2022-10-23 ------------------------------------------------------------------ I've been reading "Solitude - A Return to the Self" by Anthony Storr. It's sort of a strange book. He seems to very much want to make a case for an introverted existance, but he ends up talking a lot about how people were somehow or other damaged as kids. He also spends a lot of time on the special people, like philosophers and inventors. It seems to me that the book largely misses the point that introverts are normal people, not some damaged or special people. It could be that the author was chasing an edge case to the exclusion of more down-to-earth existance. In any case, there are a lot of interesting little sidetracks in the book. Many of them made me stop and think. Here's one that seems to describe a strand of my existence. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Quote: [Kipling] also exhibited an extraordinary capacity for inspiring confidence in others, who found themselves telling him their troubles in the assurance that he would not betray them. This particular trait seems to depend upon an unusual capacity to put oneself in other people's shoes, to identify oneself with others. It often originates in the kind of premature concern with the feelings of others which Kipling describes himself as having had developed as a child; a concern which we also observed in Trollope. Kipling became watchful and wary; alert to the changing moods of adults which might presage anger. This prescient awareness of what others were feeling and of how they displayed their emotions probably stood him in good stead when he came to write. Fear of punishment is not the only reason for this kind of watchful anxiety. Children with depressed mothers, or with mothers whose physical health is a matter for concern, develop the same kind of over-anxious awareness. Such children keep their own feelings to themselves, whilst at the same time taking special note of the feelings of the other person. They are less able to turn to the mother of other care-taker as a resource. In adult life, the watchful, over-anxious child becomes a listener to whom others turn, but who does not make reciprocal relationships on equal terms of mutual self-revelation. The same temperament is not infrequently found in psycho-analysts and doctors, who invite confidences but who are not called upon to reveal themselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------