Just finished, January 23rd, 2011...
The personality -- just like the body, and just like the birth and death of life -- starts in chaos and ends in chaos.
The arc of life (see Part 1 of this essay) is generally one of 'no organization' to 'better and better organization' right to the 'top of the arc of life' and then a slow or fast downward process back to chaos -- and finally death.
Now this is not to say that 'supreme organization' is always the 'ultimate barometer' of 'success, health, and happiness in life' because 'over-organization' can be as much a 'life-killer' as 'no organization at all'.
Once again, there is a dialectic process going on between 'no organization at all' and 'supreme organization' -- the two needing and affecting each other.
Creativity demands the existence of chaos -- chaos is the 'birth unit' of all life -- and the successful evolution of life from a lesser state to a higher state of evolution demands the dialectic interplay between chaos and organization, between Dionyssus (creative spontaneity) and Apollo (planned organization).
And so it is with the 'birth of the individual personality'...
The unconscious is the birthplace of the personality -- and the unconscious thrives in an environment of chaotic (creative) spontaneity, no distinctions initially, until the organism starts to feel the difference between 'narcissistic pleasure' and 'narcissistic pain' -- and based upon these two primary distinctions, all other resulting distinctions, start to fall in line...
At birth, and for the first little while, all 'ethics' is 'narcissistic ethics'. Even 'love' is built from narcissism: In order for me to 'love' you, you have to be 'narcissistically important to me'.
That might be putting it crudely, but, only slightly modified, put it this way: How can you love someone who is not important to you?
'Splits' in the personality start to arise in the personality for perhaps a varitey of reasons, three of which I can easily speak of and which often interact with each other:
1. Functional usefulness and 'the increasing specialization' of labour within the confines of the personality;
2. Traumacy -- and 'traumatic learning' -- which within the confines of Gap-DGB Personality Theory will often be called 'transference learning' (Freudian influence), 'lifestyle learning' (Adlerian influence), and/or 'transference-lifestyle learning' (Freudian-Adlerian dialectically integrative influence).
3. 'Social Learning' -- which may or may not 'fit' with 'personal, experiential learning'. For example, if Victorian society taught people 'not to masturbate' (for fabricated and/or ignorant reasons such as 'you'll go insane' or 'your thing will fall off' or 'you'll develop neursosis like neurastenia' (see definition below)...and meanwhile, people -- both men and women -- are finding by personal experience that masturbation can be intensely pleasurable, then you are quite likely to see the beginning of a 'general split and dissociation (see definition below) in the individual and/or collective cultural personality between what society on the one hand is teaching you is 'wrong' and what your body, on the other hand, is telling you is....oh, so 'right'...
..............................................................................................
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neurasthenia
Neurasthenia is a psycho-pathological term first used by George Miller Beard[1] in 1869 to denote a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, neuralgia and depressed mood.[footnotes 1][citation needed] It is currently a diagnosis in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (and in the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, translated as 神经衰弱). However, it is no longer included as a diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Americans were supposed to be particularly prone to neurasthenia, which resulted in the nickname "Americanitis"[2] (popularized by William James). Today, the condition is still commonly diagnosed in Asia.
...................................................................................................
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dissociation
Dissociation is a partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s conscious or psychological functioning.[1] Dissociation can be a response to trauma or drugs and perhaps allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time.[2] Dissociative disruptions can affect any aspect of a person’s functioning.[3][4][5][6] Although some dissociative disruptions involve amnesia, the vast majority of dissociative events do not.[7] Since dissociations are normally unanticipated, they are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person's usual ways of responding or functioning. Due to their unexpected and largely inexplicable nature, they tend to be quite unsettling.
Different dissociative disorders have different relationships to stress and trauma.[8] Dissociative amnesia and fugue states are often triggered by life stresses that fall far short of trauma.[9][10] Depersonalization disorder is sometimes triggered by trauma, but may be preceded only by stress, psychoactive substances, or no identifiable stress at all.[11]
...............................................................................................................
dgb...cont'd...
I call the 'Chaotic Unconscious (CU)' -- i.e., part of the initial birthplace of the personality -- by a second name -- the 'Undifferentiated Apeiron (UI)', in respect t how much influence the 2550 year old Greek dialectic philosopher -- Anaxamander -- has had on my work. However, there are also Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, and Gestalt influences in everything I have written above.
Next up in the evolutionary development of the personality is 'The Genetic Self (GS)'.
This concept of the GS incorprates two Jungian concepts together -- The Self, and The Collective Unconscious.
The first Jungian concept -- The Self -- pertains to what some might call a 'God-and/or Nature given template' in the personality -- a propensity for passion, energy, and/or ability in a certain direction...
With the birth of the organism and the unique individual personality within the organism, The Genetic -- Potential, Unactualized -- Self starts off as 'pure potential possibility' with a propensity for movement in a certain direction....
But this state of 'purest state of potential energy' is very short-lived, indeed, the baby is already conscious and moving in the womb, and then once it is born, the newborn baby emits its first 'outside world' movement, its first cry -- the first 'outer world transfer' of potential to kinetic energy in the newborn organism.
Ideally speaking, we all have the potential -- as we come into our new world -- to be the next 'Michael Jordan' in whatever the realm of our 'greatest potential energy, passion, and/or ability' may be.
Sometimes our energy, passion, and ability may not be ideally connected -- and/or they may become connected through some 'accident' or 'traumacy' in life -- the beginning of a 'transference-lifestyle complex' -- which then may steer our passion, energy, and ability down a certain path that may not have been 'figural' to us, and 'fixated' within us, before...
When our Genetic Self meets our 'Archetype Ideals' and/or 'Transference-Lifestyle Complexes', complete with unbelievable 'compensations' and 'overcompensations' of energy and passion -- at this point, huge things can start to happen, either good and/or bad, depending on either the path we end up taking through life, and/or the level of 'extremism' with which we take this path. The seeds of greatness in a person are often also the seeds of self-destruction -- or some compromised mixture of both.
The path of a person's 'Transference-Lifestyle Complex (his or her 'TLC') is often the path of a 'Superman' or 'Superwoman' if it is passionate and energetic enough. Now in some cases, depending on individual circumstance, a TLC may also 'block personal growth'. This may be the path of the alienated person whose TLC may stand in the way as a 'blockage' between his Central Ego and his Genetic Self (GS).
Everything is subject to individual case and circumstance which is why such Freudian overgeneralizations, or at least one-sided and tilted generalizations, as 'The Oedipal Complex', 'Childhood Sexuality', and 'Fantasy Theory' need to be integrated with his earlier 'Traumacy and/or Seduction Theory', not polarized against a theory that Freud once believed in as passionately as he later came to believe in The Oedipal Complex, Childhood Sexuality, and Fantasy Theory.
We will continue the development of this essay in Part 3.
-- dgb, Jan. 23rd, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,
-- Are Still in Progress...
