Just finished...Nov. 29th, 2009.
Freud and Adler -- once co-workers, then competitors -- each with his own particular vision of clinical psychology and particularly personality theory, psychological health, psychopathology, and psychotherapy.
Their respective psychologies, once more or less fully developed, were a study in opposites, specifically:
1. Freud's psychology was a study in human conflict, primarily between the 'id' (man's biological instincts and resulting hedonistic, narcissistic, and aggressive-violent impulses) and between 'the 'superego' (man's ethical, legal, and social conscience -- primarily his view of what is 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad' -- from a family, community, political and cultural perspective, as well as what is dangerous to his or her own self-preservation); in contrast, Adler's psychology is a study in 'wholism', 'unity in the personality', 'and a united course of action' -- each individual's aiming all of his or her particular main thoughts and courses of action towards some abstract and/or more particular unique 'fictional final goal' -- his or her 'lifestyle goal' -- as established early in childhood, through conscious as opposed to unconscious memories of early life experiences, through the 'family constellation' which involves the person's unique 'position' in the family and all which that entails relative to other family members, and 'pursued in a primary teleological, purposeful line of action' -- the person's unique line of 'superiority striving' aimed at 'compensating' for underlying feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, insufficiency, inferiority...the whole package of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors coming together in the person's 'lifestyle package or plan' aimed ultimately towards the fulfillment of his or her individual lifestyle goal/fictional finalized goal...(That was one very long sentence...I hope I didn't lose you...we will come back to more of the specifics in due time...);
2. Freud's psychology originated in the dualistic and dialectic thinking of Hegel (thesis/id, anti-thesis/superego, synthesis/ego) combined with some Nietzschean and Schopenhauerean ('bi-polar tragedy', Apollo vs. Dionysus, and overpowering irrationality) philosophy as well. In contrast, Adler's philosophy can be equated more with Spinoza's 'wholistic, rationalistic' philosophy as well as the ancient Greek philosophy of Epictetus ('Man is not disturbed by things but by the view he takes of them.'). Plus there is a more 'religious-spiritual-altruistic-social interest-community basis' providing the foundation for Adlerian Psychology whereas Freud's psychology is more a psychology that emphasizes the inherent instability of man's psyche and his tendency towards anti-social behavior, hedonistic-narcissistic behavior, as well as self and social destruction (see his 'death instinct' from 1920, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'). In this regard, Freud's is a more pessimistic philosophy and psychology vs. Adler's more optimistic philosophy and psychology;
3. Freud's is a 'push' psychology -- we are pushed by our 'instincts', 'drives', and 'impulses'; whereas Adler's is a 'pull' psychology -- we are pulled by our 'goals', our 'plans', our 'superiority striving', our 'teleology';
4. Freud's is a 'deterministic' psychology -- we are 'determined' by our genetics, our instincts, our fantasies, in combination with our early childhood experiences and social learning; Adler's is a more 'free-will' psychology -- we all have the freedom to change the direction of our life path if we want to badly enough and have the support to do so;
5. Freud believed in the imperative causal determinants of 'unconscious, repressed memories and fantasies'; in contrast, Adler believe in the metaphorical importance of our 'conscious early memories' in reflecting or projecting the direction of our 'fictional final goal' or worded otherwise, our 'lifestyle goal and path';
6. One of Freud's most important concepts was the concept of 'transference' which in hidden ways bears strong similarities to Adler's main concept of 'lifestyle' -- but in ways that have never before, at least to my knowledge, been properly addressed and discussed in the literature. This is where DGB Pyschology steps in and provides its 'Hegelian dialectic influence'. Having some training (Adlerian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy) and/or self-education in both Psychoanalysis and Adlerian Psychology, I feel that I am in a rather unique position to provide the type of 'transference-lifestyle' dialectic integration that I am talking about here. The 'mental and logical gyrations' required to get from point A (transference) to point B (lifestyle) are significant because Freud changed the meaning of his concept of 'transference' as his overall Psychoananlytic Theory changed around his concept of transference. Perhaps in this process here, I am even giving to the term 'transference' a meaning that Freud never gave it. But in some ways, it is like Adler went back to Freud's abandoned 'traumacy theory' (just as Arthur Janov did, and Fritz Perls did, and all of the new 'Traumacy and/or Seduction Theorists' have) and built his concept of 'inferiority feeling' and 'superiority striving' from it. Closely related to Adler's concept of 'superiority striving' was Freud's fleeting concept of the 'mastery compulsion' (1920, Beyond The Pleasure Principle). Wedged between the three concepts of 'inferiority feeling', 'superiority striving' and 'mastery compulsion' was one of Adler's other most important concepts of 'compensation'.
