DGB 'Quantum' Psychoanalysis: Integrating Different Theories of Psychoanalysis and 'Counter-Psychoanalysis' Into A More Comprehensive, 'Multi-Dialectic Whole'

Freud's model of the personality was simple, straightforward, and efficient. Visually and topographically imagining the model, you have the 'Superego' at the top of the personality which is the watchdog, the social concience, and the self-critic of the personality.

At the bottom of the personality, rising and driving up forcefully from the body, with all of the body's imagined and real needs, wants, wishes, and impulses is the Id -- the word 'impulses' is preferable to the word 'instincts' because it is less 'deterministic', more 'free-will oriented', and in my opinion, less 'semantically troublesome' than the term-concept of 'instinct' which begs the question: at what point does an 'impulse' become an 'instinct').

Finally, in the middle of the personality -- and mediating between the Superego and The Id -- is  The Ego (the 'compromiser', and ideally, the final decision-making part of the personality).

This model was created by Freud towards the end of his career (1923, The Ego and The Id)...and still works very, very well...There are some problems, liabilities, and issues with it -- the model is not perfect but no model is -- but overall, the model gets an 'A' for a combination of efficiency and simplicity.

Freud's 'triadic model of the personality' was foreshadowed by the combined philosophy of: Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche...

In particular, Nietzsche's brilliant little first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' -- which Nietzsche later disowned as being 'too Hegelian' -- was the psychological bridge between Hegel and Freud.

You can see in Nietzsche's distinction between 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' forces in the personality, the precursor for Freud's later Superego and Id, respectively. You can also see the birth of Freud's concept of The Id in Schopenhauer's idea of 'The Will as an Overpowering Cosmic Irrational Force'.

What DGB Psychology does to this 'Classic Freudian Model of The Personality' is essentially three things:

1. DGB Psychology 'splits' the Superego into three 'Superego States': 1a. 'The Nurturing Superego'; 1b. The Hedonistic-Narcissistic (Dionysian) Superego; and 1c. The Righteous-Rejecting ('Apollonian') Superego. This follows pretty closely with what Eric Berne did with Transactional Analysis in the 1960s. (See Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis)

2. DGB Psychology renames 'The Ego' as 'The Central (Mediating, Executive) Ego';

3. DGB Psychology brings part of 'The Id' up from 'the unconscious' -- the 'basement' of the personality -- gives it 'ego status', and 'splits' it into the following 'Underego States': 3a. 'The Righteous-Rejecting (Rebellious) Underego'; 3b. 'The Hedonistic-Narcissistic (Dionysian) Underego; and 3c. 'The Approval-Seeking (Apollonian) Underego' (again, following fairly closely to the work of Eric Berne in Transactional Analysis in the 1960s).

Then DGB Psychology divides 'The Unconscious' or 'Subconscious' (the word 'subconscious' is less semantically challenging) into the following four parts:

4. The Creative-Destructive Dynamic Subconscious (The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Maker);

5. The Experientially Learned Transference-Lifestyle Complex Template (Freud, Adler, Perls)

6. The Genetic, Mythological, and Biochemical Subconscious (Partly from Jung, partly from Schopenhauer and Freud -- i.e., the deepest elements of 'The Id')

7. The Unrealized Potential (Blueprint) Self  (From Jung)


What this model does -- aside from recognizing, appeciating, and utilizing the work and ideas of a number of other brilliant psychologists besides Freud (such as: Abraham, Adler, Jung, Perls, Berne...), is open up the possibility of more of an 'Object Relations' discussion which was a direction that Freud started in 1905 anyway when he first used the term 'the sexual object' as opposed to 'the sexual aim' and 'the psycho-sexual stages of development' and 'the erotogenic (sexual) zones'. (1905, Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality).

Talking about 'object relations' allows us to explore such ideas as: 'internal and external objects', 'good and bad objects', 'nurturing and rejecting objects', 'exciting internal and external objects', 'abandoning internal and external objects', 'distancing internal and external objects', 'approval-seeking internal and external objects', 'raging internal and external objects', 'violent internal and external objects'...and so on...We will talk about this whole interconnected realm of associated subject matters at a later date. 

We will continue to develop this model as we move along in later essays.

Let us go back now, once again, and do a very quick review of the beginning of Psychoanalytic history through the 1880s and 90s.


