Tom Thompson, who grew up in our town during the Sixties and participated a while back in our Discussions, has added a provocative essay on his website titled "Cathexis."

To "cathect," he explains, "means to invest our libidinal energy (creative life force and emotional energy), consciously or unconsciously, into giving meaning and significance to particular ideas, events, objects, or people."

At various times in his life, Tom has attached particular significance to many of the things that most of us do, from fancy cars to enticing gurus. In the end, though, it took an awful lot of energy to "prop up" his believe in any of these entities or philosophies. Cathexis dissipated. And as it did, I/me disappeared. Good things happened. But when I/me disappears, existential despair takes its place.

Tom writes: "Cathecting is not good or bad. It is what the “I” does to give significance, purpose and meaning to its life. Cathecting does seem to cause apparent problems among the apparent “me’s” that actually believe in what they have cathected and then kill, burn, torture, blow up or disparage those “me’s” that have cathected something else out into the vastness. The greatest cathected value is in the separate “me” itself, without which the meaningful world cannot be projected. We love our illusions. We are our illusions. We resist being disillusioned."

Tom explains it all much more eloquently in his essay and, in the process, has some interesting insights into LD and dyslexia, a topic that pops up from time to time on Elephant (type learning disability in Search.)