Just finished...Sept. 1st, 2010.
I understand very well that the 'positives' and 'negatives' of Freud's character, his theorizing, his therapy, and his 'end product' -- or at least his still very slowly evolving 'theoretical and therapeutic process' -- Classical Psychoanalysis, to be specific, has been discussed, debated, and counter-debated a thousand times over since Freud died in 1939 by about the same number of authors, each writer and/or counter-theorist wanting to lay his or her particular individual 'stamp' on one of Western history's most provocative and controversial thinkers.
I suppose I am no different in this respect.
I certainly do not wish to condemn Freud although in numerous essays I have come down hard on my view of his 'worst mistakes' and debatably even his 'ethical failings'.
Still, as a creative thinker, Freud remains my most valuable mentor. He remains one of the most creative thinkers of the end of the 19th century and most of the first half of the 20th century. For that matter, he remains one of the most creative thinkers in Western History.
From Freud and the evolution of Psychoanalysis, we have in clinical psychology and psychotherapy today a huge array of 'self-awareness' concepts such as: transference, counter-transference, narcissism, projection, introjection, identification, identification with the aggressor (rejector), retroflection, defense, resistance, sublimation, the 'oral' personality, the 'anal' personality, 'oral nurturing', 'oral receptive', 'anal retentive', 'anal righteous', 'anal rejecting', 'anal explosive', 'anal schizoid', 'allusion to immediacy', 'allusion to transference', 'transference complexes', the Oedipal Complex....and on we could go with variations on the above themes such as 'projective transference' or 'transference projection'....
In combination with Hegel, and Nietzsche -- 'The Big Three' if you will -- Freud is undoubtedly my favorite writer, thinker, theorist, to write about... Everyone else follows behind in line...
Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud....and then everyone else's influence is built into Hegel's Hotel after these three 'power houses'... Hegel was the first to give powerful meaning to the idea of 'dialectic thinking' and 'dialectic logic' which can be expanded to include 'dialectic being and becoming'...Nietzsche lit an emotional fire under Hegel's concept of dialectic thinking before Nietzsche then turned around and basically abandoned the Hegelian concept and moved in the more 'one-sided direction' of what might be called 'Dionysian Idealism'....
Finally, Freud went back to a combination of Hegelian and early Nietzschean dialectic thinking in the spirit of 'The Birth of Tragedy' (the polar tension between Apollonianism (Enlightenment 'fairness' thinking and being ) vs Dionysianism (sensual, hedonistic, narcissistic, romantic thinking and being)...and re-created this 'dynamic tension in the psyche' in the form of 'ego' and 'superego' vs. 'id'
So when I criticize Freud, I am criticizing one of the main 'fathers' or 'mentors' of my intellect, and my intellectual evolution....It is not too far away from criticizing my own real father...
In fact, there is probably a very real 'transference relationship and complex' here...
Something about the paradox, the dualism, and the dialectic interaction between authoritarianism and democracy.
And something about 'the silencing of the lambs' -- a dialectic and dualistic tension between those family, political and/or corporate and/or institutional leaders in power wanting to keep power, not wanting to be challenged in their power, who don't want to be 'transparent' (or 'congruent') in their actions, and who often or generally don't want to be 'held accountable' when any and/or all of their most 'narcissistic, undemocratic, hidden actions' start to come back to haunt them in the form of 'scandals' that may eventually, finally 'topple' these types of leaders from their office and/or their leadership role...How often have we seen this pattern in history repeat itself?
And on the other side of this dialectic, dualistic tension are the 'rebels' who want to either 'usurp' the leader(s) from power and/or at least 'equalize the power' while the most authoritarian-narcissistic leaders often do their best in either violent and/or non-violent, undemocratic ways to 'hush' these same rebels...'dissidents', if you will...or 'freedom fighters' depending on your perspective...
And throughout both Western and Eastern History, between different nations, different religions, different cultures, different sexes, different philosophies, different political perspectives, different economic perspectives, different generations.....the authoritarian leaders will always collide with the most righteous and strongest rebels...
The dialectic tension between opposing perspectives...
And narcissism out of control in places and people of power and influence between those who control the money and those who don't...the employers vs. the employees, the owners vs. the workers, the politicians vs. the citizens...the 'haves' vs. the 'have nots'...Dialectic tension -- such as in the form of authoritiarianism vs. democracy and/or Apollonian vs. Dionysian and/or altruistic vs. narcissistic thinking and being -- coming together into what might be called Hegel's version of 'The Big Bang' Theory...molecules colliding together, land masses colliding together, land and water colliding together, wind and land colliding together (hurricane season), people colliding together....when it comes to people interacting together it is always 'hurricane season'...'The Big Bang' Theory of meshing or colliding opposites is always in effect...
Freud's life did not occur in a vaccum...
And Psychoanalysis today still does not exist in a vacuum...
Political, economic, and narcissistic context always has to be taken into consideration...
The tension between the powerful and the less powerful,
The tension between the haves and the have nots...
The tension between the leaders and the rebels, the 'dissidents' and/or the 'freedom fighters'...
The tension between a husband and his wife, both good and bad...
The tension between a father and his son, both good and bad...
The tension between a mother and her daughter, both good and bad...
The tension between cultures, religions, and cultural and religious beliefs...
The tension between a teenage daughter and a father who she won't obey...
A father who feels 'disrespected' and who feels culturally and religiously 'obligated' to do something about this 'paternal disrespect'...
A 'strangled daughter' and a father and his son who are convicted of her 'righteous' murder...
A collision in cultures and their ethical, legal differences where in one culture the father is sanctified for his actions of 'regaining his respect and power in the family', in another, the same father is vilified, condemned and imprisoned for life...
In the first culture, where freedom and democracy is not viewed the same -- and particularly not 'freedom of sexual expression' -- women are punished for not wearing scarves around their faces, although now I hear they can show their foreheads, women are 'stoned to death' for betraying their husband...fathers can get away with killing their 'disrespectful, disobeying' daughters in a 'hardline' middle Eastern culture where they certainly would -- and didn't -- get away with the same action here...a family tragedy to show here in Canada for the raw emotions tied up in the collision of family, cultural, and religious ethics and values....while I hear slow changes are happening back in Iran ... women can now wear makeup....and heels....and scarves that don't hide their foreheads...
Authoritarianism vs. democracy...and the 'teeter totter' that connects them...
And Classical Psychoanalysis 'hold on with a Pit Bull's biting grip' to some of its most anachronistic Freudian, Victorian 'male biased' values....the 'one-sided Oedipal Complex Theory' that tells a Classical Psychoanalyst not to view as 'credible' a woman's assertion of having being sexually assaulted by her father...
Like some Islamic -- or for that matter, Christian and/or Biblical values -- that are some 700 years old, or more...
There is no place for this type of outdated Classical Psychoanalytic thinking,
In a supposedly 'enlightened' school of Psychology and Psychotherapy....
That is supposedly moving forward, not stuck in the past...
Classical Psychoanalysis still needs to 'deconstruct' and 'detoxify' its most obvious Freudian-Victorian-masculine-narcissistic biases...
What does it need?
Another hundred years to get the message?
-- dgb, Aug. 30th, Sept. 1st, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
...............................................................................................................................................
"The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll" -- by Bob Dylan (from the internet)
William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
William Zanzinger who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn't even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain't the time for your tears.
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em
And that ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin' that way witout warnin'
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fearsv
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears.
[ BOB DYLAN LYRICS at http://www.azlyrics.com/ ]
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Silencing of The Lambs, Part 1
You would think that this distinction would be obvious but not so in Classical Psychoanalysis.
Around about 1897, Freud stopped talking about 'memories' and focused his studies, his writing, and his clinical practise on -- 'phantasies' (or 'fantasies', some such as Melanie Klein have made the distinction between 'phantasies' and 'fantasies' by including 'negative fantasies' under the label 'phantasies').
Very little discussion about 'memories' after 1897 to the point where Classical Psychoanalysis today is often described or defined as the study of 'human fantasies'. I shake my head at that one as it seems to me to be a very 'reductionistic' definition and description of what Classical Psychoanalysis could be, can be -- and is capable of becoming.
But since I am an outsider without any power in this regard -- except in the content of my own writing, and within the walls of 'Hegel's Hotel', while at the same time, I am still basically writing about 'Psychoanalyisis' and 'Psychoanalytic topics', I make the following distinction between Freud's work, i.e., 'Classical Psychoanalysis' and my own work, '(Optimal, Multi-Dialectic) Quantum Psychoanalyis' which can also either be equated with, or fall under the broader branch of, 'GAP-DGB Psychology and Philosophy'.
To be clear, here is the distinction that I myself make between a 'memory' and a 'fantasy'...
1. A 'memory' is something that actually happened -- or at least something that the person recalling the memory 'thinks' happened in his or her life. On a broader scale, a 'memory' can include anything in our brain that we can recall that we think constitutes 'knowledge' in some category and/or fashion.
2. A 'fantasy' usually needs -- in fact, dare I say 'always needs' -- either a 'memory' or at least some sort of 'visual or perceptual image' in order to bring the 'fantasy' alive in our brain. In this regard, a 'fantasy' is generally -- unless it is working from a very 'satisfying' memory that can be reworked in our mind over and over again until we get tired of it -- tied to some sort of 'unsatisfying' or 'incomplete' or 'unfinished' memory and/or image (this memory or image could be 'traumatic', involve 'rejection', 'failure', 'insufficient satisfaction', etc.) that again, as in a very 'satisfying memory', we re-work over and over again in our mind (an indication of the 're-creation' and/or 'repetition' and/or 'mastery' compulsion) using 'conceptual additions, modifications, and compensations' to turn the less than satisfying memory into a much more satisfying and 'complete' one until we get bored with this fantasy -- and move onto another 'more exciting' one.
In this regard, to distinguish in one important way from Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis, DGB (Optimal, Multi-Dialectic) Quantum Psychoanalysis investigates the integrative dialectic interaction between 'memories' and 'fantasies' and yet at the same time clearly distinguishes the one from the other.
One of Freud's biggest failings is that he didn't do this and seemed to 'conflate' the two together 'epistemologically' basically after 1897, and more strongly after 1905, linking both memories and phantasies (or fantasies) together under the common label of -- 'phantasies'.
In this way, Freud didn't have to get involved in the 'epistemological can of worms' of trying to determine 'what was real' and 'what was not real' but instead concluded that everything cited by the client was to be considered to be 'subjectively real' for the client and further more to be considered a 'phantasy'. Thus, no more -- or at least very little more -- talk about 'childhood traumacies' and 'sexual traumacies' and 'childhood sexual seductions or assaults'....everything became linke with 'childhood sexual impulses and desires and fantasies'....Like Jeffrey Masson, I consider this to be a huge 'philosophical/epistemological error' on Freud's part that no longer generally or properly recognized the difference between a 'real childhood (sexual) assault' and an 'imaginary one that was disguising the client's own sexual wish'.... A huge epistemological (reductionistic) error on the part of Freud that the rest of Psychoanalyis continues to 'swallow whole' (introject) to this very day.
I call this the 'Silencing of The Lambs' and I include Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, Janet Malcolm, and the rest of the 'quiet' Psychoanalyists working and making a very good living today -- as 'lambs'.
For what it's worth....I write from the academic underground...Masson wrote from the academic foreground and the only way 'they' (meaning the powers of The Psychoanalytic Establishment in the early 80s (primarily Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) could 'silence' Masson was by 'pushing him out of Psychoanalysis.
At some point, the powers that run an Institution may have to choose between the 'reputation, credibility, and legacy' of their Founder -- in this case, Sigmund Freud) and the ongoing functionality, legitimacy, and 'logical, egalitarian reason' of the evolving philosophical ideas that make up the institution.
Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler chose wrong -- they defended Freud's reputation and character over fundamental philosophical changes that needed to be made in The Institution in order to better serve the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century -- and particularly, in order to better serve the needs of women, and their ongoing striving for equal rights with men.
In this regard, in remaining loyal to father Freud, both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler chose a path that continued to 'suppress' and 'betray' the ongoing evolution of women's rights.
In the end, this was their mutual fundamental failing as two of the leading psychoanalysts of the late 20th century.
And like 'good kids' that do everything their parents say, and repeat back to them everything their parents want to hear, the Psychoanalytic Powers that be continue to hold onto this 'failed legacy' of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Kurt Eissler...
Or in short, Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis,
Continues to fail women...
In order 'not to upset' Sigmund Freud's legacy and image...
As they say in poker and in business, sometimes you simply have to know when to cut your losses...
Psychoanalysis -- and more particularly, the Governing Bodies of The International Institution of Psychoanalysis,
Still wish to 'sweep their organizational, theoretical, and therapeutic problems under the carpet'.
Still abide by the organizational 'solution' of basically 'saying nothing' and hoping, assuming, expecting that the problem (i.e. 'The Oedipal Complex', the role of 'fantasy' as opposed 'memory', and the role of 'impulse and desire' as opposed to 'traumacy' in psychotherapy...) will eventually go away....It has for over 100 years but unfortunately the same problem -- the same 'neurotic symptom' -- keeps coming back to haunt them over and over again like it is attached to the 'repetition compulsion'... It won't go away...
In the face of other schools of psychology that long ago got the message...
That some of Freud's ideas are blatantly sexist and full of masculine, narcissistic bias...
Classical Psychoanalysis still hasn't gotten out of The Victorian Era...
And still hasn't come around to the 21st century...
DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis aims to offer some help here...
My goal is not to 'bash Freud's character' although that partly goes with the territory...Freud made a couple of really bad theoretical and therapeutic mistakes.
Still I admire the extent of Freud's creativity and understand that 'making mistakes' is part of the territory that comes with 'taking risks' that other theorists and psychotherapists are unwilling to make -- such as Joseph Breuer to give you an example.
Breuer probably was a much more 'empirically minded and empirically based scientist and doctor than Freud was. Breuer was much more careful with his 'generalizations' and didn't like it when Freud started to jump to poorly grounded 'over-generalizations' that weren't completely supported by the clinical facts (such as 'sexual traumacy' and then 'sexual fantasy' being at the bottom of every 'neurosis' and 'neurotic symptom').
However, Freud was the much more creative thinker than Breuer and took us to a lot more different theoretical and therapeutic places than Breuer ever took us to...Although, my idea of a 'good psychotherapist' comes a lot closer to the 'flexibility' and 'compassion' of Breuer working with 'Anna O' in the early 1880s than the more 'rigid righteousness' of Freud working with 'Dora' in the early 1900s.
Freud was always 'getting caught' inside the 'rigid righteousness' of his self-made 'box' called 'Psychoanalysis'. He didn't mind 'exploring' outside the box himself -- and this was perhaps his greatest theoretical strength. But he didn't like other theorists 'exploring outside the Psychoanalytic Box' for him -- generally, but not always, rejected such 'wild' ideas coming from other theorists and therapists outright (Adler, Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Ferenczi, Rank, and more...) -- and this was probably Freud's 'number 1 weakness' as both a theorist and therapist'. Freud didn't like being told that he was 'wrong'.
Freud remains the source of my greatest creative inspiration. And yet, in ways that other theorists and therapists haven't stated before -- or some that have (Masson) -- I have to keep 'banging with a hammer' through the Psychoanalytic Establishment's 'neurotic resitance' in order to get to what I believe is both theoretically and therapeutically closer to being 'right'.
If I was 'inside the Psychoanalytic Establishment', I would be trying to do this more 'diplomatically' and probably with a 'much gentler approach'.
But I'm not inside The Psychoanalytic Establishment, I'm outside of it, impatient, running out of time to accomplish the things I want to accomplish in my lifetime....
So sometimes, like in this essay, as Nietzsche would say, I have to 'philosophize with a hammer'.
Psychoanalysis moves only slightly faster than the skeletons of the dinosaurs in The Royal Ontario Museum...
I think Jung called neurosis 'psychic entropy'.
That fits for me -- and it also fits for my view of The Psychoanalytic Establishment.
Up to this point, in time there has still not been enough necessary motivation and/or willpower for Classical Psychoanalysis to change. They are like a professor who has been teaching the same way -- and the same things -- for 30 years (in Psychoanalysis' case, over 100 years). They are well-paid and simply don't want to change.
Psychoanalysis calls their clients neurotic tendencies 'resistance to change'...
Is that 'counter-projection'?
As long as the money keeps rolling in...
And there are no lawsuits...
As long as 'the lambs remain silent'...
Who wants to change?
Not the client with his or her 'resistance'?
And certainly not Classical Psychoanalysis...
As long as the client is still paying his or her bill?
Is this the way of the world these day?
As long as the 'lambs are silent'...
And the money is still rolling in...
What motivation is there for change?
Just look at Nortel, GM, and Chrysler...
In the North American car industry, it took 'bankruptcy' and 'massive goverment funding'
To do what should have been done years and years before,
But there too,
There was 'psychic entropy' as the money was still rolling in,
And even when it wasn't.
Is this the way of The Psychoanalytic Establishment?
To me, it certainly looks like it.
-- DGB, Aug. 27th-29th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Around about 1897, Freud stopped talking about 'memories' and focused his studies, his writing, and his clinical practise on -- 'phantasies' (or 'fantasies', some such as Melanie Klein have made the distinction between 'phantasies' and 'fantasies' by including 'negative fantasies' under the label 'phantasies').
Very little discussion about 'memories' after 1897 to the point where Classical Psychoanalysis today is often described or defined as the study of 'human fantasies'. I shake my head at that one as it seems to me to be a very 'reductionistic' definition and description of what Classical Psychoanalysis could be, can be -- and is capable of becoming.
