In DGB Central Ego Theory, I am leaning on a 'cognitive-emotional-behavioral' model that I created in 1979 for my Honours Thesis in psychology at The University of Waterloo. Dr. Meichenbaum evaluated the paper which, looking back at it now from the vantage point of 2012, I view as being a very 'Apollonian, anal-retentive, robotic' essay with a partly humanistic-existential influence and touch to it in the last half of the paper. Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, Aaron Beck, George Kelly, Jerome Frank, Albert Ellis, Eric Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May... -- these were my main or secondary influences, to my present recall, off the top of my head, without actually going back and perusing the essay yet.
There was no Freudian influence, no Adlerian influence, no Gestalt influence, no Transactional Analysis influence, no Hegelian influence, no Nietzschean influence, no dialectic influence...these would all begin in the 1980s....
The question that I was left with after this essay was finished in 1979 was basically this: What happens in the un/subconscious to influence what happens in The Central Ego? (which I didn't even call 'The Central Ego' back in 1979, indeed, I wouldn't call this model a model of 'The Central Ego' until probably about the 2000s, and mainly these last three or four years (2009-2012)?' Now, that is based on speculative recall, but the point is, that when I wrote this 1979 paper, I thought I was 'mapping out' a model of the 'whole psyche' which took me from 1972 to 1979 to research, and the 67 page essay was written over the course of my last year in university.
Little did I know that I would be researching the more 'irrational elements' of the human psyche as a hobby for over the next 30 years! In 1979, I walked into The Gestalt Institute of Toronto for the first time when it was on Markham St., behind Honest Ed's in downtown Toronto. A year later, I would join The Adlerian Institute and take courses and workshops there for the next two years. The Gestalt Institute, I would pop in and out of between 1979 and 1991...as it moved from Markham St., to Cecil St. to Carlton St. (I liked Cecil St. and didn't like the last change to Carlton St.)
It was during the 1980s that I started to pick up the essence of 'dialectic (bipolar integrative) logic' applied in the Gestalt 'hot seat and empty chair technique', and the Gestalt concepts of 'topdog' and 'underdog', as well as the Freudian concepts of 'id', 'ego', and 'superego', the Jungian concepts of 'Personna' and 'Shadow', and partly, the Adlerian concepts of 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving'.
Part 1: The 'Stimulus-Perception-Interpretation-Evaluation' Phase;
Part 2: The 'Response Creation-Interpretation-Evaluation' Phase;
Part 3: The Feedback-Learning-Transference Phase....(although I didn't start writing about transference until the mid 1980s)....
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It is interesting how I feel a certain 'disconnect' from my work of 33 years ago -- now.
Things change. People change. Values change. Life priorities change.
I was a different person then -- or at least partly. All of the main 'pieces' of my personality were 'locking into place' -- my 'disapproval-seeking under(dog) ego'; my more rebellious, passive-aggressive, anal-schizoid under(dog) (alter) ego', which carried me through much of university.
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Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and apathy. Affected individuals may also demonstrate a simultaneous rich, elaborate, and exclusively internal fantasy world,[1] although this is often more suggestive of schizotypal personality disorder.
SPD is not the same as schizophrenia, although they share some similar characteristics such as detachment or blunted affect; there is increased prevalence of the disorder in families with schizophrenia.[2]
The psychologist Nancy McWilliams argues that the definition of SPD is flawed due to cultural bias: "One reason schizoid people are pathologized is because they are comparatively rare. People in majorities tend to assume that their own psychology is normative and to equate difference with inferiority".[3]
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I take issue with two things stated above by psychologist Nancy McWilliams. Firstly, I do no believe that 'the (anal-paranoid-)schizoid personality' is rare. I think it is quite common -- in differing degrees of severity, from 'moderate' to 'severe'.
Secondly, I do not believe that the 'schizoid tendency' is either 'normal' or 'natural' regardless of cultural bias. In fact, I think that most of us can see at least some elements of 'the schizoid tendency' working inside ourselves, sometimes moderately, sometimes more extremely, depending on both internal and external stresses, as well as the degree to which this is a common 'mode of psychic defense' for us or not.
