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. 

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Added Nov. 17th, 2012...below....and a happy birthday to my sister, Trish Bain...

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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,

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

The Newest DGB Model of Character Structure and Personality Dynamics

Oct 29, 31, Nov. 1, 2012....still in process....


Good morning!


I have two essay 'coming down the pipe here' -- one on transference theory and the other on character structure and personality theory. The two are intimately interconnected: transference theory contains the core and the essence of character structure and personality theory, whereas character structure and personality theory provides the broader context by which we can 'zero in on' the study of transference theory.

I am going to write the essay on personality theory first because, it is by far the easiest one to write as it has been evolving in my mind both recently in its latest rendition, and for over 30 years, going back to my university days in 1978-79, my last two major papers in university, including my Honours Thesis (which focused mainly on the activities of what I would now call 'The Central Ego'), providing the initial humanistic-existential and cognitive-problem-solving foundation for what is to follow -- without the Gestalt, Adlerian, and Psychoanalytic influences (the first two taking shape in the 1980s, and the Psychoanalytic influence being built up primarily over the last two or three years but stretching back into the 1980s as well when I started to study Object Relations, Narcissism, and Transference Theory.)

I am happy with my latest model of character structure and personality theory to the extent that I do not believe I will change this model, from hereon in. (However, I have said that before and made further changes.)
   
The model uses 20 different 'compartments' -- an inordinately large number by most standards considering Gestalt Therapy uses 2 compartmets (topdog and underdog), and Classical Psychoanalysis uses 3 compartments (ego, id, superego).

As large and cumbersome as my model may seem to many people, it is like many models in that it simply needs to be understood better to be used easier. There are basically three parts to the model: 1. is a 'Dialectic-Classical' model that integrates traumacy-seduction theory with drive-fantasy-wish theory -- in other words, all of Freud's work in Strachey's 24 Volume Complete Standard Edition of Freud's work; not just the work he did after 1897; 2. is an Object Relations-Transactional Analysis model that looks at 'ego-states' and 'specific ego-function' (and/or  dysfunction) within or between each ego-state; 3. is a humanistic-existential model that aims at 'trumpeting and recovering' a 'humanistic-existential phenomenology of spirit' for the 21st century. This is largely a spirit of self-assertiveness and self-directedness, a spirit of self and social caring, a spirit of conscious, cognitive enlightenment and romantic-emotional-balance, a spirit of creative drive and in the process allowing ourselves to be spiritually created....

I look at the 'ego' as representing the 'whole self', 'the whole psyche'....with all the different 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments' representing more 'specialized functions' of the work of the overall ego.

If we equate the ego with 'the whole self' -- which is the way that it was originally defined by German philosophers like Fichte, and one way that Freud defined it before 1923, but not after he wrote 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923 -- then an 'ego compartment' -- or 'ego state' -- can be defined as a particular 'part of the whole ego, or the whole self'.

Freud ran himself into a philosophical and psychological conundrum after he wrote The Ego and The Id in 1923. If 'the ego' by previous standards referred to 'the whole self', then what is 'the id'? -- a 'compartment' or 'department' in the self representing the 'non-self'? The 'it'? This reflects a 'dissociation' in the self, in the whole personality, allegedly even among healthy people. It is like we all allegedly have an 'alien' inside ourselves, even as we start life, and our 'alien' is allegedly our own 'life' and 'death' instincts. 

Thus, we start out as 'man against himself' -- a man, or woman, whose own instincts are 'alien' to him or her. Even the so-called 'life' which includes the 'self-preserving' as well as the 'sexual' instincts are allegedly 'alien' to us because they are part of our 'id' which is our 'it' which is an allegedly 'foreign being' inside us that also creates our 'ego instincts' which means that even they must be 'foreign' to us -- allegedly speaking by Freud's 1923 philosophical and psychological perspective. It is like we are 'self-destructing' even as we begin life as a newborn baby -- before any 'trauma' even enters the situation (other than perhaps 'birth trauma').

How does Freud reconcile that, logically (or illogically) speaking, according to this perspective, we start life as an 'it', and then our 'it' turns into our 'I', while at the same time maintaining our 'it/id' status through the remainder of our life? And that our 'it' continues to 'psychologically feed' our 'I'? Freud has told us that our 'id' is full of internal contradictions. 

Allegedly, one of these contradictions could be the contradiction between our 'it' and our 'I', but the fact that our 'it' allegedly contains all our 'life instincts' including our self-preservation, sexual, and ego instincts blurs the boundary line so much between our 'id' and our 'ego', that one wonders why even have a 'boundary line' at all? Why not just say that the 'id' is the precursor to the 'ego' and that both contain 'life' and 'death' instincts in similar and/or different formats? Or that 'the id' is a 'compartment' of 'the whole ego, the whole self'? Thus, the 'id' and 'the superego' become different 'specialized compartments' of the whole ego. Thus, we could talk about the 'Idian Ego', which upon consciousness, might become either 'The Hedonistic, Pleasure Ego' or 'The Narcissistic Ego'. Or -- since the 'id' contains all the life and death instincts, presumably this would mean that 'the id' -- being the 'energy system' of the personality -- feeds all the different 'ego-compartments' that we may want to talk about, including all aspects of 'the superego'.

Anyway you want to cut it, by Freud's own inherently contradictory definition, the so-called 'line of distinction' between 'the ego' and 'the id' becomes so blurred by this definition that it only makes sense that at some point we have to start to talk about the 'evolution of the id into the ego' -- and at this point, as contradictory as this may sound -- the concept of 'the ego-id', or 'the idian ego' makes complete sense. The ego essentially becomes the ultimate 'vicissitude' of the id. 

