How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"It [experiencing memories] was like it was happening for real all over again."
"Feel anything?"
"Everything." I shuddered. "Every damn thing. What was it?"
"Anyone doing it feels better afterward. You can go over it all again now any time you want to, and every time you do, the hurt in it will be less. You'll see."
It was the first thing to amaze me in years. I chewed on it and then asked, "If I did it by myself, how come it never happened before?"
"It needs someone to listen." (2.3.6-11)
Time for some Psychology 101. This back-and-forth between Gerry and Stern comes shortly after Gerry talks aloud in detail about his memories of meeting Lone and the kids. The conversation suggests that talking through your painful memories lessens the pain but requires a listener with whom you feel safe, and might be easier said than done.
Quote #5
I said angrily, "I didn't like or not like. It didn't mean nothing. It was just—just talk."
"So what was the difference between this last session and what happened before?"
"My gosh, plenty! The first one, I felt everything. It was all really happening to me. But this time—nothing."
"Why do you suppose that was?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"Suppose," he said thoughtfully, "that there was some episode so unpleasant to you that you wouldn't dare relive it [...] Sometimes the very thing you're looking for—the thing that'll clear up your trouble—is so revolting to you that you won't go near it. Or you try to hide it. [...] It might be something very desirable to you. It's just that you don't want to get straightened out." (2.5.7-14)
Another psychology lesson from More Than Human. Here, Gerry compares the time he relived his memories of meeting Lone and the kids to another time when he simply summarized what life was like in the cave. The first recalling was an emotionally powerful process; the second he felt as just "nothing," just talking. Stern suggests his patient fears to dive into his memories because the curative episode hidden there might be too revolting or desirable for him to bear reliving. The whole novel presents processing your memories as a challenge that must be met in order to evolve personally or as a species.
Quote #6
"Everywhere we go, everything we do, we're surrounded by symbols, by things so familiar we don't ever look at them or don't see them if we do look. If anyone ever could report to you exactly what we saw and thought while walking ten feet down the street, you'd get the most twisted, clouded, partial picture you ever ran across. And nobody ever looks at what's around him with any kind of attention until he gets into a place like this. The fact that he's looking at past events doesn't matter; what counts is that he's seeing clearer than he ever could before, just because, for once, he's trying." (2.5.55)
Stern describes what makes psychotherapy work. Everyday life is an experience of confusing symbols that people just power through, but when in therapy (or reading! or writing!), people attend to their experience in such detail that they are able to grow or evolve. So that's how it works.