A Critique of Freud's Concept of The Id -- And Where To Go With It

Back in process....May 11th, 2012...dgb

In this essay, I will critique Freud's concept of 'the id' and -- in very unorthodox, likely unpopular style -- choose how we can 're-formulate' the id, making it a concept-phenonomen that permeates the whole pscyhe -- unconscious, preconcious, and conscious -- rather than just unconscious which is how Freud defined and described it.
 Freud created the concept of 'the id' in 1923 to offset some of the ambiguities and confusions associated with his different uses of the concept of 'the unconscious'.

However, Freud only closed one can of worms to open up another -- specifically, he brought some 'fresh ambiguities and confusions' into play when he created his concept of 'the id'.  

Every term, concept, theory, paradigm...has both a 'benefit' and a 'cost' attached to it's usage....'The one word, one meaning principle -- to the extent that anyone might even consider it a 'principle' -- is a myth.


In this regard, similar to pharmaceutical pills, all terms, concepts, theories, and paradigms have 'negative side effects' -- and these negative side effects are likely to expose themselves when we -- as theorists -- extend our terms, concepts, theories, paradigms either beyond their realm of 'functional usefulness' and/or beyond their scope of 'shared and properly understood communication'.

On a higher level of abstraction -- probably the highest possible level, like what Freud articulated in 1920 in Beyond The Pleasure Principle -- we can hypothesize that every concept, every theory, every model, every paradigm (let's shorten this to 'CTMP'), consists of both a 'life' and 'death' instinct (just like people according to Freud) -- a 'life' instinct to the extent that our CTMP structurally, dynamically, and functionally represents and/or supports the type of 'epistemological reality' that we can see on a observational level either inside and/or outside the clinical setting; a 'death instinct' to the extent that the opposite of this is true. 

Unfortunately, most theorists are too narcissistically biased relative to their own 'pet theories' ( or 'pet CTMPs') to see its 'blind spots' -- i.e., its area of 'epistemological and/or evaluative-ethical dysfunctionality'.

The more 'either/or' we are in our epistemological approach and mentality towards what we are studying and 'mapping out', the more likely it is that we will quickly or slowly succumb to 'confusion between different levels of abstraction' with our thinking that our 'theory' is 'reality' rather than simply a 'representation' or a 'set of glasses' or a 'paradigm' by which we are viewing a certain aspect of reality.

In short, our CTMPs are in us and the way that we look at things; not in the 'phenomonal or objective reality' (to the extent that there is any such thing) that we are studying -- and often we lose sight of this 'epistemological truism' the more and more 'intimate' we become with our CTMP. In the process, we tend to become more and more narcissistically biased and epistemologically, evaluatively, and ethically led astray. Like Freud, who for the most part, couldn't stand it when other theorists -- or at least male theorists (Adler, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi, Stekel, Perls...Melanie Klein seemed to have escaped his righteous wrath although his daughter, Anna, was quick and vehement in taking on her 'surrogate female sibling rival'....)

Anyways, I am trying to encourage my readers to become knowledgable, flexible, and for the most part, tolerant, with other theorists CTMPs -- don't become anally-retentively 'stuck' inside one paradigm, in this case Freud's, because as creatively brilliant as Freud may have been, he certainly didn't have a 'God's eye view' of any 'perfect CTMP' -- and neither do any of the rest of us. The more flexible we learn to become at moving in and out of different CTMPs, shifting paradigms, becoming more aware of the theoretical pair of glasses that we are wearing, and what its limitations are -- where its 'death force' is -- the better in the long run for us. We won't become trapped in our own self-made theoretical prison.  


Regarding 'words, their meaning, and their potential for referent confusion':

Every word can be viewed as having a whole host of different meanings, some of which can be classified into 'different typese or categories of meaning'.

Specifically, every word can be viewed as having these different 'categories of meaning':

1. Your (narcissistic) meaning;
2. My (narcissistic) meaning;
3. A 'general social pool' of meaning garnered from:
a) A dictionary;
b) A general cultural or social source of usage;
c) A still general, but smaller, 'sub-cultural' source of usage.

Now, if we go back to Freud's different definitions and descriptions of 'the id' -- of which there are a variety, partly building upon, and combining with, each other, but at the same time partly different, and even partly contradicting each other, we find that.....

