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....
