"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you
care."Theodore Roosevelt
care."Theodore Roosevelt
In one sense, the idea of Hegel's Hotel came together as an idealistic vision for me in the 1980s and early 1990s.
You could say that I worked my way backwards, historically, from Gestalt Therapy and Adlerian Psychology to Psychoanalysis and Jungian Psychology. Except perhaps for Adlerian Psychology, you could say that the other three schools of psychology -- Gestalt Therapy, Psychoanalysis, and Jungian Psychology -- were built on the philosophical foundation of at least one great German Idealistic Philosopher -- G.W.Hegel. And you could probably add Nietzsche as a strong secondary influence next to Hegel in the birth and foundation of these three psychologies -- in Nietzsche's case, in addition, you could also say that he was a more primary influence on Alfred Adler's school of psychology in terms of the similarity between Adler's 'Superiority Striving' and Nietzsche's 'Will to Power, Self-Empowerment, and/or The Will To Be A Superman -- or Superwoman'.
In contrast, The Hegelian 'dialectical-interactive' influence on Freud, Jung, and Perls went more like this:
Great energy requires great tension between opposing ideologies and/or people and/or characteristics of people....But in order for this great energy -- or 'synergy' -- to take place, 'the dualistic tension between opposites' has to be given the freedom, the democracy, to dialectically interact, negotiate, create, synthesize, and synergize.....
Now Freud was partly a Hegelian, dialectic thinker, but he was also partly an Aristolean dualistic, 'either/or thinker' -- and both righteously, and narcissistically, so -- in his latter 'Pit Bull, Hanging On Bite, and Attachment' to Aristolean dualistic, either/or thinking.
The Aristolean, dualistic, either/or thinking part of Freud's personality has to be considered a weakness in his thinking which led to many of his best co-workers leaving him, and/or him leaving them. (Breuer, Adler, Jung, Stekel, Rank, Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Perls, indirectly Masson...Paradoxically, Masson has some of that same 'either/or' weakness in his own personality and ideology...or at least back in the 70s and 80s he did....)
Sometimes, we do have to make bold, 'either/or' choices between 'right' and 'wrong', or 'truth' and 'fiction'.....but where there is usually strong bipolar controversy between opposing ideological camps (and one or both of these 'camps' is/are not based on 'narcissistic power-and/or-greed-mongering' , 'the rightness' of a particular ideological issue can usually be found somewhere as near as can be achieved to 'the middlepoint' wherever the point of 'homeostatic-dialectic-democratic balance' is best arrived at -- and maintained.
Now here is another paradox in the human personality. To a greater or lesser extent, 'we all want our own way' (a 'narcissistic-id mentality' combined with a greater or lesser degree of 'control demandingness'), and yet most of us -- who have not been completely 'destroyed ethically' by the influence and context of 'narcissistic capitalism' -- seek a 'personal-social balance point' that includes some greater or lesser element of 'caring, empathy, respect for others, love, altruism, ethical-moral fairness, etc... (a 'humanistic-ethical-ego-superego' mentality)...
Which sets up the paradox or dichotomy between a 'wish for personal-social autocracy' on the one hand ('Man The Righteous-Narcissistic Control-Freak and Manipulator'...Read Hobbes, Machiavelli, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche...) and a 'wish for personal-social democracy' on the other hand ('Man The Caring, Loving, Ethical and/or Altruistic Humanist')...this paradox/ dichotomy often colliding in the form of 'conflict tension' both inside the personality (intra-psychic conflict) and/or outside the personality in our social world (interpersonal conflict).
Life -- and the human body and personality -- is full of such 'Paradox-Dichotomies (PDs)' and 'BiPolar Spectrums (BPS).
Such as on the 'body and biochemical level'..... high and low blood sugar levels (and the 'Healthy, Homeostatic-Dialectic Balance Point', or 'HHDBP', between them), likewise with high, low, and balanced blood pressure, high, low and balanced thyroid levels, high, low, and balanced immune system levels, high, low and balanced acidic-alkaline levels, high, low, balanced hormonal (testosterone and/or estrogen levels)....
On the personal-social-political level, we have 'liberalism vs. conservatism', 'religious vs. non-religious', 'capitalist vs. socialist mentalities', 'masculine vs. feminine wants, demands, rights...', 'racial equalities vs. discriminations', 'employer vs. employee issues', 'upper vs. lower class issues', 'moral-ethical issues', and so on...'rootedness vs. flightiness', 'relatedness vs. non-relatedness', 'engagement vs. alienation', 'attachment vs. detachment', 'ambition vs. entropy'...
Actually, it was probably back in the 1970s when I first was exposed to the idea of 'Hegelian dialectically interactive and integrative, synergetic ideas' -- and it wasn't primarily from university that I was first exposed to this 'Hegelian-Dialectically-Interactive-Creative-Negotiative-Integrative-Synergetic-Mindset-Paradigm'...
Rather, it was from my father, and working in my father's business...
My dad was in the 'audio-visual training, educating, selling' business...
In the 1970s, I heard or overheard him talking about 'marrying' 'hardware' (audio-visual machines) with 'software' ('film and movie-making')...
And I heard him talking about 'cross-fertilizing ideas' ...
And I heard or overheard him talking about creating an 'information highway'...(foreshadowing the birth of computers and the internet...)....
So, in essence, I was already 'attuned' to becoming a 'Hegelian Dialectically Interactive-Integrative-Synergetic' thinker-philosopher-psycho-theorist' well before I finally -- through Freud, Jung, and Perls -- 'met' and 'engaged' Hegel's dialectic philosophy as the focal point of my 'philosophical-psychological journey' (in the early 1990s) -- and that was after 11 years of experiencing Gestalt Therapy and Gestalt Theory -- most particularly, in the form of 'The Gestalt Hot Seat and Empty Chair Technique' -- i.e,, becoming more and more familiar with the 'diverging' and 'converging' individual, bipolar parts of intra-psychic and inter-personal conflict....and how they can become 'creatively, interactively, and integratively synergized' in a much more productive, self and social functional -- as opposed to dysfunctional -- evolving dynamic...
This remains my ongoing vision and goal -- both on a philosophical and a psychological level as well as a medical level, an economic level, a political level, and an artistic-romantic-spiritual level -- of Hegel's Hotel...
To which I would like to hugely expand on what I am doing here....
Which right now amounts to about 1 essay a week...
And to which I need your help to take Hegel's Hotel to a 'higher, dialectically interactive, integrative evolutionary level'...
-- dgb, July 15, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
