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...
