More Editorial Comments on 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' (Freud, 1920)

Modified additions....Aug. 4th, Aug. 5th, 2011...

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Introduction

'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' -- published in 1920 when Freud was 64 -- was one of Freud's more controversial works, even for a man who was used to engaging himself in controversy. It contains 'the birth' of one of Freud's most controversial and abstract concepts -- 'the death instinct' -- which was tied to man's great propensity for 'aggression', 'destruction', and 'self-destruction'; and it was polarized in a competing 'duality' between 'the life instinct' and 'the death instinct' which in 1923, when Freud wrote 'The Ego and The Id', he 'deposited both competing instincts -- the life instinct and the death instinct -- in the 'id' (the 'reservoir' of all human biological instincts).  The 'life instinct' contained both 'the sexual instinct' -- 'Eros' which 'charged' the mind and body with 'sexual energy' called 'libido' -- and 'the self-preservation instinct' which would make its presence known primarily through the 'operations and actions of the ego and superego' which followed 'the reality principle' as opposed to 'the sexual instinct' that followed 'the pleasure principle' and 'the death instinct' ('Thanatos') which operated 'beyond the pleasure principle'.

This essay contains a wide assortment of fresh, new, and fertile ideas from when it was written in 1920, including 'some competing' ideas with Alfred Adler, one of Freud's first co-workers, who had separated from Psychoanalysis by this time (as well as Carl Jung and a number of other important 'ex-psychoanalysts'). One of Freud's most potentially fertile ideas at this time -- 'the mastery compulsion' -- was perhaps just a little too close to Adlerian thinking because Freud relegated this idea 'secondary' to his newly being born 'death instinct'. This in my opinion was a theoretical and clinical mistake where Adler came up on top. However, the 'death instinct' -- or 'death force' (sounds like 'Darth Vader in Star Wars') as I prefer to call it -- still deserves some theoretical  and therapeutic interest. I do not view the 'death instinct' as a 'biological instinct' except perhaps in the 'tangled and often pathological pursuit of perceived self-preservation' but rather as a more 'biologically modified-psycho-social-learning force'. This idea I will pursue in another paper.....Let's go with the essay I wrote here about a week ago in combination with a few modifications that I will make here and now...

-- dgb, Aug. 4th, Aug. 5th, 2011...

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Every word, every concept, every theory, every theorist carries within  it/him/her -- its own particular 'paradigm'...consequently, if we want to  'stay connected' to the world of 'objective reality' in the best way that we can, then we have to be able to be flexible and open-minded enough to know when we need to modify, adjust, extend, detract, throw away...our own particular 'subjective, conceptual paradigm reality' on a part or full-time basis, in exchange for a 'better' -- as in more 'functional' -- paradigm.

Often this may be an 'integrative paradigm'. The best and most immediate example I can come up with right now is physics changed from the 'particle model/theory/paradigm' to the 'wave model/theory/paradigm' to the 'integrative particle-wave theory/model/paradigm' which became the basis for the beginning of 'quantum physics'.... 

Another recent example is what happens in the American Government every day as 1. the President's office; 2. the House of Representatives; and 3. The Senate each try (or not try) to bring their own particlar 'paradigm' -- say, regarding 'the debt ceiling' -- into line with the other two areas (paradigms) of government which each may contain a host of more 'individualized paradigms' on the same 'problematic matter' (to raise or not raise the debt ceiling)...

We can say that there are at least as many 'subjective paradigms' out there as there are individualized people...and as mentioned above, even a 'word', a ' concept', a 'model', a 'theory', a 'principle'...can contain one, two, three, or more 'subjectively perceived paradigms' within it...In effect, we live in a world that is full of literally an 'infinite' number of possible 'subjective paradigms' that may or may not, 'fit well' to differing degrees with 'the objective thing or process' that the paradigm is supposed to 'represent' and/or 'explain'....This is what we will call 'the subjective-objective fitting game'...  

Now, if a 'thing' or a 'process' has a life and death cycle or expectancy or 'force', then if we are to 'play the fitting game right', then our words, concepts, models, theories, paradigms, need to have a life and death cycle, expectancy, or 'force' as well -- in order that it should 'fit' properly with the thing or process that it is supposed to represent.

If the 'thing' dies, then our word, concept or paradigm should 'die too' except as a 'memory' of what 'used to be'...

Words, concepts, models, theories, and paradigms that 'keep going' like the 'Energizer Bunny' even after their 'Master' -- the 'thing' or 'object' or 'process' of its affection and representation -- has died, then we have what might be called an 'outdated, dissociated paradigm' that is no longer representing anything of 'functional life value and substance'....We have the conceptual or paradigm equivalent of a 'Dead Man Walking'...a 'Conceptual Ghost'...a 'Zombie Concept or Paradigm'.... Classical Psychoanalysis is full of such concepts that were born in the Victorian Era -- and should have died in the Victorian Era....but like Dead Men Still Walking...they continue to 'haunt' us...

Freud fought long and hard to defend his concept of 'castration anxiety' but unless you are living with a woman who you 'really believe' is capable of castrating you, then the concept of 'castration anxiety' is not likely to be of much 'common' significance today....far more likely the conceptual and emotional phenomenology of 'performance anxiety' for some individuals in some contexts is very much  'alive' and not 'dead'....The same goes with -- I would surmise -- the archaic, ananchronistic concept of 'penis envy' if it ever was of meaningful significance at all. (If someone wishes to conduct a survey amongst women, please share the results with me. Please make the important distinction between 'penis envy' and 'penis lust'. If a woman would like to have a 'penis attached to her body permanently', then that we will call 'penis envy'; however, if a woman simply wishes to 'borrow' a man's penis -- or its functional equivalent -- 'temporarily' for the sake of 'hedonistic delight' -- i.e., the 'pursuit of the pleasure principle', then that is 'penis lust', not 'penis envy'.) Ironically and paradoxically, 'penis envy' is just as likely -- probably more likely -- to be a 'subjective conceptuology' shared by many men, as opposed to women, similar to 'breast envy' amongst women, the operative masculine and feminine ideal both containing the idea of 'bigger is better' -- in the right bodily places....

While oftentimes a theorist can be found overgeneralizing on a particular concept or theory, and/or 'hanging onto it with a pitbull's bite' long after the 'objective phenomenon' it is supposed to be representing -- has died; so too, can the opposite happen -- which it did in Freud's 'subjective paradigm' -- where Freud effectively 'threw out' his pre-1897 'traumacy' and 'seduction' theory when they were both still very much alive...This is like a doctor 'giving up' on a patient who is still very much breathing -- and alive.

