Part 2: Introduction: A Model of 'The Central, Mediating, Executive Ego' in the Context of 'The Personality-As-A-Whole'
Imagine that the personality is like a business where important, differentiated functions are divided into distinguishable 'departments', each managed by a different 'department manager', and each department having its own particular set of specialized functions, assets, needs, and demands required to run the department properly.
We can even analogize the 'running of the individual personality' to being like running a huge political state -- like The United States of America. ; or alternatively like running Canada with its individual 'province-departments'.
There is the potential for 'dialectical splits' between 'Federal' and 'State' (or 'Provincial') departments.
Or alternatively, there is the potential for 'dialectical unions' between Federal and State (or Provincial) Departments (and Functions).
All together, a country like America or Canada is a huge, pluralistic, and multi-dialectical State. And so too is the Individual Personality.
When the American People elect a man like Barack Obama to be President of The United States of America, they want a number of different things -- such as:
1. A person with a 'top of the line intellect' who is capable of handling the job of President and Commander-in-Chief of The United States of America. (I think of people of America have gotten this -- you don't graduate from Harvard with top marks and a degree in law without having a brilliant intellect);
2. A person who is very good at the 'business, art, and science of living'. The American people are looking for a President who can 'balance' all the mult-fold intricasies of running a country as big and as complex as The United States of America. In particular, in this regard, they are looking for a President who can balance 'accountability' and 'compassionate' values. Here is arguably the biggest split between The Republican Party and The Democrat Party -- Conservative and Liberal Philosophical, Political, Legal, and Economic Factions and Functions: The Republican Party historically tends to emphasize 'accountability' values whereas The Democrat Party tends to emphasize 'compassionate' values. This will probably be the biggest challenge to Obama's Presidency as time marches on -- as Obama tends to lean fairly heavily towards 'socialist-humanist-compassionate' values and it may become a question of whether or not this emphasis on 'social and human compassion' sinks him as a President either foreignly where 'less compassionate' States take advantage of him, and/or internally where the American economy collapes even further under all of his political, corporate, and economic 'give-aways'. Time will tell...;
3. A well-balanced, solidly unionized 'First Couple and First Family'. This is one of the places where Sarah Palin collapsed politically on the last federal election. She couldn't pull that one off -- even with all 'her family pictures'. JFK may have been able to pull his many 'infidelities' off without it destroying his political career. Same too with Bill Clinton. But not too many others can. John Edwards certainly didn't. This points out one of the toughest 'dialectic splits' to deal with in the human personality -- a conflict that we often project outwards onto our political leaders and our 'mythological gods', expecting them to 'harmoniously' deal with an issue that we often can't -- i.e., the issue of 'faithfulness' vs. 'infidelity'. In the human psyche, this conflict can be variously labelled such as the 'good boy/bad boy syndrome' or conversely the 'good girl/bad girl syndrome'. Among our mythological gods, the Greek God Zeus was infamous for His many affairs amongst both Gods and humans. Zeus was the symbolization, and idealization of the 'Alpa-Male' -- the 'testosterone-laden' God who could more or less have any female He wanted. Zeus was a 'Spartan God', a 'Republican God'. In contrast, Jesus Christ was the opposite -- more or less an 'effeminate God'. God of Compassion. God of Caring. God of Altruism. God of Love. All men walk a 'tight-rope plank' and each man walks it differently. Each man deals with this 'sexual dialectic split' differently -- the split between trying to live up to the Masculine Ideal of 'Zeus' vs. trying to live up to the Masculine-Feminine Ideal of 'Jesus Christ'.
Barrack Obama has to live up to the tightrope walk of balancing the psychology, philosophy, spirituality-religion, economics, and politics of Zeus with Jesus Christ. Bush failed miserably. There was not enough 'Jesus Christ Compassion' in Bush's psyche -- just testosterone-laden (in the area of aggression if not sexuality), hard-line, Spartan, Republican Psychological-Philosophical Dynamics -- and after 8 years, the American People had had enough of 'Republican-Spartan Philosophy, Economics, War, and Politics'. Enter Obama to offer something different -- a political projection of the more 'Jesus Christ Oriented Mythological Archetype Figure'. (Or perhaps Mohammad for that matter who shares some similarities in the Muslim religion with the Ideal of Jesus Christ in the Christian religion.)