Either that -- or as some, indeed many, psychoanalysts have already done -- you scrap the concept of 'the id' altogether. 

We must keep in mind that such 'compartments' -- whether we are talking about 'the id' or 'the ego' or 'the superego' -- are essentially 'conceptual conveniences' -- they are essentially 'make-believe sub-realms of life' -- turned into ideas with boundaries inside our head that may or may not have any bearing on any type of 'empirical boundary' that we may, or may not, be able to physically see. Many concepts have 'metaphysical boundaries' -- like 'the id' and 'the ego' and 'the superego' --  which means that these are concepts that have boundaries that we have likely made up inside our own mind. Or at least someone did -- like Freud -- and we have chosen to follow suit -- or not.  

These types of concepts with 'metaphysical boundaries' might also be referred to as 'functional fictions'. We draw boundaries where life doesn't -- mainly to help us make life easier to understand. Sometimes our 'conceptual and/or theoretical reductionism' is useful to us; and sometimes it is not.

In Freudian post-1920 terminology, ideas are essentially no different than people. They both carry 'death instincts' inside them which at a certain point, especially if we are not aware of them, 'cause' us to 'self-destruct'. Connect this to what Hegel wrote -- that 'every idea, every theory, carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'. The only way to avoid this is to carry multi-dialectic concepts and theories inside us that allow us to 'continue to evolve outwards' at the point where one theory loses its 'functional edge and importance', and another, usually bipolar concept and/or theory and/or paradigm picks up where the previous one left off. Then -- with our freshly evolving, multi-dialectic concept-theory-paradigm pulsating in our brain, we rise up -- like the Phoenix -- we don't self-destruct with the outdated or overmatched or one-sided 'Concept-Theory-Paradigm (CTP)' that we left behind because we were smart enough to see that it had lost its 'theoretical and practical importance' when it 'overstepped a boundary of life' -- the range and focus of its functionality. 

Failing to see this, the results in practical, real life are evident every day....life 'zigs', we stay still, or 'zag'....and are left holding a bagful of conceptual and theoretical 'nothings'....Our theory doesn't match with real life processes, and thus, it breaks down because of its 'unpredictability' and 'dysfunctionality'....We need to move on and change generalizations, change theories, or at least modify them so that they can stand up under the test of life 'changing directions'....That's the biggest problem with one-sided, anal retentive theories: life moves on and our theories stay the same...

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 We say -- 'Pay attention to this particular part of the ego because certain ego-functions are carried on here that significantly affect the working of the whole personality. These 'compartments' can also be viewed as 'departments'  like the type of departments we might find in a large store or other type of commercial business or government institution.

Thus, 'The Nurturing Ego' carries out nurturing functions, 'The Dionysian-(hedonistic-pleasure) Ego' carries out functions aimed at sensual/sexual pleasure, 'the Righteous Ego' carries out righteous functions, 'the Distancing Ego' carries out distancing functions', 'the Narcissistic Ego' carries out narcissistic functions....and so on....And each of these conceptualized domains can 'split' into 'topdog/superego compartments' and 'underdog/underego states' based on contextual self-image perceptions. That is 5 different ego-states -- or 10 if you count the bipolar splits within each of these 5 ego states around the issue of 'power' and 'self-image'.

So really all I am doing here is expanding the Gestalt model and/or The Classical Freudian model, depending on which paradigm you may be more comfortable working inside of.

But again, we are talking about 'abstract, metaphysical concepts and boundaries' here; not empirically and physically based concepts like 'the brain' or 'the heart' or 'the liver'. You can't see a 'Narcissistic Ego' -- but you can metaphysically and abstractly 'classify' its presence from the type of behavior you witness in a person. If you see a 'lot of narcissistic behavior' at work in a particular person's personality, then you/I/we can 'infer' a 'dominant Narcissistic Ego' at work in this person's personality. Have we explained anything? Not really -- we have simply generalized our observations  into a particular part of the personality that we have given a name to, in order to identify it, and help make people more aware of its 'metaphysical presence' and 'inferred resulting behavioral activity'. We can then go further in our 'psycho-analysis' by looking for what might be inferred as the 'etiological roots or causes' of this 'dominant narcissistic ego-activity' (either a narcissistic role model, or a 'pampered childhood', or perhaps a 'compensatory defensive line of activity' aimed at 'covering up' a weak underlying self-esteem' And alternatively, we can look at 'the teleological purpose' of the behavior -- i.e., what type of results is this type of behavioral activity aimed at achieving? Freud called this 'the whence' and 'the whither'.


 Without counting all the 'Object Relations Splits', the first 11 compartments listed below are both realistic and idealistic. In other words, we can see how they work each and every day, in our small and large 'problem-solving' and 'conflict-resolving' endeavors, and also, we can see our 'arrival' at the 'idealistic humanistic-existential ego states' when our problem-solving and/or conflict-resolving endeavors reward us with 'the fruit of our labour' -- in the form of the celebration of positive, rewarding, self-fulfilling, self-nurturing, experience. This is what I call 'Nietzsche's Mountain'.  

In contrast, the collapse of our self-confidence and problem-solving/conflict-resolving capabilities into a state of 'cognitive-emotional-humanistic-existential depression' -- is what I refer to as 'Nietzsche's Abyss'. 