There are at least two significant areas of potential ambiguity, confusion, and contradiction....

Specifically, let's identify these two problem areas by asking two respective questions:

1. Is the id a 'sub-personality' with a life and mindset/paradigm of its own, or is it simply a 'reservoir', a 'cauldron/caldron' that contains the life and death instincts but has no engaging life and/or death capabilities of its own?

I opt for the first definitional and descriptive choice which contradicts the latter idea -- but I've read the id defined and described both ways, setting off an internal contradiction in terms of what it was supposed to mean by Freud. Was it an 'unconscious sub-personality -- an 'unconscious ego state', so to speak, or was it simply a 'reservoir containing all the life and death instincts that had all the energy, while the id itself was 'energyless' -- except perhaps to the extent that 'the instincts fed the id with energy' but then it would no longer be a 'reservoir' or a 'cauldron'; rather, it would be a 'working, engaging, sub-personality within the personality-as-a-whole', which I think was more what Freud intented it to be.

The 'id' -- when translated into English -- means the 'it', which brings us to another interesting point or two.

Freud obviously wanted to view the id as 'an unconscious, dissociated part of the personality that we have no contact and no control over what comes out of there, except to the extent that the ego, with help from the superego, can defend against its 'uncivil, immoral, anti-social, instinctual impulses'.

However, if Freud had created the concept of 'the id' back in 1895 rather than in 1923, the id would have, or could have, partly meant the same thing -- as in 'the dissociated' -- only in 1895, 'the id, as in the dissociated' would have meant the 'traumatically dissociated' as opposed to 'the instinctually dissociated' which is what it would come to mean in 1923. Since I am aiming to 'dialectically bridge the gap here between 1895 and 1923, at least in my vocabulary, if not in yours.

Would it sound to unprofessional and crass if I were to call this 'defended against component of the id' -- 'The SHadow-Impulse-Traumacy Vault' which it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see what that shortens into? The acronym fits to the extent that we treat everything that is in this 'repressed, unconcious, preconscious, and/or conscious metaphysical-dissociation vault' -- whether it be good, bad, or ugly in its/our most basic intent -- as if it were 'SH*T'....In the early days before 1897, Freud simply referred to this type of 'repressed, or otherwise defended against, matarial' as 'unacceptable ideas'....which again, could fit equally well for both cases involving 'traumatic material' and for cases involving 'impulsive (and/or instinctual) material' -- of which there were both types in Freud's early case examples, only Freud was 'either/or' minded, and could only see 'traumacy material' first (his 'traumacy-seduction theory' of 1895-96), then, gradually came to see only 'impulsive (and/or instinctual) material, which led to his 'instinct-fantasy theory' (after 1896).

I have played around in previous essays with this concept, calling it 'The Shadow-Id Vault' which, looking back at it now, sounds more professional, and/or 'The SIEV' as in 'The Shadow-Id-Ego Vault' (the metaphysical logic being that 'the construction of the vault' involves 'ego-defenders' that are defending against the 'shadow-id' material), and the energy within this vault -- or 'escaping from this vault' -- I have called, or will proceed from this point on to call --  'SIEV energy' (of which some or most of this energy might be either  'libido', as in 'sexual energy', 'narcissistic energy', 'altruistic energy', 'love', 'affection', 'caring', 'aggression', or whatever...

2. Is the id unconsicous, conscious, or both?

Here's the problem. By definition, Freud asserts that the id is 'unconcious', and yet he has no problem stating that there is both a conscious and unconsious element of both the ego and the superego -- so why not the id too?  In 1911 (Two Principles of Mental Functioning), Freud distinguished between 'the pleasure ego' which abides by the 'primary (or pleasure) principle', and 'the reality ego' which abides by 'the secondary or reality principle'. This, to my knowledge, was Freud's only concerted effort to 'split or divide the ego into two opposing ego-states' (at least until his last essay in 1939), but between 1911 and 1939, he never followed up on this 'split ego-state' idea which had at least partly been around since the mid 1980s ('Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and Janet's work on 'dissociation' and 'split personalities' or even 'multiple personalities' as opposed to Freud's idea of 'repression'.

