Synopsis
In this essay, I want to pull together three central concepts in DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis: 1. Narcissism; 2. Transference; and 3. The Splitting of The Ego.
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1. Narcissism:
The concept of 'narcissism' holds several advantages over its 'competing' concepts (such as: hedonism/pleasure, sexuality, libido, self-interest, selfishness, egotism, arrogance, power, revenge, superiority striving...) in that it incorporates all of these different concepts into one concept -- narcissism -- and in this fashion allows us to integrate Freudian and Adlerian concepts much easier in a way that potentially makes both schools of psychology stronger as they 'compromise' on their conceptual differences. In human behavior, we usually find a mixture of pleasure-seeking, sexuality, and egotism (self-esteem issues). Freud covered the first of these areas very well (pleasure-seeking and sexuality -- as well as the 'restaint', the 'resistance', and/or the 'defense' against them); while Adler was the first to put his finger on the critical factor of self-esteem (the triadic relationship between 'inferiority feelings', 'compensation', and 'superiority striving').
The concept of narcissism 'kills both birds -- both aspects of human behavior -- with one conceptual stone, and that stone is 'narcissism'. The opposite of narcissism is 'altruism' -- the generous giving to, and caring about others... Altruism is not generally tied up to human psychopathology. Narcissism is. Thus, any discussion of human psychopathology has to centre around the concept of narcissism. Altruism, for the most part, will be discussed at a later time.
2. Transference:
The Freudian concept of 'transference' is very similar to the Adlerian concept of 'lifestyle' with a couple of significant differences in over-riding or under-riding assumptions that keep these two concepts separated from each other, such as: a) the Freudian assumption of conflict in the personality vs. the Adlerian assumption of 'unity in the personality. I opt for the assumption of 'conflicted unity' or 'unified conflict' in the personality. How's that for a 'working compromise' between the two schools of psychology which definitely works for me?; and b) the Freudian assumption of 'repressed memories', 'distorted memories', and 'screen memories' vs. the Adlerian assumption of 'conscious early memories reflecting a person's lifestyle' (complex -- my addition). Sometimes I will use the integrative concept of 'Transference-Lifestyle Complexes' which leads to the following DGB formula: In general, if we had more 'TLC' in the world (as in 'Tender, Loving, Care'), then we would have less pathological 'TLC's' (as in 'Transference-Lifestyle Complexes). Why? Because most TLC's are built as 'compensatory defenses' against childhood rejections (self-esteem injuries, narcissistic injuries, traumatic, ego-deflating childhood memories of painful encounters...Not all TLC's are built from childhood rejections but most of the most pathological ones are.
3. The Splitting of The Ego
For our purposes here, the ego 'splits' -- either figuratively or literally, take your choice -- in childhood for one or more of three different reasons: a) functional expedience, division of labor, specialization of sub-cognitive-emotional-behavioral functions; b) painful childhood rejections; and/or c) 'narcissistic fixation'. Items b) and c) usually occur together as it is almost a 'psychological given' that a 'perceived painful childhood rejection' (narcissistic injury, self-esteem injury, ego-traumacy...) will become a lifelong 'narcissistic fixation'.
Think of a 'physical injury'. We cut our finger. Our mind-brain-body swings into 'overdrive'. This what Adler, in 1906, called 'supervalent cerebral activity'. The mind-brain-body rushes 'clotting factors' down to the site of the injury to 'clot' the wound before we bleed to death and/or 'opportunistic outside invaders (germs, microbes, bacteria, viruses..) can take advantage of the situation to find easy access into our bloodstream. Which is why our 'immune system' is also given instructions to 'rush down to the site of the injury' to 'protect this new point of bodily weakness and vulnerablity'.
