You won't find most of these distinctions in most of the common psychotherapeutic literature...except in different, smaller pieces...
But they are important to what I see as the potential therapeutic dynamics of DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis...
1. An 'Existential Analysis'...
Pertaining to the here-and-now...as opposed to the 'there-and-then' of past childhood, teenage, and/or adult experience, desire, and/or trauma... Focusing in on such things as work, love, romance, sex, family, stability, rootedness, passion, self-idealism, growth and self-actualization, depth of insight into current problems, conflicts, and potential solutions, as well as direction and degree of action to solve these problems and conflicts in order to keep growing....
2. An 'Existential -- or Gestalt Existential -- Hotseat (or Psychodrama)'...
A 'therapeutic acting out' of current existential issues, conflicts, problems in a way that 'emotionally brings these issues' back in tighter and closer to the heart...so they can't be simply 'abstractified away' with words and/or intellect...'Psychodrama' utilizes other people in the therapeutic group to play out different roles in the individual participant's 'existential issues' whereas 'The Gestalt Hotseat and Empty Chair Technique' utilizes the individual participant's own 'projections' to play out as many 'invisible characters' as he or she needs to in order to bring some meaningful type of 'conflict resolution' to the therapeutic exercise....
3. A Freudian or (Modified Post-Freudian) 'Transference Analysis'...
A comparison -- and contrast -- of past 'there-and-then' (usually childhood) events, memories, perceptions, interpretations, judgments, feelings, impulses, and/or relationships with current, here-and-now ones...
4. A Freudian-Gestalt Transference Hot Seat (or Freudian-Satir Transference Psychodrama)...
Similar to an 'Existential Hot Seat' except with an emphasis on 'Childhood Transference Psycho-Dynamics' and how they weave themselves into our 'Here-And-Now'...
5. A Freudian-Adlerian 'Transference-Lifestyle Analysis and/or Hotseat'
A 'modified transference analysis and/or hotseat utilzing both Freudian and Adlerian concepts (e.g., 'lifestyle', 'conscious early memories', 'inferiority feelings', 'superiority striving' and/or 'superiority feelings, and 'compensation') and modified concepts like 'projective transferences', 'lifestyle transferences', 'introjective transferences', and 'compensatory transferences'...Originally, i used the term 'GAP (Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic') Hotseat and Therapy Work, now 'DGB' or 'GAP-DGB' Quantum Psychoanalytic...
The name is less important than the quality and the meaninfulness of the potential psychotherapeutic work...but I need some sort of distingishing name that separates my work here from everything else that is out there...
I feel comfortable with any of GAP or DGB or GAP-DGB Psychology or Quantum Psychoanalysis...
I work the 'GAPS' between other schools of psychology and psychotherapy as well as the 'gaps' -- or 'chasms' or 'abysses' -- between our 'self-images' and our 'self-ideals' because it is here that we generate our greatest sense of 'self-depression, self-rage, and self-crucification' or alternatively, 'self-celebration'...
It is here that we need to do our main work aimed at 'closing or bridging the gaps, the chasms, the Nietzschean abysses...between being and not being, between being and becoming, between the Archetype of Jesus Christ working as the 'Master of All Self-Healers' as opposed to tumbling into, or purposely choosing, 'Self-Crucification'...'Self-Victimization'...'Self-Martyrdom'...as in the 'Archetype Idealization and Pathology' of 'The Suicide Bomber'...who takes out as many people as he or she can take with him or her...in the movement towards meeting his or her perceived and fantasized 'Maker'...
It is this latter type of more 'mythological' work with 'archetypes' and 'symbols' that I call:
6. 'A Freudian-Jungian Archetype-Transference Analysis and/or Hot Seat...
Which simply, as stated above, utilizes a combination of 'mythological archetype symbols' and 'transference work'...
