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We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. -- Albert Camus
- A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)
All things truly wicked start from an innocence. -- Ernest Hemingway
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When I start using Nietzsche's concepts of 'The Abyss' and 'The Monster', I have this visual picture in my head....It's a bit morbid -- existential too, Freudian too -- sometimes the imagery comes to me such as now in a more 'academic' moment; other times, if I am feeling deathly sick, the imagery and whole experience becomes much more real...
Here I am, David Bain, looking over the precipace of 'life' and 'death', metaphorically if not literally a few times in my life....I'm staring into a deep, deep abyss, and I start to see two 'eyes' staring back at me....Am I hallucinating or is this real? Am I staring down into the eyes of a 'Shadow Life Monster' or a 'Shadow Death Monster'? Or is it both?
If I keep staring long enough into the Abyss, is it possible that I could be 'dragged down into the Abyss'? Or even jump? Or give the 'Monster' enough time, space, freedom, and energy to 'jump out of the abyss of my psyche' and into my 'Conscious Personality'?
Academically speaking, can I make a distinction between my 'Id Monster' and my 'Superego Monster'?
My Superego Monster seems to be ranging around in my conscious personality all the time, and when I get sick, or when I start thinking about what I wanted to achieve, and haven't achieved up to this point in my life, my Superego Monster can start going 'ballistic' on me -- 'bathing and toxifying me in self-loathing' like a character in a Doestevsky novel.
My 'Shadow-Id Monster' is of a different sort....He seems to dwell in the depths of my personality a la Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung. Usually, he stays down there -- indeed, I usually have lots of 'ego-defenders' to keep him 'chained up down there'....Still, he has enough power to 'send partly restrained amounts of either life and/or death energy up to any 'ego-state' in my conscious personality -- 'sexual energy' up to my 'hedonistic ego', 'creative-passionate energy' up to my 'creative-romantic ego', 'righteous energy' up to my 'righteous ego' (which can turn into my 'Superego Monster'), 'approval-seeking and/or co-operative energy' up to my 'approval-seeking, co-operative ego'...(which is the more 'wimpy', non-confrontational, non-assertive side of my character)....
Some of these different types of energies can collide with, oppose and contradict each other...especially as they fully manifest themselves in their respective ego-states. And all of these different 'ego-states' can themselves split into either a 'superior (topdog) ego position' or an 'inferior (underdog) ego position.
We have to recall that before 1920, Freud visualized the dialectic opposition between 'the sexual instincts' (with a 'sexual object' and 'sexual aim' in mind) and the 'self-preservative (ego) instincts' which were designed to 'keep our sexual instincts under normal, safe, civil, self-control', and not have them endanger or destroy us -- what can turn out to be a 'lose-lose situation' or even a 'win-lose situation' where the loss significantly over magnifies any 'win' before it...(like having an affair, getting caught, and losing your wife/husband and family because of it).
However, in 1914, Freud introduced the concept of 'narcissism' and this concept became front and centre in all further, evolving Freudian theory. It more or less, took the place of Freud's '(sexual) libido' theory because 'narcissism' became a new form of 'energy' theory containing both 'sexual instincts' and 'ego instincts' which blew away the line between 'sexual instincts' and 'self-preservative instincts' -- they both merged together under the concept of 'narcissism' which reflected 'the self-interests of the organism' whether that 'self-interest' was of a 'sexual' nature, an 'egotistic' nature, and/or a 'self-preservative' nature.
In this regard, you could start to see 'conflicts' developing within the concept of 'narcissism' itself -- such as 'approach-avoidance conflicts' between being boldly assertive vs. being more 'cautiously conservative and self-restrained'....
And our aforementioned conflict between 'the sexual (id) instincts' and 'the self-preservative (ego) instincts' still remained -- it was just that, again, the line between what we would normally call 'the ego' (defense) and 'the id' (sexual libido) had both been subsumed under the concept of 'narcissism', and thus, Freud had no conceptual 'dualism' left, heading into 1920.