 The First Two Theories/Models of Psychoanalysis (1. The 'Traumacy' Theory/Model; and 2. The 'Seduction' Theory/Model)


Freud's first model of Psychoanalysis -- with Breuer's and Charcot's and some might say Janet's help --  was a very good one. It was a very simple model. It is still used today in almost all forms of psychotherapy to various greater or lesser extents. I mean how many of us would even consider going into psychotherapy without there being some form of 'traumatic stress factor' in our lives -- past and/or present -- that would create the 'perception of the need to go into psychotherapy' in the first place.

With Freud's and Breuer's first model of Psychoanalysis -- and without getting too technical about all aspects of it -- there were at least three different aspects of the model that stood out about it, and made it controversial, right from the start. First, what was the model, what was the theory -- in its simplest form:

The theory went something like this: A person experiences a 'traumatic episode' in his or her 'childhood' that he or she cannot properly deal with. He or she does not know how to handle the traumatic episode. So -- the childhood traumacy is 'buried it in a closet of the personality' -- a part of the personality that Freud and Breuer labeled as 'the unconscious'.

Furthermore -- and here is where Freud started to separate from Breuer -- Freud began to argue that the process of 'locking the traumatic childhood episode' in the deepest closet of the personality -- the unconscious -- and keeping it locked up in there, even into adult hood, also needed a name for it -- to which Freud gave the name 'repression', and so began one of the most important evolutionary developments in the history of Psychoanalysis which was 'the psychology of defense'. Later, in the early 1900s, Alfred Adler would introduce the idea of 'compensation' which can be viewed as an important addition to Freud's theory of the 'psychology of defense'. The principle of 'compensation' is used extensively not only in Adlerian Psychology but also in Jungian Psychology as well.

Once Freud and Breuer had introduced the idea of 'childhood traumacies' and 'childhood traumatic memories' which became basically the person's 'childhood negative secret'  -- both to the world and even to him or herself -- then the goal of Psychoanalysis became to 'find and/or unravel that childhood negative secret'.

Because according to Freud's and Breuer's evolving early (pre-1896) Psychoanalytic theory, the 'negative secrets' that get locked up or 'repressed in our unconscious' do not go away. Indeed, they come back to haunt us in the form of a whole myriad of possible 'negative day to day symptoms' that become disturbing both to us, and to the people around us, in our adult lives, who are trying to live with us.

This is how such terms as 'neurosis' and 'anxiety neurosis' and 'obsessional neurosis' and 'hysteria' came to be born in Psychoanalysis. They became the labels that Freud and others (perhaps even Charcot before Freud) started to put on the various different types of 'negative symtoms' that they started to see over and over again in their clinical practice.

'Hysteria' was viewed mainly as a 'woman's psychological disorder' -- in the case of 'conversion hysteria' a woman might have a 'paralyzed arm' with no apparent 'physical or physiological origin'. So the woman is sent to a 'neurologist' like Charcot and later Freud who start to see 'distinctions' between those 'neurological problems' that are caused by 'physical or physiological origins' vs. those 'seemingly or apparent neurological problems' that are caused by 'psychological origins' which come down basically to 'distorted and/or pathological ideas' in the person's head (mind-brain).


And regarding the 'seemingly or apparent neurological problems' with 'psycho-genic or psychological origins ('pathological ideas') in the person's 'mind-brain' -- so began the history of 'Clinical Psychology' in general, and 'Psychoanalysis' in particular.

At the very beginning, 'hypnosis' played a deciding factor in the distinction between neurological problems of a 'physio-genic' vs. a 'psycho-genic' nature. If someone like Charcot could 'hypnotize' a woman who came to him with a 'paralyzed arm' and under hypnosis, Charcot could 'unparalyze' the woman's arm -- well, that would certainly seem to indicate -- as long as there was no 'doctor-patient charade' being pulled off here -- that the patient had a 'neurological problem' connected with a 'psycho-genic' cause -- meaning basically a 'pathological idea'.

So in essence, you could have two different type of 'neurological problems'  -- or 'neuroses'; 1. those caused by physical and/or physiological origins; and 2. those caused by psycho-genic or psychological origins. Freud, early in his developing 'neurological career' became a 'specialist' in the latter type of neurological problem or 'neurosis' -- i.e., the psychologically based ones. And in this regard, Freud became a 'specialist' in hunting down 'pathogenic ideas'  -- which for the most part, he was finding in the 'repressed, negative memories and secrets of childhood'.

