'The Phenomenology of Spirit' is a central concept in my own modified, extended rendition of Hegel's work -- 'Hegel's Hotel' -- taken from the title of Hegel's most important philosophical work by the same name, written in 1807, although it is unfortunately more often translated today as 'The Phenomenology of Mind'. The semantic problem hinges around the German word 'Geist' which means both 'spirit' and 'mind' in German.
Unfortunately, the word 'mind' does not conjure up the same type of idea that 'spirit' does -- the latter of which is generally more easily connected to to the ideas of 'feeling' and 'soul' than the word 'mind' is.
Hegel's famous book takes us on an analytic trip of collective-and-individual-historical-evolutionary-determinism from primitive times to German Idealism, culminating with Hegel's work, and heading through the dialectic process of 1. thesis; 2. anti-thesis; 3. synthesis; (although Hegel never used these actual words to describe this essential dialectic process) and start the process all over again at a higher level of evolution....the ultimate end of human growth and evolution supposedly culminating in what Hegel called 'The Absolute' as in 'Absolute Godliness' where man reaches a level of consciousness and self-consciousness where he has, in effect, actualized God's creative intent -- and let it be added, no matter how 'ugly' it may have gotten in the very volatile dialectic movement and actualization of human thinking and behavior to get to this ultimate evolutionary ending of 'actualizing God's creative intent'. In Hegel's idealistic picture of human evolution, some very nasty human behavior -- such as, say The French Revolution and The Reign of Terror -- will eventually end in a 'happy, idealistic human ending where man ultimately reaches God's own level of Absolute Consciousness'...
For me -- and Hegel's Hotel: GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology -- 'The (Multi-Dialectic) Phenomenology of Spirit' works quite differently than what Hegel had in mind -- much less 'cerebral' and much more 'spiritual'; still partly historically and dialectically deterministic, but at the same time, potentially much more individual and multi-dialectic-romantic-humanistic-existential, as well as being potentially multi-dialectic-romantic-humanistic-existential in a larger group sense as well.
Let me see if I can explain.
My modified and extended version of Hegel's 'phenomenology of spirit' is predicated on three working assumptions:
1. Man is essentially 'multi-bipolar' and 'dialectic engagement' is necessary to 'harmonize' our conflicted, opposing bipolarities so that they are working together within us and outside of us towards the same end, rather than tearing us apart -- ending in self-destruction and self-tragedy (Nietzschean style)....Conflicted bipolarities, unrecognized, disowned, dissociated from each other, and/or otherwise unresolved within the personality can drag us down into the abyss of self-destruction and self-defeat; in contrast, recognized, accepted, and resolved 'self-splits' can move us more forcefully and integratively towards actualizing our 'ideal phenomenology of spirit';
2. 'Self-splits' are usually formed, using primarily Freudian terms here in one or more of the three following stages of early childhood development: 1. The Pre-Birth Womb; 2. The Pre-Oedipal Stage (birth to 2 yrs old); and/or 3. The Oedipal Stage (3 to 7 yrs. old). Self-splits are partly inherent in the normal 'multi-bipolar' biological and cognitive-emotional-behavioral functioning of the organism, but self-splits are also exasperated by mainly early childhood traumacy -- what can be called 'core, nuclear, traumacy-transference rejection or failure scenes with resulting internal conflict' that can, and usually do, have a lifelong evolutionary and/or regressive and/or pathological effect on our developing personality...
3. At least fifteen of our essential bipolarities come down through our evolution from seemingly the beginning of human time, and can be found in almost all cultures of human mythology....
Let me list what I consider to be fifteen main ones...
Fifteenth Essential-Existential Bipolarities in Both Man's Nature and His Existence
Most of you have probably seen these four cornerstones of human existence laid out in some form of ancient mythology: 1. water-peace-tranquility-harmony; 2. earth-vitamins-minerals-food-shelter-groundedness-rootedness-security; 3. fire-blood-energy-passion-forcefulness; 4. air-wind-sky-ambition-creativity-transcendence....
Of which we can deduce at least two rather self-apparent bipolarities: 1. fire vs. water; and 2. air and sky vs. earth and ground. These are two of the mythological and humanistic-existential bipolarities and dichotomies that we all have to deal with in some fashion during the course of living....A balance between both bipolarities -- or our four mythological cornerstones of existence -- is essential for a healthy human 'multi-dialectic, phenomenology of spirit'....
