I said in Part 1 of this essay, that life is much to do about 'engagement' and 'contact' as well as let me add -- 'awareness', 'sensitivity-empathy', 'ethics', combined with the right type of good 'narcissistic self-confidence', from which springs 'passion', 'courage', 'the will and the choice of right direction to self-empowerment' and 'empowering others', the 'mental and emotional stamina and the perseverance' needed to get to where we want to get to, 'and the willingness and ability to negotiate assertively with and against others for the things that are most important to us in our life'....to 'share our personal vision relative to what we want to accomplish in life'...and 'to get other people on board with us if, and to the extent, that they may share our passion with us, and to 'make this all happen through our actions' and letting people know that 'we mean what we say we mean' and in this regard show a 'strength of congruence and transparency' relative to 'talking the talk' and then 'walking the walk'...
These characteristics are all integrated and make up much of what is the center of my focus here in Hegel's Hotel in terms of 'dialectic-democratic engagement' and even 'multi-dialectic-democratic engagement'. Indeed, these characteristics probably make up much of what we might call the 'art and science of living'....and in this regard, are probably the focus of many, if not most, 'self-help' and 'motivational' books...
But right now, we are going down a little different path...
I said in an earlier essay that I needed a 'guinea pig' for the purpose of bringing an assortment of very abstract ideas down to a level of concrete application...What I was looking for was some person's 'conscious earliest memory'. Since I didn't get any 'volunteers' -- gee, that surprises me -- that leaves me two options: either going back to Freud's earliest memory which I have used in a few other essays. Or -- gulp -- use my own earliest memory which isn't exactly exciting me, but coincidently or non-coincidently, it is actually quite similar to Freud's earliest conscious memory.
Let me confuse you before I enlighten you in aiming to bring clarity to my 'Massive Psychoanalytic Integration Project' (MPIP) here spanning some 120 years (1890-2010).
My aim is to teach 'Dialectic-Democratic-Integrationism' (DDI); not 'Narcissistic-Either/Or-Conceptual-Capitalist-Property-Alienation-Isolationism, and Divisionism' (NEO-CCPAID).
Pay me money for my thoughts and watch me succumb to the 'manipulative-seduction' -- 'the bait with a hook on it' -- of Narcissistic-Conceptual-Capitalism...
Right now I can 'think freely' like Spinoza who 'kept himself free of all narcissistic affiliations' -- where 'you get paid to tow the party line'. That is why people think inside of 'boxes and paradigms' -- and can't or won't or choose not to -- take a Nietzshean leap of courage outside of these self-limiting containers... As Marx would say, it all comes down to the economics (of not thinking outside the box -- my addition).
That is why -- billions of dollars later -- we still don't have a cure for cancer, or diabetes, or high blood pressure, or high cholesterol... There is too much money that is tied up in 'alleged partial cures' that don't work...or don't work for long...or only partially work...and/or create new problems that may be equal or worse than the old ones...
My aim is to teach 'Hegelian Integrative Dialectic-Democratic-Empathic-Negotiable' (HIDDEN) Logic (I like that acronym); not 'Aristotelean-Compartmentalized-Either/Or-Us-Or-Them-Black-or-White-Right-or-Wrong-Excluded-Middle' Logic (sorry, too big for any acronym that I can think of here).
I have another 'single' and 'triple acronym' however, which may or may not be worth anything after this essay.
What I am trying to create here is a type of 'All Star-All-Inclusive-Psychoanalysis'.
Stereotyping, Discrimination, Conceptual and Property Narcissism, Narcissistic Capitalism, Special Interests Groups, Preferentialism, Elitism, Exclusionism, Marginalization, Suppression, Denial, Non-Transparency -- these characteristics all tend to bring out the worst in human beings.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau had a dream of 'multi-culturalism' and one day his dream may come true.