You could probably say that there was a new 'dualism' between 'narcissism' and 'altruism' but Freud never, to my knowledge, seemed to write much about 'altruism' except as a type of 'sublimation' or 'diffusion' of underlying 'sexual impulse and energy' and/or 'narcissistic impulse and energy'.
One could argue that the root of all altruism is still narcissism -- this is a type of Ayn Rand philosophy (as well as Freudian philosophy), the idea being that when we say, 'I love you because you are hugely important to me', well, you can see here a 'merging of altruism and narcissism'....You could call 'love' -- either 'narcissistic altruism' or conversely, 'altruistic narcissism'....We are not going to treat anyone with 'love' (altruism) who we do not deem to be 'important to us' (narcissism).
Anyways, we can say that this Freudian 'problem' of 'narcissism' blowing away the dualistic boundary between 'sex' and 'self-prervation' led to Freud's huge revisionism of 1920 (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) in which 'the life' and 'death instincts' both became incorporated within the concept/confines of 'the id' -- this latter part of the revision not taking place until 1923 when Freud wrote 'The Ego and The Id'.
My conceptuology above which borrows a couple of Nietzschean metaphors follows in line with this last revisionism on the part of Freud where he 'deposited' all 'life and death energy' into the confines of 'the id'.
If you are a psychotherapist or a client engaging in 'depth' psychology, it can be very useful to use the Nietzschean model of 'The Abyss' and 'The Monster'
as I have above, and line it up with 'Classic' Freudian Psychoanalysis with some modifications and extensions such as below...
My concept of 'The ID Vault' (think also of 'Impulse-Defense' Vault) as basically a synonym and substitute for 'The Abyss'. Turning to Jungian language, I also feel comfortable using Jung's famous concept of 'The Shadow' as another synonym and substitute for Nietzsche's metaphor of The Abyss....
The 'It', the 'id', the 'shadow', the 'disowned', the 'dissociated', the 'estranged', the 'suppressed', the 'repressed', the 'projected', the 'transferred', the 'sublimated'....all can be incorporated into one under-riding concept regardless of what we want to call it: I have basically brought this idea down to three or four concepts: 1. The Id (which can have 'free-flowing', 'partly free-flowing', or 'restrained/bound/imprisoned energy' in which case I bring into being my concept of ; 2. The Id Vault (restrained/bound/imprisoned Id energy); 3. The Shadow; 4. The (Nietzschean) Abyss (or 'The Black Pit').
Now the human personality is full of multiple dualisms, paradoxes, contradictions, and even hypocrisies. What might be totally 'intolerable' to one of our 'internal ego states' might be totally 'acceptable' to another....That is why most people can generally accept the dualistic ideas of 'ego' and 'alter-ego'...Robert Louis Stevenson published 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in 1886 which, to give you a time line...
1. Nietzsche had just finished writing 'Thus Spoke Zarathrusta' between 1883 and 1885, and wrote (or published) 'Beyond Good and Evil' the same year that Stevenson published Dr. Jekyll (1886)....Nietzsche would 'lose his sanity' on January 3rd, 1889.
2. Joseph Breuer -- later to hook up with Freud -- had clinically worked with 'Anna. O' (Bertha Pappenheim) between 1880 and 1882, in what is now usually regarded as 'the first case of psychoanalysis'. It would not be written up until the 'preliminary communications' of 'Studies on Hysteria', co-written by Freud and Breuer, in 1893.