 Thus, we have some 'do's' and 'don't's of 'the subjective-objective fitting game'. Don't hang onto -- and still use -- a concept and/or theory that reflects a perhaps once alive phenomenon that is now dead. And don't discard a concept and/or theory that used to reflect a phenomenon that is still very much alive and breathing...


I have stated elsewhere that every word has both a 'range' and 'focus' of 'self' and 'social' meaning (an extension of the work of George Kelly, A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs, 1955, 1963).

Words like 'unconscious' or 'the unconscious' can be very troublesome -- like the word-concept-phenomen of 'God' -- because if something is 'unconscious', as in 'out of the range of normal consciousness', then how are we to judge whether it is 'real' or not? 'Faith'? That word doesn't work too well with science which is built on a foundation of 'skepticism', not 'faith'...
 Religion is built on 'faith' but science and rational-empiricism can view that 'faith' as being 'toxic' to human philosophy-psychology, which is why we generally have a 'Mexican standoff' -- a generally unresolvable conflict -- between science and religion. They live in two entirely different paradigms of human consciousness and conceptuality. They use entirely different 'personal constructs' unless you are talking about those philosophers, psychologists, and/or scientists who have tried to 'bridge the gap between philosophy, psychology, science and/or relgion' such as Heraclitus, Spinoza, Schelling, Jung, Einstein, myself included... who have delved into similar and/or different dimensions of 'romantic-spiritual-scientific-philosophical-psychological deism and/or pantheism'...

If you are reading the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 'the ego' -- in what I deem to be the first appearance of the term 'ego' in Western philosophy-psychology -- means 'the wholistic self' whereas Freud wavers back and forth between this Ficthean sense of the term 'ego' and the more 'specialized, reductionistic' concept of the term 'ego' that Freud finally zeroed in on in 1923 (The Ego and The Id).

The latter, more specialized (1923) version of the term 'ego' by Freud requires a 'paradigm shift' from the much earlier, Fichtean sense of the 'same word-different (more generalized, wholistic) concept'.

Same word -- different context -- different meaning.

This is perhaps the most important principle in the proper understanding of any word in different historical, social, and/or self contexts/settings /paradigms...resulting in different meanings of the same word...

If it was a mathematical formula, it might read something like this:

The contextual focus of meaning of any word is a particular, more concrete subset of the more generalized range of self and social meaning of the the same word applied in different self and/or social contexts of meaning...

Did you get that? It sounds profound -- it is profound -- the formula is an extension of the same principle that I learned from three 'linguist-semantic philosophers extraordinaire' -- Korzybski, Hayawaka, and Kelly...

In 1893-1896, 'the unconscious' and 'the repressed unconscious' meant something quite different to Freud (based on his 'traumacy-seduction theory') than it did in 1923 (based on his 'instinct-fantasy theory'). The shift in meaning of the term 'unconcious' and the idea of 'the repressed or dynamic unconcious' came on the heels of a radical 'paradigm shift in theory' after 1896 from 'the traumacy-seduction theory' to 'the instinct-fantasy theory'...

I now view May 4th, 1896 as the day of 'The Perfect Storm' in Freud's life -- where particular discordances and inconsistencies between 'clinical fact' and 'conceptual theory' (discordances in the 'objective-subjective reality fitting game' ); discordances and collisions in two radically different theoretical approaches and/or paradigms, and finally also, particular economic, professional,  political, and pragmatic realities all 'converged and exploded in Freud's psyche-self-mind-brain' in a way that started to give us a 'totally different Psychoanalysis' -- 'Classical' Psychoanalysis as opposed to 'Pre-Classical' Psychoanalysis -- after this day as opposed to before this day.

After May 4th, 1896, 'the unconcsious' would never be viewed the same...

After May 4th, 1896, 'traumacy' would never be viewed the same...

After May 4th, 1896, 'seduction' -- as in 'childhood sexual assault', at least between a father and his daughter -- would never mean the same...   

After May 4th, 1896, 'reality' and 'fantasy' would never mean the same...(fantasy would mean more, and reality would mean less...)

After May 4th, 1896, 'memories' would never mean the same....they would be divided up into 'screen memories' and 'fantasy memories'...

Aside from the economic, professional, political, and pragmatic realities that were 'stressing' and 'distressing' Freud at this particular time in Freud's life (leading up to the letter of May 4th, 1896 to Fliess...), I would argue -- indeed, I do now argue -- that Freud's 'clinical' and 'theoretical nemisis' was 'the repetition compulsion'.

It was bothering him in 1895-96, even as Freud was laying out the heart of his 'traumacy-seduction theory' -- to the point where he started to abandon this theory on May 4th, 1896, and 'the repetition compulsion' was still bother him in 1920 when he wrote 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'...

Partly because of the 'clinical impact' of 'the repetition compulsion' on his thinking in 1895-1896, Freud decided to keep his cherished ''constancy principle' and 'pleasure-unpleasure principle'  and 'repression theory' (which were both all causing him some theoretical problems), and instead, throw out his recently cherished and trumpeted 'traumacy-seduction theory' which was/were colliding with the other three principles/theories....

The theoretical inconsistency/contradiction went something like this:

If a memory is supposedly so 'traumatic' and 'painful', why is it that some people tend to 'repeat' a particular memory in an endless parade of different 'nuances' and 'fantasies' in a way that suggests that the memory seems to be more appropriately viewed as the 'hub' of a 'personal fetish' rather than anything that is 'trying to be avoided and denied and repressed because of its horrifically painful nature at any cost'? 

And so was born Freudian 'Instinct-Fantasy' Theory and 'Classical' Psychoanalysis... That was 'officially' -- in my personal rendition of this historical psychoanalytic turning point -- starting on May 4th, 1896...

Now Freud was starting to look at 'memories' AND 'dreams' as both being based on 'fantasies' and 'underlying instincts'...like 'The Oedipal/Electra Complex'...

In the process, 'traumatic memories' and 'real childhood sexual assaults' were being 'left by the wayside' -- or alternatively -- 'thrown out the window or into the trash can', or 'lit a fire' to (very much like how he 'lit a fire' to, and destroyed, Fliess' personal letters, in the name of 'personal privacy' and/or 'protecting Fliess' and/or both Fliess' and his own  professional reputation' in the face of some very 'unflattering professional moments'...)

Whatever way you wish to look at it, 'gone' -- or at least 'significantly submerged' -- was Freud's Traumacy-Seduction Theory.

And in its place, was the beginning of Freudian 'Classical (Instinct-Fantasy) Theory....This was after May 4th, 1896, and heading into the turn of the century with all three of Freud's 1. uncompleted 'Project', 2.   the beginning of 'Screen Memories' (1899) and 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1899-1900) fresh in Freud's creatively and/or manipulatively and destructively 're-directed, re-focused mind'....

