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

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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....

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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...