When something comes at you obliquely it doesn’t come straight at you, it comes at you sideways, sometimes from the periphery and at other times, from a direction not readily visible.
So too with dysfunction. It does not come at you as what it is. It manifests as a symptom. Addiction* for example, is not what it appears. It is not the representation of an individual’s illness, lack of willpower or questionable character. And while addiction can bring about all of these things, addiction is about pain. Not about the pain of being addicted, but pain that you can only see obliquely. Only by seeing to the side and underneath of an addiction can you uncover the genesis of the symptom.
*It’s important to broaden our reference when we mention addiction otherwise behaviours and ways of thinking that are just as ‘addictive’ as any illicit drug will not resonate for most of us who don’t have issues with illicit drugs but are addicted nevertheless to ways of being (like addicted to a myopic way of thinking, addicted to behaviours that continuously get us stuck in unhealthy relationships, addicted to magical thinking like when we think that someone will rescue us, like being addicted to hoping without doing, etc.,) that don’t present as harmful addictions when looked at straight on.
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