The last 11 ego-states or ego-compartments -- the 'top of the iceberg' if you will -- can be classified as follows: 

20. Nietzsche's Mountain;
19. The Central-Executive Ego (Nietzsche's 'Tightrope' to Self-Empowerment, Being and Becoming'); 
18. The Public Persona Ego;
17. The Private-Shadow Ego; 
16. The Romantic-Spiritual Ego; 
15. The Anal-Schizoid-(Angry-Distancing or Abandoning) Ego; 
14. The Oral-Phobic, Anxious Ego; 
13. The Dionysian-Hedonistic Ego; 

12. The Narcissistic Ego; 

11. The Righteous-Apollonian (Constructive, Deconstructive, or Destructive) Ego;

10. The Oral-Receptive-(Nurturing-Altruistic) Ego; 

All of the ego-compartments listed above (except for Nietzsche's Mountain) can be 'split' in the process of ego development into 'topdog and/or underdog' or alternatively, 'superego and/or underego' states and functions depending on the degree of 'inferiority feeling' or 'superiority and/or confident feeling' attached to the particular ego compartment or state. Nietzsche's Mountain pre-supposes a feeling of euphoric, superiority, and/or confident, celebratory feeling, meaning that there is no 'underdog or underego' component that is attached to it except as Nietzsche's Mountain may have become a place of 'defensive, megalomaniac behavior' in the form of narcissistic compensation for underlying feelings of insecurity and/or inferiority.  


Below these ego states or compartments listed above, we can find another set of evolving 'id-ego' states or compartments that can be viewed as 'precursors' to the ones listed above. These are:

9. The Dream and Fantasy Weaver;
8. Escaped or Released Vicissitudes of The Evolving Subconscious Id-Ego;
7. The Detaining Subconscious-Id-Ego Vault;
6. The Post-Transference, Subconscious-Id-Ego;
5. The Transference-Lifestyle Memory-Learning Templates;
4. The Pre-Transference, Evolving Subconscious-Id-Ego;
3. Nietzsche's Abyss;
2. The Evolving Subconscious-Id-Ego in The Womb;
1. The Genetic Potential (Humanistic-Existential) Self (or Id-Ego). 


One of the most important distinctions between Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis and what has evolved here -- informally stated -- as, in effect, DGB Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP) Theory, is that Freud defined and described his concept of 'the Id' in two different and largely mutually exclusive, incompatible ways: 1. as the 'reservoir' of our deepest, darkest instinctual drives, most notably, sex, and then, later aggression and destruction; and 2. as a further evolution of the previous theory -- the 'reservoir' of all 'life' and 'death' instincts, which more or less takes away the significance of Freud's previous dualism (before 1920) between the 'sexual (id) instincts' and the 'self-preservation (ego) instincts'. Now, since the concept of 'the id' didn't formally come into existence until 1923 (The Ego and The Id), Freud, more or less, conflated the two different ideas of the id into one definition and description, but not without newly created problems for his overall theory. With his definition of the id as the reservoir of all life and death instincts, Freud basically 'blurred the vision of the psycho-dynamic relationship between the id and the ego. Firstly, the ego is viewed as the largely 'conscious part of our self or Self' -- an 'organic, thinking, feeling entity' -- whereas the id is simply viewed as a more or less 'inorganic reservoir' -- which, I am sure, that is not how Freud wanted us to view it. The 'organic, psycho-dynamic component of the id, as technically described by Freud would seem to be 'the instincts' contained within the id; not the id itself. And/or 'the vicissitudes of the id'. 

But when Freud started to include the 'ego-self-preservative-and-defensive-instincts' with the 'sexual' (Eros) and 'death-destructive' (Thantos) instincts, Freud had reached a state of conceptual and theoretical abstraction where more or less 'everything' had 'conflated' into the 'reservoir of the id', to the point where one had/has to say that the dualistic distinction between the id and the ego had/has essentially become non-existent or increasingly blurred. 

The only fruitful way out of this Freudian conundrum, as I see it, is to say that 'the id is the precursor of the ego and indeed, the superego too', and that the id essentially evolves and mutates into all the various ego and superego splits, functions, states, compartments that I have conceptualized above -- and that we are perhaps better talking about 'ego-ego conflicts between the different ego-states', as well as perhaps 'id-id conflicts' between the evolving and contradicting parts of the id that later evolve and mutate into the different parts of the ego. 

This is my justification for the use of the term 'the evolving id-ego' -- or 'The Subconscious-Id-Ego' within the confines of the subconscious personality; and the id-ego, or simply the ego, within the confines of the more conscious, self-aware, personality.      

 In my opinion, we are better viewing the ID as 'The Paradoxical, Impulsive-Defensive Ego' like the newborn baby that cries out of impulse and need -- or the frustration of such -- and 'spits out food' as a sure sign that the baby's 'Defensive-Detoxification System' is just as in place when it is born as its 'Impulse-Need-System' is. Both systems are vital to the newborn baby's -- and the adult ego's -- survival. If we are going to use the concept of 'the id' at all, then it should be viewed as a 'wholistic precursor of the ego'; not an 'It' that is buried in the unconscious like some form of 'alien being'...

Alienation, detachment, repression,  dissociation...and all the rest of the defense mechanisms -- used outside of awareness -- are usually signs of 'neurosis' and/or 'psychopathology'; not 'psychological health'.  'Congruent wholism/holism' is usually a better sign of psychological health. And a newborn baby, and even a young todddler is generally born and functions in a 'congruently wholistic' style -- until either the forces of 'socialization' and/or 'narcissistic trauma' -- and the 'fixation' and 'defensive compensations' to this narcissistic trauma -- start to set in. Then you begin to see the evolution of what might be better called 'The Divided Self'.    