Ironically, Freud's new 'fantasy-instinct' theory still didn't 'solve' Freud's 'return of his own private clinical nemesis' after World War 1 -- 'the repetition compulsion' -- when it started to show up in his office again, this time, not in the face of his hysterical and/or obsessional patients, in what we would now call patients or clients with 'Post-Traumacy-Stress-Syndrome'...

Once again, Freud had to deal with the unpleasant theoretical dilemma that his cherished 'pleasure-unpleasure principle' and his theory of 'dreams' as 'wish fulfilments' couldn't answer the 'riddle' of 'the repetition compulsion' -- specifically, why war veterans would have 'recurring dreams' -- or rather nightmares -- of their 'worst moments' in the war...

It was this still 'unsolvable riddle' to Freud -- probably in addition to Freud's own more dominant concern with his own 'mortality' and more closely approaching cancer and later death -- that prompted the birth of 'the death instinct' in his classic but still controversial 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' in 1920.

'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' is a brilliant, creative work -- particularly if it is viewed in a slightly modified and then perhaps greatly extended format in the light of still evolving but further advanced 'linguistic-semantic' and 'oxidation and anti-oxidant' knowledge...

My greatest wish in hindsight for 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' -- assuming that there was no 'semantic loss' in the German-English translation (which I am sure that there wasn't) -- is that Freud had called his 'Death Instinct' -- 'The Death Principle' instead of 'The Death Instinct'...But I can't change Freud -- and/or his body of work -- all I can do is 'modify' certain terms, concepts, theories...to meet my own 'conceptual and theoretical wishes and/or needs'....that take me in a partly different direction than Freud but still with Freud -- in addition to Hegel -- 'the double dialectic force' -- being the main two influence on my evolving body of work here...

Sometimes Freud was 'dualistic and dialectic' in his thinking; at other times he was 'monistic' (choosing to go this way or that way with a particular concept and/or theory rather than 'integrating' the possibility of two or more concepts/theories either 'conflicting' and/or 'harmonizing' with each other -- or a combination of both -- which is much closer to the way 'life' actually works...)

Freud got into much more theoretical trouble when he took an 'either/or' stance than he did when he, in effect, either said to himself, or to someone working with him (or against him), 'Let's see how these 'conflicting' theories might work in 'conficted harmony' or 'harmonized conflict' with each other such that we can keep them both'....(Now, mind you, there were not too many times in Freud's life that he was this 'dialectically open-minded' -- unless he was working with himself -- such as in the case of 'the life and death instinct'...

What I take as an 'extended modification' from 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' -- as well as the rest of Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis is:

1a. 'The (Monistic) Life Principle'; and

1b.  'The (Monistic) Death Principle'...

Going Head to Head against each other as...

1. 'The (Dualistic-Dialectic) Life-Death Principle'...while

2a.  'The (Monistic) Pleasure Principle' (Pursuing Pleasure, Avoiding and/or Minimizing Pain)...dialectically unites with....

2b.  'The (Monistic) Unpleasure-(Unhappiness) Principle' (Pursuing Pain, Unpleasure and/or Unhappiness while avoiding and/or minimizing the pursuit of pleasure...and/or happiness)...as...

2. 'The Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle' which goes beyond what Freud meant by this principle because he meant it as a 'one-sided, monistic' principle whereas I am now conceptualizing it as a 'two-sided, dualistic and dialectic principle'...which includes those who purposely pursue 'pain' or 'unpleasure' or 'unhappiness'....to make up the second half of Freud's one-sided 'pleasure' principle...which later required him to 'go beyond the pleasure principle'.... 


and 3a. 'The (Monistic) Equilibrium' (or Homeostatic Balance or Constancy) Principle'...which needs to be dualistically and dialectically balanced with...

3b. 'The (Monistic) Unequilibrium (or 'Homeostatically Unbalanced' or 'Unconstancy) Principle'...to create...

3. 'The Equilibrium-Unequilibrium (Constancy-Unconstancy) Principle'...and...

4a. 'The (Monistic) Conservation of Energy Principle' which needs to be dualistically and dialectically balanced with...

4b. 'The Unconservation of Energy Principle'...to form...

4. 'The Conservation-Unconservation of Energy Principle'...and...

5. 'The Displacement-Non-Displacement of Energy Principle'... 


And now we have opened up a whole mountain or ocean of new and/or old dualistic-dialectic theoretical possibilities...such as...

6. 'The Dictatorship-Democracy Principle';
7. 'The Liberal-Conservative Principle';
8. 'The Apollonian-Dionysian Principle';
9. 'The Superego-Underego (or 'Topdog-Underdog' or 'Inferiority-Superiority Complex) Principle';
10. 'The Nurturing-Critical Principle';
11. 'The Safety-Excitement (Security-Insecurity, Novelty-Routine) Principle';
12. 'The Commitment-Freedom Principle';
13. 'The Ethical-Unethical Principle';
14. 'The Organization-Disorganization (Predictability-Chaos) Principle;
15. 'The Oral-Anal Principle';
16. 'The Reason-Romantic Principle';
17. 'The Active-Passive Principle';
18. 'The Science-Spirituality(Religion) Principle';
19. 'The Proactive-Reactive Principle';
20. 'The Yang-Yin (Masculine-Feminine, Testosterone-Estrogen, Fire-Water) Principle';
21. 'The Abstract-Concrete (Plato-Aristotle, Freud-Breuer, 'Fly High in the Air-Ground Yourself on the Earth') Principle;
22. 'The Realism-Idealism Principle';
23. 'The Traumacy-Fantasy Principle';
24. 'The Memory-Fantasy Principle';
25. 'The Dream-Nightmare Principle';
26. 'The Impulse-Restraint (Id-Ego/Superego) Principle;
27. 'The Consciousness-Un(Sub)consciousness Principle'
28. 'The Contact-Avoidance Principle';
29. 'The Dominance-Submission (Sadism-Masochism, Power-Seeking-Approval-Seeking) Principle';
30. 'The Exhibitionism-Voyeurism Principle';
31. 'The Heterosexuality-Homosexuality Principle';
32. 'The Narcissistic-Altruistic Principle;
33. 'The Introverted-Extroverted Principle';
34. 'The Righteous-Rebellious Principle';
35. 'The Constructive-Deconstructive (Creative-Destructive) Principle';
36. 'The White-Black (God-Satan, Good-Evil, Heaven-Hell) Principle'
37. 'The God-Scapegoat (Falsely Idolized-Falsely Vilified and Terrorized) Priniple;
38. 'The Introjection-Projection Principle'
39. 'The Overt-Covert (Transparent-Hidden) Principle;
40. 'The Centralization-Decentralization Principle';
41. 'The Humanistic-Existential (Compassionate-Accountable) Principle;
42. 'The Freedom-Determinism (Existential-Transference, Here-and-Now-There--and-Then) Principle';
43. 'The Push-Pull (Drive-Goal) Principle';
44. 'The Being-Becoming Principle';
45. 'The Monistic-Dualisitic (Dialectic) Principle'...
46. 'The Love-Hate Principle';
47. 'The Dependence-Independence Principle';
48. 'The Self-Social Principle';
49. 'The Individual-Community Principle'
50. 'The Individual-Government Principle'

I am sure that there are a few dozen -- or more likely, a few HUNDRED DOZEN -- dualistic-dialectical possibilities, principles, and/or theories that did not rise to the top of my head in the fleury of dialectic conceptual action above...