Maybe if enough different cultures, races, religions, and ethnic groups come together in time and space for a long enough period of time, slowly integrate with each other, cross-breed with each other, cross-integrate their respective thoughts, ideas, desires, goals, and feelings with each other,
then Trudeau's dream of 'multi-culturalism' will eventually come true.
But part of me remains pessimistic and cynical unless people can 'un-learn' all of the different thinking mechanisms that I have listed up above. Because even people living right beside each other can have no contact with each other. And even different ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious groups can live right beside each other and still remain isolated from each other.
No mixing. No integrationism. Just ethnic, cultural, racial, and religious narcissism, 'Aristotelean Either/Or' thinking, and isolationism.
The same basic principle also governs the Academic World and the World of 'Capitalist-Conceptual-Property-Narcissism' feature of Western Society.
Let us just say that particular 'negative thinking patterns' are endemic, pandemic, and socio-pathological to any idea and any idealistic vision of 'multi-dialectic-democratic-egalitarian-culturalism'.
In my essays to come on 'Central Ego Functioning: Language, Epistemology, Ethics, and Action' , I will address many of these negative thinking patterns that come with 'Over-Interpreting, Over-Generalizing, Over-Associationism, Over-Stereotyping, Over-Discriminating, Over-Judging' and 'Either/Or-Right-Or-Wrong' thinking using 'General Semantics' as my main 'Semantic and Epistemological Tool Kit'. In a nutshell, Korzybski's General Semantic philosophy can be summarized in the simple sentence: 'This is not that.!'
In Hegel's Hotel, I am trying to teach you to both 'think outside the box' -- and to think in 'between the boxes', in between all the different 'gaps' that are left behind by all the different boxes or paradigms.
In this context, all the different 'boxes' or 'paradigms' refer to all the different schools of psychology that are out there, each pushing their own particular brand of philosophy-psychology to sell you in terms of education and/or psychotherapy.
Call me the point man and integrative co-ordinator for the creation of a 'GAP-DGB Psychoanalytic and Non-Psychoanalytic Hall of Fame'. And a school of integrative philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy that knows no borders and borrows and modifies ideas from all the esteemed psychologists that I write about.
I teach inclusionism; not exclusionism.
Within the scope of my ability and knowledge, I teach all brands of 'Psychoanalysis' and 'Non-Psychoanalysis' in Hegel's Hotel. And integrate them all within the scope of my 'flexible, outwardly pulsating Super-Psychoanalytic and non-Psychoanalytic thinking'...You throw a rock into a lake and you watch the rock cause commotion in the lake with ripples pulsating outwardly from where it just disappeared -- and that rock is Hegel's Hotel: DGB Multi-Dialectic-Democratic-Philosophy-Psychology...
At the center of the rock -- at the center of Hegel's Hotel -- is Hegel, followed closely by Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse and Daoism, Spinoza, Locke, Diderot, Voltaire, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Russel, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Rand, Foucault, Derrida...and that is on the 'philosophical side of the rock'...
On the psychological side, Freud is at the center of the rock, at the center of Hegel's Hotel, followed closely by Adler, Perls, Jung, Ferenczi, Rank, Wilhelm and Theodor Reik, Melanie Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Eric Berne, Jeffrey Masson, Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden...
In my opinion, these psycho-theorists and therapists listed above should all be included in 'The Psychoanalytic Hall of Fame' -- and as such, I include them all, trumpet their similar and different ideas, and honor them all in 'the multi-dialectic-democratic-integrative holistic spirit' of Hegel's Hotel...
I theorize and therapize between many of the different gaps and paradigms that still separate and isolate many of the similar and different schools of psychology that are in operation in the world today.
I would call this particular approach 'GAP-DGB Psychoanalysis' other than the fact that I have no academic credentials in Psychoanalysis other than what I have taught myself and what I have learned from different theorists and therapists some of whom call themselves 'psychoanalysts' and some of whom don't .
'A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.'
That is enough for today.
-- dgb, Dec. 17th, 2005.
-- david gordon bain