So the 'pleasure ego' of 1911 was the predecessor or precursor to 'the id' only the pleasure ego was (by logical extension) a partly 'conscious', partly 'preconscious', and partly 'unconscious' ego-state -- just as 'the ego' would be defined and described in 1923 -- which raise the metaphysical question: Why couldn't Freud have hung onto these two dualistic and dialectic concepts of 1911, and then 'the pleasure (or narcissistic) ego' could have been defined as 'the mainly conscious ego-state that pays the most undivided attention, and in this regard, most favorably supports, the unconscious and preconscious "percolating activities" of the id'.

I will keep this idea 'perocolating' and 'evolving'...and it will become an ongoing concept in DGB 'multi-dialectic, synergetic, humanistic-existential, post-psychoanalytic conceptuology and terminology'...Did you get all of that? I hope I was clear in my line of logic...

From an 'evolutionary' point of view, a point of view that Freud liked, although Freud was influenced more by 'Darwinian evolutionary theory' whereas I am influenced more by 'Hegelian evolutionary theory', Freud argued that the newborn baby started out as 'all id' -- or alternatively, 'all narcissistic ego' -- and that as the newborn baby evolves, just as man himself evolved over thousands of years, the issues of both 'self-preservation' and 'ethics' came/comes into play in our evolution such that 'the ego' or 'reality ego' and 'the superego' are, generally speaking, and all else being equal, psychological and philosophical 'evolutionary improvements' over the 'primitive id' and 'supporting narcissistic ego', working in tandem -- and alone together with little or no regard for the issues of 'self-preservation' and/or 'social unity and cohesion through ethics and morals....' 

That, for the most part, has changed over thousands of years as man has evolved, and it happens too over the years in our own personal, individual evolution -- generally speaking, and all else being equal....

However, at times in our life -- well, everyday actually -- we revert back to the more primordal, primitive, uncivil thinking of our 'id' and 'narcissistic ego' with or without 'the modifications of our (reality) ego's and/or our superego's usually more ethical-moral-civil thinking and behaving activity'.

All three elements of our 'Wholistic Self or Personality' (more conceptual-theoretical elements to the extent that we do more 'ego, superego, and id splitting' than what Freud did) are necessary for our functional survival.

Our 'humanistic-existential problem' -- as opposed to our 'biological-reductionist-deterministic problem' -- is getting our 'multi-dialectic, homeostatic balance...

Right...

For our own needs, interests, wants, and impulsive drives...

In conjunction with our self-determined, 'ethical-moral (humanistic-existential) self ideals and expectations'...

In such a way....

That we can live ideally on reasonably good terms with our spouses, our family, our friends, our neigbours, our local community, as well as our larger regional, national, and international community...

Without metaphorically or actually trying to destroy each other...

In our worst moments...

On the more idealistic side....

We are striving to be the best we possibly can be..

At what we most want to do...

And making the best contact possible...

Allowing for some areas of personal privacy...

With the people who are most important in our lives...

I think Freud once said...

That being psychologically healthy...

Is being able to work and love...


-- dgb, May 1st, 2012...

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...

-- Are Still Being Created...

An Introduction To DGB Multi-Dialectic, Synergetic Philosophy-Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Personality Theory

Click edit above to add content to this empty capsule.

Expanded on April 26th, April 28th, 2012....dgb

New ideas, new theories, new paradigms -- especially of a seemingly unorthodox, radical nature -- often meet with heavy resistance from the established supporters of the ideas, the theories, the paradigms that have preceded the newly introduced 'radical paradigm shift'.

In this regard, one thinks easily of the Copernican Revolution, Spinoza's Pantheism, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Dialectic Theory, Darwin's Evolution Theory, Nietzsche's 'Anti-Christian' Philosophy, Freud's Theory of The Unconscious and of Repression, Freud's Traumacy-Seduction Theory, Freud's Childhood Sexuality Theory, Freud's Instinct-Fantasy Theory, Freud's Oedipal Theory, Freud's Dream Theory, Freud's Theory of Jokes and Their Relationship To The Unconscious, Freud's Theory of Transference, Freud's Theory of Narcissism, Freud's Life and Death Instinct Theory, Freud's Ego, Id, and Superego Theory, Freud's Theory of Culture, Freud's Final Theory of The Splitting of The Ego, and stepping outside of Freud again, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, The Theory of Bacteria and The Birth of Antibiotics, The Dialectic Theory of Quantum Physics....and every major theoretical paradigm shift that I have missed off the top of my head...

