I am an old-fashioned 'rational-empiricist' -- and student of General Semantics -- meaning that I believe in the 'representational' idea of 'conceptual constructs' reflecting some aspect of 'phenomenal reality' (and/or 'noumenal' reality in a Kantian sense).
Thus, the equation relative to words, concepts, reality, and meaning, from a DGB rational-empirical-General Semantic perspective goes something like this:
1. Words are short forms for concepts (or conceptual constructs).
2. Concepts (or ideas) are mental representations of our phenomenal or phenomenological experience which entails a combination of our observations, interpretations (or inferences) and value judgments.
3. Theories involves interrelationships between concepts which again are supposed to reflect some aspect of the way 'objective reality works', meaning a representational and structural correspondence between our theoretical constructs and what is or was 'really happening out there (or in there).
4. There will always be the so-called 'Kantian (or 'subjective-objective') Split' which means that there will always be some greater or lesser degree of 'structural and/or process error' between what we think is happening in our 'objective world of reality both inside and outside our body' and what really is happening. For example, I just had an MRI done on my liver yesterday in which doctors were trying to get a 'better picture and representational model' relative to what was happening with my liver (and liver pathology). Oftentimes, a 'picture' is worth more than a thousand speculative inferential or interpretive or assumptive guesses without the picture.
Now, when it comes to 'personality theory', concepts or conceptual constructs can be put together and pulled apart faster than a set of Legos. Why? Because we have no way of getting 'pictures' of 'mental images' or 'concepts' or 'ideas'. These things are strictly metaphysical in that they cannot be seen although they are often meant to stand for something that can be seen. For example, the word 'dog' cannot be seen although it is meant to stand for a whole host of similar but different individual dogs such as such and such a dog over here, 'Rover', who can be described more specifically in term of his or her individual characteristics.
However, one of the main problems relative to personality theory is: How do you see a 'Self' or an 'Ego' or a 'Superego' or an 'Id' or a 'Persona' or a 'Shadow'.
These concepts are meant to stand for something -- some aspect of our 'mental or phenomenological (subjective, conceptual) reality that cannot be seen. And things cannot be seen tend to create much more controversy in terms of whether they actually exist or whether we are just 'making something up' that does not exist.
Consequently, philosophers like David Hume -- being the very strict, reductionist- empiricist that he was -- denied the phenomenological concept or conceptual construct of 'The Self' as even having any kind of 'real-objective existence'. Perhaps even more so with concepts like 'The Soul' or 'God' which again have no 'observational reality'.
'Behavioral theorists' -- being strict psychological empiricists -- have also denied the 'real-objective existence' of anything that goes on within our mind in the way of 'mental, representational images'.
Strict empirical behavioral theorists deal with a 'Stimulus-Response(SR)' Model and Formula that denies any existence of any 'mental representations' inside our heads that have anything to do with 'explaining or understanding behavior'.
In contrast, 'cognitive theorists and therapists' advance a model and formula that goes more like this: 'Stimulus-Belief-Response(SBR)'. This model, in contrast to the SR model advanced by the Behavioral Theorists and Therapists takes into account our inner phenomenological process our -- 'inner cognitions or beliefs or mental representations'.
The professor at the University of Waterloo back in 1979 who was marking my Honours Thesis paper was a 'Cognitive-Behavioral Theorist and Therapist', Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, who was trying to bridge the gap (I think very successfully) between the very strict behavioral theorists (like B.F. Skinner) and the more 'rationally-empirically' based Cognitive Theories (like Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and George Kelly whose philosophy can be traced back through the Enlightenment, through philosophers like John Locke, Sir Francis Bacon, and all the way back to the ancient Roman philosopher, Epictetus and his famous saying: 'Man is not disturbed by things but by the view he takes of them.').
In 1979, I advanced a model of what now I would call 'The Central Ego' which was a 'Cognitive-Emotional-Behavioral' model influenced by my readings of the Cogntive Theorists, by the General Semanticists (primarily Alfred Korzybski and S.I., Hayakawa) and influenced partly by the 'Objectivist and Self-Esteem Philosophy' of Nathaniel Branden ('The Psychology of Self-Esteem', 1969), as well as indirectly, Ayn Rand who created Objectivist Philosophy and who strongly influenced Branden during the eighteen years they worked and were professionally and personally involved with each other (from 1950-1968).
My 1979 'Central Ego' model could/can also be referred to as a 'Stimulus-Perception or (Sensory Perception)-Interpretration-Evaluation-Response' (SPIER) -- an extension of the more basic Stimulus-Belief-Response (SBR) Cognitive Model. There is not too much about the 1979 model that I would change today except perhaps in an updated format that takes into account everything that I have learned philosophically and psychologically in the 30 years from 1979 to the present. Still, the basic 'Central Ego' model remains the same.
Now going back to the word 'Ego' which is of German origin (at least as far back as I can trace it), dating back at least to the philosophy of Johann Fichte (1762-1814), and meaning basically 'I' or 'Self', often used in an almost 'objective third party sense' as if our 'Ego' is operating outside of ourselves which can create some serious difficulties relative to 'denying accountability and responsibility for what comes out of our Ego -- which is basically just another way of saying 'I' or 'Self'.
The Classic Psychoanalytic Model, for example, tends to be very 'deterministic' with certain classes of thoughts and/or impulses and/or restraints and/or behaviors coming out of one of the three main Psychoanalytic Psychic Departments or Compartments -- 'Ego' (mediating and problem solving compartment of the personality), 'Id' (the impulsive, biological and/or instinctual compartment of the personality), or 'Superego' (the social and internal righteous-ethical conscience compartment of the personality) -- almost as if we have no, or at least, little 'free control' of what comes out of these three 'zones' of the personality, and relative to how we ultimately behave (with all of the 'historical, biological, childhood, and socially determining forces that are at play in the way that we think, feel, want, and act).
