Room 2004: Different Types of Shadow-Id-Drive (SID) Formations/Complexes and Their Derrivative Cognitive-Emotional-Behavioral Expression

SID (Shadow-Id-Drive) Complexes can be classified and described in many ways...such as: as 'oral' vs. 'anal', 'narcissistic' vs. 'altruistic', 'Apollonian' vs. 'Dionysian', righteous vs. rebellious, 'topdog' vs. 'underdog', direct vs. indirect, overt vs. covert, explosive or non-explosive, buried in 'Siggy's Cave' for a lifetime, or entering and leaving Siggy's Cave faster than a speeding bullet...in slow, small releases like  a 'dirty allusionary joke'...or with all the cognitive-emotional-behavioral strength and force of an erupting volcano...

We can see the 'erupting volcano' type in what Charcot called 'Grand Hysterical Attacks'....or in cases of 'exploding narcissistic rage'...or explosions of grief....or love....or lust....or anxiety...and/or in the 'primal-symbolic process of a psychotic/nervous breakdown'...


From the subconsciousness or unconsciousness of 'Siggy's Cave, the SID Complex -- whatever it might be -- can enter into consciousness and through any 'auxillary ego-state' which we haven't really clearly described and defined yet....like 'The Righteous Superego-State' or 'The Rebellious, Under-Alter-Ego State'....or through 'The Dionysian Under or Superego'....or 'The Narcissistic Under or Superego'....or The Approval-Seeking Underego'.....


The SID Complex could involve a 'Traumacy-Transference Memory' or a 'Traumacy-Transference Compensatory Fantasy' -- or elements of both.


More on this very fertile field of investigation at a later date in time...What the concepts of 'The Shadow-Id' and different types of 'SID Formations or Complexes' do, is they create a 'new marriage' in Psychoanalysis between Freud's pre-1897 Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his post-1896 Instinctual Impulse Theory.


..............................................................................................................

8. Melanie Klein: 'Good' and 'Bad' Mother Objects -- and The Birth of Object Relations


Melanie Klein took Freudian Theory too an even younger age than Freud. For Freud, most 'Oedipal impulse neuroses' were formed around the age of 3 or 4.
If we are talking 'traumacy neuroses', these can happen at any age between birth and death. But Melanie Klein -- probably because of the nature of her own personal 'Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Neuroses' -- there is the acronym that I was trying to avoid but it came back anyway, even after being 'pushed down'. A 'TIT' neurosis. I shake my head, but the picture is strangely at least partly important here...in its Melanie Klein and Object Relations connection.


Klein had a largely horrific early childhood. (See...Hinshelwood, Robinson, and Zarate, Introducing Melanie Klein, 1999). They write:

Melanie, the only child not breast-fed by mother, had a wet nurse. (No loss in my books.) Her father openly favoured Emile (sibling rivalry -- my Adlerian addition).

Whether 'who' breast-fed little Melanie was an issue in her early character development -- or not -- is a contentious point of debate. However, there were some other factors surrounding Melanie's early upbringing that were definitely 'traumatic' -- the death of one of her older sisters (Sidone, 8) when Melanie was 4, probalby a 'lack of sufficient attention and affection' from both her mother and father, and then later, her dad died when she was 18, and an older brother (Emanuel, 25) died when she was 20.


Regardless, in the words of the authors of Introducing Melanie Klein...


'Her (Melanie Klein's) psychoanalytic contributions uniquely stressed the raw, painful emotions of rage, envy, and hatred as well as creativity, and she attributed such powerful feelings to children. She particularly stressed the very earliest relationship of all -- to the mother's breast.' (p. 7.)'

Klein was the primary founder of what was to become known as 'Object Relations' (Psychoanalysis).

In this regard, Klein introduced such important concepts as: 'good object' and 'bad object', 'good mother' and 'bad mother', and I believe unless I am mistaken (subject to confirmation), 'good breast' and 'bad breast'.


Now let us step away from Melanie Klein and see how her ideas can be added to the concept of 'SID Complexes'....


9. SID Complexes and Bi-Polar Disorder


First, however, let us talk a bit about 'Bi-Polar Disorder'. We are all bi-polar. Indeed, we all have hundreds if not thousands of real or potential bi-polarities.


So the name 'Bi-Polar Disorder' is highly ambiguous -- a 'catch-all diagnostic term' that could mean almost anything, depending on the 'particular content of the bi-polar extremes that are presumably not integrated very well, if at all...

In our new terminology here, our 'SID (Shadow-Id/Secret-Interest Drive) Chamber' or 'Siggy's Cave' is basically a combination of a 'subconscious holding bin or jail' while, at the same time, partly active -- or at least active in terms of all its 'SID inmates' -- in the form of a bi-polar 'submerged alter-ego' that generally creates a 'counter-force' to the types of 'secondary-reality-based, cognitive activities' that are usually -- or at least more visibly -- going on inside our 'Executuve Central Ego (ECE).


This is essentially the same as saying in Jungian terminology that 'The Personna' is the conscious and socially visible bi-polar opposite of 'The (Submerged, Suppressed, Dissociatated) Shadow'...although looks can be deceiving and all of us have different Personna-Shadow or ECE-SID dynamics.


In the old terminology, Bi-Polar Disorder (BPD) used to be called 'Manic-Depression' which at least told you more concretely what the nature of the opposing two bi-polarities were: 'mania' and 'depression'....


The person goes on his or her own personal 'Dionysian Carnival'...and then, once his or her energy has finally crashed, assuming that he or she still has a home to return to, the person comes back to his or her home and 'crashes' in 'depression' -- again. Depression, mania, depression, mania...and so the cycle continues until there is some sort of intervention... I don't know too much about Melanie Klein's personal history but it is possible that she perhaps had some sort of 'manic-depression' going on...She seeemed to be just as absent from her own kids as she was from her own mother and father...


