Just finished...July 25, 2010...
Synopsis
I stated previously, and I will state it again, at bottom level, theoretically, Psychoanalysis is a rather simple art and science. It's a one, two, three step dance -- 1. impulse, 2. defense/restraint/resistance, and 3. compromise-formation.
Very Hegelian.
However, we will expand this 'three step dance' to 'fifteen steps' to accomodate my own unique modfications to Classical Freudian Psychology. Call this 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' if that works for you. If not, we will go back to an older name I used to use: DGB-GAP (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis) Psychology. Sorry, 'Transactional Analysis' but your name should be represented by a 'letter' too. But you were the last addition and by then, my first name 'GAP' Psychology, and then later, 'DGB-GAP' Psychology -- was set. I would say that what is conceptually represented below is about 60 percent Psychoanalysis, 10 percent Adlerian Psychology, 10 percent Gestalt Therapy, and 10 percent Transactional Analysis. The percentage is debatable but regardless, the integration is unique. You won't find this constellation of ideas in any other school of psychology.
So here is my '15 step DGB-GAP dance':
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1. We have impulses, perceived and/or real needs, desires, drives, and;
2. We have restraints, defenses, compensations against those same impulses, desires, drives...as well as;
3. We have an external world that provides us with a mixture of need satisfactions and need frustrations as well as a combination of perceived and/or real dangers;
4. Of which our 'defensive(reality)-ego' provides us with defenses against these real and/or perceived external dangers as well as the most extreme and/or perceived dangerous of our own internal impulses.
5. Back around 1911 (Freud, Formulations on The Two Principles of Mental Functioning), before Freud came up with his classic distinction in 1923 (Freud, The Ego and The Id) between: 1. 'the ego' (our compromise-formation, conflict-resolution, and problem-solving mind-brain central processor system), 'the id' (our wild, dangerous, and hard to control, unconscious impulse system), and 'the superego' (our ethical-moral-legal-economic restraint system), Freud was working with two prior concepts instead: 1. 'the pleasure ego'; and 2. 'the reality ego'. The 'pleasure-ego' (1911) was the precursor to his later 'id' (1923) with two notable differences: 1. Note that the 'pleasure-ego' reflects what might be called an 'alter-ego' or a 'shadow-ego' or an 'id-ego' that is more archaic and dangerous, directly and extremely connected to the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of unpleasure without any 'long term' or 'reality' consequences in mind than the usually much more reasonable, rational, and socially sensitive reality-ego. 2. Note also, that the 'pleasure-ego' can be viewed as an 'ego-state', similar in this one respect to what Freud later called 'the ego ideal' which ended up being the precursor of his 1923 'superego'. In contrast, in 1923, 'the id' would be differentiated from 'the ego' altogether (and no longer viewed as an 'ego-state' at all) which was very different than where his thinking was in 1911. Quite frankly, I prefer the 1911 terminology (even though it had some problems and wasn't complete) because it was in line with the idea -- to be developed later by the Object Relations theorists and the Transactional Analysts -- of 'ego states' and the concept that Freud came back to in the twilight of his career (around 1938, I believe, or a few years previously) of 'ego-splitting'.
6. You see, the concepts of 'ego-states' and 'ego-splitting' are conducive to each other. When the 'ego splits' -- either for 'functional' (evolutionary specialization) purposes and/or because of 'childhood rejections and/or failures' (which have the effect of 'splitting' the personality/ego like Humpty Dumpty after his 'great fall') -- the result is a combination of harmonious and non-harmonious, co-operative and competing, 'ego-states'.