Furthermore, right from the time of his involvement with Charcot and then Breuer, Freud was becoming more and more convinced that most if not all of the 'repressed, negative memories and secrets of childhood' that his patients were eventually sharing with him, first through hypnosis, then a little later in his career in the 1890s through the 'pressure technique', and then finally later in the 1890s through his beginning of the use of 'free association' -- involved 'sexual secrets'.  (Today we might not be nearly as surprised or shocked by this conclusion of Freud's but back then in the middle of the 'Victorian era', this idea by Freud didn't go over too well -- especially when in 1896, Freud started talking in front of a professional medical community of 'fathers' about 'childhood sexual assaults and seductions' by fathers with or against their daughters, or between older and younger siblings or between, 'uncles' or 'friends of the family', or 'babysitters', or strangers...  and young female children...)  


Freud, from my historical interpretation of things, learned very quickly -- in fact in one professional psychiatric conference in April, 1896 -- what the potential social, political, and economic consequences for himself could be for 'opening his mouth and being politically incorrect'.  (Back then in 1896, 'political correctness' was 180 degrees different than it is today. Freud was going up against a 'Patriarchal Power Base of Powerful Men' who did not want their patriarchal power based challenged and/or undermined by a young, rebellious, and ambitious new neurologist with some very, very controversial, provocative, and 'patriarchally disturbing' ideas...

Thus, in this professional psychiatric conference of April, 1896, Freud's new ideas about 'childhood seduction and sexual assault/abuse/attack/rape' were called a 'scientific fairy tale' by the conference master (Krafft-Ebing) -- and Freud was basically 'booed off the stage for his provocative presentation of his newest paper, 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', on the evening of April 21st, 1896).

And Freud didn't talk or write too much about childhood sexual assault -- especially between a father and his daughter -- for the rest of his career. Thus, Freud's highly controversial 'Seduction Theory' didn't last very long -- less than a year, really -- and slowly, 'Freudian Sexual Fantasy Theory' and his equally controversial (but less legally disturbing for guilty adult men and particularly fathers) Oedipal Theory would rise up in its place, and still, to this day, exists in Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis but not in two of its younger 'siblings', i.e., newer models of Psychoanalysis -- 1. 'Object Relations'; and its still younger 'sibling'/extension/model/theory -- 'Self Psychology'.

So did Freud 'morally lose courage'? -- as Masson interpretively claimed in his own 'career-changing' book entitled 'The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of The Seduction Theory', 1984, 1985, 1992 -- which effectively ended Masson's career as a Psychoanalyst, as 'The Director of The Freud Archives', and as probably the third most politically powerful person in The Freudian Empire and The Psychoanalytic Hierarchy -- behind only Anna Freud who died in 1982 and Kurt Eissler who died in 1999.

Yeah, I think he did. I think Freud lost 'moral courage' after this very traumatic April 21st, 1896 conference meeting. In fact, personally, I think the evidence is pretty strong to support Masson's historical interpretation. Which is not to say that any of us -- not Masson, not me, not anyone still living today -- will ever be able to definitively say that he or she  can 'go back in history and get back inside Freud's mind and back into everything Freud was thinking back in 1896...and afterwards...'

Still, one only has to ask the following questions: How much did Freud write about 'child sexual seduction/abuse/assault' after 1896?' And in particular, how much did Freud write about 'fathers seducing, exploiting, assaulting, attacking, raping...their daughters' after 1896?

And the answer is....precious very, very little...especially regarding the second question, and particularly considering the fact that in 1896 Freud was ready to build all of Psychoanalysis around his '(childhood) seduction/assault theory' which he called 'the solution to a more than thousand-year-old problem -- a caput Nili'. -- Freud, 1896. (Assault on Truth, p. 3).

To which I add one more further qualification to my point of view here. How many of us today wouldn't have done the same if we had been in Freud's shoes? Unlike Freud, Masson in the 1980s wouldn't let go of 'Freud's Abandoned Seduction Theory'  -- he hung in there with a 'Pit Bull bite' -- and, in doing so, he effectively 'trashed his career' as one of the 3 most powerful people in Psychoanalysis during this time period. (Well, behind Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, there was also  some sort of 'board of directors' of 'The Freudian Empire' and/or 'The Freudian Archives' who collectively voted that Masson be 'fired' as 'The Director of The Freud Archives'.)

So -- do we give Masson an 'A' for 'moral and political courage'?

Or do we give Masson an 'E' for 'political correctness, expedience, and intelligence'?

In other words, do we say that Masson was 'politically stupid' for saying and writing what he did, particularly in the 'blunt politically incorrect' (i.e., saying and writing that 'Freud lost moral courage') manner that he did?

