Thursday, November 29, 2012
Taking Stock on The Driving Force Behind 'Hegel's Hotel' -- The Synergy of Opposing Ideas and The Phenomenology of The Multi-Dialectic Spirit (Part 1): Hegel Meets Nietzsche Meets Freud
Hegel's Hotel -- as a metaphor for the history, evolution, and integration of Western Philosophy-Psychology -- can be internalized into our individual and/or collective minds, our personalities, in larger or smaller fashion, depending on how many times you or I want to slice 'the classification pie', so to speak; or to continue with my main Hegel's Hotel metaphor, how many 'rooms' I want to include in the 'psychology wing of Hegel's Hotel' -- for example, whether I want to include 'philosophy' and/or 'mythological' rooms in this wing of my hotel, or create different wings of the hotel for these two related but different subject areas.
For the purpose of this essay, and probably eventually this whole section, I have chosen to put these two subject areas -- philosophy and mythology -- into separate wings of Hegel's Hotel, and focus on '20 particular psychology rooms' I am interested in at this particular moment in time Actually, one of my 20 rooms -- my 'Phenomenology of Spirit Room' -- can be viewed as a room that encompasses both the positives and the negatives of our 'whole existential and emotional spirit' -- good, great, so-so, bad, ugly, or horrific...
Even within the psychology wing of the hotel, we could make up a different number of rooms, depending on how you or I want to 'organize the psychology wing of the hotel', whether you or I want to do a summary of the major ideas of each major psychologist who means something to you or I in the history of clinical psychology -- I say 'you or I' because what I am trying to say is that 'Hegel's Hotel' can be an individual, customized project, for anyone who wants to try to build their own modified derivative of Hegel's Hotel -- although this Hegel's Hotel that you are reading is definitely my custom made 'hotel' which is not to say that I might not invite other writers to contribute at a later date....
Since the ultimate goal of my project is 'massive, evolving DGB integration', at some point, I need to draw a line, a cut off point, and devote a certain number of 'rooms' to this evolving end product of massive philosophy-psychology...integration.
Of course, again, all is very subjective and personal -- in this case, organized and classified by yours truly (although much, much more classifying and organizing still needs to be done).
At some point, I would like to have all the different 'wings' of the hotel labelled, all the 'floors' numbered, and all the 'individual rooms' numbered.
Whether this all comes together before I die or not remains to be seen. Sorry to sound morbid here but that is just the reality of the situation. Freud said that the 'id' -- the bottom, most primitive, uncivil portion of the mind -- is divided into the 'life' and 'death' instincts. I do not mind starting with this bipolarity in the personality, although I prefer to use the concepts of 'life force' and 'death force'... At some point in one's life -- whether chronically and/or acutely -- one is going to start to feel our death force overcrowd our life force as nature starts to drag us back towards entropy. Morbid -- but real.
Now, everything is subject to change, and at the present time I am battling a bout on pneumonia, so obviously I am negatively biased, and the optimist in me says that things will get better (the pessimist is not so sure...)
Life is fleeting -- and precious -- the older we get, the more we begin to appreciate this, or should begin to appreciate this, unless, in the case of sudden death, we never come to fully appreciate this...
Looking at two great philosophers in history, Kierkegaard died at 42 and accomplished a lot of writing in that time -- he died in 1855, a hundred years before I was born (maybe that is why I am so pessimistic); Nietzsche died at 56 (of which the last 10 years he spent 'insane', from 1889 to 1997 in the care of his mother until she died, and the last three years in the care of his sister until Nietzsche himself died in 1900).
In my 'historical perspectivism', I look at some of the age and accomplishment milestones of some of the great philosophers and psychologists. Even though I have written over a thousand essays on the internet now -- I have no idea of the exact number of completed pieces -- at the moment, all these essays lie in my archives in organizational disarray, and until they are actually cohesively organized into one major integrative piece of work, I don't think I've accomplished anything yet.
Man is caught between a number of different philosophical ideals in terms of how to live 'the good life'.
One, that we are all familiar with is 'the pursuit of happiness'; that comes from 'The Enlightenment' period and is written into a number of different national constitutions.
Another, is the goal of 'equilibrium' or '(homeostatic, dialectic) balance'.
A third is Nietzschean in nature -- in 1872, in 'The Birth of Tragedy' (BT), Nietzsche was looking for an almost unattainable balance between an 'Apollonian' and a 'Dionysian' lifestyle, thus, the 'birth of tragedy'; but by the time he started writing 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (TSZ), between 1883 and 1885, Nietzsche had abandoned poor Apollo, and was riding full steam ahead on his 'Dionysian Horse'....this was living life to the fullest, passionately, 'Beyond Good and Evil', in the spirit of 'The Anti-Christ', not the 'Crucified'....the life of a 'Superman' with a 'Will to Self-Empowerment', flying high above the 'mediocre, crucified, herd'....You would have to say that this involved living life with a far greater sense of 'imbalance' than what Nietzsche was looking for in 1872 (under Hegel's influence) in a 'tug-of-war conflict' between an Apollonian (cerebral, organized, cohesive) and a Dionysian (sensory, passionate, impulsive, emotional...) lifestyle. BT gave us a mythological analysis of what was to come, say, 51 years later in 'The Ego and The Id' (Freud, 1923), and more generally in The Standard Edition of The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud.
