The Breakthrough in Two Acts

Breaking the Spells of Painful Emotions and Finding the Calm in the Present Moment (Revised Edition July 9, 2020)

By: Fredric C. Hartman PhD

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Gabrielle de Cuir, Justine Eyre

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Breakthrough in Two Acts, Dr. Fredric C. Hartman paints a vivid picture of emotional pain and its context within the human mind and brain. Set in the dramatic backdrop of a therapy session as a stage play, featuring Dr. Hartman as the psychologist and Human Consciousness itself as “the patient”, this is a practical guide for anyone who struggles with negative or painful emotions.

In his play, Dr. Hartman tells the story about our vulnerability to painful emotions, which flare up from the depths of our brains, casting distressing and destructive spells over us. As the play unfolds, he develops two new experiences to help strengthen our consciousness: one, by actively breaking the spell of the two thoughts that lie at the heart - and generate the distress - in each of our negative emotions, and two, by embracing the strange, fleeting collection of conditions that come along with the present moments of our lives as they each flash by.

The Breakthrough in Two Acts is an appeal to humanity and a plan for how to use one “part” of our brain - consciousness - to quiet down another chronically overheated “part” - the limbic system - that has ravaged our species with troubles ranging from emotional illness to war. Here is a way of thinking for hard times to help overcome emotional distress and embrace a calmer and more fulfilling way to experience life.

©2007, 2020 Fredric C. Hartman, PhD (P)2020 Skyboat Media, Inc.

Strange and wonderful

Fredric Hartman’s path through life parallels my own in a lot of ways. One major difference is that he went the medical and psychological route and I went the literature and theatrical route. But in this book, with its surprising and practical wisdom, he’s found a way to join those two worlds. And the deep, echoing voice of Stefan Rudnicki gives wonderful resonance to the message.

At the risk of oversimplifying that message, I’ll summarize it thus: we are creatures who live in two streams of time. We have a conscious awareness that exists in the present moment; and we have a primitive consciousness rooted in the limbic system that only knows how to replay fear and anger from past traumas. Most of our emotional turmoil results from not being able to pry those two modes of thinking apart.

There is a strong component of CBT in this. There is also a strong component of Buddhism and mindfulness. But what sets it apart and makes it more immediately helpful — at least I’ve found it so — is this grounding in biological reality. It removes all blame from the equation and provides a shift in perspective that almost by itself does some of the heavy lifting involved in identifying those moments when your thinking has lost touch with present reality.

You may not like the “fantastical” framework he’s adopted for presenting his ideas. The book purports to be a course of psychotherapy where the client is human consciousness itself. But if you don’t like the medium, stick with the message. You may, as I did, find it more genuinely life-changing than a library of similar books.