The dualistic-dialectic spectrum -- and 'quantum' or 'multi-dialectic' -- spectrum of the life and death process interacting with each other in a constantly evolving and/or de-evolving 'life and death playoff'
is very much worth following up behind with labels, concepts, and theories of the same dualistic-quantum-dialectic nature...that is, if we want to play the best possible 'fitting game' (Perls) looking for the best possible structural and dynamic similarity (Korzybskci, Hayakawa) between our words, concepts, theories -- and 'the subjective-objective world of living and dying phenomena'...

If we want to 'play the fitting game properly' with language, concepts, and theories fitting the very real game of 'life and death', then we need to make our language, concepts, and theories structually and dynamically similar to life which demands the need for new reconstructions and extensions of old dualistic-dialectic words, concepts, and theories...and joining all these dualistic and dialectic theories together into one comprehensive whole -- indeed, this is the 'idealistic, quantum-dialectic goal of 'Quantum (or 'Multi')-Dialectic-Interplay (QDI or MDI or DGB as in 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging')  Language-Philosophy-Psychology-Politics-Economics... -- and within this larger world of the 'quantum-dialectic universe -- both in theory and in practice' -- what we are focusing in on right here -- namely -- 'Multi-(Quantum)-Dialectic-Interplay' (MDI or QDI) Psychoanalysis' or 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'...to get us closer to our multi-dialectic idealistic goal(s)....

I don't want to flood you with any more acronyms than I have to...but these are a cross-section of the different acronyms that you will find spread out over the 6 years of writing 'Hegel's Hotel'...or 'Hotel Hegel' or...'The Hegel Hotel'...or 'The Hegel-Freud Hotel'... which keeps changing as well...until I finally zero in on hopefully the simplest acronyms and titles that I wish to keep...while discarding the rest...or 'retiring' them in my 'archives'...

In essence, we are picking up what is most important in Freud's classic 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', then move beyond it and tackle and pick up what is most important in 'The Ego and The Id',  and continue to evolve in 'Multi-Dialectic-Interplay Psychoanalysis' with different editorial reports, modifications, and extensions of 'classic' Freudian papers (which one day will be ordered chronologically as they appear in The Standard Edition... 

What we are looking for is 'new integrations and evolutions' -- through labeling, conceptualizing, theorizing, and re-theorizing -- in an endless Hegelian cycle of 'constructionism', 'deconstructionism' and 'integrationism' -- or more classically worded in Hegelian Philosophy as: 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; and 3. 'synthesis'....and start the cycle over again, ideally at a 'higher level of creative integration and evolution'

Dialectic interplay...and beyond that...

'Multi or Quantum-Dialectic Interplay'...

Of which Freud only partly subscribed to...

You see, everywhere that Freud created a 'monistic, one-sided' concept and/or theory, he was virtually 'seducing' his co-workers and students to work on 'counter or anti-Freudian theories'...

The whole 'Freudian over-controlling phenomenon' was very much like a parent telling his or her teenage son or daughter 'what he or she must do' and/or 'what he or she must not do'....which virtually turns into a 'seduction' to do -- or at least 'investigate out of rebellious curiosity' -- the opposite...

This 'rebellious curiosity and perceived wish or even need to demonstate one's own creative (and/or destructive) freedom and independence' is as much a part of 'human nature' -- particularly for a more 'rebellious' and/or 'independent' type of personality (the type that 'doesn't want to be controlled', such as yours truly) -- as sexual curiosity and drive is for almost everyone...

The funny part of this whole 'reverse psychology' syndrome, is that when all is said and done -- and all the 'anti-Freudians' and 'counter-Freudians' and 'post-Freudians' and 'neo-Freudians have each had their particular  'field day' -- the biggest challenge of all is for 'the multi or quantum-integrationist theorist' to go back in history, waddle through history, evolve with history, and come back to the present to 'put everything back together again' in one colossal 'multi-dialectic' or 'quantum-dialectic' integrative package... This is metaphorically akin to 'all the king's men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again'....But they couldn't...

This is where you sometimes need 'The Grand Narrative' of one man or woman -- a 'Grand Inquistor, Constructionist, Deconstructionist, and/or Integrative Theorist' -- who can do what hundreds, perhaps thousands, or even millions of theorists couldn't do before him or her....In the 'fitting game of philosophy vs. life (and/or death)', this has been largely a man's game headed by the likes of Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Voltaire, Diderot, Paine, Jefferson, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and I could go on and on -- but in the 20th and presumably the 21st century (particularly within the overall movement of different brands of 'feminism'), this 'male domination' of philosphy will probably start to 'even out' as more and more 'female philosophers continue to come out of the closet'....and in the field of clinical psychology, we have been blessed with the abilities and contributions of a number of top level clinical psychologists such as Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, and Anna Freud...

In my opinion, Sigmund Freud still heads the list as the most productive, creative philospher-psychologist-theorist in Western history...which is not to say that Freud couldn't be -- or wasn't -- wrong, sometimes so terribly wrong, or simply 'theoretically boxed in by his time and culture in history'...

For me, perhaps the most important time in the history and evolution of Psychoanalysis has come, 'where the boxed in' elements of Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis need to 'dialectically meet and integrate' with 'the boxed out' elements of Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis....

This remains my 'Quantum-Dialectic Ideal'....

The ideal of 'DGB Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalyis'...

And 'Hegel's Hotel'...

To which I must passionately continue to address myself....

In 'The Existential, Being-Becoming, Fitting Game of Life'...


I think we have covered enough for today...which has now turned into 'tonight'...

Next up, we will look at new dialectic interplay and integrations in the theoretical and clinical connections between 'the repetition compulsion', 'the mastery compulsion', and 'the life and death and (instinctual?) forces'...

On that note....

I wish you all...

A good night...

-- dgb, July 30th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...

Editorial Comments, Modifications, and Extensions on 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' (Freud, 1920)

1. Introduction

In this essay, we will look at some of the strengths, weaknesses, possible modifications, and/or extensions of 'the death instinct' -- a still controversial concept created by Freud in one of his most famous works, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', published in 1920.