In contrast, TSZ was a horse of a different colour -- a Dionysian Horse -- which was more of a philosophy of 'Let our Id be free!'....a rather dangerous and unstable, unpredictable ethical recipe....this was the philosophy of 'The Anti-Christ'.....as opposed to the Christian philosophy which was more of a 'submission to God's demands and wishes' (as interpreted by whoever... presumably, in most cases, with an aim of a philosophy and a lifestyle involving more altruism and self-denial...as opposed to narcissistic self-interest).
At this point, we can choose the path of 'the unilateral, either/or philosopher' or the path of the more 'bipolarity negotiating, multi-integrative-dialectical, homeostatic balance oriented, compromising' philosopher' who wishes to 'find the middle path between opposite poles of conflicting thought, spirit, and action'...
This is what I label down below as the domain of 'The Central Ego' as well as our 'Phenomenology of Spirit Room' which is our 'emotional and spiritual thermostat' to let us know how we are doing in our very fine and precarious balancing act of different philosophies, problem-solving strategies, conflict-mediation, and resulting behavior patterns and styles of life...
It is interesting to note that in The United States of America, things aren't so united, as there exists a philosophical and political gridlock in Congress and in The White House between 'the unilateralists' and 'the more compromising integrationists'... Dependiing on whether this gridlock is unlocked or not, at the end of this month, lies what is being called the financial cliff of which the future of America is hanging on the edge...Let the better mediating and conflict-solving politicians win a negotiated settlement that will at least partly head America in the right direction...
Below, I have created part of the 'psychological wing' of Hegel's Hotel -- the part that summarizes my work as a 'multi-integrative-dialectic philosopher and psycho-theorist'. It integrates the work of say, some 50 psychologists starting with Freud, of which about 10 or 15 of these psychologists are more important.
Abstracting still further from here, we come to what, for me, might be called 'The Big Three Psychologists' -- Freud, Adler and Perls -- Jung, the fourth, Berne, the fifth, and then we can start to get into all the other early psychoanalysts: Rank, Abraham, Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich... 'The Objective Relationists' -- Karl Abraham, Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Harold Guntrip, and 'Self-Psychologists -- Heinz Kohut, and 'The Neo-Freudians and Humanistic-Existentialists -- Karen Horney, Eric Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow; 'The Cognitive-Emotional-Behaviorists' -- Alfred Korzybski, S.I. Hayakawa, Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, Donald Meichenbaum...
For me, three big philosophers lie in the 'shadow-background' of all these great psychologists -- Spinoza, Hegel, and Nietzsche -- and beyond that Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao tse, Epictetus, Epicurus, Diogenes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Foucault, Derrida, and back to psychology, Jeffrey Masson and somehow we should be able to find a way to fit Bion and Lacan into the psychoanalytic list....
The result is 'Hegel's Hotel: The GAP-DGB Psychology Wing' of which all of what I have listed above has been, in one way or another, highly compacted into the model below...
We can use this model to help us understand better how our mind works in different contexts -- structurally, organizationally, and psycho-dynamically.
It can be viewed as a larger, '20 room extension' of Freud's classic 'ego', 'id' and superego' model, or Perls' 'topdog', 'underdog' model, or Bernes' transactional analysis model, or Jung's 'personna', 'shadow' model...
This newest rendition of Hegel's Hotel -- the internalized psychological model -- we can choose to visit consciously, or -- 'out of awareness' -- visit subconsciously. All of the different rooms have both 'healthy' and 'pathological' components attached to them, contextually, to different degrees, in different persons.
The model I present to you can be used 'mythologically and/or spiritually' as well as 'rationally-empirically' without any talk of 'mythological figures' or 'Gods'... Your choice -- this is the flexibility of the model.
'GAP' incidentally, if you do not already know, stands for 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic' and it also stands for all the 'gaps' in our personality, and in our existence...
'DGB' stands for 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' ....
And together, 'GAP-DGB' stand for the gap, the Nietzschean Abyss, in each of our lives, and the 'rope' or 'bridge' or 'cape' that we all have to create and use to climb or fly from 'The Precipice of Personal and/or Genetic History (Etiology) to 'The Precipice of Being (Ontology)' and then again to 'The Precipice of Becoming (Teleology)...and it also signifies climbing back and forth from 'The Precipice of Dionysus' to 'The Precipice of Apollo'......
This is living the life of 'The Multi-Integrative Dialectic Superman or Superwoman'....It is 'The GAP-DGB rendition of 'The Phenomenology of Spirit'....and in Heraclitus-Lao-tse-Spinozian-Schellingian-Hegelian fashion...it is 'The Multi-Integrative-Dialectic-Holistic Path to Personal Spiritual Salvation'....ideally speaking...
