In this essay, I am going to write briefly about Freud's concept of 'the id' -- and how this concept might have been defined completely differently if Freud had created it in 1894 (say, in 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense') rather than in 1923 (in 'The Ego and The Id).
As I stated in the first essay, one of my main goals in this series of Freudian, Psychoanalytic essays is to integrate Psychoanalysis where it has not been integrated before. And this starts with a metaphorical bridge over top of the 'Freudian Abyss' that separates his pre-1897 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' (which is usually classified as 'Pre-Classical' Psychoanalysis) with his post-1896 'Biological Instinct' Theory (which lies at the heart of what became known as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis).
As many have stated before me in similar and/or different words, Freud's concept of 'the id' -- indeed, his whole 'biological-instinct centered paradigm' of post-1897, Classical Psychoanalysis -- is too reductionistic....too narrow a pair of psychological glasses to look through in order to properly understand the full spectrum of human behavior.
Man does not live by sex, survival, aggression and destruction alone, although to be sure, these are highly significant and highly volatile areas of human thinking, feeling, and behaving -- and central areas of any investigation into the understanding of, and motivation behind, human behavior.
In Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis, The 'ID' (with a captial 'D') can be defined by breaking it down into the following acronym: 'Instinctual Drive' (or 'Impulsive Desire', or 'Instinctual Desire' or 'Impulsive Drive').
However, if 'The ID' was defined in terms of Pre-Classical Traumacy-Seduction Theory -- and even dialectically integrating the idea of 'Instinctual/Impulsive Desire/Drive' right into the middle of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory -- we would need a different two-word acronym to define and describe the full essence of what 'The ID' meant. We could call it the 'The Isolation-Dissociation (ID) Chamber' or 'The Shadow-Id Derrivatives' or The 'Secret Interests and Desires' Chamber -- or to use another anacronym, 'The SID Chamber' for short. Or 'SIGGY's (Silente Interest Group and Ghosts of Yesterday) Cave'.
Now I don't want to go too fast here for those of you who are relatively new to this subject matter -- and we will go back over this material with a fine tooth and comb at a later date -- but there are a couple of different but related 'human paradoxes that are running wild' here together in a way that was effectively driving Freud crazy in 1895, 1896.
Here's one human paradox -- clients/patients/people tell the truth -- and they also lie, embellish, distort, and whitewash the truth...
Human honesty is always the 'play toy' of human narcissism.
That was one of the things that Freud was 'finding out' by 1895, 1896 -- which was really only a 'clinical confirmation' of something that Freud had found out a long, long time ago, previously, back when he was 3 or 4 years old. Especially when it comes to 'sex' -- people lie, whitewash, and cover-up.
Any arguments with that assertion?
It fits for me -- with occasional exceptions, of course.
The formula goes something like this: 1. 'Narcissistic (Hedonistic-Sensual-Sexual) Impulse'; 2. 'Narcissistic (Hedonistic-Sensual-Sexual) Deed'; 3. 'Ethical-Moral- Transgression'; 4. 'Narcissistic (Ethical-Moral)-Coverup'.
Now sometimes this 'Ethical-Moral-Transgression (EMT)' is based on very 'tight, stringent, anal-rententive ethical morals' in which case it is going to be very tough for anyone and everyone to 'live up to these saintly standards'....And then in other cases, depending on the particular contents of a person 'SID Chamber' -- the human SID Formation/Complex' may paradoxically be 'inhuman' -- 'narcissistically pathological', indeed, depending on its structure, dynamics, and psycho-social-history, these contents may be brutally inhuman and illegal -- resulting in 'nightmare behaviors' that typlify someone like Ted Bundy...or thousands of other past, present, and/or future 'narcissistic sociopaths'...
It all depends on just exactly 'what is down there' in 'The SID Chamber' or 'SIGGY's Cave'...
What is down there is a combination of 'past traumacy' and 'present impulse'...
