The main idea that I have been developing over the last four essays -- the idea of 'SID Formations and Complexes', 'SID' standing for 'Shadow-ID Defensive' (Formations and/or Complexes) -- is an extrapolated and integrative concept that adjoins Jung's concept of 'The Shadow' with Freud's concept of 'The Id', and also at the same time, seeks to integrate Freudian Traumacy Theory with his later Instinct/Impulse Theory.
In this latter regard, SID Formations can include 'traumatic memories', emotional affects of any and every type, symbolic-metaphorical-mythological and/or psychotic formations, as well as 'instinctual and/or impulsive drives' of any and every type.
The 'SID Chamber' which I may also refer to as 'SIGGY's Cave' (Shadow-Id Groups and Ghosts of Yesterday), can be viewed as being like a combination of 'engine room' and 'quarantine room' ('SIC Bay') where 'threatening' experiences, secrets, ideas, impulses, affects, behaviors are shut down either permanently, temporarily, in certain contexts, and/or in their most blatant, extreme form....released perhaps in either more 'watered-down' or 'sugar-coated' form, or in the face of drugs, alcohol, and/or extreme stress....
Hormones -- and hormone 'signals' -- flow up and down between our mind and body. The same goes for 'motivational' and 'energy' flow. Freud tried to make sense out of this 'mind-brain-body' connection in his unfinished work called 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (1895, S.E., V. 1. p. 283).
Freud finally gave up on this project -- in terms of 'solving' the mystery that he originally set out to solve, i.e., 'finding the elusive mind-body connection' where every philosopher and scientist before him had failed. Still, the work was not in vain, as it contained what amounted to as an overview and a table of contents of 'the essence' of his work to come -- for the next 40 years, plus.
And although I have not read 'The Project', I would speculate that much of the 'core of Freud's thesis' relative to the interworkings of the 'higher' and 'lower' parts of the 'mind-brain' are captured in my essay here. 1895 was a crucial year for Freud. He was caught between a 'rock and two hard places': 1. traumacy theory; 2. seduction theory; and 3. a 'covertly percolating' instinct-impulse theory.
However, the one thing that Freud couldn't or wouldn't -- and didn't -- do, is put all three theories together into a meaningful 'dialectic or trialectic whole'. That is what I am doing here -- integrating all elements of Freud's traumacy, sexual traumacy, and instinct-impulse theory.
For whatever reason -- which we will speculate about at a later date -- Freud could or would not think dualistically or dialectically or trialectically here. Rather, he could only think in terms of 'either/or'.
Either his (1895) 'traumacy theory' was right; or his later (1896) 'seduction (sexual traumacy/assault) theory was right; or his still later (post-1896) 'instinct-impulse' theory was right. No compromise-solutions, no integrations, no syntheses...And after 1896, his instinct-impulse theory 'won out' over the other two theories (the traumacy and seduction theories) -- to the detriment of the future evolution of Psychoanalysis. A lot of people suffer from 'either/or' neuroses -- and Freud, in this case, was definitely one of them.
I call Freud' s brave but nebulous 'The Project' -- 'The Black Box' of human psychology-physiology-neurology-biology-chemistry (PPNBC) that is all multi-dialectically linked and at the same time beyond any current understanding available to man. Call it 'The Magic 'God-Nature-Creation Communication Connection Within The Black Box Portion of The Human Mind-Brain-Body'.
Does a person's bio-chemistry affect his or her psychology? Or does the person's psychology affect his or her bio-chemistry? Or both? I opt for the 'dialectic-two way street' option. Between 'mind' and 'brain (or 'body'), there is a 'magic, God-Nature-Created, box of inter-mind-brain-body communication' that no one to this day in human evolution still comes close to understanding. Freud bravely tried -- and failed -- at attempting to understand, or at least partly understand, the nature of this 'mind-brain-body' connection.
Our body sends 'hunger pangs' up to our 'mind-brain', and our mind-brain decides what it is going to do about the 'problem'.
'Hormonal' signals can come from the body, or alternatively, be set off by what we perceive outside us in our environment. 'Mental cues' can 'travel downwards' to meet 'affective energy' in our SID Chamber and merge together into one 'mind-body-action' complex that either stays in The SID Chamber of travels back upwards again to be handled by our Executive Central Ego (ECE) for choice of decision-making action.
We can view our SID Chamber -- and our SID Formations -- as originating in a more primitive, more uncivil -- and uncompromised -- lower part of our mind-brain, to be 'screened', 'edited', 'restrained', 'water-downed'. 'sugar-coated', 'compensated for', 'defended against'...as it moves -- or attempts to move upward towards the 'more civil, social, educated, conscious part of our mind-brain.
Alternatively, in some cases, our SID Formations and/or Complexes can simply 'erupt' and 'explode' into our conscious mind-brain -- 'no holds barred', the Socially Conscious (Co-operative, Compliant) Ego and The Executive Central Ego being basically 'pushed aside' by a much stronger, cognitive-emotional-behavioral force originating from our SID Chamber -- or below that in our 'Transference Complexes' and/or our 'Genetic Self'.
Under normal, healthy conditions, there is a sophisticated 'multi-dialectical communication path' moving throughout our mind-brain, from top to bottom, and bottom to top, from left to right side of the mind-brain, and right to left.
That is, until we start to look at the different types of 'neurotic (traumacy)-transference disorders and how they both 'cause' and are 'caused by' different types of 'blockages' or 'dissociations' in the personality, or alternatively, 'impulsive cognitive-affective-behavioral explosions'.
'Neurotic disorders' can be defined and described in different ways.
1. Neurotic disorders reflect the personality 'out of balance'.
2. Two different types of 'neurotic disorders' can be distinguished from each other: 'gaps' in the personality vs. 'obsessive-compulsions' in the personality, both reflecting opposite ways of the personality being 'out of balance'.
3. A 'neurotic disorder' is the opposite of a 'learning disability' or a 'failure in learning'; in contrast, the neurotic person, relative to his or her particular neurotic complex, has 'learned too much' -- in Freud's language, they 'suffer from reminiscences' and 'false connections' between these 'reminiscences' and their 'badly or falsely construed association' to 'present-day reminding people, places, things, signals...'
4. This is what I am calling -- in extrapolated Freudian terminology -- a 'neurotic (traumatic)-transference neurosis'. In essense, the 'inappropiate or false learning lesson' stemming from the memory of a bad, painful experience in the past has been 'transferred' inappropriately into a present-day situation -- and led to a 'neurotic complex of thinking, feeling, behaving...'
This is where we will leave things for today...
-- dgb, March 30th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations,
-- Are Still in Process...