The schizoid tendency is usually a 'neurotic and/or pathological tendency' involving a movement 'away' from people (i.e., distancing people, turning 'a cold shoulder' away from social contact, social engagement, etc.)
The 'schizoid tendency' is a 'compensatory movement' -- often designed to 'protect one's self-boundaries' and as a movement away from 'authoritarian people, parents, jobs'....The 'anal-paranoid-schizoid' person might be trying to escape/deny/avoid/suppress/dissociate/repress strong negative feelings such as grief, anxiety, panic, anger, rage, hate, as well as strong negative impulses such as aggression, hostility, violence -- which may be 'projected' as impulses coming from other people, or a particular 'sub-class' of people...
In my case, both my 'disapproval-avoiding persona' and my more 'covert, passive aggressive, narcissistic, alter ego' were probably designed -- as a very common 'double defense mechanism' designed to: 1. appease my father's righteous temper and authoritarianism on the one hand; and 2. appease my own 'self-boundaries' and 'fantasy-impulses' on the other hand.
My father has been both my 'main idealistic, visionary mentor' on the one hand, and at the same time, a 'righteous, authoritarian presence' that I have spent much of my life trying to 'escape' from, in a wish to protect my own 'self-boundaries' -- with other 'projective-transference surrogates' standing in for him in his physical absence -- which for both good and bad, has led to my developing a 'rich, fantasy life' that can become 'fixated' and a form of 'mental and emotional escapism' -- meaning 'avoiding the reality principle' at the same time, and ideally, what we all should be doing on a regular basis, which is the 'integrating' or 'synthesizing/synergizing' of our dream-fantasies with a type of 'work or hobby life' that supports, ideally, to a great extent, our greatest passions....
In the same way that 'The Enlightenment Period' of Western philosophy was criticized by, and evolved into, a more 'Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Period' that followed shortly thereafter -- I had to personally go through this process as well, which is why my more 'Romantic-Humanistic-Existential Paradigm/Mindset' today seems somewhat 'dissociated' from what I would now call, my more 'naive Rational-Enlightenment Paradigm/Mindset' of 33 years ago. The more Romantic-Humanistic-Existential side of my thinking/feeling was just starting to develop but would take off shortly thereafter in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, probably to the point of 'overkill' whereby I am now 'suppressing' what used to be a much more dominate part of my thinking -- my 'Apollonian-Enlightenment' thinking of the 1970s as opposed to my much more Nietzschean based 'Dionysian-Romantic-Humanistic-Existential-Dialectic' thinking-feeling-behaving of today.
There is something about being in your mid 50s that is a 'serious wakeup call' regarding 'time running out' and 'impending death' -- something that most university students are not going to identify with at all (unless they have already been significantly exposed to death), as most students are likely to see their whole lives in front of them...
It would be nice to combine the optimism, hope, and energy of youth, with the greater experience, and hopefully greater wisdom, of 30 more years of life experience....Some days I get there...and some days I don't....
Maybe I can integrate some of the new ideas with some of the old -- and that may 'freshen up this process' of digging back up what I was thinking in the 70s...
Let's see how far I can get this time, before I do what I normally do -- which is to come back to more 'immediately relevant writing material'....
-- dgb...June 14, modified June 17, 2012....
-- David Gordon Bain....
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Part 1
1. Prologue
The following essay is a modified, updated, and extended version of my 1979 Honours Thesis in Psychology at The University of Waterloo. I am proud to say that my professor, sponsor, and marker back in 1979 was Dr. Donald Meichenbaum who has since become a Canadian Leader in Clinical Psycholgy specializing in 'Cognitive-Behavior Modification' interventions.
A lot of theoretical changes, modifications, and extensions have taken place in my thinking and in my writing since I was a young and idealistic 24 years old in 1979 (not to mention the underlying life changes that have contributed greatly to these theoretical changes).
In 1979, I had just barely been exposed to the concept of 'dialectic thinking' which is now the central focus of my thinking and writing. The focus up to 1979 in my thinking and my writing was a two-fold combination of 'Post-Enlightenment Rational-Empiricism (Cognitive Therapy, General Semantics...)' and 'Humanistic-Existentialism (Erich Fromm, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers...').