When we move to Part 2 of my first part 'transference essay', we will be referring to what happens within #5. The Transference-Lifestyle Memory-Learning Templates. And this includes the impact of 'trauma fixation' and 'narcissistic-compensatory-defensive serial behavior patterns' to this trauma fixation. 

It is to this essay, that we will next turn. 

-- dgb, October 29, 2012. 

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations and Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process...

Transference Re-Visited: A Tribute to The 100th Anniversary of Freud's Ground-Breaking 1912 Essay: 'The Dynamics of Transference'... (Part 1)

Has been re-written....finished, October 29th....


October 28, 2012.


There are two ways we can look at the study of 'transference' -- one of, if not, Freud's most important concept(s) within the framework of psychoanalysis: 1. is a historical, evolutionary study of how transference developed as a concept over time in the history of psychoanalysis. In this regard, we need to distinguish the difference between the 'concept' of transference, meaning how Freud differently defined and described this concept over time vs. the 'phenomenon' itself as any clinical psychologist and/or therapist or husband or wife can experience it as their client or spouse is 'transferring' particular thoughts, feelings, impulses, and or defenses onto them from their childhood past; 2. is a more cognitive psychology approach to how the phenomenon of transference fits into the functioning -- and the dysfunctioning -- of the mind.

This essay became truncated after it was previously written -- chopped up into two or three essays. -- leaving behind it the one below which now has been re-written, hopefully in a more logically coherent manner. This essay is the first of a two to five essay series that will start with transference theory, then move on to character structure and personality theory, which should give us the type of multi-dialectic, multi-school template that we can then apply to the study of psychological health, the study of 'neurosis', mental illness, and psychopathology, and to the art and science of psychotherapy and clinical psychology as a whole. Here is essay number 1 below.


-- dgb, October 28, 2012....
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From a DGB cognitive theoretical perspective, we process our perceptions, interpretations, judgments, decisions in the confines of what we will label here as our 'Central, Executive and/or Mediating Ego'. Freud would have called this just 'the ego' but since I have followed the path of Object Relations and Transactional Analysis in the study of various 'subsidiary ego states' each with different 'ego functions', this necessitates a more specific labeling of each of these distinctively conceptualized ego-states with different sub-ego functions. 

Call this the specialization of the ego as it goes about its daily functions, two of the most important being: 1. to compare; and 2. to contrast all the thousands of new things, new situations, new encounters, new relationships with similar and/or different experiences from our past. 

This 'comparing' and 'contrasting' process is part of what underlies one of Freud's most important concepts -- transference. From the time we are newly born til the day we die, we are constantly 'processing' new experiences, learning from them, storing them in our memory banks, and then days or months or years later, bringing them back, as associatively connected to what is happening in our lives in the immediate present, in the form of what we might loosely call 'transferences' from our past that help us -- or hinder us -- in our new evaluations of these new situations, new things, new people, new encounters, new relationships that we are dealing with now.  

This is our 'past' meeting our 'present', the bridge between our past and present, our 'dialectic connection' between our past and present. Our past judgments and generalizations are carried forward to help (or hinder) us in our present evaluations, and conversely, our present evaluations can also change the way that we construe our past, as well as providing 'fresh new transference generalizations' that may be used at some point in the evolving future. 

Of particular importance, are the 'transference generalizations' that we learn in about the first 7 years of our life. These tend to be filled with emotional, impulsive, and defensive 'side kicks' that very much will determine the direction of our future destiny. We can classify them into 'life-directing' 'transference templates, complexes, and games' that create obsessive compulsions in our thoughts and behaviors, as well as 'serial behavior patterns'. 

These serial behavior patterns can both be the driving force behind extremely creative and/or genius-like behavior on the one hand (such as can be seen through the biographies of all the great men and women in history), and/or alternatively, these same or different serial behavior patterns can also lead to extreme destruction and/or self-destruction on the other hand. Often our greatest character strength is also our greatest character weakness. And we know where 'serial behavior patterns' can take the extremely 'offside' psycho-or-sociopath. 

Transference is only one of a large number of 'defense mechanisms' that have been classified by psychoanalysis. 

From the learning functions of 'association', 'dissociation', and 'discrimination', come a whole host of seemingly 'hard-wired' or 'almost unavoidable' 'ego-learning and/or ego-defense mechanisms' that psychoanalysis, through its some 120 years of existence and evolution, has itemized and classified very well -- processes like 'repression', 'suppression', 'denial', 'resistance', 'disavowal', 'transference', 'compensation' (Adler's influence), 'introjection', 'identification', 'projection', 'sublimation', 'compromise-formation', 'allusion to immediacy', 'reaction-formation', 'displacement'....Many of them are inter-connected and/or subsidiaries of other defense mechanisms...

 At this point, I need you to remember that I am a 'GAP' theorist -- as in a 'Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic' theorist -- who 'walks and explores the conceptual and theoretical boundary lines between Gestalt Theory, Adlerian Theory, and Psychoanalysis, among other schools of psychology. In football terminology, I look for 'the seams in the zone coverage' -- and that is where I do the essence of my theorizing, looking for 'Conceptual-Theoretical-Paradigm Bridges' between different schools of philosophy and/or psychology and/or simply paradigm perspective. 