That is the essence of the driving force behind Hegel's Hotel...
At this point, we are talking about 'hotel rooms' metaphorically representing 'ego-states' or 'ego-positions' and various different types of 'id-ego impulses' and 'defense mechanism' -- some against our own id-ego impulses, others toward the perceived dangers in our outer world.
We need to better understand -- or at least have a workable theory -- that will help us better understand how we got to these different ego-states or positions, id-ego impulses, and defense mechanisms against 'over-impulsiveness' on our own accord, and the perceived dangers that we interpret in our outer world.
Let us develop such a theory -- that integrates maybe about 30 to 40 psychologists, probably about 10 important ones that I will list in approximate order of importance here: Freud, Adler, Perls, Jung, Berne, Rank, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Horney, Fromm, Berne, Janov.... backed up by these important philosophers listed chronilogically: Anaximander, Heraclitus, Lao Tse, Epicurus, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida.
This will be the subject of my next essay.
-- dgb, Dec. 8th, 2012,
Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations...
Are Still in Process..
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Gods, Archetypes, Myths, Christianity, Humanistic-Existential Religion, and Personality Theory -- Part 1: Underlying Philosophical and Spiritual-Religious Foundations
I am picking up a theme here that I started to develop in January, 2011. How do the essays that I wrote back in that time period on 'God, Archetypes, Myths, Philosophers, and Psychologists' relate to my most recent work on personality theory?
Well, I am a man of 'Grand Unorthodox Inspirations, Interactions, and Integrations'....or at least that is what I would like to be viewed as....Put that on my tombstone when I am dead and gone...and I will rest with some peace....More peace if I can actually found and start a Massive Mult-Dialectic-Integrative Educational-Philosophy-Psychology...Institute that bears Hegel's name.....
Hegel's Hotel ....As a philosophical-psychological-political-spiritual treatise, it will never be finished because it is always evolving....It is my version of the continuation of Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807)
Fresh thinkers say, 'Think outside the box.' Well, the wonderful thing about Hegelian Philosophy, Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Logic, and my extended, projected manifestation of Hegel's brilliant work, is that once you develop a Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Philosophical Mindset -- you can never 'not think outside the box'. Indeed, you are always thinking outside the box....because you are always integrating different boxes, different concepts from different boxes, different theories from different theorists, different paradigms....Structures and processes -- whether metaphysically conceptualized or physically real -- become interwoven together to form creative new conceptual structures, processes, theories, and paradigms...(See Otto Rank and his viewpoint on creativity...)
Questions like this -- whether consciously or subconsciously formulated -- make up the foundation of my 'Phenomenology of Spirit': How can I integrate Christianity with Nietzsche's (so called 'Anti-Christian') brand of Humanistic-Existentialism? And where did Nietzsche go wrong? Nietzsche went wrong -- or at least partly wrong -- after his first creatively brilliant book (The Birth of Tragedy, or BT for short, 1872) where Nietzsche integrated Hegelian philosophy with a 'balanced view' of his (at that time) humanistic-existentialism which can be referred to as either 'Apollonian-Dionysianism' or 'Dionysian-Apollonianism'. This remarkable little book represented what might be called 'The Hegelian-Nietzschean Phenomenology of Spirit of 1872'.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche abandoned 'his Hegelian Bi-Polar (Dialectically Integrative) Horse of BT' after 1872, never to return to it in this first conceptualized format. A pity, I say, because BT is, in my opinion, Nietzsche's 'healthiest' book, perhaps his best book -- the bridge between Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and Freud's Psychoanalysis.
Nietzsche himself looked at 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his masterpiece but the closer I get to this book, the more I fail to see this. It is full of 'Nietzschean hypocrisies', and quite frankly, having lost his 'Apollonian-Dionysian (and Enlightenment-Romantic) Balance', I believe that Nietzsche had become so 'full of himself' that he had become both 'narcissistically and righteously offside'. 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' would need to be ethically and morally 'sanitized' before it could be considered a 'balanced' piece of work -- and, of course, that will never happen except in the editorial reviews of authors like me.
Nietzsche, in Zarathustra, calls all idealists 'cowards' and yet what is Zarathustra other than Nietzsche's ultimate 'idealistic' work. Similarly, Nietzsche confuses 'truth' with 'value' arguing that 'truthfulness is the highest virtue' (and yet what is virtue other than an 'ideal moral or ethical value'?) while at the same time Nietzsche dismisses and demeans all 'morality' -- this was allegedly Zarathustra's most 'calamitous error; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it'...Nietzsche builds an idealistic model of how man should live his life -- through the life of 'The Superman or Overman', through 'The Will to Power', through the process of 'overcoming', through the process of 'truthfulness', through the process of....
... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch (Superman/Overman).