I mean if I subscribed to a 'Machiavellian' type of philosophy, and I had been back there to 'politically advise' Dr. Masson at the beginning of the 1980s (I had by this time graduated from The University of Waterloo with my Honours B.A. in psychology and I had freshly enrolled into a Masters Degree Program in Adlerian Psychology which I abandoned a year later, and I had also stepped inside The Gestalt Institute of Toronto by this time....but no, I had not heard of the name 'Dr. Jeffrey Masson' at this point in my 25 year young life yet...nor had I heard about the drama that was about to unfold around him, but had I), I might have said to him something like this (perhaps in hindsight thiinking about how Masson could have eventually strongly affected the direction of Psychoanalysis, politically, theoretically, and therapeutically, after the main two  powers that be at the time -- Anna Freud and Eissler -- eventually passed away):

'Dr. Masson, take a valium, please (metaphorically speaking of course). I value the 'truth' just as much as you do. But perhaps there is a way that you can 'couch' your perspective and 'wrap up' your editorial opinion, especially your interpretive generalization about Freud's character, i.e., his 'alleged loss of moral courage' (which none of us can know about for sure because none of us can get back into his head) -- wrap it up in a way that even Dr. Anna Freud and Dr. Kurt Eissler might  be able to more easily digest and tolerate your very provocative editorial opinion and your rather 'ambitious return to the buried past of Psychoanalysis'.

In effect, perhaps Dr. Masson, perhaps you can 'bury the strongest parts of your editorial opinions about Freud's character for a while in your subconscious' -- and with all due respect to both you and Dr. Anna Freud as well as the 'slippery epistemological truth' whatever that might be (and it is not likely to be only 'one generalized truth' but rather an 'assortment of different concrete truths' depending on the context of each particular situation -- this being the case, perhaps you can wait at least until Anna Freud dies before you let loose with that 'full lock-jaw, all teeth, Pit Bull bite' of yours against Classical Psychoanalysis and Dr. Sigmund Freud's perhaps over-villified character...'

Probably some 'transference issues' at work here which by no means diminishes in anyway the 'epistemological and humanistic-existential importance of your message', nor lessen its relevance to the fact that Anna Freud herself -- in my eyes -- should have modifed a 'distorted, one-sided portion of Psychoanalytic Theory that narcissistically marginalized the rights of the applicable women to have their 'real live' childhood sexual assaults fully recognized for what they are, and were' -- a horror show as depicted initially by Freud in 'The Aetiology of Hysteria', and not, as later depicted by Freud  as some 'distorted fantasy on their part that never actually happened'.

In short, Dr. Masson, Psychoanalysis is probably worse off today for not having you up near the top of the power hierarchy.

In this regard -- and I am talking in 2010 now -- Classical Psychoanalysis has no name, no face, no personality, no idealistic vision, no white horse that it can ride on the back of...

And that should have been you Dr. Masson -- idealistically speaking, the man on the charging white Psychoanalytic horse...to change the face of Psychoanalysis, to change 'The House That Freud Built'...and to help 'Rebuild It'...to 'Re-Idealize' it...to 'Humanistically-Existentialize' it...even with your own imperfections...

The man to welcome more and more women into Psychoanalysis -- and to treat them equally, both as clients and as Psychoanalytic Students and Becoming Analysts -- in a way that does not still continue to marginalize women, suppress them, alienate them, and pretend that some of their worst, most horrific nightmares relative to men sexually exploiting them, especially relative to some fathers sexually exploiting their daughters -- (which is not to say that it cannot happen the other way around too, and that women are just as capable of exploiting men in their own particular ways...again, there is a need for 'dialectic-democratic-egalitarian justice'; not one-sided favoritism and/or marginalization directed towards either men or women or seniors or children...)

The 'House That Freud Built', Psychoanalysis -- in 2010 -- as in the 1980s -- still needs to be rebuilt. That is one of the main things that is happening here in Hegel's Hotel.
I believe that I have some major theoretical differences of opinion with Dr. Masson -- as well as with Freud.

I am a 'post-Hegelian dialectic thinker'. I try as much as possible not to be an 'Aristotelean Either/Or thinker'.

I am a 'dialectical integrationist and wholist'.

Call this 'theoretically sitting on the fence' if you wish.

I think it is much, much more.

Look at life as one 'very, very large box' -- the 'almost infinitely large box of life'.

Anytime some theorist comes along -- whether it be Freud, or Adler, or Jung, or Perls, or Masson, or myself, or anyone else...and we espouse and trumpet a particular theory, we are essentially wrong before we even start.

Every theory, every idea, every model, every characteristic carries within it the seeds of its own self-destruction (a paraphrasing of Hegel's dialectic theory).