Indeed, Freud seems to be The Undisputed King of All Theoretical Paradigm Shifts...

And yet paradoxically speaking, Freud hated it when one of his co-workers pulled a major theoretical paradigm shift on his constantly evolving but at the same time very anally retentive model of psychoanalysis. Especially if he was male. The only theorist who I can see who pulled a major paradigm shift on Freud and escaped 'unscathed' was -- Melanie Klein. (Almost comically, here his daughter, Anna Freud, took up her father's blistering torch relative to the radical, paradigm shifting ideas of Melanie Klein....

Transference sibling and/or same sex rivalry, anyone?  Sigmund Freud had an intensely close but competive and often hostile rivalry with his nephew, John, in his early childhood. John, amazingly and perplexingly, was actually a year older than Sigmund. (Sigmund's father was married twice, and Sigmund was the son of his father's second wife whereas John was the son of a son from Freud's father's first marriage. Did you get that? You can find the genetic logistics in Jones' biography, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Part 1, p. 8, 1953, 1981).

Regarding Anna Freud, is there any doubt that she wanted to be 'The Princess/Queen of Psychoanalysis'? Anna undoubtedly achieved that title during her lifetime, fiercely protecting her father's legacy, integrity, and theories, to the detriment of the evolution of psychoanalysis and the women's movement. In this regard, Melanie Klein was by far the more creative theorist partly because of her talent for theorizing, and also partly because she was not nearly as 'father-and-conservative, classical psychoanalysis-bound' as was Anna. Melanie Klein grew up experiencing the intense bipolarity of love and hate, good father and bad father. So too did Sigmund Freud relative to both John and also his dad. I don't want to get too far into this -- the man, who I respect is still alive, and there are ethical boundaries here involving not 'psychoanalyzing' and/or 'profiling' people who are still alive -- but I am not the first person to say that, in Jeffrey Masson's life, you can see the 'serial behavior' (i.e., transference) pattern' of 'intense idealization' followed by 'intense disappointment, anger, and deconstructionism.' And I put myself in this 'seduction-abandonment', 'idealization followed by deconstructionism' as well....I'd also put Schopenhauer somewhere in this camp (his dad committed suicide when Arther was in his teens), Nietzsche's father died on him at a very young age.....There have been a lot of 'intensely paradoxical bipolar, good father/bad father' relationships that have precipitated a fiercely intense internal transference need for some sort of monumentous psychological and philosophical 'closure' from the phenomenological viewpoint of the rejecting father/rejected son or daughter syndrome. Undoubtedly, the same is true with a 'rejecting mother/rejected son or daughter syndrome'.  Childhood transference dynamics tend to be fiercely black and white and bipolar, and to the extent that these 'early transference templates' have been more or less 'cemented' into our young childhood psyche, they tend to remain fiercely black and white and bipolar for most, if not all, of our lives.

Now, Anna Freud's case is a little different. She was 'smitten' by an 'idealized father transference syndrome', and it was to this extent that she couldn't, or wouldn't help an evolving women's movement -- at least when 'egalitarian feminist ideas' contradicted her father's 'Victorian, patriarchal, narcisisstic bias', and the legacy that this narcissistic bias left on Classical Freudian Theory. Anna's 'introjected' abandonment of her father's traumacy-seduction theory and her theoretical, clinical, and political collision with Jeffrey Masson are the main, combined, negative blots on Anna Freud's otherwise (from my distant vantage point) stellar career.

Anna Freud could have done something to move Classical Psychoanalysis into the late 20th century -- evolution-wise -- by aligning some of Freud's worst patriarchal ideas and theories with the evolving egalitarian feminist ideas of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. She could have eliminated the idea of 'penis envy' from the evolving Classical Freudian literature (at least to the extent that it was a gross, sexist, overgeneralization), she could have changed, or at least modified, the idea of 'castration anxiety' -- a concept that might have been relevant to the Victorian culture but which had become 'anachronistic' by the 60s, 70s, and 80s -- into 'performance anxiety' and then perhaps differentiated between 'masculine performance anxiety' and 'feminine performance anxiety'. Finally, she could have made it unequivically clear to both the analytic world and to the general public that the idea of 'The Oedipal Complex' was in absolutely no manner whatsoever, intended to mask the possibility of a 'real, childhood sexual assault memory'. She could have stated -- if she in fact believed it which she proably did not -- that her dad made a significant theoretical and clinical mistake in dissociating his early trauma-seduction theory from his later instinct-fantasy theory and that she was encouraging all contemporary psychoanalysts of finding a way to 'bridge the gap' between these two dissociated psychoanalytic theories that needed to be synthesized and synergized.