These values above are all well and good, one could say an anti-Christian Bible of existential values -- unsanitized, or immoralized, in its lack of humanistic (Christian) values of such things as compassion, caring, altruism, love, generosity, empathy, social interest.....the types of values that a 'pathological narcissistic thinker' would not have much, if any, use for...as Nietzsche was, by this time, flying towards his own Abyss -- and perhaps an abysmal 'eternal recurrence'. Which brings us to another Nietzschean hypocrisy -- Nietzsche dismisses and demeans the Christian view of 'The Afterlife' while at the same time 'idealizing' his own mythological creation of 'The Eternal Recurrence'. Similarly....Part of Nietzsche's reactionary thought is also that the creature he most sincerely loathes is the spirit of revolution, and his hatred for the anarchist and rebel.[8]..(Wikipedia, Zarathustra).
while at the same time it is not hard at all to view Nietzsche as one of the ultimate 'rebel, anarchist philosophers' in all of Western history....Did Nietzsche really know himself as much as many scholars seem to think he did? To what extent did Nietzsche find 'truth within himself'? There seems to me to be a lot of polar parts of Nietzsche's character that Nietzsche was trying to bury in his own private closet -- and yet which were being projected into his work (sublimation) in an unrecognized way. His writing hypocrisies are many -- he fails to see his own idealism, his own 'ethical or moral virtues',his own view of the 'afterlife', the highly rebellious nature of his philosophy, he trumpets the sensory virtues of Dionysus, suppresses the righteous, truth-seeking virtues of Apollo -- and yet it is easy to see Nietzsche as much more of a 'righteous-narcissistic Apollonian philosopher' than a 'Dionysian one'. What is 'Dionysianism' other than man's 'uncultivated animality'....and yet Nietzsche sees... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch.. .
This, to me, sounds like a movement away from Dionysianism and towards an Apollonian Superman (and wasn't this, in effect, what Nietzsche was doing -- while at the same time trumpeting Dionysianism and suppressing/repressing his own Apollonianism? An Apollonianism based on existential virtues -- but lacking in humanistic compassion -- and we know where this ultimately led Germany to.....and I am generalizing to one point in time.....a crystallized cultural 'herd-crowd' of 'righteous-narcissistic-arrogant Nazi national supremists lacking in human compassion, empathy, and decency....until everything came crashing down....like Nietzsche's life....You can say what you want to about Nietzsche condemning German 'herd thinking' but the essence of the 'herd-thinking' was based on the type of 'Social Darwinian Extremism' that Nietzsche trumpeted through all of his later philosophy....We need someone to synthesize and synergize Nietzsche's radical brand of extremist existentialism with the Christian virtues of humanism meaning: compassion, empathy, caring, generosity, altruism...all of which was radically missing in Nietzsche's later philosophy. That is one of the things that I am trying to accomplish here in Hegel's Hotel...And that is why I view 'BT as a 'healthier' book than Zarathustra....Zarathustra, in effect, lacks Christian -- and any humanistic religious -- BALANCE....Combine Nietzsche's Self-Assertion with Christian Caring About Others...and you have Adler's idea of a balance between 'self and social interest'. Self-assertion is the 'yang' of life; while 'compassion and caring about others' is the 'yin' of life....
.Here below is Nietzsche expressing his animosity towards all 'morality' except his own one-sided brand of 'Existentialism Without Compassionate Humanism'...
..............................................................................................................................................
The ultimate of ironies was Nietzsche's most 'Christian' act -- or at least so the story goes -- just before he went insane -- when he saw a horse rider about to whip his horse and Nietzsche ran across the street to shield the horse from the impending whip....There in that one special moment -- just before he went insane -- Nietzsche integrated his brand of 'Existentialism Without Huamism' with his own very 'Christian-Humanistic Deed'.
For the most part, I believe in the idea of 'Cosmic Balance and Justice' -- which is not to say that we don't need 'civil laws and applied justice'....
But read Anaximander's and Heraclitus' philosophy in quick succession, and you will find the foundation of Western Dialectic Philosophy....before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle....which coincidentally or non-coincidentally merges very well with the Ancient beginnings of Chinese and Eastern Philosophy....with their polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...and also similar mythological philosophical implications involving 'air/wind', 'water', 'earth', and 'fire'...
'Humanistic-Existential Balance' is 'The Path'....as I move to converge elements of Ancient Western and Eastern Dialectic Philosophy, Christianity, Daoism, Heraclitus-Spinozian Pantheism, Enlightenment Deism, Agnosticism, Atheism...
They all can be connected if they share the underlying foundation of Humanistic-Existentialism, Self Assertion, Healthy Narcissism, Self-Overcoming, and Self-Actualization with Social Empathy, Caring, and Altruism...
This is the philosophical foundation of Hegel's Hotel....
It underpins all my theoretical ideas on the concept of 'Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis'.
Let us move in the next part of this paper into the manifestations of these ideas in the form of DGB Personality and Transference Theory...
