Probably most of us visit one or more of our potential bi-polar extremes, to some extent or another, at various points in our lives...
Our 'visit' here may not necessarily be dysfunctional...
Call it a 'vacation'...or a form of 'compensation' against an already existing, underlying dysfunctional, humanistic-existential, problem...the problem of being real, of being alive...of having a pulse...
The problem of living the life of a lie...
Of living the life of a Stranger...
Is the mind,
The body,
The soul,
Dead yet?
Call 'bi-polar disorder'...
Or 'manic-depression'...
At least sometimes...
The psychological equivalent...
Of an emergency form of 'bi-pass open heart surgery'...
A race against time...
To find a living, throbbing, pulse...
An admittedly, usually, self-destructive....
Wild attempt...
To find a better life equilibrium...
A better psychological, homeostatic...
Balance....
Unfound...
The bi-polar extremist...
Keeps slamming his or her head...
Against each opposite goal post...
And can't find 'the humanistic-existential net' in the middle...
Otherwise,
The strategy...
Would not need to be,
Endlessly repeated...
--dgb, April 30th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Between Mania and Depression...
-- Are Still in Process...
Friday, April 30, 2010
On The Trial of a Stranger...
Life is full of bi-polar choices,
Opposing choices...
We can choose this,
Or we can choose that..
We can do this,
Or we can do that...
If we are starting to feel like the main character...
In a Franz Kafka (The Trial) or an Albert Camus novel (The Stranger)...
That we are living in a strait-jacket...
Or that we are living our life devoid of feeling..
And/or meaning...
That we are the puppet in someone else's play...
The pawn in someone else's game...
It is perhaps time to review our choices...
And break out of our self-defined prison...
Our own 'house arrest'...
Or 'out of house arrest'.....
In the end, our choices define us....
Regardless of the factors and powers that impinge upon us...
Either we find our own 'essence'...
And 'water' this essence,
And give it sun...
Like a plant or flower in our house garden...
Or we don't....
We leave our 'essence' stifled inside,
To wither away in the darkness of our soul...
How strong is our 'will to power'?
Our will to 'self-empowerment'?
Are we going to define our selves?
Or are we going to let others define our selves for us?
Until we have no self...
Sartre was wrong...
'Existence precedes essence' -- or so he proclaimed...
Wrong!
We are each born with an 'essence'...
And it is up to each of us to 'find' this essence...
In our selves...
To bring it to the light of day...
Embrace it....embrace our selves...
And nourish it...nourish ourselves...
Nourish our essence...
Like the plant, the flower, in our garden...
To be the person God meant us to be...
And/or we were/are meant to be ourselves...
Regarding religion -- and God -- I can't, or won't, even claim to be a tightly defined religious person...
In any orthodox sense of the meaning of the word 'religious'...
But like Einstein before me...
And Schelling...and Holderlin...and Schiller...before Einstein...
And Spinoza and Heraclitus before the birth of German Idealism and Romanticism...
I can't help but look around me, and look within me...
At the wonder of God's Creation...
And/or the Creation of Evolution...
To me, these concepts, these ideas are not opposed to each other...
But harmonize each other, embrace each other....
Creative Evolution....perhaps in the metaphorical Hands of God...
Something -- or Somebody -- Created Us....
There is too much 'Intelligent Design' all around us...
And in us...
For this not to have been the case...
Somebody -- or some Creative Genius -- created us with a unique, individual blue print...
For how we should -- for how we need to -- let our lives unfold...
To be the person we were meant to be...
To let God's -- and Evolution's -- creativity unfold...
In the words of the humanists -- we all need to 'actualize' our selves...
To actualize our 'essence' -- our humanistic, and/or God-given, blueprint...
We all need to actualize our God-given, creative genetic talents...
Sartre wasn't meant to be a brick layer...
He was meant to be a philosopher...
He was meant to use his gifted intellect...
Not to let it rot in the mud...
Of human slavery...
Or 'economic necessity'...
Kafka was not meant to be an 'insurance agent'...
He was meant to be a writer....
To talk about 'existence before essence'....
Is to talk about a potentially meaningless, directionless...
Existence...
Devoid of essence...
Devoid of an underlying game plan...
Devoid of an underlying blueprint...
God's creative, genetic blueprint of the life we were/are 'designed' to live in harmony with...
However you want to view or define 'God'...
I define 'God' as the 'underlying intelligence and blueprint of life'...
Yes, Mr. Sartre...
We all can choose who, or whatever, we want to be...
But just trying being someone, or doing something, you are not...
You called that 'Bad Faith'...
Here I totally agree with you...
But in order to label a particular choice and/or action as 'Bad Faith'...
You have to have some basis -- some underlying blueprint -- by which to compare and contrast...
Our choices and actions with...
That, Mr. Sartre,
Is the 'Unique, Individual, Essence' that lies deep -- like a 'seed' -- within each,
And everyone of us...
The 'seed'...the essence...the blueprint...that precedes existence...
And that should give our existence meaning and direction...
The type of meaning and direction that helps us avoid Sartre's label of...
'Bad Faith'...
Throughout our individual lives...
There should be a dynamic, dialectic interplay...
Between our existence and our essence...
Always seeking to harmonize the one with the other...
When we lose our essence in our existence...
Then we become a 'walking dead person'...
Living the life of 'The Stranger'...
And at some point, we all must go on Trial...
If we continue to choose to live the life of...
The Stranger...
Right now...
At least when I am not here writing in Hegel's Hotel...
I am living the life of a Stranger...
And for that...
I now stand...
On Trial...
-- dgb, April 30th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Between my Existence and my Essence...
-- Are Still In Process...
Opposing choices...
We can choose this,
Or we can choose that..
We can do this,
Or we can do that...
If we are starting to feel like the main character...
In a Franz Kafka (The Trial) or an Albert Camus novel (The Stranger)...
That we are living in a strait-jacket...
Or that we are living our life devoid of feeling..
And/or meaning...
That we are the puppet in someone else's play...
The pawn in someone else's game...
It is perhaps time to review our choices...
And break out of our self-defined prison...
Our own 'house arrest'...
Or 'out of house arrest'.....
In the end, our choices define us....
Regardless of the factors and powers that impinge upon us...
Either we find our own 'essence'...
And 'water' this essence,
And give it sun...
Like a plant or flower in our house garden...
Or we don't....
We leave our 'essence' stifled inside,
To wither away in the darkness of our soul...
How strong is our 'will to power'?
Our will to 'self-empowerment'?
Are we going to define our selves?
Or are we going to let others define our selves for us?
Until we have no self...
Sartre was wrong...
'Existence precedes essence' -- or so he proclaimed...
Wrong!
We are each born with an 'essence'...
And it is up to each of us to 'find' this essence...
In our selves...
To bring it to the light of day...
Embrace it....embrace our selves...
And nourish it...nourish ourselves...
Nourish our essence...
Like the plant, the flower, in our garden...
To be the person God meant us to be...
And/or we were/are meant to be ourselves...
Regarding religion -- and God -- I can't, or won't, even claim to be a tightly defined religious person...
In any orthodox sense of the meaning of the word 'religious'...
But like Einstein before me...
And Schelling...and Holderlin...and Schiller...before Einstein...
And Spinoza and Heraclitus before the birth of German Idealism and Romanticism...
I can't help but look around me, and look within me...
At the wonder of God's Creation...
And/or the Creation of Evolution...
To me, these concepts, these ideas are not opposed to each other...
But harmonize each other, embrace each other....
Creative Evolution....perhaps in the metaphorical Hands of God...
Something -- or Somebody -- Created Us....
There is too much 'Intelligent Design' all around us...
And in us...
For this not to have been the case...
Somebody -- or some Creative Genius -- created us with a unique, individual blue print...
For how we should -- for how we need to -- let our lives unfold...
To be the person we were meant to be...
To let God's -- and Evolution's -- creativity unfold...
In the words of the humanists -- we all need to 'actualize' our selves...
To actualize our 'essence' -- our humanistic, and/or God-given, blueprint...
We all need to actualize our God-given, creative genetic talents...
Sartre wasn't meant to be a brick layer...
He was meant to be a philosopher...
He was meant to use his gifted intellect...
Not to let it rot in the mud...
Of human slavery...
Or 'economic necessity'...
Kafka was not meant to be an 'insurance agent'...
He was meant to be a writer....
To talk about 'existence before essence'....
Is to talk about a potentially meaningless, directionless...
Existence...
Devoid of essence...
Devoid of an underlying game plan...
Devoid of an underlying blueprint...
God's creative, genetic blueprint of the life we were/are 'designed' to live in harmony with...
However you want to view or define 'God'...
I define 'God' as the 'underlying intelligence and blueprint of life'...
Yes, Mr. Sartre...
We all can choose who, or whatever, we want to be...
But just trying being someone, or doing something, you are not...
You called that 'Bad Faith'...
Here I totally agree with you...
But in order to label a particular choice and/or action as 'Bad Faith'...
You have to have some basis -- some underlying blueprint -- by which to compare and contrast...
Our choices and actions with...
That, Mr. Sartre,
Is the 'Unique, Individual, Essence' that lies deep -- like a 'seed' -- within each,
And everyone of us...
The 'seed'...the essence...the blueprint...that precedes existence...
And that should give our existence meaning and direction...
The type of meaning and direction that helps us avoid Sartre's label of...
'Bad Faith'...
Throughout our individual lives...
There should be a dynamic, dialectic interplay...
Between our existence and our essence...
Always seeking to harmonize the one with the other...
When we lose our essence in our existence...
Then we become a 'walking dead person'...
Living the life of 'The Stranger'...
And at some point, we all must go on Trial...
If we continue to choose to live the life of...
The Stranger...
Right now...
At least when I am not here writing in Hegel's Hotel...
I am living the life of a Stranger...
And for that...
I now stand...
On Trial...
-- dgb, April 30th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Between my Existence and my Essence...
-- Are Still In Process...
Oftentimes, the greatest moments in life,
The greatest discoveries in life,
Can be found,
In the here and the now,
Between the I and the Thou...
Think back to your finest moments...
It all comes down to risk...
And trust...
With that most special person...
To borrow and modify a line by Dylan,
Are you willing to risk at all,
Or is your love -- is your life -- in vain...
dgb, April 30th, 2010
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"Is Your Love In Vain ?"
Do your love me, or are you just extending goodwill ?
Do you need me half as bad as you say, or are you just feeling guilt ?
I've been burned before and I know the score
So you won't hear me complain
Will I be able to count on you
Or is your love in vain ?
Are you so fast that you cannot see that I must have solitude ?
When I am in the darkness, why do you intrude ?
Do you know my world, do you know my kind
Or must I explain ?
Will you let me be myself
Or is your love in vain ?
Well I've been to the mountain and I've been in the wind
I've been in and out of happiness
I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed.
All right, I'll take a chance, I will fall in love with you
If I'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too
Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain ?
Are you willing to risk it all
Or is your love in vain ?
Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain ?
Are you willing to risk it all
Or is your love in vain ?
-- Bob Dylan (from the album, Street Legal)
[ BOB DYLAN LYRICS at www.AZLyrics.com ]
The greatest discoveries in life,
Can be found,
In the here and the now,
Between the I and the Thou...
Think back to your finest moments...
It all comes down to risk...
And trust...
With that most special person...
To borrow and modify a line by Dylan,
Are you willing to risk at all,
Or is your love -- is your life -- in vain...
dgb, April 30th, 2010
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
"Is Your Love In Vain ?"
Do your love me, or are you just extending goodwill ?
Do you need me half as bad as you say, or are you just feeling guilt ?
I've been burned before and I know the score
So you won't hear me complain
Will I be able to count on you
Or is your love in vain ?
Are you so fast that you cannot see that I must have solitude ?
When I am in the darkness, why do you intrude ?
Do you know my world, do you know my kind
Or must I explain ?