Through the 1980s, I became much more exposed and familiar with the concepts and applications of Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, Psychoanalysis (Classic, Object Relations, and Self Psychology), Jungian Psychology, Transactional Analysis...and the underlying 'double-edged' philosophical influence of Hegel and Nietzsche behind all of these 'dialectic' and 'humanistic-existential' schools of psychology.
When I finished my Honours Thesis in 1979, I knew that I had a lot more research and theoretical work to do to get into the 'deeper realm of the unconscious influences' (which I now call 'transference-archetype templates, complexes, and neuroses'), on here-and-now thinking, but even now, in 2010, the basic 'rational-empirical' foundation laid down in this essay contributes much to what is now 'Hegel's Hotel: The Multi-Dialectic (Bi-Polar) Humanistic-Existentialist'.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness. -- Erich Fromm, 1947.
2. Introduction
The issue of values and value judgments (or evaluations) represents a critical problem in regard to man's life.
On the one hand, man if free to evaluate and to respond to the situations he is confronted with in his day to day life as he or she pleases (usually within the context of what he or she has learned up to that point in the course of his or her life). But on the other hand, man is not free from the very real consequences that these evaluations, choices, and actions will have (or won't have) on his natural and/or social environment, and the consequences that will in turn come back to him or her via these consequences on his/her environment.
The following two 'cosmic truisms' are very applicable to anyone's evolving life.
What goes around comes around.
For every action there is a reaction.
A person's evaluations (which are built on top of his or her epistemological sensory perceptions and interpretations) can be said to be 'effective' or 'functional' to the extent that they are 'life-serving' -- that is, they work towards promoting a person's health and/or happiness.
Conversely, a person's evaluations can be said to be 'ineffective' or 'dysfunctional' to the extent that they are 'life-negating' -- that is, they work towards 'sabotaging' the person's health and/or happiness.
Now, being more of a 'skeptical, cynical realist and post-modern deconstructionist' in 2010, as opposed to the 'young, naive idealist' that I was in 1979, I look back at the last two paragraphs and I see clearly that these statements are not quite as 'rosy' and 'clear' as they were to me when I initially wrote them in 1979, under the dual influence of Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand was in the midst of building her 'Objective' epistemological and ethical system which she appropriately came to name -- 'Objectivism'.
By 1979, Rand had already completed two of her 'fictional-philosophical' masterpieces, 'The Fountainhead' (1943), and 'Atlas Shrugged'(1957), in which she laid down her Capitalistic Ideals that she would later blend into her more general philosophy of Objectivism.
But even back between 1974 and 1979, I was getting the beginning of my 'dialectic exposure' even though I hadn't tagged it with that particular label yet. For as well as receiving my father's Capitalistic influence -- who introduced me to the philosophy of Ayn Rand through 'The Fountainhead', and later the philosophy of Adam Smith -- still, at the same time I was reading Erich Fromm's 'Escape From Freedom' (1941), and 'Man For Himself' (1947), and 'The Sane Society' (1955) that introduced me to Fromm's 'Post-Marxian-Post-Freudian-Humanistic-Existential Philosophy'.
The potential and reality for at least partly 'opposite thinking' in epistemological, ethical, econonomic, and/or political philosophy between two very well known and well respected living philosophers at the time sparked the beginning of what would eventually, for me, become the beginning of 'dialectically integrative thinking and philosophy-psychology-ecomomics-politics...' in the 1980s.
The question for me at the time was starting to become: 'How do you understand and account for the seemingly opposite thinking in two polar opposite -- and yet both logically intelligent, rational-empirical, humanistic-existential -- philosophers'; and beyond this, 'How do you potentially integrate the results of their polar-opposite thinking?'...
These two types of dialectic questions would come to dominate my own 'Subjective-Objective', 'Humanistic-Existential', 'Capitalistic-Socialistic', 'Liberal-Conservative, 'Freudian-Adlerian-Jungian-Gestalt' brand of 'Post-Hegelian Multi-Dialectic Philosophy-Psychology-Economics-Politics...'