-- dgb, Nov. 17th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap Inspirations, Creations, Interactions, Negotiations, and Integrations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Well, I am a man of 'Grand Unorthodox Inspirations, Interactions, and Integrations'....or at least that is what I would like to be viewed as....Put that on my tombstone when I am dead and gone...and I will rest with some peace....More peace if I can actually found and start a Massive Mult-Dialectic-Integrative Educational-Philosophy-Psychology...Institute that bears Hegel's name.....
Hegel's Hotel ....As a philosophical-psychological-political-spiritual treatise, it will never be finished because it is always evolving....It is my version of the continuation of Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807)
Fresh thinkers say, 'Think outside the box.' Well, the wonderful thing about Hegelian Philosophy, Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Logic, and my extended, projected manifestation of Hegel's brilliant work, is that once you develop a Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Philosophical Mindset -- you can never 'not think outside the box'. Indeed, you are always thinking outside the box....because you are always integrating different boxes, different concepts from different boxes, different theories from different theorists, different paradigms....Structures and processes -- whether metaphysically conceptualized or physically real -- become interwoven together to form creative new conceptual structures, processes, theories, and paradigms...(See Otto Rank and his viewpoint on creativity...)
Questions like this -- whether consciously or subconsciously formulated -- make up the foundation of my 'Phenomenology of Spirit': How can I integrate Christianity with Nietzsche's (so called 'Anti-Christian') brand of Humanistic-Existentialism? And where did Nietzsche go wrong? Nietzsche went wrong -- or at least partly wrong -- after his first creatively brilliant book (The Birth of Tragedy, or BT for short, 1872) where Nietzsche integrated Hegelian philosophy with a 'balanced view' of his (at that time) humanistic-existentialism which can be referred to as either 'Apollonian-Dionysianism' or 'Dionysian-Apollonianism'. This remarkable little book represented what might be called 'The Hegelian-Nietzschean Phenomenology of Spirit of 1872'.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche abandoned 'his Hegelian Bi-Polar (Dialectically Integrative) Horse of BT' after 1872, never to return to it in this first conceptualized format. A pity, I say, because BT is, in my opinion, Nietzsche's 'healthiest' book, perhaps his best book -- the bridge between Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and Freud's Psychoanalysis.
Nietzsche himself looked at 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his masterpiece but the closer I get to this book, the more I fail to see this. It is full of 'Nietzschean hypocrisies', and quite frankly, having lost his 'Apollonian-Dionysian (and Enlightenment-Romantic) Balance', I believe that Nietzsche had become so 'full of himself' that he had become both 'narcissistically and righteously offside'. 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' would need to be ethically and morally 'sanitized' before it could be considered a 'balanced' piece of work -- and, of course, that will never happen except in the editorial reviews of authors like me.
Nietzsche, in Zarathustra, calls all idealists 'cowards' and yet what is Zarathustra other than Nietzsche's ultimate 'idealistic' work. Similarly, Nietzsche confuses 'truth' with 'value' arguing that 'truthfulness is the highest virtue' (and yet what is virtue other than an 'ideal moral or ethical value'?) while at the same time Nietzsche dismisses and demeans all 'morality' -- this was allegedly Zarathustra's most 'calamitous error; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it'...Nietzsche builds an idealistic model of how man should live his life -- through the life of 'The Superman or Overman', through 'The Will to Power', through the process of 'overcoming', through the process of 'truthfulness', through the process of....
... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch (Superman/Overman).
The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". (from Wikipedia, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
.................................................................................................................................These values above are all well and good, one could say an anti-Christian Bible of existential values -- unsanitized, or immoralized, in its lack of humanistic (Christian) values of such things as compassion, caring, altruism, love, generosity, empathy, social interest.....the types of values that a 'pathological narcissistic thinker' would not have much, if any, use for...as Nietzsche was, by this time, flying towards his own Abyss -- and perhaps an abysmal 'eternal recurrence'. Which brings us to another Nietzschean hypocrisy -- Nietzsche dismisses and demeans the Christian view of 'The Afterlife' while at the same time 'idealizing' his own mythological creation of 'The Eternal Recurrence'. Similarly....Part of Nietzsche's reactionary thought is also that the creature he most sincerely loathes is the spirit of revolution, and his hatred for the anarchist and rebel.[8]..(Wikipedia, Zarathustra).
while at the same time it is not hard at all to view Nietzsche as one of the ultimate 'rebel, anarchist philosophers' in all of Western history....Did Nietzsche really know himself as much as many scholars seem to think he did? To what extent did Nietzsche find 'truth within himself'? There seems to me to be a lot of polar parts of Nietzsche's character that Nietzsche was trying to bury in his own private closet -- and yet which were being projected into his work (sublimation) in an unrecognized way. His writing hypocrisies are many -- he fails to see his own idealism, his own 'ethical or moral virtues',his own view of the 'afterlife', the highly rebellious nature of his philosophy, he trumpets the sensory virtues of Dionysus, suppresses the righteous, truth-seeking virtues of Apollo -- and yet it is easy to see Nietzsche as much more of a 'righteous-narcissistic Apollonian philosopher' than a 'Dionysian one'. What is 'Dionysianism' other than man's 'uncultivated animality'....and yet Nietzsche sees... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch.. .