The trouble that many men have with this Sexual Dialectic Split in the Personality -- as I have described it here between the Archetype-Figure of Zeus vs. the Archetype Figure of Jesus Christ -- was differently but similarily described by Alfred Adler under his concept of 'The Masculine Protest'. Unfortunately, Adler ran away from this concept when it became 'politically misinterpreted and incorrect'. This is too bad because it was a great concept. One that I intend to bring back to life again.
In the 'femininine sexual dialectic split', this split has sometimes been called 'The Madonna/Whore Syndrome' -- women more or less being expected to, or expecting themselves to, live up to some combination of -- let us say -- 'Mother Teresa' and the pop star 'Madonna' (where Madonna in this latter sense is used in the opposite sense of the first).
Now stepping out of the political world and back into the business world, any business can be divided into whatever departments the owner of the business feels he or she needs in order to run the business properly.
In personality theory, the business being run is the business of living -- the art and the science of living (See Erich Fromm, 'Man For Himself', 1947, and 'The Art of Loving', 1956).
In Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology, the business, art, and science of living -- or worded otherwise, personality theory -- is divided into 20 -- yes, count them! -- 20 departments in the personality.
Twenty departments in the human mind-psyche-personality, you gasp. Freud only had three (Ego, Id, Superego). Perls only had two (topdog/underdog). Jung's final divisions of the personality I am not sure of. Let us say he had five ('Persona', 'Shadow', 'Personal Unconcious', 'Collective Unconscious', and 'The Self'. He had other concepts like 'archetype-figures' and the 'anima' and the 'animus' but these, I believe, were parts of the 'Collective (Mythological) Unconscious'. So let us say, for working purposes here, he had five. I stand to be corrected by anyone more knowledgeable of Jungian Theory than me. But I am sure that I have the central 'essence' of his theory here).
Ronald Fairbain had some interesting concepts such as 'Rejecting Object' and 'Exciting Object' that I intend to incorporate into DGB Transference Theory.
Eric Berne had three main 'ego-states' -- 'Child/Lower'; 'Adult/Middle'; 'Parent/Top' of which 'The Parent' was divided into 'The Nurturing Parent' vs. 'The Controlling Parent'; and 'The Child' was divided into the 'Free Child' and 'The Adapted Child'. That makes '3 ego-states -- two of them which have 'auxiliary sub-ego-states'. My DGB Model is closest to Berne's Transactional Analysis Model while incorporating elements of all of the others as well. We will come back to the TA model shortly but first let us look at some of Erich Fromm's ideas -- another important influence on Hegel's Hotel.
Erich Fromm postulated 5 different 'basic needs' in 'human nature':
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From the internet..Wikipedia..
The word biophilia was frequently used by Fromm as a description of a productive psychological orientation and "state of being". For example, in an addendum to his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius For Good and Evil, Fromm wrote as part of his famous Humanist Credo:
"I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom." (c. 1965)
Erich Fromm postulated five basic needs:
1. Relatedness - relationships with others, care, respect, knowledge;
2. Transcendence - creativity, develop a loving and interesting life;
3. Rootedness - feeling of belonging;
4. Sense of Identity - see ourselves as a unique person and part of a social group.
5. A frame of orientation - the need to understand the world and our place in it.
Fromm's thesis of the "escape from freedom" is epitomized in the following passage. The "individualized man" referenced by Fromm is man bereft of "primary ties" of belonging (nature, family, etc.), also expressed as "freedom from":
"There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all men and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.... However, if the economic, social and political conditions... do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality in the sense just mentioned, while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It then becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom." (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom [N.Y.: Rinehart, 1941], pp. 36-7. The point is repeated on pp. 31, 256-7.)
Five orientations
Fromm also spoke of "orientation of character" in his book "Man For Himself", which describes the ways an individual relates to the world and constitutes his general character, and develops from two specific kinds of relatedness to the world: acquiring and assimilating things ("assimilation"), and reacting to people ("socialization"). Fromm considers these character systems the human substitute for instincts in animals. These orientations describe how a man has developed in regard to how he responds to conflicts in his or her life; he also said that people were never pure in any such orientation.