But a lot of years -- and a lot of ideas -- would have to pass between 1979 and what I am writing now in 2010.
In 1979, I was just getting the ball rolling...
In 1979, I was just starting the preliminary architecture of 'Hegel's Hotel'...
I was a young guy in the woods just starting to stretch out my cognitive faculties...probably much more of an 'Enlightenment idealist' than I am today....Today I identify much more with the likes of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, Sartre, Foucault, Derrida....than all my 'Enlightenment mentors' that I was reading in the 1970s...(Korzybski, Hayakawa, Rand, Branden, Ellis, and the likes...)
A thousand essays later and Hegel's Hotel is still not completely built, probably never will be, but it is getting closer to what I continue to envision...as the architecture and construction -- metaphorically speaking -- continues to be filled in, and continues to reach higher and higher into the sky...
How do you integrate Rand's 'Objectivism' with Nietzsche's brand of epistemological and ethical 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism'?
A banker, a poverty political activist, a playboy, and an artist all walk into the same cocktail party and none of them are likely to 'see' the same things...
We are all individually -- or 'narcissistically' -- biased.
However, 'Subjectivism' or 'Individual Relativism' -- Nietzsche style -- can only take us so far. If I cross a busy street and don't see a car turning the corner and aiming right at me, with the driver not seeing me, I could be in tomorrow's obituary column...or if I, and/or my tragedy, am/is considered by a newspaper writer and/or editor to be important enough, I might even get a first or second page article...
But I won't be around to find out where I ended up in the newspaper, or if I arrived there at all, because the difference between life and death can often be only a matter of a second or two of timing...
And if my subjective, individualistic, narcissistic timing is off by even a second or two when a car is racing towards me, the driver not seeing me, or unable to apply the brakes in time, or an ex-girlfriend 'confusing' the gas with brakes...then my 'Subjective, Relativistic Philosophy' has been steamrolled under the more 'Objective Cosmic Forces of Life and Death' and/or someone else's 'Subjective, Relativisitic Epistemology and/or Ethical -- mistake, or act of Epistemological and/or Ethical judgment (or lack thereof).
In our day to day world, life and death involves a constant 'dialectic collision' between 'subjective-narcissistic' and 'more objective' (and/or other 'subjective-narcissistic') forces.
Kant's 'noumenal'(objective) and 'phenomenal'(subjective) world are constantly colliding even if man will never know perfectly just exactly what it is that is in his 'noumenal/objective' world. He still has to strive for a 'good enough' epistemological and ethical 'fit'.
Fritz Perls, the (co-)founder of Gestalt Therapy, fittingly called this the 'fitting game'.
Alfred Korzybski, one of the best (and philosophically least known) epistemologists in the history of Western Philosophy,
created his school of 'General Semantics' as a 'cognitive toolbox' for people to better learn how to play life's various '(epistemological and ethical) (subjective-objective) fitting games'.
This essay here is a continuation and an extension of Korzybski's (and later S.I. Hayakawa's) General Semantic, language, and epistemology work, as well as the 'Cognitive Theory and Therapy' ('epistemological fitting game work') of writers such as Beck, Kelly, Ellis, and Meichenbaum, as well as the political-economic philosophies ('economic-political fitting game work') of Branden, Rand and Fromm, and the 'ethical fitting game work' of other Humanistic-Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Binswanger, Heidegger, Sartre, and Rollo May...
The two main principles that are slowly starting to be built here are:
1. The principle of 'post-Enlightenment-rational-empirical-egalitarian-humanistic-existentialism';
2. The principle of 'bi-polarity', 'dialectic interaction and negotiation between bi-polar extremes', and 'ideally evolving/resulting homeostatic-dialectic balance between bi-polar extremes in epistemology, ethics, politics, economics, and/or whatever other human endeavor we wish to partake in...
I hope you are sufficiently motivated to follow through with me on this 1979 to 2010 evolution of the 'original architecture and later construction' of -- Hegel's Hotel.
-- dgb, Nov. 30th, 2010,
-- David Gordon Bain
