At bottom level, the study of Psychoanalysis -- and human behavior in general, both healthy and neurotic (psychotic/pathological) -- is a simply art and science.
I say Psychoanalysis even though Psychoanalysis -- particularly Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis -- is regarded by many, laypersons, academics, and professional psychotherapists alike, as being outdated, passe, anachronistic, Victorian, and not in synch with 21st century psychiatry, behaviorism, cognitive-behavior therapy, short term counseling, and even depth psychotherapy.
Psychiatry has gone the easy route (for the therapist) -- for the most part, you might as well call most psychiatrists 'medical control therapists'. I am sorry if that is an overgeneralization -- I try to teach people not to label and stereotype -- but sometimes even stereotypes have some basis of truth in them. For a schizophrenic, medical -- meaning drug -- therapy may be the only way of subduing his or her hallucinations. With the hallucinations, a schizophenic may not (likely will not) be able to live a basically normal life. With the anti-psychotic drugs, and no hallucinations, a schizophrenic may be able to live a decently normal life. So the anti-psychotic drugs are most definitely a huge improvement over anything a therapist could or couldn't do regarding such a client's hallucinations...
Hallucinations -- unless they are drug or stress induced -- are not likely to go away without anti-psychotic medicine. There is an underlying biochemical problem here. Whether that biochemical problem was triggered by genetics, drugs, and/or underlying cognitive-emotional (transference) factors is another question. But the anti-psychotic drugs usually work quickly at 're-grounding' a person who is lost in his or her hallucinations so, under such circumstances, especially if it turns out to be a prolonged acute and/or chronic problem - and with no life-threatening side effects that I am aware of, why would you not use them? I have lived with a schizophrenic person for a number of years, and I am not at all sure that his problem wasn't (recreational) drug and/or stress induced as opposed to genetics, but this having been said, once the problem was full-blown, and not going away, the anti-psychotic drugs (as long as he was taking the pills or later getting the injections), brought his life back to reasonable normalcy. Like everyone else I have met, he still had a full plate of life-altering 'transference neuroses', but at least he wasn't taking 'bizarre trips into the world of the insane'...To all extents and purposes, he was 'normal' again -- and has been ever since.
'Behaviorism' -- I have never liked because it basically pretends that a person's 'mind' is not there -- they call it a 'black box' -- like the mind of a rat in a maze. (Even rats have minds that are more than a 'black box'.) However, if both client and therapist can agree on the intended goal of therapy -- say, for the client to quit smoking (or swearing, or snoring, or drinking, or thinking 'perverse thoughts' -- then sometimes behaviorism can be effective, indeed, even more effective than other different types of 'talking' therapy. Just 'shock' the person -- like the rat in the maze every time he makes a 'wrong turn' -- every time he or she swears, snores, drinks, or thinks 'perverse thoughts'....
Cognitve behavior therapy integrates cognitive therapy with behaviorism. I was studying cognitive therapy when I was at the University of Waterloo between 1974 and 1979, and the professor who marked my Honours Thesis was a leader in the area of 'Cognitive-Behavior Therapy' -- Dr. Donald Meichenbaum -- and even after leaving the University of Waterloo as a professor, Dr. Meichenbaum, from what I have read, went on to do a great number of very innovative and important things in the area of Cognitve-Behavior Therapy, of which I have the strongest of respect for him doing.
I experienced first hand, Adlerian psychology and Adlerian Psychotherapy (the main foundation and precursor of Cognitive Therapy) in Toronto at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) around 1980,81 and learned some very valuable ideas and therapeutic techniques there.
And likewise, at The Gestalt Institute of Toronto, I experienced the 'hot seat' first hand in numerous different group therapy sessions, off and on, between 1979 and 1991, while reading much of Fritz Perls' work at the same time.
I have read some pieces of Jungian Psychology and would like to one day read more...
But here I am in 2010,
And I am still both captivated -- and partly mesmerized -- by the grand daddy of them all: Sigmund Freud.