The difference then, in my vocabulary, between a Transference Analysis and an Archetype Analysis is the utilization of 'personal memories' vs. 'mythological symbols' towards the same end -- the self-celebration of the individual and the human personality towards a happier, healthier, more meaningful and self-sastisfying existence...
One of my main purposes in conducting this type of psychotherapeutic approach is to 're-own' the 'projections' of 'The God or Gods' that we look into the sky for...and help us realize that these same 'God-Archetype Figures' are also Within Us...meant to be utilized as 'Internal GuidePosts' of the Psyche, Self, and Soul' as long as the 'Jesus Christ Archetype' of our 'Central Mediating Ego' is acting as 'Self-Healer' and not as 'Self-Crucifier' and/or 'The Crucifier of Others'...
That is just about where 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis' stands today once we have also factored in 'The Family Dynamics Mandala' of Our Early Transference Memories, Encounters, Relationships...and 'Repetition Compulsion' ('Obsessive-Compulsive-Addictive-or-Avoidant') Complexes...
That, we will leave for another day...
Some final comments here...
1. 'Heaven' and 'Hell' are often right beside each other in the deepsest abyss or Underground of our Psyche, Self, and Soul...
2. Often we have to go through 'Hell' to get to 'Heaven'...
3. In DGB Quantum (Post-Jungian) Psychoanalysis, the 'Holy Trinity' of 'The Father', 'The Son', and 'The Holy Ghost' is The Holy Trinity of a) 'The Central Ego' (The Jesus Christ Archetype of 'Self-Healer'), b) The Genetic, Unactualized or Partly Actualized and Partly Unactualized, Individually Unique Template of The Self-Soul' (The Archetype of God), and 'The Shadow' (The Archetype of The Holy Ghost which often needs to be 'detoxified' of its potentially 'toxic' components before it is 'actualized' through The Central Ego...Failure to do so can sometimes breed the worst evils of mankind...)
4. The Ultimate Celebration of The Individual and/or The Dialectical, Engaging Man is 'The Internal Meeting of The Father, Son, and The Holy Ghost...or worded otherwise, 'The Central Ego, The Self-Soul, and The Shadow'...with 'Dionysus' providing the dance music, the alcohol, the sensuality, and the celebration of The God-Archetype-Self-Soul...(Nietzsche, 'The Birth of Tragedy')
5. 'God' in the Roman-Christian sense can also be viewed as the 'Ultimate Integration of All Greek and Roman Gods' and all things human (and projected externally into 'God' and/or 'Gods')...
6. The 're-ownership and worship of 'God' is the ownership of Archetypes, Mythological Symbols, and The Celebration of The Actualization and Fulfillment of The Self-Soul...
7. 'Heaven' in this particular approach can be viewed as the celebration of the actualization of our 'Self-Soul' which can be viewed as both a part of God, and also, God's Ultimate Unique Creative Gift to each of us that we need to creatively apply to our lives in order to properly live out our 'partly God-scripted, partly unscripted' destiny...
What this is, in effect, is an integration of religion and humanistic-existentialism. Humanistic-existentialism wants no part of a 'God' -- such as the Christian God taught in the organized religion that Nietzsche was protesting against -- that people believe teaches 'self-denial' and 'self-sacrifice', 'blind faith and authoritatianism' and 'submission' to this blind faith and authoritarianism to the extent of 'denying one's own reason and rationality, one's own rational-empiricism...and one's own pursuit of health and happiness'. 'Don't worry if your life is a living death -- you will be rewarded in the 'afterlife' -- in 'Heaven'. This is the type of mindset that created Nazi Germany...and 9/11. It is the type of mentality that creates religious wars. Some pathological authority-figure masquarades as being the 'bridge' between man and God -- and then puts 'pathological words into the mouth of God'.
In this approach that I am advocating here -- which does not dismiss the possibility of believing in a more 'humanistic-existential' God -- even if that God is a 'mythological creation of our own projective capabilities' -- still, who cares if the message remains: 'Treat your neighbour with the same freedom, respect, and tolerance that you would want and expect from him or her under the same circumstances'...And if our 'message from God', if this is where we wish to be believe where it comes from, remains essentially the same, and does not contradict, what, for example, is written in The American Declaration of Independence......