Why? Because a theory always trumpets a particular point of view -- it asks, sometimes demands, that we look at this particular aspect of life, and not that particular aspect of life. If we are trumpeting 'white', then 'black' is marginalized. If we are trumpeting 'men', then 'women' are marginalized. If we are trumpeting 'children', then 'seniors' or 'parents' are marginalized...

This is 'Jacques Derrida Philosophical Theory 101'. (Derrida was hugely influenced by Hegel).

We cannot trumpet any 'theory of life' without effectively 'marginalizing' some aspect of life that we have 'left out of our theory'. Because the 'Infinite Box of Life' will always be bigger than any 'Man-Made, One-Sided Theory of Life'.

The best we can do is to properly appreciate the full extent of 'Post-Hegelian Humanistic-Existential Multi-Dialectic Theory' (I guess I am partly going through the back door to 'trumpet my own DGB Dialectic-Philosophy-Psychology...here).

By fully recognizing and appreciating that it takes two 'opposing bi-polar theories' to make one good -- or at least better, i.e., more 'dialectically wholistic and integrative', theory that covers both opposing sides of life, and is not inherently incomplete, and thus, eventually self-destructive.

By itself, Freud's 'Traumacy Theory' collapses -- it self-destructs -- because it is inherently one-sided. We need to search out the 'bi-polar opposite' of 'traumacy theory' which is a combination of 'pleasure theory', 'narcissistic fixation' theory, 'fantasy theory', 'Oedipal Theory'...and more...

Freud did all of this...but Freud was more of an Aristotelean 'Either/Or' thinker than he was a 'Hegelian dialectic thinker'. By this, I mean that even though Freud's fundamental Classical Model of The Personality -- i.e., 'The Id', 'The Superego', and 'The Ego' -- is based on 'Classical Hegelian Dialectic Theory (i.e., 'thesis', 'anti-thesis', and 'synthesis'), still for the most part in Freud's professional career, whenever Freud developed a 'new' theory, he left his 'old' theory behind. This very bad thinking habit of Freud's was based on Aristotelean Either/Or thinking.

When Freud developed his rather 'narrow-minded' and infamous 'Seduction Theory', he left behind a better, less narrow-minded theory which 'explained' more of human behavior and neurosis as a whole: i.e., his Traumacy Theory. Thus, 'Freud's 'Seduction Theory' should have been kept as a 'sub-section' or 'sub-theory' relative to his Traumacy Theory. Relative to his more general Traumacy Theory, Freud's Seduction Theory could have been, and should have been called his 'Sexual Traumacy Theory'. Thus, his Seduction/Sexual Traumacy Theory should have been incorporated as part of his larger, and more generally applicable Traumacy Theory. His Traumacy Theory shouldn't have been left behind anymore than his Seduction Theory should have been. And here is the kicker -- both should have been incorporated into and integrated with his later Fantasy and Oedipal Theory and Object Relations Theory.

My motto is: 'Let no good theory -- or partly good theory -- be left behind.

We saw this in the evolution of physics where 'particle theory' became integrated with 'wave theory' to become a more 'dialectically solid theory' that we now call 'particle-wave theory'. The latter -- dialectically stronger theory -- paved the wave for what we now call 'Quantum Physics'.

This is exactly what needs to be done in Psychoanalysis.

Multi-Integrative Psychoanalysis where the 'bi-polar opposite theories' start to come back together...back into one 'Multi-Dialectic Whole'... 

Worded otherwise, call this: 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'. (Don't ask me where the name 'quantum' came from in physics but it sounds good...and it sounds 'integrative'...as attested by 'particle' and 'wave' theory dialectically coming together in the form of 'particle-wave' theory...


And dare I say this -- knowing that I will probably come across as a complete egotist (which is partly true on a good day...) -- but I am probably one of the few theorists -- if not the only one -- who can completely rebuild Classical Psychoanalysis in the 'most multi-dialectical, integrative and wholistic fashion' that I have creatively contrued in my head (mind-brain) here over the course of my own philosophical and psychological evolutionary period of some 35 years. 



I had no idea that I would end up back on the subject of Psychoanalysis -- a subject that I took an interest in, and basically taught myself in the 1980s.

I can only remember taking a handful of 'introductory Psychoanalysis courses' in university. I think I took one course that introduced me to 'Object Relations'.  


I have not met one Psychoanalyst or ex-Psychoanalyst (except by email) in my lifetime -- at least that I can remember. I probably did at one point but not to the point of actually discussing Psychoanalysis (except again, one rather important person by email).  


But I have become 'obsessive' in re-building Psychoanalysis -- even though I have no 'official credibility' by which to do so. But it is a 'free internet' and 'integrating ideas' is free also in North America...something that I do believe I am pretty good at...