These two factors form four types of malignant character, which he calls Receptive, Exploitative, Hoarding and Marketing. He also described a positive character, which he called Productive.
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The Modern Transactional Analysis Model of The Personality...
From the internet...businessballs.com
Significantly, the original three Parent Adult Child components were sub-divided to form a new seven element model, principally during the 1980's by Wagner, Joines and Mountain. This established Controlling and Nurturing aspects of the Parent mode, each with positive and negative aspects, and the Adapted and Free aspects of the Child mode, again each with positive an negative aspects, which essentially gives us the model to which most TA practitioners refer today:
1. Parent (Upper Ego States...dgb addition)
Parent is now commonly represented as a circle with four quadrants:
Nurturing - Nurturing (positive) and Spoiling (negative).
Controlling - Structuring (positive) and Critical (negative).
2. Adult (Middle Ego States...dgb addition)
Adult remains as a single entity, representing an 'accounting' function or mode, which can draw on the resources of both Parent and Child.
3. Child (Lower Ego States...dgb addition)
Child is now commonly represented as circle with four quadrants:
Adapted - Co-operative (positive) and Compliant/Resistant (negative).
Free - Spontaneous (positive) and Immature (negative).
Where previously Transactional Analysis suggested that effective communications were complementary (response echoing the path of the stimulus), and better still complementary adult to adult, the modern interpretation suggests that effective communications and relationships are based on complementary transactions to and from positive quadrants, and also, still, adult to adult. Stimulii and responses can come from any (or some) of these seven ego states, to any or some of the respondent's seven ego states.
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The Hegel's Hotel: DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Personality Theory Model is built mainly from The Transactional Analysis with numerous 'auxilliary ego-state additions' and 'four unconscious/basement floor additions' that combine a mixture of Freudian and Jungian Psychology. There are also some 'Nietzschean Birth of Tragedy' elements in the model.
The DGB Model has:
A/ 3 Upper Zone/Parent Ego States: 1. The Nurturing (Hera/Gaia) Topdog; 2. The Dionysian-Narcissistic-Controlling Topdog; and 3. The Apollonian-Righteous-Rejecting-Controlling Topdog;
B/ 10 Middle Zone/Adult Ego States: 4. The Central-Mediating-Executive Ego surrounded by 9 'Auxilliary-Advisory Ego States: 5. The Darwinian-Survival Ego; 6. The Epistemological (Rational-Empirical-Metaphysical) Ego; 7. The Ethical Ego; 8. The Smith-Marx-Conservative-Liberal-Capitalist-Socialist Economic Ego; 9. The Security-Risk-Taking Ego; 10. The Enlightenment-Romantic Ego; 11. The Humanistic (Compassionate)-Existential (Accountable) Ego; 12. The Physical Health Ego; and 13. The Creative-Destructive (Constructive-Deconstructive) Ego.
C/ 3 Lower Zone/Child Ego States: 14. The Rebellious-Apollonian Underdog; 15. The Rebellious-Dionysian Underdog; and 16. The Adapted (Co-operative-Approval-Seeking) Underdog.
D/ 4 Unconscious Genetic, Bio-Chemical, Mythological, Symbolic, Dream, Fantasy, and Memory-Transference Templates/Complexes/Drives/Impulses
17. The Dynamic-Creative-Destructive-Symbolic-Integrating Unconscious
18. The Personal-Social Memory-Learning-Transference Template
19. The Genetic Mythological-Symbolic Memory-Learning-Archetype Template
20. The Genetic, Talented, Potential, Unactualized Self
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This is the entire DGB model of the human psyche and personality of which 'The Central Ego State' constitutes only one of 20 'departments' in the personality, albeit, one of the most important -- i.e. 'the Chief Executive and Mediating Officer', The 'Commander in Chief', The 'President of The Personality' seeking to integrating all other 18 departments in the personality.
To be sure there are some significant overlaps.
But this is the model we will work with for the forseeeable future.
We will return to a longer discussion of this model in Part 3 of this essay.
For now, let us continue on with Part 1 of this essay. Let us describe and explore a model and functioning of 'The Central Mediating and Executive Ego' in the context of the larger DGB model of the 'personality-as-a-whole'.
-- dgb, May 6th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
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