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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
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And when we read in the Bible the story of God, Abraham, and Isaac....Abraham going up to the mountain with the full intention of killing his son, his very flesh and blood...someone has got to stop and think...how does this type of God connect with the one advocated in 'The American Declaration of Independence'? The God described in the Bible in this parable 'asks' Abraham to kill his son, and Abraham is willing to 'comply' without a second thought....And preachers everywhere say that this 'faith' in God is 'good'....and now you have a good idea how Nazi Germany and 9/11 came about...
Here is the Abraham and Isaac parable as described by Wikipedia...
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The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis 22:1-24 is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah.
The narration is referred to as the Akedah (עקדה) or Akedat Yitzchak (עקידת יצחק) in Hebrew and as the Dhabih (ذبح) in Arabic. The sacrifice itself is called an Olah in Hebrew — for the significance of sacrifices, especially in Biblical times, see korban.
According to the narration, Abraham sets out to obey God's command without questioning. After Isaac is bound to an altar, the angel of God stops Abraham at the last minute, at which point Abraham discovers a ram caught in some nearby bushes. Abraham then sacrifices the ram in Isaac's stead.
While it is often imagined that Isaac was a small child upon their arrival at the setting of the altar, some traditional sources claim he was an adult as Jews are considered adults at age 13. The Book of Genesis does not tell the age of Isaac at the time; the Talmudic sages teach that Isaac was thirty-seven, likely based on the next biblical story, which is of Sarah's death at 127 (she was ninety when Isaac was born). Bishop Ussher's chronology would place Isaac at about 20 years of age.
Genesis 22:14 states that it occurred at "the mount of the LORD": in 2 Chronicles 3:1; Psalm 24:3; Isaiah 2:3 & 30:29; and Zechariah 8:3, the Bible seems to identify the location of this event as the hill on which Solomon later built the Temple, now known as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
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It was this kind of 'blind religious authoritarianism' that brought about the 'anti-thesis' of the age of Science, and then The Enlightenment, of which the founding fathers and the authors of 'The American Declaration of Independence' were a compelling part of this 'age of Enlightenment'....As can be seen in the actual text of 'The Declaration', these founding fathers of America did not dismiss 'God', or 'our Creator', or 'The Creator of Nature', outright but 'attached' this God to an element and a message of 'rationality and sanity' -- of the combined humanistic-existential goals of 'Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness' -- not of 'killing and sacrficing your son on The Mount'...
In the end, civil man has to be the judge of what constitutes 'rational sanity' and rational sanity never never was, never is, built from 'blind faith and submission to authority'...
Nietzsche wasn't rebelling and preaching against a 'humanistic-existential' God -- no, he was rebelling and preaching against the type of 'introjected, authoritarian, sadistic God' that destroys people's lives and leaves them miserable both in their every waking moment because they can't do anything without feeling guilty and because they are not allowed to use their own minds to decide what is and isn't 'good' for them...
How do you justify or rationalize one of God's Ten Commandments -- 'Thou shalt not kill!' -- against the same God who apparently asked/told/demanded? Abraham to kill his own son! Do you call this God a 'hypocrite'?
Or a God who is willing to change His rules and demands at a moment's notice -- irrespective of justice, fairness, sanity, and human compassion?
Or do we say that at some point in history there were a series of preachers and/or Biblical writers who put contradictory words and ideas into God's mouth?
Anybody can put words into God's mouth if we choose to believe the credibility as a 'bridge to God' (utter nonsense!) of the preacher who is uttering them...whether these words be humanistic and compassionate or sadistic and pathological...It could be The Pope, it could be a minister or priest of the local Church, or it could be Bin Laden...