But since I am an outsider without any power in this regard -- except in the content of my own writing, and within the walls of 'Hegel's Hotel', while at the same time, I am still basically writing about 'Psychoanalyisis' and 'Psychoanalytic topics', I make the following distinction between Freud's work, i.e., 'Classical Psychoanalysis' and my own work, '(Optimal, Multi-Dialectic) Quantum Psychoanalyis' which can also either be equated with, or fall under the broader branch of, 'GAP-DGB Psychology and Philosophy'.
To be clear, here is the distinction that I myself make between a 'memory' and a 'fantasy'...
1. A 'memory' is something that actually happened -- or at least something that the person recalling the memory 'thinks' happened in his or her life. On a broader scale, a 'memory' can include anything in our brain that we can recall that we think constitutes 'knowledge' in some category and/or fashion.
2. A 'fantasy' usually needs -- in fact, dare I say 'always needs' -- either a 'memory' or at least some sort of 'visual or perceptual image' in order to bring the 'fantasy' alive in our brain. In this regard, a 'fantasy' is generally -- unless it is working from a very 'satisfying' memory that can be reworked in our mind over and over again until we get tired of it -- tied to some sort of 'unsatisfying' or 'incomplete' or 'unfinished' memory and/or image (this memory or image could be 'traumatic', involve 'rejection', 'failure', 'insufficient satisfaction', etc.) that again, as in a very 'satisfying memory', we re-work over and over again in our mind (an indication of the 're-creation' and/or 'repetition' and/or 'mastery' compulsion) using 'conceptual additions, modifications, and compensations' to turn the less than satisfying memory into a much more satisfying and 'complete' one until we get bored with this fantasy -- and move onto another 'more exciting' one.
In this regard, to distinguish in one important way from Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis, DGB (Optimal, Multi-Dialectic) Quantum Psychoanalysis investigates the integrative dialectic interaction between 'memories' and 'fantasies' and yet at the same time clearly distinguishes the one from the other.
One of Freud's biggest failings is that he didn't do this and seemed to 'conflate' the two together 'epistemologically' basically after 1897, and more strongly after 1905, linking both memories and phantasies (or fantasies) together under the common label of -- 'phantasies'.
In this way, Freud didn't have to get involved in the 'epistemological can of worms' of trying to determine 'what was real' and 'what was not real' but instead concluded that everything cited by the client was to be considered to be 'subjectively real' for the client and further more to be considered a 'phantasy'. Thus, no more -- or at least very little more -- talk about 'childhood traumacies' and 'sexual traumacies' and 'childhood sexual seductions or assaults'....everything became linke with 'childhood sexual impulses and desires and fantasies'....Like Jeffrey Masson, I consider this to be a huge 'philosophical/epistemological error' on Freud's part that no longer generally or properly recognized the difference between a 'real childhood (sexual) assault' and an 'imaginary one that was disguising the client's own sexual wish'.... A huge epistemological (reductionistic) error on the part of Freud that the rest of Psychoanalyis continues to 'swallow whole' (introject) to this very day.
I call this the 'Silencing of The Lambs' and I include Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, Janet Malcolm, and the rest of the 'quiet' Psychoanalyists working and making a very good living today -- as 'lambs'.
For what it's worth....I write from the academic underground...Masson wrote from the academic foreground and the only way 'they' (meaning the powers of The Psychoanalytic Establishment in the early 80s (primarily Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) could 'silence' Masson was by 'pushing him out of Psychoanalysis.
At some point, the powers that run an Institution may have to choose between the 'reputation, credibility, and legacy' of their Founder -- in this case, Sigmund Freud) and the ongoing functionality, legitimacy, and 'logical, egalitarian reason' of the evolving philosophical ideas that make up the institution.
Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler chose wrong -- they defended Freud's reputation and character over fundamental philosophical changes that needed to be made in The Institution in order to better serve the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century -- and particularly, in order to better serve the needs of women, and their ongoing striving for equal rights with men.
In this regard, in remaining loyal to father Freud, both Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler chose a path that continued to 'suppress' and 'betray' the ongoing evolution of women's rights.
In the end, this was their mutual fundamental failing as two of the leading psychoanalysts of the late 20th century.
And like 'good kids' that do everything their parents say, and repeat back to them everything their parents want to hear, the Psychoanalytic Powers that be continue to hold onto this 'failed legacy' of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Kurt Eissler...
Or in short, Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis,
Continues to fail women...
In order 'not to upset' Sigmund Freud's legacy and image...
As they say in poker and in business, sometimes you simply have to know when to cut your losses...
Psychoanalysis -- and more particularly, the Governing Bodies of The International Institution of Psychoanalysis,
Still wish to 'sweep their organizational, theoretical, and therapeutic problems under the carpet'.
Still abide by the organizational 'solution' of basically 'saying nothing' and hoping, assuming, expecting that the problem (i.e. 'The Oedipal Complex', the role of 'fantasy' as opposed 'memory', and the role of 'impulse and desire' as opposed to 'traumacy' in psychotherapy...) will eventually go away....It has for over 100 years but unfortunately the same problem -- the same 'neurotic symptom' -- keeps coming back to haunt them over and over again like it is attached to the 'repetition compulsion'... It won't go away...
In the face of other schools of psychology that long ago got the message...
That some of Freud's ideas are blatantly sexist and full of masculine, narcissistic bias...
Classical Psychoanalysis still hasn't gotten out of The Victorian Era...
And still hasn't come around to the 21st century...
DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis aims to offer some help here...
My goal is not to 'bash Freud's character' although that partly goes with the territory...Freud made a couple of really bad theoretical and therapeutic mistakes.
Still I admire the extent of Freud's creativity and understand that 'making mistakes' is part of the territory that comes with 'taking risks' that other theorists and psychotherapists are unwilling to make -- such as Joseph Breuer to give you an example.
Breuer probably was a much more 'empirically minded and empirically based scientist and doctor than Freud was. Breuer was much more careful with his 'generalizations' and didn't like it when Freud started to jump to poorly grounded 'over-generalizations' that weren't completely supported by the clinical facts (such as 'sexual traumacy' and then 'sexual fantasy' being at the bottom of every 'neurosis' and 'neurotic symptom').
However, Freud was the much more creative thinker than Breuer and took us to a lot more different theoretical and therapeutic places than Breuer ever took us to...Although, my idea of a 'good psychotherapist' comes a lot closer to the 'flexibility' and 'compassion' of Breuer working with 'Anna O' in the early 1880s than the more 'rigid righteousness' of Freud working with 'Dora' in the early 1900s.
Freud was always 'getting caught' inside the 'rigid righteousness' of his self-made 'box' called 'Psychoanalysis'. He didn't mind 'exploring' outside the box himself -- and this was perhaps his greatest theoretical strength. But he didn't like other theorists 'exploring outside the Psychoanalytic Box' for him -- generally, but not always, rejected such 'wild' ideas coming from other theorists and therapists outright (Adler, Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Ferenczi, Rank, and more...) -- and this was probably Freud's 'number 1 weakness' as both a theorist and therapist'. Freud didn't like being told that he was 'wrong'.
Freud remains the source of my greatest creative inspiration. And yet, in ways that other theorists and therapists haven't stated before -- or some that have (Masson) -- I have to keep 'banging with a hammer' through the Psychoanalytic Establishment's 'neurotic resitance' in order to get to what I believe is both theoretically and therapeutically closer to being 'right'.
If I was 'inside the Psychoanalytic Establishment', I would be trying to do this more 'diplomatically' and probably with a 'much gentler approach'.
But I'm not inside The Psychoanalytic Establishment, I'm outside of it, impatient, running out of time to accomplish the things I want to accomplish in my lifetime....
So sometimes, like in this essay, as Nietzsche would say, I have to 'philosophize with a hammer'.
Psychoanalysis moves only slightly faster than the skeletons of the dinosaurs in The Royal Ontario Museum...
I think Jung called neurosis 'psychic entropy'.
That fits for me -- and it also fits for my view of The Psychoanalytic Establishment.
Up to this point, in time there has still not been enough necessary motivation and/or willpower for Classical Psychoanalysis to change. They are like a professor who has been teaching the same way -- and the same things -- for 30 years (in Psychoanalysis' case, over 100 years). They are well-paid and simply don't want to change.
Psychoanalysis calls their clients neurotic tendencies 'resistance to change'...
Is that 'counter-projection'?
As long as the money keeps rolling in...
And there are no lawsuits...
As long as 'the lambs remain silent'...
Who wants to change?
Not the client with his or her 'resistance'?
And certainly not Classical Psychoanalysis...
As long as the client is still paying his or her bill?
Is this the way of the world these day?
As long as the 'lambs are silent'...
And the money is still rolling in...
What motivation is there for change?
Just look at Nortel, GM, and Chrysler...
In the North American car industry, it took 'bankruptcy' and 'massive goverment funding'
To do what should have been done years and years before,
But there too,
There was 'psychic entropy' as the money was still rolling in,
And even when it wasn't.
Is this the way of The Psychoanalytic Establishment?
To me, it certainly looks like it.
-- DGB, Aug. 27th-29th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Essays on 'The Central Ego': From My 1979 Honours Thesis.. 'Evaluation and Health'...and More...)
Evaluation and Health -- By David Bain, 1979
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm (1947)
Introduction
The issue of values and evaluation represents a crucial problem in regard to our lives. On the one hand, we are free to evaluate and respond to the situations we are confronted with in our day-to-day lives as we please. But on the other hand, we are not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations and responses have on our lives and well-being.
Our evaluations then, can be said to be 'healthy' and/or 'functional' to the extent that they are life-serving -- that is, they work towards protecting or enhancing our personal health and happiness. Conversely, our evaluations can be said to be 'pathological', 'neurotic', and/or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are life-negating -- that is, they work towards sabotaging the person's health and happiness.
Now to be sure, there are numerous areas of complication here such as the matter of 'individual taste', and also the matter of 'short term pleasures' of the 'healthy' and/or 'unhealthy' variety vs. 'longer term life-serving and life-preserving choices'.
For example, if I like bananas and you like apples, there is not much to be said about this -- both are generally 'healthy' choices (unless it is a rotten apple or rotten banana). However, if over time, you develop a deficiency in calcium, magnesium, and/or potassium, then 'rational-empirical logic' would suggest that you introduce more bananas into your diet to address your nutritional deficiency and imbalance -- and to correct this deficiency/imbalance. The same would go for me if I was missing some important nutritional needs that could or can easily be found in 'apples' but not as much so in 'bananas'. (Obviously, eating both would probably be a generally good health practice for both of us, all else being equal.)
Then there are the 'unhealthier' pleasures that we may or may not disregard when warning signs start cropping up relative to our health and/or happiness. Too much food, not enough food, not enough nutritional food, too many carbs, too much alchohol, too many exotic desserts, dangerous drugs, smoking, not enough exercise...and on and on we could go...The older we get, the more we are likely to realize that there is the very real issue of our 'mortality' -- and that life is not forever -- unfortunately, some young people never reach this level of 'wisdom' before they run into tragic disaster and for my fellow aging 'baby boomers' (obviously this is me writing in 2009, not 1979), there is the issue of all of the acute and/or chronic diseases that can start to hit us in our 40s and/or 50s -- clogged arteries, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, adrenal fatigue, liver problems, kidney problems, colon problems, cancer, male problems, female problems, and on and on we could/can go...Welcome to our 50s for those who have made it this far...
And then there are all the psychological, economic, political, social, relgious, moral, and ethical issues...
Enough to more than fill an essay of this size with issues that could require an essay of 10 or 20 or 50 times this size to even begin to properly address all of the various subject matters...(See 'Hegel's Hotel'...)
What we are primarily interested in here is what might be called: 'Central Ego Functioning' including language, perception, interpretation, evaluation, a brief introduction to the idea of balancing 'Narcissistic-Dionysian' impulses with 'Apollonian moral-ethical restraints', generating response-alternatives, judging possible consequences of different actions, making decisions and choices, and the execution of action. Followed by the perception, interpretation, and evaluation of feedback -- and the resulting 'learning and/or mislearning' process.
That is the essence of 'Evaluation and Health'.
The essay will be divided into 3 parts.
In Part 1, we will look at three different 'sub-processes' in Central Ego Functioning -- specifically: 1. The Stimulus-Evaluation Stage; 2. The Response-Evaluation Stage; and 3. The Feedback-Learning Stage.
In Part 2, we will look at potential 'disturbances', 'neuroses', and/or 'pathologies' within each of the previously mentioned stages of Central Ego functioning.
In Part 3, we will look at a more 'wholistic' -- as well as 'reductionistic-compartmentalized' -- model of the personality, including The Central Ego in the centre of all the 'soap opera conflict-generating and conflict-resolving or unresolving action' as what we might also call the 'Chief Executive Officer' (CEO) in our personality. The model is designed to give us some idea of how we might approach the 'art and science of living -- from a (Post-Hegelian, multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential) DGB-GAP perspective. Part 3 was never written in the original 1979 essay but will be 2009 addition from the context of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Let's look at the interactive dynamics of language, epistemology, evaluation, response choice, action or inaction -- and the resulting effects on our health.
Let's look at 'Evaluation and Health'.
-- dgb, March 5th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm (1947)
Introduction
The issue of values and evaluation represents a crucial problem in regard to our lives. On the one hand, we are free to evaluate and respond to the situations we are confronted with in our day-to-day lives as we please. But on the other hand, we are not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations and responses have on our lives and well-being.
Our evaluations then, can be said to be 'healthy' and/or 'functional' to the extent that they are life-serving -- that is, they work towards protecting or enhancing our personal health and happiness. Conversely, our evaluations can be said to be 'pathological', 'neurotic', and/or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are life-negating -- that is, they work towards sabotaging the person's health and happiness.
Now to be sure, there are numerous areas of complication here such as the matter of 'individual taste', and also the matter of 'short term pleasures' of the 'healthy' and/or 'unhealthy' variety vs. 'longer term life-serving and life-preserving choices'.
For example, if I like bananas and you like apples, there is not much to be said about this -- both are generally 'healthy' choices (unless it is a rotten apple or rotten banana). However, if over time, you develop a deficiency in calcium, magnesium, and/or potassium, then 'rational-empirical logic' would suggest that you introduce more bananas into your diet to address your nutritional deficiency and imbalance -- and to correct this deficiency/imbalance. The same would go for me if I was missing some important nutritional needs that could or can easily be found in 'apples' but not as much so in 'bananas'. (Obviously, eating both would probably be a generally good health practice for both of us, all else being equal.)
Then there are the 'unhealthier' pleasures that we may or may not disregard when warning signs start cropping up relative to our health and/or happiness. Too much food, not enough food, not enough nutritional food, too many carbs, too much alchohol, too many exotic desserts, dangerous drugs, smoking, not enough exercise...and on and on we could go...The older we get, the more we are likely to realize that there is the very real issue of our 'mortality' -- and that life is not forever -- unfortunately, some young people never reach this level of 'wisdom' before they run into tragic disaster and for my fellow aging 'baby boomers' (obviously this is me writing in 2009, not 1979), there is the issue of all of the acute and/or chronic diseases that can start to hit us in our 40s and/or 50s -- clogged arteries, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, adrenal fatigue, liver problems, kidney problems, colon problems, cancer, male problems, female problems, and on and on we could/can go...Welcome to our 50s for those who have made it this far...
And then there are all the psychological, economic, political, social, relgious, moral, and ethical issues...
Enough to more than fill an essay of this size with issues that could require an essay of 10 or 20 or 50 times this size to even begin to properly address all of the various subject matters...(See 'Hegel's Hotel'...)
What we are primarily interested in here is what might be called: 'Central Ego Functioning' including language, perception, interpretation, evaluation, a brief introduction to the idea of balancing 'Narcissistic-Dionysian' impulses with 'Apollonian moral-ethical restraints', generating response-alternatives, judging possible consequences of different actions, making decisions and choices, and the execution of action. Followed by the perception, interpretation, and evaluation of feedback -- and the resulting 'learning and/or mislearning' process.
That is the essence of 'Evaluation and Health'.
The essay will be divided into 3 parts.
In Part 1, we will look at three different 'sub-processes' in Central Ego Functioning -- specifically: 1. The Stimulus-Evaluation Stage; 2. The Response-Evaluation Stage; and 3. The Feedback-Learning Stage.
In Part 2, we will look at potential 'disturbances', 'neuroses', and/or 'pathologies' within each of the previously mentioned stages of Central Ego functioning.
In Part 3, we will look at a more 'wholistic' -- as well as 'reductionistic-compartmentalized' -- model of the personality, including The Central Ego in the centre of all the 'soap opera conflict-generating and conflict-resolving or unresolving action' as what we might also call the 'Chief Executive Officer' (CEO) in our personality. The model is designed to give us some idea of how we might approach the 'art and science of living -- from a (Post-Hegelian, multi-Dialectic, Humanistic-Existential) DGB-GAP perspective. Part 3 was never written in the original 1979 essay but will be 2009 addition from the context of 'Hegel's Hotel'.
Let's look at the interactive dynamics of language, epistemology, evaluation, response choice, action or inaction -- and the resulting effects on our health.
Let's look at 'Evaluation and Health'.
-- dgb, March 5th, 2009.
-- David Gordon Bain
Friday, August 20, 2010
Essays on 'Quantum' Psychoanalysis: 2. Energy, Processes, and Structures...
Let us start with energy.