This, to me, sounds like a movement away from Dionysianism and towards an Apollonian Superman (and wasn't this, in effect, what Nietzsche was doing -- while at the same time trumpeting Dionysianism and suppressing/repressing his own Apollonianism? An Apollonianism based on existential virtues -- but lacking in humanistic compassion -- and we know where this ultimately led Germany to.....and I am generalizing to one point in time.....a crystallized cultural 'herd-crowd' of 'righteous-narcissistic-arrogant Nazi national supremists lacking in human compassion, empathy, and decency....until everything came crashing down....like Nietzsche's life....You can say what you want to about Nietzsche condemning German 'herd thinking' but the essence of the 'herd-thinking' was based on the type of 'Social Darwinian Extremism' that Nietzsche trumpeted through all of his later philosophy....We need someone to synthesize and synergize Nietzsche's radical brand of extremist existentialism with the Christian virtues of humanism meaning: compassion, empathy, caring, generosity, altruism...all of which was radically missing in Nietzsche's later philosophy. That is one of the things that I am trying to accomplish here in Hegel's Hotel...And that is why I view 'BT as a 'healthier' book than Zarathustra....Zarathustra, in effect, lacks Christian -- and any humanistic religious -- BALANCE....Combine Nietzsche's Self-Assertion with Christian Caring About Others...and you have Adler's idea of a balance between 'self and social interest'. Self-assertion is the 'yang' of life; while 'compassion and caring about others' is the 'yin' of life....
.Here below is Nietzsche expressing his animosity towards all 'morality' except his own one-sided brand of 'Existentialism Without Compassionate Humanism'...
[F]or what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. [...] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality [...]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.
— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
..............................................................................................................................................
The ultimate of ironies was Nietzsche's most 'Christian' act -- or at least so the story goes -- just before he went insane -- when he saw a horse rider about to whip his horse and Nietzsche ran across the street to shield the horse from the impending whip....There in that one special moment -- just before he went insane -- Nietzsche integrated his brand of 'Existentialism Without Huamism' with his own very 'Christian-Humanistic Deed'.
For the most part, I believe in the idea of 'Cosmic Balance and Justice' -- which is not to say that we don't need 'civil laws and applied justice'....
But read Anaximander's and Heraclitus' philosophy in quick succession, and you will find the foundation of Western Dialectic Philosophy....before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle....which coincidentally or non-coincidentally merges very well with the Ancient beginnings of Chinese and Eastern Philosophy....with their polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...and also similar mythological philosophical implications involving 'air/wind', 'water', 'earth', and 'fire'...
'Humanistic-Existential Balance' is 'The Path'....as I move to converge elements of Ancient Western and Eastern Dialectic Philosophy, Christianity, Daoism, Heraclitus-Spinozian Pantheism, Enlightenment Deism, Agnosticism, Atheism...
They all can be connected if they share the underlying foundation of Humanistic-Existentialism, Self Assertion, Healthy Narcissism, Self-Overcoming, and Self-Actualization with Social Empathy, Caring, and Altruism...
This is the philosophical foundation of Hegel's Hotel....
It underpins all my theoretical ideas on the concept of 'Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis'.
Let us move in the next part of this paper into the manifestations of these ideas in the form of DGB Personality and Transference Theory...
-- dgb, Nov. 17th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap Inspirations, Creations, Interactions, Negotiations, and Integrations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
On Transference (Part 1)
November 12, 2012
When defining a concept, the concept is attached to one or more certain contextual parameters or variables which provide the boundaries of the concept, and based on these conceptual boundaries which in turn are based on the particular variable-parameters specified, gives the concept its definition.
Freud (1895, Studies in Hysteria) originally defined 'transference' as a 'false connection' (where a person confuses or distorts the characteristics of a person in the here-and-now that he or she is relating to -- usually the therapist/analyst within the context of the therapeutic relationship -- with a person from the past -- usually one of the client's parents. Thus, the idea of 'false connection' became the original defining variable/parameter of the concept of transference.)
A new concept, transference, was born in psychoanalysis -- and a very important one -- indeed, from my perspective, a concept that was to become more important than Freud's earlier concept of 'repression'.
My work on transference is a mixture of the orthodox and the unorthodox. Some of it is supported by the work of Freud -- and the likes of Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Ronald Fairbairn, Eric Berne, Arthur Janov, Brian Bird...
For other parts of it, I have stepped outside of the realm of psychoanalysis and entered into the realm of Adlerian Psychology (Alfred Adler), Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls), Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne), Primal Therapy (Arthur Janov) to find parts of the answers I have been looking for to certain otherwise unanswered questions. For example, Is transference a form of intended self-psychotherapy? Or is it a manifestation of the destructive-death instinct at work? Or are there elements of both tendencies at work in the same 'obsessive-compulsive' process?