In contrast, a more 'humanistic-existential psychoanalytic model' such as the one I am trumpeting here in Hegel's Hotel, as developed from my own thinking, in conjunction with my own source of historical, philosophical, psychological, and experiential influences, adds a more 'free will' and 'first person I' perspective to the more traditional perspective of Psychoanalysis. Perhaps my main influential mentor here is the Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalyst -- Eric Fromm (1900-1980) -- who was a highly influential force on my thinking in the 1970s, and who continues to influence my work today.
Once we start 'splitting the Ego' up into 2 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 25 different compartments, the issue becomes all about 'functional-theoretical-therapeutic convenience' -- every 'ego-theorist' ostensibly looking for some kind of ideal balance between 'simplicity and sophistication' with almost as many different renditions of 'ego-splits' out there as there are theorists. It is all 'cognitively metaphysical' in that no one can see any picture of 'the ego' or any 'sub-compartment of the ego' whether we want to use the Classic Psychoanalytic terminology or some other different rendition of it.
In fact, in the Classic Psychoanalytic model, the 'Ego' is not even equivalent to the 'Total, Wholistic Self' but rather to a sub-component of The Self -- a mainly consciously aware part of our selves as opposed to the activities of the allegedly more unconscious and biologically/narcissistically driven 'Id'.
In contrast, I view the Ego as reflecting every aspect and every mental and emotional activity within the Self. In other words, 'Self' and 'I' and 'Ego' are all equivalent words for the same representation of our entire, wholistic, dialectically integrated and/or split subjective-objective Self -- including both our 'aware' components and our 'unaware' components, both our biologically and psychologically impulsive components and forces as well as our ethically righteous and/or safety restraining components and forces.
We can reduce our personality -- our Self, our Ego, our 'I' -- into as many different useful and/or not useful conceptual constructs as we want, put them together and/or dismantle them at a moment's notice, and/or put some reductionist 'Ego-compartments' into our 'theoretical closet' until we need to pull them back out and use them, but in the end -- like the operation of any company with few or many different 'departments' in it -- still have to come back to the main overall functioning of the company which may come down mainly to the philosophy and activity of 'The CEO' or in our case here -- 'The Central (Mediating and Executive) Ego'.
Every other 'Ego-Compartment' or 'Ego-Split' in the personality, as constructed by me -- which are like 'lobbyists', each appealing to their particular realm of specific, functional and/or dysfunctional interest -- has to, in the end, answer to the CEO of the personality -- the Central Ego -- the 'subjective-objective I' of the personality, even if the Central Ego, like a weak boss, allows itself (ourselves) to be overwhelmed by this internal lobbyist or that one -- for example, overwhelmed in the addictive personality to the hedonistic impulses of the 'Id' or as I prefer to call this portion of the personality -- our 'Dionysian Ego'.
In such instances, we simply need to find ways of 'strengthening the power' of our Central Ego and/or the activities of another conceptually constructed division of our personality -- the 'Superego' in Psychoanalytic terminology, the 'Topdog' in Gestalt Terminology, the 'Apollonian Ego' in my own DGB terminology.
In opposite instances, we may need to strengthen the 'power' of our Dionysian or Narcissistic Ego in order to increase our self-assertiveness and our ability to both say -- and get what we want. We can say that people who 'beat around the bush' all the time and/or 'allude to immediacy' without directly stating the immediacy of what they are thinking and/or wanting are people who have 'weak Dionysian and/or Narcissistic Egos'. The same goes with people who are 'pleasing' and/or 'submissive' all the time -- here we may have to 'strengthen the activities of our Righteous and/or Rebellious and/or Dionysian and/or Narcissistic Ego' in order not to be dominated all the time by someone else's 'will to power' and/or 'will to hedonism' and/or 'will to narcissism'. We need to 'step up to the plate more' unless of course we get some sort of 'Dionysian and/or approval-seeking pleasure' out of staying exactly where we are and playing the 'Submissive Ego' -- or 'Doormat' -- role.
Been there. Done that. Kicked myself for doing it. More narcissistic self-assertion needed please. Sometimes we need to fill up our 'narcissistic tank'. Other times, we need to fill up our 'altruistic tank'. Both tanks are needed for a 'healthy, well-balanced personality. Same with our Dionysian and Apollonian tanks. And our 'Enlightenment' and 'Romantic' tanks. And our 'Humanistic' (compassionate) and 'Existential' (self-accountability) tanks.
These are some of the different types of 'Polar-Ego-Compartments' or 'Polar-Ego-Splits' can be functionally used by a psychotherapist to help a client re-integrate whatever his or her particular dominant polar split is to arrive at a more balanced dialectical-democratic wholism.
Meanwhile, each and everyone of us generally goes through our particular day with one polar-ego-compartment dominating over another -- some version of our 'dominant Persona' pushing aside our 'marginalized Shadow' -- as opposed to finding and using a more ideally operative set or system of 'dual-action-dual-polarities-democratically and dialectically working with and against each other to find a healthier state of being in the middle of these two opposing internal polar lobbyists'
This can be viewed as Aristotle's version of 'the middle path' or my DGB post-Hegelian version of the middle path (even as we are bound to experiment with opposite Nietzschean and/or anti-Nietzschean extremes before we get to the place we are ultimately looking for in the middle).
Such is the 'ideal purpose' of using 'conceptual constructs' to describe and sometimes alter the inner activities of our Self, our Ego, our 'I'.
-- dgb, Aug. 26th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are still in process...
..............................................................................