From the early mythological Greeks -- as laid out by Nietzsche in 'The Birth of Tragedy' (1872) -- we come to a third essential bipolarity in the nature of man -- Apollo vs. Dionysus (or as later laid out by Freud, 'the ego and the superego' vs. 'the id'). Again, evolving harmony and integration of these two polar characteristics in the nature of man -- Apollo and Dionysus -- leads, generally speaking, to a more idealistically evolving 'multi-dialectic, phenomenology of spirit' -- whereas 'dissociation' between the two tends to lead to the opposite -- in Nietzsche's words, a 'birth of tragedy'....
A fourth bipolarity in the nature of man can be identified as 'separation and individuation' vs. 'union and togetherness'.
A fifth bipolarity in the nature of man can be identified as 'narcissism' vs. 'altruism'.
A sixth bipolarity in the nature of man can be identified as 'righteous judgment' vs. 'nurturing acceptance'.
A seventh bipolarity in the nature of man can be identified as 'construction' vs. 'deconstruction'.
An eighth bipolarity in the nature of man can be identified as Apollo vs. Aphrodite-Eros-Cupid or 'Enlightenment Reason, Fairness, Justice, Equality, Goal-Setting, Planning, Law-and-Rule Making' vs. 'Romantic Impulsiveness, Spontaneity, Unpredictability, and Ethics-Law-and-Rule-Breaking'
In Platonic triadic fashion, man has 'three energy centres': 1. the mind (Apollo); 2. the heart (Aphrodite-Eros-Cupid); and 3. the loins (Dionysus, Bacchus). Thus, the distinction between the 'Apollo-Dionysus bipolarity' and the 'Apollo-Eros bipolarity'.
This also adds a ninth human bipolarity, that being the bipolarity between Dionysus (loins) and Eros/Cupid (heart).
A tenth bipolarity can be identified as (Narcissus) narcissism vs. (Apollo) ethics-morality-fairness-justice...
An eleventh bipolarity -- and here we may be partly overlapping with an earlier bipolarity (separation vs. union) can be identified as self-independence vs. environmental and/or social dependence...
A twelfth bipolarity or dichotomy as identified by Erich Fromm can be articulated as 'freedom' vs. 'unfreedom' -- the idea being that 'freedom' in terms of 'freedom to be and to become' can cause 'dizzying anxiety' relative to 'fear of failing or looking foolish' -- and a wish to turn around and seek anonymity and/or existential safety in the midst of the 'hiding crowd'...
A thirteenth bipolarity I will list as the bipolarity between love and hate and/or love and war, as well as between good and evil....
A fourteenth bipolarity I will identify as the bipolarity between moving towards people, and/or moving towards caring, sharing, compassion, intimacy and love -- and moving away from people, away from caring, sharing, compassion, intimacy and love...
A final fifteenth bipolarity I will list as the Freudian bipolarity between 'life' and 'death' forces....
Assumptively speaking, interacting with these fifteen essential-existential bipolarities in man are:
1. The genetic aspect of our 'essential-existential life-template' as partly laid out in our 'Genetic Self and Potential Self' which includes our most unique talents and skills...
2. Our traumatic or non-traumatic early childhood transference scenes, usually depicted in our earliest childhood memories which become a part of our 'evolving transference-lifestyle script' for better and/or for worse, for love and/or for hate, for health and/or for pathology, for good and/or for evil, for dissociative conflict and/or for united harmony...
The result of all these essential and existential co-factors -- coming together and/or splitting us apart -- determines the evolving nature or 'emotional thermostat' of our 'multi-dialectic, phenomenology of spirit'...
Which, generally speaking, works better and feels better in a positive, harmonious, balanced, united direction than being torn apart in opposite directions, or worse perhaps, being united in hate, destruction, and death....
In an optimal group and/or organizational setting....
Where there is a spirit of mutual trust, respect, caring, and encouragement...
Every member of the group lays out deeper and deeper layers of his or her own unique phenomenology of spirit -- good, bad, and/or indifferent -- and through dialectic exchanges with other members of the group, as well as the 'overall, building, evolving, healing elements of the group phenomenology of spirit', create an environment that both optimally and ideally leads to a healthier and more exhilarating phenomenology of spirit in the individual, as well as adding to a healthier and more exhilarating group...
This, to me, is when both the individual and the group can approach what Hegel called...
'The Absolute', 'God', and/or 'Godliness'....
Not in terms of 'cerebral consciousness'...
But rather in terms of the multi-dialectic-romantic-humanistic-existential....
'Spirit of Man'....
