In order to understand the co-relation between man's culture -- religion, art, mythology, philosophy, psychology, medicine, architecture, business, politics, law --and the nature and makeup of man's psyche, we have to understand the process of 'internalization' and 'externalization' which can be called alternatively 'introjection' (or 'identification') and 'projection'. These are primarily 'psychoanalytic concepts' although many if not most forms of psychotherapy today use them in similar fashion (Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy...)
I am not here to knit-pick over small technical differences in meaning. I am here to integrate concepts in a way that hopefully helps us to understand the relationship between man and his culture, and the evolution of man and his culture.
Quite simply put, we learn from our culture and we give back to our culture what we have learned either in an 'either/or' format (either we completely 'introject' what we have learned or we completely 'reject' it); or in a 'modified-integrative-assimilative' fashion. I heard a religious preacher on tv say that we either 'transmit' what we have learned or we 'transform' it. I like the distinction.
Either we can transmit what we have learned in its entirety -- for better or for worse -- or we can transform what we have learned in which case we have internally changed a part of what we have learned to make it something else -- which is particularly important when we have learned something 'toxic' and 'pathological' and 'detoxified' this to make it something that is much healthier for social consumption.
The religious preacher was talking about 'purifying toxic beliefs and forms of living' and 'transforming' these beliefs/behaviors into something that was not going to pass on these toxins to someone else. He gave the example of Jesus as the perfect 'role-model' for how this 'detoxification process' was done. I might mention 'Mother Teresa' and 'Martin Luther King' as two other role models who rose far above other people in their ability to deliver this 'detoxification process' -- and in so doing -- inspire hope and optimism where before there was only hopelessness and despair.
In terms of understanding the dynamics of man, everything is integrated -- history, politics, law, economics, business, philosophy, art, architecture, sports and enteratainment, masculinism and feminism...
From one you can come to understand them all, and from all you can come to understand one. Reductionism is connected to/integrated with wholism just as wholism is connected to/integrated with reductionism.
Understand mythology and you can get some understanding of man's psychology -- ancient mythology is like a 'soap opera' involving the externalization of the internal dynamics of man's psyche. If you understand the 'projective-externalization' process of a man's -- or woman's -- God', then this can give you a very good working indication of at least one of the man's/woman's 'internal archetype -- and transference -- figures'.
'Transference' -- in my opinion, Freud's most creative and powerful psychoanalytic concept -- we will delve into with considerable gusto at a different time. Unlock a person's transferences -- and 'transference complexes' -- and you unlock the the depths of a person's spiritual and/or sexual, poisoned and/or enlightened, soul. Obviously, transference is not a concept that we want to talk about lightly, casually, or carelessly. In the hands of the best psychotherapists, understanding 'the dynamics of the transference' can be like a 'magic wand'. Self-enlightenment -- and change -- can follow. Or not.
Most of us have to live with the dynamics of our own personal transferences complexes -- for better and/or for worse -- for the entirety of our life, with perhaps some greater or lesser modifications along the way. It is a short -- connected distance -- between our transference complexes, our archetypes and sterotypes, our narcissistic ego traumacies and their compensations, our obsessions, our addictions, and our serial behavior patterns. The more 'poisoned' a person's transference complexes are, the more 'poisonous' are likely to be his or her resulting 'serial behavior patterns'. I am talking about cases like the 'serial rapist and/or killer', the 'serial victim'...and so on. Another day. Let us move on.
The model that is about to follow -- the DGB integrative model of the human psyche -- is a mixture of: Psychanalysis Theory (Traumacy Theory, Narcissistic Theory, Ego Theory, Object Relations, Self-Theory), Jungian Theory, Transactional Analysis, Adlerian Theory, Gestalt Theory, the history of philosophy, and Greek Mythology...
Many will say the model is too big. There are too many different 'ego compartments' in it. Remember that 'ego compartments' are 'metaphysical constructs' that can be expanded or reduced, accepted or rejected, at a moment's notice. They are metaphysical constructs that are meant to have 'functional value'. If they don't have functional value for teaching and/or learning purposes, then trash them. They are not 'God-given epistemological truths'. They are not empirically verifiable. They are metaphysical constructs that are meant to have functional value. No value -- don't use. It's as simple as that. Too many psycho-theorists spend endless hours righteously arguing for or against where a particular 'ego-compartment boundary' should or should not be drawn. A waste of time! Again these boundaries are not like the boundaries of a 'liver' where someone can actually trace the boundary with a finger, a pen, or a knife. They are conceptual, metaphysical boundaries that are more or less completely arbitrary -- except for the factor of 'pragmatic, functional value and usage'. Throw them out if they are not useful -- and try again. Try another model that works better for what you are trying to accomplish. But don't get into the 'righteous either/or' argument of 'true or false', 'right or wrong'. True and false, right or wrong -- are for mathematics and spelling; not for metaphysical constructs and models.
I think we are ready. 'The Messiah is coming!' The DGB Integrative Model of the human psyche is coming! Hold onto your hats! Hide your children! We might be coming into something that is X-rated. Man -- in the deepest depths of his being -- is X-rated. Homer said that -- or he projected man's X-ratedness onto man's 'Gods'. Plato said that man had three energy sources: the mind, the heart, and the loins. St. Augustine said that man was X-rated -- or at least he admitted that he, himself was: 'God, make me chaste -- but not yet!' (Wait until I have no testosterone left! -- my editorial addition). Hobbes wrote that man was X-rated. (You need a heavy police force to contain him.) Schopenhauer wrote that all of life is X-rated -- and there is nothing that we can do about it except maybe learn Budhism or go see a good theatre play in order to release our pent up feelings.
Nietzsche said that man was X-rated -- and that was basically a 'good thing'. Man needed to be more in touch with his senses -- and do away with the 'Christian, herd mentality'. Man needed to strive to be a 'Superman' at whatever he was good at -- and wanted to be. (I hear you, Professor Nietzsche, I hear you. In 'Hegel's Hotel', I am striving to be a 'Superman'. Even though you hated Hegel, 'The Birth of Tragedy ('BT')' was one of your best works -- and it was extremely 'Hegelian'. Your 'BT' was the bridge between Hegel, Schopenhauer -- and Freud. BT -- perhaps more than anything Freud wrote -- marked 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis'. Man needed to 'integrate' his inner 'Apollo' with his inner 'Dionysus'. Only then could he achieve the proper balance that he needed to live his life with 'existential gusto'! Sounds like 'homeostasis'. Sounds like the beginning of the need for man's 'ego' to integrate his 'superego' (Apollo) with his 'id' (Dionysus). Where BT started, Freud -- and Jung -- took over.
And that too is where we will start.
dgb, May 11th, 2008.