We sometimes use the expression...'He has a death wish'....in the context of what most of us would view as 'very high risk-taking behavior' by some people, especially when they keep gravitating back to these types of behaviors...

Perhaps the expression,

'There is a life force, and a death force -- in everything'....

Might sit with some people better...

Let's look at some of the variables that may or may not be involved in making sense -- and/or nonsense -- out of the idea of a 'death instinct' or 'death wish' or 'death force' -- particularly the last one which may be the most palatable of the three of them...

But like usual, Freud wasn't generally interested in the 'palatable'....

He would sooner deliver the 'unpalatable' rather than the 'palatable'...

The 'shocking' rather than the 'mundane'...

And except for 1896 (when his family income and professional career may have been seriously threatened),

To 'unappease' rather than to 'appease'....

That was Freud...

And in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' (BPP), we enter one of his most controversial essays.

Did creating the dualism and the dialectic between 'the life instinct' and 'the death instinct' help Freud, or hinder Freud, in his post-1920 theorizing?

In some ways -- or at least partial ways -- BPP seemed like Freud 'returning to his largely dismissed 1895 Traumacy Theory' -- attempting to account for those clinical facts that he could not otherwise account for using his 'Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle' (PUP, pup) Theory.

Specifically, Freud had to deal with the clinical phenomenon of 'the repetition compulsion'. But that may have been partly why Freud largely abandoned the traumacy theory in the first place. Freud's rendition of the 'traumacy theory' back in 1895 might have been better labelled as his 'traumacy-repression-pleasure-unpleasure-principle (pup)' theory because, for Freud back then, if there was no 'repression' and/or 'resistance', then there was no 'neurosis'. If clients were 'bringing up' and 'repeating' their supposedly 'most traumatic moments' way too easily, then that seemed to violate both his repression-resistance theory and his pleasure-unpleasure (pup) principle. Freud 'solved' this clinical problem -- or so he thought at the time -- by dropping his 'painful traumacy' theory and replacing it with his new theory at the time (1897 onwards...) -- 'pleasurble fantasy' theory. But even this did not seem to entirely work -- to solve the clinical phenomenon of the 'repetition compulsion'...

So Freud took another stab at soving the 'repetition compulsion' problem in 1920. Back was the Traumacy Theory (or at least partly). Gone was his PUP Theory (or at least partly). And replacing his PUP Theory -- was his new 'Death Instinct' (DI) Theory...

Did this work? Or not? ....

Let's start to look at some of the different variables surrounding BPP and Freud's new addition to Classical Psychoanalysis in 1920 -- 'the death instinct'...

....dgb, July 26th, 2011... 
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2. Language, Perceptual-Interpretations, and Paradigms


Interpreting somone else's essay can be a dangerous, misguided enterprise. Words, concepts, and theories can all play havoc with our minds -- both as writer-theorists, and as readers trying to interpret someone else's writing and theorizing.

Every word has both a 'range of self and social meaning' and a 'focus of self and social meaning', and it is quite easy for us as readers --  based partly on the 'range of self and social meaning' phenomenon, partly on our own unique 'interpretive understanding of a particular, word, concept, and/or theory, as we apply it to a particular reading context, and in this regard, our own range and focus of different ideas and/or experiences that we are most likely to apply to a given reading context, all else being equal -- based on all of these different factors, it becomes extremely easy in many instances to 'end up on a different page of meaning than the writer we are trying (or not trying) to properly understand' . In so doing, as readers, we may easily miss what the author really had in mind by using the same word shared by author and reader alike -- but in a totally or significantly different sense of meaning.

In reading and writing -- just as in life as a whole -- there are some readers and some writers who are more or less 'narcissistic' than others, meaning more or less willing to take the time and energy to communicate a 'shared meaning' as opposed to a 'we, as reader and writer respectively, locked in a dialectic relationship that has some significant limitations in terms of different goals and agendas, lack of visual ques, voice ques, full context ques, and the opportunity for 'checking meaning' (in the case of a written piece of work) -- may or may not have the patience and/or motivation in our 'fast moving world' to do anything other than to 'look for instant gratification and/or miracle solution pills', on our terms, meaning we don't want to work too hard (like not wanting to exercise or change our diet to lose the pounds we want to lose), at the expense of missing an opportunity to 'dialectically and democraticly connect' -- meaning both sides reaching out to understand the other person's frame of reference, while at the same time, being assertive in our own frame of reference, and when necessary, working hard to find the necessary common ground, to work out a mutally negotiated 'compromise-formation' that gets a settlement done and working, not forever locked in a 'strike', a 'lockout', an 'impasse', an 'either/or ultimatum'....that brings both parties into contact with what might be called 'the death, destructive, and/or self-destructive, instinct'.  We can't or won't look outside of our 'old paradigm', replace our 'old, near-sighted pair of glasses', step outside of our old 'repetition compulsion', our lifelong 'transference compulsion', our 'serial behavior pattern'  -- and adapt to a changing world, with new modified, and/or integrative responses, that work better than the 'out of date' old ones...

We evolve or we get left behind. Those who are best adapted to meet the challenges of a fast changing world, are those who have both a strong 'will to power or self-empowerment', and at the same time, a 'social sensitivity and a willingness and flexibility' to modify our own personal goals and agendas to meet those of whom we need to interact and 'share our world' with...

'Too weak' or 'too strong' are both likely to have their own respective 'death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' attached to them. Indeed, in the paradigm of Hegel, every word, every concept, every characteristic, every person, has its own respective 'life' and 'death' force attached to it...in different degrees, in different contexts, and at different times... In different ways, we all need to 'nurture' our 'life wishes' and find different, functional ways of 'quelling our death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' before they eventually destroy us...This perhaps, is the best message to be taken from Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' although this is perhaps a more 'existential message' than the more 'mechanistic, deterministic message' that Freud was delivering in 1920.  

 The dangers of language and the dangers of life are basically one and the same: 'not 'zigging when life zags'.

In terms of language, we must not get caught in the 'one word, one meaning fallacy'. As long as language is 'flexible' in both its range of 'narcissistic' (self), and its various range of 'social' meanings, it always will breed 'referent misinterpretation and/or confusion'.

We need to better understand how 'words' are following 'the fitting game'. Language, for the most part, was -- and is -- meant to 'symbolically represent' our internal and external world -- and the types of similar and different types of 'dynamic processes' that go on in both these worlds.

In this regard, language was created -- and is being 're-created' each and every day -- to twist and turn, zig and zag, as life twists and turns. zigs and zags, in a 'cat and mouse game' -- the 'language-life fitting game'.