But she didn't. And that 'failure' on her part (from my perspective) is the 'failed part' of her legacy where she could not separate her own self -- and the good of a partly evolving, partly stagnating ('sterile' in Masson's words) Classical Psychoanalysis -- from her father.

In my short contact with Jeffrey Masson after I interviewed him briefly two years ago in Hegel's Hotel here, Masson said that he didn't believe that I could integrate Freud's dissociated traumacy and fantasy theory, although he wished me the best of luck in trying. He said that at least I was supporting the 'reality of early childhood, traumatic memories and their foundational impact on the human psyche -- which pointed also to the very real possibility of many of Freud's clients' childhood sexual assault memories being real also -- not to be automatically re-interpretated and reconstructed by the psychoanalyst as a 'childhood sexual fantasy of a child towards his or her mother or father'. (I am paraphrasizing and extrapolating a bit on what he said back then but you get the idea.)

My thesis in this regard is reasonably easily stated as a combination and spinoff of Freudian transference theory,  Adlerian lifestyle theory, and Gestalt 'unfinished situation' theory --  specifically: Adult narcissistic and/or sexual fantasies are generally built, by means of a combination of transference, projection, identification, and defensive-compensatory measures, from usually easily remembered childhood rejection and/or failure memories -- or the reverse, i.e., memories of perceived narcissistic pleasure and/or achievement -- in such a fashion that they are purposely but subconsciously 're-created', metaphorically or symbolically, over and over and over again in 'the transference-projecter's obsessive mind', in an effort to 'master' what one couldn't master as a child, or conversely, to 'repeat' what was in some way deemed 'immensely satisfying and/or pleasurable' as a child and therefore 'in need of repeating' in some similar but different adult fashion.


Regarding the connection between a particular theorist's 'transference complexes' and his or her 'abstracted projections of philosophy and/or psychology theories'....the two are extrememly likely to be 'intimately joined together' like 'the pieces of a child's picture puzzle or an adult jig-saw puzzle'. (Freud's metaphor in a different  context, first used, I believe, in 1896, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' to describe the association between childhood memories, linked memories, and adult 'neurotic/hysterical symptoms'. Alfred Adler would years later, in 1931 ('What Life Should Mean To You', or 1956, 1964, Ansbacher and Ansbacher, editors of, 'The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler', p. 351, call our conscious early memories 'The Story of My Life' -- very similar but a little different to Freud's use of the 'picture or jigsaw puzzle' metaphor in relation to our 'adult lifestyle goals and patterns' (as well as 'neurotic, obsessive, serial behavior patterns'); and Fritz Perls, in 1973, 'The Gestalt Approach', p. 56-57 would use similar but different language again to describe 'unfinished childhood memories/encounters/relationships/situations'...)

Thus, an idea that was largely rejected by Freud and went out with his traumacy-seduction theory was picked up by two other theorists influenced by Freud -- Adler and Perls -- with 35 to 40 year gaps between three different times the same basic idea appeared...

In other words, good ideas rarely disappear, they simply get picked up by someone else -- and 'recycled' in similar but different and/or re-formulated language and/or theories...

In the realm of philosophy, and relative to the relationship between philosophers and their own 'obsessive (sublimated) transference complexes', Arthur Schopenhauer described life as 'nasty and brutish' (a self-projection, undoubtedly). To 'escape' the nastiness and brutishness of life, Schopenhauer advocated going to the theatre and/or otherwise get involved in some form of art in order to 'cathartically release your emotional pain'; and/or develop a 'buddhist philosophical approach' whereby you more or less 'reduce your disappointments and pain by reducing your wants and expectations'....Now, that is my interpretation of Schopenhauer's philosophy....compensatory in nature....To say that it is a 'Schopenhauerian World' is to say basically that it is a 'nasty, brutish, narcissistic, Lord of The Flies, Swim With The Sharks, Social Darwinian, survival of the fittest world'...and all we can basically do about this is to expect this type of world, go to the theatre for emotional release, and keep our wants and expectations low regarding other people and what we want from them...Sounds like Schopenhauer in relation to his dad who committed suicide when he was a teenager, and his 'alienating, dissociated mother' who lived an elitist, artistic life far away from her very intelligent, philosophical son who 'bit back at her' every chance he could, and at Hegel and Fichte too....in fact, probably almost everyone...Arthur lived what might be called a very 'hedonistic', 'aesthetic' lifestyle (Kierkegaard's choice of words for this type of lifestyle), with 'compensatory' ventures into theatre, art, and Buddhism.... 

