Happiness Or Suppresion Of The Truth Essay

, Research Paper

The effect of being unable to gain access to truth is having to live the lie for the rest of your life, forgetting what you were, and altering where you were headed. In the book, Listening to Prozac these points are proven to be true in lives of the individuals on Prozac. In O?brien?s book, In the Lake of the Woods John and Cathy are examples of what happens to your life when you suppress the truth. The Essential Epicures gives a lot of wisdom toward why this happens, how it effects us, and what we can do to solve the problem. All these books help to understand the effects of being unable to gain access to truth and suppressing the truth.

In Listening to Prozac, Prozac just suppresses the truth instead of actually helping the person. This is turn keeps the person from accessing the truth and this is what they want, so that?s why they take it. As you become more and more dependent upon the drug, the harder it is for you to access the truth. People become so dependent on Prozac because they are trying suppress the truth and they know as soon as they stop taking the drug they have to deal with these truths all over again. Tess had a lot of problems growing up starting with an alcoholic for a father. She had to carry the weight of the family on her shoulders because her mom didn?t want to deal with it any more. Since she was depended upon most of her life she wanted to have someone she could depend upon and that?s why she married men who she typically had problems. She married an abusive alcoholic man and had affairs with married men. She couldn?t understand why this was and she felt as if she was trapped. Because of this she turned to prozac as a way of suppressing her true self. This was her way of going around the problem, instead of finding out why it was that she was attracted to these men. Most people who have a problem work through it and learn from it. Unfortunately, since she is suppressing the truth and will eventually be unable to gain access to it, she will never learn from this problem. Prozac alters what is in store for her in the future, because it changes her true self and makes her into something she?s not. Since prozac makes her unable to gain access to the truth she will eventually forget was she was. This could be a positive or a negative thing. It could be a positive thing because she moved on an put the past behind her. Yet, it could be a negative thing because she won?t be able to help people who are having the same problem she was. These are the effects that prozac has on a young women?s life who is trying to suppress the truth and how it enables her to access the truth.

In the book, In the Lake of the Woods John and Cathy are examples of what happens to a couple when they try to suppress the truth. In both of their lives they have things that they just want to forget about, because it?s just too painful to deal with. John had a lot of things that he just put behind him because he didn?t want to have to face them. He tries to keep these thing suppress from his wife, from the voters, and from his self. He suppressed the truth about the My Lai massacre because he hated to think about it and hated what it did to him. Plus, he doesn?t want the voters to hear about it because it would ruin his chances. He thought about it constantly and dreamed about it. He would wake up in cold sweats and just pretend like it didn?t happen. John was verbally abused by his father and tries to forget about it. He was also suppresses the truth about how his friend died. There?s talk about how he killed his friend and possibly more. This suppression of the truth effects him very negatively. It causes him to live his life through deception. This is why he does magic and get?s involved in politics, because both of those jobs are deceptive. Eventually he?s so caught up in the illusion that he stuck and has to keep on living the lie he created, because there is no way to turn back. This suppression of the truth enables him to access most of the truth, except for the stuff he dreams about. He tries to forget about everything, but his dreams won?t let him forget about his father or the My Lai massacre. The end of the book also suggest that John killed Cathy, but he so crazy that he can?t gain access to the truth about it. This is just one of the effects his suppression of the truth has on his relationship with Cathy.

Cathy is apart of John?s deception, even though he?s trying to suppress the truth from her. She also suppresses the truth about him from herself. She knows how crazy he is, but she pretends like it isn?t so. She remembers how scared he had her when he was writing those crazy letters from the war. Yet, she suppressed the truth and married him anyway. She know that he?s not right but she chooses to suppress the truth for the sake of the relationship, because she knows how he likes to earn his power through deception. So when he wakes up late at night from a nightmare, she doesn?t him if he?s okay or what it?s about. She rather not know for her own sake. She also didn?t want him to see a shrink. Because she eventually she was unable to gain access to the truth about what was really going on. This whole thing affected their relationship. They were in debt because of it and couldn?t go on vacation or buy the house they wanted. She was also pushed into having an abortion because that?s what John wanted. They never talked openly because they had to keep up the lie that they?ve been living for so long. This is the effect that suppressing the truth had on them as individuals and as a couple.

The Essential Epicurus gives a lot of wisdom toward why this happens, how it effects us, and what we can do to solve the problem. ?We must tend to our misfortunes by the unhappy memories of what is gone and by realization that it is impossible to undo what has been done? (Vatican Saying #55). This is the solution to John?s, Cathy?s, and Tess?s problems. If John could just relize that what happened in the war and with his father is the past. Then he could stop suppressing the truth and live his life. If Cathy would stop making excuses for what happened to her husband. She needs to realize that that was a long time ago and now he needs to put it behind him and get help. Tess needs to come to the conclusion that she can?t help what happened to her and it?s time to move from the past and focus on the future. ?The limit of the extent of pleasure is the removal of pain. Where ever pleasure present, for however long, there can be no pain or grief, or both at once? (Principle Doctrine #3). This is the reason these people do the things they do. Tess and John try to remove the pain, so they can have pleasure. John simply tries to act like it never happened and suppresses the truth, to gain pleasure. Tess tries to eliminate the pain of having an abusive alcoholic father by dating men like her dad and married men. She later turns to prozac to suppress this pain. The Epicurus shows us why these effects are ad what we can do to help us.

The effect of being unable to gain access to truth is having to live the lie for the rest of your life, forgetting what you were, and altering where you were headed. In the book, Listening to Prozac these points are proven to be true in lives of the individuals on Prozac. In O?brien?s book, In the Lake of the Woods John and Cathy are examples of what happens to your life when you suppress the truth. The Essential Epicurus gives a lot of wisdom toward why this happens, how it effects us, and what we can do to solve the problem. All these books help to find the effects of being unable to gain access to truth and suppressing the truth.