Paradoxically, transference can be both therapeutic and/or pathological at the same or different times. It all depends on how it is being acted out, and what exactly is coming out of our 'transference complexes'.
Are we getting on the same roller coaster ride over and over again without even being consciously aware of what we are doing, and how we are doing it? And will there ever come a time where we say to ourselves: I don't want to get on this roller coaster ride anymore. It hurts too much when the roller coaster ride goes awry and I am left with 'emotional parts' strewn all over the 'bottom of the roller coaster'.
There is also the question of how, exactly, transference theory relates to the broader parameter of personality theory. And more questions: How does transference theory relate to traumacy theory and fantasy theory? And how does transference theory relate to Object Relations and Self Psychology as well as Classical Theory? And can we draw a connection between transference theory and elements of Bionian Traumacy Theory? These questions, we will come back and answer shortly.
...................................................................................................................................
Added Nov. 17th, 2012...below....and a happy birthday to my sister, Trish Bain...
.............................................................................................................................................
But first, I have another essay I wish to write that takes me back to a number of essays and a line of thinking that I began to develop a couple of years ago.
I found one of these essays in my archives, dated June 17th, 2011,
There are one or two more out there from the same time period that explore this same theme...I just added the word 'transference' to the first title listed above...
I will be back shortly to pick up the trail that I am leaving you in 'the midst of the woods' here...
To be continued...
-- dgb, November 17th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain,
When defining a concept, the concept is attached to one or more certain contextual parameters or variables which provide the boundaries of the concept, and based on these conceptual boundaries which in turn are based on the particular variable-parameters specified, gives the concept its definition.
Freud (1895, Studies in Hysteria) originally defined 'transference' as a 'false connection' (where a person confuses or distorts the characteristics of a person in the here-and-now that he or she is relating to -- usually the therapist/analyst within the context of the therapeutic relationship -- with a person from the past -- usually one of the client's parents. Thus, the idea of 'false connection' became the original defining variable/parameter of the concept of transference.)
A new concept, transference, was born in psychoanalysis -- and a very important one -- indeed, from my perspective, a concept that was to become more important than Freud's earlier concept of 'repression'.
My work on transference is a mixture of the orthodox and the unorthodox. Some of it is supported by the work of Freud -- and the likes of Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Ronald Fairbairn, Eric Berne, Arthur Janov, Brian Bird...
For other parts of it, I have stepped outside of the realm of psychoanalysis and entered into the realm of Adlerian Psychology (Alfred Adler), Gestalt Therapy (Fritz Perls), Transactional Analysis (Eric Berne), Primal Therapy (Arthur Janov) to find parts of the answers I have been looking for to certain otherwise unanswered questions. For example, Is transference a form of intended self-psychotherapy? Or is it a manifestation of the destructive-death instinct at work? Or are there elements of both tendencies at work in the same 'obsessive-compulsive' process?
Paradoxically, transference can be both therapeutic and/or pathological at the same or different times. It all depends on how it is being acted out, and what exactly is coming out of our 'transference complexes'.
Are we getting on the same roller coaster ride over and over again without even being consciously aware of what we are doing, and how we are doing it? And will there ever come a time where we say to ourselves: I don't want to get on this roller coaster ride anymore. It hurts too much when the roller coaster ride goes awry and I am left with 'emotional parts' strewn all over the 'bottom of the roller coaster'.
There is also the question of how, exactly, transference theory relates to the broader parameter of personality theory. And more questions: How does transference theory relate to traumacy theory and fantasy theory? And how does transference theory relate to Object Relations and Self Psychology as well as Classical Theory? And can we draw a connection between transference theory and elements of Bionian Traumacy Theory? These questions, we will come back and answer shortly.
...................................................................................................................................
Added Nov. 17th, 2012...below....and a happy birthday to my sister, Trish Bain...
.............................................................................................................................................
But first, I have another essay I wish to write that takes me back to a number of essays and a line of thinking that I began to develop a couple of years ago.
I found one of these essays in my archives, dated June 17th, 2011,
On Dialectic (Transference) Complexes, Gods and Archetypes, Mythologies, The Id, The Instincts/Impulses, and Their Many Viscisitudes (Mutations, Defenses, and Compromise-Formations)...
Here is another one, dated January 15th, 2011...
Floor 2: Gods, Myths, Archetypes, Philosophers, and Psychologists: Room 201: What Are Gods?
There are one or two more out there from the same time period that explore this same theme...I just added the word 'transference' to the first title listed above...
I will be back shortly to pick up the trail that I am leaving you in 'the midst of the woods' here...
To be continued...