No problem as long as life doesn't 'zig' as language 'zags'.....Too much of this and you have the 'deconstruction and eventual death of a concept or theory'... The constancy principle, the pleasure principle, the inertia principle, the equillibrium principle, the entropy principle, the reality principle...they all, at one point or another, have 'zigged' while life 'zagged'....They have all been 'constructed' by this or that ambitious, creative theorist; they all in turn have also been 'deconstructed' when the concept/theory missed too many 'zags' in the road of life....and left the reader conceptually flying off the cliff of 'language-life structural and/or dynamic dis-similarity'...

Every concept, every theory can be viewed as having both a life and a death instinct....

Hegel's 'death instinct' meets Freud's 'death instinct'....

In the paraphrased words of Hegel, every concept, every theory, every characteristic, carries within it, the seeds of its own self-destruction....it carries its own private 'Thanatos (death) energy' which paradoxically destroys the concept or takes it out of fashion as soon as it loses its 'predictability of life' function... 

-- dgb, July 28th, 2011

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To be continued...

An Introduction to DGB Modified 'Ego and Id' Theory: Part 1: History and Overview -- From Fichte to Freud

Let's go back in the history of philosophy -- briefly -- to the philosophy of Johann Fichte even if I don't care too much for what I can understand of his very obscure, head-scratching philosophy-psychology. Fichte dropped one of Kant's most important concepts -- the 'noumenal' (or 'objective') world -- and kept Kant's bipolar concept of the 'phenomenal' (or 'subjective') world as being 'all inclusive', meaning no 'noumenal (objective) world' exists.

Admittedly, the noumenal-objective world is a metaphysical concept in that 'How can we know what is purportedly 'beyond the reach and grasp of our senses'? Obviously, we can't -- as in we Kant -- which is what makes the epistemological domain of Kant's philosophy a highly skeptical, metaphysical business.

However, Fichte -- in trying to eliminate this 'Kantian epistemological skepticism' -- i.e., never knowing for sure whether our senses and reasoning process having actually accurately, or at least semi-accurately, captured and represented our noumenal-objective world -- to repeat, Fichte only takes us down a more obscure, mystical path that all but eliminates the art and science of epistemology altogether.

Read Wikipedia's biography of Fichte to get Schopenhauer's rather sharp-witted 'deconstruction' (from Schopenhauer's 'Parerga and Paralipomena' -- Greek for 'Appendices and Omissions', 1851) of Fichte's 'philosophy that metaphysically eliminates 'the real, (noumenal)-objective world' that we live in'...

The good part of Fichte's philosophical system is that he introduced a 'philosophy of consciousness -- and self-consciousness, partly in 'Descartean-Spinozian subjective-wholistic style', that created a path for Freud to follow in the Freud's 'psychology of the ego'. Indeed, as far back as I can trace this concept, Fichte seems to have created the concept of 'the ego' -- as in meaning 'the Whole Self', and/or been the first to use it philosophically.

In between Fichte and Freud, Nietzsche still under Hegel's influence in Nietzsche's first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (1872) -- by interpretive extension (even though Nietzsche didn't use the term 'ego') -- created the bipolar conceptuology of 'the Dionysian Ego' vs. 'the Apollonian Ego' -- which in turn, may or may not have had an influence on Freud's triadic conceptuology of 'the id', 'the ego', and 'the superego'.

 Freud may have thought differently but he was basically compartmentalizing 'the Wholistic Self' or 'the Ego-as-a-Whole' into three separate 'ego-compartments' or 'ego-states': i.e., the ego, the id, and the superego.

In this regard, Freud was changing -- i.e., 'reducing' -- the meaning of 'the ego' -- at least in most contexts -- from 'the ego-as-a-whole' to 'the ego as consisting of one third or at least one of three parts of the Whole Self'....(the id and the superego making up the other two thirds or at least the other two parts of The Whole Self/Personality/Psyche).

In this regard also, Freud's concept of 'the ego' was taking the place of a concept he used to call 'the reality ego' -- i.e., that part of the whole Self concerned with perceiving, interpreting, and evaluating reality both inside and outside the organism -- and then making the final decision (at least under 'normal' conditions) on how best to act and/or not act in order to meet internal and external stressors (and/or 'exciters').

So Freud might roll over in his grave if he saw me writing this next point but 'the id' really is nothing more than an 'alter-ego state or compartment' -- what I have previously called 'The Dionysian Ego' (under Nietzsche's influence).

The fact that the 'primal state of the id' might be deemed located in the unconscious or subconscious is really a non-sufficient point -- the id as Freud described it can equally be viewed as an 'alter-ego state ' consisting of 'impulsive -- often uncivil -- human drives' that is often radically different than our more customary 'social ego' or 'personna' -- as described by Jung -- or even 'the ego' as in 'reality-ego' as opposed to 'pleasure-ego' as described by Freud.

Similarily, the 'superego' can also be viewed as another form of 'alter-ego state', in this case not based on 'impulsive drives' as from the id, but rather from 'introjected (or internalized) parental restraints, values, judgments, and more generally speaking, society's laws, regulations, codes of ethics, morality, and the like...

In conclusion, we can talk about 'three different ego-states' in Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis making up the 'structural triad' of 'the ego-as-a-whole' as originially historically defined and described by Fichte...

Now obviously, if Freud was alive today, he would righteously object -- and probably ostracize me -- for having the nerve to call 'the id' an 'ego-state' or 'ego-compartment...but Dr. Freud...Weren't you the one who said that the ego was origininally 'born' from the id? Wouldn't that make the id a 'rudimentary, primitive, uncivil, unsocialized ego or ego-state or ego-compartment or ego-function -- since we all seem to still carry this 'primitive ego-state-compartment-function' into our adult personalities. We often guard against its (the Id's or 'The Shadow-Id's') 'impulsive propulsions' -- but it is still there our 'unadulterated early childhood ego' if you will -- before it was 'properly and fully socialized'. Perhaps I am over-extending Freud's words but I don't think so...I have to go dig for the exact quote....Not tonight...I have a headache (I don't)...I'm tired (I am)...Time for a break...

On this note,

I will say goodnight.

-- dgb, July 13th, 2011.

-- David Gordon Bain

On The Principle of 'Unified Diversification' or 'Diversified Unity'...As Pertains to The Dialectic Integration and/or Dissociation of Different Elements Within The Human Personality...

Freshly modified...July 9th, 2011...


I have settled on a name for the particular brand of integrative psychoanalysis I wish to teach -- 'DGB Multi-Dialectic-Integrative (MDI) Psychoanalysis'. 

