Finished!...Feb. 19th., 2012...dgb
When I write at night, which is not often, I tend to write in a more free-flowing, free association, loosey goosey, loosely structured, Dionsysian style....At times, these essays can be more psychologically revealing in terms of my own personality, but generally speaking, these essays would not pass anywhere close to academic standards, and so it is, that I usually have to come back and 'repair the damage of my largely non-professional presentation' the next morning...in more logically coherent, more tightly structured, more properly referenced, more Apollonian, style...Such was the situation with this paper here....and hopefully, the presentation is a little better today than it was last night....
Regarding my references, sometimes the references I want to cite I haven't read in 20 or 30 or even more years.. I generally know the book that they came from, but I may be wrong, and this can make for a long detective hunt trying to re-find the quote that I want to reference....If I was writing an academic paper, this would absolutely mean finding the appropriate reference for the quote -- or not using it...because you can't say in an academic paper that 'I think I read it here but I haven't been able to find it yet....' The essay would probably be thrown back at you with a 'D' -- or simply not graded with the professor saying something like; 'Don't you ever hand in an essay like this to me again...' I could certainly see Dr. Masson, as a professor, doing something like this...I once wrote to him last year some time, and said that I thought that Freud had used the analogy of 'finding the source of the Nile' twice -- once regarding The Seduction Theory, and once regarding The Oedipal Theory -- to which he promptly responded -- 'Where?' -- and to which I sheepishly replied that I didn't know where, I would have to look for it...and I still haven't found it, I am assuming now because it doesn't exist. Memories can play tricks on people and on some people more than others....i.e., some people have more reliable memories than others....and 'subjective, narcissistic biases can, in particular, interfere with the 'objective reliablity' of memories....This is much of what makes 'The Seduction Theory vs. Oedipal Theory Controversy' a mind-twisting and wrenching challenge -- especially the deeper you get into it. No memory is likely 100 percent 'factual' unless we are talking about a very simple 'either/or' part of the memory...and even that is not always entirely reliable....In Nietzsche's words, 'There are no facts; just interpretations.' We will explore this dilemma in my next essay on 'The Good and Bad Aspects of The Oedipal Complex Theory'.
Meanwhile, Fritz Perls once asserted in my paraphrased words that the repetition compulsion involves 'unfinished (transference) situations' or 'unfinished (transference) gestalts' where we are cyclically and compulsively trying to 'finish these unfinished transference situations' -- or 'work them through', or 'resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict' -- over and over and over again, usually throughout the course of our lives, with generally not too much success....perhaps partial or even overwhelming success in one or many of our particular endeavors, but seemingly never enough to 'totally clear up our negative self-image and/or whatever else it is that obsessively-compulsively continues to drive us to symbolically return again and again to the scene of one of our early childhood, primal transference scenes'.....
In fact, it does not usually matter how much 'outside success' we experience if inside, we keep telling ourselves (from some introjected and/or self-taught childhood message) that we are 'a failure', 'a loser', and/or 'not worthy of our success'....Thus, we are talking about issues of 'childhood self-esteem' encompassed within 'childhood transference scripts, games, complexes, templates' that become the basis for a lifelong 'self-fulfilling prophecy' (the basis of the transference repetition compulsion) that can either seriously impair and/or 'compulsively stimulate' our evolutionary development, our existential being, and our road to becoming what or who we were/are meant to become....
In other words, usually these transference-repetition compulsion-serial behavior pattern issues of the type I am thinking about are issues that lie at the core of our psyche, They are what I believe it was either Jacob Moreno or Virginia Satir used to call 'core nuclear conflicts'. This goes hand in hand with Perls calling a dream a 'paradox', an 'impasse', or in my words, a maze that we are stuck in, a house with no doors or windows that we can't see an 'outside perspective', a 'paradigm' that we are stuck inside that we again cannot see an outside perspective....
We remain 'transfixed', like a deer caught in a car's headlights, everyone else can see our way out of our self-created maze except ourselves; for us our 'psychotherapy' remains our 'blindspot'...we make the easy look impossible....we prefer the status-quo....we prefer our self-made prison over anyone trying to show us where the door is to this prison...our prison is our 'safety institution'....our means of 'escaping the responsibility and accountability for our own freedom' (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) rather than risking the failures and/or rejections and/or insecurities and/or potentially 'paralyzing anxiety' that comes with actually 'being free'....'the dizziness of freedom' (Kierkegaard)...of being 'congruent'...of lining up our 'Spiritual Self and Soul' with the behavior of our 'Central Executive Ego', our 'Chief Executive Officer'.....