-- dgb, November 17th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain,
Sunday, November 4, 2012
What Is 'The Phenomenology of Spirit'? And What Is Its Opposite? How Is The Phenomenology of Spirit 'Derailed' By 'The Depressive-Addiction Cycle'
'The Phenomenology of Spirit' -- taken from the title of Hegel's 1807 masterpiece -- is the 'humanistic-existential energy' of the human soul, the human spirit. Or at least it is by my interpretation of what Hegel meant by it.
You can tell when you have it because you feel energized and 'full of life' -- you want to embrace people and embrace life; contradistinctively, you can tell when you don't have it because -- at its worst -- you feel a 'dark, depressive or death spirit emulating from your heart and your whole mind and body'. This is 'the abyss', 'the pit', or 'the garbage pail' of human existence. In between, we all have good and bad days but the mark of the completely depressive personality is that there are no good days -- they are all bad, or so we 'conceptually and emotionally construct' them.
Some depressions can be improved just by 're-framing' or 're-constructing' the way we think. There are other types of depressions that demand that we take radical action to change our whole life around -- and make it significantly better. In between are those of us who simply have good and bad days where a full night sleep will often do wonders relative to the preceding bad day.
Let's just say that I am having a very bad day where a decent night's sleep did not wipe away my preceding bad day. If I were on The Toronto Raptors basketball team, I would say that I am 'sliding on a two game losing streak'. Could be worse. Could be better.
Depression is often tied to addiction. Here is where you get the 'manic-depressive' or 'bipolarity' tag (the first tag is more descriptively concrete and includes the bipolarity issue). And here is what I would call 'The Depression-Addiction Cycle'. 1. You are working through the days problems and not coming up with the solutions you want. The problems are significant to your sense of existence. 2. You feel a loss of 'self-empowerment' or 'self-control'. The world is controlling you; you are not controlling it. 3. You plunge into 'the abyss of depression' which is basically 'uncontacted grief, anxiety, resentment, anger, rage, or the like. A Gestalt Hot Seat is in order. But you don't have a Gestalt Therapist in your back pocket. So you do the next best thing -- or so you think. 4. You 'contact your addiction' to try to make yourself feel better. That could be food, sweets, spending and buying, alcohol, gambling, drugs, sex....anything that 'kicks your pleasure principle into gear'...Worry about 'the reality principle later. 5. Depending partly on how bad your addiction is, and what your attitude is about it, you either: a) ignore help and keep on doing it; b) you wrestle though it yourself and get your Central Ego back in gear again so that it is working in a more 'Apollonian' as opposed to 'Dionysian' direction, and go back to trying to solve the same problems you couldn't solve the first time around. You either succeed -- or you don't -- or somewhere in between.
That is about the extent of my capabilities for this evening.
-- dgb
You can tell when you have it because you feel energized and 'full of life' -- you want to embrace people and embrace life; contradistinctively, you can tell when you don't have it because -- at its worst -- you feel a 'dark, depressive or death spirit emulating from your heart and your whole mind and body'. This is 'the abyss', 'the pit', or 'the garbage pail' of human existence. In between, we all have good and bad days but the mark of the completely depressive personality is that there are no good days -- they are all bad, or so we 'conceptually and emotionally construct' them.
Some depressions can be improved just by 're-framing' or 're-constructing' the way we think. There are other types of depressions that demand that we take radical action to change our whole life around -- and make it significantly better. In between are those of us who simply have good and bad days where a full night sleep will often do wonders relative to the preceding bad day.
Let's just say that I am having a very bad day where a decent night's sleep did not wipe away my preceding bad day. If I were on The Toronto Raptors basketball team, I would say that I am 'sliding on a two game losing streak'. Could be worse. Could be better.
Depression is often tied to addiction. Here is where you get the 'manic-depressive' or 'bipolarity' tag (the first tag is more descriptively concrete and includes the bipolarity issue). And here is what I would call 'The Depression-Addiction Cycle'. 1. You are working through the days problems and not coming up with the solutions you want. The problems are significant to your sense of existence. 2. You feel a loss of 'self-empowerment' or 'self-control'. The world is controlling you; you are not controlling it. 3. You plunge into 'the abyss of depression' which is basically 'uncontacted grief, anxiety, resentment, anger, rage, or the like. A Gestalt Hot Seat is in order. But you don't have a Gestalt Therapist in your back pocket. So you do the next best thing -- or so you think. 4. You 'contact your addiction' to try to make yourself feel better. That could be food, sweets, spending and buying, alcohol, gambling, drugs, sex....anything that 'kicks your pleasure principle into gear'...Worry about 'the reality principle later. 5. Depending partly on how bad your addiction is, and what your attitude is about it, you either: a) ignore help and keep on doing it; b) you wrestle though it yourself and get your Central Ego back in gear again so that it is working in a more 'Apollonian' as opposed to 'Dionysian' direction, and go back to trying to solve the same problems you couldn't solve the first time around. You either succeed -- or you don't -- or somewhere in between.
That is about the extent of my capabilities for this evening.
-- dgb
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