Will you let me be myself
Or is your love in vain ?
Well I've been to the mountain and I've been in the wind
I've been in and out of happiness
I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed.
All right, I'll take a chance, I will fall in love with you
If I'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too
Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain ?
Are you willing to risk it all
Or is your love in vain ?
Can you cook and sew, make flowers grow
Do you understand my pain ?
Are you willing to risk it all
Or is your love in vain ?
-- Bob Dylan (from the album, Street Legal)
[ BOB DYLAN LYRICS at www.AZLyrics.com ]
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Things Have Changed (Excerpt) -- Bob Dylan, 1999
I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care,
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care,
But things have changed...
-- Bob Dylan, 1999.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
The Obsessive-Compulsive Approval-Seeking Under-Ego Speaks...And The Defiant Alter-Under-Ego Replies...
Freshly updated...April 24th, 2010...
The 'Obsessive-Compulsive Approval-Seeking Underego' Speaks: 'Your love and approval are more important to me than my own self-boundaries and integrity...Just tell me who and what you want me to be...and I will be that...'
The 'Obsessive-Compulsive Approval-Seeking Underego' Speaks: 'Your love and approval are more important to me than my own self-boundaries and integrity...Just tell me who and what you want me to be...and I will be that...'
Meanwhile, The Defiant, Rebellious Alter-Ego Shakes His or Her Disagreeing Head At The Approval-Seeking Underego's 'Unbelievably Wussy Behavior' (The Approval-Seeking Underego and The Rebellious-Defiant Underego have a relationship of considerable tension and animosity when they disagree significantly about how to respond to 'external people' in their outside world.
Suffice is to say that that internal tension and conflict can mount between the approval-seeking underego and the defiant, rebellious underego. They can literally be swearing at each other -- the defiant underego claiming that the approval-seeking underego is being too 'wimpy', 'wussy', and 'soppy nice'...while the approval-seeking underego shouts back at the defiant alter-underego to 'shut up, before he or she leads them both to the plank overlooking the very deep ocean...the abyss of all mortal men and women who do not show enough 'diplomacy', who are not 'politically correct' enough, and put their individual feet in their overly rebellious individual mouths...
-- dgb, updated and modified Feb. 2nd-3rd, and April 24th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Is It Still Worth Distinguishing Between The 'Oral' and The 'Anal' Personality In The Classic Freudian Sense?
Just finished...Sat. April 24th, 2010....
Freud said and did some very controversial things during his some odd 50 year professional career in neurology, psychology, and psychotherapy. It is partly a mark of the brilliance and creativity of Freud's mind that modern day scholars, theorists, and therapists are still debating the value and/or non-value of probably literally thousands of ideas that crossed through Freud's brain, and from Freud's brain, onto the paper that laypersons, students, teachers, and professionals from not only psychology and philosophy but probably almost every other cultural discipline, still read today.
Some say, 'Throw all his ideas out...they are all garbage...'
Others say, 'Protect his ideas exactly the way that he presented them with no "deviations" or "modifications".'
And still others say, 'Pick and choose...Either you accept this Freudian idea (for example, 'The Seduction Theory' in 1896) or you accept this idea (The Oedipal Complex, 1897...)...You cannot accept both ideas at the same time because they are mutually exclusive...'
Anyway you want to look at it, there was no greater rebel of Freudian psychology -- or what Freudian psychology (Psychoanalysis) stood for at any one point in time between, let us say, 1888 and 1938 -- than Freud himself...(He just didn't like anyone else rebelling against his ideas in a way that compromised his thinking at any one particular point in time...although Freud didn't seem to hold the same rigid standards for either Fliess or Melanie Klein...I would be interested to read -- but have not come across -- what Freud thought of Melanie Klein's revolutionary psychoanalytic work that was as different from Classical Psychoanalysis as was Jungian or Adlerian Psychology...Freud didn't seem to have the same type of 'father-son transference relationship' with Melanie Klein -- for obvious reasons --she was not male -- that he did with all the 'male psychoanalysts' that were influenced by -- and then 'rebelled' against -- Freud's thinking...i.e., Adler, Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Ferenczi, Rank, Stekel...)
My goal is to put all of Freudian Psychology through a new, 'DGB-Hegel's Hotel screening test' that screens out certain Freudian ideas, keeps a great number of others, but in 21st Century revised, post-Freudian, post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential fashion...
And so it is with Freud's classification distinction between the 'oral' and 'anal' personality...which still lends well with much of what I am trying to do here...
To be continued...
.................................................................................................................
It has been almost a week since I started this theme....my writing time has diminished as I work longer hours at my 'day job' trying to put my financial pieces back in order again...leaving at the moment Saturday and Sunday morning for writing....anyway, let's see what we can do with this essay to finish it off in the direction that it was started....
..................................................................................................................................
Freud's idea of 'body zones of eroticism' is not a bad idea....and what I would like to do here is to connect this idea to the later 'object relations' idea of 'compartmentalized ego states'...specifically, seven of them as I have differentiated in previous essays: 1. 'The Oral-Nurturing (Maternal) Superego'; 2. 'The Anal-Righteous (Critical, Rejecting) Paternal (or Apollonian) Superego'; 3. 'The Dionyisan (Hedonistic-Narcissistic) Superego'; 4. 'The Oral-Needy, Approval-Seeking (Submissive Child) Underego'; 5. 'The Anal-Rebellious (Defiant Child) Underego'; 6. 'The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Narcissistic) Underego'; and 7. The Central Mediating Ego.
The 'individual, developmental timeline' on the 'psycho-sexual stages of development' is not particularly important to me -- not worthy of 'knit-picking' over how and when each stage developed from infancy to the beginning of puberty -- but the 'ego-state distinctions' that result from this 'childhood evolutionary process of development in every individual', both generically in a more generalized, abstracted form, and more uniquely in each and every individual depending on the particular environmental and social, family, and outside family factors that went into each unique person's development, are important to me...
Collectively, all of these different 'factors' come together to form our 'transference-lifestyle (Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt-DGB) serial profile' in a manner that is very similar to what you have probably seen the 'Behavioral Analysis FBI agents' do on the popular late evening television show -- 'Criminal Minds'...
Now in real life, I do not profess to be as 'specialized in my Behavioral Analysis knowledge' as the real life FBI agents who train excessively in this area, and have access to thousands of different case files to aid them in their training... However, I do bring with me a particular 'depth psychology' perspective that both dovetails with, and embellishes, the type of work that these men and women are doing...
The domain of 'sexual eroticism and fixation' is huge -- even bigger if we change the terminology slightly to 'narcissistic childhood traumacies' and 'compensating adult fixations' which includes and brings together a whole assortment of psycho-sexual-developmental factors pertaining to: self-esteem, hedonism, narcissism, egotism, sensuality, sexuality, love, lust, guilt, anxiety, panic, resentment, anger, rage, hate, power, revenge, fixation, obsession, compulsion, addiction...phobia and counter-phobia...
One presses the remote on the tv and we come across the tv show 'Hoarders' -- a rather nasty (as in 'un-hygienic) form of obsessive-compulsion that Freud would have probably linked to some sort of a 'anal-fixation' or 'anal narcissism' disorder.... Without plodding through years of Psychoanalytic literature (I don't have either the time or the energy to do so), it would seem feasible to me to distinguish between an 'anal-phobic (retentive)' and an 'anal-narcissistic-(explosive) personality...which plays itself out respectively as either the 'excessively organized' or 'excessively disorganized' personality respectively. (Personally, I have elements of both.)
We press the remote again and now we are looking at the tv program 'Intervention'....a program on a wide assortment of different (usually drug related) addictions. Freud would have called all these different types of drug-related addiction 'oral erotic fixations'. Similarly with food and alcohol addictions...
I would take these -- and indeed all forms of 'OCD' ('Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder') and/or addiction and/or 'serial behavior pattern' one step further, adding an Adlerian component to the following 'Freudian-Adlerian-DGB' formula...
Specifically, an internal and/or external 'stressor' sets off in an 'OCD-addictive-serial-behavior-pattern' person the internal feeling of 'emotional agitation'...that can usually be linked to a 'self-esteem deficiency' (or in Adlerian terms, an 'inferiority feeling') which in turn can be traced back to a 'transference-lifestyle childhood narcissistic traumacy' that is 're-asserting itself' in the person's adult life... In such a state of being, an 'OCD-addictive-serial-behavior-pattern' person feels a compelling internal need (his or her internal state of fantasy-directed-obsessive-compulsion and/or addiction) to act in a 'compensatory' manner that aims to 'alleviate' and/or 'overcome' and/or 'master' this internal feeling of 'emotional agitation' and/or 'internal distress' and/or 'internal self-esteem deficiency'....The particular 'movement', 'fantasy', and/or 'action' of the particular person in this state of emotional agitation or internal distress is intimately connected -- indeed, the same as -- the person's particular form of OCD and/or addiction and/or serial behavior pattern.
Freud linked 'oral fixations' to a certain type of personality -- the 'oral personality' -- which in turn, could be further differentiated into the 'oral nurturing personality' (the person who always needs to 'give love, acceptance, and/or approval' -- and/or at the same time usually has a hard time giving 'disapproval') vs. the 'oral-needy (approval-seeking) personality' (the person who always needs to 'receive love, acceptance, and/or approval -- and/or to avoid 'disapproval'). Often, these two 'personality types' and/or 'ego states' are tied together in the same 'personality package'.
In contrast, Freud put different types of 'anal fixations' together in describing the makeup of 'the anal personality'. In this regard, issues of 'organization' vs. 'non-organization', 'order' vs. 'disorder', 'work' vs. 'non-work', 'discipline' vs. 'non-discipline', 'hygiene' vs. 'non-hygiene', 'punctuality' vs. 'non-punctuality', 'production' vs. 'non-production', 'tightness vs. generosity with money', 'righteousness' vs. 'non-righteousness', 'criticalness' vs. 'non-criticalness', 'rejection' vs. 'non-rejection' became important relative to describing this type of personality...
Within the classification of the 'anal personality' and/or the 'anal ego state', it is important to sub-classify and distinguish the 'anal-retentive (or anal-phobic) personality/ego state' from the 'anal-explosive (or anal-erotic-narcissistic and/or counter-phobic) personality/ego state. The first type of 'anal topdog or superego' personality/ego-state reflects a very 'organized, neat, hygienic, punctual, parsimonious' type of person -- someone who is metaphorically and/or literally 'in love with rules, regulations, and restrictions' whereas the second type of 'anal underdog or underego' personality/ego-state reflects a much more disorganized, non-neat, non-hygienic, non-punctual, non-parsimonious, rebellious type of person...This latter type of person/ego state basically 'hates all rules, regulations, and restrictions'...and/or wants to invent his or her own...
In regard to the anal distinction just made above, we can distinguish in similar fashion the 'collector' from the 'hoarder'. The 'collector' -- whether he or she be a 'car collector', a 'train collector', an 'art collector', a 'coin collector', a 'butterfly collector', or whatever...in all of these different cases the 'collector' is usually going to reflect an 'anal-organized personality' whereas the 'hoarder' is going to reflect an 'anal-disorganized personality'.
The 'hoarder' -- as you can see on tv if you watch this particular show -- reflects a much more disorganized personality than the 'organized collector'. The hoarder lets basically anything and everything just 'stay where it lands' with no thought or feeling or impulse towards 'organization, order, hygiene, detoxification, functionality, throwing un-needed stuff out, etc...everything just more or less explodes out of control...'
I watched one particular episode of 'Hoarders' where the female hoarder involved recalled the memory as a child or teenager where her aunt 'burned all her property'...and she became 'property-less'....The particular 'hoarding OCD' in this woman's case would seem to reflect an 'overcompensating' need to 'hold onto' all her property...regardless of how dysfunctional this OC serial behavior pattern was...
There are a number of different but interconnected 'learning functions and/or mechanisms' that are tied up to all forms of learning including OCDs and 'transference-lifestyle complexes/disorders'..