I could similarly connect the 'transference complexes' of Nietzsche and Freud to their respective philosophies and psychologies, which I have already at least partly done in other essays, and will probably come back to this subject matter in future essays....

............................................................................................................




Nietzsche distinguished between those of us who don't have any ambition, or have lost our ambition, and those of us who aspire to be great -- to be as great as we possibly can be in that field, and on that project, that we most want to be great at.

Nietzsche referred to the first type as 'the herd mentality' and he referred to the second type as those of us who want to live the philosophy of 'The Superman' (or Superwoman).

In a partly similar, partly different, vein, Freud distinguished between 'The Life Instinct' and 'The Death Instinct' which has both 'physical' and 'psychological-existential' connotations.

Some people have trouble with Freud's use of the term 'instinct', including myself at times. Transferred into 'Star Wars' language, we might modify Freud's life and death instinct distinction into 'The Life Force' vs. 'The Death Force'.

Modifed in this fashion, Freud's life and death instinct theory (created in 1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle) can be viewed as taking on new 21st century 'life' -- both in biological theory and in existential theory.

Specifically, in biology, it has become common theory to talk about the dangers of 'oxidation' inside the body, 'free radicals' that damage and/or destroy body cells, and 'anti-oxidants' that help to protect the body from free radical and oxidation damage.
Thus, paradoxically speaking, 'oxygen' becomes both a 'life' and 'death' force in human biology -- and aging. Indeed, in this respect, Freud wasn't too far -- if at all -- off the mark when, extrapolating from his theory, it can be easily argued now that we are all both blessed and cursed with a 'life' and 'death' instinct inside us, 'competing', and 'working at odds against each other'. Indeed, oxygen would seem to paradoxically 'carry' both the 'life' and the 'death' instinct within its molecular structure.

Upon the 'combustion of energy' within each of our body cells, in which oxygen combines with other ingredients like glucose to give us 'the energy of life' -- immdeidately after combustion, free radical fragments of the oxygen molecule are 'exploding' in all directions and looking for human body molecules that they can 'deconstruct', as in 'creating a death force' in the human body that moves us in the direction of death, even as the same oxygen molecule, immediately before combustion, was working towards keeping us alive and 'energized'.

Existentially speaking, in our combined physical and psychological world, the same basic argument can be put forward -- firstly, because our physical well-being affects our psychological well-being; and secondly, because a distinction can be made by those of us are dominated by 'entropy' (lethargy, lack of effort, herdism...) and those of us who are still 'striving to be Supermen or Superwomen' -- to be as great as we possibly can be at whatever it is that we want to be great at....

I am reminded of Ray Lewis' recent motivational speech at Stanford University when he said that you have to be 'pissed off to be great', or worded otherwise, righteously intolerant of your own imperfection, and in this respect, always intent on evolving -- on moving forward, and upward....until you are 'flying like Superman'...
Effort, continues Lewis, if between you and you (or between I and I).

There is no room for entropy and herdism to the extent that you are intently focused, always pressing, always changing, always evolving, because you need to be at least significantly 'pissed off to be great'...Pissed off with the existing order....always striving to be better, always striving to be the change you want to see in the world, and pissed off enough that you can rhetorically -- and/or through your actions -- show the world that your 'shifting paradigm' is better than the paradigm that hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people are still living in, and you are leaving behind....or at least partly leaving behind, intent on creating a better place, a better paradigm to live in...

Such was the motivational mindset of Dr. Jeffrey Masson when he tried vigorously, rhetorically, to change Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis -- to make it a better paradigm to 'live inside'.

And such is the mindset of myself as I strive to make 'DGB Quantum-Dialectical Philosophy-Psychology-Mythology-Spirituality...' a better paradigm to live inside.
My blogsite and main body of work is called 'Hegel's Hotel: A 21st Century Phenomenology of Mind-Body-Spirit'.