We can talke about 'Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde' bi-polar disorder -- Ted Bundy being a perfect example.


A social worker talked to me the other day about a very extreme case of a teenager, 17 years old, who had been diagnosed with BPD. His father left him at 14 and his worst behaviors, from what I gathered, started to show themselves very quickly afterwards -- he both raped his sister and killed his mother.

He was/is a big boy -- 300 pounds plus. The social worker had to interview him in one of the few 'psychiatric institutions' left around here -- and the kid was trying to get through the plastic protective shield separating the two of them to 'kill' the social worker. Injected with two rounds of valium, the kid was still raging out of control. And the whole purpose of the interview was to see if this kid was ready for a 'half-way house' yet. I don't think so....unless they want to take the highly possible risk of a 'dead group home worker'.


Indeed, the case reminded me of one of the most infamous serial killers in American history -- Ed Kemper -- who murdered his grandmother, mother, and a series of high school/college girls before he finally gave himself in. This was in the early 1970s. The case is easy to look up...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Kemper

.............................................................................................



In the case of this young man, you have a 'raging bull' type personality where the 'rage' is not even being attempted to being hidden. Like the erupting volcano, it has simply 'fast-tracked' its way through any 'restraining conscious force' of the Superego and/or Executive Central Ego...and essentially taken over the Central Ego...Is there a 'bi-polarity' behind the 'rage'? I would guess probably 'grief' -- grief pertaining to the loss of the boy's 'AWOL father'... Call this a 'rage-grief' polarity...


There are many other 'bi-polarity disorders' -- such as an 'Apollonian-Dionysian' BPD, or a 'Madonna-Whore' BPD Complex as described below, and attributable, in different ways, to both a man and a woman. Here is the man's version:

................................................................................................................


The Madonna-Whore Complex


In Freudian psychoanalysis, a Madonna–whore complex is a psychological complex that is said to develop in the human male. The term is also used popularly, often with subtly different meanings.

According to Freudian psychology, this complex often develops when the sufferer is raised by a cold and distant mother. Such a man will often court someone with qualities of his mother, hoping to fulfill a need for intimacy unmet in childhood. Often, the wife begins to be seen as mother to the husband—a "Madonna" figure—and thus not a possible object of sexual attraction.

For this reason, in the mind of the sufferer, love and sex cannot be mixed, and the man is reluctant to have sexual relations with his wife, for that, he thinks subconsciously, would be incest. He will reserve sexuality for "bad" or "dirty" women, and will not develop "normal" feelings of love in these sexual relationships. This introduces a dilemma where a man may feel unable to love any woman who can satisfy him sexually and is unable to be sexually satisfied by any woman whom he can love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex


....................................................................................................






The 'female' version of the 'Madonna-Whore' Syndrome might be better equated with the movie, 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar'...

...........................................................................................
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_for_Mr._Goodbar_(film)


..............................................................................................


In both male and female versions of The Madonna-Whore Syndrome, we can see the interplay of a person's 'Personna' with his or her 'Shadow' or The Executive Central Ego (ECE) with a particular SID Complex.


A 'Passive-Aggressive' or 'Overtly Compliant-Covertly Rebellious' BPD is also very common, as is an 'Organized-Disorganized' BPD. Turning to the 'Sexual BPDs', we could talk about 'sado-masochism', 'exhibitionism-voyeurism', 'bi-sexuality', 'dominant-submissive', a whole host of different 'anal-oral' bi-polarities as extrapolated from Classical Freudian distinctions...'oral-assertive-anal-schizoid', 'approval-seeking-anal-rebellious' (same ideas as 'passive-aggressive'), 'oral nurturing-anal rejecting'...and on and on we could go...'oral nurturing-oral narcissistic'....'anal-retentive-anal-explosive'...


I hope you are starting to get the idea of just how many basically endless types of BPDs there are....because every wish, every need in the body, hinges on the principle of 'Bi-Polar-Homeostatic-Balance.


With all of these endless 'content' possibilities in terms of 'BPD', the diagnostic category of BPD in and by itself is a totally abstract, ambigous diagnostic term -- until the 'diagnostician' starts to itemize the particular contents of both 'bi-polarities within the BPD.

'Psychotherapy' -- if this type of problem or 'break in self and/or social contact' becomes 'acute, 'serial', and/or 'chronic' -- is generally addressed and hopefully achieved by helping this type of person (which includes most of us to some greater or lesser extent) 'make better contact' between the two dissociated parts of his or her personality -- and/or at the same time willing to share in different social contexts with different people that we feel more or less comfortable with.

Obviously, if a husband or wife is having great difficulty expressing his or her feelings and/or perceived needs to his or her partner, this is probably something that should be 'therapeutically addressed' unless the couple can work through the problem themselves and/or, for whatever reason, they are 'comfortable' leaving the 'status-quo' the way it is...


Different relationships -- depending on the degree of mutual trust, respect, and caring -- should 'guide us' to our appropriate level of 'self-disclosure'. Disclosing 'too much' personal information to 'the wrong person or people' can sometimes be just as problematic as not disclosing enough personal thoughts and feelings to the person/people that we love and trust most (or are having trouble with 'trust' and 'love' issues because of past or present 'bad encounter' scenarios).


That is about as much as I would like to write on this subject for today...For sure, we will come back to the essence of this essay -- just like Freud and Jung did -- over and over and over again...

But for today, this is enough...


-- dgb, March 23rd, 25th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...