Focusing on the principle of 'homeostatic-dialectic-(democratic) balance' as its central principle, this particular viewpoint -- that borrows different elements from most of the main schools of psychology, starting with 'Pre-Classical', 'Classical', and 'Object Relations Psychoanalysis' as its main foundational structure -- blends 'reality (traumacy and memory) theory' with 'fantasy theory', 'ego psychology' with 'id psychology', 'life' and 'death' forces circulating in the human personality, 'self-objects' blending with 'social objects', 'immediacy (here and now) theory' blending with 'transference (there-and-then) theory', 'narcissistic theory' blending with 'altruistic theory', the past blending with the pressent blending with the future, the conscious personality blending with the subconscious (preconscious and unconscious) personality, conscious memories blending with subconscious memories and both being potentially diagnosable as 'transference memories', not 'screen memories'....

Even though I am not formally trained in Psychoanalysis, and can be considered an 'outsider' and/or an 'underground' psychoanalytic theorist -- being an outsider can be at least partly a good thing as it allows you to develop a different perspective on things (or even a number of such different perspectives), which at the same time, prevents you from becoming locked inside one and only perspective, one 'overly tight, reductionistic, anal-retentive, theoretical box' that limits and closes off your mindset to other more flexible and functional possibilities.

 'Liberal' only becomes 'overly permissive' at the point where 'important, functional boundaries are crossed'. Now obviously, the point at which 'functional' and/or 'normal' becomes 'dysfunctional', 'neurotic', and/or 'pathological' is always subject to significant 'social disagreement' and 'dialectic-democratic (or undemocratic) debate'...

The downside of not being an 'insider' is that you miss much of the depth of the whole evolution and spectrum of (in this case) psychoanalytic ideas, in terms of who's doing and saying what, and in this regard, I have to confess that I more or less lost contact with the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas after the whole Anna Freud, Kurt Eissler, and Jeffrey Masson Seduction Controversy died down in the early 90s, by which time Anna Freud had died in 1982 at the beginning of the controversy, Eissler died in 1999, some 5-7 years after the controversy had subsided, and Masson was about to start his new  career in animal psychology shortly after his litigation procedures had finally ended in the early 90s...

Today, I don't have a clue who is running the Freudian Empire at the top, nor who the main psychoanalytic theorists are, nor what kind of work they are doing...The only 'legendary' psychoanalyst who I know is still alive is Otto Kernberg. (I read part of a recent interview with him that you can find online. I would like to read more of Kernberg's work.) I don't know what happened to Brian Bird. I can't find anything about him -- other than his classic essay on transference (and that Masson met and liked him). Harry Guntrip died in 1975. Morris Eagle received an honourary award for his work in psychoanalysis in 2009, and I assume is still alive.  Guntrip (Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and The Self, 1971, 1973) and Eagle (Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis, 1984) more or less introduced me to the study of 'Object Relations Theory'.

My work, I would eventually like to coherently organize and put on a new blogsite that I have just opened up -- the 'Psychoanalytic Branch' of Hegel's Hotel...http://hegelshoteldgbpsychoanalysis.blogspot.com
in which you should expect a 'solid evolutionary development of the new, 'all-encompassing multi-integrative school' that I have been talking about here -- which will include excerpts and modifications of all 50 years of Freud's theorizing in Strachey's Standard Edition, as well as Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics Theory and Therapy, Primal Therapy, Self-Esteem Psychology...).

My Table of Contents of '(GAP)-DGB Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Psychoanalysis' can be found at the link listed above...

The initials -- and acronym -- 'DGB' which stands for 'Dialectic Gap-Bridging' as well as the initials of my name, is perhaps mainly a duplication of the acronym 'MDI' which stands for 'Multi-Dialectic-Integrative'. Before both of these acronyms, I used to use the acronym 'GAP' which stands for 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic' and also the idea of the various 'theoretical gaps' that DGB Philosophy-Psychology seeks to 'bridge' in some greater or lesser capacity in each and every essay that I write....

The idea of 'multi-dialectic-integrative' can also be referred to as 'multi-bipolar-integrative'. When a psychologist or psychiatrist uses the term 'bipolar personality' today, he or she is basically implying that the 'class' of people under discussion (which could include all of us to greater or lesser extents) have 'unintegrated bipolar personalities'...The therapeutic process whether through 'drug therapy' and/or 'pscyhotherapy' can be presumed (or not) to be one of seeking 'greater bipolar integrationism' and 'less bipolar extremism' in this type of client population (which as stated above probably includes all of us to some greater or lesser extent).

The type of theory that I am trumpeting here is one that goes back to the philosophical assumptions and premises of our oldest philosophers such as Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Lao Tse ('yin' and 'yang'), who all in their own particular way, emphasized the idea that the world is built on the principle of 'attraction' and 'repulsion', 'force' and 'consent', of 'opposites colliding and/or collaborating with each other', trying to 'overpower' each other, 'manipulate' each other, 'exploit' each other, 'suppress' each other, 'opress' each other, and/or the opposite -- 'dialectic-democratic consent' which may or may not include the idea of 'integrating opposite characteristics, beliefs, values, lifestyles, etc'...

It is based on the principle that opposites can both attract and repel, that similarities can both attract and repel, that the world is full of countless 'bipolarities' that 'dialectically interact' with each other, and affect each other in both positive and/or negative ways, that 'integrating opposite bipolarities constitutes much of what makes man happier and healthier -- both individually and collectively, in a movement that might be called 'diversified unification' and/or 'unified diversification' -- that 'Multi-Dialectic-Integrative Psychoanalysis is born.

An example of how this type of paradigm works:

Let's look at the example of a typical family. A husband has a 'dialectic' relationship with his wife (meaning that there are interactive and ideally integrative dynamics going on between the husband and wife with 'actions' and 'reactions' flowing back and forth -- and affecting each other -- from both sides). Now the father is going to have a different type of dialectic relationship going on with his son. The mother will have still a different dialectic relationship going on with her son. And if there is another son and/or daughter involved, the number of different dialectic relationships will continue to expand for every extra member of the family. And I have not yet mentioned the different types of dialectic relationships that are going on between each two siblings....and the different types of dialectics that surface when a third sibling enters into the picture...and/or a parent....and on, and on, we could list the different types of dynamics going on in the family depending on who and who isn't present....This is what I mean by 'multi-dialectics'.

Now, within any dialectic relationship, there is going to be some combination of 'powerplays', 'manipulations', and 'competitions' vs. 'co-operation' and 'integration' going on...That is the nature of any relationship...Adding more people into the fold simply escalates the different numbers and/or types of competitive and/or co-operative interactive dynamics...

Thus, the whole idea of 'dialectic logic' is to map out the different types of interactive, dynamic competitive and/or co-operative possibilities and/or realities in any given set of two or more people, or even two or more 'entities' like 'metaphorical structures postulated within the working psyche'... And the same can even be done for the different body organs in the body as a biologist or biochemist or neurologist or physiologist may look at any or all different possible type(s) of (healthy or unhealthy) interactive dynamics between the different organ structures....

