In this essay here, I will take a trip down history lane, examine some of the work of the early Freudians on early childhood development, later Object Relationists and Attachment Theorists, and currently accepted psychoanalytic theory as well as adding my own editorial comments and modifications to come up with the phases of early childhood development, the 'psycho-structures', and the multi-dialectic, multi-bi-polar, psycho-dynamics that are serving me at this point in my theoretical development.
We will start with 'pre-birth' and the concepts and theories before and after birth that I believe influence early childhood development up to around the age of 7, and the relevance of these concepts and theories on later adult life. Let us start with The Genetic (Potential) Self (GPS).
1. The Genetic Potential Self (GPS)
This includes all the genetic hardware and software that our parents have genetically given to us through their DNA, both good and bad, and indeed, includes all genetic material that may stretch hundreds or even thousands of years back in our family tree. It includes many of our genetic skill sets, our genetic strengths and weaknesses, it includes our ability to learn language, and it includes mythological and metaphorical picture symbols that make themselves available in our dreams -- and when certain things break down in our neurological and/or biochemical processes, sometimes under extreme stress -- our hallucinations. From our picture symbols, we can take the Jungian route and talk about 'Gods', 'Heroes', 'Villains', and 'Archetypes' at a later time although I have written a number of essays on this subject in the past.
2. Our 'Womb Room'
Under normal circumstances, this should be a safe haven for the unborn baby. It is beyond the scope of my expertise to know what kinds of things can happen under a 'not normal womb environment'. Suffice is to say that 'toxins' can enter this environment -- drugs, alcohol, and perhaps or probably an emotionally unstable mother...But when everything is right, call this the 'Garden of Eden' for the unborn baby -- until its 'eviction time'.
3. Birth Trauma: Eviction From The 'Garden of Eden' -- The New-Born Baby's Abyss and His or Her Movement Towards The Safety and Nurturing of The 'Good Enough Mother'
Otto Rank talked about 'birth trauma' which threw Classical Psychoanalysis into a righteous uproar -- a challenge to Freud's beloved 'Oedipal Complex Theory' -- and libido -- as the root of all neurosis. Rank was the first to coin the term 'pre-Oedipal' -- a now (2012) but not then (1925) well-accepted concept in Psychoanalysis. Back then, Rank's 'birth trauma theory' and 'pre-Oedipal' concept were both rejected by Ferenzci -- Rank's best friend -- as well as by Freud, and by the process of association -- or dissociation -- the rest of The Psychoanalytic Establishment.
If it hadn't been for the early work of Rank, Abraham, and Ferenzci, and the later Object Relationists and Self-Psychologists, and the provoked rebellion and scandal of The Traumacy-Seduction Theory by Masson in the 80s, Psychoanalysis would have probably died on the cross of The Oedipal Complex and Libido-Fantasy Theory by now. What was missing, most essentially, was the application of the concepts of '(dialectical) contact-engagement and the mutual influence of the therapist on the client, and the client on the therapist in the here-and now, I and Now' situation -- the difference between a 'sterile, reductistic relationship' (Classical Psychoanalysis) and a much more dynamic, humanistic-existential relationship where the therapist acts as an individual person and not as an emotionally schizoid, distancing robot. How can you teach relationship skills and contact-engagement if you are not demonstrating any of these skills in the therapeutic room. Interpretation after interpretation leads only to relationship sterility -- and, in effect, a death-like relationship. Human immediacy in the here-and now brings relationships alive. Rank knew that. Ferenzci knew that. That was not Freud's therapeutic goal or ideal -- he wanted the emotionless interpreter (the therapist) to harness the 'destructive energy of the client's out of control and dangerous id'. Need it be said, that Freud always wanted control.
Getting back to the idea of 'birth trauma', Rank believed that birth trauma is our first, primary -- and prototype for -- all later 'separation anxieties'. Who knows what a newborn baby is feeling as he or she comes out of the birthing channel, and abruptly lands in the outside world, and how much individual reaction there is to this experience? And this assumes that there were not any notable traumas within the womb itself that entered the pre-born baby's consciousness or subconsciousness.