I do not profess to be an expert in biology and biochemistry but I know enough that I think I can make some decent general statements relative to the creative and flow of energy.
A doctor once told my dad that health and medicine can be reduced to a pretty simple formula, not unlike the buy and sell of real estate.
Specifically, in real estate, we hear people repeat this formula over and over again:
Location, location, location...
And a similar formula can be repeated over and over again in health and medicine:
Circulation, circulation, circulation...
Everything the mind and body needs to function properly needs to move, come together, supply energy and building products to the mind and body, and then, after energy has been released and used, waste products need to be detoxified, recycled, and/or removed from the body so that the mind and body can keep functioning properly...
With our body, we have instruments and our own powers of observation (and/or that of our doctor's) to actually see -- and then interpret and evaluate -- what is going on inside and outside our body. We have microscopes, X ray machines, CAT Scans, MRIs, Ultrasound machines...and so on...We can actually take pictures, and/or a surgeon can actually go inside the body to take a look at, an 'organ of interest'...the heart, the liver, the pancreas, the kidneys, and so on...
In the brain, visual pictures can also be taken of the different 'sub-structures' that perform 'sub-functions' that come together to provide the complete workings of the brain...
But we cannot see an 'idea', a 'concept', a 'generalization', an 'abstraction', a 'classification', a 'category', a 'distinction', a 'stereotype', and we cannot see what we say 'houses' all of these different type of 'non-empirical' ideas -- which is what, in English, we call our 'mind' as differentiated by our 'brain'.
In English, we differentiate our 'mind' from our 'brain' because our brain we associate with 'physical', 'physiological', biological, chemical, and 'bio-chemical' 'processes' whereas our 'mind' we associate with all our 'thinking' and 'conceptual' -- non-empirical -- processes.
Labelling becomes important here because we 'make decisions on what we are going to do' based on how we 'label' something....which can get us into the problem of 'bad decisions based on false or bad label stereotyping'...
If we label something as a 'brain dysfunction' -- say, something like a 'tumor' or 'epilepsy' -- we advise the person experiencing this type of problem (assuming that he or she agrees with this assessment or perhaps even if he or she doesn't) to go see a doctor and/or a 'brain or neurological specialist'.
If we label something as a 'mental disorder' or a 'personality disorder' or an 'emotional disorder', then we are more likely to advise the person experiencing this type of problem (assuming that he or she agrees with this assessment or perhaps even if he or she doesn't) to a 'psychologist' and/or a 'psychotherapist'...
Bridging the gap between the two -- i.e., between the 'brain' specialists and the 'mind' specialists -- we have the 'psychiatrists' who are trained in both medicine and in psychology and psychotherapy.
The 'mind-brain split' -- just like the 'mind-body split' -- has created a 'mental problem' of gigantic proportions -- a 'conundrum' if you will -- for thousands of years....with many of our finest philosophers and psychologists trying to get to the bottom of this 'conundrum' and get it straightened out...
Generally, without much success.
Freud spent years trying to complete his 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' -- and finally gave up. He started out as a 'neurologist', then became a 'hypnotist', and then finally a 'clinical psychologist', 'psychotherapist', and 'psychoanalyst'....but he couldn't solve the age-old mind-body, mind-brain conundrum...Welcome to the club...It is a large one.
Thinking 'dialectically' means that you opt to use a lot of 'hyphenated words' such as 'mind-brain' and, in my case, here in Hegel's Hotel -- 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis' or 'GAP' Psychology. Or alternatively what I call 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
This doesn't mean that I have any secret answers to the age old 'mind-body' or 'mind-brain' problem; just that I recognize the danger of making bad decisions on the basis of bad or inappropriate labels; and also, that I recognize that the 'mind' and 'brain' function together 'holistically' which is why I prefer to use the lable 'mind-brain' when i am thinking about this conundrum.
In the body, we know that a wide assortment of different things have to happen in order to give us 'energy'....We need 'food' which breaks down into 'sugar' or 'glucose', we need 'sunshine', we need 'oxygen', we need 'water', and we need 'good circulation' to get everthing where it needs to go to: specifically, to all the millions of different cells in the mind-brain and body....
Now psychologically speaking, 'energy' can be differentiated and this is one of the ways in which we can differentiate the different schools of psychology from each other -- i.e. what types of 'energy' do they talk about', and how many different types of energy do they talk about?
Energy turns into 'processes', or processes turn into energy (depending on which way you want to dialectically look at it -- or both); and processes turn into 'structures' like 'body structures or organs' and/or visa versa with structures turning into processes...and in the 'mental' sphere of things we can talk about energy turning into psycho-processes which in turn turn into psycho-structures (or 'psycho-organs' or 'ego-states' and 'underlying subconscious templates')....
And now we have the begining of talk about 'personality theory' and/or 'models of the psyche/personality' and/or 'character structure'...
And away we go to the races...
But it all starts with talk about different types of 'energy' creating different types of processes creating different types of structures and/or visa versa with different types of 'psychological structures' creating different types of 'psychological processes' and different psychological processes creating different types of 'psychological or psycho-energy'.
Verbs turn into nouns and nouns turn into verbs...or so we make them so...
Once we start talking about different types of 'psycho-structures', then we are talking about different types of 'classifying' and 'sub-classifying' parts of the mind or mind-brain that we either totally or partly cannot see.
In the area of 'personality theory', there is nothing visual to support what we are doing...
It is all based on watching people behave...and then making 'inferences' and 'judgments' based on 'commonalities' and 'differences' in behavior...
That is why B.F. Skinner (much as I didn't like what the man stood for) said that we don't even need to talk about 'personality theory' in order to understand and 'predict' human behavior....Skinner was the founder -- or at least one of the main founders -- of 'Behaviorism'.
Skinner said that we can just visualize the 'personality' as a 'black box' that we really don't even need to find anything about, we don't need to go 'inside'...
Because all the answers to this 'black box' and how it works can be found and determined by 'watching' and 'conditioning' 'overt behavior'...
Sorry, but that is not my perspective. I have spent much of almost 40 years 'investigating what is inside the black box, and how things work inside there'...
And I don't believe in 'conditioning'...I believe in 'learning' as a 'dialectic process between teacher and student'; not with some laboratory researcher telling me what I am going to learn by 'positively' and/or 'negatively' 'reinforcing' me... Unless there is 'mutual consent' in which case again, the process becomes 'dialectical' as opposed to 'unilateral'....One of the biggest problems of our society and our times -- like all societys and all times -- is one of 'non-transaparency', 'narcissism', 'unilateral decisions' and 'manipulative underhanded cover operations' from individuals, corporations, and governments...
But I am getting ahead of myself...
Back to the 'black box' -- man's 'mind-brain' and the largely 'invisible' energy, processes, and structures that run it...that we 'interpret', 'judge' and 'classify' based primarily on some combination of personal and/or clinical experience...
We will take this up again tomorrow...
If we use the metaphor of 'energy-process-structure' (EPS) and apply this triangular concept to the workings of 'the mind' or the 'mind-brain', then here is the type of thing/structure (and dynamic process) we can come up with...
1. 'Nurturing energy'....leads to a 'nurturing process'...leads to a 'nurturing structure' -- 'The Nurturing Ego'
If we also look at the dynamics of 'power' or 'degree of self-empowerment', 'self-image', and 'self-esteem', then we can divide or 'split' The Nurturing Ego into two components or facets: 'The Nurturing Superego' and 'The Nurturing (Co-operative, Approval-Seeking) Underego.
Thus, we now have:
1a. The (Therapeutic) Nurturing Superego;
1b.The (Submissive) Nurturing Underego;
2. Following this line of thinking, we also have 'Narcissistic Energy' leading to a 'Narcissistic Process' leading to a 'Narcissistic Structure' -- 'The Narcissistic Ego' which is then 'split into'...
2a. The Narcissistic Superego;
2b. The Narcissistic Underego.
3. We also have 'Dionysian' ('hedonistic', 'pleasure-seeking) Energy' leading to a 'Dionysian Process' and a 'Dionysian Structure' -- 'The Dionysian Ego' which is then split into:
3a. The Dionysian Superego;
3b. The Dionysian Underego;
4. We also have 'Apollonian Energy' leading to an 'Apollonian Process' leading to an 'Apollonian Structure' -- 'The Apollonian Ego' which is split into:
4a. 'The (Righteous, Organized) Apollonian Superego';
4b. 'The (Rebellious, Organized) Apollonian Underego';
5. In the 'middle zone' of the 'ego-state' portion of the personality, we have:
5a. 'Romantic Energy' leading to a 'Romantic Process' leading to 'The Romantic Ego' (which can be split into 'top zone' (Superego) and 'bottom zone' (Underego) as well but we will leave it here in the 'middle zone'.
5b. 'Enlightenment-(Democratic, Egalitarian) Energy' leading to an 'Enlightenment Process' leading to an 'Enlightenment Structure' -- 'The Democratic-Enlightenment Ego';
5c. 'Mediating (Negotiating, Compromising, Problem-Solving, Conflict-Resolving) Energy' leading to a 'Mediating Process' leading to a 'Mediating Structure' -- 'The Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego.
From top to bottom, this leaves us with:
1. The Nurturing (Therapeutic) Superego;
2. The Narcissistic (Self-Interested) Superego;
3. The Dionysian (Hedonistic, Pleasure-Seeking) Superego;
4. The Apollonian (Righteous, Organized) Superego;
5. The Nurturing (Submissive) Underego;
6. The Narcissistic (Self-Interested, Defiant) Underego;
7. The Dionysian (Hedonistic, Pleasure-Seeking) Underego;
8. The Apollonian (Rebellious, Deconstructive, Organized) Underego;
9. The Romantic Ego;
10. The Enlightenment (Democratic-Egalitarian) Ego;
11. The Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego.
Together, these eleven ego-states above represent the actions of the 'Divided and/or Wholistic Ego'.
All of these various 'ego-states' are partly supported 'energy', 'processes', and 'structures' (EPS) happening below the surface of the personality in different stages and areas of the 'subconscious';
12. The Dynamic, Creative-Destructive Symbolic Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver;
13. The Id (a mixture of seemingly irrational creative and destructive, sexual, sensual, and aggressive energy pushing upwards to different and interconnected ego-states in 'The Wholistic Ego';
14. The Transference, Memory, Experience, and Learning Template;
15. The Symbolic-Mythological Template
16. The Evolving Blueprint of The Potential and Actual Self, Spirit, and Soul.
At this point in time, this is where 'energy', 'process', and 'structure' takes me in my DGB model of The Personality, The Psyche which stands as the foundation for 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
Remember, this is only a continually evolving model of how the psyche and personality works.
The model is only worth talking about -- and keeping -- to the extent that it can be demostrated to be 'functionally useful'....If it is like an 'unused bag of clothes lying in the middle of the living room or bedroom floor with the clothes in the bag not being worn -- then get rid of the bag, or at least the clothes that you are not using...
The same goes for the different, individual 'compartments' within the model....Either they can be shown to be 'functionally useful' to talk about in themselves, in that they reflect some aspect of our 'phenomenological existence', and they can be shown to be 'interwoven into the whole of the model' which again reflects an important part of our 'phenomenological existence' -- or if this is not case -- thrown the unused portion, the unused 'compartment' of the model out...
Life is a dynamic, dialectic process between getting 'good nutrition from our food (or in this case, 'ideas') and also having a good 'detoxification' process at work in our mind and body as well which means that we 'detoxify' by throwing out those ideas that we don't find useful. We don't 'hoard' introjected and/or bad (unuseful and/or toxic, pathological) ideas that are causing us trouble and harm...In this regard, we all need to learn how to be good 'self-psychotherapists'...
Either this model helps you in this process or -- throw it out...Don't be an 'introjective hoarder'...
Enough for today,
-- dgb, Saturday Aug 21st, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
I do not profess to be an expert in biology and biochemistry but I know enough that I think I can make some decent general statements relative to the creative and flow of energy.
A doctor once told my dad that health and medicine can be reduced to a pretty simple formula, not unlike the buy and sell of real estate.
Specifically, in real estate, we hear people repeat this formula over and over again:
Location, location, location...
And a similar formula can be repeated over and over again in health and medicine:
Circulation, circulation, circulation...
Everything the mind and body needs to function properly needs to move, come together, supply energy and building products to the mind and body, and then, after energy has been released and used, waste products need to be detoxified, recycled, and/or removed from the body so that the mind and body can keep functioning properly...
With our body, we have instruments and our own powers of observation (and/or that of our doctor's) to actually see -- and then interpret and evaluate -- what is going on inside and outside our body. We have microscopes, X ray machines, CAT Scans, MRIs, Ultrasound machines...and so on...We can actually take pictures, and/or a surgeon can actually go inside the body to take a look at, an 'organ of interest'...the heart, the liver, the pancreas, the kidneys, and so on...
In the brain, visual pictures can also be taken of the different 'sub-structures' that perform 'sub-functions' that come together to provide the complete workings of the brain...
But we cannot see an 'idea', a 'concept', a 'generalization', an 'abstraction', a 'classification', a 'category', a 'distinction', a 'stereotype', and we cannot see what we say 'houses' all of these different type of 'non-empirical' ideas -- which is what, in English, we call our 'mind' as differentiated by our 'brain'.
In English, we differentiate our 'mind' from our 'brain' because our brain we associate with 'physical', 'physiological', biological, chemical, and 'bio-chemical' 'processes' whereas our 'mind' we associate with all our 'thinking' and 'conceptual' -- non-empirical -- processes.
Labelling becomes important here because we 'make decisions on what we are going to do' based on how we 'label' something....which can get us into the problem of 'bad decisions based on false or bad label stereotyping'...
If we label something as a 'brain dysfunction' -- say, something like a 'tumor' or 'epilepsy' -- we advise the person experiencing this type of problem (assuming that he or she agrees with this assessment or perhaps even if he or she doesn't) to go see a doctor and/or a 'brain or neurological specialist'.
If we label something as a 'mental disorder' or a 'personality disorder' or an 'emotional disorder', then we are more likely to advise the person experiencing this type of problem (assuming that he or she agrees with this assessment or perhaps even if he or she doesn't) to a 'psychologist' and/or a 'psychotherapist'...
Bridging the gap between the two -- i.e., between the 'brain' specialists and the 'mind' specialists -- we have the 'psychiatrists' who are trained in both medicine and in psychology and psychotherapy.
The 'mind-brain split' -- just like the 'mind-body split' -- has created a 'mental problem' of gigantic proportions -- a 'conundrum' if you will -- for thousands of years....with many of our finest philosophers and psychologists trying to get to the bottom of this 'conundrum' and get it straightened out...
Generally, without much success.
Freud spent years trying to complete his 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' -- and finally gave up. He started out as a 'neurologist', then became a 'hypnotist', and then finally a 'clinical psychologist', 'psychotherapist', and 'psychoanalyst'....but he couldn't solve the age-old mind-body, mind-brain conundrum...Welcome to the club...It is a large one.
Thinking 'dialectically' means that you opt to use a lot of 'hyphenated words' such as 'mind-brain' and, in my case, here in Hegel's Hotel -- 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalysis' or 'GAP' Psychology. Or alternatively what I call 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
This doesn't mean that I have any secret answers to the age old 'mind-body' or 'mind-brain' problem; just that I recognize the danger of making bad decisions on the basis of bad or inappropriate labels; and also, that I recognize that the 'mind' and 'brain' function together 'holistically' which is why I prefer to use the lable 'mind-brain' when i am thinking about this conundrum.
In the body, we know that a wide assortment of different things have to happen in order to give us 'energy'....We need 'food' which breaks down into 'sugar' or 'glucose', we need 'sunshine', we need 'oxygen', we need 'water', and we need 'good circulation' to get everthing where it needs to go to: specifically, to all the millions of different cells in the mind-brain and body....
Now psychologically speaking, 'energy' can be differentiated and this is one of the ways in which we can differentiate the different schools of psychology from each other -- i.e. what types of 'energy' do they talk about', and how many different types of energy do they talk about?
Energy turns into 'processes', or processes turn into energy (depending on which way you want to dialectically look at it -- or both); and processes turn into 'structures' like 'body structures or organs' and/or visa versa with structures turning into processes...and in the 'mental' sphere of things we can talk about energy turning into psycho-processes which in turn turn into psycho-structures (or 'psycho-organs' or 'ego-states' and 'underlying subconscious templates')....
And now we have the begining of talk about 'personality theory' and/or 'models of the psyche/personality' and/or 'character structure'...
And away we go to the races...
But it all starts with talk about different types of 'energy' creating different types of processes creating different types of structures and/or visa versa with different types of 'psychological structures' creating different types of 'psychological processes' and different psychological processes creating different types of 'psychological or psycho-energy'.
Verbs turn into nouns and nouns turn into verbs...or so we make them so...
Once we start talking about different types of 'psycho-structures', then we are talking about different types of 'classifying' and 'sub-classifying' parts of the mind or mind-brain that we either totally or partly cannot see.
In the area of 'personality theory', there is nothing visual to support what we are doing...
It is all based on watching people behave...and then making 'inferences' and 'judgments' based on 'commonalities' and 'differences' in behavior...
That is why B.F. Skinner (much as I didn't like what the man stood for) said that we don't even need to talk about 'personality theory' in order to understand and 'predict' human behavior....Skinner was the founder -- or at least one of the main founders -- of 'Behaviorism'.
Skinner said that we can just visualize the 'personality' as a 'black box' that we really don't even need to find anything about, we don't need to go 'inside'...