Inside the paradigm of 'pscyhoanalysis', I strive to integrate the bipolar editorial differences between Freud and Masson, or alternatively speaking, between the early, 'Pre-Classical' Freud (1893 to 1896) and the post 1896, 'Classical' Freud. Some -- like myself and Masson (although I can only speak for myself on this point) -- would probably argue that the early Freud should be called the 'Classical' Freud, and that the later post-1896 Freud should be called 'the Post-Classical' Freud....Or even better in my mind, ALL of Freudian theory (1893 to 1939) should be called 'Classical' Freudian Theory -- it just needs to be better integrated in a fashion that Freud never accomplished himself (nor has anyone after him)...

That is -- until 'DGB Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalysis'.

Or at least, that is my intent.

-- dgb, April 23rd, 2012

-- David Gordon Bain...

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Paradigm Shifts...

-- Are Still in Process...

DGB Personality Theory: Classic Freudian Id Psychology vs. DGB Modified-Extrapolated 'Shadow-Id' Psychology (1)

New essay...finished...April 22nd, 2012...


As most of you may or may not know (probably know), Freud created his theory of 'the id' -- relative to both 'the ego' and 'the superego' -- in 1923, in one of his classic, famous essays -- 'The Ego and The Id'.

Freud wrote this essay to address a number of ambiguities and areas of potential or actual confusion surrounding his previous use of the concept of 'the unconscious'.

Previously, Freud had distinguished between: 1. 'the (deep) unconscious'; 2. 'the preconscious' (as in the 'shallow' or 'almost but not quite' conscious) and; 3. 'the conscious'.

Furthermore, in around 1915, after Freud's paper 'On Narcissism' (1914, where Freud's new concept of 'narcissism' started to at least partly replace Freud's old concept of 'libido' as a more 'general psychic concept' (to compete with Jung's concept of libido as a 'general life energy' rather than 'straight, unadulterated, sexual energy', and also to compete with Adler's concept of 'the masculine protest' that also seemed to mix elements of 'egotism', 'self-esteem', 'selfishness', 'self-absorption' and 'sexuality' in a similar vein to what Freud's 1914 concept of narcissism was at that time doing.

It was at about this point in time (actually a little earlier, 1911, Two Principles of Mental Functioning), that Freud started to make the new distinction between 'the pleasure ego' (connected to 'the primary principle') and 'the reality ego' (connected to 'the secondary principle').  This distinction would become 'the id' vs. 'the ego' in 1923 where the id would become relegated strictly to the unconscious, and the ego would be relegated mainly to the conscious but with portions operating in the unconcious.

The same 'concious-unconsious split' was deemed by Freud to also play a part in the role of the activities of the 'superego' which contained both our 'ego ideals' as well as our 'agent of enforcement and criticism' relative to our failure to live up to these primarily 'society-introjected' ego-ideals.

However, the question can be asked -- and indeed needs to be asked -- if both the ego and the superego were deemed by Freud to be active in both the conscious and the unconcious part of the personality, why not the id too? Maybe rather than dropping the concept of the 'pleasure-ego' altogether, Freud should have developed a 'working relationship' between the 'unconcious id' and the 'conscious pleasure ego'.

This would have necessitated a 'conceptual splitting of the ego' (in 1923 as opposed to when he wrote his last paper in 1939 -- 'Splitting of The Ego' -- still playing with his 'metaphysical conceptuology' at the very end of his life which was steering towards Melanie Klein 'Object Relations' conceptuology) into --  let's say for argument sake -- 'the pleasure ego', 'the social reality ego' (like Jung's concept of 'the personna' or what I am contemplating calling 'the public ego'), and 'the central, (mediating, decision-making, problem-solving, conflict-resolving, executive) ego'.

The activities of the id should no more be curtailed to the activities of the unconscious personality than the activities of the ego and superego should be curtailed to the activities of the conscious personality. To 'restrict the freedom and movement' of the id (by definition) in this respect was -- and still is -- to engage in unecessary 'theoretical and clinical reductionism', a habit that Freud has been accused of many times before, by many Freudian critics preceding me.