And the working of 'The Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle' -- we steer away from 'pain' (unless we are attracted to pain) and we steer towards 'pleasure'.
At the same time, we steer away -- generally speaking, unless again there is a 'personal attraction in this direction' -- from 'being out of control' and we steer towards 'being in control'...This is what Freud very briefly -- too briefly -- called 'The Mastery Compulsion'.
Mastery is generally pleasurable; in contrast, being 'out of control' is usually perceived as being stressfully anxiety-provoking -- in essence, 'unpleasurable'.
Now we will turn quickly and sharply to a 'loose DGB rendition' of one aspect of Kleinian (as in Melanie Klein, 1882-1960) Theory. Let us call this 'The Bad Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Theory' or -- here we go again with me and my acronyms -- 'The Bad TIT Theory'.
Yes, I had to do it... Actually, both seriously and satirically, the acronym is very appropriae and fits very well relative to what I want to say here, and my ongoing pursuits into the future of this theory...
Do I hit you with a bit of Kleinian 'Object Relations', 'Good' and 'Bad' Objects, 'Good' and 'Bad' Mother, 'Good' and 'Bad' Breast Theory...?
Or do I hit you with my most 'provocative punch'...like....
We all, at least partly -- both men and women -- chase 'Good' and 'Bad' 'TITS'...
'TITS' here is both a metaphor -- and one of my now infamous acryonyms...
'TITS' as an acronym stands for: 'Traumacy-Impulse-Transference-Syndrome' 'Synergies'..
Wow! Sounds profound! Sounds impressive!Does it mean anything?
Of course it means something! It means something very astute and profound.
And paradoxical....Man's existence is full of a smorgasboard of paradoxes...
Melanie Klein went back to the nursing infant and the mother's breast...
I don't go back that far -- I go back to 3, 4, or 5 years old...in Adlerian style...but that is to come a little later...
Let's stick with Melanie Klein for a few minutes...
I'm sorry but my references aree loose here....the internet...Introducing Melanie Klein...and partly -- or largely -- my own rendition of what I find most important in the work of Melanie Klein, in her 'Object Relations Theory'...
The feeding infant is born largely 'oral narcissistic' in nature....his or her survival is dependent on getting the right type of 'nourishment' from 'mother's breast', 'mother's milk' -- and/or now, 'a bottle surrogate', hopefully with the right types of 'nutrients' in it...
The 'breast feeding baby' comes to associate 'the good mom and the good breast' with available 'food, nourishment -- and love'....
In contrast, the feeding -- and needing to be loved -- baby comes to associate 'the bad mother' and 'the bad breast' with an 'unavailable, anal-rejecting mother' who does not answer the baby's needs for food, nourishment -- and love....
Both 'objects' -- the good and bad mother, and the good and bad breast -- become internalized in the infant's mind and create a 'internal split' in the psyche that matches the baby's 'external split reality'.... a world of 'oral nurturing' and a world of 'anal rejecting'. This can be viewed as both the beginning of the baby's 'external warm and cold reality' -- and the beginning of both a 'warm and cold internal reality as well' that matches the external reality...
Indeed, the harsher the baby's external reality is likely to be, the harsher the baby's internal reality is likely to be as well -- to the point where you can get different degrees of 'anal-rejecting babies' -- they may reject their food, they may reject their mother, they may reject anything or anyone who they do not feel comfortable with...Indeed, in integrating this 'Good' and 'Bad', 'External' and 'Internal' Mother and Breast Theory with Freud's 1920 'Death Instinct Theory, Klein argued that the young infant already has an evolving 'death instinct' with accompanying 'death wishes' and that these 'death wishes' are easily associated to 'the bad mother' and the 'bad breast'...