Because all the answers to this 'black box' and how it works can be found and determined by 'watching' and 'conditioning' 'overt behavior'...
Sorry, but that is not my perspective. I have spent much of almost 40 years 'investigating what is inside the black box, and how things work inside there'...
And I don't believe in 'conditioning'...I believe in 'learning' as a 'dialectic process between teacher and student'; not with some laboratory researcher telling me what I am going to learn by 'positively' and/or 'negatively' 'reinforcing' me... Unless there is 'mutual consent' in which case again, the process becomes 'dialectical' as opposed to 'unilateral'....One of the biggest problems of our society and our times -- like all societys and all times -- is one of 'non-transaparency', 'narcissism', 'unilateral decisions' and 'manipulative underhanded cover operations' from individuals, corporations, and governments...
But I am getting ahead of myself...
Back to the 'black box' -- man's 'mind-brain' and the largely 'invisible' energy, processes, and structures that run it...that we 'interpret', 'judge' and 'classify' based primarily on some combination of personal and/or clinical experience...
We will take this up again tomorrow...
If we use the metaphor of 'energy-process-structure' (EPS) and apply this triangular concept to the workings of 'the mind' or the 'mind-brain', then here is the type of thing/structure (and dynamic process) we can come up with...
1. 'Nurturing energy'....leads to a 'nurturing process'...leads to a 'nurturing structure' -- 'The Nurturing Ego'
If we also look at the dynamics of 'power' or 'degree of self-empowerment', 'self-image', and 'self-esteem', then we can divide or 'split' The Nurturing Ego into two components or facets: 'The Nurturing Superego' and 'The Nurturing (Co-operative, Approval-Seeking) Underego.
Thus, we now have:
1a. The (Therapeutic) Nurturing Superego;
1b.The (Submissive) Nurturing Underego;
2. Following this line of thinking, we also have 'Narcissistic Energy' leading to a 'Narcissistic Process' leading to a 'Narcissistic Structure' -- 'The Narcissistic Ego' which is then 'split into'...
2a. The Narcissistic Superego;
2b. The Narcissistic Underego.
3. We also have 'Dionysian' ('hedonistic', 'pleasure-seeking) Energy' leading to a 'Dionysian Process' and a 'Dionysian Structure' -- 'The Dionysian Ego' which is then split into:
3a. The Dionysian Superego;
3b. The Dionysian Underego;
4. We also have 'Apollonian Energy' leading to an 'Apollonian Process' leading to an 'Apollonian Structure' -- 'The Apollonian Ego' which is split into:
4a. 'The (Righteous, Organized) Apollonian Superego';
4b. 'The (Rebellious, Organized) Apollonian Underego';
5. In the 'middle zone' of the 'ego-state' portion of the personality, we have:
5a. 'Romantic Energy' leading to a 'Romantic Process' leading to 'The Romantic Ego' (which can be split into 'top zone' (Superego) and 'bottom zone' (Underego) as well but we will leave it here in the 'middle zone'.
5b. 'Enlightenment-(Democratic, Egalitarian) Energy' leading to an 'Enlightenment Process' leading to an 'Enlightenment Structure' -- 'The Democratic-Enlightenment Ego';
5c. 'Mediating (Negotiating, Compromising, Problem-Solving, Conflict-Resolving) Energy' leading to a 'Mediating Process' leading to a 'Mediating Structure' -- 'The Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego.
From top to bottom, this leaves us with:
1. The Nurturing (Therapeutic) Superego;
2. The Narcissistic (Self-Interested) Superego;
3. The Dionysian (Hedonistic, Pleasure-Seeking) Superego;
4. The Apollonian (Righteous, Organized) Superego;
5. The Nurturing (Submissive) Underego;
6. The Narcissistic (Self-Interested, Defiant) Underego;
7. The Dionysian (Hedonistic, Pleasure-Seeking) Underego;
8. The Apollonian (Rebellious, Deconstructive, Organized) Underego;
9. The Romantic Ego;
10. The Enlightenment (Democratic-Egalitarian) Ego;
11. The Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego.
Together, these eleven ego-states above represent the actions of the 'Divided and/or Wholistic Ego'.
All of these various 'ego-states' are partly supported 'energy', 'processes', and 'structures' (EPS) happening below the surface of the personality in different stages and areas of the 'subconscious';
12. The Dynamic, Creative-Destructive Symbolic Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver;
13. The Id (a mixture of seemingly irrational creative and destructive, sexual, sensual, and aggressive energy pushing upwards to different and interconnected ego-states in 'The Wholistic Ego';
14. The Transference, Memory, Experience, and Learning Template;
15. The Symbolic-Mythological Template
16. The Evolving Blueprint of The Potential and Actual Self, Spirit, and Soul.
At this point in time, this is where 'energy', 'process', and 'structure' takes me in my DGB model of The Personality, The Psyche which stands as the foundation for 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
Remember, this is only a continually evolving model of how the psyche and personality works.
The model is only worth talking about -- and keeping -- to the extent that it can be demostrated to be 'functionally useful'....If it is like an 'unused bag of clothes lying in the middle of the living room or bedroom floor with the clothes in the bag not being worn -- then get rid of the bag, or at least the clothes that you are not using...
The same goes for the different, individual 'compartments' within the model....Either they can be shown to be 'functionally useful' to talk about in themselves, in that they reflect some aspect of our 'phenomenological existence', and they can be shown to be 'interwoven into the whole of the model' which again reflects an important part of our 'phenomenological existence' -- or if this is not case -- thrown the unused portion, the unused 'compartment' of the model out...
Life is a dynamic, dialectic process between getting 'good nutrition from our food (or in this case, 'ideas') and also having a good 'detoxification' process at work in our mind and body as well which means that we 'detoxify' by throwing out those ideas that we don't find useful. We don't 'hoard' introjected and/or bad (unuseful and/or toxic, pathological) ideas that are causing us trouble and harm...In this regard, we all need to learn how to be good 'self-psychotherapists'...
Either this model helps you in this process or -- throw it out...Don't be an 'introjective hoarder'...
Enough for today,
-- dgb, Saturday Aug 21st, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Essays On 'Quantum' Psychoanalysis: 1. What To Do About The Oedipal Complex (and The Seduction Theory)?
April 18th-21st, 2010...freshly modified...
Let us start with what we have so far -- a significant extension of Freud's Classical 'Superego-Ego-Id' model.
Hegel's Hotel -- and GAP-DGB Psychology -- is much more 'oral-receptive' to post, neo, and anti-Freudian schools of psychology than Sigmund Freud ever was.
Indeed, GAP-DGB Psychology aims to be the most integrative of all schools of psychology -- with Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, Jungian Psychology and all 50 years and 24 Standard Editions of Freudian Psychoanalyis including both pre and post 1897 Psychoanalytic Theory playing a part in what you can either already read in my previous 'Quantum Psychoanalytic' essays, and/or what you are about to read below.
Right now, Classical Psychoanalysis is a 'collapsed school of psychology' even though the 'power brokers that be' -- in line with the 'power brokers that were' -- refuse to admit it.
Most specifically the 'power brokers that were' refer mainly to Sigmund Freud himself until he died in 1939, and after that, primarily Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler particullarly in the late 70s and early 80s when The Seduction Theory Controversy resurfaced and became a public scandal courtesy of the rhetorical arguments and accusations of Jeffrey Masson relative to The Oedipal Complex Theory being used and abused -- or at least potentially so -- as an abstractive 'cover-up' for childhood sexual abuse.
If Masson was/is right regarding the tarnished if not outright toxic and pathological Oedipal Complex Theory (OCT), then all of Classical Psychoanalysis and Sexual Fantasy Theory collapses under the actual and/or potential pathology of OCT. One of the most crucial 'dominos' in Classical Psychoanalysis in effect brings down all the rest. Or so it would seem at first glance. And thus, Classical Psychoanalysis collapses. This would not affect those Psychoanalysists who have already moved on to Object Relations and Self Psychology, neither of which employs the controversial OCT.
I still partly like the Oedipal Complex Theory as an adjunct to Transference Theory but not at the expense of Psychoanalytically distorting real childhood memories of sexual abuse that become re-interpreted as the 'child's/teenager's/adult's own imaginary sexual fantasy'. No theory of psychology or psychotherapy should distort reality -- otherwise, it becomes pathological in itself and any theory of childhood and later adult sexuality that potentially distorts what really happened in childhood becomes the pathological toxin or poison that will eventually spread to, and poison the entire school of psychology -- in this case, Classical Psychoanalysis.
Now obviously the counter-argument from Classical Psychoanalysis for the past 70 years after Sigmund Freud died has been the same: no mistake was made. There is nothing wrong with the Oedipal Complex as it was constructed and defined by father Freud.
But when you think about it, the theory as Freud constructed and defined it is at the very least a broad overgeneralization of the facts. We know that incest exists and has throughout human history. We know that some fathers have committed sexual assaults on their daughters and that this phenomenon continues to happen even as I write here. So how could Freud have the nerve to tell his co-workers, his students, and the general public that if a woman recites a sexual assault memory to her analyst in the process of Psychoanalysis that involves her father assaulting her, then this is not to be taken at 'face value' but rather it is to be re-interpreted as her own unconsciously distorted sexual fantasy?
I'm not saying that false accusations can't and/or don't happen; I am just saying that real childhood sexual assaults involving some fathers assaulting their daughters do happen so how could Freud -- as an empirical scientist and as a theorist who wanted people to believe that his theories were grounded in clinical facts -- have the nerve, especially when he saw the traumatic results of many of these real assaults in the early portion of his career, in one sweeping overgeneralization, to, in effect, 'dismiss' and 'blow away' all such possible cases for what they were: real childhood sexual assaults; not unconcsciously distorted female sexual fantasies... I shake my head...And that generations of Classical Psychoanalysts following behind father Freud including his own daughter Anna on this sweeping overgeneralization also defies my imagination.
It is like father Freud laid a gigantic 'pile of poop' on Psychoanalysis between 1897 and 1905 and called it 'gold', or worse, called it 'nutritious to swallow whole'. In my partly paraphrased words, Freud was saying: 'Introject this into your collective psyches, my dear co-workers, I have just found the source of the Nile -- the Oedipal Complex!' (Didn't he say that about The Seduction Theory too?)
And a few brave co-workers (I'm not sure which ones actually confronted Freud on the nonsense of the Oedipal Complex as he so narrowly defined it, not leaving any room for the opposite possibility, indeed the opposite extreme -- that all hysteria was based on repressed childhood sexual assault -- which he had only a few years before (1896) trumpeted as being The Gospel according to Freud at that time) may have told Freud that he was speaking rubbish, probably not too many.
However, enough must have been said. Harsh rhetorical dialogue was being passed both ways between Freud and a host of rebellers. A long string of co-workers did leave him between about 1905 and 1920. So I can't say that they were all lemmings: Adler, Jung, Steckel, Rank, Reich, Ferenczi...all had their words...and their fallings out... with Freud...and that is before we even start talking about all the post, neo, and/or anti-Freudians that developed most of their work after Freud died....Horney, Fromm, Sullivan, Erickson, Perls...and the Object Relationists...Klein, Fairbairn, Jacobson, Winnicott, Guntrip....and the Self Psychologists...Kohut...and the new breed of 'Traumacy-Seduction' Theorists...led by Masson's 1970s, 80s, and 90s harsh 'anti-Freud tirade' and his own brand of 'Psychoanalytic (and Psychiatric) Deconstructionism'...alongside and fresh after his exit from Psychoanalysis...
What amazes me is that throughout all of this, is that there were still enough 'loyal followers' to keep Classical Psychoanalysis standing....The 'anal retentive' ones...
I have already called them 'lemmings'....I don't want to disrespect all of their work....Ernest Jones supported Fritz Perls unorthodox growth as a Psychoanalyst -- and later 'anti-Psychoanalyst' -- even when Freud didn't. Anna Freud....I have a hard time with her...the 'ultimate Daddy's girl'....seemingly introjected everything that came out of the old man's mouth....'hook, line, and stinker'....Give me Melanie Klein any day...Klein was the much more creative thinker...and yet Klein was the much more self-destructive person....Some of Klein's ideas were a little too 'wild' for me...a little too far off the deep end....but she was the primary founder of Object Relations....and, in contrast, I am not sure that Anna Freud every had a 'wild idea' in her life....Did she ever 'let loose'? Did she ever throw a party? Did she ever go to a party? Did she ever get drunk? Did she ever have a love affair? Did she ever lose control? Or was there just too much riding on her dad's name and reputation to endanger her own name and reputation as 'The Protector of The Freudian Establishment'? Anna Freud -- the ultimate 'Establishment Woman'..solid to the end in her own reputation as the protector of her dad's 'House'....but.....loyalty often bears a huge price to pay such as loss of self-identity and the unwillingness to show any form of self-assertion that may have gone against her dad's wishes...Eissler paid the same price in this regard because I believe that even he saw the negative implications and consequences of the 'Oedipal Complex Gone Offside'...
Do you try to keep protecting someone you love's character, beliefs, and reputation even when, underneath, you may believe that they may have been wrong in what they said or did? I can't believe that, through all of Masson's rhetorical stance against father Freud -- even without the attack on his character -- that, underneath, Anna Freud didn't believe that her father committed a 'big booboo' when he overstated the 'reality' of The Oedipal Complex....when father Freud made it sound like no daughter is, or ever has been, sexually assaulted by her dad. This overgeneralization is just plain irresponsible psycho-theory, psychotherapy, and clinical psychology...It doesn't stand up to a good percentage of the clinical facts....
I am amazed that no strong feminist or group of feminists from the 60s, 70s, or early 80s ever confronted Anna Freud on her basically protecting her dad's male chauvanism and narcissism. But it seems like everyone including Eissler, Janet Malcolm, the media, and the public as a whole -- everyone except Masson that is -- was facing Anna Freud with 'kids gloves on'...even as she protected her father's masculine unethical narcissistic bias against the equality and credibility of women to tell a straight story, a straight memory, without father Freud putting a 'fantasy spin' on it....
Having said this, Anna Freud was 87 years old at the height of Masson 'Seduction Theory Controversy and scandal' -- the same year that she died -- and I am pretty sure that I could not have, would not have, confronted Anna Freud the way that Masson did at this late stage of her life. With all due respect to everyone involved here, I would have, at the very least, 'couched' things a lot more 'diplomatically' than Masson did. You had Eissler saying in effect to Masson, and I am loosely paraphrasing from what I read actually happened, Eissler saying to Masson in effect: Leave the poor lady alone, Jeffrey, she is 87 years old...Let her die in peace...Perhaps we can re-look at this whole issue again in a few years...when things have changed and when Anna Freud is no longer around...but don't tell her in her 87th year that her father was immoral and unethical...You're going to drive the woman to her grave with this accusation pounding in her head....
Masson was uncompromising...he wanted a Psychoanalytic theory that better represented 'clinical reality and truth' -- and he felt that The Oedipal Complex Theory was being used as a collossal 'cover-up' that clinicaly hid and suppressed the reality of underlying childhood sexual abuse....specifically, the reality of some father's sexually assaulting their daughters....Masson believed that Freud's pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' did a much better job of clinically representing these facts than his post-1897 Oedipal Complex Theory did.
In this regard, there was a faceoff between Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler trying desperately to uphold the integrity and character of Sigmund Freud, as well as the integrity and respect of Classical Psychoanalyis as a whole, whereas Masson didn't believe that either Freud or Classical Psychoanalysis deserved any such integrity or respect under the existing circumstances.
A Mexican standoff...an unchangeable rift and a rhetorical fight between the two most powerful leaders in charge of the Freudian Empire in 1981, 82 (i.e., Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) with the third most powerful leader of the Empire at that time (Masson)...three people who had developed a close bond with each other, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, in effect, giving Masson the 'key to the Vault', i.e., putting Masson in charge of The Freud Archives which, in hindsight, was like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse...at least from an Orthodox Classical Psychoanalytic point of view...
And the rest is ongoing Psychoanalytic history.....a court fight or two or three....Masson exiting Psychoanalysis, and moving from California to New Zealand to taking up the study of animal psychology...and always the prolific writer, publishing a whole string of books on animal psychology, particularly on animal emotions such as: 'Dogs Never Lie About Love'...and 'When Elephants Weep'...and Eissler living to the grand old age of 91 years old, dying in 1999....
The Seduction-Oedipal Controversy is still not resolved...Classical Psychoanalysis is still 'schizoid' or 'repressed' in its structure, its foundation, its dynamics...broken in two major pieces like 'Humpty Dumpty' with no one being able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in one piece....which would take connecting Freud's pre-1897 work with his post 1897 work...
The giant 'pile of poop' that father Freud dumped on Classical Psychoanalysis -- meaning his strict, rigid, one-sided interpretation of The Oedipal Complex -- is still lying there, stale but fresh because no one with sufficient organizational, creative, and enlightenment power and courage, meaning primarily Anna Freud when she was alive (I don't know who is at the top looking over things now almost 20 years since Anna Freud died and over 10 years since Eissler died)...thus, the pile of poop is still sitting there on the carpet floor just as odourous today as the day it was dumped there by father Freud.
I am sorry if my metaphor of a 'pile of poop' or 'crap' or 'shit' is a little crass but it was Freud himself who invented this metaphor to descripe a certain personality type (i.e., the 'anal' personality) -- indeed, his own personality type in all of its good and bad ramifications (mainly bad in this context).
