouse’s affection. People who feel anxious or depressed when they reach a pinnacle, a success, who feel not pleasure or pride in it but rather a dull bad feeling that leads them to say “no big deal – it’s what a person’s supposed to do.” People, maybe mostly women, who reject a caring, “boring” man and are attracted to the “bad boy.” People who self-sabotage (fail, drop out) right before they would have reached an achievement. They may then condemn themselves for their failure while I’ll tell them “you are actually being good to yourself. Your unconscious is telling you that after all these years you can no longer fake being well. You have always been bleeding and need to collapse, and get help.”

 

Today’s theory says that those of us who experience these perversions have been living in what I will call the Mundanity Defense, the most invisible and pervasive defense. We go about our days with mild or moderately strong satisfactions and frustrations, or with none; with piquant pleasures (a pet’s funny behaviors, a good meal, an exciting movie, sex, ad infinitum), with our thoughts, riding in our adult ocean. Our mental and spiritual life is a cloud that doesn’t touch the ground. But beneath this horizonless fog is our failed childhood where we did not receive love, but aloneness. Everything sits on top of that broken egg.

 

When we are given compliments or care, when we near success and what should be happiness and peace, we feel the past and present loss. Our child feels his home: “I do not get that.” Our adult feels, in a way, much worse: “I didn’t get that when it would have mattered, and it’s too late.” Strangely but naturally, good proves bad, pleasure proves pain.

 

This loss is the underlying problem of human life. We don’t really move on from the child’s broken heart. The rest of our life needs to cover that, and it does, until the truth is revealed by too-late love, by too-late success.