In Melanie Klein's own personal history, apparently she was breast fed by her 'wet nurse'. Where was mommy? She was obviously 'unavailable'... It seems like Melanie Klein had a lifelong problem with 'depression', 'unavailability to her own kids', perhaps 'manic-depression', and/or some type of 'grief-rage' bi-polar disorder...Without going into her full biographical and psycholgical history, it is impossible for us to get a 'full reading' of what exactly was going on inside Ms. Melanie Klein -- but a lot of it was very depressing and tragic, as depressing and tragic as one person's psychological and biographical history could/can possibly be... To be pursued at another time perhaps...
I find it easy to understand and accept much of the premise and psycho-logistics of Klein's theoretical work...and easy to 'transfer' into other theories like Classical Freudian, Adlerian, and Janovian...
I spent two years at The Adlerian Institute of Ontario -- and even made one trip to The Adlerian Institute in Chicago -- so for me to mix Adlerian Theory with Classical Psychoanalysis, Kleinian Object Relations, Fairbairn's Object Relations, Transactional Analysis, Perls' Gestalt Therapy, and Arthur Janov's 'Primal Scream Theory and Therapy' -- all of this comes pretty easy for me...My own rendition of Hegel's dialectic theory is the 'straw' that mixes this 'integrative smoothie'...
In the 1880s and 1890s theorists and therapists like Breuer, Charcot, Janov, Freud were all chasing 'the unconcious', 'unconscious, dissociated states of mind', and 'repressive defenses'...
That was fine for them and what they were chasing...but I am chasing something different here...I say, 'Why spend $200 an hour for ten years of Psychoanalysis probing for 'this uncosncious memory and/or fantasy' ...and then that one...the 'proverbial needle in the haystack syndrome'...if or when a therapist can simply ask for a client's earliest conscious memories -- two, three, or four of them -- particularly the earliest one that is remembered -- and come up with 'Transference Magic in a Bottle'....and unlike the most serious problem that Freud was 'chasing' in the 1880s and 1890s -- it isn't 'cocaine'...
In Adlerian theory, these earliest memories that I am talking about are called 'lifestyle memories'...Here we will call them 'transference memories' or 'transference-lifestyle memories' (TLMs). Again, these are 'conscious' memories as opposed to 'unconscious' (unremembered) or 'repressed' memories...In one sense, we might say they are 'unremembered' because they are not usually remembered and/or thought about until someone -- like a therapist -- asks us to remember them...Then we can usually 'dig them out' of our 'unconscious' or 'subconscious' or 'preconscious' within a minute or two...or three...or four...
Usually one of these TLMs will contain what I will call our 'Primal Traumacy/Failure/and/or Rejection Scene'...
Here we are getting close to the main idea behind Arthur Janov's work although I think he might have been looking for 'unconcious' or 'repressed' early childhood memories...I will have to check that...
In Janov's work, the essence of the therapy seems to amount to -- presumably in the nurturing environment of the therapeutic setting -- unleashing a 'Primal Scream' which is meant to bring forth all the 'emotional anguish' attached to our earliest 'Primal Traumacy-Rejection Scene'....which is tied up to our 'lifelong transference neurosis and neurotic symptoms'...
I'm doing a lot of paraphrasing and interpreting here without so much as looking for Janov's 1970 book, 'The Primal Scream' in my library...It could take me a week to find it..... See the internet to learn a little more about the type of psychology and psychotherapy that Arthur Janov developed...It seems like an updated, modern day version of Freud's pre-1897 'Traumacy Theory'.
Earlier than Janov's 1970 best seller, Eric Berne came up with his own best-seller in 1964 called 'Games People Play'....This too fits into the DGB Massive Integrative Jigsaw Puzzle we are putting together here...In DGB Traumacy-Impulse-Transference Theory, these 'games' are called: 'Transference Games'...and can be very easily and meaningfully described and labelled in Berne's Transactional Analysis terminology...These 'games' are often very non-productive, 'neurotic', dysfunctional, destructive, self-destructive -- and 'tragic'...
They are like Freud's 'cocaine fixes' -- 'pleasurable' and 'satisfying' -- until the pus starts to run out of his nose, the migraines start up , and the heart starts to lose a beat or two...