Well, the 'psyche' (or 'mind-brain-body') does the same thing in the event of a 'psychological' or 'narcissistic' (self-esteem) injury -- a psychological traumacy. The most critical narcissistic injuries tend to take place in early childhood up to about 6 or 7 years old. To be sure, we can -- and will -- meet with a wide assortment of other narcissistic (self-esteem) injuries during the course of our whole lifetime but none seem to be generally as critical to our psychological well-being as the psychological injuries sustained in our first 6 or 7 years of our existence, during our main 'character forming' years. Usually, most narcissistic injuries that we sustain after this point in time can somehow be 'associated with' and 'fit into' our 'Transference-Lifestyle Complex Tempate' in some creative and/or destructive fashion or another. Our lifelong character patterns -- our 're-creation, repetition, and mastery compulsions' -- have been established and will continue to either evolve and/or devolve in some creative and/or destructive fashion or another. Our 'TLC's (Transference-Lifestyle Compulsions/Complexes/Neuroses) can be viewed as our own guided and/or misguided, creative and/or destructive, attempt at 'compensatory self-psychotherapy'. The usually life-long process of a person 'setting up and engineering his or her own transference process' is very much equivalent to a person setting up and engineering his or her own 'medical and/or psychotherapy' program...which is perhaps the main reason why the 'doctor' and/or 'therapist' may be met with so much 'resistance' from the client in the clinical room. There is likely to be a 'conflict in wills' -- a conflict in 'wills to power' -- as both try to compete with each other as to whose 'therapeutic program' they are going to institute and regulate.
As far as the 'splitting of the ego', our psyche becomes and remains partly a 'war zone' from our earliest rejecting encounters and/or relationships. This 'psychological war zone' is easily at least partly 'transferrable' onto others as we welcome or don't welcome them into our own 'Personal, Internalized Transference Scenarios ('PITS' -- or stated differently -- our own 'Obsessive-Compulsive Transference Psychodrama Disorders').
We can play any part: 'superego', 'ego', 'id', 'topdog', 'underdog', 'personna', 'shadow', 'Nurturing Parent', 'Rejecting Parent', 'Good Child', 'Bad Child'...you name it -- if it is a part of our transference psychodrama -- we can play it. Metaphorically speaking (no, I'm not schizophrenic), it is as if we all have 'antennae' and 'radar' attached to our heads such that we easily -- consciously or subconsciously -- pick out people in our lives who 'fit into our personal psychodrama' (as we do into theirs). We call this 'chemistry' -- as long as it is creative and passionate and mutually facilitating....Once it 'flips' over into 'negative transference' and turns into a 'psychological war game', then our 'chemistry' starts to lose its 'attractive, exciting, idealizing apeal (positive transference, love, lust...)
May the transference games begin!
Oh, they are so exciting when they are full of seduction, idealization, love, passion, and lust...
A conflation of egotism, power and sex making our hormones go crazy...off the wall crazy...
But be aware of the dangers of the PITS....our own internalized obsessive-compulsive transference disorders...
They can take us to the top of Mt. Everest...and then drop us -- out of control -- off the same mountain top plunging towards the valley or abyss below...
Transference is not a child's game even though it starts in childhood.
Transference often turns into a 'life or death struggle' for self-esteem, and self-existence...
And the mechanisms of transference are often skewed towards both relationship and self-destruction... Our own negative self-fulfilling prophecy...
Transference turns us all into 'psychological hypocrites'.
Freud had one (rebellious underdog) 'ego state' where he basically had an 'obsessive-compulsion to invade other people's personal privacy'. At the same time, he had another (rejecting topdog) ego state that basically went 'ballistic' (his internalized rejecting dad) when other people tried to invade his own privacy. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why 'hypocrisy' is so prevalent in human behavior. Opposing behavior patterns in our own personality face off against each other in the dynamics of our Transference-Lifestyle Complexes/Conflicts.
Transference turns us all into both serial rejectors and serial victims -- in the mold of our earliest childhood rejections.
Transference turns us all into 'manipulators'. We manipulate people into the 'projective mold' of our own TLCs. And if they don't fit, we 'throw them out' and look for another 'transference partner'.
Transference brings lovers together -- passionately -- and just as often tears them apart, with the same characteristic that brought them together, in attraction, being the main culprit in their later repulsive demise.
Every characteristic -- in its extreme -- carries the seeds to its own self-destruction (and the relationship self-destruction)...