7. So how do these ideas all come together? To begin with -- lots of 'dialectic interplay' between Freudian and Adlerian concepts which can be further extended outwards to include Perls and Gestalt Therapy ('the unfinished situation'), Jung (the Shadow and Persona), Melanie Klein (different 'ego positions' like 'the depressive position', the 'paranoid position' and I would add others like 'the approval-seeking position', 'the anal-schizoid or distancing position', 'the rebellious, narcissistic-hedonistic bad boy or bad girl position'), Fairbairn's 'The Rejecting-Exciting Object/Topdog/Superego', Eric Berne's 'The Nurturing Parent' (Topdog/Superego)...The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Topdog/Superego...and more...
8. A distinction needs to be made between 'transference relationships' and 'transference memories'. As soon as we add the concept of 'transference memories' to Freud's work, then the linking connection between this concept and Adler's concept of 'lifestyle memories' starts to become more easily discernable. We need simply take one further step out of the realm of the unconscious and the repressed (Freud) and into the realm of the conscious or subconscious (Adler) and mix all of the concepts together that are mentioned briefly above -- and voila -- DGB Psychology using its dialectic process has started to 'dialectically bridge the gap' between Freud, Adler, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Janov, Perls, and more...
9. And one further thing we need to do: dialectically integrate Freud's Traumacy and Seduction Theories with his later Narcissistic and Narcissistic Fantasy Theories...i.e, dialectically bridge the gap essentially between Freud and Masson.
10. Now, I know that I have left about 99 percent of you trying to grapple with all these abstract implied connections above that obviously need to be fleshed out if there is to be any real communication here, it seems apparent also that we need a case example to illustrate some of these various connections that I am trying to bring together in one super-integrative philosophical and psychological package. Does anyone want to step up to the plate and be my guinea pig? Be my case example?
Speak up, anyone, while I mull over an alternative plan that I don't really like...
We can all sit on these ideas for a day or two before I take this huge range of different but interconnected ideas to the next level of multi-dialectic-democratic-integration.
Perhaps Hegel was right. And partly even Plato...Perhaps hidden in the depths of our collective minds and souls is an integrative potential source of knowledge that is so great, so powerful, that it almost deserves to be called 'Absolute Knowledge' ...Except man's full psychological nature is still too vast and mystical to fully comprehend even by the combined efforts of all the greatest psychologists and philosophers.
In this regard, I prefer the term 'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic Knowledge'.
Perhaps collectively, the full range and focus of psychological knowledge that has been put together by all of the 'Psychological Superstars' mentioned above...and more: people like Freud, Adler, Jung, Rank, Theodor and Wilhelm Reik, Ferenczi, Karen Horney, Klein, Fairbairn, Sullivan, Winnicott, Guntrip, Berne, Kohut, Janov, Aaron Beck, George Kelley, Albert Ellis, Fritz and Laura Perls, Hefferline, Goodman, Virginia Satir, Erich Fromm, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, Sartre, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, Abraham Maslow and the rest of the Humanists and the Humanistic-Existentialists...Even the Behaviorists and a better from my perspective, the 'Cognitive Behaviorists'...one of whom I wrote my Honours Thesis for -- Dr. Donald Meichenbaum.
I will let you ponder on these rather obscure thoughts and connections for now...
And on that note, I will bid you a goodnight...
-- dgb, Nov. 29th, 2009,
-- david gordon bain
-- dialectic gap-bridging negotiations...
-- are still in process...