3. Freud, in October, 1885 went to study with Charcot in Paris which became the turning point at which Freud moved away from neurology research and into the field of medical psychopathology and what would eventually turn into the study and practice of 'clinical psychology';
4. As Freud started advancing his ideas of a 'split between the conscious and unconscious self' -- and 'the defense/repression against unacceptable ideas' (which started out as 'real memories' in Freud's work between 1893 and 1896, and then became 'repressed fantasies' after 1897, so too was Pierre Janet advancing his ideas of 'splits in consciousness' whereby 'two or more states of consciousness are dissociated from each other'....Janet was probably even a year or two ahead of Freud in that Freud was critiquing Janet's work in Freud's earliest papers on the study of hysteria and neurosis (1893), and trying to clearing distinguish the difference in their work, which may or may not have been more or less conceptually important. Janet coined the terms 'subconscious' and 'dissociation' as opposed to Freud's 'unconcious' and 'repression'. Both of Janet's terms/concepts here I prefer to Freud's because they are less 'definitionally confusing', less 'reductionistic' and, I believe, more clinically useful. I have already shown -- and will show more below -- that 'transference neuroses/complexes' can easily be linked to 'conscious early memories' (which Freud later called 'screen memories', minimizing as opposed to trumpeting their clinical significance). Freud was only interested in 'repressed' memories (or after 1896 'repressed fantasies') because for Freud in his early work it was the 'repression' that 'caused' the neurosis, and nothing less -- like 'suppression' or 'conscious dissociation' would do it. 'Repression', to this day, remains a troublesome concept -- a potential 'smoke and mirrors' concept that has no empirical -- or possibly even 'clinical' validity. Or alternatively, 'repression' -- as in a 'repressed memory' may be a 'rare bird' that only few therapists and/or clients may ever experience in or out of therapy. Most of us 'remember' our childhood traumacies -- only too clearly. And our 'remembering them very clearly' does not stop them from being 'neurotically and/or erotically operative' as 'transference/lifestyle neuroses/complexes/games' for our whole lives. What Freud called 'the repetition compulsion' does not have to be 'unconscious' or 'repressed' to be neurotically/erotically operative although it is usually carried on 'out of consciousness' or 'out of awareness' -- i.e., in Janet's word -- 'subconsciously'.
Are we knit-picking over our choice of words. Maybe -- or maybe not. A discussion or debate that we will perhaps pick up again at another time. There are many similar and different comparative and contrasting angles between the two competing theorists/therapists that are worth investigating in greater depth. Just not here.
Whether we want to talk about 'dissociative splits in consciousness' as in 'dissociative splits between ego states' or we want to talk about 'splits between conscious and sub/unconscious impulses' (the ego vs. the id, or the personna vs. the shadow), all of this partly similar, partly different conceptuology and terminology can be viewed as being like one big 'spider's nest' that weaves its way inward towards the 'core figure' of 'the spider', the Monster in the Abyss and/or in The Superego, the Identification and/or Compensatory Hero...'the transference neurosis'....
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Nor could Freud...properly...
Because he was too busy looking for either 'sexually repressed memories' and/or 'sexually repressed fantasies'....
Which drew the common criticism of 'pansexualism' and 'scientific (or non-scientific) reductionism'...
Let me give you this example, kinda like an 'excavation' example that Freud used to use.
Let us say that Freud was a 'building contractor' and had information suggesting that there was 'gold' -- or alternatively a 'skeleton' -- buried somewhere behind one of the walls in your house, although he didn't know which wall. If you wanted it taken out from behind one of the walls, then he and his work crew would have to start opening up the walls in the house, wall by wall, until he found where the 'gold' (or 'skeleton') in your house was actually hidden....
Then I came along as a second building contractor and concurred with Freud that there was indeed 'gold' (or a 'skeleton' -- indeed, maybe more than one 'gold bar' or more than one 'skeleton') buried behind one of the walls in your house but that I knew just exactly which wall that it was, indeed, it was the wall in your front closet, and that therefore, I would not have to tear apart all of the rest of the walls in your house, needlessly....
Which 'contractor' would you hire to 'find your gold' (or get rid of your 'skeleton')?
The one likely to be cheaper, faster, and more efficient, which, in this case, would be me -- providing I was telling you the truth, and that I indeed knew what I was talking about -- i.e., more specifically knew where the 'gold' or 'skeleton' was exactly hidden....