If you haven't figured it out already, Psychoanalysis is basically the centerpiece of Hegel's Hotel.
The biggest influence on my work -- other than arguably Hegel himself -- is, more and more, Sigmund Freud.
Much of Hegel's influence has been indirect.
I studied Gestalt Therapy. What is the backbone of Gestalt Therapy? Hegelian Philosophy.
I studied Jungian Psychology. What is the backbone of Jungian Psychology? Hegelian Philosophy.
I studied Psychoanalysis. What is the backbone of Psychoanalysis? Hegelian Philosophy.
I study Democracy. What is the backbone of Democracy? Hegelian Philosophy.
I study Evolution. What is the backbone of Evolution? Hegelian Philosophy.
I study a little bit about biology, biochemisty, quantum physics, medicine. What is the backbone of all four of these? Hegelian philosophy.
You wonder why this philosophical and psychological and political and economic treatise (if I ever get back to politics and economics) is called 'Hegel's Hotel'?
It is because Hegelian Philosophy provides much of the backbone of Western -- and Eastern -- culture and philosophy.
Hegel's Dialectic Philosophy in a nutshell: 1. Thesis, 2. Counter or Anti-Thesis, 3. Synthesis...and start the process all over again at another level of either 'evolution' and/or 'de-evolution'.
Freud's Final Model of The Personality: 1. Thesis: 'The Id' (the psycho-biological driving impulses of the organism thrusting upwards for 'release'; 2. Counter-Thesis: 'The Superego' (the parental, cultural, legal, and ethical-moral division of the personality whose function is to 'restrain' or 'hold back' any and all dangerous, illegal, unethical-immoral inner impulses that are pushing upwards for 'release'); 3. Synthesis: 'The (Central, Mediating, Conflict-Resolving, Compromise-Forming) Ego' (whose function is basically to solve problems, resolve conflicts within the personality and outside the personality, and to creatively engineer and administer 'compromise formations' that are designed to basically 'appease' both inner factions in the personality (i.e., the id vs. the superego) and outer factions in the social and/or environmental world while at the same time, as best as possible, satisfying as many perceived needs both within the personality and within the organism-as-a-whole as can possibly be satisfied...
That is basically Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis in a nutshell -- very Hegelian in its philosophical and psychological structure: 1. thesis; 2. counter or anti-thesis; and 3. synthesis.
The 'thesis' is the orginal 'driving impulse from inside the organism'....
The 'counter-thesis' is the superego's and/or ego's defense, restraint, and/or resistance against the perceived 'anxiety-provoking (dangerous) nature of the 'inner driving impulse' (usually sexual, aggressive, and/or narcissistic in some way...but very strong emotions of -- grief, rage, anxiety, love...-- can also be perceived as 'externally dangerous' if fully expressed...
The 'synthesis' is the 'conflict resolution', the 'problem-solution', the 'compromise-formation' and/ or the 'allusion to (transference) immediacy' which both hides and alludes to the 'underlying organismic impulse'...
On this essence of Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis, Freud and I are in full agreement with each other.
I met a woman a month or two ago.
I think that she was just coming back from a pet store with food for some of her 'pets'.
I asked what kind of pets she had...
She said rather nonchalantly: 'Scorpions, and snakes, and a dragon (lizard)...',
She said that she had to get rid of one of her snakes because 'it was just too aggressive'...it frightened her poor mom half to death...
I asked her what kind of snake it was, and she said (as best I can remember) that it was some sort of 'Burmese boa constrictor' with teeth or fangs and a lightning fast strike...She kept having to 'unlock her hand from its teeth'...
Our conversation never got any further than this so allow me to wildly (or not so wildly) speculate on this matter from a DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic perspective that revolves around but extends beyond Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis:
Let's call this woman's 'exotic (dangerous)' pets her 'narcissistic fixation' and, at the same time, an 'allusion to her transference immediacy' or to some sort of 'transference complex and childhood transference nuclear conflict'...
How are we to understand this?
Let's imagine that the woman was bitten by a snake (or stung by a scorpion) as a child...
