The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.

The truth is that personality inevitably bleeds into all forms of our intellectual life. We all extrapolate from our own lives in order to understand the world.

Memory changes as a person matures.

The faculty of memory cannot be separated from the imagination. They go hand in hand. To one degree or another, we all invent our personal pasts. And for most of us those pasts are built from emotionally colored memories.

There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

Dreaming is another form of thinking, more concrete, more economical, more visual, and often more emotional than the thoughts of the day, but a thinking through of the day, nevertheless.

Memory is essential to who we are, and memories can be both implicit and explicit - unconscious and conscious.

True stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.

It seems to me that going backward sometimes means going forward.

Worries about the power of a doctor's suggestions to influence and shape his patient's mind, whether they are made under hypnosis or not, are still with us.

Infancy is irretrievable. Its memories live underground. To what extent they return by stealth or are triggered by various catalysts remains an ongoing question.

Natürlich ist ein Selbst viel umfassender als der innere Erzähler. Die Insel des selbst-bewussten Geschichtenerzählers liegt mitten in einem Meer von Unbewusstem, über das wir nichts wissen, nie etwas wissen werden oder das wir vergessen haben. Es gibt vieles in uns, das wir nicht beherrschen oder wollen, aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es unwichtig wäre, eine Erzählung für uns selbst zu finden. In der Sprache bilden wir den Lauf der Zeit so ab, wie wir ihn empfinden – das Es war, es ist, es wird sein. Wir abstrahieren, denken und erzählen. Wir ordnen unsere Erinnerungen und verknüpfen sie miteinander und diese Bruchstücke bekommen einen Besitzer: das autobiographische Ich, das nicht ohne ein Du ist. Für wen erzählen wir denn schließlich? Auch allein in unseren Köpfen ist ein vorausgesetzter anderer dabei, die zweite Person unserer Rede.