To be sure, there is some huge 'creative Transference and/or Sublimation Complex' at work here in my 35 years of work on this project as I continue to write hundreds of integrative essays in Hegel's Hotel...


In Hegel's Hotel, 

• Freud and Masson are united...and speak together in the same hotel conference room...
• Masson and Classical Psychoanalysis are re-united under the banner of a larger, 'more enlightened' and 'more sexually egalitarian' and idealistic Psychoanalysis for the 21st Century...In Hegel's Hotel, as of this essay, I just started to call this 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'...
• Freud and Adler are reunited in the same hotel conference room
• Freud and Jung are reunited in the same hotel conference room
• Freud and Perls are reunited in the same hotel conference room
• Freud and Ferenczi, Rank, Wilhelm and Theodor Reik, are all united in the same hotel conference room...

In Hegel's Hotel, 

We strive for dialectic contact, engagement, energy, passion, a 'tolerance and respect for disagreement', negotiation, and integration...

In Hegel's Hotel, 

All the Classical Psychoanalysts, Object Relationists, Self Psychologists, ex-Psychoanalysts, neo-Psychoanalysts, and anti-Psychoanalysts....

Come home to roost...to help Rebuild The House That Freud Built...

In a more 'dialectically-democratic' environment...

With me playing the primary role of mediator, negotiator, integrator... 

Enough writing for today...my other work is calling me....

-- dgb, January 30th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process...

  
  























































  

On Interpreting Your Dreams...and 'Acting Out Your Dreams in A Therapeutic Situation'...

All of the different parts of our dreams represent both people and things in our lives -- good and bad -- as well as different parts of our own personality....In other words, we choose people to get involved with who reflect different aspects of our own personality so that our 'internal-external dialogue' -- or stated differently, our 'I vs him or her dialogue' -- is also an 'internal-internal dialogue'.

Put another way still, the friend or lover or ideal person or antagonist you choose to get involved with for any length of time in your day to day life is generally some kind of reflection of your 'inner friend, lover, ideal person, and/or antagonist' -- your 'external people and/or objects' reflecting your 'internal people, sub-personalities, and/or objects', and visa versa. This could be a projection of your 'inner mother or father', your 'anti-mother or father'...'your inner sibling, friend, and/or rival'....or any compilation or spinoff in between...or 'outside the box of our past relationships'...

But in order to work with your dreams, you also have to be able to enter a world of 'symbols', 'mythology', 'mythological archetypes', 'transference-lifestyle analysis (memory analysis)'....to be able to associate between them, and interpret the feelings, impulses, and goals behind them...

This takes some learning, some theory, some applied theory, and practice...all coming together into the 'art of dream interpretation' or 'dream work', and better still actually 'existentially role-playing' and acting out your dream in the safe confines of a competent psychotherapist's office, a competent dream therapist's office, and or a therapeutic group setting...If you are in the process of 'working through risky stuff', you need someone who knows what they are doing and is going to be able to help you through your dream work in a competent, encouraging, and compassionate manner. The same goes with interpreting your early childhood memories -- the subject of which is still very controversial today.

You want your therapist to be able to stay with 'who you are' and stay with your own projections, fantasies, and memories, as opposed to projecting their own self-imposed, and/or one-sided theories, fantasies, and/or memories on you that may not have anything to do with you and your past or present life. Stay true to yourself and 'put up red flags' if or when you think your therapist may be steering you down a channel that has no relevance 'to you'. A good therapist will listen to you -- and adjust. A bad therapist may not listen to you and just keep going, and pushing harder, with his or her own theories, assumptions, and beliefs, no matter how irrelevant they may be to your situation. To repeat, this 'epistemological area of dream and memory interpreting' can get very cloudy and controversial. The worst therapists can bungle this area very badly and pathologically. Not to scare you from dream or memory work but just a note of necessary caution.



-- dgb, Jan. 29th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

On Relationships, Risking, and 'The Immediacy of The Moment'...

I heard this on CSI the other day:

'A relationship that doesn't move forward, withers.'


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


The lifeblood of a relationship is 'the immediacy of the moment'. 


But sometimes the immediacy of the moment is too 'risk-taking'...perhaps taking our partner too close to our inner Essence...with unknown reactions to follow: acceptance; rejection; fear; anger; rage; alienation; abandonment...anything and everything is possible...does sharing the intimacy of a risky moment take us deeper into the relationship or does one of us choose to bail out...having let down to much of our outer Wall...