The 'id' should not be viewed as a 'reservoir of life and death instincts' -- as Freud once analogized it -- because a 'reservoir' is definitely not the same thing as a working, thinking 'mind-brain' -- or any functional or dysfunctional, psycho-dynamic subset of one. I can work with most of the characteristics of the id as laid out by Freud in different definitions -- but not the idea of the id being like a 'reseroir' or a 'seething cauldron' (I call this part 'The Shadow-Id Vault'), nor even that all parts of the id are 'unorganized' because our 'sex drive' is certainly at least partly 'organized' in one particular direction...

Thus, I view the id as the most primitive and uncivil part of our mind-brain that starts from chaos and moves -- or evolves -- up through the unconscous personailty and into the different 'ego-states' in the ego that each have 'functional and/or dysfunctional purposes, motives, drives that sometimes 'fuse' with each other, sometimes co-operate with each other, and sometimes compete with each other -- a 'house of parliament, so to speak, in the conscious personality, as driving up from the underground, multi-directional id and ego instincts, that come from the confines of that part of our mind-brain that we can call our id....at least this is my conceptual formulation of the id....

In comparison and contrast, Freud's definitions and descriptions of the id are articulated below from Wikipedia with quotes from multiple Freudian essays...

.....................................................................................................

Id

The id is the unorganized part of the personality structure which contains the basic drives.The id contains the libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality^[2]. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle", seeking to avoid pain or displeasure aroused by increases in instinctual tension.^[3]

The id is unconscious by definition:

"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the Dreamwork and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle."^[4]

In the id,

"contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out....There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation...nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time."^[5]

Developmentally, the id precedes the ego; i.e. the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id:

"...contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, is laid down in the constitution — above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organization, and which find a first psychical expression here (in the id) in forms unknown to us." ^[6]

The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and needs immediate satisfaction, a view which equates a newborn child with an id-ridden individual—often humorously—with this analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end, paraphrasing a quip made by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan during his 1965 campaign for Governor of California in which he compared government to a baby ^[7].
The id is responsible for our basic drives, "knows no judgements of value: no good and evil, no morality...Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge — that, in our view, is all there is in the id."^[8] It is regarded as "the great reservoir of libido",^[9] the instinctive drive to create — the life instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival. Alongside the life instincts came the death instincts — the death drive which Freud articulated relatively late in his career in "the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state."^[10] For Freud, "the death instinct would thus seem to express itself — though probably only in part — as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms."^[11]: through aggression. Freud considered that "the id, the whole person...originally includes all the instinctual impulses...the destructive instinct as well."^[12] as Eros or the life instincts.

...................................................................................................................

 

Going back to my interpretation of the id, I believe that the id should be viewed as a portion of our mind-brain (like the distinction in neuro-anatomy between our 'thalamus' and 'hypothalamus' -- our id at least partly matching up, metaphorically speaking, with our more or less automatic, unconscious 'hypothalamus', and our ego and superego matching up, again, metaphorically, with our more 'evolved', and usually more 'civilized' -- but not always -- thalamus.)

Of course, our 'brain' is anatomical and physical; whereas our mind is 'metaphysical' as in 'above physics' -- and our 'mind-brain' is a 'dgb dialectic concept' that (somehow 'as if by 'magic') connects the physical activies of our brain with the metaphysical activities of our mind.



All three 'personality states' should be conceptually given the 'freedom' -- in following what, in my opinion, seems to actually happen in reality -- to 'travel', 'psycho-dynamically speaking', from our conscious to our un(sub)(pre)conscious personality state. and back again, at their respective whim -- or rather, 'our' respective whim, existentially speaking.

Freud wrote about the 'vicissitudes' of the id and its instincts which is an idea that I like -- and will continue to follow up on -- because this is Freud's idea of 'movement of energy and instincts up through the id to its 'derrivatives' or 'vicissitudes' (meaning mainly 'modifications') in the conscious personality', but, at this point, we need a 'pleasure-ego' or a 'narcissistic ego' to receive our 'id impulses' from down below....What we need, in other words, is a 'conscious id or pleasure or narcissistic ego state' in our conscious personality to receive the impulses of our id... 

I will give you a little time to mull over these Dialectical Gap Bridging (DGB), modified and extrapolated, ideas before we move on.

-- dgb, April 22nd, 2012

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectical Gap-Bridging Creations...

-- Are Still in Process....