Every theorist of the mind takes a partly similar, partly different, snap shot of how they picture the process and structure of the mind -- including myself -- although my particular  'snapshot' is basically a collage of the snapshots taken before me, integrated together, and both modified and expanded in a way that makes sense to me. And I will be the first to admit that my own 'transference templates and complexes' play a significant determining factor in my particular 'range and focus of snapshots' as I present them to you. No different than Freud, Adler, Jung, or Perls before me....We have, or have had, 'unfinished business' or 'unfinished situations' that have provided each of us with the 'motivating drive' behind whatever theory we have ended up presenting. It is up to others to 'sift out' the 'narcissistic biases' that may lean a theory one way or another in such a fashion that it may not be helpful to a certain class of people with other different life experiences and/or different narcissistic biases...For example, the Seduction Theory might be useful for one class of therapeutic clients, while not being useful to another...And a good psychoanalyst will not use Freud's 'Oedipal Complex Theory' in a way that prevents the therapist from seeing the possibility of real clients that were really sexually seduced, manipulated, exploited, assaulted...as children...or later on...


So, right now I am walking the 'unfinished situation-lifestyle-transference' boundary between Gestalt Therapy, Adlerian Psychology, and Psychoanalysis with the goal of explaining Freud's concept of 'transference' and Adler's concept of 'lifestyle' in an integrative Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic fashion that probably Perls was the closest to 'nailing on the head with a hammer'....But I bring more psychoanalytic detail back into the human phenomenon that Freud called transference -- and that includes all of a 'pre-1897, post-1896, Classical, and Object Relations 'smorgasbord' to mix with Adler's theory of 'conscious early memories', 'lifestyle memories, inferiority feelings, compensation, superiority striving, lifestyle goals and orientations', and Perls' important contribution of 'the unfinished situation'. 

One Freudian-Jungian theorist who I read had a good handle on what I am about to present here, when he called it our 'handicap challenge' -- our 'childhood ego traumacy memory' that becomes 'worked over a thousand or a hundred thousand times in our mind during the course of our life' -- and 'symbolically or metaphorically re-created, re-enacted, repeated in a way that is ideally aimed at compensation, defense, wish-fulfillment, ego-satisfaction, superiority-striving -- that crashes through the wall of our childhood ego traumacy, dis-satisfaction, and/or frustration that we have gone on to set up as a transference-lifestyle-unfinished situation GAME with the intended goal of patching the hole in our childhood-self-esteem -- and thus, essentially trying to make our self-esteem and self-image feel whole again'...

This is the 'whole part' of transference that Freud never got in its entirety -- rather, he gave us 'two partial solutions' that he never integrated: Part 1. 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory'; and Part 2. 'Fantasy-Wish Fulfillment-Oedipal Theory'. 

This is also where my work connects with both Eric Berne's 'Games People Play', and Janov's 'The Primal Scream'. Because underneath each and every unique and customized 'Primal Transference-Lifestyle Game/Complex' that each and everyone of us is walking around and symbolically re-enacting in our lives with the goal of 'gaining or winning our supreme form of transference-lifestyle ego-satisfaction'  -- underneath all of this -- is a childhood memory, and an ego-traumacy that, when traced back to its original source, is capable of eliciting a 'Primal Transference Scream' -- of anguish, pain, rejection, abandonment, exclusion, guilt, anxiety, panic, and/or rage....This is the essential transference connection between Freud's Traumacy Theory and his later Fantasy Theory which Adler re-developed in terms of the latter's 'Inferiority Feeling' and 'Superiority Striving (Ego-Compensation) Theory...

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Freud's real 'caput Nili' that he never totally found. He thought he had found it until he renounced that he had found it (i.e., The Traumacy-Seduction Theory). Then, he thought he had found it again with his creation of 'The Oedipal Complex' -- the counter-thesis to Freud's previous Traumacy-Seduction Theory. 

But Freud couldn't, or wouldn't, in this particular context and controversy -- think dialectically and integratively as opposed to unilaterally. Thus, the 'caput Nili' (source of the Nile), for Freud, remained undiscovered. He found the two main 'branches' leading in and out of 'The Source' -- but he never found the source. The 'Source' as I am trumpeting it here is a dialectic integration between Freud's early Traumacy-Seduction Theory and his later Fantasy-Impulse Theory. The two are intimately interwoven. I just better need to show you how. 

What remains is for the integration of the ideas of Freud, Adler, Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Berne, Janov, Perls...

All woven together...in intricate fashion...

To be neatly demonstrated in a few crystal clear case examples of how this multi-dialectic theory all comes together...

In the life force, the death force -- the paradoxical love-hate, approach-avoidance, power-submission dynamics -- of the individual 'transference complexes' and the 'transference games that people play'....often without even knowing, or at least fully understanding, the underlying psycho-dynamics that are at work in their own minds...

And this is where I will leave you today, in this, the 100th anniversary of one of Freud's most important papers: 'The Dynamics of Transference' (1912).

To help unfold this whole mystery -- and its solution or resolution -- in the form of more concrete details in concrete cases...And also, a synopsis of the evolution of the concept of transference in the history of psychoanalysis and how DGB Transference Theory is similar but also significantly -- different. 

Until then....

Have a great day! 

-- dgb, Oct 16, 17, 2012

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Creations....

-- Are Still in Process...



.......................................................................................................

New Thoughts on 'The Id' (A DGB 'Re-Framing' of The Id)

Finished, Oct. 21, 2012...


Good evening,

There are two areas of study that I would like to focus on over the next little while -- and the two are intimately inter-connected. One, is the study of 'transference' (on this the 100th anniversary of one of Freud's most important papers: 'The Dynamics of Transference', 1912).