To risk or not to risk; to share or not to share -- these are the choices which can decide whether a relationship goes deeper into each partner's respective Inner Core; or starts to dry up and wither away into non-relevance, alienation, impasse, non contact, psychological and/or physical abandonment...


Each and everyone has to decide how much we want to hang onto our Outer Wall...


And each and everyone has to decide the speed at which we move deeper into our Inner Core...


If at all...


To share or not to share, that is the question. 


-- dgb, Jan. 26th, 2010


-- David Gordon Bain

Karl Abraham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Abraham
Karl Abraham
Born	3 May 1877
Died	25 December 1925
Nationality	German
Fields	psychiatry

Karl Abraham (3 May 1877 – 25 December 1925) was an early German psychoanalyst, and a correspondent of Sigmund Freud, who called him his 'best pupil'.^[1] He founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, and was the president of the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1914 to 1918 and again in 1925.

Karl Abraham collaborated with Freud on the understanding of manic-depressive illness, leading to Freud's paper on 'Mourning and Melancholia' in 1917. He was the analyst of Melanie Klein during 1924-1925, and of a number of other British psychoanalysts, including Edward Glover, James Glover, and Alix Strachey. He was a mentor for an influential group of German analysts, including Karen Horney, Helene Deutsch, andFranz Alexander.

Karl Abraham studied the role of infant sexuality in character development and mental illness and, like Freud, suggested that if psychosexual development is fixated at some point, mental disorders will likely emerge. He described the personality traits and psychopathology that result from the oral and anal stages of development (1921;1924a). In the oral stage of development, the first relationships children have with objects (caretakers) determine their subsequent relationship to reality. Oral satisfaction can result in self-assurance and optimism, whereas oral fixation can lead to pessimism and depression. Moreover, a person with an oral fixation will present a disinclination to take care of him/herself and will require others to look after him/her This may be expressed through extreme passivity (corresponding to the oral benign suckling substage) or through a highly active oral-sadistic behaviour (corresponding to the later sadistic biting substage) (1924a). In the anal stage, when the training in cleanliness starts too early, conflicts may result between a conscious attitude of obedience and an unconscious desire for resistance. This can lead to traits such as frugality, orderliness and obstinacy, as well as to obsessional neurosis as a result of anal fixation (Abraham,1921) . In addition, Abraham based his understanding of manic-depressive illness on the study of the painter Segantini: an actual event of loss is not itself sufficient to bring the psychological disturbance involved in melancholic depression. This disturbance is linked with disappointing incidents of early childhood; in the case of men always with the mother (Abraham, 1911). This concept of the prooedipal “bad” mother was a new development in contrast to Freud’s oedipal mother and paved the way for the theories of Melanie Klein (May-Tolzmann,1997). Another important contribution is his work “A short study of the Development of the Libido” (1924b), where he elaborated on Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) and demonstrated the vicissitudes of normal and pathological object relations and reactions to object loss. Moreover, Abraham investigated child sexual trauma and, like Freud, proposed that sexual abuse was common among psychotic and neurotic patients. Furthermore, he argued (1907) that dementia praecox is associated with child sexual trauma, based on the relationship between hysteria and child sexual trauma demonstrated by Freud.

Abraham (1920) also showed interest in cultural issues. He analyzed various myths suggesting their relation to dreams (1909) and wrote an interpretation of the spiritual activities of the monotheistic Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1912).

Contents  [hide] 1 Publications 2 Quotes 3 References 4 External links

[edit]Publications

• Selected Papers on Psycho-Analysis, Publisher: Karnac Books; 1997, ISBN 0-9501647-7-1

[edit]Quotes

• A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work

• What did we get ourselves into?

Theodor Reik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

memorial plaque, Berlin

Theodor Reik (12 May 1888 in Wien — 31 December 1969 in New York City) was a prominent psychoanalyst who trained as one of Freud's first students in Vienna, Austria. Reik received a PhD degree in psychologyfrom the University of Vienna in 1912. His dissertation, a study of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony, was the first psychoanalytic dissertation ever written. After receiving his doctorate, Reik devoted several years to studying with Freud, who financially supported Reik and his family during his psychoanalytic training. During this time, Reik was analyzed by Karl Abraham. Reik, who was Jewish, emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1938 in flight from Nazism. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Rejected from the dominant community of medical psychoanalysts in the United States because he did not possess an MD degree, Reik went on to found one of the first psychoanalytic training centers for psychologists, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, which remains one of the largest and best-known psychoanalytic training institutes in New York City.

As part of Reik's conflict with the medical psychoanalysis community, he participated in the first lawsuit which helped define and legitimize the practice of psychoanalysis by non-physicians.