The 'snake' (or the scorpion) becomes (in Ronald Fairbairn's Object Relations terminology) both her 'rejecting object' and her 'exciting object' (thus, the beginning of both the 'phobia' and the 'counter-phobia' or 'obsessive-compulsion' regarding 'snakes'....which then leads to her 'mastery compulsion' regarding 'biting snakes'...
So she starts 'raising dangerous, biting snakes' (and/or scorpions and/or lizards/dragons...), raising them in a more 'controlled environment' where she 'feeds' them and seeks to 'master' them while at the same time 'respecting their potential power over her'...if she isn't careful and/or fast enough to avoid 'the biting teeth' or 'lashing tail'...
She buys one snake which is 'just a little too aggressive and fast for her'...'sinking its teeth into her before she fed it, while she fed it, and/or after she fed it...' Her mother objects to the presence of this snake and puts added pressure on her to get rid of it...which she finally does...but her 'counter-phobia' and her 'obsessive-compulsion', and her 'mastery compulsion' live on regarding her wish to be in the proximity of 'dangerous, biting snakes and/or other animals...'
Who knows? There could even be some 'human symbolism' here in all of this 'transference play' that I am not aware of...I never got to ask her about her relationship with her father and/or mother...so that we will have to leave out of this 'transference equation'....
If I was a Gestalt therapist working with this woman, I might even ask her to 'Be the snake: Who would you like to bite?' Or to 'Be the scorpion: Who would you like to sting?'
Our 'projections' both hide and allude to our innermost feelings and impulses (again, they are 'allusions to immediacy', often 'allusions to transference immediacy')...
We 'project' onto others (people, pets, things, books, titles, essays...) our own 'narcissistic fixations', which are more often than not our 'transference narcissistic fixations'...
I know another woman, a friend of mine, who says that she is 'being beaten' by her current, live-in boyfriend. I asked her the obvious question: Why don't you leave him? Or kick him out of your townhouse? Or call 911 when this is happening? (They have already been through this legal process once already and have done the so-called 'marriage counselling' before getting back together -- and nothing changing, especially when he and/or both of them are intoxicated.)
She told me that she had 'no place to go', and that 'his name was on the lease too' ...and on and on...
Furthermore, she told me that she had gone through 4 years of this type of 'violent behavior' with her previous husband....had been assaulted numerous times by other men, including at least one, if not more, violent rapes...her history with men was not far from pretty...indeed, if anything, pretty horrific....
And this is not a naive and/or a stupid woman that I am describing here...and yet it almost seems like she has 'victim' or 'martyr' plastered all over her forehead...I hate to say this but it almost seems like she has 'radar' attached to her forehead...that leads her right into the psychology and the activity of violent men doing violent things to women...(In Adlerian Psychology, there are two similar but different 'lifestyle patterns/plans/goals/complexes)' called respectively: 1. 'the victim'; and 2. 'the martyr'. The 'serial victim' always manages to get him or herself into situations where he/she is victimized; whereas the 'serial martyr' is victimized -- or even dies -- for a perceived 'noble cause'.)
Like the 'snake' and the 'scorpion' in the preceding example, the best way I can explain this type of behavior is to assume that her dad was both her 'rejecting, violent childhood object' -- and at the same time her adult, 'exciting object' -- the object of her 'counter-phobia' and her intended 'mastery compulsion' -- which generally only leads her back into the arms of misery, pain, violence, and ptential self-destruction -- what Freud would call the 'death instinct' but I call the 'dark side' of our 'obsessive-compulsive, rejecting-exciting transference object and intended psychotherapeutic mastery compulsion'....'This time I will get my 'substitute transference daddy' to love me even if I have to experience more pain and violence to get it...(or maybe the 'potential for violence' even at some subliminal, or not so subliminal, level excites me...)
If you see yourself in this type of 'transference roller coaster or merry-go-round', then quite simply,
Get off the ride or quit claiming to be an innocent, helpless victim...
-- dgb, July 18th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