-- dgb, Dec. 14th, 2012
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Creations, Integrations...
-- Are Still in Process....
Friday, December 14, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
Nietzsche's Ultimate Failure and Nemesis in Life -- Dissociating Himself From His Own Underlying Christian Spirit
Christianity can have both a exuberant, healing influence on the human soul -- and a toxic, debasing one. It depends on how far we take the 'spirit' of Christianity, and to what extent religious and political leaders have tampered with its meaning.
Nietzsche's ultimate failure in life was that he could not -- or would not -- identify, care about, empathize with, show love for -- those people who he negatively stereotyped as being members of 'the herd'. (This is the same reason Romney lost the last election.)
Instead, Nietzsche chose to fly as 'Superman' or ride his 'Dionysian-Narcissistic-Dark Horse' -- until he crashed. Legend has it that Nietzsche's last 'sane' act before he became 'insane' in 1899 -- was a 'Christian Act' -- stepping between a master and his horse to take the whippings that the master was directing towards his horse. Perhaps, assuming that this legend is true, and it may not be, this was Nietzsche's 'Christian Day of Atonement' before Nietzsche fell into his 'dark abyss of insanity', to be altruistically looked after by his mother for 8 to 9 years (1889-1897) until his mother died, at which point his sister took over and looked after him altruistically for the last 3 to 4 years.
I was brought up as a Protestant-Christian, basically dissociated myself from my religion, proceeded to live a more 'narcissistic-self-serving' lifestyle....with some underlying elements of empathy, caring, loving, altruism...in effect 'Christian elements' still surfacing from time to time in my character... Other than that, I was brought up in 'the me first' generation...
Hegel's Hotel synergizes the spirit of Nietzsche with the spirit of Christianity -- not to point of self-denial or self-suppression, but with the point being the emphasis of The Christian Spirit on empathy, caring, loving, altruism, and generosity -- the flip side of Nietzschean Narcissism.
In other words, from a Hegelian-GAP-DGB perspective, Nietzschean philosophy, synergized with Christian empathy and altruism, offers a better philosophy of life than Nietzsche's Dionysian Philosphy taken alone, or for that matter, Christianity, when it is steeped in self-denial and self-suppression.
-- dgb, Dec. 10th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Integrations, and Creative Synergies...
-- Are Still in Process...
Nietzsche's ultimate failure in life was that he could not -- or would not -- identify, care about, empathize with, show love for -- those people who he negatively stereotyped as being members of 'the herd'. (This is the same reason Romney lost the last election.)
Instead, Nietzsche chose to fly as 'Superman' or ride his 'Dionysian-Narcissistic-Dark Horse' -- until he crashed. Legend has it that Nietzsche's last 'sane' act before he became 'insane' in 1899 -- was a 'Christian Act' -- stepping between a master and his horse to take the whippings that the master was directing towards his horse. Perhaps, assuming that this legend is true, and it may not be, this was Nietzsche's 'Christian Day of Atonement' before Nietzsche fell into his 'dark abyss of insanity', to be altruistically looked after by his mother for 8 to 9 years (1889-1897) until his mother died, at which point his sister took over and looked after him altruistically for the last 3 to 4 years.
I was brought up as a Protestant-Christian, basically dissociated myself from my religion, proceeded to live a more 'narcissistic-self-serving' lifestyle....with some underlying elements of empathy, caring, loving, altruism...in effect 'Christian elements' still surfacing from time to time in my character... Other than that, I was brought up in 'the me first' generation...
Hegel's Hotel synergizes the spirit of Nietzsche with the spirit of Christianity -- not to point of self-denial or self-suppression, but with the point being the emphasis of The Christian Spirit on empathy, caring, loving, altruism, and generosity -- the flip side of Nietzschean Narcissism.
In other words, from a Hegelian-GAP-DGB perspective, Nietzschean philosophy, synergized with Christian empathy and altruism, offers a better philosophy of life than Nietzsche's Dionysian Philosphy taken alone, or for that matter, Christianity, when it is steeped in self-denial and self-suppression.
-- dgb, Dec. 10th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations, Integrations, and Creative Synergies...
-- Are Still in Process...
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Taking Stock of The Driving Force Behind 'Hegel's Hotel' -- The Synergy of Opposing Ideas and Our Multi-Dialectic Phenomenology of Spirit (Part 2): Early Childhood Development And Its Influence on The Psycho-Structures, Direction and Evolution of The Lifelong Personality
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...
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...
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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