Chief amongst these learning (and often pathological) functions are: 'introjection', 'identification', 'compensation', 'projection', 'sublimation', 'displacement', and 'transference-reversal'...
'Introjection' and 'identification' are basically related versions of 'copying' our parents, siblings, and/or other childhood mentors. When I 'introject' a particular thought, feeling, impulse, belief, characteristic...I am metaphorically 'swallowing it whole' in the way that it was taught to me by someone from my usually but not always childhood past.... Similarly, with 'identification', I am 'identifying' with someone who I 'want to be like' and in this regard 'copy' one or more of this person's behavioral idiosyncrasies, and/or patterns...
'Compensation' requires an 'adjustment' in our personality and/or behavior pattern in order to deal with a particular type of 'obstacle', 'problem', and/or 'conflict' in our life. For example, if I had an extremely 'anal-righteous, domineering father' in my upbringing, then two very common forms of 'compensatory behavior' designed to deal with this type of 'problem' are: 1. 'approval-seeking (and/or disapproval-avoiding) behvavior; and/or 2. 'anal-rebellious' behavior...When these two opposite types of compensatory behavior patterns are 'mixed', then we get what is often called 'passive-aggressive' forms of behavior...
'Projection' is where we see in others what we -- at some level of consciousness or subconsciousness -- see either in ourselves and/or in some 'transference figure' from our past...
'Sublimation' is where there is some 'underlying narcissistic and/or erotic fantasy/desire' that is motivating the type of 'work' that we do that both hides and alludes to the underlying 'fixation/obsessive-compulsion-serial behavior pattern' that is attracting us and holding us to this type of work...
Often these learning mechanisms, functions, and resulting OCDs/addictions/serial behavior patterns can become 'pathologically and/or neurotically twisted' in destructive and/or self-destructive ways...
An 'identification rapist' is a rapist who is copying the type of behavior pattern learned from a pathological role model/mentor...usually the father...
A Barrie man was just arrested the other day on 'child pornography' charges. He had been the local 'Santa Claus' for years previously and otherwise liked to 'work around children'. This is what I would call a 'sublimation pedophile' (or at least 'sublimation closet pedophile' depending on whether he actually 'assaulted' any children or not -- or 'restrained' himself from such dark underlying desires...).
Ed Kemper might have been either an 'identification serial killer' and/or a 'compensatory serial killer'...for sure, he was a 'compensatory transference killer'...As a child he used to 'cut the heads off of dolls'....Was this an 'identification behavior pattern'? If so, he would have had to have seen a 'beheading', a 'decapitation'...Regardless, it became one of his 'signature, compensatory, narcissistic transference fixatons'...Years later he would behead his mother as well as a host of other women...
John Henry Lucas also eventually ended up killing his 'anal-sadistic mother' (as well as perhaps hundreds of other men and women -- no one knows anywhere close to the exact number...) who among other childhood events: 1. beat him with a wood plank (he would suffer from various brain injuries as a child); 2. shot his pet mule; 3. beat him up for accepting a 'teddy bear' from a teacher'; 4. dress him up in little girls clothing (verified by his sister); and 5. would make him watch her having sex with 'customers'...
For bad, ugly, and horrific, nothing that 'goes around' in the life of a serial killer 'comes around any worse' than in the 'horrifically violent obsessive-compulsions of a serial killer'...partly to those who may by some be judged to partly or wholly deserve it (i.e., the 'anal-sadistic' mothers in the case of Kemper and Lucas) but more often to those who don't deserve it at all...who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...as unsuspecting 'projective-transference figures'...
It is in this vein that Anaximander's most famous fragment becomes even more haunting...
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
At the same time, it is probably 'violent revenge' that remains man's worst obsessive-compulsion...
'Violence begets violence'....and never does the circle of 'perceived justice' and/or 'real injustice' end...Someone's friend, family member, and/or lover is violated and/or murdered and someone else picks up the pathological mantra of 'hatred, violence, and revenge'...and keeps the circle going..and spreading wider...seemingly without end...
Sadly and regrettably, in the words of Brian Bird, 'transference is a universal phenomenon' -- sometimes in its most pathological extremes, and this, for better or for worse, is what keeps both psychotherapists and religious practitioners in business...
Fortunately, for every Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Paul Bernardo, and Henry Lee Lucas, we can 'fly' to the other extreme end of the 'transference spectrum' and bless our good fortunes for the 'amazing altruism' and/or creative brilliance of a Florence Nightingale, an Edith Cavell, a Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, a Sigmund Freud, an Albert Einstein, and so on...
Paradoxically -- and seemingly shockingly but not once you come to fully understand the paradoxical nature of 'transference' -- sometimes both 'altruistic' and 'narcissistic' character traits appear in the same person, the same personality -- as 'opposing ego states'...for example, Ted Bundy, before he lost control of the 'narcissistically pathological part of his personality' actually 'saved lives' as a crisis and suicide prevention counselor...
One of the key ideas that I would like to make immensely clear in this paper is my 'synthesis' of pre-1897 and post-1897 Freudian Theory...In other words, I want to make it abundantly clear that I am integrating Freudian Traumacy-Seduction Theory with his later Classical Oedipal Theory...In other words again, 'childhood narcissistic -- and sometimes sexual traumacy/assault, especially in the case of male children -- can and often does become the transference springboard for a cycle of sexual and violent 'fantasy' often but not always leading to a 'serial behavior pattern' of actual physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse of another 'victim'... This 'other victim' may be either 'a projected image of himself as a child' and/or a 'projected image of his childhood victimizer ( his 'childhood victimizer' is most likely to be either his father and/or mother...but it could be an older sibling, an extended family member, a family friend, or a stranger...all documented by Freud in his 'infamous 1896 Seduction Theory'...)
In effect, the usually but not always male child 'identifies' with, and 'copies' the behavior of his 'violent/sexual abuser/victimizer'...In Psychoanalysis, this is called 'identification with the aggressor'. I have extended this name to include 'identification with the abuser/victimizer/abandoner/rejector...'...and will also sometimes call this obsessive-compulsive behavior pattern 'transference reversal'...
I will leave you with this rather provocative paper below that I just found on the internet...
-- dgb, April 24th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process......
...............................................................................................................................
Freud said and did some very controversial things during his some odd 50 year professional career in neurology, psychology, and psychotherapy. It is partly a mark of the brilliance and creativity of Freud's mind that modern day scholars, theorists, and therapists are still debating the value and/or non-value of probably literally thousands of ideas that crossed through Freud's brain, and from Freud's brain, onto the paper that laypersons, students, teachers, and professionals from not only psychology and philosophy but probably almost every other cultural discipline, still read today.
Some say, 'Throw all his ideas out...they are all garbage...'
Others say, 'Protect his ideas exactly the way that he presented them with no "deviations" or "modifications".'
And still others say, 'Pick and choose...Either you accept this Freudian idea (for example, 'The Seduction Theory' in 1896) or you accept this idea (The Oedipal Complex, 1897...)...You cannot accept both ideas at the same time because they are mutually exclusive...'
Anyway you want to look at it, there was no greater rebel of Freudian psychology -- or what Freudian psychology (Psychoanalysis) stood for at any one point in time between, let us say, 1888 and 1938 -- than Freud himself...(He just didn't like anyone else rebelling against his ideas in a way that compromised his thinking at any one particular point in time...although Freud didn't seem to hold the same rigid standards for either Fliess or Melanie Klein...I would be interested to read -- but have not come across -- what Freud thought of Melanie Klein's revolutionary psychoanalytic work that was as different from Classical Psychoanalysis as was Jungian or Adlerian Psychology...Freud didn't seem to have the same type of 'father-son transference relationship' with Melanie Klein -- for obvious reasons --she was not male -- that he did with all the 'male psychoanalysts' that were influenced by -- and then 'rebelled' against -- Freud's thinking...i.e., Adler, Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Ferenczi, Rank, Stekel...)
My goal is to put all of Freudian Psychology through a new, 'DGB-Hegel's Hotel screening test' that screens out certain Freudian ideas, keeps a great number of others, but in 21st Century revised, post-Freudian, post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential fashion...
And so it is with Freud's classification distinction between the 'oral' and 'anal' personality...which still lends well with much of what I am trying to do here...
To be continued...
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It has been almost a week since I started this theme....my writing time has diminished as I work longer hours at my 'day job' trying to put my financial pieces back in order again...leaving at the moment Saturday and Sunday morning for writing....anyway, let's see what we can do with this essay to finish it off in the direction that it was started....
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Freud's idea of 'body zones of eroticism' is not a bad idea....and what I would like to do here is to connect this idea to the later 'object relations' idea of 'compartmentalized ego states'...specifically, seven of them as I have differentiated in previous essays: 1. 'The Oral-Nurturing (Maternal) Superego'; 2. 'The Anal-Righteous (Critical, Rejecting) Paternal (or Apollonian) Superego'; 3. 'The Dionyisan (Hedonistic-Narcissistic) Superego'; 4. 'The Oral-Needy, Approval-Seeking (Submissive Child) Underego'; 5. 'The Anal-Rebellious (Defiant Child) Underego'; 6. 'The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Narcissistic) Underego'; and 7. The Central Mediating Ego.
The 'individual, developmental timeline' on the 'psycho-sexual stages of development' is not particularly important to me -- not worthy of 'knit-picking' over how and when each stage developed from infancy to the beginning of puberty -- but the 'ego-state distinctions' that result from this 'childhood evolutionary process of development in every individual', both generically in a more generalized, abstracted form, and more uniquely in each and every individual depending on the particular environmental and social, family, and outside family factors that went into each unique person's development, are important to me...
Collectively, all of these different 'factors' come together to form our 'transference-lifestyle (Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt-DGB) serial profile' in a manner that is very similar to what you have probably seen the 'Behavioral Analysis FBI agents' do on the popular late evening television show -- 'Criminal Minds'...
Now in real life, I do not profess to be as 'specialized in my Behavioral Analysis knowledge' as the real life FBI agents who train excessively in this area, and have access to thousands of different case files to aid them in their training... However, I do bring with me a particular 'depth psychology' perspective that both dovetails with, and embellishes, the type of work that these men and women are doing...
The domain of 'sexual eroticism and fixation' is huge -- even bigger if we change the terminology slightly to 'narcissistic childhood traumacies' and 'compensating adult fixations' which includes and brings together a whole assortment of psycho-sexual-developmental factors pertaining to: self-esteem, hedonism, narcissism, egotism, sensuality, sexuality, love, lust, guilt, anxiety, panic, resentment, anger, rage, hate, power, revenge, fixation, obsession, compulsion, addiction...phobia and counter-phobia...
One presses the remote on the tv and we come across the tv show 'Hoarders' -- a rather nasty (as in 'un-hygienic) form of obsessive-compulsion that Freud would have probably linked to some sort of a 'anal-fixation' or 'anal narcissism' disorder.... Without plodding through years of Psychoanalytic literature (I don't have either the time or the energy to do so), it would seem feasible to me to distinguish between an 'anal-phobic (retentive)' and an 'anal-narcissistic-(explosive) personality...which plays itself out respectively as either the 'excessively organized' or 'excessively disorganized' personality respectively. (Personally, I have elements of both.)
We press the remote again and now we are looking at the tv program 'Intervention'....a program on a wide assortment of different (usually drug related) addictions. Freud would have called all these different types of drug-related addiction 'oral erotic fixations'. Similarly with food and alcohol addictions...
I would take these -- and indeed all forms of 'OCD' ('Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder') and/or addiction and/or 'serial behavior pattern' one step further, adding an Adlerian component to the following 'Freudian-Adlerian-DGB' formula...
