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81 " The second experiential pillar—idealizing—is the process by which we identify figures who are powerful in their stability, wisdom, and goodness. These ideal figures provide a port in the storm during turbulent times, and they also model key organizing principles of life: how to maintain purpose and meaning even in the midst of distress. "
― Christine Montross , Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration
82 " Twinship is the third and final pillar of self-psychology, and the term describes the ability to relate to and feel like another human. Doing so combats alienation and estrangement; it makes us feel connected to another person and thus to humanity, more broadly. "
83 " Every time I hear a sound and see another person look toward the origin of that sound, I receive an implicit confirmation that what I heard was something real, that it was not just my imagination playing tricks on me. Every time someone walks around the table rather than through it, I receive an unspoken, usually unremarkable, confirmation that the table exists, and that my own way of relating to tables is shared by others. "
84 " In this way our perceptions of the world are constantly affirmed and buoyed up by others. I see people respond to the world in predictable ways and, to use Guenther’s phrase, it “supports the coherence of my own experience.” When human beings are isolated, they have no such support and thus no way to affirm the reality of their experience, of the world around them, even of their own existence, their own selves. "
85 " Punishment, isolation, deprivation, restraint, subjugation. These are our societal responses to violence. But we have the sequence wrong. These are the elements that give rise to violence rather than quell it. And misguided attempts to clamp down on violence to an even greater degree can drive a malignant innovation that distills aggression into a more highly evolved form. We have constructed prisons to eradicate human violence, but we have, in fact, created crucibles that render the human capacity for violence even wilier, even less predictable, even more severe. "