Think that others who don't agree with them are stupid, bad, or otherwise not worthy of their company

Indeed, the hysteric of early twentieth-century Vienna presented a series of fascinating dilemmas for a young neurologist like Freud. The hysteric patient suffered from symptoms of psychological stress that had been converted into strange and unaccounted-for physical symptoms--a process psychologists came to call conversion. There was, for example, the case of Baroness Anna von Lieben, who had been one of Freud's earliest and most instructive cases. She was a wealthy, intelligent, and extremely well-educated young woman from an Austrian Jewish family. Even in the midst of a contented life, an exhausted fiftysomething father of four children under six might be expected to indulge in a bit of (alcohol-aided? ) nostalgia. Still, it got me thinking: What if this man had been my first love, or someone who haunted me from time to time with thoughts of what might have been? How would I have reacted to his musings then? What if I had been looking for an escape or distraction? Might I have studied his words, mentally amplified them, even spent hours crafting my response? My thoughts turned to the various patients who'd reported over the years their struggles with Facearticle stalking, risque email repartee, and escalating text exchanges that seemed friendly until they got confusing, creepy, or carried them away. People drained entire afternoons of productive activity in just such pursuits--and often weren't even sure what they wanted or why. Unexpected blasts from the past can't help but deliver a particular piquancy, marinating us in a bath of memory, desire, and nostalgia. They feed our midlife urge to reach back through the decades of our lives, whether to pick up threads or to stir old pots--we're not quite sure. It's obvious to you, if you've got the guts to be honest. Look into your eyes. You'll know if you're kidding yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself what you want out of life; what would make you prouder, more satisfied. Not how you have to be, but what your heart wants for you.

See if what you are saying feels right; see if it sounds right to you. If it doesn't, maybe it is time for some change. Because, in a way, you are like a corporation. I know what works and what doesn't. And after many failures, one day we make a better choice. (This should not surprise us. It would be surprising if we didn't learn, if we didn't behave correctly after making the same mistake for the hundredth time in a familiar situation. ) That's the moment when the Planner and Doer in us are joined by the Coach in us. We don't need an outside agency to point out our behavioral danger zones, or urge us to toe the line, or even hear our nightly scores. We can do it on our own. The Coach in us takes many forms. It can be an inner voice, akin to conscience, whispering in our ear to remember an earlier time when we did the right thing. She had been bedeviled for many years by a variety of puzzling symptoms: hallucinations, random spasms, and the awkward automatic response of converting insults or criticisms into severe facial neuralgias. Her entire face flinched dramatically whenever she felt she had been insulted--a series of spasms that seemed, remarkably, to exactly replicate a slap in the face. Freud started to dig. Slowly, he began to see that Baronness von Lieben and the many other hysteric patients whom he treated suffered from hidden memories. In many cases, Freud believed these to be repressed sexual experiences--what Freud's colleague, Josef Breuer, came to call secrets d'alcove (secrets of the bedchamber). Breuer believed that these hidden memories were almost always organized around sexual conflicts that were hidden from the very sufferers themselves.

They were, thought Breuer and Freud, sexual experiences that were so unacceptable at the time--or so traumatic--that they were exiled to the basement of consciousness to fester and create problems in life above stairs. In their first joint communique on hysteria, Freud and Breuer wrote a phrase that would resonate in the history of psychology: the hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences. The hysteric suffers mainly from reminiscences. That is to say, the hysteric suffers from memories that he or she cannot bear to bring into consciousness, but also that he or she cannot escape. Online communication adds an unprecedented charge, since messages launched into the void lend themselves to fevered anticipation, not to mention runaway fantasy and an inflated sense of significance. Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful shaper of behavior; when rewards come at variable intervals, it's habit-forming. We never know when we might be rewarded, so we repeat the behavior more and more often in hope of a hit (think slot machines). Unfortunately, the obsessive quality of infatuation can become paired with the conditioned rewards of email checking, creating a supersaturated energy suck. People feel horrible about themselves but seem powerless to put on the brakes. Despite the depressing nuisance of such habits, they express a deeper dilemma. By midlife we can't help but feel aware of the roads not taken. Our awareness can prompt anything from leisurely curiosity to profound regret. We look for ways to incorporate the dreams of our youth into our present reality. You and that person in the mirror are stockholders. If you never let them vote, managing is simpler much of the time, but don't expect their support when you really need it. You'll probably feel awkward and embarrassed in front of a mirror. Most people do when they try to look within. But love that awkward and embarrassed person, who has found the courage to look you in the eyes. Expect a stilted, unreal feeling at first, especially if this is new to you.

You may never have considered doing it seriously before. And don't worry, talking to yourself won't make you crazy or grow hair on your palms. It's okay to talk to you . okay to love you. It can be a song lyric, a spiritual talisman, a meaningful motto, an instruction on a card, a memory of someone important to us, anything that triggers desired behavior. It can even be a photograph. This one coaches me. It is the only framed photo in my study at home. It was taken by an Associated Press photographer in Mali, Africa, in 1984. I was getting started in my coaching practice and working as a volunteer with Richard Schubert, CEO of the American Red Cross. Sub-Saharan Africa was experiencing a massive drought. Hundreds of thousands of people were facing starvation. Richard asked me to join eight other Americans on a fact-finding mission to Mali. Our trip was featured for a week on NBC News. The patient unconsciously converts these unbearable memories and the feelings that accompany them into a whole array of bizarre symptoms. What was the evidence for this? It was simple, but dramatic: When the patient remembered the repressed material--brought it into consciousness, into the light of day--her symptoms often simply vanished. Sometimes the symptoms disappeared dramatically, overnight, and sometimes only after a process of slow, deliberate uncovering. Freud discovered--astonishingly enough--that in simply talking about their distress in great detail in a kind of uncensored stream of consciousness to an attentive listener, the difficult material (what Freud called pathogenic psychological material or the reminiscences) were brought to the surface of consciousness and cleared away. So, the cure for these cases was simply a process of uncovering--and of remembering?

Yes. Said Freud, We liked to compare [it] to the technique of excavating a buried city. The reminiscences Freud discovered were, in our terms, very much like implicit memories, memories that had not been brought into consciousness, nor integrated into a true autobiographical narrative. Memories whose central conflict could not be made explicit, and so was acted out through a variety of strange symptoms. It's not simply boredom, though it might be that too. We want to reconnect to people from our pasts, to set things straight or understand events from a different angle. We want our life stories to add up, to make sense. For some, these desires draw on the memory of what life felt like when they were young, and this can't help but invite invidious comparisons to how life feels now. The family-building phase pulls people toward a conventionalized set of roles that can feel repetitive even when we're basically contented with them. We run from home to work to school to home and repeat the cycle when we rise the next day. No wonder people lack the time or energy to develop a subtler and more pleasurable mix of relationships. And life throws all sorts of exhausting and difficult things at all of us. Fatigue, stress, and anxiety make it notoriously hard to access a creative state of mind that generates new possibilities, and too often we end up stuck in the same old mental grooves. When things feel stressful or confusing, sometimes all we want to do is shut down, stop trying, and click into automatic mode. Although Gail had long before grown apart from her-self, in that short session she was able to begin recovering her self-love. With practice, she reinforced it, thinking of herself as a worthwhile person and showing those feelings in action. Doing so is extremely difficult and certainly one of the most profound changes anyone can make. She, at least, had the benefit of one of us alternately screaming and encouraging her to face herself in the mirror. All you have is some print and paper exhorting you. But now that you've got the idea, use it.