When I say 'I love myself' or conversely 'I hate myself'....who is the 'I' and who is the 'myself'? The 'I' is 'the judge' which could be any practically any part of our 'wholistic self' but it is probably most likely to be our 'Righteous, Critical Superego' which in turn could either be our 'Introjected Critical Childhood Parent' or our own 'Moral-Ethical Superego' or our own 'Existential Superego' judging the perceived 'failures' of our 'Central Executive Ego' -- the 'myself' in this equation. Or it could be our 'Approval-Seeking Underego' judging the performance of our 'Rebellious Dionysian or Apollonian Underego'....or the other way around....or it could be our 'Nurturing Superego' judging the judgments of our 'Righteous, Critical Superego'....or the other way around....There are a lot of theoretical and therapeutic possibilities within our 'Split Self' or 'Split Psyche' where 'psychotherapy' become the 'evolutionary process' of 'better dialectic-democratic internal integration'...
When you look at my still evolving model of the human psyche, at first glance. it may seem overly large, complicated, and cumbersome, but it is designed to be 'multi-bipolar' and it is designed to accommodate a whole host of different, competing psycho-theoretical and therapeutic systems or paradigms....It is designed to accommodate significant elements of: 1. 'Pre-Classical' and 'Classical' Freudian Theory; 2. Adlerian Theory; 3. Jungian Theory; 4. Kleinian and Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory and Kohutian Narcissistic Theory; 5. Frommian Theory; 6. Gestalt Theory; 7. Bernean Transactional Analysis Theory; 8. elements of Janovian 'Primal Scream' Theory; 9. Cognitive Theory (Ellis and his 'ABC Theory', Beck, Kelly and his 'Personal Constructs', Frank and 'Persuasion and Healing', General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa), and Self-Esteem Theory (Maltz and 'Psycho-Cybernetics', Branden and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem') ; 10. Existential Theory (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Frankl, Choice Theory (Glasser), and Cognitive-Behavioral Theory (Meichenbaum)....You could probably include Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', Carl Rogers 'Congruent vs. Incongruent Self', Horney's 'Our Inner Conflicts', and I am not comfortable enough with the work of either Lacan or Bion to make any comments on them...
Is this overkill? Trying to 'appease' and/or 'integrate' too many different 'theoretical paradigms'? I don't think so....and you can see by my work on Freud that I am certainly not trying very hard to 'appease any psychoanalysts'....as much as Freud remains at the foundation of my 'multi-bipolar, theoretical system'.
My multi-bipolar model can easily be broken down into smaller, simple bipolar dichotomies and conflicts....such as:
1. Our Nurturing Superego vs. Our Righteous, Critical Superego;
2. Our Shadow-Id-Ego (or 'Alter-Ego') vs. Our Central Ego, or alternatively, 'Our Personna';
3. Our Dionysian Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our Apollonian Ego, Superego, or Underego;
4. Our Rebellious, Apollonian or Dionysian Underego vs. Our Approval-Seeking Ego;
5. Our Apollonian (Righteous) or Dionsyian (Hedonistic) Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our 'Romantic' and/or 'Spiritual-Religious' Ego, Superego, or Underego;
6. Our 'Abyss' vs. our 'Womb' vs. our 'Existential Mountain Peak';
7. Our Central Executive Ego and/or our Personna vs. Our 'Genetic, Existential Self' and/or our 'Spiritual Self' and/or our 'Wholistic Self'....
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Here's how the DGB model of the psyche currently looks....