Thus, we can ask the question: What is the general, dialectic, interactive relationship between the 'id' and the 'ego' in most particular situational and/or character contexts?

I would answer: Well, the general goal of the id is to propel its internal tension, its instinct or impulse, its emotion, its experience, its memory, its belief...upwards from subconsciousness to consciousness -- perhaps by way of a conscious mediating 'ego-state' that we might call the 'Idian Ego' or in my previous terminology, 'The Narcissistic-Dionysian Ego' -- that has a direct impact on 'The Central Mediating Ego'.  However, at the same time, the combined job of The Central Ego and The Righteous Superego is to 'push back down' any perceived dangerous and/or anxiety-provoking 'internal tensions' from the population mentioned above...The 'non-threatening' id propulsions may be 'streamlined straight through to The Central Ego for immediate action' whereas the more threatening of the id propulsions may be 'siphoned and vaulted off' into a 'dissociated part of the personality'. This is what we are calling here the 'Id Vault' or 'Shadow-Id (SId) Vault'.

Metaphorically speacking, if this is done early enough in the process, we can say that The Central Ego has 'sent down' 'ego-defenders' to 'swarm', 'encompass', and 'contain' the 'rising internal tensions' before they even get out of subconsciousness -- in which case we can say that 'The Id or Sid Vault' is located in the subconscious personality -- the primary 'home' of the Id. 

We can also say that the SId Vault contains a mixture or 'complex' of 'Shadow', 'Id', and 'Ego-Defending' factors... If the relative strength of the 'Shadow-Id Factor' is greater than the strength of the 'Ego-Defending Factor', the SId Vault will break down and whatever was making the most amount of 'noise' in The SId Vault will be propelled upwards into consciousness and into the Central Ego -- with or without the 'ego's consent'.

This 'upward driving propulsion' can be facilitated by such factors as drugs, alcohol, change in situational context, a rise in internal tension, a lowering of defense-mechanisms...The whole 'ego defensive system' can be very much likened to the way the 'immune system' functions on the biological level....And the 'Id Force'  or 'Id Propulsions' can be likened to some conflated or non-conflated combination of 'red blood cells' (our 'life force') and 'toxic black cells' ('pathogens' arising from some combination of 'traumatic', 'compensatory', and/or 'narcissistic' learning -- which can create a 'destructive', 'self-destructive', and/or 'death force' within us...propelling upwards towardes the Central Ego and Social (or 'Anti-Social) expression.... 


The precursor to the id before 1923 was 'the pleasure ego'  -- which means that Freud changed 'the id' from being a more or less 'conscious ego state', and dialectically opposed to the 'reality ego' (a 'splitting of ego-consciousness into two opposing ego-states here) before 1923, to being a 'largely unconscious un-ego state' in 1923 and afterwards (which seems somewhat inconsistent with Freud's idea that 'the ego' was 'born' from the more 'primitive and uncivil id'.) The question can easily be asked: Can't the id be viewed as an 'ego-state' -- largely subconscious in its most primitive, uncivil, evolving form -- but then perhaps having a 'conscious partner' that we might refer to as 'The Idian Ego (which is an integration of what I have so far been calling 'The Dionysian-Narcissistic-Rebellious Ego').

We have to look at 'The Id' as being a 'primitive ego state' -- the first 'ego state' in the evolutionary development of the child (and primitive man) -- Freud more or less wrote this, as he asserted that the ego was born from the id as an evolutionary and civil enhancement to the overall well-being of the organism. The id followed 'the pleasure principle' while the ego followed 'the reality principle' (safety and ethics or 'the law' first). The id followed the 'primary process' (symbolic language, uncivil wishes, contradictory impulses, no inherent, consistent logic) whereas the ego followed the principles of more coherent, consistent, logical thought (at least ideally).

Pathological breakdowns in 'logic' can be a determining factor in a person's overall type of 'pathology' or 'neurosis', and/or breakdowns in 'social ethics and values', or conversely 'overly stringent ethics and values' can also have a determining effect on the outcome of a person's particular 'neurosis'. Either way, the person can be viewed as being dialectically and/or democratically 'out of balance' in some capacity -- neurosis is generally, if not always, a product of some form of 'bipolar extremism'.

Though I write in the third person here in terms of 'metaphysical and/or metaphorical structures' -- in the end, all of these different 'psychic structures' have to be 'owned' or 're-owned' by us -- the 'I' in the 'Wholistic Self' -- and we are responsible and accountable for each and every behavior that comes out of whatever 'structure' or 'substructure' that we intend to use as a basic 'teaching and/or learning device' for better understanding the intra-psychic dynamics of the personality.

These are some of the different types of 'dialectic dynamics' that you are likely to find going on between the Id and The Central Ego, or between the conscious Idian Ego and The Central Ego with the Righteous Superego harping on the Central Ego from 'over top of its shoulder' like a 'critical, judging parent'. 

There is the basic overall look at how I have taken what I consider to be the best of the work of Freud -- in his 50 years of theorizing -- and added a few extra elements from my own theorizing that is aimed at 'bridging the gap' between Freud's 1895 'Traumacy Theory' and his post-1896 'Instinct, Fantasy, Oedipal, and Narcissistic Theory'.

Certainly more is to come as I view myself as one of the 'leading edge transference theorists in the world (underground or not).

In this regard I will seek to continue to bring together such old, new, and/or modified concepts as: 'Traumacy Transferences', 'Impulse Transferences', 'Defensive or Compensatory Transferences', 'Identification and/or Introjective Transferences', 'Projective Transferences', 'Narcissistic Transferences', 'Approval-Seeking Transferences', 'Righteous Transferences', 'Nurturing Transferences', 'The Repetition Compulsion', 'The Re-Creation Compulsion', 'The Mastery Compulsion', 'Serial Behavior Patterns', 'Profiling Different Character Types', 'Profiling Different types of Complexes and Neuroses' (Anxiety Neuroses, Phobic Neuroses, Obsessive-Compulsions, 'Anal' Obsessions, 'Oral' Obsessions, Narcissistic Neuroses, Paranoia, Different Types of Bi-Polar Disorders, 'Anal-Schizoid' (Distancing) Behavior, Borderline Personality Types (what I consider -- following after Guntrip -- to be people with certain neurotic features in their personality that could -- if certain 'safeguards' are taken away -- balloon into a full-blown 'psychosis' or 'psychotic breakdown' or 'schizophrenia'...)...following in Jung's line of work...  'Mythological Archetypes/Heroes/Gods at work within the personality'...and much, much more...

-- dgb, July 2nd, updated July 9th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...