“The goal of therapy is to help the patient go beyond intellectualization and rationalization and other resistive maneuvers to the point where he can move into uncharted territories to seek and find the anguish and terror of total realization and discover that he can survive. To know that life can be truly absurd and capricious; that one is not omnipotent; that without magic as the ultimate defense, there is pain at times which hurts more than words can describe. And after the grief and the mourning, not only for the lost objects of one’s fantasies, but for the fantasies and illusions themselves, to be able to live relatively without illusion. To know Time as a friend as well as an enemy. To recognize that happiness is not a condition, but an ephemeral and precious experience, that if one lives without illusion one must impart meaning to one’s life; that hope must replace expectations and demands; that activity must replace passivity; that realistic hope must be directed towards the expansion and growth of one’s potentialities, which implies experiencing more richly both sorrow and joy.”

⊙ James Hollis, The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other