Specifically, an internal and/or external 'stressor' sets off in an 'OCD-addictive-serial-behavior-pattern' person the internal feeling of 'emotional agitation'...that can usually be linked to a 'self-esteem deficiency' (or in Adlerian terms, an 'inferiority feeling') which in turn can be traced back to a 'transference-lifestyle childhood narcissistic traumacy' that is 're-asserting itself' in the person's adult life... In such a state of being, an 'OCD-addictive-serial-behavior-pattern' person feels a compelling internal need (his or her internal state of fantasy-directed-obsessive-compulsion and/or addiction) to act in a 'compensatory' manner that aims to 'alleviate' and/or 'overcome' and/or 'master' this internal feeling of 'emotional agitation' and/or 'internal distress' and/or 'internal self-esteem deficiency'....The particular 'movement', 'fantasy', and/or 'action' of the particular person in this state of emotional agitation or internal distress is intimately connected -- indeed, the same as -- the person's particular form of OCD and/or addiction and/or serial behavior pattern.
Freud linked 'oral fixations' to a certain type of personality -- the 'oral personality' -- which in turn, could be further differentiated into the 'oral nurturing personality' (the person who always needs to 'give love, acceptance, and/or approval' -- and/or at the same time usually has a hard time giving 'disapproval') vs. the 'oral-needy (approval-seeking) personality' (the person who always needs to 'receive love, acceptance, and/or approval -- and/or to avoid 'disapproval'). Often, these two 'personality types' and/or 'ego states' are tied together in the same 'personality package'.
In contrast, Freud put different types of 'anal fixations' together in describing the makeup of 'the anal personality'. In this regard, issues of 'organization' vs. 'non-organization', 'order' vs. 'disorder', 'work' vs. 'non-work', 'discipline' vs. 'non-discipline', 'hygiene' vs. 'non-hygiene', 'punctuality' vs. 'non-punctuality', 'production' vs. 'non-production', 'tightness vs. generosity with money', 'righteousness' vs. 'non-righteousness', 'criticalness' vs. 'non-criticalness', 'rejection' vs. 'non-rejection' became important relative to describing this type of personality...
Within the classification of the 'anal personality' and/or the 'anal ego state', it is important to sub-classify and distinguish the 'anal-retentive (or anal-phobic) personality/ego state' from the 'anal-explosive (or anal-erotic-narcissistic and/or counter-phobic) personality/ego state. The first type of 'anal topdog or superego' personality/ego-state reflects a very 'organized, neat, hygienic, punctual, parsimonious' type of person -- someone who is metaphorically and/or literally 'in love with rules, regulations, and restrictions' whereas the second type of 'anal underdog or underego' personality/ego-state reflects a much more disorganized, non-neat, non-hygienic, non-punctual, non-parsimonious, rebellious type of person...This latter type of person/ego state basically 'hates all rules, regulations, and restrictions'...and/or wants to invent his or her own...
In regard to the anal distinction just made above, we can distinguish in similar fashion the 'collector' from the 'hoarder'. The 'collector' -- whether he or she be a 'car collector', a 'train collector', an 'art collector', a 'coin collector', a 'butterfly collector', or whatever...in all of these different cases the 'collector' is usually going to reflect an 'anal-organized personality' whereas the 'hoarder' is going to reflect an 'anal-disorganized personality'.
The 'hoarder' -- as you can see on tv if you watch this particular show -- reflects a much more disorganized personality than the 'organized collector'. The hoarder lets basically anything and everything just 'stay where it lands' with no thought or feeling or impulse towards 'organization, order, hygiene, detoxification, functionality, throwing un-needed stuff out, etc...everything just more or less explodes out of control...'
I watched one particular episode of 'Hoarders' where the female hoarder involved recalled the memory as a child or teenager where her aunt 'burned all her property'...and she became 'property-less'....The particular 'hoarding OCD' in this woman's case would seem to reflect an 'overcompensating' need to 'hold onto' all her property...regardless of how dysfunctional this OC serial behavior pattern was...
There are a number of different but interconnected 'learning functions and/or mechanisms' that are tied up to all forms of learning including OCDs and 'transference-lifestyle complexes/disorders'..
Chief amongst these learning (and often pathological) functions are: 'introjection', 'identification', 'compensation', 'projection', 'sublimation', 'displacement', and 'transference-reversal'...
'Introjection' and 'identification' are basically related versions of 'copying' our parents, siblings, and/or other childhood mentors. When I 'introject' a particular thought, feeling, impulse, belief, characteristic...I am metaphorically 'swallowing it whole' in the way that it was taught to me by someone from my usually but not always childhood past.... Similarly, with 'identification', I am 'identifying' with someone who I 'want to be like' and in this regard 'copy' one or more of this person's behavioral idiosyncrasies, and/or patterns...
'Compensation' requires an 'adjustment' in our personality and/or behavior pattern in order to deal with a particular type of 'obstacle', 'problem', and/or 'conflict' in our life. For example, if I had an extremely 'anal-righteous, domineering father' in my upbringing, then two very common forms of 'compensatory behavior' designed to deal with this type of 'problem' are: 1. 'approval-seeking (and/or disapproval-avoiding) behvavior; and/or 2. 'anal-rebellious' behavior...When these two opposite types of compensatory behavior patterns are 'mixed', then we get what is often called 'passive-aggressive' forms of behavior...
'Projection' is where we see in others what we -- at some level of consciousness or subconsciousness -- see either in ourselves and/or in some 'transference figure' from our past...
'Sublimation' is where there is some 'underlying narcissistic and/or erotic fantasy/desire' that is motivating the type of 'work' that we do that both hides and alludes to the underlying 'fixation/obsessive-compulsion-serial behavior pattern' that is attracting us and holding us to this type of work...
Often these learning mechanisms, functions, and resulting OCDs/addictions/serial behavior patterns can become 'pathologically and/or neurotically twisted' in destructive and/or self-destructive ways...
An 'identification rapist' is a rapist who is copying the type of behavior pattern learned from a pathological role model/mentor...usually the father...
A Barrie man was just arrested the other day on 'child pornography' charges. He had been the local 'Santa Claus' for years previously and otherwise liked to 'work around children'. This is what I would call a 'sublimation pedophile' (or at least 'sublimation closet pedophile' depending on whether he actually 'assaulted' any children or not -- or 'restrained' himself from such dark underlying desires...).
Ed Kemper might have been either an 'identification serial killer' and/or a 'compensatory serial killer'...for sure, he was a 'compensatory transference killer'...As a child he used to 'cut the heads off of dolls'....Was this an 'identification behavior pattern'? If so, he would have had to have seen a 'beheading', a 'decapitation'...Regardless, it became one of his 'signature, compensatory, narcissistic transference fixatons'...Years later he would behead his mother as well as a host of other women...
John Henry Lucas also eventually ended up killing his 'anal-sadistic mother' (as well as perhaps hundreds of other men and women -- no one knows anywhere close to the exact number...) who among other childhood events: 1. beat him with a wood plank (he would suffer from various brain injuries as a child); 2. shot his pet mule; 3. beat him up for accepting a 'teddy bear' from a teacher'; 4. dress him up in little girls clothing (verified by his sister); and 5. would make him watch her having sex with 'customers'...
For bad, ugly, and horrific, nothing that 'goes around' in the life of a serial killer 'comes around any worse' than in the 'horrifically violent obsessive-compulsions of a serial killer'...partly to those who may by some be judged to partly or wholly deserve it (i.e., the 'anal-sadistic' mothers in the case of Kemper and Lucas) but more often to those who don't deserve it at all...who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...as unsuspecting 'projective-transference figures'...
It is in this vein that Anaximander's most famous fragment becomes even more haunting...
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
According to necessity;
For they give to each other justice and recompense
For their injustice
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
At the same time, it is probably 'violent revenge' that remains man's worst obsessive-compulsion...
'Violence begets violence'....and never does the circle of 'perceived justice' and/or 'real injustice' end...Someone's friend, family member, and/or lover is violated and/or murdered and someone else picks up the pathological mantra of 'hatred, violence, and revenge'...and keeps the circle going..and spreading wider...seemingly without end...
Sadly and regrettably, in the words of Brian Bird, 'transference is a universal phenomenon' -- sometimes in its most pathological extremes, and this, for better or for worse, is what keeps both psychotherapists and religious practitioners in business...
Fortunately, for every Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Paul Bernardo, and Henry Lee Lucas, we can 'fly' to the other extreme end of the 'transference spectrum' and bless our good fortunes for the 'amazing altruism' and/or creative brilliance of a Florence Nightingale, an Edith Cavell, a Gandhi, a Mother Teresa, a Sigmund Freud, an Albert Einstein, and so on...
Paradoxically -- and seemingly shockingly but not once you come to fully understand the paradoxical nature of 'transference' -- sometimes both 'altruistic' and 'narcissistic' character traits appear in the same person, the same personality -- as 'opposing ego states'...for example, Ted Bundy, before he lost control of the 'narcissistically pathological part of his personality' actually 'saved lives' as a crisis and suicide prevention counselor...
One of the key ideas that I would like to make immensely clear in this paper is my 'synthesis' of pre-1897 and post-1897 Freudian Theory...In other words, I want to make it abundantly clear that I am integrating Freudian Traumacy-Seduction Theory with his later Classical Oedipal Theory...In other words again, 'childhood narcissistic -- and sometimes sexual traumacy/assault, especially in the case of male children -- can and often does become the transference springboard for a cycle of sexual and violent 'fantasy' often but not always leading to a 'serial behavior pattern' of actual physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse of another 'victim'... This 'other victim' may be either 'a projected image of himself as a child' and/or a 'projected image of his childhood victimizer ( his 'childhood victimizer' is most likely to be either his father and/or mother...but it could be an older sibling, an extended family member, a family friend, or a stranger...all documented by Freud in his 'infamous 1896 Seduction Theory'...)
In effect, the usually but not always male child 'identifies' with, and 'copies' the behavior of his 'violent/sexual abuser/victimizer'...In Psychoanalysis, this is called 'identification with the aggressor'. I have extended this name to include 'identification with the abuser/victimizer/abandoner/rejector...'...and will also sometimes call this obsessive-compulsive behavior pattern 'transference reversal'...
I will leave you with this rather provocative paper below that I just found on the internet...
-- dgb, April 24th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process......
...............................................................................................................................
We look at heroes and do-gooders as a special sort of breed; people who possess extraordinary traits of altruism, or self-less concern for the well-being of others, even at the expense of their own existence. On the other end, sociopaths also have an extraordinary set of traits, such as extreme selfishness, lack of impulse control, no respect for rules, and no conscience.
As crazy as it sounds, there may be a closer link than than most people would think between the extreme-altruistic personality and sociopathic personality. Would it shock you to know that two people, one with the traits of extreme-altruism (X-altruism) and the other the traits of a sociopath, could be related? Even siblings? And that their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them? Research by Watson, Clark, and Chmielewki from the University of Iowa, "Structures of Personality and Their Relevance to Psychopathology", present a convincing argument in which they support the growing push for a trait dimensional scheme in the new DSM- V to replace the current categorical system.
Personality has consistently shown to be extremely heritable. However, the same genetic material arranged and weighted in a slightly different way, may at times express as vastly different phenotypes: the "extremely good" and the "extremely bad" individual. How is this possible?
At a first glance, one would be compelled to put the sociopath and the X-atruistic person on opposite ends of a personality scale. After all, the chances of a serial killer running into a burning building to save a child are pretty slim, right? And wouldn't a hero-type be one of the last people likely to break rules? WRONG!!!!
Someone who goes out of their way to help others, even at the expense of their own welfare, is actually more likely to break rules than the average person. Think of Dr Ross from the early days of the TV show "ER". He was constantly pushing limits, breaking the rules, throwing caution to the wind, all for the sake of the child-patient, even when it ultimately meant getting fired. On 9/11, after it was apparent that the buildings were about to collapse, teams of firefighters were called back, yet they disobeyed orders and pushed on anyway, only to perish in the quest to possibly save even one more life. Those are the actions of a hero, or an X-altruistic personality type. But consider the type of rule-breaking that the X-altruist engages in- would you classify it as criminal, or even unlawful? How does motive factor in?
