“ Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?

Sigmund Freud

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Reposted by MBHollen

“ What we frequently see is that the growth-seeking part of the person, yearning to heal the early injury, seeks intimate connection with a partner whose conscious and unconscious qualities are reminiscent of significant parental figures. What then happens is a repetitious pattern […] in which the internal working models of each trigger the underlying unconscious emotional reactions that created the original difficulty. This creates a counterreaction and eventually shapes the partners’ responses such that each becomes a reenacting figure similar to the original inadequate caregiver.

Robert J. Neborsky & Marion F. Solomon on the process of projective and introjective identification in “Attachment Bonds and Intimacy

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“ According to current research, in the determination of a person’s level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts. In other words, people have an inborn disposition that’s set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down tot he bottom of their happiness range by their actions. It seems obvious that some people are more naturally ebullient or melancholic than others and that, at the same time, people’s decisions about how to live their lives also affect their happiness.

- Gretchen Rubin, on the “set-point” theory ”