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 here is a basic rule that a psychotic person is concerned with the past, a neurotic person is barely able to keep up with the present and a sane person is concerned with the future.
This division could be more specifically made by realizing that the neurotic is barely able to confront the present, but that the very, very sane confront the present entirely and have very little concern for the future, being competent enough in handling the present to let the future take care of itself. Looking into the past and looking into the extreme future, alike, are efforts to avoid present time and efforts to look elsewhere than at something. (By present time we mean the time that is now. It is the instant which is now and the successive instants of now.)
You have known people who would reply on an entirely different subject when asked about anything; when consulted concerning the weather, they would reply about a meteorologist. The inability to look at something becomes first manifest by thinking before looking, and then the actual target at which one should be looking is more and more avoided until it is hidden entirely in a mix-up of complications.
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