People whom we consider to be heroes (or X-altruists, as I am referring to them here), while among some of the most admired individuals, they possess many of the same traits as the sociopath. However, there is a fundamental difference in the motivation behind their actions that distinguish them from their nasty cohorts. Incidentally, that one difference is vitally important in determining if someone turns out to be the comic book hero or more like his archenemy.
X-altruists are compelled to good, even when doing so makes no sense and brings harm upon them. The cannot tolerate injustice, and go to extreme lengths to help those who have been wronged, regardless of their personal relationship to them. Now, I am not speaking of the guy who helps an old lady cross the street. I am speaking of the guy who throws himself in front of a speeding bus to push the old lady out of the way, killing himself in the process. The average, kind, thoughtful person does not take these kinds of extreme personal risks on a regular basis.
If you asked someone with an X-altruistic personality why they take the actions they do (and I have personal knowledge of at least one person like this), they would tell you that they couldn't help themselves. When they are faced with that moment, they just act. Compulsively. Barely considering any other course. The lack the impulse control to stop themselves from doing "the right thing" when it comes to the welfare of others, yet ironically, it almost always results in some form of negative consequence for themselves. They have no problem breaking the rules when it means helping an innocent, yet they highly value the importance of obeying rules in other contexts. That's crazy, you say? Now you're getting the idea.
The word "altruism" conveys images of people like Mother Teresa or Gandhi, passive, extremely self-less people. They are altruistic, sure. But the X-altruistic person is anything but passive or meek. They are often feisty, argumentative, independent, idealistic risk-takers and convention-breakers. Sound sort of like the sociopathic personality? Let's take a closer look at some similarities and differences between the two.
Sociopath:
X-altruist:
Both X-altruists and sociopaths have high impulsivity, need for novelty, and the tendency to break rules, but there is a fundamental difference in the motivation driving their behavior. Someone who is altruistic is always looking to the idealistic good situation, or the way things should be in a fair and just world. They are able to empathize- feel what the other person is feeling, or imagine themselves in another's shoes. This empathy is the force that moves them to engage in heroic behaviors. They have a need to live in "a fair and just world", and will go to great lengths to try and maintain that. They are driven by factors outside of themselves,externally motivated drives, such as aiding the plight of society or serving the "greater good".
The sociopath, on the other hand, is motivated by internal factors; selfish desires and the advancement of their own cause, rather than the causes of others or society as a whole. They don't have the ability to empathize, so they see no logic in acting in any way other than selfishly, since they cannot imagine themselves in anyone else's position. Everything they do is driven by their quest to satisfy their own needs, rather than (and often at the expense of) the needs of another person.
If an altruistic person is able to empathize, and thus is motivated to help others, the X-altruistic person has too much empathy for others, driving them to break rules and put themselves in harms way in order to alleviate the suffering of others or bring fairness to the world. That extreme empathy, combined with a lower impulse control, the need for novelty, and an intolerance for injustice, is the trait formula of the X-altruistic personality. Because this type of person often engages in such extreme behavior that results in harm to self on some level, he earns a spot on the dysfunctional end of the personality scale, nearing psychopathology.
Interestingly, these two type of individuals, the sociopath and the X-altruist, may appear similar in their displays of behavior, and at times, even confused for the other type. If an X-altruistic person is compelled to break rules without remorse in order to help a disadvantaged person, is may seem as if he is acting rebelliously, especially if the motives behind his behavior are not known. On the other hand, a sociopath may donate a large sum of money to a charity, a seemingly altruistic behavior, but his actions may have been motivated by his selfish need to appear better than or more generous than a colleague. The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much, which then drives the extreme behavior of each.
So while the X-altruistic person indeed acts for the good of the people, he often violates laws, breaks rules, or otherwise causes ripples in the order of society. To be a good citizen, we are required and expected to follow laws at all times. But we can all agree that the world needs extreme heroes; they are the ones who consistently go above and beyond the call of duty, for self-less reasons, even when it could mean losing their job, receiving hefty fines, or even serving time in jail.
But are they really criminals? Or do we need to bend the rules at times in order to allow for these types of do-gooders to continue on their path, bringing righteousness and justice to an otherwise corrupt world? Where do we draw the line between criminality and heroism?
Here's an even better question:
How exactly do we support necessary rule-breaking for virtuous intent, yet punish malicious rule-breaking for ill-intent? Can it be done? Maybe someday we will be able to write public policy that actually serves the best intent of the people, even if it means that once in a while, some rules need to be broken in the process.
I want to send a message out to all of those heroic, X-altruists out there, continually putting their butts on the line for our well-being: Thank you. The world is a better place because you dare to do good... even when it seems crazy to do so.
*For more on the HEXACO Personality Inventory and how traits define psychopathology, lookhere. (this was added after posting the original article)
As crazy as it sounds, there may be a closer link than than most people would think between the extreme-altruistic personality and sociopathic personality. Would it shock you to know that two people, one with the traits of extreme-altruism (X-altruism) and the other the traits of a sociopath, could be related? Even siblings? And that their personality traits are very similar, with only a few features to distinguish them? Research by Watson, Clark, and Chmielewki from the University of Iowa, "Structures of Personality and Their Relevance to Psychopathology", present a convincing argument in which they support the growing push for a trait dimensional scheme in the new DSM- V to replace the current categorical system.
Personality has consistently shown to be extremely heritable. However, the same genetic material arranged and weighted in a slightly different way, may at times express as vastly different phenotypes: the "extremely good" and the "extremely bad" individual. How is this possible?
At a first glance, one would be compelled to put the sociopath and the X-atruistic person on opposite ends of a personality scale. After all, the chances of a serial killer running into a burning building to save a child are pretty slim, right? And wouldn't a hero-type be one of the last people likely to break rules? WRONG!!!!
Someone who goes out of their way to help others, even at the expense of their own welfare, is actually more likely to break rules than the average person. Think of Dr Ross from the early days of the TV show "ER". He was constantly pushing limits, breaking the rules, throwing caution to the wind, all for the sake of the child-patient, even when it ultimately meant getting fired. On 9/11, after it was apparent that the buildings were about to collapse, teams of firefighters were called back, yet they disobeyed orders and pushed on anyway, only to perish in the quest to possibly save even one more life. Those are the actions of a hero, or an X-altruistic personality type. But consider the type of rule-breaking that the X-altruist engages in- would you classify it as criminal, or even unlawful? How does motive factor in?
People whom we consider to be heroes (or X-altruists, as I am referring to them here), while among some of the most admired individuals, they possess many of the same traits as the sociopath. However, there is a fundamental difference in the motivation behind their actions that distinguish them from their nasty cohorts. Incidentally, that one difference is vitally important in determining if someone turns out to be the comic book hero or more like his archenemy.
X-altruists are compelled to good, even when doing so makes no sense and brings harm upon them. The cannot tolerate injustice, and go to extreme lengths to help those who have been wronged, regardless of their personal relationship to them. Now, I am not speaking of the guy who helps an old lady cross the street. I am speaking of the guy who throws himself in front of a speeding bus to push the old lady out of the way, killing himself in the process. The average, kind, thoughtful person does not take these kinds of extreme personal risks on a regular basis.
If you asked someone with an X-altruistic personality why they take the actions they do (and I have personal knowledge of at least one person like this), they would tell you that they couldn't help themselves. When they are faced with that moment, they just act. Compulsively. Barely considering any other course. The lack the impulse control to stop themselves from doing "the right thing" when it comes to the welfare of others, yet ironically, it almost always results in some form of negative consequence for themselves. They have no problem breaking the rules when it means helping an innocent, yet they highly value the importance of obeying rules in other contexts. That's crazy, you say? Now you're getting the idea.
The word "altruism" conveys images of people like Mother Teresa or Gandhi, passive, extremely self-less people. They are altruistic, sure. But the X-altruistic person is anything but passive or meek. They are often feisty, argumentative, independent, idealistic risk-takers and convention-breakers. Sound sort of like the sociopathic personality? Let's take a closer look at some similarities and differences between the two.
Sociopath:
- low impulse control
- high novelty-seeking (desire to experience new things, take more risks, break convention)
- no remorse for their actions (lack of conscience)
- inability to see beyond their own needs (lack of empathy)
- willing to break rules
- always acts in the interest of himself
X-altruist:
- low impulse control
- high novelty-seeking
- little remorse for their actions (would "do it again in a heartbeat")
- inability to see past the needs of others (very high empathy)
- willing to break rules
- acts in the best interest of others, or for the "common good" (because it is the right thing to do)
Both X-altruists and sociopaths have high impulsivity, need for novelty, and the tendency to break rules, but there is a fundamental difference in the motivation driving their behavior. Someone who is altruistic is always looking to the idealistic good situation, or the way things should be in a fair and just world. They are able to empathize- feel what the other person is feeling, or imagine themselves in another's shoes. This empathy is the force that moves them to engage in heroic behaviors. They have a need to live in "a fair and just world", and will go to great lengths to try and maintain that. They are driven by factors outside of themselves,externally motivated drives, such as aiding the plight of society or serving the "greater good".
The sociopath, on the other hand, is motivated by internal factors; selfish desires and the advancement of their own cause, rather than the causes of others or society as a whole. They don't have the ability to empathize, so they see no logic in acting in any way other than selfishly, since they cannot imagine themselves in anyone else's position. Everything they do is driven by their quest to satisfy their own needs, rather than (and often at the expense of) the needs of another person.
If an altruistic person is able to empathize, and thus is motivated to help others, the X-altruistic person has too much empathy for others, driving them to break rules and put themselves in harms way in order to alleviate the suffering of others or bring fairness to the world. That extreme empathy, combined with a lower impulse control, the need for novelty, and an intolerance for injustice, is the trait formula of the X-altruistic personality. Because this type of person often engages in such extreme behavior that results in harm to self on some level, he earns a spot on the dysfunctional end of the personality scale, nearing psychopathology.
Interestingly, these two type of individuals, the sociopath and the X-altruist, may appear similar in their displays of behavior, and at times, even confused for the other type. If an X-altruistic person is compelled to break rules without remorse in order to help a disadvantaged person, is may seem as if he is acting rebelliously, especially if the motives behind his behavior are not known. On the other hand, a sociopath may donate a large sum of money to a charity, a seemingly altruistic behavior, but his actions may have been motivated by his selfish need to appear better than or more generous than a colleague. The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much, which then drives the extreme behavior of each.
So while the X-altruistic person indeed acts for the good of the people, he often violates laws, breaks rules, or otherwise causes ripples in the order of society. To be a good citizen, we are required and expected to follow laws at all times. But we can all agree that the world needs extreme heroes; they are the ones who consistently go above and beyond the call of duty, for self-less reasons, even when it could mean losing their job, receiving hefty fines, or even serving time in jail.
But are they really criminals? Or do we need to bend the rules at times in order to allow for these types of do-gooders to continue on their path, bringing righteousness and justice to an otherwise corrupt world? Where do we draw the line between criminality and heroism?
Here's an even better question:
How exactly do we support necessary rule-breaking for virtuous intent, yet punish malicious rule-breaking for ill-intent? Can it be done? Maybe someday we will be able to write public policy that actually serves the best intent of the people, even if it means that once in a while, some rules need to be broken in the process.
I want to send a message out to all of those heroic, X-altruists out there, continually putting their butts on the line for our well-being: Thank you. The world is a better place because you dare to do good... even when it seems crazy to do so.
*For more on the HEXACO Personality Inventory and how traits define psychopathology, lookhere. (this was added after posting the original article)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Strange Attractors....DGB Dialectic Theory Meets Chaos Theory...
It is funny...whenever I need a new -- and/or additional, complimentary -- theory, the theory suddenly appears.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
I have known for a while that Hegel's Hotel -- its architecture -- is straining at the edge of Chaos Theory.