I will give you three or four examples of 'transference games' from Freud's own life...
First the memory -- 'the primal scene'...
Freud, as an unabashed 3 or 4 year old, burst into his parents' master bedroom -- only to catch his parents 'doing the nasty'...I think, to the little Siggy, at the time, he saw what looked to be like his 'father peeing on his mother'...Obviously, Freud's very limited knowledge at the time didn't extend any further than this...
In the scene, his father 'freaks' on little Siggy...and yells at him in no uncertain terms..'Get the bleep, bleep out of this room'...
And that, 'my dear readers' -- or my dear 'Watsons', if you will -- is the 'beginning of Act 1' on 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis'. Freud was his own 'first case'.
Psychoanalysis was born in this psychodrama -- the 'psycho-structure and psycho-dynamics -- of Freud's earliest conscious -- not repressed -- memory, the 'Primal Scene Rejection Memory' cited above.
At least three, four, maybe five or more different types of interconnected 'lifelong transference games' came out of this primal transference rejection scene memory for little Siggy, turned adult Siggy. Before I get to these transference games, let me add eight new 'Oedipal Complex Sub-Distinctions':
1. 'The Good Maternal Oedipal Complex';
2. 'The Bad Maternal Oedipal Complex';
3. 'The Good Counter-Maternal Oedipal Complex';
4. 'The Bad Counter-Maternal Oedipal Complex';
And the same four sub-distinctions for the 'Paternal/Counter-Paternal Oedipal Complex'...
It should be noted that not all 'transference games' are 'neurotic and dysfunctional' -- some can be productive both to the self and to society...On the other hand, some can be very dysfunctional and destructive...
Game 1. 'The Psychoanalytic Game': 'My patient is going to try to lie to me, confuse me, distract me, whitewash me, fool me...with a wide assortment of 'tricks' or 'defense mechanisms' designed to lead me astray -- to in effect, 'pull the wool over my eyes' -- in order to 'hide' from me what is going on, and what is going on is definitely 'sexual'....
Game 2: 'Let's You and Me, Dad, Play With Mom': This 'transference game' was not nearly as creatively productive in Freud's life...In fact, it resulted in the horrific 'Medical Menage et Trois' between Freud, Fliess, and Emma Ekstein...You can find this story in Essay 6...
Game 3: 'The Master Bedroom Eviction Game': How many co-workers did Freud effectively evict -- either directly or indirectly -- from Psychoanalysis? Too many to count....Breuer, Fliess, Adler, Jung, Steckel, Rank, Ferenczi, Perls....and in Freud's 'paternally rejecting' image, this time orchestrated by his daughter, Anna Freud, and the eldest senior psychoanalytic statesman in the 1980s, Kurt Eissler -- this time, on the 'receiving end of the psychoanalytic eviction notice' was Jeffrey Masson...
Game 4: The 'Homosexual Game' -- My Dad's Missing 'Nurturing Tit': Freud spent his whole life vicariously trying to 'please' his dad, looking for the sign or type of affection, the approval, the encouraging support, that just wasn't there sufficiently for little 'Siggy'...'The boy will come to nothing' are the words that Siggy remembered coming out of his dad's mouth....and of course....'Get the bleep, bleep out of my bleep, bleep bedroom'....Freud connected 'homosexuality' and 'paranoia' -- the (potentially homosexual) son being effectively 'paranoid' of a very anally-rejecting (and sometimes 'anal-sadistic') father...But beneath the 'potential for homosexuality', the son -- in this case, Sigmund -- simply wants his dad's affection, encouragment, and love...This whole psycho-drama was played out 'extremely intensely' in Freud's most intimate 'friendship' to Fliess -- who was almost like 'the mirror image' of Sigmund himself, and presumably in this same regard, like Sigmund's father himself....Sigmund had a similar type of emotional relationship -- albeit not nearly as long and as intense -- with Jung, even though Jung was almost 20 years younger than Sigmund.