7. The personality/ego invariably splits in at least four different ways: 1. 'horizontally' along the lines of 'nurturing, encouraging, supportive, co-operative' vs. 'criticizing, rejecting, abandoning'; 2. 'vertically' along the lines of 'superiority complex' vs. 'inferiority complex' or 'topdog' vs. 'underdog' or 'superego' vs. 'underego'; as well as 3. 'organizationally' vs. 'disorganizationally' ('order' vs. 'chaos'); and 4. 'impulse' vs. 'restraint' or 'pleasure-ego' vs. 'reality-ego' or 'Dionysian-Narcissistic Ego' vs. 'Apollonian Ego' (which also accounts for the distinction between 'order, righteousness, fairness, justice, and restraint (The Apollonian Righteous-Rejecting-Reality Ego, short form if you want: 'The ARE') vs. 'disorder, deconstruction, rebellion, anarchy, pleasure-seeking (hedonism), no rules, free spirit, freedom, lack of restraint, impulse psychology to the max, self-infatuation, narcissism....(The Dionysian-Narcissistic (Pleasure-Seeking) Ego, possible short forms if you want, 'The DNE' or 'The PSE' or 'The DNPSE').
8. The DNE (Dionysian-Narcissistic Ego) and ARE (Apollonian-Righteous Ego) have their legacy in Freud's distinction between the 'oral personality' and the 'anal personality' as well as further back than this to Nietzsche's 'The Birth of Tragedy' in 1872, which was the main bridge between Hegelian Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, with generous respect also being paid here to Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Representation', 1818, which Nietzsche was heavily influenced by when he wrote and then published BT in 1872).
The 'oral' personality can be defined by the polar spectrum of 'giving' (nurturing, encouraging, supporting, pleasing, approval-seeking...) and 'getting' (wanting, needing, demanding, expecting....all hallmarks of the 'narcissistic personality'). Further distinctions can be made between the: a) 'oral-giving personality', b) 'oral-giving' ('oral-narcissistic') personality, c) 'oral-receptive personality' (friendly, open-armed, maternally or paternally receptive, sexually receptive...), d) 'oral-schizoid, resistant, and/or defensive personality'...this category -- or the idea leading up to it -- was introduced by Fritz Perls in Vienna in 1936 when Perls met Freud for the first and only time -- a crushing disappointment for Perls. Perls, at this point, was still a psychoanalyst who had just opened a Psychoanalytic practice in South Africa, had taken a boat from South Africa to Vienna with little money on his person to cover the expense of the trip, but was exciting about the prospect of reading to the Conference, and sharing with Freud, Perls' new and provocatively unorthodox ideas on 'oral resistances' (an idea that he probably developed through his work with Wilhelm Reich on 'body armor protecting a person from emotional release', and which Perls would further develop in his first published 'Gestalt' book called, 'Ego, Hunger, and Aggression', a remarkable book in my opinion as Perls, in conjunction with his eventual wife, Laura Perls, started to conduct his own 'major revision' of Freudian Theory that would eventually turn out to be 'Gestalt Therapy'). Up til this point in Freudian Theory, all talk had been about 'anal resistances', not 'oral resistances'....Whether this is a matter of 'semantics' and 'terminology' on the one hand, or whether there is a significant distinction that needs to be made here is a matter of some debate... I support the latter position, and thus, an 'oral schizoid' person becomes a person who is 'not oral-receptive' but the opposite -- 'unfriendly', 'unreceptive', 'untalkative', with underlying issues of 'anger' and distrust'...to be further distinguished from an 'oral phobic' person who is 'afraid' to talk...or eat, or drink, or socially or sexually engage...all hallmarks of the 'oral personality' -- the bipolarity here being between those who are 'open' and 'receptive' vs. those who are not, and a further bipolarity being between those who are angry vs. those who are scared...
The 'anal' personality has some important differences and the only question of debate might be whether the 'oral-schizoid personality' and 'the anal-schizoid personality are essentially the same thing...In general, the 'anal' personality is generally 'tight-assed', 'righteous', 'rejecting', parsimonious, punctual, cheap, rule-abiding, rule-demanding, organized, more unapproachable, less giving and nurturing....There is a second type of 'anal personality' that is more the opposite of the first...This is the 'anal-explosive' personality who is more of an 'anarchist', angry, rebellious, hates rules and laws, hates authority-figures, and either hides his or her rage beneath the surface of his or her personality and/or is capable of 'blowing up' given sufficient provocation, which may not be much....Other sub-types of 'anal' personalities: the 'anal-schizoid' (angry, distancing) personality, the 'anal-retentive' personality ('cheap'), the 'anal-righteous' personality (rule demanding), the 'anal-rejecting' personality (rejects and shuts out people easily...carrying an 'arrogant, superiority complex'), the 'anal-phobic-obsessive-compulsive' personality (heavy restraints and compensations against germs, dirt, disorder, bad hygiene, uncleanliness...)