Not to be a complete cynic here....some people do work through their negative transferences...
Our TLC's are the psychological tightropes that we all live our lives by....If we conquer the tightrope, we feel great!!! If we fall off the tightrope or strangle ourselves in the tightrope...well the ending isn't so exciting and happy...
It is like walking into a casino....
If we win, especially if we win big, we are ecstatic!!
But the odds are that more times we are going to lose in a casino than win...
And when we walk out of the casino with barely a dollar in our wallet, seduced and then ransacked, and then keep going back, over and over again, with usually the same negative result, we may or may finally see that the 'cost' of going into the casino is not worth the potential 'benefit'....
And so it is with our TLC's...
We can play our transference games subconsciously....with some idea of what is going on...
And celebrate when we 'beat our negative transferences'....
But more often than not, we are going to probably end up back in the same negative space again...
The space of our own negative self-fulfilling prophecy...
The space of our own negative transference scenario...
If we subconsciously or consciously think we are going to be rejected, then we most likely will be...
Or we may triumph briefly in our 'handicap challenge' only to be defeated again down the line...
Us human beings are remarkably, creatively -- and destructively -- resourceful.
We all (am I overgeneralizing?) have an endless variety of ways of turning a 'positive' into a 'negative' and a 'negative' into a 'worse negative' and a 'worse negative' into a 'worst nightmare negative'...
All fitted nicely and snugly into our own unique network of TLCs...
We all have choices here epecially once we understand more fully the 'pscho-dynamics' and 'potential payoffs' and 'worst nightmares' of the particular TLCs we play...
We can play our transferences...
We can let our transferences play us...
Or we can get off the transference merry-go-round or roller coaster...
In the end, -- if we want to go here -- it all comes down to a 'cost' vs. 'benefit' analysis...
And whether we really have the strength of will-power to get off our generally lifelong transference ride -- or not....
If you are attracted to a 'a man with violent tendencies...' and stereotype yourself as the 'victim'...him being the 'victimizer'...
You might have all the support in the world behind you in the form of your friends, and the police, and women's organizations, and politicians...
But behind all of this community support,
Perhaps the real personal growth starts when you ask yourself,
'Why can I not leave this man'?
And perhaps even,
How am I a 'victimizer' as well as a 'victim'?
These are not necessarily 'politically popular' or 'politically correct' questions...
But if this has been a 'repetitive, life-long process' for you,
Then perhaps you need to move beyond and below 'political correctness'...
In order to get to a deeper understanding of yourself...and what this very dangerous, pathological TLC is all about?
We are all accountable and responsible to and for ourselves in the way that we may or may not 'subconsciously' walk into 'toxic situations' and 'toxic relationships'...and even contribute to their evolution or shall we say 'de-evolution'...
In Western Society, we are so quick to label, classify, and stereotype -- 'victimizer' and 'victim'...
This is our 'either/or' system of justice...
A more 'wholistic, dialectic view of the truth' and of 'justice' -- particularly as it pertains to 'domestic violence' -- views all of us as potential and/or partial victimizers and/or victims...
Many incidents of domestic violence involve 'double assaults'...an exchange of pushing, shoving, and/or hitting...Is it right to put 80 or 90 percent of the blame on one sex?
One person instigates or provokes, the other retaliates, the first person ups the stakes, ups the 'trash talk', and the second person follows suit...this is the beginning of potential domestic violence escalating its way up the ladder -- until someone breaks -- and pushes or strikes...Who's guilty? The first person who breaks? The instigator? The retaliator? The trash-talker? Both were trash-talking...Who's innocent? The first person to dial 911?
Most men are not going to pick up the phone to report female assaults...Like many rapes, many female domestic assaults -- where the woman, not the man, is the assaulter -- go unreported....
Are men and women treated differently upon arrest? Men, if they are arrested for domestic assault, get evicted from their homes? How many women get evicted from their homes if they are charged with domestic assault? What are the statistics for men and women being charged and convicted of 'domestic assault'? 90/10 in favor of men being more likely to be charged and convicted?
