Picking up where I left off yesterday regarding the differences between knowledge and truth and riffing a bit more.

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People will sometimes ask me some version of, "What is the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy?"

They start in the same way: A patient comes to a therapist, or an analysand comes to an analyst. They talk logistics (scheduling, fee, etc.) and do the necessary paperwork. Then the work starts. At first, the therapist/analyst does not know anything about the patient/analysand. The patient/analysand tells the therapist/analyst all about their past, their problems, their job, their relationships, so on and so forth. Sometimes people talk about their dreams. The therapist/analysts listen a lot starts to build up some understanding of what is going on with the patient/analysand.

This is the gathering of knowledge, all the things that can be told. For a long time, this knowledge (the speech that the patient/analysand produces in their sessions) is the therapist/analyst will work with. The knowledge is interpreted, re-described, connected in new ways.

If all goes well, things that don't make sense to the patient/analysand start to make sense. Working with and through knowledge produces therapeutic effects.

Most people stop coming when sense is made, and therapeutic effects are achieved. They say, "Thanks, this has been helpful. But I want to stop here."

However, a few people keep going. These few people are interested in the truth beyond the therapeutic effects, in what they can't say because there are no words for it, in what can't be caught or contained within knowledge. They want an experience of the truth, whatever it is.

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Why don't more people continue? Why don't more people desire to move past the effects of working through knowledge? Because the effects of confronting "our truth" are far from fun or easy. No one can say what an encounter with an absolute truth will do to them. Chances are, whatever happens, it will be hard.

Why not just go to the truth? Because we can't. It is impossible to go to the truth without first passing through knowledge. (And the effects that come about when we work through knowledge are good!) People need to make sense of their lives before confronting the truth. That's just the way it is.

People who think they can bypass the long trip through knowledge and just go to the truth are delusional in a bad way.