The more choices we have, the greater the need for focus. - Tom Butler-Bowdon

For Pascal, lack of faith was a kind of laziness, a view summed up by T.S. Eliot in his introduction to the Pensées: “The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.

The ego develops a defense in order to protect itself against being overcome by unconscious demands such as sex and aggression. The work of the psychoanalyst is to get the person to become conscious of their instinctual urges, which may involve isolating the pain experienced when they were originally confronted by an unsatisfied impulse.

Burns lists ten “cognitive distortions,” such as all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralization, disqualifying the positive, jumping to conclusions, and giving ourselves labels. By understanding these distortions, we are led to the awareness that “feelings aren’t facts,” they are only mirrors of our thoughts.