Of prime concern was the number of 'living dead' people who he saw around him -- people who were 'sacrificing their life on Earth' for a supposedly better 'Afterlife in Heaven'. Utter balderdash in Nietzsche's mind. And in my mind too.
It is to this end that Nietzsche wrote: 'God is dead! (through one of his characters in a fictional book) and it is to this end that I fully support his statement.
Let blind faith in a so-called authoritarian, sadistic God that could ask a man to destroy his own son -- be dead!
And let a much more 'humanistic-existential God', even a 'pantheistic, humanistic-existential God' -- modelled closely after the men who wrote the American Declaration of Independence (and/or Spinoza, Diderot, and/or Schelling)-- come alive!!!
And then we can say, 'God is alive, man is alive, and they are both dialectically (and democratically) supporting each other. God is in man, and man is in God! They are both Creative Extensions of each other!
If or when we we fulfill God's -- and/or our Creator's -- Creative Gifts to us, we experience an internal version of 'The Holy Trinity' in a three-way embrace. Our Creativity and Creative Passion comes out of 'The Shadow of our Unconscious' -- the archetype of 'The Holy Ghost'. God is proud of us and/or we are proud of ourselves because we feel ourselves expressing and fulfilling in our Earthly lives our Creator's Unique Creative Gifts to us. We feel our Soul and Spirit coming alive within us -- The Archetype Image of God, Our Mythological or Real Creator. And our Central Ego -- which has reached into our Spirit-Soul-Self and into our Creative Unconscious -- feels the 'self-healing' and/or the 'healing of others' Archetype Image of Jesus Christ, the Mythological or Real Son of God.
Does it really matter if God created man, and/or if man created God?
As long as we are creating ourselves in the Humanistic-Existential Spirit-Soul of our Unconscious, partly scripted, partly unscripted Potential Selves which contain the Unique Indivdual Creative Gifts of Nature-Our Creator-and/or Our Real or Mythological God.
There is no 'blank tabula rasa' in our Unique Potential Self. Sartre got this part all wrong. He says 'existence before essence'. I say 'essence before existence'. And I say, that ideally 'existence and essence should embrace each other through our actions during the course of our lives. That is how you get 'self-actualization' or 'self-fulfillment'. If essence and existence do not embrace each other during the course of our lives, then that is how we get 'self-alienation' and 'self-estrangement'...If there was 'no essence' to start our lives with, then there could be no such thing as 'self-alienation' or 'self-estrangement'. Jean Paul, you were supposed to be an existentialist. Shame on you! If there was no 'essence' in you, how could you choose whether you liked 'existentialism' or not? Whether you liked 'Communism' or not? And so on...
There has to be an Internal Essence in our Genetic Spirit-Soul-Potential Self that provides the 'map', 'the guide posts', and the 'route' that we ultimately -- and ideally -- choose to live our lives by. If we don't follow this 'internal map' that comes from deep inside our Spirit-Soul, then we pay the price for this 'existential negligence'. We suffer and feel the very real pain of an 'unfulfilled life'.
As Spinoza bravely proclaimed, 'God is in everything'. And that includes Our Self.
All we have to do is 'Find Him/Her' -- through our Spirit-Soul -- through our Creative Unconsicous and Shadow -- through our Central Ego.
Through 'The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost'...
Spinoza, Jung, and DGB style.
Our Potential, Unactualized Self is full of unique or rare, creative, genetic gifts that we got from someone or somewhere...genetically....before us...and/or even long before us.
Whether you want to call the Original Source of all these unique individual gifts -- ultimately 'Gifts from God', or not -- that is up to you...
I have given you my take on this matter. Unorthodox to be sure. But still very spiritual, and potentially spiritually-uplifting as well as both humanistic-existential and dialectical -- even 'trialectical'.
Religion and modern day personal growth psychology -- coming together into one.
Inside and out, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- all embracing each other.
Have a creatively brilliant day!
-- dgb, Nov. 6th, 8th, 9th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