I am not trying to underestimate, or undervalue, the meaning and importance of good 'psychotherapy' -- regardless of what school of psychology it derives from. There are good and bad psychotherapists, and ones who care more than others, in every school of psychology out there, and there are often 'different routes' to the same 'core, nuclear conflict or problem'.
Wilhelm Reich, Alexander Lowen, and Fritz Perls learned more about 'body and character armour' than most therapists, and could get a client quickly to a point of 'grief and crying' simply by say, rubbing his/her eyes, or to a point of 'anger and rage' by perhaps 'rubbing his/her jaw' or getting him to 'clench and unclench his fist'...assuming their was 'locked in tension' in one of these three areas...
A properly trained, reputable massage psychotherapist can often do the same...and perhaps cut through 'intellectual and/or emotional resistances' much faster than other types of therapists from other schools of psychotherapy who are working with words only that may keep a client 'locked up in his head' -- and unable and/or unwilling to 'feel' his or her bodily and/or emotional sensations.
There are different 'phases' of psychotherapy -- an 'awareness' phase, a 'working and sorting through' phase, and a 'willingness to try different choices' phase -- and there has always been a push both inside and outside Psychoanalysis to cut down the number of inefficient sessions to help a client to get to a better place involving better day to day choices as quickly and efficiently/effectively as possible.
Coming at least partly from an Adlerian (as well as a Gestalt) paradigm, I am prepared to say to you that...
You can usually, if not always, find 'your gold' and/or your 'skeleton', or alternatively, find some of the most important answers to 'The Riddle of your Id, Ego, and/or Superego Monster(s)' -- as well as your 'Internalized Super Heroes' -- in your earliest, conscious memories...which you can get to in a matter of minutes as opposed to seemingly endless, far less efficient, sessions...searching for unconscious and/or 'repressed' memories that may or may not exist, and/or may not even be worth 'the transference interpretation value', time, and energy that it takes to 'dig them out'.
The Adlerian route -- or my modified Freudian-Adlerian route -- can take far less time to find 'valuable transference-lifestyle memories' that do not have to take you half of your lifetime as a 'student analyst' to figure out how and where to find them, and how to interpret them properly -- or let the client 'play out' the memory in such a fashion that he or she can learn 'more experientially' how he or she has, in effect, 'introjected' the 'entire memory' into his or her 'transference template' and 'character structure' in such a way that the memory becomes the 'initial prototype' for an ongoing, evolving, 're-creation' and/or 'repetition compulsion' that takes on a life of its own -- in a 'phobic' and/or 'counter-phobic, obsessive-compulsive' manner -- for likely the rest of the person's life...'To be or not to be' -- in the sphere of a 'transference phobia and/or obsession' -- can essentially become...'To strive for perceived self-psychotherapy at the risk of perceived self-destruction...If you want to get back on the horse again, you have to risk falling off of it again....
Put another way, ideally, if I have 'three clusters of points on your personal, evolutionary graph' -- 1. your childood early memories, plus a brief description of your 'family constellation' (i.e. your relationship growing up with your mother, father, sisters and brothers, plus any important extended family members...), any other close friends and/or mentors and/or 'enemies' who might have influenced the direction of your early life...2. a brief, evolutionary history of the time period between your early childhood and present adulthood, including any major relationships, relationship breakups, deaths or sicknesses, other possible types of traumacies...achievements and celebrations, mentors....3. your present, here and now ('existential') life, including all major relationships, recent or current stresses and/or traumacies, achievements and celebrations, etc.....
If I have these 'three major clusters of points' to work with, then in my head, I can start 'drawing lines' between individual and clusters of points in each time period and their similar (or opposite) type of occurence in the other two time periods of your life....This is what I call a 'transference-lifestyle analysis' which intermixes some of the fundamental concepts and theories of both Freudian and Adlerian Theory (Adler didn't believe in 'conflict' in the personality whereas I do) with perhaps some elements of Nietzschean, Jungian, and/or Gestalt philosophy-psychology thrown into the 'psychic stew' as well...