But then, in a moment's notice, Freud could turn his very cold, harsh shoulder away from the different close, male co-workers at different times in his life, and 'identify' with his father's rendition of 'the eviction game'...and 'another one bit the dust'... Freud had a lifelong 'Masculine Seduction-Abandonment (Paternal Oedipal, Identification With The Aggressor) Transference Neurosis-Game'...going on...
I will quickly summarize...
Many -- if not most or all of us -- are looking for a 'Missing Maternal and/or Paternal 'Tit' or a 'Nurturing Shoulder' to lean on...whatever it was that we suddenly perceived as 'missing' in a particular early childhood encounter memory that may have stood, in turn, metaphorically or symbolically for an 'essential missing ingredient in a particular relationship' ...and the rest of our lives we spend 'longing' for that particular missing ingredient...
Here is the meeting ground where Freud's 'traumacy' theory met with his later 'compensatory longing and fantasy' theory. Unfortunately, Freud could only see 'one theory at a time' -- he couldn't see how both theories dialectically and psychodynamically interacted with each other...
The exact structure, content, and dynamics of this 'Missing Love' Neurosis can usually be found and 'pieced together again' like 'Humpty Dumpty', or like an intricate 'jigsaw puzzle' -- at least cognitively -- from the recitial of a person's conscious early memories, particularly the first one. Now -- 'healing' the emotional and behavioral damage brought about over a lifetime by this 'neurotic transference game' is a horse of a different colour.
Psychotherapy -- if it is good psychotherapy -- will likely help. But, more or less, a person is going to have to deal with his or her transference neuroses for the entirety of their lifetime...through good, bad, and ugly times...
Ferenczi -- towards the end of his career -- started playing, much to Freud's anal-rejecting chagrin, with what we might call 'Touch' Psychoanalysis, trying to 'supply the patient' with their 'missing Maternal and/or Paternal Nurturing Love'...This would foreshadow the 'Client-Centered Therapy' of Carl Rogers...
Other schools of therapy -- of 'cognitive, reality-based, and/or Gestalt paradigms' -- would 'more confrontationally' tackle the clients' 'neurotic need for affection, love, power, distance, or whatever the neurotic, manipulative game was that they were playing...' (Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Albert Ellis, Eric Berne, Fritz Perls, William Glasser...)
Rather than spend our whole lifetime neurotically trying to 'change our love surrogate of a bad father into a good one' or 'change our love surrogate of a bad mother into a good one' -- 'You're okay, I'm not', or 'I'm okay, you're not', or 'You're not okay and neither am I'...
You see the essential 'neurotic paradoxical nature of the game' is that we are looking for both the 'good and bad tit' or 'good and bad shoulder' in the same person....
It is not enough that we look for a 'more nurturing mother or father'...No, that is not what we want...The 'obsessive-compulsive-addictive-orgasmic fix' attached to our 'transference games' is some aspect of the idea of 1. 'trying to make a bad boy, good'; or 2. 'trying to make a good boy, bad'; or 3. 'trying to make a bad girl, good'; or 4. 'trying to make a good girl, bad'...
Are you starting to get the picture here?
You see, we need the 'chemistry' of 'conflicting psychological tension'...The greater the tension...the greater the release...ultimately in a psycho-physical transference orgasm...
Now, do you see why 'grown adults' play these sometimes creatively productive and sometimes neurotically destructive 'transference games'...
It is kind of a 'psychological game of Russian Roulette'...
Either we have the greatest orgasm of our life...
Or the encounter/relationship usually at the same time risks the possibility of ending in some type of 'nuclear holocaust'...
Or the encounter/relationship is 'too boring a transference game' and we start looking for 'bigger and better prey'...
On this note, I will leave my little exposition here...and let us both take a break...
And chew on this for a while...
-- dgb, April 6th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