Rank used the concept of 'birth trauma' generically as a common experience for all individuals, all newborn babies coming into the world and not knowing what is going on...The quicker the transition to a 're-creation of a womb-like environment -- warm and tight' -- the easier this transition is likely to be for newborn baby. But we can expect that there is going to be an element of 'chaos' and 'unpredictablity' and 'emotional instability' for baby until he or she starts to begin to expect and feel a 'new predictability' in the routines of being fed and cleaned and going back to sleep....This is also where newborn baby's first instinctual skill within his or her own self control -- i.e., 'sucking for nutrition' -- comes into play and baby is slowly on the path to 'individuation', the path from 'complete environmental dependency and support to greater and greater self-support, assuming everything proceeds properly along this path.
So we have three different things happening during this earliest time period of life: 1. an 'eviction into unpredictable chaos'; 2. a re-establishing of environmental support, emotional predictability, stability, groundedness, and trust under 'good enough to ideal mothering conditions'; and 3. the beginning of the path to indivuation and greater and greater self-support, assuming a 'good enough' family culture that encourages this type of individual development.....otherwise, certain 'neurotic developments' may start to take place in the child. Perhaps the main three of these 'overly developed defensive strategies' that we may carry with us our whole life, as distinguished by Karen Horney, are: 1. movement towards people (i.e., movement towards a 'clinging' emotional and/or behavioral dependency on people); 2. movement away from people (the distancing, anal-schizoid, or emotionally schizoid personality type); and/or 3. movement against people in an overly paranoid, defensive, aggressive manner (the rebellious and/or anarchist, deconstructive personality type).
This brings us to the end of what might be called the 'Pre-Oedipal Phase' of early childhood development, leading into the Oedipal Phase, using a partly Classical Psychoanalysis classification system, with an Object Relations and Attachment Theory influence (Abraham, Rank, Winnicott, and others) bringing us up to present Psychoanalytic Theory.
It would seem that the deepest emotional and social schisms -- marks of the anal or emotionally schizoid (distancing) personality -- are most likely to occur in this earliest phase of post-birth life, with 'not good enough mothering (and/or fathering)' perhaps being the most significant factor in this development phase gone wrong, assuming no significant pre-birth traumacies, no genetic or neurological or biochemical irregularities that may complicate the picture in our current wish to better understand autism for example which seems to add the symptomology of impaired language and communication skills of a type that goes 'significantly beyond the anal-schizoid personality', indeed, autism seems to show some of the characteristics of Freud's earliest 'hysteria and obsessional neurosis' patients but again, with some significantly impaired language skills which would seem to separate autism from hysteria and obsessional neurosis -- that is just my own personal observation and tentative interpretation -- and having said this, we move now into what Freud called the Oedipal Phase of early childhood development.
To be continued...
A/ The 'Object Relations' Rooms
01. Our Nurturing Superego Room;
02. Our Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking, Dionysian) Superego Room;
03. Our Narcissistic Superego Room;
04. Our Righteous-Critical Superego Room;
05. Our Social Persona Room;
06. Our Central Processing Ego Room;
07. Our Private-Id-Ego-Superego Room;
08. Our Phenomenology of Spirit Thermostat Room;
09. Our Comfort-Safety-Creative Room;
10. Our Approval-Seeking Underego Room;
11. Our Hedonistic (Pleasure-Seeking, Dionysian) Rebellious Underego Room;
12. Our Narcissistic Underego Room;
13. Our Righteous-Rebellious-Critical Underdego Room;
B/ Our Primarily Subconscious, Traumacy, Impulsive-Drive, Transference Template, and Restraint Rooms
14. Our Dream and Fantasy Weaver Room;
15. Our Uncontained, Rising Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego Elements;
16. Our Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego Vault Room;
17. Our Memory-Learning--Transference-Lifestyle Templates;
18. Our Evolving, Rising Shadow-Id-Ego-Superego Elements;
19. Our Personal Abyss (Our Black Hole, Pit, Apeiron, Chaos);
20. Our Pre-Born Child Influences (including Our Genetic-Existential Potential Self).
Of particular interest here, is my new concept of 'Our Phenomenology of Spirit Room' which is basically our 'Spirit Thermostat' -- a combination of our 'life and passion spirit', 'death and destructive spirit', with all of our other 'rooms' in our personality contributing to the ongoing, evolving, changing, positive and/or negative spirit of our 'Phenomenology of Spirit Thermostat Room (PSTR)'. Influences on the quality and quantity of spirit within this room come from both our internal self (meaning all of the different rooms I have listed above) and from our external environment.
More on this model, in the essay to follow....
-- dgb, December 5th, 2012...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Synergetic Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