A/ Our 'Introjected and/or Compensatory Parent' Ego-State Domain
1. Our Nurturing Superego;
2. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
3. Our Righteous-Critical-Rejecting (Exciting) Superego';
B/ Our'Humanistic-Existential-Decision-Making' Ego-State Domain
4. Our Romantic-Spiritual Ego (as mythologically and/or philosophically reflected by Aphrodite-Venus-Psyche-Eros-Cupid, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling);
5. Our Apollonian, Dionysian, and/or Aphroditean Influenced Shadow-Id Ego;
6. Our Central, Mediating, Executive Ego;
7. Our Personna;
C/ Our'Child' Ego-State Domain
08. Our Apollonian Rebellious Underego;
09. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;
10. Our Approval-Seeking (Disapproval-Avoiding, Co-operative, Compliant) Underego;
D/ Our 'Underworld' Domain
11. Our 'Nietzschean Existential Mountain Peak' (Requiring a 'Rope' To Climb Over Our 'Abyss', Requiring Us To Be Our Own Personal 'Superman or Superwoman', Thus Spoke Zarathrusta...);
12. Our Dream Weaver (Revealing Inner Paradoxes and Impasses, Dangers and Wishes, Lost Love Objects, Unfinished Business of our Day's or Life's Residue, Suppressed Feelings, Transference Complexes...);
13. Our Shadow-Id Vault;
14. Our Shadow-Id;
15. Our Neurological, Biochemical, and Hormonal Influences;
16. Our Personal 'Womb';
17. Our Personal Abyss, Apeiron, Black Hole, Chaos;
18. Our Genetic-Spiritual-Mythological Self (Our Mythological Self...Projecting Outwards into Our External World The Contents and Essence of Our Inner Spiritual Self);
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There's a difference between a 'dualistic' and a 'dialectic' conception of man....Freud at different times was both....The dualistic philosopher-psychologist posits something like, say for example, a 'life' vs. 'death' instinct in an 'either/or' fashion....or a 'no conflict resolution is possible' fashion, whereas the dialectic philosopher-psychologist looks for 'dialectic integrations' and/or 'integrative balances' that can lead to 'healthy, balanced, functional behavior' as opposed to dichotomized, radically extreme dysfunctional behavior that goes unilaterally off the charts at one end of a particular bipolar spectrum...or the other....
Dialectic integration does not necessarily lead to 'healthy behavior'. Sadism, Freud would say...and I am paraphrasing here... that sadism was an integration of the 'life' and 'death' instincts, or alternatively, 'the sexual' and 'aggressive' instincts'...
One of the clearest dreams I can still remember dreaming while I was at The University of Waterloo....I dreamt that I was being chased through the campus grounds by German, Nazi soldiers....It was terrifying while I was dreaming it which is probably why I woke up promptly when they finally caught me...I did not want to experience my death while I was dreaming...
'Trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes', 'repetition compulsions', 'serial behavior patterns' -- these are all examples of 'unfinished gestalts' or 'unfinished business'...and since we never seem to 'finish' these 'unfinished gestalts', this would seem to suggest that these repetitive behavior patterns reflect either 'cyclical needs' inside our mind-body, and/or they reflect 'paradoxes' and 'impasses' that we never seem to be able to 'work our way through sufficiently enough to put an end to this ongoing series of repetitive behavior patterns'. In effect, they reflect the existence of a 'core nuclear, transference conflict'....
Now, regarding 'trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes' (try saying that without stumbling or stuttering...'Stuttering' -- now there is a very intriguing anxiety neurotic symptom we could examine sometime...The mouth, the tongue, and the vocal chords become the warzone and central focus for an internal conflict between 'stop' and 'go' on what next I am going to say...The stutterer is ruled by a very harsh, introjected rejecting superego which then is projected out into the external world onto one or more of our perceived 'rejecting transference figures'...which could be either our 'reality' or our 'phantasy')...Regarding our childhood trauma transference complexes, our whole existential world comes to a grinding halt -- and paradoxical impasse -- at the point of our 're-visit' to our primal or childhood transference scene...Metaphorically or symbolically, we always return to the scene of our primal-childhood transference scene....over and over and over and over and over and over...again...often times 'excitedly'....other times 'horrifically'...and again 'traumatically'...
In Perls' words, we develop a 'neurotic blindspot' -- an 'impasse' -- a point at which all psychological growth stops evolving because of a particular 'phobia' resuting from the trauma....But another part of the mind (in my terminology 'the shadow-id' and 'shadow-id-ego' or often labelled as the 'alter ego') creates a 'counter-phobia' -- a 'counter obsessive-compulsion' to battle the dysfunctional element of the 'regressive, dysfunction phobia'...Thus, the 'transference phenomenon' -- or more particularly here, the 'transference counter phobia and obsessive compulsion' -- becomes a form of 'subconscious and oftentimes erotically narcissistic self psychotherapy'....
Freud described all dreams as 'wish fulfilments' (even nightmares like the dream example of the German Nazi soldiers chasing me through the university campus until they finally caught me at which point I promptly woke up...) Alternatively, Perls described all dreams as 'paradoxes' where our 'split or dissociated personality' (my addition) represents both sides of the paradox.