For one thing, my whole style of writing, and my style of presentation, is somewhat chaotic...
In Hegel's Hotel, there is order within chaos, and chaos within order...
New order and direction arises from the midst of chaos...
No writer, no philosopher, no psychologist, out there, to my knowledge, is trying to integrate as many different and seemingly paradoxical theories as I am.
DGB Philosophy used to be called 'Gap' Philosophy...and then 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy...
Why? Because 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy philosophizes in the 'gaps' between opposing and differentiated theories....
'Gap-DGB' Philosophy is a 'Dialectic Gap-Bridging' Philosophy...
Think about it for a minute...
Freud would love this...
Creating new ideas, new theories, new philosophies...is a very sexual experience...
Freud would call it 'sublimation'.
How are new ideas, new theories, new philosophies born?
Simple.
They are born the same way new children, new offspring, are born.
Through (dialectic) intercourse and cross-fertilization....
Hegel meets Darwin meets Freud meets DGB Philosophy...
Dionysus meets Apollo in Hegel's Hotel...
Hegel's Hotel is The Grand Meeting Hotel where all ideas...
All theorists...all philosophers...all psychologists...all ideologies...all politic factions...all religions...
Can meet....
Integrate...
And consumate human idealism...
Turn human idealism into philosophical realism...
Through the engagement of the dialectic...
Over and over and over again...
Ad infinitum...
This has always been one of the limitations, one of the problems,
In human thinking...
Theories always have boundaries, they always are finite...
Whereas life is boundless, infinite, defying any and all boundaries...
Life is born from the Shadows, the Apeiron...Chaos...
Life is chaotic...random...unpredictable...turbulent...
Born out of chance encounters...chance meetings...seeming 'coincidences'...
'Purposeful coincidences'...
'Strange attractors'...
Attracting each other...
Engaging together for a short while...
Or for a long time....
Depending on the unique 'bio-psycho-chemistry' of the encounter....
Protons meeting electrons...
Testosterone meeting estrogen...
Sperm meeting egg...
Yin meeting yang...
Thesis meeting anti-thesis...
In Ancient Chinese philosophy, 'yin' and 'yang' differentiate from random chaos...
Amazingly, almost exactly what Anaxamander was saying in around the same time in Ancient Greece...
Another 'strange coincidence'?
Both Ancient China and Ancient Greece were developing a theory of 'chaos' differentiating into 'opposites' -- thousands of years before 'Dialectic Theory' would become 'fashionable' (and then hated) in the form of early 19th Century Hegelian Theory; and even almost a couple of hundred years longer before 'Chaos Theory' would start to become 'fashionable' in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s...
In Ancient Pre-Socratic Greece, Anaximander was philosophizing about 'power dialectics' -- the idea of each 'opposite' trying to 'dominate' the other -- a 'dialectic power struggle' -- with one opposite eventually 'winning' the power struggle and taking its 'moment of glory in the sunshine' while the other opposite is 'pushed back into The Shadows', or the 'Apeiron' which is what Professor Anaximander used to call it...to be 'minimalized' and 'marginalized' until the 'wheels of power keep churning and turning' and eventually 'the dominant becomes usurped from power and forced into the Shadows by the marginalized and the forgotten', and 'the marginalized and the forgotten take their respective turn glorifying in the sunshine of power'...
That is a remarkable piece of philosophy right there...a combination of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida...all rolled up into one -- some 2500 to 2650 years before Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida respectively launched their 'post-Anaxamanderian' 'power-dialects' and/or 'will to power' philosophies...
Philosophers throughout the evolution of Western history have been fascinated by the only written passage left behind by Anaximander, the obscure, mystical, and enchanting Anaximanderian Fragment:
......................................................................................................
From Wikipedia...
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
- The condemnation for the crime -
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Martin Heidegger lectured extensively on Anaximander, and delivered a lecture entitled "Anaximander's Saying" which was subsequently included in Off the Beaten Track. The lecture examines the ontological difference and the oblivion of Being or Dasein in the context of the Anaximander fragment.[44] Heidegger's lecture is, in turn, an important influence on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.[45]
...............................................................................................................................
Now I have no idea what Heidegger was talking about at that 'Anaxamander's Saying' lecture -- it might be worth investigating, interpreting, and/or analyzing in another essay -- but I do most definitely see Derrida's 'Deconstruction' philosophy (which he learned partly from Heidegger's lectures) as a 'modern day clarification and amplification of both Anaxamander's ('power-dialectic' philosophy and Heidegger's philosophy of 'deconstructing' the philosophy of 'Being' as it has evolved in the history of Western philosophy. More on this at a different time.
Back in the Ancient East, a more 'democratically friendly' dialectic philosophy was being developed even in the context of great Chinese Civil War (similar to the civil wars between the Spartans and the Athenians in Ancient Greece).
Ancient pre-Socratic Greek philosophy had no equivalents for the Chinese dialectic concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' -- even though Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaximander, was also developing a more 'democratic friendly' dialectic philosophy. Not only do opposing and dueling dialectic philosophies continually try to 'outmuscle each other for power dominance' but also, and/or in a more 'healthy vein', opposing dialectic polarities are 'attracted to each other' and 'need each other to 'co-exist' at a 'higher plateau of existence' in a state of being and becoming that might be called 'dialectic unity and harmony and wholism'. This was the message that Heraclitus developed in Ancient Greece that Anaximander didn't, and it was also the type of message that was coming out of the Chinese East in the form of 'yin' and 'yang' philosophy...
Returning once again to the mutual development of 'Dialectic Theory' and 'Chaos Theory' in Ancient Chinese Philosophy,
Even once 'yin' and 'yang' -- feminine and masculine 'energies' -- have differentiated themselves from each other, bringing more order into a 'chaotic world'...
Still, too much 'yin'...or too much 'yang'...can lead us back to chaos again...
'Dialectic harmony', 'dialectic unity', 'dialectic wholism'...
Is the type of harmony, unity, and wholism...
That arises from 'strange attractors'...'dialectic attractors'...
Harmonizing their respective, opposing, energies...
With each other...
Without each of them trying to respectively 'dominate' the other into 'submission' in an Anaximanderian or Marxian or Foucaultian or Derridian way...
Lao Tse meets Anaxamander meets Heraclitus meets Hegel meets Darwin meets Nietzsche (Birth of Tragedy) meets Freud meets Jung meets Cannon meets Derrida meets Perls meets DGB Philosophy...
They have all come togetheer to integrate their respectiv ideas...
In Hegel's Hotel...
Dialectic Theory meets Chaos Theory...
.....................................................................................................
According to Ziauddin Sardar...
Author of 'Introducing Chaos'...(1998, 1999, 2000)...
'Mathematical physicist David Ruelle gave chaos theory a kick start with his work on turbulence. For decades, turbulence had been a major problem for physicists. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), who contributed the "Uncertainty Principle" to quantum physics, probably still worried about it even on his deathbed.
God! Why relativity? And why turbulence?
Even I do not have an answer for turbulence.
So turbulence is a graveyard of theories.' (Sardar, Introducing Chaos, 2000, p. 56)...
...............................................................................................................................................
Yes, turbulence is a graveyard of all theories.
Theories are finite -- with boundaries, and classification systems...
Whereas life is infinite -- with no boundaries, and/or boundaries with always stretching...always breaking always evolving and changing boundaries...
Theories -- regardless of how good they are, regardless of how sophisticated they are -- cannot keep up with life...always mutating, always evolving, always compensating...life...
The best we can do is try as best as possible to 'keep up with life'...to evolve and mutate and modify and compensate and dialectically integrate our theories in accordance with what we see around us...in life...
Don't hang onto your 'model' or your 'map' or your 'theory' too tightly...
Because life will always allude -- and break the boundaries -- of your 'cherished conception'...
The human mind and personality is full of 'yin' and 'yang' and 'order' and 'regularity' and 'habits' and 'custom' and 'Apollo'....and 'disorder' and 'irregularity' and 'turbulence' and 'chaos' and 'Dionysus'...
Perfect predictability will always be defeated by 'turbulence'...the influence of 'chaos'...
We may be able to some extent to 'predict chaos'....
But we will never be able to perfectly predict...
Where chaos is going to take us...
This spawns the infinite diversity of life...
And DGB Philosophy...
As best as possible...
Needs to account for...
'Dialectical turbulence'....
'Strange attractors'...
And strange encounters...
Between strange attractors...
This is the most recent -- and evolving -- influence...
Of Chaos Theory...
On DGB Multi-Dialectic Theory...
And Hegel's Hotel...
-- dgb, April 13th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
I have known for a while that Hegel's Hotel -- its architecture -- is straining at the edge of Chaos Theory.
For one thing, my whole style of writing, and my style of presentation, is somewhat chaotic...
In Hegel's Hotel, there is order within chaos, and chaos within order...
New order and direction arises from the midst of chaos...
No writer, no philosopher, no psychologist, out there, to my knowledge, is trying to integrate as many different and seemingly paradoxical theories as I am.
DGB Philosophy used to be called 'Gap' Philosophy...and then 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy...
Why? Because 'Gap-DGB' Philosophy philosophizes in the 'gaps' between opposing and differentiated theories....
'Gap-DGB' Philosophy is a 'Dialectic Gap-Bridging' Philosophy...
Think about it for a minute...
Freud would love this...
Creating new ideas, new theories, new philosophies...is a very sexual experience...
Freud would call it 'sublimation'.
How are new ideas, new theories, new philosophies born?
Simple.
They are born the same way new children, new offspring, are born.
Through (dialectic) intercourse and cross-fertilization....
Hegel meets Darwin meets Freud meets DGB Philosophy...
Dionysus meets Apollo in Hegel's Hotel...
Hegel's Hotel is The Grand Meeting Hotel where all ideas...
All theorists...all philosophers...all psychologists...all ideologies...all politic factions...all religions...
Can meet....
Integrate...
And consumate human idealism...
Turn human idealism into philosophical realism...
Through the engagement of the dialectic...
Over and over and over again...
Ad infinitum...
This has always been one of the limitations, one of the problems,
In human thinking...
Theories always have boundaries, they always are finite...
Whereas life is boundless, infinite, defying any and all boundaries...
Life is born from the Shadows, the Apeiron...Chaos...
Life is chaotic...random...unpredictable...turbulent...
Born out of chance encounters...chance meetings...seeming 'coincidences'...
'Purposeful coincidences'...
'Strange attractors'...
Attracting each other...
Engaging together for a short while...
Or for a long time....
Depending on the unique 'bio-psycho-chemistry' of the encounter....
Protons meeting electrons...
Testosterone meeting estrogen...
Sperm meeting egg...
Yin meeting yang...
Thesis meeting anti-thesis...
In Ancient Chinese philosophy, 'yin' and 'yang' differentiate from random chaos...
Amazingly, almost exactly what Anaxamander was saying in around the same time in Ancient Greece...
Another 'strange coincidence'?
Both Ancient China and Ancient Greece were developing a theory of 'chaos' differentiating into 'opposites' -- thousands of years before 'Dialectic Theory' would become 'fashionable' (and then hated) in the form of early 19th Century Hegelian Theory; and even almost a couple of hundred years longer before 'Chaos Theory' would start to become 'fashionable' in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s...
In Ancient Pre-Socratic Greece, Anaximander was philosophizing about 'power dialectics' -- the idea of each 'opposite' trying to 'dominate' the other -- a 'dialectic power struggle' -- with one opposite eventually 'winning' the power struggle and taking its 'moment of glory in the sunshine' while the other opposite is 'pushed back into The Shadows', or the 'Apeiron' which is what Professor Anaximander used to call it...to be 'minimalized' and 'marginalized' until the 'wheels of power keep churning and turning' and eventually 'the dominant becomes usurped from power and forced into the Shadows by the marginalized and the forgotten', and 'the marginalized and the forgotten take their respective turn glorifying in the sunshine of power'...
That is a remarkable piece of philosophy right there...a combination of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida...all rolled up into one -- some 2500 to 2650 years before Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida respectively launched their 'post-Anaxamanderian' 'power-dialects' and/or 'will to power' philosophies...
Philosophers throughout the evolution of Western history have been fascinated by the only written passage left behind by Anaximander, the obscure, mystical, and enchanting Anaximanderian Fragment:
......................................................................................................
From Wikipedia...
Whence things have their origin,
Thence also their destruction happens,
As is the order of things;
For they execute the sentence upon one another
- The condemnation for the crime -
In conformity with the ordinance of Time.
Martin Heidegger lectured extensively on Anaximander, and delivered a lecture entitled "Anaximander's Saying" which was subsequently included in Off the Beaten Track. The lecture examines the ontological difference and the oblivion of Being or Dasein in the context of the Anaximander fragment.[44] Heidegger's lecture is, in turn, an important influence on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.[45]
...............................................................................................................................
Now I have no idea what Heidegger was talking about at that 'Anaxamander's Saying' lecture -- it might be worth investigating, interpreting, and/or analyzing in another essay -- but I do most definitely see Derrida's 'Deconstruction' philosophy (which he learned partly from Heidegger's lectures) as a 'modern day clarification and amplification of both Anaxamander's ('power-dialectic' philosophy and Heidegger's philosophy of 'deconstructing' the philosophy of 'Being' as it has evolved in the history of Western philosophy. More on this at a different time.
Back in the Ancient East, a more 'democratically friendly' dialectic philosophy was being developed even in the context of great Chinese Civil War (similar to the civil wars between the Spartans and the Athenians in Ancient Greece).
Ancient pre-Socratic Greek philosophy had no equivalents for the Chinese dialectic concepts of 'yin' and 'yang' -- even though Heraclitus, an indirect student of Anaximander, was also developing a more 'democratic friendly' dialectic philosophy. Not only do opposing and dueling dialectic philosophies continually try to 'outmuscle each other for power dominance' but also, and/or in a more 'healthy vein', opposing dialectic polarities are 'attracted to each other' and 'need each other to 'co-exist' at a 'higher plateau of existence' in a state of being and becoming that might be called 'dialectic unity and harmony and wholism'. This was the message that Heraclitus developed in Ancient Greece that Anaximander didn't, and it was also the type of message that was coming out of the Chinese East in the form of 'yin' and 'yang' philosophy...
Returning once again to the mutual development of 'Dialectic Theory' and 'Chaos Theory' in Ancient Chinese Philosophy,
Even once 'yin' and 'yang' -- feminine and masculine 'energies' -- have differentiated themselves from each other, bringing more order into a 'chaotic world'...
Still, too much 'yin'...or too much 'yang'...can lead us back to chaos again...
'Dialectic harmony', 'dialectic unity', 'dialectic wholism'...
Is the type of harmony, unity, and wholism...
That arises from 'strange attractors'...'dialectic attractors'...
Harmonizing their respective, opposing, energies...
With each other...
Without each of them trying to respectively 'dominate' the other into 'submission' in an Anaximanderian or Marxian or Foucaultian or Derridian way...
Lao Tse meets Anaxamander meets Heraclitus meets Hegel meets Darwin meets Nietzsche (Birth of Tragedy) meets Freud meets Jung meets Cannon meets Derrida meets Perls meets DGB Philosophy...
They have all come togetheer to integrate their respectiv ideas...
In Hegel's Hotel...
Dialectic Theory meets Chaos Theory...
.....................................................................................................
According to Ziauddin Sardar...
Author of 'Introducing Chaos'...(1998, 1999, 2000)...
'Mathematical physicist David Ruelle gave chaos theory a kick start with his work on turbulence. For decades, turbulence had been a major problem for physicists. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), who contributed the "Uncertainty Principle" to quantum physics, probably still worried about it even on his deathbed.
God! Why relativity? And why turbulence?
Even I do not have an answer for turbulence.
So turbulence is a graveyard of theories.' (Sardar, Introducing Chaos, 2000, p. 56)...
...............................................................................................................................................
Yes, turbulence is a graveyard of all theories.
Theories are finite -- with boundaries, and classification systems...
Whereas life is infinite -- with no boundaries, and/or boundaries with always stretching...always breaking always evolving and changing boundaries...
Theories -- regardless of how good they are, regardless of how sophisticated they are -- cannot keep up with life...always mutating, always evolving, always compensating...life...
The best we can do is try as best as possible to 'keep up with life'...to evolve and mutate and modify and compensate and dialectically integrate our theories in accordance with what we see around us...in life...
Don't hang onto your 'model' or your 'map' or your 'theory' too tightly...
Because life will always allude -- and break the boundaries -- of your 'cherished conception'...
The human mind and personality is full of 'yin' and 'yang' and 'order' and 'regularity' and 'habits' and 'custom' and 'Apollo'....and 'disorder' and 'irregularity' and 'turbulence' and 'chaos' and 'Dionysus'...
Perfect predictability will always be defeated by 'turbulence'...the influence of 'chaos'...
We may be able to some extent to 'predict chaos'....
But we will never be able to perfectly predict...
Where chaos is going to take us...
This spawns the infinite diversity of life...
And DGB Philosophy...
As best as possible...
Needs to account for...
'Dialectical turbulence'....
'Strange attractors'...
And strange encounters...
Between strange attractors...
This is the most recent -- and evolving -- influence...
Of Chaos Theory...
On DGB Multi-Dialectic Theory...
And Hegel's Hotel...
-- dgb, April 13th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Monday, April 12, 2010
In The Heat of The Night....
Dionysus is running amok!!! Chain him up!! Quickly, Apollo, take back control of the ship before we all go down with it!! And sink to the bottom of the sea!!!
A Comparison Between Greek Dialectic Mythology, Greek Dialectic Philosophy -- and The Bible
It is almost a 'chicken and egg' argument...
Does man think dialectically -- i.e., in terms of opposites -- because that is just how he/she thinks?
Or was the world made dialectically -- again divided into opposites -- that is how the world operates, which is what influenced man to think dialectically in order to 'accurately represent' what was happening in the world?
Or both? Because man is a part of the way 'the world' was created...
In Greek mythology, we had 'Apollo' (God of Truth and Ethics) vs. 'Dionysus' (The first major 'Bad Boy' God; God of Wine and Alcohol, God of Celebration, Sensuality, Seduction, Sex...)
Gee, how often has this 'human, all too human' soap opera played itself out both in 'The Greek Skies' and in thousands of years of human religion, culture, and history...
All Nietzsche did (I shouldn't say 'all Nietzsche did' because what he did was of colossal, evolutionary importance)-- in his revolutionary first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (which he later unfortunately rejected as being too 'Hegelian') -- was he bridged the mythological, philosophical, and psychological gaps between Greek Mythology, Greek Pre-Socratic Philosophy, Schopenhauer, and what was later to come down the psychological pipe in the form of Freud and Psychoanalysis. Oh yes, and let us not forget the work of the most ancient Chinese philosophers like Lao Tse who were building the idea of 'yin' and 'yang' philosophy...
The little underestimated book of 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- in shortened analysis -- was the most important bridge and connecting point between Hegel, Schopenhauer -- and Freud.
I mean, how far a 'mythological, philosophical, and psychological leap' is it to make between a person living an 'Apollonian lifestyle' (emphasizing truth, equality, ethics...let us say everything that 'Enlightenment Philosophy' taught us) on the one hand, and a person living a 'Dionysian lifestyle' (emphasizing romance, sensuality, sexuality, mystery, seduction, dance, celebration...all of the key ideas emphasized in 'Romantic Philosophy') on the other hand...
Or taking this 'dialectic connection' one step further, how big a leap is it -- actually Plato made this leap and I personally think it was the most important thing Plato ever wrote -- to say that the 'mind-body' or 'personality' is divided into 'three different types of energies' -- 'thinking (Apollonian) energy', 'romantic (heart) energy', and 'sexual (Dionysian) energy'...
Freud seemed to have a 'romantic gap' in his own personality because he missed out on the Platonic idea of 'three different types of energy' in the mind-body -- missed out in particular on the idea of developing the concept of a 'Romantic Ego'....and instead 'dichotomized' the personality into 'Superego (Apollonian) energy' and 'Id (Dionysian, Sexual) energy....similarly to what Nietzsche had done in 'The Birth of Tragedy'...
Later on in Freud's career, Freud's 'Id energy' would take on 'aggressive, violent, death-wish impulses' as well as 'sexual, life-creating impulses' and both of these different but combined types of 'Dionysian-Satanic' energies would, in Freud's world, become a part of the 'unconscious realm of the Id'...as contrasted against the usually but not always more conscious realm of 'The Apollonian Superego'...
With 'The Romantic Ego' left out of the equation entirely...Carl Jung would integrate more 'romanticism' into Western Clinical Psychology, adding a dimension to the human personality that Freud had left out...
The 'Romantic Ego' could also be called 'The Loving Ego' or 'The Loving-Nurturing Ego'...
There are three things that I have taken from Platonic Philosophy that I have kept alive in DGB Philosophy-Psychology and one is this idea of the 'mind-body' or 'psyche' being divided into the three different types of energies listed above/below...
A second idea that I have taken from Platonic philosophy comes from 'The Symposium' -- a party where a number of important Greek philosophers were sitting around, drinking, and trying to define 'love'...From this comes the following myth...
The next to speak is the comic poet Aristophanes. Aristophanes draws an engaging myth that suggests that we were once all twice the people we are now, but that our threat to the gods prompted Zeus to cut us in half. Ever since, we have wandered the earth looking for our other half in order to rejoin with it and become whole.
From this myth, and from the philosophy of one of the main pre-Socratics before Plato and Socrates -- specifically, Anaxamander, and Anaxamander's 'pre-Nietzschean, 'will to power (dominance vs. submission and marginalization) philosophy', as would be more clearly articulated some 2600 years later by Jacques Derrida in Derrida's philosophy of 'Deconstruction(ism) -- comes my following ideas about 'philosophical, psychological, medical, and socio-economic-political health vs. pathology'...
Worded one way, 'dialectic-democratic-egalitarian-homeostatic health' equals 'balance' and 'equilibrium'...
Every type of philosophical pathology, psychopathology, medical pathology, political pathology, socio-economic pathology...is a reflection of something being out of 'dialectical-homeostatic balance'...
Worded a second way, 'pathology' generally reflects some form of either 'preferred (pampered) treatment' and/or some form of 'alienation' and/or 'marginalization'...
Worded a third way, almost every form of 'pathology' reflects in some format the idea of 'self and/or social dominance and pampering' on the one hand, and the idea of self and/or social exclusionism, suppression, repression, and/or marginalization on the other hand...
'Health' is generally a state and/or process of dialectic unity, negotiation, integration, and wholism on the one hand; whereas 'pathology' is generally a state and/or process of dialectic alienation, isolation, suppression, repression, marginalization, preferentialism, and/or pampering on the other hand...
Very much like the 'balance scales of justice'....Indeed, this used to be the 'official logo' of 'GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...(If I can ever find a way of reproducing this 'balance scale of justice logo' on my blog site here, I most definitely will...I am getting closer...but still no cigar...).
Does man think dialectically -- i.e., in terms of opposites -- because that is just how he/she thinks?
Or was the world made dialectically -- again divided into opposites -- that is how the world operates, which is what influenced man to think dialectically in order to 'accurately represent' what was happening in the world?
Or both? Because man is a part of the way 'the world' was created...
In Greek mythology, we had 'Apollo' (God of Truth and Ethics) vs. 'Dionysus' (The first major 'Bad Boy' God; God of Wine and Alcohol, God of Celebration, Sensuality, Seduction, Sex...)