9. What Freud called the 'phallic personality', I include here under the 'oral getting (narcissistic) personality' although distinctions can be made between the 'phallic obsessive-compulsive (narcissistic) personality' (likes to brag about his or her masculine or feminine prowess...and 'exploits') vs. the 'phallic schizoid' and/or 'phallic phobic' personality who steers away from sex for either angry, rejecting (schizoid) reasons or for 'phobic' reasons ('performance anxieties', lack of confidence and/or inferiority complex around living up to his or her 'masculine' or 'feminine' ideal or his or her perception of society's masculine or feminine ideal....)
10. 'Anger', 'rage', and 'aggression' can be divided into three types: 1. 'Righteous anger, rage, and/or aggression' connected to disobeying a particular ethical, moral, social, and/or legal rule or set of rules; 2. rebellious anger, rage, and/or aggression connected to being 'overly controlled' and/or exploited and/or suppressed by a particular rule or set of rules and its/their associated authority figure(s); (the perceived 'slavery' syndrome); which borders into 3. narcissistic anger, rage, and/or aggression connected to simply not getting what one wants, and/or with self-preservation, and/or with overcontrolling and/or annihilating some one else's self, or sense of self;
11a. The 'Oedipal Complex' is a valuable Freudian concept as long as it is not abused. Using 'The Oedipal Complex' as a 'cover up' for the possibility/probability of very real child sexual abuse between a daughter and her father in a case where a female client asserts such a childhood memory is obviously a clinically pathological use of The Oedipal Complex unless there is strong empirical and/or circumstantial evidence to the contrary that makes the memory 'highly doubtful' as an 'empirical reality'. But even here, a therapist is treading on very dangerous epistemological and ethical territory -- to the point where he or she may simply have to admit that the 'historical and empirical reality' of the memory is unprovable one way or the other, and/or a matter for the courts to decide...similarily, 're-interpreting' or 're-constructing' a client's memory to the point where it becomes something other than what the client asserted is treading into the territory of 'brainwashing' -- regardless of whether a therapist is an 'Oedipal Theorist and Therapist' or whether a therapist is a 'new brand' of 'Seduction Theorist' and possibly 'projecting' interpreted childhood sexual assaults into memories where the client asserted no such thing.
11b. The best use of 'The Oedipal Complex' by a therapist is simply to ascertain from the client's childhood history and also from the client's more current adult clinical information what makes up the client's 'masculine' and/or 'feminine ideal', what makes up their 'rejecting and/or exciting object-transference figure, and what makes up his or her 'narcissistic fixation' in terms of the character and physical type of 'romantic/sexual object/figure' that 'turns the client on'. Freud's 'maternal love' (i.e. his 'Maternal Oedipal Complex') from his mother was very strong and steady which seems to have been 'carried on' and/or 'transferred' into his relationship with his wife; in contrast, Freud was much more uncertain and conflicted in terms of his 'paternal love' from his father and it was his 'Paternal Oedipal Complex' that triggered most of Freud's deepest transference (core nuclear) conflicts that were then 'carried over' and 'tranferred onto' most of the men that Freud worked with as an adult clinician, therapist, and theorist. A person can have an 'inconsistency' and conflicted bi-polarity between an 'Oedipal Complex' and a 'Counter-Oedipal Complex'; and/or between a 'maternal' and a 'paternal' Oedipal Complex.