The second is the study of 'The ID' -- which I purposely spelled in capital letters for purposes of a 'double acronym' and for purposes of moving the study of The Id in a partly different direction than Freud. 

Understand, before we get going that: 1. I am certainly not any kind of 'orthodox Classical Psychoanalytic theorist'; 2. I am not the type of Psychoanalytic theorist who wants to 'jump off the Freudian Ship' and jump onto 'The Object Relations Ship', or 'The Bionian Ship', or 'The Lacanian Ship'...If anything, what I want to do is to 'integrate the design of the Freudian Ship with The (Abraham-Klein-Fairbairn-Winnicott-Guntrip-Horney-Federn-Berne) Object Relations Ship....Except we are not going to talk Object Relations theory right now; rather Classical Id Theory going down a slightly different path....

Are you with me? 

Let us start with Classical Id theory -- and I will differentiate it as we progress here from my currently evolving DGB ID theory. 

In 1920, in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', Freud postulated a 'life instinct' and a 'death instinct' -- and he 'deposited' both these paradoxical, warring instincts in 'the id' (which was not to have a name for another 3 years in 1923, in 'The Ego and The Id'). We are told by James Strachey, co-editor of Freud's Complete Works, The Standard Edition, that 'the id' in German means 'the it', as in something quite different -- and 'dissociated/disavowed/detached' -- from (and/or by 'the ego'). 

Furthermore, the id is completely unconscious, and is like a container or reservoir that containing the completely volatile and unpredictable 'life' and 'death/or destructive') instincts. If you follow Freud by 'the letter of the law', this would seem to indicate that 'the instincts are volatile and unpredictable'; whereas as 'the id' -- being only the 'container' for the instincts, is not. The instincts or impulses or desires or drives or wishes are 'full of life and/or death processes' -- like the 'wish/desire' I had for the coffee I am drinking right now, whereas 'the id' is more like the coffee mug I am drinking the coffee out of -- structural, boring, not particularly interesting to a psychologist anymore than 'the prostate' would be of particular interest to a person studying genetics, sperm, and/or semen...

Life is full of the paradoxical interaction -- including the construction and destruction -- of 'structure' and 'process'...but Freud did call one of his papers, 'The Instincts and Their Vicissitudes' (1915), and by this he presumably meant that neither 'the id' nor even 'the primary instincts' travel to 'the consciousness of the ego' (except allusively and/or symbolically through a dream, a joke, a Freudian slip, a projection, a sublimation, a compromise-formation, a reaction-formation, a displacement, a transference relationship, a 'neurotic symptom and/or complex'...), all of which might be called 'vicissitudes' of the original primal instinct born in the confines of the id...which does start to make the id sound a little more exciting than a 'coffee mug'....and to be sure a 'prostate' has more life in it than a coffee mug -- indeed, it is essential to the birth of new life....Certainly, the prostate --  like any organ -- is 'organic', where a coffee mug is 'inorganic' (except to the extent that the coffee mug is made up of 'organic' ingredients). Anyway, let us not overly confuse the situation. 

Perhaps, in this regard, we might want to call the id our 'instinct maker or creator', in which case, from a spiritual standpoint, some might even wish to view the id as both our 'Internal God' and our 'Unadulterated Creator of Spirit'...that is...before our 'defense mechanisms' get to it...and 'sugar coat' it, 'white wash' it, 'derail' it...'modify' it, 'compromise' it...make these desires more 'civil'....). 

This is where 'the id' gets a bad name. It has been stereotyped as being inherently 'unconscious' and 'uncivil'. Not fit for civilization. And this brings us to the conflict between 'the ego and the id' (with the 'superego' being an extra 'ethical mutation' of 'the ego' involving the addition of more 'socially introjected', or 'self-introjected', guilt...)....

But did Freud get this all right? Or perhaps stated better, did Freud 'frame' his conceptualized theory of the psycho-dynamics of the ego and the id -- or the 'working psyche' -- in a manner that best described what was 'phenomenologically really happening'? Or are there better models out there of the human psyche that work better -- especially with, say, a hundred years (give or take 10 years) of evolution behind us to study this whole matter. 

For Fichte -- and even for Freud at times in his earlier years -- the 'ego' meant the 'self' or 'Self'. (For Hume, even the 'self/Self' was a human invention -- and a conceptual fiction.)

So how could he turn around and argue that the ego was 'born' from the id, and that a newborn baby is 'full of id' with no ego present. 

Balderdash! The ego is there. The self is there. The id is there -- as part of the ego/self. The first time it cries, we know it wants something that it doesn't have (it's 'oral' or 'impulsive desire' ego is in place); the first time it 'spits out food' or takes a dump, we know its 'anal-rejecting' ego is in place as well -- this classification system is not perfect -- no classification system is -- but it is very useful up to the point where the boundaries start to blend together. Just think 'nutritious' and 'good for me' for the 'oral desire' or 'oral ego'; and 'toxic' or 'poisonous' or 'not good for me' for the 'anal ego'. Of course, things can always get twisted around -- and turned inside out -- which is the essence of 'neurosis' and 'psychopathology', and much of the point of everything we are distinguishing here.  