Don't get me wrong here. I love Freud and I love the creativity and intermixture of many of his ideas. But I don't love him to the point of 'father worship' which can be a 'dangerous pathology' depending on what is being 'introjected' or 'swallowed whole' without tasting, chewing, biting, and assimilating as Fritz Perls would say (Perls, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression). In this case, all of the most 'anal-retentive' of Classical Psychoanalysts (Anna Freud, Eissler...and all of the other 'lemmings' who haven't had the courage to think and/or speak for themselves) have 'swallowed whole', i.e., introjected, the pile of shit lying on the floor that father Freud said was 'nutricious'.
It was partly father Freud's fault himself: 'Thou shalt not worship or idolize any other God but me. Copy everything that I say and do...' And that was the 'legacy' he left for the future of Classical Psychoanalysis -- a Victorian anacronism still trying to hold on to Freud's Victorian, masculine, narcissistically biased beliefs in the 21st century...Someone -- amongst those who have not already abandoned the 'house that Freud built' -- with power, creativity, and courage, needs to better sort out the good ideas from the bad ideas that Freud left us with...it doesn't have to be an 'all or nothing package'...
The 'hoarder' is partly 'anal aggressive and/or explosive' and partly 'anal retentive'. He or she 'dumps his or her pile of shit on the floor' (usually in bags of clothes or whatever...) and then stares at this 'bag of shit' on the floor, as if 'transfixed' by it, fascinated by it, mesmerized by it, to the point where he or she 'cannot let it go', cannot clean it up and either organize it, and/or send it to a proper storage unit, and/or put it in a Salvation Army bin, or sell it in a garage sale, or put it in a garbage bin...
Freud was partly 'anally aggressive', partly 'anally implosive or retentive', and partly 'anally explosive'...It almost seemed like Freud cared more about his own ideas than he did the men he worked with....He would sooner 'eject', 'reject', and 'throw away one of his own co-workers' than he would throw away one of his own ideas...(or let someone else do it for him)... Freud was 'conceptually narcissistic'...He didn't mind changing ideas himself but he generally didn't like other theorists (particularly his own co-workers and students) changing them for him. When they didnt, they were usually going, going, and then gone...
Father Freud was the one who dumped the pile of shit -- The Oedipal Complex (in its strictest, most rigid interpretation) -- on the floor for the other analysts to look at -- and smell...Some analysts didn't like the look and the smell of The Oedipal Complex and left Psychoanalysis because of it (mostly 'Object Relationists' and 'neo-Freudians' after Freud had died).
But the really 'anally retentive' ones, including his own daughter Anna, basically 'introjected' (swallowed whole) Father Freud's 'shit'....and nourished it as if it was highly nutricious...'Daddy said it was good, so it must be good.'....'Thou shalt not worship or idolize any other God before you -- except Me!'
Poor Anna...stuck between a rock and a hard place...loyal to her dad's image and to her dad's ideas right up to her death...and yet in doing so, and being so, she can also be viewed as a 'betrayor of women and women's rights in the clinical/psychotherapeutic setting', particularly the right to be heard and heard for what one says; not to be heard and then 're-interpreted' according to a potentially unempirical and unethical Freudian Theory -- i.e., The Oedipal Complex -- which has the very real potential and/or actual effect of covering up female childhood sexual abuse at the hands of some transgressing fathers, that thanks to Freud, have been given a cart blanck 'immunity and protection' of being accused of such a transgression....which is not to say that some memories might not be 'false'; it's just that not all of them are going to be false -- indeed, a significant subset of such memories are probably far more likely to be 'true'....in the end, if it comes down to this, a matter for the courts to decide...but not a matter for any psychotherapist/psychoanalyst to take a 'rigid, one-sided theoretical position' on...that is the ultimate pathology of The Oedipal Complex is its decidedly 'rigid, one-sided perspective' that in effect denies a very dark human sexual phenomenon that we all know in some family situations actually exists...
You would think that some Classical Psychoanalyst -- most specifically Anna Freud -- who definitely had enough power, and you would hope would have the insight, the integrity, and the over-riding, idealistic vision of Classical Psychoanalysis at heart -- brought up to the standards of 1970 and 1980 feminist egalitarianism and idealism -- would have the strength and fortitude to make the proper modifications to 'The Oedipal Complex'...but alas, that was not to happen...
If it was me standing in for Anna Freud, I would have announced publicly to the world something like this:
'Upon careful review and judgment of my father's very controversial pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' vs. his post 1897 'Oedipal-Sexual Drive and Fantasy Theory', I have come to the conclusion that Classical Psychoanalysis, in order to be the very best it can be as a theory and a therapy relative to human experience, thought, feeling, impulse, restraint, and behavioral compromises...needs to integrate both pre and post 1897 theories together giving all Psychoanalysts the free right and opportunity to judge each individual case on the merits of its own findings, which means that if an Analyst believes that there is a very good chance that a female client may have indeed been sexually assaulted by her father at such and such an age, then there is nothing in the Template of Classical Psychoanalysis -- most specifically, in the one-sided rigid, unflexible belief of the Oedipal Complex -- to stop such an Analyst in believing in the possible or probable 'truth' of such a childhood sexual assault because in such circumstances, the practicing Psychoanalytst has the full support and endorsement of the Psychoanalytic Establishment to believe in what he or she thinks is clinically right, and more specifically, to fall back on the Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory if the practicing Psychoanalyst believes that this is appropriate and validated by the clinical evidence...'
If Anna Freud had made a speech something like that, back around 1981, 82 before she died, I would have had the greatest of respect for Anna Freud's bravery and, in my opinion, her ability to successfully mediate and resolve the Seduction vs. Oedipal Controversy....Eissler, I imagine, would have been happy, Masson, may or may not have been happy but I think that he could have lived with that resolution....Anna Freud could have died in peace...Masson may have stayed on in his position as the head of the Freud Archives, or not, he may or may not have decided to leave Psychoanalysis, I don't think that he deserved to be 'pushed out' of Psychoanalysis for declaring his belief in the truth and ethics of what he was standing up for...Indeed, he might have been the head of the Freudian Empire as I write this essay...except then I wouldn't have needed to write the essay...No court cases....no betrayals and abandonments....indeed, the whole situation might have had a much more harmonious resolution and a much happier ending for the three -- Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson -- who had become quite attached to each other, Eissler and Masson like a close father and son, before everything rapidly deteriorated, fell apart completely, kept getting worse, and basically split Classical Psychoanalysis wide open again, showing its raw wound again and its traumatic 'ego-splitting' year -- the year that made Classical Psychoanalysis 'schizoid' -- 1896.
And I am left to tell the story of a most unfortunate triadic human relationship tragedy -- blown apart by opposing 'ethical righteousness' -- which is quite a bit different than Janet Malcolm's version of the same tragedy...(Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives)...
Janet Malcolm basically supported the Psychoanalytic Establishment and status-quo (i.e., Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler) whereas I am here to give my post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Formula....
Thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis...
Hegel's Hotel and DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis provides the 'synthesis'...
And that is where I will leave things today...
-- dgb, Aug. 19th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Let us start with what we have so far -- a significant extension of Freud's Classical 'Superego-Ego-Id' model.
Hegel's Hotel -- and GAP-DGB Psychology -- is much more 'oral-receptive' to post, neo, and anti-Freudian schools of psychology than Sigmund Freud ever was.
Indeed, GAP-DGB Psychology aims to be the most integrative of all schools of psychology -- with Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, Jungian Psychology and all 50 years and 24 Standard Editions of Freudian Psychoanalyis including both pre and post 1897 Psychoanalytic Theory playing a part in what you can either already read in my previous 'Quantum Psychoanalytic' essays, and/or what you are about to read below.
Right now, Classical Psychoanalysis is a 'collapsed school of psychology' even though the 'power brokers that be' -- in line with the 'power brokers that were' -- refuse to admit it.
Most specifically the 'power brokers that were' refer mainly to Sigmund Freud himself until he died in 1939, and after that, primarily Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler particullarly in the late 70s and early 80s when The Seduction Theory Controversy resurfaced and became a public scandal courtesy of the rhetorical arguments and accusations of Jeffrey Masson relative to The Oedipal Complex Theory being used and abused -- or at least potentially so -- as an abstractive 'cover-up' for childhood sexual abuse.
If Masson was/is right regarding the tarnished if not outright toxic and pathological Oedipal Complex Theory (OCT), then all of Classical Psychoanalysis and Sexual Fantasy Theory collapses under the actual and/or potential pathology of OCT. One of the most crucial 'dominos' in Classical Psychoanalysis in effect brings down all the rest. Or so it would seem at first glance. And thus, Classical Psychoanalysis collapses. This would not affect those Psychoanalysists who have already moved on to Object Relations and Self Psychology, neither of which employs the controversial OCT.
I still partly like the Oedipal Complex Theory as an adjunct to Transference Theory but not at the expense of Psychoanalytically distorting real childhood memories of sexual abuse that become re-interpreted as the 'child's/teenager's/adult's own imaginary sexual fantasy'. No theory of psychology or psychotherapy should distort reality -- otherwise, it becomes pathological in itself and any theory of childhood and later adult sexuality that potentially distorts what really happened in childhood becomes the pathological toxin or poison that will eventually spread to, and poison the entire school of psychology -- in this case, Classical Psychoanalysis.
Now obviously the counter-argument from Classical Psychoanalysis for the past 70 years after Sigmund Freud died has been the same: no mistake was made. There is nothing wrong with the Oedipal Complex as it was constructed and defined by father Freud.
But when you think about it, the theory as Freud constructed and defined it is at the very least a broad overgeneralization of the facts. We know that incest exists and has throughout human history. We know that some fathers have committed sexual assaults on their daughters and that this phenomenon continues to happen even as I write here. So how could Freud have the nerve to tell his co-workers, his students, and the general public that if a woman recites a sexual assault memory to her analyst in the process of Psychoanalysis that involves her father assaulting her, then this is not to be taken at 'face value' but rather it is to be re-interpreted as her own unconsciously distorted sexual fantasy?
I'm not saying that false accusations can't and/or don't happen; I am just saying that real childhood sexual assaults involving some fathers assaulting their daughters do happen so how could Freud -- as an empirical scientist and as a theorist who wanted people to believe that his theories were grounded in clinical facts -- have the nerve, especially when he saw the traumatic results of many of these real assaults in the early portion of his career, in one sweeping overgeneralization, to, in effect, 'dismiss' and 'blow away' all such possible cases for what they were: real childhood sexual assaults; not unconcsciously distorted female sexual fantasies... I shake my head...And that generations of Classical Psychoanalysts following behind father Freud including his own daughter Anna on this sweeping overgeneralization also defies my imagination.
It is like father Freud laid a gigantic 'pile of poop' on Psychoanalysis between 1897 and 1905 and called it 'gold', or worse, called it 'nutritious to swallow whole'. In my partly paraphrased words, Freud was saying: 'Introject this into your collective psyches, my dear co-workers, I have just found the source of the Nile -- the Oedipal Complex!' (Didn't he say that about The Seduction Theory too?)
And a few brave co-workers (I'm not sure which ones actually confronted Freud on the nonsense of the Oedipal Complex as he so narrowly defined it, not leaving any room for the opposite possibility, indeed the opposite extreme -- that all hysteria was based on repressed childhood sexual assault -- which he had only a few years before (1896) trumpeted as being The Gospel according to Freud at that time) may have told Freud that he was speaking rubbish, probably not too many.
However, enough must have been said. Harsh rhetorical dialogue was being passed both ways between Freud and a host of rebellers. A long string of co-workers did leave him between about 1905 and 1920. So I can't say that they were all lemmings: Adler, Jung, Steckel, Rank, Reich, Ferenczi...all had their words...and their fallings out... with Freud...and that is before we even start talking about all the post, neo, and/or anti-Freudians that developed most of their work after Freud died....Horney, Fromm, Sullivan, Erickson, Perls...and the Object Relationists...Klein, Fairbairn, Jacobson, Winnicott, Guntrip....and the Self Psychologists...Kohut...and the new breed of 'Traumacy-Seduction' Theorists...led by Masson's 1970s, 80s, and 90s harsh 'anti-Freud tirade' and his own brand of 'Psychoanalytic (and Psychiatric) Deconstructionism'...alongside and fresh after his exit from Psychoanalysis...
What amazes me is that throughout all of this, is that there were still enough 'loyal followers' to keep Classical Psychoanalysis standing....The 'anal retentive' ones...
I have already called them 'lemmings'....I don't want to disrespect all of their work....Ernest Jones supported Fritz Perls unorthodox growth as a Psychoanalyst -- and later 'anti-Psychoanalyst' -- even when Freud didn't. Anna Freud....I have a hard time with her...the 'ultimate Daddy's girl'....seemingly introjected everything that came out of the old man's mouth....'hook, line, and stinker'....Give me Melanie Klein any day...Klein was the much more creative thinker...and yet Klein was the much more self-destructive person....Some of Klein's ideas were a little too 'wild' for me...a little too far off the deep end....but she was the primary founder of Object Relations....and, in contrast, I am not sure that Anna Freud every had a 'wild idea' in her life....Did she ever 'let loose'? Did she ever throw a party? Did she ever go to a party? Did she ever get drunk? Did she ever have a love affair? Did she ever lose control? Or was there just too much riding on her dad's name and reputation to endanger her own name and reputation as 'The Protector of The Freudian Establishment'? Anna Freud -- the ultimate 'Establishment Woman'..solid to the end in her own reputation as the protector of her dad's 'House'....but.....loyalty often bears a huge price to pay such as loss of self-identity and the unwillingness to show any form of self-assertion that may have gone against her dad's wishes...Eissler paid the same price in this regard because I believe that even he saw the negative implications and consequences of the 'Oedipal Complex Gone Offside'...
Do you try to keep protecting someone you love's character, beliefs, and reputation even when, underneath, you may believe that they may have been wrong in what they said or did? I can't believe that, through all of Masson's rhetorical stance against father Freud -- even without the attack on his character -- that, underneath, Anna Freud didn't believe that her father committed a 'big booboo' when he overstated the 'reality' of The Oedipal Complex....when father Freud made it sound like no daughter is, or ever has been, sexually assaulted by her dad. This overgeneralization is just plain irresponsible psycho-theory, psychotherapy, and clinical psychology...It doesn't stand up to a good percentage of the clinical facts....
I am amazed that no strong feminist or group of feminists from the 60s, 70s, or early 80s ever confronted Anna Freud on her basically protecting her dad's male chauvanism and narcissism. But it seems like everyone including Eissler, Janet Malcolm, the media, and the public as a whole -- everyone except Masson that is -- was facing Anna Freud with 'kids gloves on'...even as she protected her father's masculine unethical narcissistic bias against the equality and credibility of women to tell a straight story, a straight memory, without father Freud putting a 'fantasy spin' on it....
Having said this, Anna Freud was 87 years old at the height of Masson 'Seduction Theory Controversy and scandal' -- the same year that she died -- and I am pretty sure that I could not have, would not have, confronted Anna Freud the way that Masson did at this late stage of her life. With all due respect to everyone involved here, I would have, at the very least, 'couched' things a lot more 'diplomatically' than Masson did. You had Eissler saying in effect to Masson, and I am loosely paraphrasing from what I read actually happened, Eissler saying to Masson in effect: Leave the poor lady alone, Jeffrey, she is 87 years old...Let her die in peace...Perhaps we can re-look at this whole issue again in a few years...when things have changed and when Anna Freud is no longer around...but don't tell her in her 87th year that her father was immoral and unethical...You're going to drive the woman to her grave with this accusation pounding in her head....
Masson was uncompromising...he wanted a Psychoanalytic theory that better represented 'clinical reality and truth' -- and he felt that The Oedipal Complex Theory was being used as a collossal 'cover-up' that clinicaly hid and suppressed the reality of underlying childhood sexual abuse....specifically, the reality of some father's sexually assaulting their daughters....Masson believed that Freud's pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' did a much better job of clinically representing these facts than his post-1897 Oedipal Complex Theory did.
In this regard, there was a faceoff between Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler trying desperately to uphold the integrity and character of Sigmund Freud, as well as the integrity and respect of Classical Psychoanalyis as a whole, whereas Masson didn't believe that either Freud or Classical Psychoanalysis deserved any such integrity or respect under the existing circumstances.
A Mexican standoff...an unchangeable rift and a rhetorical fight between the two most powerful leaders in charge of the Freudian Empire in 1981, 82 (i.e., Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler) with the third most powerful leader of the Empire at that time (Masson)...three people who had developed a close bond with each other, Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, in effect, giving Masson the 'key to the Vault', i.e., putting Masson in charge of The Freud Archives which, in hindsight, was like putting a fox in charge of a henhouse...at least from an Orthodox Classical Psychoanalytic point of view...
And the rest is ongoing Psychoanalytic history.....a court fight or two or three....Masson exiting Psychoanalysis, and moving from California to New Zealand to taking up the study of animal psychology...and always the prolific writer, publishing a whole string of books on animal psychology, particularly on animal emotions such as: 'Dogs Never Lie About Love'...and 'When Elephants Weep'...and Eissler living to the grand old age of 91 years old, dying in 1999....
The Seduction-Oedipal Controversy is still not resolved...Classical Psychoanalysis is still 'schizoid' or 'repressed' in its structure, its foundation, its dynamics...broken in two major pieces like 'Humpty Dumpty' with no one being able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in one piece....which would take connecting Freud's pre-1897 work with his post 1897 work...