The dream of being 'chased by Nazi soldiers' was actually one specific, frightful example of a whole 'serial dream complex' of being chased by 'bad men' who want to 'hurt or kill me'...or 'confine me'...
My lifelong 'masculine protest' (Adler), 'counter-phobia' and/or 'counter-obsessive-compulsion' can be summarized as: I will not be confined -- not by any one person nor by any one organization.'
Consequently, I am not exclusively a Freudian, I am not exclusively an Adlerian, I am not exclusively a Jungian, I am not exclusively a Gestaltist.... I am both all of these...and none of these to the extent that each 'theoretical paradigm' 'confines' me and prevents me from 'stepping outside the particular paradigm' and investigating other paradigms....That is probably also why I will never be married.....I have 'commitment or confinement phobia'....and 'freedom-o-holism'....the desired freedom to step away from what 'is' and to visit and/or create a new paradigm...that creates a new 'is'...
The 'being chased serial nightmare' can be traced to one of my conscious early memories....not particularly traumatic or frightful...indeed more pleasurable than painful......I was about 6 or 7 years old, in Grade 1 (they had no kindergarten back then where I was going to school...) My classmates and I were playing a game of 'chase and catch' in the playground....the 'primary chaser' was a girl...her name was Cherry...the first girl I fell in love with....the 'secondary chasers' -- or perhaps they should be viewed as the 'primary chasers' -- were all boys in my class....The idea is that Cherry would chase all the boys in my class until she caught and kissed one of them....Then he would become her 'helper' until the next boy was caught -- and kissed....On and on it went, I was one of, if not, the fastest kid(s) in the class because I was the last one caught. I ran my best but I was no match for the whole class of boys chasing me....They finally caught me....and 'constrained me'...leaving me powerless....until Ms. Cherry caught up with the troop...and kissed me.... The kiss was nice...very nice...but I guess you could say that I have had a life long transference complex involving 'constraint-a-phobia'....The counter-impulse, counter-phobia, counter-obsessive-compulsion -- would have to be labelled as a 'constraint-compulsion'....This is my 'blind-spot' or at least one of them....My 'constraint-compulsion' is a 'very sneaky, subconscious, manipulative defense mechanism'....I don't even usually know I'm doing it....There is the 'wish fulfillment' part of the phantasy-nightmare....'The being caught by a transference-surrogate of Cherry....and finding that pleasurable..well, that's a no brainer....but that is never a part of my 'serial nightmare'.....which terrifies me when I have one of these types of 'chase dreams'.....Could the conscious early memory that I have cited here be a 'screen memory' for something much more traumatic? I don't know....I can't -- or won't -- remember anything more horrific and terrifying....But remember...as Freud articulated...neurotic complexes are always 'over-determined'....There have to be other associations...but maybe I am not willing to 'see them through'...and that would bring us to Freud's concept of 'repression'....or somewhere between a 'semi-conscious suppression' and a 'repression'...Hmmm.....Some new insights here for me....
We will stop here...Is this 'resistance'?...Sometimes, even when Freud was at least partly wrong, he was also at least partly right....I shake my head both at his creative brilliance and his obstinately, righteous, stupidly (or more likely dramatically for shock value and impact) overstated, reductionistic overgeneralizations...Both are equally astounding...the latter had much to do with Freud's breakup with Breuer as Breuer knew that Freud was hardly acting like a 'grounded scientist' when he leaped 'ahead of all of his clinical cases' to some of his early, dramatic, theoretical conclusions, most notably 'The Seduction Theory' and then 'flying over to the opposite side of the dialectic spectrum to 'The Oedipus Complex Theory'...Freud overgeneralized on 'repression', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual abuse', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual fantasy', and he overgeneralized or overidealized his rate and degree of 'therapeutic success'...
One of Freud's life paradoxes....caught between the 'wanna be grounded biologist and scientist' and the 'fly high into the sky abstractionist'...He was much better at being the latter...Even Ernest Jones knew this...
'We have already noted his (Freud's) early tendency to speculative rumination, one which he sternly checked. (When? How sternly? It sure didn't last long...My editorial comments.) (Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 34)
'Such considerations made him (Freud) feel the need of intellectual discipline, and everything pointed to science as the supreme opportunity. Science then meant, as it still does to many people, not only objectivity, but above all exactitude, measurement, precision, all the qualities in which Freud knew he was lacking.' (Ibid, p. 34)
One could call this one of Freud's lifelong 'Achilles Heels'...
-- dgb, February 18th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain
