1. It’s not that I only remember pain. I remember joy too, except there wasn’t really much of it. I remember some joy, but it wasn’t real. The real joy, I do remember.
2. Consistent joy started a few years into analysis. Or maybe straight away, cuz where do you find that kind of love? But at first it was joy mingled with pain, and it made sense, because I have always experienced joy alongside pain. A few years into analysis, though, I started experiencing simple joy, consistently (well, with more consistency than I had ever known).
3. I am not saying that analysis is for everyone, but analysis is perhaps necessary for all humans whose babyhood was shaped by painjoy. These do-overs, I don’t think they are possible any other way, at least in our fucked Western world.
4. I don’t know of any other world. I just try not to generalize.
inside(r) psychoanalysis 