The giant 'pile of poop' that father Freud dumped on Classical Psychoanalysis -- meaning his strict, rigid, one-sided interpretation of The Oedipal Complex -- is still lying there, stale but fresh because no one with sufficient organizational, creative, and enlightenment power and courage, meaning primarily Anna Freud when she was alive (I don't know who is at the top looking over things now almost 20 years since Anna Freud died and over 10 years since Eissler died)...thus, the pile of poop is still sitting there on the carpet floor just as odourous today as the day it was dumped there by father Freud.
I am sorry if my metaphor of a 'pile of poop' or 'crap' or 'shit' is a little crass but it was Freud himself who invented this metaphor to descripe a certain personality type (i.e., the 'anal' personality) -- indeed, his own personality type in all of its good and bad ramifications (mainly bad in this context).
Don't get me wrong here. I love Freud and I love the creativity and intermixture of many of his ideas. But I don't love him to the point of 'father worship' which can be a 'dangerous pathology' depending on what is being 'introjected' or 'swallowed whole' without tasting, chewing, biting, and assimilating as Fritz Perls would say (Perls, Ego, Hunger, and Aggression). In this case, all of the most 'anal-retentive' of Classical Psychoanalysts (Anna Freud, Eissler...and all of the other 'lemmings' who haven't had the courage to think and/or speak for themselves) have 'swallowed whole', i.e., introjected, the pile of shit lying on the floor that father Freud said was 'nutricious'.
It was partly father Freud's fault himself: 'Thou shalt not worship or idolize any other God but me. Copy everything that I say and do...' And that was the 'legacy' he left for the future of Classical Psychoanalysis -- a Victorian anacronism still trying to hold on to Freud's Victorian, masculine, narcissistically biased beliefs in the 21st century...Someone -- amongst those who have not already abandoned the 'house that Freud built' -- with power, creativity, and courage, needs to better sort out the good ideas from the bad ideas that Freud left us with...it doesn't have to be an 'all or nothing package'...
The 'hoarder' is partly 'anal aggressive and/or explosive' and partly 'anal retentive'. He or she 'dumps his or her pile of shit on the floor' (usually in bags of clothes or whatever...) and then stares at this 'bag of shit' on the floor, as if 'transfixed' by it, fascinated by it, mesmerized by it, to the point where he or she 'cannot let it go', cannot clean it up and either organize it, and/or send it to a proper storage unit, and/or put it in a Salvation Army bin, or sell it in a garage sale, or put it in a garbage bin...
Freud was partly 'anally aggressive', partly 'anally implosive or retentive', and partly 'anally explosive'...It almost seemed like Freud cared more about his own ideas than he did the men he worked with....He would sooner 'eject', 'reject', and 'throw away one of his own co-workers' than he would throw away one of his own ideas...(or let someone else do it for him)... Freud was 'conceptually narcissistic'...He didn't mind changing ideas himself but he generally didn't like other theorists (particularly his own co-workers and students) changing them for him. When they didnt, they were usually going, going, and then gone...
Father Freud was the one who dumped the pile of shit -- The Oedipal Complex (in its strictest, most rigid interpretation) -- on the floor for the other analysts to look at -- and smell...Some analysts didn't like the look and the smell of The Oedipal Complex and left Psychoanalysis because of it (mostly 'Object Relationists' and 'neo-Freudians' after Freud had died).
But the really 'anally retentive' ones, including his own daughter Anna, basically 'introjected' (swallowed whole) Father Freud's 'shit'....and nourished it as if it was highly nutricious...'Daddy said it was good, so it must be good.'....'Thou shalt not worship or idolize any other God before you -- except Me!'
Poor Anna...stuck between a rock and a hard place...loyal to her dad's image and to her dad's ideas right up to her death...and yet in doing so, and being so, she can also be viewed as a 'betrayor of women and women's rights in the clinical/psychotherapeutic setting', particularly the right to be heard and heard for what one says; not to be heard and then 're-interpreted' according to a potentially unempirical and unethical Freudian Theory -- i.e., The Oedipal Complex -- which has the very real potential and/or actual effect of covering up female childhood sexual abuse at the hands of some transgressing fathers, that thanks to Freud, have been given a cart blanck 'immunity and protection' of being accused of such a transgression....which is not to say that some memories might not be 'false'; it's just that not all of them are going to be false -- indeed, a significant subset of such memories are probably far more likely to be 'true'....in the end, if it comes down to this, a matter for the courts to decide...but not a matter for any psychotherapist/psychoanalyst to take a 'rigid, one-sided theoretical position' on...that is the ultimate pathology of The Oedipal Complex is its decidedly 'rigid, one-sided perspective' that in effect denies a very dark human sexual phenomenon that we all know in some family situations actually exists...
You would think that some Classical Psychoanalyst -- most specifically Anna Freud -- who definitely had enough power, and you would hope would have the insight, the integrity, and the over-riding, idealistic vision of Classical Psychoanalysis at heart -- brought up to the standards of 1970 and 1980 feminist egalitarianism and idealism -- would have the strength and fortitude to make the proper modifications to 'The Oedipal Complex'...but alas, that was not to happen...
If it was me standing in for Anna Freud, I would have announced publicly to the world something like this:
'Upon careful review and judgment of my father's very controversial pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' vs. his post 1897 'Oedipal-Sexual Drive and Fantasy Theory', I have come to the conclusion that Classical Psychoanalysis, in order to be the very best it can be as a theory and a therapy relative to human experience, thought, feeling, impulse, restraint, and behavioral compromises...needs to integrate both pre and post 1897 theories together giving all Psychoanalysts the free right and opportunity to judge each individual case on the merits of its own findings, which means that if an Analyst believes that there is a very good chance that a female client may have indeed been sexually assaulted by her father at such and such an age, then there is nothing in the Template of Classical Psychoanalysis -- most specifically, in the one-sided rigid, unflexible belief of the Oedipal Complex -- to stop such an Analyst in believing in the possible or probable 'truth' of such a childhood sexual assault because in such circumstances, the practicing Psychoanalytst has the full support and endorsement of the Psychoanalytic Establishment to believe in what he or she thinks is clinically right, and more specifically, to fall back on the Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory if the practicing Psychoanalyst believes that this is appropriate and validated by the clinical evidence...'
If Anna Freud had made a speech something like that, back around 1981, 82 before she died, I would have had the greatest of respect for Anna Freud's bravery and, in my opinion, her ability to successfully mediate and resolve the Seduction vs. Oedipal Controversy....Eissler, I imagine, would have been happy, Masson, may or may not have been happy but I think that he could have lived with that resolution....Anna Freud could have died in peace...Masson may have stayed on in his position as the head of the Freud Archives, or not, he may or may not have decided to leave Psychoanalysis, I don't think that he deserved to be 'pushed out' of Psychoanalysis for declaring his belief in the truth and ethics of what he was standing up for...Indeed, he might have been the head of the Freudian Empire as I write this essay...except then I wouldn't have needed to write the essay...No court cases....no betrayals and abandonments....indeed, the whole situation might have had a much more harmonious resolution and a much happier ending for the three -- Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson -- who had become quite attached to each other, Eissler and Masson like a close father and son, before everything rapidly deteriorated, fell apart completely, kept getting worse, and basically split Classical Psychoanalysis wide open again, showing its raw wound again and its traumatic 'ego-splitting' year -- the year that made Classical Psychoanalysis 'schizoid' -- 1896.
And I am left to tell the story of a most unfortunate triadic human relationship tragedy -- blown apart by opposing 'ethical righteousness' -- which is quite a bit different than Janet Malcolm's version of the same tragedy...(Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives)...
Janet Malcolm basically supported the Psychoanalytic Establishment and status-quo (i.e., Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler) whereas I am here to give my post-Hegelian, Humanistic-Existential Formula....
Thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis...
Hegel's Hotel and DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis provides the 'synthesis'...
And that is where I will leave things today...
-- dgb, Aug. 19th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
On Being Assertive, Proactive, and Persistent...
The world rarely comes to you unless or until you are perceived as someone truly special...For the rest of us, or at least until we finally achieve this 'special' status which may never come...if we want something bad enough, we usually need to be assertive, proactive, and persistant...until we achieve our desired goal...and even then...in the immortal words of Satchel Paige,
'Don't look back. Something could be gaining on you.'...
-- dgb, Aug. 17th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
'Don't look back. Something could be gaining on you.'...
-- dgb, Aug. 17th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
Sunday, August 15, 2010
('Anal') Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- and 'Collecting' vs. 'Hoarding', The Organized Personality vs. The Disorganized Personality...
Newly modified....Aug. 17th, 2010.
I regret to say that I do not have a lot of clinical cases to work with here...just situations and people I have met in my own personal experience...including myself who has been called at least a 'partial hoarder' myself...
I am going to approach this topic from a theoretical perspective and try to bring better clarity to the whole subject matter by helping to make 'better classification distinctions'...
'Hoarding' has been called a type of 'OCD' (Obessive-Compulsive Disorder) but this is bound to create as many problems as it solves because there is probably not a person alive who does not have some form of OCD to a greater or lesser extreme...The same goes with 'Bi-Polarity Personality' which also can be applied to each and everyone of us to a greater and/or lesser extreme...and probably about a hundred different possible specific 'bi-polarities' that we can talk about because both the mind and the body are built around the principle of 'multiple bi-polarity homeostatic function'.
For example, on the biochemical level, 'high' and 'low' levels of 'blood-sugar' in the blood can be viewed as a type of 'bi-polar dysfunction' where the body's need for a 'quantifiable blood-sugar level' to 'balance' the body's ability to perform its other functions properly is not being met. The over-riding or under-riding principle of psychological, physical, and/or bio-chemical 'homeostasis' is not being met.
On the psychological level, depending on the type of classification system(s) we want to use, we can talk about 'topdog-underdog' bi-polarities, 'anal-oral' bi-polarities, 'nurturing-critical' bi-polarities, 'phobic-counter-phobic (obsessive-compulsive)' bi-polarities, 'Parent-Child' bi-polarities, 'Superego-Underego' bi-polarities, 'Apollonian-Dionysian' bi-polarities, 'Superego-Id' bi-polarities, 'Personna-Shadow' bi-polarities, 'Conscious-Subconscious' bi-polarities....and many possible more...
Now, regarding the subject of 'hoarding', the first distinction that we need to make is between the 'anal-phobic personality' (APP) and the 'anal-explosive personality' (AEP)...
In this regard, we can make a distinction between 'collecting' and 'hoarding'...
The 'collector' is generally meticulously organized and organizes his or her 'collection' meticulously....(coins, CDs, books, gems, comic books, butterflies...)
In contrast, the 'hoarder' tends to live in an environment that is generally 'a walking disaster area' that is only going to keep getting worse...Most of us have probably seen the tv show 'Hoarders' so I am sure you know what I am talking about here....
The collector (anal phobic personality) has a 'counter-phobia' against 'dirt', 'germs', 'disorder'...wheras the 'hoarder' (anal-explosive personality) has a 'counter-phobia' against rules, organization, order, neatness, hygiene...The anal-phobic personality is basically 'allergic' to a mess whereas the anal-explosive personality ('Pigpen', 'Diogenes') lives in a mess, seemingly thrives in a mess....at least until the mess starts to basically 'strangle' his or her work or home environment...
This is essentially the distinction that 'serial profilers' make between an 'organized' (Apollonian) personality and a 'disorganized' (anti-Apollonian, more Dionysian) personality.
An anal-phobic person is generally more of an 'Establishment, Organization, Corporate' person unless their are underlying 'sadistic', 'violent', and/or other forms of 'anti-social' impulses whereas the anal-explosive person generally is much more likely going to have trouble finding and keeping a job because there are issues of 'disorganization', 'chaos', 'rebellion', 'anarchy', 'problems with authority and following organizational rules' that are basically likely going to sabotage the latter type of person's ability to function in an organizational environment...and thus, keep a job in this type of environment...
I've met a lot of people of this latter personality type driving taxis at night because they need to 'stay as far away as they can from the day-time politics of the organization they are working for'... Similarily, as a landlord, most of the young adults or even older adults who I have met and rented our 'basement apartment' to, have turned out to be of this 'personality type' -- the basement apartment soon becoming a 'walking disaster area'....
Personally speaking, I tend to be 'bi-polar' in this area of 'anal-phobic' vs. 'anal-explosive' distinction. In my younger years, my CD collection used to be well-organized, now it is a 'disorganized mess' as it has become less of a focal-point of my life. I aim to be clear in the organization of my essays, my work as a dispatcher used to combine 'anal-phobic' and 'anal-explosive' features...
My books are usually either at least decently organized on bookshelves if or when I have the time to properly organize them, my Freudian collection for the most part sits right behind me here in my den, including Freud's 24 volume Standard Edition Collection which sits behind me in a glass bookshelf that was recently bought. However, if you catch me on a more disorganized day, you may catch my books scattered all around the townhouse, down in the living room where I used to have my computer, out in the garage in boxes when I briefly moved out of here, sometimes on the table, sometimes on the floor...until I finally get around to 'organizational cleanup' ...An 'organized mind generally means an organized self-environment and visa versa'...and similarly, a 'disorganized mind generally means a disorganized self-environment and visa versa'...
In this regard, we can also make some furhter distinctions between different types of 'anal-phobic' and 'anal-explosive' personalities...
For example, we can distinguish between the 'entropic anal-explosive' person who simply lacks the energy, motivation, and/or willpower to organize his or her environment, and the more 'deliberately rebellious, or even anarchist personality' who is the type of person who thrives on 'chaos', 'disorganization', 'sabotage', 'putting the wrench into the organizational assembly line', hates authority figures, hates rules and regulations, hates 'being told what to do'...
Here is another type of 'hoarding'. This one I just briefly caught while I was watching the tv show 'Hoarders'....A female hoarder recalls when she was younger, a teenager I believe who was in the process of leaving the aunt who she lived with at the time, that the aunt very cruelly 'burned all the teenager's clothes in a bonfire'....Since then, the woman simply 'held onto all of her property, refusing to part with anything'...We might call this type of hoarding 'post-traumatic, counter-phobic hoarding'...I surmise there is a strong underlying compulsion to hold onto one's property for dear life' -- i.e., propped up by a self-statement saying in essence, 'I'm not going to let someone else take away or destroy any of my property again....'...a combination of 'repetition' and 'mastery' compulsion at work here...
Finally, I would like to make a distinction between the 'collector who loses control of whatever he or she is collecting which then turns into a chaotic hoard of unorganized property'....that's me to a certain extent as I have a tendency of 'biting off more than I can chew when I am in a book store and see a book or more that I want and/or particularly used books that are being sold cheap, ...and then when I take them home I end up with not enough space in my townhouse to put the bookshelves needed to properly organize all my incoming books...and then they can start to look like a 'chaotic hoard' scattered all around the townhouse....although certainly not even close to some of these scenes that we see on tv regarding 'hoarding nightmares' where people can't even walk properly, cook, or do anything productive in their own home.
Contrast the type of hoarding above with something that is a little more -- or a lot more -- anally explosive in terms of potential underlying rage...
In the case I am thinking about, I know a person who combines 'alcoholism' with 'hoarding'...He is a 'basement alcoholic'...So was his father when he was a child growing up, in fact, he became obligated to be his dad's 'bartender' and whenever he heard the 'rattling of ice cubes' this was his cue to bring his father another drink... There is much more to this story than I am even partly aware of -- mental abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse that he may or may not have been directly involved in. He was in effect his dad's 'private whipping post' -- a very intelligent man who made oodles of corporate money during the day and then brought this private nightmare home to his young family at night...The son left home to make his own way in life when he was 16...and did amazingly well...saving -- indeed, 'hoarding' the money he made -- and becoming better and better in the banking business, the stock market, and corporate mangement reaching a point where he was making a $150,000 salary with a major corporation....But with a huge psychological cost...on the clock, 24/7...very little down time or re-energizing time....and the time he did get he started to 'replay' his dad's nightmare as the 'basement alcoholic'....he lost his job, his wife...became reclusive....albeit financially self-sufficient and well off without the need for a job at age 50...with this eery 'repetition compulsion' that he took over from his dead father...on the computer all night...drinking all day and all night, primarily in the basement where I have never been down there but am afraid of what it might look like....I would gusess probably hundreds of liquor bottles covering the entire basement down there...and upstairs which I have seen is very similar to what you would see on 'Hoarders'...everything in 'bags' and scattered all over the townhouse floor...at least enough room to walk in there, at least the last time I was there, and sit down on his couch...but scary still the same...he doesn't let most people in except family and a close friend of the family -- that being me....Both his sisters are social workers, his brother a well respected classical musician and teacher...and no one so far has been able to 'break this mad repetition compulsion'...a very smart, kind, and caring man...entrapped and enslaved by his alcholism and his father's 'introjected' repetition compulsion...I hope to one day give you a 'happier ending' -- or at least 'evoluton' -- on this story...
In this latter case, the man's 'hoarding' characteristic almost seems to be more of an 'internal purging of psychological toxins' -- even as he is putting more and more alcoholic toxins down his throat before the empty bottles become littered all over the basement floor -- rather than a situation of 'collecting gone out of control'... I know another 'home alcoholics' who is still a 'neat freak' and get his empty bottles out to the garage for either recycling and/or returning to the liquor or beer store...
An 'organized' alcholic still has a lot of 'detoxification energy' in him and can never be called a 'hoarder'; wheras a 'disorganized' alcoholic is missing a combination of 'detoxification energy, motivation, and/or skills' and can often be called a 'hoarder'...