We 'introject' (or 'internalize') our earliest, conscious memories in such a fashion that they 1. become 'templates' for our 'psychic structure'; and 2. become metaphors for our entire life history -- or at least the seemingly 'pre-determined, fatalistic part of it'...the 'lifestyle-transference' part of it...
These 'lifestyle-transference scripts' are partly amenable to change but with usually great difficulty and only partly....I support much of what Freud wrote in his classic paper on transference -- 'The Dynamics of The Transference' (1912). Combine that paper with what Adler wrote on his concept of 'lifestyle' and the interconnection between a person's 'lifestyle' and his 'conscious early memories' and you have the essence of my concept of 'transference-lifestyle scripts'...
If you buy into this strategy, you will easily find that it also solves the 'memory' vs. 'fantasy' conundrum....
We live a life that is both 'reality-bound' and 'fantasy-driven'....and very, very often the two are as interconnected as our left and right hands, our left and right brains, and Adler's concepts of 'inferiority/insecurity feelings' and 'superiority-striving'....The superiority-striving -- regardless of what direction it might take, if it is linked to 'the inferiority feeling' becomes a 'compensatory and/or defensive measure' taken to 'alleviate', 'reverse', and/or 'celebrate' our 'mastery' over previously debilitating inferiority/insecurity feeling....
For Freud to 'abandon' his 'traumacy-reality theory' in favor of his later 'fantasy-longing-wish-fulfillment theory', would be like Adler abandoning his 'inferiority complex' theory in favor of his 'superiority-striving' theory....
For Adler, the two 'half theories' made up a 'complete whole' theory...Why Freud didn't do the same thing in terms of integrating his 'fantasy-wish-fulfillment' theory with his previous 'reality-traumacy' theory is beyond me...To me, it implies to this day that there were 'neurotic elements' in Freud's own personal and professional life back in 1895 and 1896 that 'motivated' Freud to 'dissociate' his 'reality-traumacy' theory from his 'fantasy-longing theory'... And Classical Psychoanalysis has paid to this day for Freud's 1896 'dissociation' of his previous 'reality-traumacy' theory....
In contrast, if you read my paper 'The First True Case of Psychoanalysis', I don't think you will find any psychoanalyst or psychoanalytic historian, or Adlerian psychologist for that matter, before or after Freud died who has given a 'transference-lifestyle analysis' the way that I did in the paper cited above.
I credit that analysis with my being able to integrate a part of Freudian theory with what I learned studying Adlerian theory for two years in Toronto -- backed up by what I learned at The Gestalt Institute in different workshops and programs between 1979 and 1991. And the fact that my own earliest memory just happens to be remarkably similar to Freud's -- allowing for some 'creative tranference projection' on my own part...
Little Siggy was evicted from his parents' master bedroom by his irate dad for busting in at the most inappropriate time....
Little David, about 4 years old, the same age as little Siggy, was evicted from the front door of my friend's house by my friend's irate mother for ringing their doorbell too many times, too early in the morning...I can only surmise that she was sleeping or otherwise not wanting to come to the door...but that didn't take away any of the shock and petrification that prevented yours truly from being able to coherently say anything, or even being able to move a muscle, until the door was slammed in my face....To this day, I still have nightmare-dreams of being caught in a perilous situation -- and not being able to move a muscle...
Freud's 'rejecting topdog' or 'internal object' was his rejecting father....as pertains to the 'transference complex' stemming from his first memory...
My 'rejecting topdog' or 'internal object' was a 'strange woman' (although it could be extended to the relationship with my father as well -- regarding 'petrification in response to his volatile temper')....