Remember Freud's primal distinction in his earliest days of theorizing but perhaps not fully articulated until between 1911 and 1915. The 'primary principle' (pleasure) vs. 'the reality principle' (safety) which by 1915 had been worked into 'the pleasure ego' vs. 'the reality ego'....No 'id' needed for this distinction....rather, just a 'splitting of the ego' which would come back to partly haunt or excite Freud (or both) in his last paper, 'Splitting of The Ego in The Mechanism of Defense' (1939)....Oh, oh, here comes Object Relations -- gyrating through Freud's mind -- to put another 'crowbar' in the 'assembly line' of Classical Psychoanalysis....

Do you think 'the id' -- meaning the 'house of the pleasure-pain principle' -- is 'unconscious' in a newborn baby? Do you think it is always even unconscious or subconscious or preconscious in a fully grown -- and 'mainly civilized' -- adult?  We have our ego and superego to help protect us from the dangers of our 'unadulterated id'....even at a conscious level. So what is Freud's preoccupation with 'the unconscious' all about? Was that a part of his 'Secret Society Complex'? (I will explain that later via Freud's main 'Transference Complex'. Call it 'Transference Complex #1).  

What I am getting at is this: We are all born with an 'ego' or an 'Ego-ID' that is already partly 'split' from the first breath of air and the first gulp of milk that, as a newborn baby, we take. 

Yes, the ego is 'holistic' and working toward a common goal -- life and self-survival -- unless, or until, that gets 'pathologized' towards a 'wish of death'. 

But lets take this example. I watch the activity of a small bird that drops down on my bird feeder, looking for food to eat. Self-survival again, is the name of the game. 

But the small bird also has an 'ego' that is essentially divided into two part-functions: 1. 'Impulsive Drive'; and 2. 'Immunity or Internal Defense'. Both are crucial to self-survival. One moment it grabs a seed or two; the next moment, it's head is up, looking around, and the next moment it is in flight again...Harder to nab a moving target than a sitting one...


Thus, Freud's career long distinction between 'the primary (pleasure-unpleasure) principle' and 'the secondary principle' is at least partly a misnomer. Later on, this was framed as 'the pleasure principle' vs. 'the reality principle', and then 'the pleasure ego' vs. 'the reality ego'.

But if you think about it long enough, the 'reality principle' is essentially the 'unpleasure or pain principle' -- meaning the second half of the 'pleasure-unpleasure principle' -- meaning that they are one and the same with two part functions: one, 'pleasure' meaning 'food', 'shelter', 'sex', etc. and two, 'avoidance of pain or unpleasure' which essentially comes down to 'avoidance of possible predators, dangers, risks, frights, traumacies, longer term bad consequences, etc.', which is essentially what Freud meant by 'the reality principle' or 'the secondary principle'. 

All of this is to say, 

That we are all born with an 'ID-Ego' which can be divided into two parts and/or two part-functions: 

1. The 'ID1-Ego' -- meaning 'The Impulsive-Desire (or Oral-Proactive/Receptive) Ego'; and,

2. The 'ID2-Ego' -- meaning 'The Immunity-Defense (or Anal-Righteous/Schizoid) Ego'; 

Which comes down to...

3. 'Perceived Need and Wish Satisfaction (Pleasure)' vs. 'Safety, Ethics-Politics-Law, and Detoxification (Avoidance of Pain)';

The 'Oral-Proactive/Receptive' Ego uses, for the most part the law of 'association' -- as in, 'I associate -- and want to bring you closer -- to me'....

Whereas 'The Anal Righteous, Rejecting, and/or Schizoid' Ego uses, for the most part, the law of 'dissociation' -- as in, 'I dissociate myself -- and want to push you further away from -- me'....

A distinction can also be made here between the 'oral addictions' and 'the anal defenses' against the 'oral addictions'. or even the 'anal obsessive-compulsions and/or defenses' (transference, projection, introjection, identification, displacement, denial, sublimation...) which may (or may not) be covering up for a 'submerged, underlying, suppressed, repressed, subconscious') 'oral addiction' or 'oral fixation'....(food, sex, seduction, power, money, alcohol, drugs, clothes, shopping, spending...) or the two sets of symptoms, together might make up a 'compromise-formation' between the impulsive desire and the defense against the desire...

For example, in 'manic-depression', we might say that the 'manic' phase satisfies 'the oral addictions part' and the 'depressive' phase satisfies 'the anal righteousness and self-rejection part'....Rather than a 'better working compromise between the two polar sides of the personality', we get a radically extreme polarity between opposite sides of 'The Id-Ego' being acted out sequentially, with each part (ID-Ego1 and ID-Ego2) -- the 'oral' and the 'anal' side -- taking its respective turn at 'controlling' the 'steering wheel' of 'The Central Executive Ego'...

Coming from a Gestalt background, a 'good hot seat and empty chair therapy session' might help a person with over-extreme polarities warring with each other to gain more 'conscious awareness' of the whole set of dynamics, and ideally, help move the person towards a more integrative, healthy balance...