Again, hoarding is a 'disorganized' phenomenon as opposed to 'collecting' which is an 'organized' phenomenon...
My example of the 'basement alcoholic' is an example of a man with essentially 'no detoxification energy and/or motivation' even though he obviously has the awareness, the knowledge, and the skills to get rid of his empty bottles if he really wanted to...He just continues to 'not want to'...
It is like he follows a 'Diogenes' archetype figure -- Diogenes being the ultimate philosopher of chaos, disorder, and deconstruction...although unlike in the description of 'Diogenes Syndrome' cited below from Wikipedia, on the internet, Diogenes was certainly not 'senile', certainly not 'intellectually deficient' in any degree, indeed intellectually superior to many of his protagonists and antogonists...and certainly not mentally ill...rather, Diogenes was making a 'philosophical statement' by the lifestyle he chose to follow, and the assorted 'shocking stunts' that he is famous for having pulled were again designed to 'make a philosophical statement'....Thus, if we are going to use this label of 'Diogenes Syndrome' then it is important that we not always, if ever, associate it with 'dementia', 'alzheimer's, 'senility', 'degeneracy', or the like...
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Diogenes of Sinope
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Diogenes of Sinope
(Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς)
Diogenes by John William Waterhouse, depicting his lamp, tub, and diet of onions
Full name Diogenes of Sinope
(Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς)
Born c. 412 BCE
Sinope
Died 323 BCE
Corinth
Era Ancient philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Greek philosophy, Cynicism
Main interests Asceticism, Cynicism
Notable ideas Cynic philosophy
Influenced by[show]Antisthenes, dogs
Influenced[show]Crates of Thebes, other Cynics, the Stoics
Diogenes of Sinope (Greek: Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς Diogenes ho Sinopeus), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey) in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.[1]
Diogenes was one of the few men to ever publicly mock Alexander the Great and live. He intellectually humiliated Plato and was the only pupil ever accepted by Antisthenes, whom he saw as the true heir of Socrates. Diogenes taught his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates who taught it to Zeno of Citium who fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring branches of Greek philosophy.
Diogenes of Sinope was always controversial. Exiled from his native city for defacing the currency, he moved to Athens and declared himself a cosmopolitan (in defiance of the prevailing city-state system). He became a disciple of Antisthenes, and made a virtue of extreme poverty, famously begging for a living and sleeping in a tub in the marketplace. He became notorious for his provocative behaviour and philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He regularly argued with Plato, disputing his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, where he was befriended by Alexander.
Diogenes was a staunch admirer of Hercules. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. His life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. None of his many writings have survived, but details of his life come in the form of anecdotes (chreia), especially from Diogenes Laërtius, in his book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.
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Diogenes syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Diogenes syndrome, also known as senile squalor syndrome, is a disorder characterized by extreme self-neglect, domestic squalor, social withdrawal, apathy, compulsive hoarding of rubbish, and lack of shame.[1][2]
The condition was first recognized in 1966[3] and designated diogenes syndrome by Clark et al.[4] The name derives from Diogenes of Sinope, an ancient Greek philosopher, a Cynic and an ultimate minimalist, who allegedly lived in a barrel. Not only did he not hoard, but he actually sought human company by venturing daily to the Agora. Therefore, this eponym is considered to be a misnomer,[5] Other possible terms are senile breakdown, Plyushkin's Syndrome (after a character from Gogol's novel Dead Souls[6]), social breakdown and senile squalor syndrome.[7] Frontal lobe impairment may play a part in the causation (Orrell et al., 1989).[8]
See also
Compulsive hoarding
Edmund Trebus
Collyer brothers
.............................................................................................................................
Diogenes syndrome: A rare condition where a person (usually an elderly person) fails to look after there personal cleanliness and hygiene. They tend to be untidy and hoard rubbish. More detailed information about the symptoms, causes, and treatments of Diogenes syndrome is available below.
Symptoms of Diogenes syndrome
•Self-neglect
•Lack of self-consciousness about personal habits
•Untidiness
•Hoarding of rubbish
•Aloofness
•more symptoms...»
See full list of 10 symptoms of Diogenes syndrome
..........................................................................................................
DIOGENES AND ALEXANDER THE GREAT
There lived a wise man in ancient Greece whose name was Diogenes. Men came from all parts of the land to see him and talk to him.
Diogenes was a strange man. He said that no man needed much, and so he did not live in a house but slept in a barrel, which he rolled about from place to place. He spent his days sitting in the sun and saying wise things to those who were around him.
When Alexander the Great came to that town he went to see the wise man. He found Diogenes outside the town lying on the ground by his barrel. He was enjoying the sun.
When he saw the king he sat up and looked at Alexander. Alexander greeted him and said:
"Diogenes, I have heard a great deal about you. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes," said Diogenes, "you can step aside a little so as not to keep the sunshine from me."
The king was very much surprised. But this answer did not make him angry. He turned to his officers with the following words:
"Say what you like, but if I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes."
......................................................................................................................................
Hegel's Hotel is bult on a combination of anal-phobic and anal-explosive, organized and disorganized, deconstructive and reconstructive, Apollonian and Dionysian characteristics and forces...all aiming to come together in a 'balanced synthesis'...an integrative, multi-dialectic whole...
Enough writing for today...
-- dgb, Aug 15th-17th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
I regret to say that I do not have a lot of clinical cases to work with here...just situations and people I have met in my own personal experience...including myself who has been called at least a 'partial hoarder' myself...
I am going to approach this topic from a theoretical perspective and try to bring better clarity to the whole subject matter by helping to make 'better classification distinctions'...
'Hoarding' has been called a type of 'OCD' (Obessive-Compulsive Disorder) but this is bound to create as many problems as it solves because there is probably not a person alive who does not have some form of OCD to a greater or lesser extreme...The same goes with 'Bi-Polarity Personality' which also can be applied to each and everyone of us to a greater and/or lesser extreme...and probably about a hundred different possible specific 'bi-polarities' that we can talk about because both the mind and the body are built around the principle of 'multiple bi-polarity homeostatic function'.
For example, on the biochemical level, 'high' and 'low' levels of 'blood-sugar' in the blood can be viewed as a type of 'bi-polar dysfunction' where the body's need for a 'quantifiable blood-sugar level' to 'balance' the body's ability to perform its other functions properly is not being met. The over-riding or under-riding principle of psychological, physical, and/or bio-chemical 'homeostasis' is not being met.
On the psychological level, depending on the type of classification system(s) we want to use, we can talk about 'topdog-underdog' bi-polarities, 'anal-oral' bi-polarities, 'nurturing-critical' bi-polarities, 'phobic-counter-phobic (obsessive-compulsive)' bi-polarities, 'Parent-Child' bi-polarities, 'Superego-Underego' bi-polarities, 'Apollonian-Dionysian' bi-polarities, 'Superego-Id' bi-polarities, 'Personna-Shadow' bi-polarities, 'Conscious-Subconscious' bi-polarities....and many possible more...
Now, regarding the subject of 'hoarding', the first distinction that we need to make is between the 'anal-phobic personality' (APP) and the 'anal-explosive personality' (AEP)...
In this regard, we can make a distinction between 'collecting' and 'hoarding'...
The 'collector' is generally meticulously organized and organizes his or her 'collection' meticulously....(coins, CDs, books, gems, comic books, butterflies...)
In contrast, the 'hoarder' tends to live in an environment that is generally 'a walking disaster area' that is only going to keep getting worse...Most of us have probably seen the tv show 'Hoarders' so I am sure you know what I am talking about here....
The collector (anal phobic personality) has a 'counter-phobia' against 'dirt', 'germs', 'disorder'...wheras the 'hoarder' (anal-explosive personality) has a 'counter-phobia' against rules, organization, order, neatness, hygiene...The anal-phobic personality is basically 'allergic' to a mess whereas the anal-explosive personality ('Pigpen', 'Diogenes') lives in a mess, seemingly thrives in a mess....at least until the mess starts to basically 'strangle' his or her work or home environment...
This is essentially the distinction that 'serial profilers' make between an 'organized' (Apollonian) personality and a 'disorganized' (anti-Apollonian, more Dionysian) personality.
An anal-phobic person is generally more of an 'Establishment, Organization, Corporate' person unless their are underlying 'sadistic', 'violent', and/or other forms of 'anti-social' impulses whereas the anal-explosive person generally is much more likely going to have trouble finding and keeping a job because there are issues of 'disorganization', 'chaos', 'rebellion', 'anarchy', 'problems with authority and following organizational rules' that are basically likely going to sabotage the latter type of person's ability to function in an organizational environment...and thus, keep a job in this type of environment...
I've met a lot of people of this latter personality type driving taxis at night because they need to 'stay as far away as they can from the day-time politics of the organization they are working for'... Similarily, as a landlord, most of the young adults or even older adults who I have met and rented our 'basement apartment' to, have turned out to be of this 'personality type' -- the basement apartment soon becoming a 'walking disaster area'....
Personally speaking, I tend to be 'bi-polar' in this area of 'anal-phobic' vs. 'anal-explosive' distinction. In my younger years, my CD collection used to be well-organized, now it is a 'disorganized mess' as it has become less of a focal-point of my life. I aim to be clear in the organization of my essays, my work as a dispatcher used to combine 'anal-phobic' and 'anal-explosive' features...
My books are usually either at least decently organized on bookshelves if or when I have the time to properly organize them, my Freudian collection for the most part sits right behind me here in my den, including Freud's 24 volume Standard Edition Collection which sits behind me in a glass bookshelf that was recently bought. However, if you catch me on a more disorganized day, you may catch my books scattered all around the townhouse, down in the living room where I used to have my computer, out in the garage in boxes when I briefly moved out of here, sometimes on the table, sometimes on the floor...until I finally get around to 'organizational cleanup' ...An 'organized mind generally means an organized self-environment and visa versa'...and similarly, a 'disorganized mind generally means a disorganized self-environment and visa versa'...
In this regard, we can also make some furhter distinctions between different types of 'anal-phobic' and 'anal-explosive' personalities...
For example, we can distinguish between the 'entropic anal-explosive' person who simply lacks the energy, motivation, and/or willpower to organize his or her environment, and the more 'deliberately rebellious, or even anarchist personality' who is the type of person who thrives on 'chaos', 'disorganization', 'sabotage', 'putting the wrench into the organizational assembly line', hates authority figures, hates rules and regulations, hates 'being told what to do'...
Here is another type of 'hoarding'. This one I just briefly caught while I was watching the tv show 'Hoarders'....A female hoarder recalls when she was younger, a teenager I believe who was in the process of leaving the aunt who she lived with at the time, that the aunt very cruelly 'burned all the teenager's clothes in a bonfire'....Since then, the woman simply 'held onto all of her property, refusing to part with anything'...We might call this type of hoarding 'post-traumatic, counter-phobic hoarding'...I surmise there is a strong underlying compulsion to hold onto one's property for dear life' -- i.e., propped up by a self-statement saying in essence, 'I'm not going to let someone else take away or destroy any of my property again....'...a combination of 'repetition' and 'mastery' compulsion at work here...
Finally, I would like to make a distinction between the 'collector who loses control of whatever he or she is collecting which then turns into a chaotic hoard of unorganized property'....that's me to a certain extent as I have a tendency of 'biting off more than I can chew when I am in a book store and see a book or more that I want and/or particularly used books that are being sold cheap, ...and then when I take them home I end up with not enough space in my townhouse to put the bookshelves needed to properly organize all my incoming books...and then they can start to look like a 'chaotic hoard' scattered all around the townhouse....although certainly not even close to some of these scenes that we see on tv regarding 'hoarding nightmares' where people can't even walk properly, cook, or do anything productive in their own home.
Contrast the type of hoarding above with something that is a little more -- or a lot more -- anally explosive in terms of potential underlying rage...
In the case I am thinking about, I know a person who combines 'alcoholism' with 'hoarding'...He is a 'basement alcoholic'...So was his father when he was a child growing up, in fact, he became obligated to be his dad's 'bartender' and whenever he heard the 'rattling of ice cubes' this was his cue to bring his father another drink... There is much more to this story than I am even partly aware of -- mental abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse that he may or may not have been directly involved in. He was in effect his dad's 'private whipping post' -- a very intelligent man who made oodles of corporate money during the day and then brought this private nightmare home to his young family at night...The son left home to make his own way in life when he was 16...and did amazingly well...saving -- indeed, 'hoarding' the money he made -- and becoming better and better in the banking business, the stock market, and corporate mangement reaching a point where he was making a $150,000 salary with a major corporation....But with a huge psychological cost...on the clock, 24/7...very little down time or re-energizing time....and the time he did get he started to 'replay' his dad's nightmare as the 'basement alcoholic'....he lost his job, his wife...became reclusive....albeit financially self-sufficient and well off without the need for a job at age 50...with this eery 'repetition compulsion' that he took over from his dead father...on the computer all night...drinking all day and all night, primarily in the basement where I have never been down there but am afraid of what it might look like....I would gusess probably hundreds of liquor bottles covering the entire basement down there...and upstairs which I have seen is very similar to what you would see on 'Hoarders'...everything in 'bags' and scattered all over the townhouse floor...at least enough room to walk in there, at least the last time I was there, and sit down on his couch...but scary still the same...he doesn't let most people in except family and a close friend of the family -- that being me....Both his sisters are social workers, his brother a well respected classical musician and teacher...and no one so far has been able to 'break this mad repetition compulsion'...a very smart, kind, and caring man...entrapped and enslaved by his alcholism and his father's 'introjected' repetition compulsion...I hope to one day give you a 'happier ending' -- or at least 'evoluton' -- on this story...
In this latter case, the man's 'hoarding' characteristic almost seems to be more of an 'internal purging of psychological toxins' -- even as he is putting more and more alcoholic toxins down his throat before the empty bottles become littered all over the basement floor -- rather than a situation of 'collecting gone out of control'... I know another 'home alcoholics' who is still a 'neat freak' and get his empty bottles out to the garage for either recycling and/or returning to the liquor or beer store...
An 'organized' alcholic still has a lot of 'detoxification energy' in him and can never be called a 'hoarder'; wheras a 'disorganized' alcoholic is missing a combination of 'detoxification energy, motivation, and/or skills' and can often be called a 'hoarder'...
Again, hoarding is a 'disorganized' phenomenon as opposed to 'collecting' which is an 'organized' phenomenon...
My example of the 'basement alcoholic' is an example of a man with essentially 'no detoxification energy and/or motivation' even though he obviously has the awareness, the knowledge, and the skills to get rid of his empty bottles if he really wanted to...He just continues to 'not want to'...
It is like he follows a 'Diogenes' archetype figure -- Diogenes being the ultimate philosopher of chaos, disorder, and deconstruction...although unlike in the description of 'Diogenes Syndrome' cited below from Wikipedia, on the internet, Diogenes was certainly not 'senile', certainly not 'intellectually deficient' in any degree, indeed intellectually superior to many of his protagonists and antogonists...and certainly not mentally ill...rather, Diogenes was making a 'philosophical statement' by the lifestyle he chose to follow, and the assorted 'shocking stunts' that he is famous for having pulled were again designed to 'make a philosophical statement'....Thus, if we are going to use this label of 'Diogenes Syndrome' then it is important that we not always, if ever, associate it with 'dementia', 'alzheimer's, 'senility', 'degeneracy', or the like...
........................................................................................................
Diogenes of Sinope
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Diogenes of Sinope
(Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς)
Diogenes by John William Waterhouse, depicting his lamp, tub, and diet of onions
Full name Diogenes of Sinope
(Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς)
Born c. 412 BCE
Sinope
Died 323 BCE
Corinth
Era Ancient philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Greek philosophy, Cynicism
Main interests Asceticism, Cynicism
Notable ideas Cynic philosophy
Influenced by[show]Antisthenes, dogs
Influenced[show]Crates of Thebes, other Cynics, the Stoics
Diogenes of Sinope (Greek: Διογένης ὁ Σινωπεύς Diogenes ho Sinopeus), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey) in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.[1]
Diogenes was one of the few men to ever publicly mock Alexander the Great and live. He intellectually humiliated Plato and was the only pupil ever accepted by Antisthenes, whom he saw as the true heir of Socrates. Diogenes taught his philosophy of Cynicism to Crates who taught it to Zeno of Citium who fashioned it into the school of Stoicism, one of the most enduring branches of Greek philosophy.
Diogenes of Sinope was always controversial. Exiled from his native city for defacing the currency, he moved to Athens and declared himself a cosmopolitan (in defiance of the prevailing city-state system). He became a disciple of Antisthenes, and made a virtue of extreme poverty, famously begging for a living and sleeping in a tub in the marketplace. He became notorious for his provocative behaviour and philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He regularly argued with Plato, disputing his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures. After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, where he was befriended by Alexander.
Diogenes was a staunch admirer of Hercules. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. His life was a relentless campaign to debunk the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. None of his many writings have survived, but details of his life come in the form of anecdotes (chreia), especially from Diogenes Laërtius, in his book Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.
.............................................................................................................................................
Diogenes syndrome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Diogenes syndrome, also known as senile squalor syndrome, is a disorder characterized by extreme self-neglect, domestic squalor, social withdrawal, apathy, compulsive hoarding of rubbish, and lack of shame.[1][2]
The condition was first recognized in 1966[3] and designated diogenes syndrome by Clark et al.[4] The name derives from Diogenes of Sinope, an ancient Greek philosopher, a Cynic and an ultimate minimalist, who allegedly lived in a barrel. Not only did he not hoard, but he actually sought human company by venturing daily to the Agora. Therefore, this eponym is considered to be a misnomer,[5] Other possible terms are senile breakdown, Plyushkin's Syndrome (after a character from Gogol's novel Dead Souls[6]), social breakdown and senile squalor syndrome.[7] Frontal lobe impairment may play a part in the causation (Orrell et al., 1989).[8]
See also
Compulsive hoarding
Edmund Trebus
Collyer brothers
.............................................................................................................................