Do we really believe that this is an accurate assessment of the ratio of who is being 'violent' in the domestic household? A woman loses her temper, goes ballistic on the man, red with rage, chasing him first into this room, then into that room, finally cornering him somewhere, acusing him of this, accusing him of that, continually invading his personal space no matter how hard he tries to avoid her, inciting him to finally lose his temper, to finally break, to finally push her away from him...and she says (or thinks), 'Gotcha!....You S.O.B.' (See Eric Berne, Games People Play, 1964) 'You're going to jail!!! 'Do not pass Go'! Straight from my 911 call....
And guess who is going to be 'judged' as to needing 'counseling' and needing an 'anger management program'? Not likely the woman who, red with rage, went 'Postal' on the man, and chased him from room to room, cornering him in some room in the house, the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen....No, she gets a 'Get out of jail free' card while the man is charged and either convicted and sent to jail, or if he is a first time offender, he does his 'anger management program'....
I do not wish to polarize the issue of 'civil rights between the sexes' anymore than it is already polarized.
To be sure, I am well aware that a thousand horror stories could easily be recounted to me by members of both sexes.
But I am still of the strong belief that there are some fundamental injustices and 'reverse-discrimations' going on here -- systemically -- both overtly and covertly -- against men.
At some point the issue of 'invasion of personal space' needs to be addressed by civil rights leaders of both sexes...
Men and women should both have a right to their own 'personal space' within their own home. And if one person's personal space is continually being 'invaded' to the point of intimidation and/or non-privacy, this, I speculate, is a very common 'precursor' to domestic violence . Especially, if there is alcohol involved. A man (or a woman for that matter although she is heavily protected by 911) shouldn't have to run off and spend all night in the local donut shop every time his wife or girlfriend decides to 'lose it' on him and 'start pushing his buttons until he breaks'...
Do we really believe that there is 'equality' going on here between the sexes?
Or is that a 'politically correct myth' that is being force fed upon us?
Are men losing more and more of their civil rights when the 'accuser' is a woman?
Violence should be legally unacceptable regardless of what sex it comes from...
The 'precursors' of domestic violence -- jealousy, possessiveness, unfaithfulnes, lateness, financial stress, trash-talking, instigation, retaliation, transfernce -- these should all be more fully understood and investigated if we really want to get a handle on the 'causes' of 'domestic violence'....
And no man should be charged, convicted, and/or punished with a crime that a woman would not be similarly charged, convicted, and punished with...
Anymore than a woman should be paid less than a man for doing the same work as a man...
Or anymore than a woman should not be allowed to vote...
Otherwise, the 'pretense of equality' is a sham...
Sorry, I wandered away from 'transference' into the issue of 'domestic violence' and 'civil rights between the sexes' here -- a 'personal and political sore spot' for me....
If you have a 'serial wife hitter', that most definitely is likely to be a transference issue stemming back to the man's childhood and what he likely saw his dad doing. (Mel Gibson certainly isn't doing himself -- or men in general -- any favors these days.)
But women too can have 'transference domestic violence issues'...easily determined by the fact that a woman keeps getting entangled over the course of her life with different 'violent men'...
Yesterday I heard a story from a woman at a housing shelter who was telling me that there was a couple that had just arrived there who had been sleeping on a beach in Toronto -- and were beaten up and robbed by 5 girls. Violence -- particularly today -- comes in all shapes and sizes, and both sexes.
And transference issues and domestic violence issues definitely do connect.
So too, on a different level, do civil rights issues between men and women. Because there is nothing that is going to enrage a man more than for him to believe that he is being scapegoated, labeled, and/or taking all the punishment for something his wife or girlfriend instigated and escalated to the point where she basically 'pushed his buttons' and 'manipulated' him until he 'broke'.
In this regard, we still have a long way to go to get things right on this 'domestic violence' and 'civil rights' issue between the sexes. Both as they are connected to the issue of 'transference' and the 'transference games we play' -- and apart from these same games.
-- dgb, July 13th-14th, 2010
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