This is one example of how Psychoanalysis and Gestalt Therapy might be integrated to complement each other....Therapeutically, I like the hot seat and empty seat technique but theoretically, I prefer where I am right now in terms of my development of 'psycho-dynamic structure and process' using Psychoanalysis as my 'base camp', than the simple 'two compartment-topdog-underdog' model that Perls left us with in Gestalt Theory. It's simple and effective -- I just like more to work with, such as 'the transference templates' and 'the pleasure ego' vs. 'the safety ego' or the 'oral ego' vs. 'the anal ego', 'inferiority complexes juxtaposed against superiority complexes', 'Gods' and 'Archetypes', 'Nietzsche's/Zarathustra's Mountain', and 'Nietzsche's Abyss', and 'the tight rope of life between them'...all the 'Object Relations Ego States' (The Nurturing Superego and Underego or Topdog and Underdog, The Hedonistic-Dionysian-Pleasure Topdog and Underdog, The Anal-Schizoid and/or Oral-Phobic Topdog and Underdog, The Apollonian, Anal-Righteous-Rejecting Topdog and Underdog, The Private Shadow Ego, The Public Persona Ego, The Central Executive Ego, The Unconscious, Pre-Conscious, or Conscious, Uncivilized, or Unrefined Id-Ego (Before Splitting), The Dream-Weaver, The Id-Ego Vault, The Oral Addiction (Obsessive-Compulsion) Centre (which is inside The Dionsysian Pleasure Ego), The Anal Addiction (Obsessive-Compulsion) Centre which can be found inside The Apollonian Anal-Righteous Ego...

Topographically, the model now looks like this: 

1. The Nurturing Ego which splits into our Nurturing Topdog and Underdog (or Nurturing Superego and Underego);

2. Our Dionysian-Pleasure Ego which can split into topdog and underdog polarities;

3. Our Anal-Schizoid (Angry, Distancing) Ego which can split into topdog and underdog polarities;

4. Our Oral-Phobic (Scared, anxious, distancing) Ego which can split into topdog and underdog polarities;

5. Our Anal-Righteous-Rejecting (Confrontational) Ego which can split into topdog and underdog polarities;

6. Our Private Shadow Ego;

7. Our Public Persona Ego;

8. Our Central Decision-Making Ego;

9. Our Dream-Maker;

10. Our 'Escaped' Id-Ego Complexes and Their Greater or Lesser, Partly Healthy, Partly Toxic Vicissitudes;

11. Our Id-Ego Vault;

12. Our 'Post-Transference' Id-Ego Complexes and Their Partly Toxic Vicissitudes;  

13. Our Transference Traumacy and Narcissistic Fixation Templates;

14. Our Version of Nietzsche's Mountain;

15. Our Version of 'Nietzsche's Tightrope Walk of Life' (Our Will Towards Greater and Greater Self-Empowerment, Being, and Becoming);

16. Our 'Symbolic, Existential Replacement Womb' (Or our 'Safety Room' -- or initially and ideally, 'Our Nurturing Mom');

17. Our Newborn, Evolving Id-Ego, Our Impulsive Drives, and Our Beginning Anal Defenses, 'Functional and Dysfunctional Splits in The Personality/Ego/Self;

18. Our Existential Abyss (Nietzsche's Abyss, Anaximander's Apeiron, Freud's Partial Version of The Id as 'Chaotic', 'Unorganized', and Paradoxical, Self-Contradictory, Pre-Polarization)

19. Our Real Pre-Birth Womb;

20. Our Genetic Potential Self 

Maybe understandable at this point, maybe not...or probably partly both...

Until the next time...we can spend together....

 dgb, Oct. 21, 2012, 

-- David Gordon Bain, 

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process....

My Dream-Vision Relative to A Very Special-Idealistic-Interactive-Integrative-Romantic-Spiritual-Real Place in East Gwillimbury, York Region, GTA, Ontario, Canada That Will Be Called 'Hegel's Hotel'

I have a vision for the birth of Hegel's Hotel as a 'real, live, structural entity' that I am trying to place in East Gwillibury on a rustic, romantic-spiritual property....

The vision -- or the dream -- is something in the mold of what Fritz Perls created on Vancouver Island at the end of his life, in the form of a 'Gestalt Community'....

In effect, a strived-for, idealistic, mini-Utopia. 


A place where people for a day, an evening, a weekend, or part of a lifetime....

Can get away from the more urbanized, dehumanized, 'Civilization and Its Discontents'. 

What I am looking for, in essence, is a 'spiritual-soul oasis and re-energizer'...

With different professional schools of psychology contributing their particular perspective or 'paradigm' to a larger, 'multi-dialectic-interactive-integrqtive perspective/paradigm 'housed' on a romantic-spiritual-rural property that will be called 'Hegel's Hotel'....

People can come in to hear a Psychoanalyst speak...

Or a Gestalt Theorist/Therapist...

Or an Adlerian Theorist/Therapist....

Or a 'Cognitive-Language-Behavioral Choice' Theorist/Therapist...

Or a 'Humanistic-Existential Theorist/Therapist..

Or a 'Spiritual Philosopher'............

There will be interactions between professionals from different paradigms each stimulating each other in a direction of future, interactive-integrative evolutionary growth...

There will be interactions between professionals and the interested lay public....

And/or students striving to become 'mental-emotional-spiritual-behavioral professionals'...in the paradigm of their choice, or the newly evolving, interactive-integrative paradigm of'Hegel's Hotel: The GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology Association-Society-Institute'...

This is the next phase of 'The Hegel's Hotel Dream'...

The hardest part of The Hegel's Hotel Dream....

Putting it into reality, and into action....

I am looking for any and all interested persons -- professional practitioners and/or lay persons who would like to help me make this dream -- come true and real.

Come one, come all...


-- dgb, October 12, 2012

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Dreams and Visions...

-- Are in Motion....

You're In The Midst of a War...

 You're in the midst of a war: a battle between the limits of a crowd seeking the surrender of your dreams, and the power of your true vision to create and contribute. It is a fight between those who will tell you what you cannot do, and that part of you that knows -- and has always known -- that we are more than our environment; and that a dream, backed by an unrelenting will to attain it, is truly a reality with an imminent arrival.   Robbins, Anthony