Gee, how often has this 'human, all too human' soap opera played itself out both in 'The Greek Skies' and in thousands of years of human religion, culture, and history...
All Nietzsche did (I shouldn't say 'all Nietzsche did' because what he did was of colossal, evolutionary importance)-- in his revolutionary first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (which he later unfortunately rejected as being too 'Hegelian') -- was he bridged the mythological, philosophical, and psychological gaps between Greek Mythology, Greek Pre-Socratic Philosophy, Schopenhauer, and what was later to come down the psychological pipe in the form of Freud and Psychoanalysis. Oh yes, and let us not forget the work of the most ancient Chinese philosophers like Lao Tse who were building the idea of 'yin' and 'yang' philosophy...
The little underestimated book of 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- in shortened analysis -- was the most important bridge and connecting point between Hegel, Schopenhauer -- and Freud.
I mean, how far a 'mythological, philosophical, and psychological leap' is it to make between a person living an 'Apollonian lifestyle' (emphasizing truth, equality, ethics...let us say everything that 'Enlightenment Philosophy' taught us) on the one hand, and a person living a 'Dionysian lifestyle' (emphasizing romance, sensuality, sexuality, mystery, seduction, dance, celebration...all of the key ideas emphasized in 'Romantic Philosophy') on the other hand...
Or taking this 'dialectic connection' one step further, how big a leap is it -- actually Plato made this leap and I personally think it was the most important thing Plato ever wrote -- to say that the 'mind-body' or 'personality' is divided into 'three different types of energies' -- 'thinking (Apollonian) energy', 'romantic (heart) energy', and 'sexual (Dionysian) energy'...
Freud seemed to have a 'romantic gap' in his own personality because he missed out on the Platonic idea of 'three different types of energy' in the mind-body -- missed out in particular on the idea of developing the concept of a 'Romantic Ego'....and instead 'dichotomized' the personality into 'Superego (Apollonian) energy' and 'Id (Dionysian, Sexual) energy....similarly to what Nietzsche had done in 'The Birth of Tragedy'...
Later on in Freud's career, Freud's 'Id energy' would take on 'aggressive, violent, death-wish impulses' as well as 'sexual, life-creating impulses' and both of these different but combined types of 'Dionysian-Satanic' energies would, in Freud's world, become a part of the 'unconscious realm of the Id'...as contrasted against the usually but not always more conscious realm of 'The Apollonian Superego'...
With 'The Romantic Ego' left out of the equation entirely...Carl Jung would integrate more 'romanticism' into Western Clinical Psychology, adding a dimension to the human personality that Freud had left out...
The 'Romantic Ego' could also be called 'The Loving Ego' or 'The Loving-Nurturing Ego'...
There are three things that I have taken from Platonic Philosophy that I have kept alive in DGB Philosophy-Psychology and one is this idea of the 'mind-body' or 'psyche' being divided into the three different types of energies listed above/below...
A second idea that I have taken from Platonic philosophy comes from 'The Symposium' -- a party where a number of important Greek philosophers were sitting around, drinking, and trying to define 'love'...From this comes the following myth...
The next to speak is the comic poet Aristophanes. Aristophanes draws an engaging myth that suggests that we were once all twice the people we are now, but that our threat to the gods prompted Zeus to cut us in half. Ever since, we have wandered the earth looking for our other half in order to rejoin with it and become whole.
From this myth, and from the philosophy of one of the main pre-Socratics before Plato and Socrates -- specifically, Anaxamander, and Anaxamander's 'pre-Nietzschean, 'will to power (dominance vs. submission and marginalization) philosophy', as would be more clearly articulated some 2600 years later by Jacques Derrida in Derrida's philosophy of 'Deconstruction(ism) -- comes my following ideas about 'philosophical, psychological, medical, and socio-economic-political health vs. pathology'...
Worded one way, 'dialectic-democratic-egalitarian-homeostatic health' equals 'balance' and 'equilibrium'...
Every type of philosophical pathology, psychopathology, medical pathology, political pathology, socio-economic pathology...is a reflection of something being out of 'dialectical-homeostatic balance'...
Worded a second way, 'pathology' generally reflects some form of either 'preferred (pampered) treatment' and/or some form of 'alienation' and/or 'marginalization'...
Worded a third way, almost every form of 'pathology' reflects in some format the idea of 'self and/or social dominance and pampering' on the one hand, and the idea of self and/or social exclusionism, suppression, repression, and/or marginalization on the other hand...
'Health' is generally a state and/or process of dialectic unity, negotiation, integration, and wholism on the one hand; whereas 'pathology' is generally a state and/or process of dialectic alienation, isolation, suppression, repression, marginalization, preferentialism, and/or pampering on the other hand...
Very much like the 'balance scales of justice'....Indeed, this used to be the 'official logo' of 'GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...(If I can ever find a way of reproducing this 'balance scale of justice logo' on my blog site here, I most definitely will...I am getting closer...but still no cigar...).
My third 'Platonic influence' comes from Plato's parable of 'The Caves'. Although I almost hate to admit this because relative to epistemology, I think that Plato had this parable 'backwards' and/or 'upside down', still relative to my own rendition of 'The Ideal, Genetic Template of The Un-actualized Self', here I follow Plato's parable of 'The Caves'....because unlike Sartre, and following more in the footsteps of the humanistic post-Freudian psychologist, Erich Fromm, I subscribe to the idea that we all have an 'ideal, genetic template of our Unactualized Self' in our personality...and it is our 'Existential Responsibility' in life to find out what this 'Ideal, Unactualized Template of our Self' 'reflects -- like a mirror, or like 'light coming out of our Platonic Cave' (i.e., light coming out of our deepest sub/unconscious Shadows...) that reflects the person we were/are ideally meant to be...
But this is for future reference relative to the development of DGB Personality Theory...
Right now, let us return to my own version of 'DGB-Anaxamanderian Chaos and Differentiation Evolution Theory'...
I wish I knew more biology, chemistry, physics, and biochemistry here...but I have to go with what rudimentary knowledge I have in these areas...
I can also start to feel some Freudian 'life and death instinct theory' starting to develop here...
What is the saying....We start from dust and end in dust...
Life starts from Chaos, from an Undifferentiated Mass of Disorganization....
And moves in the direction of more and more differentiation, more and more 'generic cells' to more and more 'customized and complexly differentiated cells'...Cells split, mutate, evolve, change, modify, customize, specialize, and specialize further...all reflecting a movement from greater disorganization to greater organization, specialization, customization, and complexity of function...
And so it is with the personality, the 'mind-brain-body' and 'The Ego'...The ego splits...and splits again...and splits again...in a movement towards greater and greater organization and specialization of function...
If this is indeed what happens in biology -- which any biologist, I believe, would say that it does...then our 'mind-brain-body' is absolutely connected to this whole biological and genetic DNA 'splitting process'...
And any 'model' or 'map' of the personality has to reflect this biological, psychological, and philosophical, evolving process...
Such a map or model of the personality must reflect a 'splitting of the Ego'....which is where Freud got to in a small but very important essay called, 'The Splitting of The Ego' in 1938 -- just before he died.
Freud commented on his own partial confusion as to whether what he was just starting to write about in 1938 at the very end of his career was something 'new' or something 'very old'...
It was both...
Freud's earlies work in the early 1890's contained what we might call a 'vertical splitting of the personality' between 'conscious' and 'unconscious/repressed' elements....
In contrast, one of Freud's main 'competitors' back in the early 1890s -- the French philosopher-psychologist-psychotherapist, Pierre Janet -- was writing about what might be called a 'horizontal splitting of the personality -- or ego'...which was a little -- and a lot -- different...
Personally, I prefer Janet's terminology and conceptuology to Freud's...
Janet was talking and writing about 'the subconscious' and 'dissociation' whereas Freud was talking and writing about 'the unconscious' and 'repression'...
I am partial and preferential to the first two Janet -- rather than the last two Freudian -- concepts.
The ideas of 'subconscious', 'dissociation', 'defense', and 'compensation' are all pertinent to any discussion we will hold here or anywhere in 'Hegel's Hotel' relative to 'neurotic', 'psychotic', and/or 'psycho-pathological' tendencies...
The concept of 'repression' does nothing for me because I have not found it to be fundamental to neurosis, psychosis, and/or psychopathology...
A memory does not have to be 'repressed' to be 'psycho-pathological'...Many 'conscious' or 'preconscious' memories are pathological...with no hint of 'repression' or 'unconscious forces'...
Two ideas or impulses can be 'dissociated' or 'alienated' from each other and this can be troublesome relative to possible future psychopathology but this does not mean that one of the ideas and/or impulses necessarily has to be 'repressed' from the other...
Ted Bundy had a 'good guy ego or persona' and he had a 'very narcissistic and psychopathic alter-ego'...
His 'alter-ego' was not 'repressed' from his 'good guy persona'...His 'Mr Hyde sub-personality' was not 'repressed' from his 'Dr. Jeckyll' sub-personality. If anything, Ted Bundy's 'Dr Jeckyll Personality' was in the manipulative service of his 'Mr. Hyde Personality'. Bundy would use his 'nice guy' personality in order to foster 'trust' in the women he was intent on 'assaulting'...and then once he had them alone and within his complete control...well, we know the rest...all Hell would break out from the other side of his personality...
The essential point I am trying to make here is that 'repression' does not have to be involved at all...because all that is needed in order for 'psychopathology' to break out is a combination of 'ego-splitting' and then a 'dissociation'/'alienation' between the two 'splits in the personality'...
This could very well be between the 'defiant-rebellious underego' and the 'socially sensitive, approval-seeking underego'....tensions arising between the two opposing ego-states as to which one would most dramatically influence the behavioral choice of 'The Central Mediating and Executive Ego'...In some very common cases, either the approval-seeking or the defiant rebellious ego could/can basically 'overwhelm' the power of the Central Ego....This is why we can very easily distinguish between a 'defiant, rebellious personality' and a 'over-co-operative, approval-seeking personality'...Both can, and often do, reflect opposing extreme dialectic polarities in the personality...
Likewise, between 'The Nurturing, Supportive Superego' and 'The Righteous, Rejecting Superego' who may be at odds with each other as to how to show 'superego leadership' over the 'underego' elements of the personality (either the defiant underego and/or the approval-seeking underego).
All of this brings us to the distinction between a 'vertical splitting in the personality and/or ego' vs. a 'horizontal splitting in the personality and/or ego'.
Vertical splits involve splits in 'authority', 'power', and/or 'stability of self-esteem'. They are denoted by the 'superego' vs. 'underego' distinction.
Horizontal splits generally involve splits between 'narcissistic' and 'altruistic' tendencies...
There can also be vertical and/or horizontal splits in the personality between 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' tendencies...
The final DGB model of 'ego-splits' and 'ego-states' in the personality looks like this:
1. The Oral-Nurturing-Supportive Superego; 2. The Oral-Narcissistic-Dionysian (Hedonistic) Superego; and 3. The Anal-Sadistic-Righteous Apollonian Superego;
4. The Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Ego; 5. The Central-Mediating, Executive Ego;
6. 'The Oral-Needy, Anal-Submissive Approval-Seeking Underego; 7. The Oral-Narcissistic-Dionysian (Hedonistic) Underego; and 8. The Anal-Sadistic-Rebellious Underego.
And then on the deeper and deeper subconscious levels we have:
09. The Dynamic Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Creator;
10. The Evolving Transference Memory, Relationship, and 'Complex' Template;
11. The Genetic, Mythological, Spiritual-Symbolic Template;
12. The Genetic, Un-actualized, Ideal Potential Self Template.
Our 'Dream-Fantasy-Nightmare Creator (DFNC)' is the bridge between the deeper subconscious aspects of our self and our more conscious dynamic creative and destructive ego-states....
In the next essay, we will look at a comparison between the 'Platonic Hermaphrodite Myth', 'The Adam and Eve Myth', and 'The God and Satan Myth'...
-- dgb, April 11th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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