The 'transference game' out of Freud's earliest conscious memory had several different variations or elements off the same overall theme -- 'reversing the transference rejection'....Such as:
1. Two men 'analyzing' a female 'client' (sexual object);
2. Freud 'taming' a 'here-and-now, adult, projective transference figure' of his father (i.e, Freud's own internalized rejecting object) by keeping the 'projective transference figure' (eg. Fliess, Jung) 'happy' with Freud's ongoing 'performance of achievement' -- as Freud strove to do with Fliess, and to a lesser extent, Jung (caught inside his 'approval-seeking ego state' until the point at which he finally became cold on both of them -- his 'rejecting topdog or underdog ego-state' and/or 'anal-schizoid' topdog or underdog ego state);
3. Freud rejecting other adult men (his co-workers and students) as his father rejected little Siggy for 'unbecoming behavior' and/or 'unacceptable performance'.
My transference pattern follows much the same route as numbers 2 and 3 in Freud's case...More particularly, I would say that I have:
1. 'Power battle-Abandonment Issues with both 'anal-schizoid' women and 'authoritarian men';
2. An 'approval-seeking neurosis' with both men and women -- or at least with some men and women of more judgmental personalities;
3. A 'narcissistic, anal-schizoid neurosis' where I would prefer to be in my own fantasy world (in my head, thinking, integrating, creating, writing) than in the company of other live, people (not always but often) -- to the point where I will 'snap' at someone who interrupts me at the wrong moment or 'rings my doorbell too loud and too often' when I am 'preocuppied' with what's happening inside my own 'fantasy world';
4. An over-compensating, over-liberal, over-nurturing father who didn't come down hard enough on his/my son's homework and essay procrastinations -- but he's doing well enough in his career as a young arborist and as foreman of his work crew to put his father's guilt to rest;
I have another early memory of driving in the deserts outside of Yakama, Washington with my dad (we lived in Yakama when I was about 5 or 6 years old and my dad spent a lot of time driving with me on both business trips -- I am his eldest son -- and on social family trips ) and somehow, perhaps through direct questioning, or simply his informing me, I ascertained that there were 'rattlesnakes living up in the desert hills', which left an anxiety-provoking image in my head, and my deciding that the desert hills were no place that I wanted to visit on foot...
In our early childhood memories -- just as in our dreams -- we are every part of our memory: indeed, our memory becomes our own personal 'psycho-drama' templated into our psyche in the form of what are being referred to here as 'transference-lifestyle scripts'....And like Freud said in his earliest works (Studies on Hysteria, The Aetiology of Hysteeria), memories 'co-operate' with each other in that they can be like the different angles of a spider's net weaving towards the centre of the net: the 'primary or integrative transference-lifestye complex'
In this memory, the 'rattlesnake' 'co-operates and integrates' with the 'rejecting friend's mother' from my first memory....creating the image of the 'rattlesnake mother' (the anti-thesis of my own mother) who can 'strike' with a 'ratttlesnake bite', with or without a 'rattle warning'....vs. the kid who has learned from prior experience 'not too get too close' or within 'striking distance'....Thus, the rattlesnake lives his own solitary existence is a very desolate, non-human environment, and the curious little boy has learned not to encroach into the rattlesnake's territory....
On the other hand, this memory also has created a 'transference template' within me around the activity of 'driving' both for business and for pleasure....and whenever I get too close to the 'rattlesnakes' of the corporate world, I usually go back to 'driving' for a living where I am generally a safer distance away from the 'corporate rattlesnakes'....
The metaphor of the 'rattlesnake' might be a bit of 'overkill'....
But memories -- as well as dreams -- can be analyzed in terms of their 'symbolic, metaphorical signifance' (in addition to their 'reality content')...and so too, can the 'obsessive-compulsive, adult transference scenes' played out many years later be symbolically or metaphorically analyzed in terms of their childhood 'prototype transference scenes'...
You get the idea...
We will leave it at that..
Perhaps I am also partly warming up for an eventual critical analysis of Freud's often acclaimed masterpiece, 'The Interpretation of Dreams'....
We will get there when we get there...
-- dgb, October 21st, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectical Bridges are still being crossed...