Diogenes syndrome: A rare condition where a person (usually an elderly person) fails to look after there personal cleanliness and hygiene. They tend to be untidy and hoard rubbish. More detailed information about the symptoms, causes, and treatments of Diogenes syndrome is available below.
Symptoms of Diogenes syndrome
•Self-neglect
•Lack of self-consciousness about personal habits
•Untidiness
•Hoarding of rubbish
•Aloofness
•more symptoms...»
See full list of 10 symptoms of Diogenes syndrome
..........................................................................................................
DIOGENES AND ALEXANDER THE GREAT
There lived a wise man in ancient Greece whose name was Diogenes. Men came from all parts of the land to see him and talk to him.
Diogenes was a strange man. He said that no man needed much, and so he did not live in a house but slept in a barrel, which he rolled about from place to place. He spent his days sitting in the sun and saying wise things to those who were around him.
When Alexander the Great came to that town he went to see the wise man. He found Diogenes outside the town lying on the ground by his barrel. He was enjoying the sun.
When he saw the king he sat up and looked at Alexander. Alexander greeted him and said:
"Diogenes, I have heard a great deal about you. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes," said Diogenes, "you can step aside a little so as not to keep the sunshine from me."
The king was very much surprised. But this answer did not make him angry. He turned to his officers with the following words:
"Say what you like, but if I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes."
......................................................................................................................................
Hegel's Hotel is bult on a combination of anal-phobic and anal-explosive, organized and disorganized, deconstructive and reconstructive, Apollonian and Dionysian characteristics and forces...all aiming to come together in a 'balanced synthesis'...an integrative, multi-dialectic whole...
Enough writing for today...
-- dgb, Aug 15th-17th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Sunday, August 8, 2010
DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis: A Working Model of The Human Psyche
Just completed...Saturday August 14th, 2010.
Happy Anniversary to my girlfriend of 11 years now, Sharida Ali...
Synopsis
This essay is a continuation of a long series of essays on the re-structuring, extending, and re-eneregizing of Classical Psychoanalysis...in all its facets of its structure and dynamics...starting with an integration of the pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' with the post-1897 'Instinct-Fantasy-Oedipal Complex Theory'. Outside additions come from Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Cognitive Therapy (Rational-Emotive Therapy, General Semantics...), Erich Fromm, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Jeffrey Masson with an underlying philosophical foundation of Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, Paine, Montesque, Jefferson, Rousseau, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Ayn Rand, Foucault, Derrida, and whoever else may be mentioned or even focused on that I have left out...
1. A DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic Working Model of The Human Psyche
'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' -- i.e., what you are reading here -- is very ambitious (most professionals would probably say 'way too ambitious') as I am seeking to integrate everything that we are talking, and/or have talked, about here...and far more...for example, 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' with 'Fantasy-Oedipal Theory', Classical Psychoanalysis with both Object Relations and Transactional Analysis, as well as with Adlerian Psycholgy, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, and Cognitive-Emotive-Behavioral Therapy including Rational-Emotive Therapy and General Semantics Therapy...
DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis has identified eight important 'ego-states'...
What is an 'ego-state'?
An ego-state is a 'split ego-function'....a 'division of labour' within the psyche...that specializes in a certain type of thought pattern, feeling, impulse (or lack of it) and behavior pattern....
Now it is a contentious point of argument as to how much of this 'ego-split function' is simply the theorist playing 'theory games' (i.e. me, in this case, abstractifying and classifying different types of behavior patterns and then giving certain 'repetitive commonalities or lumps of behavior' a particular name like 'The Nurturing Superego' -- or whether this type of thing is actually happening phenomenologically and existentially in every one of our minds, our psyches (like cells dividing to specialize in this area or that area relative to the functioning of particular body organs and activities).
One way, we treat the model as an 'As If' phenomenon -- the psyche functions AS IF it is split into 3 ego-states or 5 or 8 but this is a 'model building activity' --- primarily a 'teaching device' for explaining how the psyche works -- that is not to be taken literally but metaphorically...
Or we treat these 'ego-states' as if they actually exist...which they do to a greater or lesser extent -- it just depends on where you want to draw the 'conceptual boundaries' and the names you want to give the types of thoughts, feelings, and behavior within these conceptual boundaries; our model is designed to follow 'reality' and the way we actually think, feel, and behave -- both functionally and dysfunctionally. But no model can perfectly reflect reality...that is why they are called 'model's or 'theories' or 'maps' of what we are studying...Life...and the human mind...is far too complicated and sophisticated for even the most complicated and sophisticated of models...and so we must always maintain our awareness that we are just 'map-makers', 'model builders', 'theory makers' in the end....always trying to make them better but always knowing that they will never be perfect....there will never be anything that we can call 'Absolute Knowledge'....Man is condemned to imperfection...no matter how 'Apollonian and Anally Obsessive-Compulsive' we are....
A combination of the two opposing attitudes -- linked together that keeps us alert to both realism and skepticism -- is probably the preferred intellectual route to go on this issue...
Relative to the study of 'personality theory', 'ego' -- meaning 'self' or 'psyche' or some portion of the self or psyche -- is almost a unanimously and routinely used concept except in Behavioral Psychology which barely talks about 'personality' and the 'self' or 'psyche' in any sense of the word....for the rest of the schools of psychology, 'ego' and 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments' and 'ego-splitting' is almost an assumed if not directly talked about phenomenon...It's just a matter of 'how many ego-states' is the most practical and useful number to talk and write about....pick a number between 2 and 10...and then some of us, myself included might talk about what we can label as 'underlying sub-conscious, sub-ego states and/or templates and/or symbolic archetypes'...
A 'Cross-School Comparison and Contrast of Different Types and Numbers of 'Ego-States' and Underlying 'Sub-Ego-States'
1. Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls): 2 ego-states: 'topdog' vs. 'underdog';
2. Classical Psychoanalysis (Freud): 3 ego-states (although Freud would not have called them that): the 'superego' vs. 'the ego' vs. 'the id'...
3. Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne): 5 ego-states: 'Nurturing Parent', 'Controlling Parent', 'Adapted Child', 'Free (Wild) Child', 'The Adult (Ego-State)';
4. Jungian Psychology (Jung): 2 basic ego states: 'the personna' vs. 'the shadow' and a number of 'underlying, unconscious functional states' such as: 'the personal unconscious', 'the collective unconscious', 'the archetype figures', and 'The Self'....6 functional states altogether, if not one or two more;
5. DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis (David Bain): 9 basic ego-states: The Nurturing Superego; The Righteous-Rejecting Superego; The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Pleasure-Seeking) Superego; The Co-operative and/or Approval-Seeking Underego; The Rebellious-Righteous Underego; The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Pleasure-Seeking) Underego); The Enlightenment Ego; The Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Ego; The Central Mediating (Conflict-Resolving, Problem-Solving) Executive Ego....with 5 underlying 'Sub-Ego-States': 10. The Dynamic Creative and/or Destructive Fantasy and Dream Weaver; 11. The Transference Memory and Compensatory Fantasy Templates; 12. The Mythological Archetype Symbols and Figures; 13. The Id (Life and Death Energy Forces Mixing and Bridging the Gap Between Biological, Bio-Chemical, Hormonal, and Psychological Co-Factors); 14. The Potential (Creative and/or Destructive) Evolving or 'De-Evolving' Genetic and Partly Socially Changing Blueprint of The Self.
B/ Seven Types of Interactive 'Energy Flow' Moving 'Vertically' From Bottom to Top in The Personality/Psyche and From Top To Bottom in The Personality/Psyche as Well as 'Horizontally' and 'Diagnonally' Throughout the Different Ego-States and Sub-Ego-States...
1) Narcissism;
2) Altruism;
3) Erotic Libido (Freudian Sexual Energy);
4) Non-Erotic Libido (Jungian Life Energy);
5) Thanatos (Life and/or Death Aggressive Energy)
6) Transference Energy (Associative Energy Primarily From Childhood)
7. Immediacy Energy (Energy of the Moment)
C/ Three Different Types of 'Sexual Fixations and/or Fetishes' Involved in Most Sexual Fantasies
a) The Sexual Aim;
b) The Sexual Object;
c) The Sexual Setting or Context;
D/ Regarding The Childhood to Adulthood 'Association' and 'Interplay' of 'Traumatic-Rejecting Memories' and 'Compensatory Transference Sexual and/or Aggressive Fantasies'...
a) Childhood traumacy and/or rejecting memories are easily 'cathected' with sexual and/or romantic transference energy;
b) Sexual and/or romantic energy is easily 'turned upside down' and 'cathected' with 'aggressive thanatos energy' if or when 'adult transference surrogates' become aggressive and/or rejecting -- like their 'childhood transference predecessors' years and years before them in a mainly subconscious to unconscious 'self-fulfilling prophecy' that Freud called 'the repetition compulsion'.
c) If or when we are able to sustain the 'positive romantic and/or sexual energy' of ourselves and our 'current adult transference surrogate' for either 'a one time encounter' (i.e., a 'one night stand') or a 'longer lasting, balanced relationship', we can call this a person's 'successful, tight-rope-walking venture' into a 'relationship mastery compulsion scenario' (happy different adult transference ending...) which could/can easily turn -- in the blink of an eye -- into a 'relationship traumacy-rejection-repetition compulsion' (same old unhappy transference ending as first established and blueprinted in early childhood).
That will suffice for today...
-- dgb, Aug. 8th to 14th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
Happy Anniversary to my girlfriend of 11 years now, Sharida Ali...
Synopsis
This essay is a continuation of a long series of essays on the re-structuring, extending, and re-eneregizing of Classical Psychoanalysis...in all its facets of its structure and dynamics...starting with an integration of the pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' with the post-1897 'Instinct-Fantasy-Oedipal Complex Theory'. Outside additions come from Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Cognitive Therapy (Rational-Emotive Therapy, General Semantics...), Erich Fromm, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Jeffrey Masson with an underlying philosophical foundation of Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, Paine, Montesque, Jefferson, Rousseau, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Russell, Wittgenstein, Korzybski, Hayakawa, Ayn Rand, Foucault, Derrida, and whoever else may be mentioned or even focused on that I have left out...
1. A DGB Quantum Psychoanalytic Working Model of The Human Psyche
'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' -- i.e., what you are reading here -- is very ambitious (most professionals would probably say 'way too ambitious') as I am seeking to integrate everything that we are talking, and/or have talked, about here...and far more...for example, 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' with 'Fantasy-Oedipal Theory', Classical Psychoanalysis with both Object Relations and Transactional Analysis, as well as with Adlerian Psycholgy, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, and Cognitive-Emotive-Behavioral Therapy including Rational-Emotive Therapy and General Semantics Therapy...
DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis has identified eight important 'ego-states'...
What is an 'ego-state'?
An ego-state is a 'split ego-function'....a 'division of labour' within the psyche...that specializes in a certain type of thought pattern, feeling, impulse (or lack of it) and behavior pattern....
Now it is a contentious point of argument as to how much of this 'ego-split function' is simply the theorist playing 'theory games' (i.e. me, in this case, abstractifying and classifying different types of behavior patterns and then giving certain 'repetitive commonalities or lumps of behavior' a particular name like 'The Nurturing Superego' -- or whether this type of thing is actually happening phenomenologically and existentially in every one of our minds, our psyches (like cells dividing to specialize in this area or that area relative to the functioning of particular body organs and activities).
One way, we treat the model as an 'As If' phenomenon -- the psyche functions AS IF it is split into 3 ego-states or 5 or 8 but this is a 'model building activity' --- primarily a 'teaching device' for explaining how the psyche works -- that is not to be taken literally but metaphorically...
Or we treat these 'ego-states' as if they actually exist...which they do to a greater or lesser extent -- it just depends on where you want to draw the 'conceptual boundaries' and the names you want to give the types of thoughts, feelings, and behavior within these conceptual boundaries; our model is designed to follow 'reality' and the way we actually think, feel, and behave -- both functionally and dysfunctionally. But no model can perfectly reflect reality...that is why they are called 'model's or 'theories' or 'maps' of what we are studying...Life...and the human mind...is far too complicated and sophisticated for even the most complicated and sophisticated of models...and so we must always maintain our awareness that we are just 'map-makers', 'model builders', 'theory makers' in the end....always trying to make them better but always knowing that they will never be perfect....there will never be anything that we can call 'Absolute Knowledge'....Man is condemned to imperfection...no matter how 'Apollonian and Anally Obsessive-Compulsive' we are....
A combination of the two opposing attitudes -- linked together that keeps us alert to both realism and skepticism -- is probably the preferred intellectual route to go on this issue...
Relative to the study of 'personality theory', 'ego' -- meaning 'self' or 'psyche' or some portion of the self or psyche -- is almost a unanimously and routinely used concept except in Behavioral Psychology which barely talks about 'personality' and the 'self' or 'psyche' in any sense of the word....for the rest of the schools of psychology, 'ego' and 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments' and 'ego-splitting' is almost an assumed if not directly talked about phenomenon...It's just a matter of 'how many ego-states' is the most practical and useful number to talk and write about....pick a number between 2 and 10...and then some of us, myself included might talk about what we can label as 'underlying sub-conscious, sub-ego states and/or templates and/or symbolic archetypes'...
A 'Cross-School Comparison and Contrast of Different Types and Numbers of 'Ego-States' and Underlying 'Sub-Ego-States'
1. Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls): 2 ego-states: 'topdog' vs. 'underdog';
2. Classical Psychoanalysis (Freud): 3 ego-states (although Freud would not have called them that): the 'superego' vs. 'the ego' vs. 'the id'...
3. Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne): 5 ego-states: 'Nurturing Parent', 'Controlling Parent', 'Adapted Child', 'Free (Wild) Child', 'The Adult (Ego-State)';
4. Jungian Psychology (Jung): 2 basic ego states: 'the personna' vs. 'the shadow' and a number of 'underlying, unconscious functional states' such as: 'the personal unconscious', 'the collective unconscious', 'the archetype figures', and 'The Self'....6 functional states altogether, if not one or two more;
5. DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis (David Bain): 9 basic ego-states: The Nurturing Superego; The Righteous-Rejecting Superego; The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Pleasure-Seeking) Superego; The Co-operative and/or Approval-Seeking Underego; The Rebellious-Righteous Underego; The Dionysian (Hedonistic-Pleasure-Seeking) Underego); The Enlightenment Ego; The Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Ego; The Central Mediating (Conflict-Resolving, Problem-Solving) Executive Ego....with 5 underlying 'Sub-Ego-States': 10. The Dynamic Creative and/or Destructive Fantasy and Dream Weaver; 11. The Transference Memory and Compensatory Fantasy Templates; 12. The Mythological Archetype Symbols and Figures; 13. The Id (Life and Death Energy Forces Mixing and Bridging the Gap Between Biological, Bio-Chemical, Hormonal, and Psychological Co-Factors); 14. The Potential (Creative and/or Destructive) Evolving or 'De-Evolving' Genetic and Partly Socially Changing Blueprint of The Self.
B/ Seven Types of Interactive 'Energy Flow' Moving 'Vertically' From Bottom to Top in The Personality/Psyche and From Top To Bottom in The Personality/Psyche as Well as 'Horizontally' and 'Diagnonally' Throughout the Different Ego-States and Sub-Ego-States...
1) Narcissism;
2) Altruism;
3) Erotic Libido (Freudian Sexual Energy);
4) Non-Erotic Libido (Jungian Life Energy);
5) Thanatos (Life and/or Death Aggressive Energy)
6) Transference Energy (Associative Energy Primarily From Childhood)
7. Immediacy Energy (Energy of the Moment)
C/ Three Different Types of 'Sexual Fixations and/or Fetishes' Involved in Most Sexual Fantasies
a) The Sexual Aim;
b) The Sexual Object;
c) The Sexual Setting or Context;
D/ Regarding The Childhood to Adulthood 'Association' and 'Interplay' of 'Traumatic-Rejecting Memories' and 'Compensatory Transference Sexual and/or Aggressive Fantasies'...
a) Childhood traumacy and/or rejecting memories are easily 'cathected' with sexual and/or romantic transference energy;
b) Sexual and/or romantic energy is easily 'turned upside down' and 'cathected' with 'aggressive thanatos energy' if or when 'adult transference surrogates' become aggressive and/or rejecting -- like their 'childhood transference predecessors' years and years before them in a mainly subconscious to unconscious 'self-fulfilling prophecy' that Freud called 'the repetition compulsion'.
c) If or when we are able to sustain the 'positive romantic and/or sexual energy' of ourselves and our 'current adult transference surrogate' for either 'a one time encounter' (i.e., a 'one night stand') or a 'longer lasting, balanced relationship', we can call this a person's 'successful, tight-rope-walking venture' into a 'relationship mastery compulsion scenario' (happy different adult transference ending...) which could/can easily turn -- in the blink of an eye -- into a 'relationship traumacy-rejection-repetition compulsion' (same old unhappy transference ending as first established and blueprinted in early childhood).
That will suffice for today...
-- dgb, Aug. 8th to 14th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process....
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