12. Conscious early memories are very, very good way of 'diagnosing' a person's character-type, various 'ego-splits' and 'ego-states', 'topdog' and 'underdog' interactions, 'righteous/rejecting and approval-seeking interactions, righteous/rejecting and rebellious interactions, 'nurturing' and 'pampering' interactions, and 'approval-seeking' and 'rebellious' interactions, as well as 'oral' characteristics, 'anal' characteristics, 'narcissistic' characteristic, phobic and counter-phobic behavior patterns, 'repetition compulsion' and 'mastery compulsion', 'overt, dominant' and 'covert, latent' ego-states...and more....Our early recollections are great symbolic metaphors of 'The Story of Our Life' (my paraphrasing of an Adlerian quote already cited in several previous essays...).
13. I prefer using the term 'subconscious' generally speaking rather than 'unconscious' and I shy away for the most part from the concept of 'repression'. 'Ego-splitting', defensive reactions, and various types of 'compensatory behavior' are terms and concepts that all work better for me.
14. Oh, here's one....I have not engaged in a group or individual psychotherapy session in about 15 years now...I think the last time I was in a Gestalt Group Psychotherapy Session or Program was back about 1995...However, I was fairly active in a series of group psychotherapy personal and professional growth programs back between 1979 and 1991. In contrast, I have never experienced a Psychoanalytic session....(too much money for one main reason). This having been said, it is perhaps not surprising that I have a personal preference for 'The Gestalt Hot Seat and Empty Chair Technique' as opposed to 'The Psychoanalytic Couch'. From my perspective, The Hotseat and Empty Chair Technique is more interactive, more existential, more immediate, more conducive to 'jumping between different ego states' and expressing the 'bipolarities of different ego splits and ego-states'...topdog vs. underdog, and everything else that I listed above...more conducive to actual interactions with the therapist and with other group members....Too much 'interpretation' and 'analysis' will basically 'kill any form of psychotherapy'...abstractionism and 'cognitive mind games' are easy 'defense mechanisms' for most people who are used to being in their 'heads', and not in touch with either their feelings and/or their bodies...
Some interpretation and transference analysis, I believe, is important...but even this is more effectively shown to the client through the 'immediacy and the interactiveness of the existential moment'....not through a therapist analyzing a client to existential death....and not by 'hiding behind a couch' and being 'invisible to the client' or 'from saying nothing or sounding profound or making pathological theoretical over-generalizations in books or essays that are going to 'prejudice' a therapist into making theoretical and therapeutic judgments about a client that he or she has not even met yet....
15. As both Freud and Adler have stated in different essays or books (Freud, The Aetiology of Hysteria; Adler, What Life Should Mean To You), Freud relative to 'repressed memories' and Adler relative to 'conscious early memrories', and I will extrapolate on, and modify here: Memories, fantasies, dreams, nightmares, creative work and hobbies (sublimation, choice of friends and lovers (projection and compensation), all support each other and co-operate with each other in the pursuit of the individual person's unique brand and choice of the 'mastery compulsion' as woven around his or her transference complex, his or her core nuclear conflict, much like the planets revolve around the sun, are energized by the sun, often take on too much heat and will self-destruct when they are too close to the sun, but will self-destruct also if they are too far away from the sun's energy...Adler called this our 'lifestyle plan', Freud called this a (transference) 'template' in 'The Dynamics of The Transference, Jung called it a 'Complex', and I am calling it our 'Central (or Core Nuclear) Transference Conflict'....or there may be several such conflicts that are all intertwined....You might have one transference conflict centering around your mom, another one around your dad, another one around a sibling, or a relative, or a childhood friend, or a childhood enemy, or a childhood stranger....or any type of unique subset, all intertwined into one lifelong 'transference psychodrama' propelled by 'the re-creation and mastery compulsion'....and energizing you to either great creative accomplishments and triumphs or great self-destruction....or both....
That is a good enough capsule of my intention for this essay...Six days of work....and finally a day off...
-- dgb, July 23rd, 24th, 25th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