Reik is best known for psychoanalytic studies of psychotherapeutic listening, masochism, criminology, literature, and religion.

Reik's first major book was The Compulsion to Confess (1925), in which he argued that neurotic symptoms such as blushing and stuttering can be seen as unconscious confessions that express the patient's repressedimpulses while also punishing the patient for communicating these impulses.

Reik further explored this theme in The Unknown Murderer (1932), in which he examined the process of psychologically profiling unknown criminals. He argued out that because of unconscious guilt, criminals often leave clues that can lead to their identification and arrest.

In Masochism in Modern Man (1941), Reik argues that patients who engage in self-punishing or provocative behavior do so in order to demonstrate their emotional fortitude, induce guilt in others, and achieve a sense of "victory through defeat."

Reik presented a forceful criticism of traditional Freudian theory in A Psychologist Looks at Love (1944). Freud had believed that love is always based on some form of sexual desire. Reik argued, to the contrary, that love and lust are distinct motivational forces.

In Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies" (1946), he uses psychoanalytic te shed light on the meaning of couvade, puberty rites, and the Jewish rituals of Yom Kippur and shofar.

Reik's most famous book, Listening with the Third Ear (1948), describes how psychoanalysts intuitively use their own unconscious minds to detect and decipher the unconscious wishes and fantasies of their patients. According to Reik, analysts come to understand patients most deeply by examining their own unconscious intuitions about their patients.

In his psychoanalytic autobiography Fragments of a Great Confession (1949), Reik turned a psychoanalytic ear toward his own life, interpreting his inner conflicts and their influence on his writing and relationships.

The Secret Self (1952) comprises a number of essays of psychoanalytic literary criticism, in which Reik tried to decipher the unconscious fantasies and impulses lying beneath literary works. In this book, Reik continued to develop his interest in the relationship between his own personality and his work, exploring how his internal conflicts shaped his interpretations of literary works.

In Myth and Guilt (1957), Reik investigated the role of guilt and masochism in religion.

Reik's theories were a strong influence on the French psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan, and anticipated recent developments in US psychoanalysis, such as its current emphasis on intersubjectivity and countertransference. Reik's legacy for nonmedical psychoanalysis in the US is equally important. The training of nonmedical analysts, such as psychologists and social workers, is now largely accepted, partly because of Reik's efforts. It is also worth mentioning that the philosopher Frank P. Ramsey was his patient, during a prolonged stay in Vienna with that purpose.

[edit]Publications

• 1923: Der eigene und der fremde Gott. , Neuausgabe: Der eigene und der fremde Gott : zur Psychoanalyse d. religiösen Entwicklung, Mit e. Vorw. z. Neuausg. von Alexander Mitscherlich, Frankfurt (am Main) : Suhrkamp, 1975.
• 1925/1959 - The Compulsion to Confess. In J.Farrar (Ed) The compulsion to confess and the need for punishment. (pp. 176-356). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.
• 1932/1959 - The Unknown Murderer. In J. Farrar (Ed) The compulsion to confess and the need for punishment. (pp. 3-173). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.
• 1937 - Surprise and the Psycho-Analyst: On the Conjecture and Comprehension of Unconscious Process. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
• 1941 - Masochism and Modern Man. New York: Toronto, Farrar & Rinehart.
• 1944/1974 - A Psychologist Looks at Love. In M.Sherman (Ed.) Of Love and Lust. (pp.1-194) New York: Jason Aronson.
• 1946 - Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Stidoes" 1962 Grove Press edition.
• 1948 - Listening with the Third Ear: The inner experience of a psychoanalyst. New York: Grove Press.
• 1952 - The Secret Self. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
• 1957 - Myth and Guilt. New York: George Braziller.
• 1959 - Mystery on the Mountain: The Drama of the Sinai Revelation. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
• 1960 - The Creation of Woman: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the Myth of Eve. New York: George Braziller.
• 1961 - The Temptation. New York: George Braziller.
• 1964 - Voices From the Inaudible: The Patients Speak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company.

Psychoanalysis Maximum Without Borders... Hegel's Hotel Welcomes All Open-Minded Psychoanalysts, Ex-Psychoanalysts, and Anti-Psychoanalysts Into Its Conference Rooms...And Those Theorists and Therapists Who Are Dead But Whose Ideas Influenced The Evolution of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy......

Freud, Adler, Jung, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, Wilhelm Reik, Theodor Reik, Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne, Masson, and an assortment of others are all welcome to share and integrate their ideas in Hegel's Hotel... And since most of those are not alive, or might object to being in the same room with each other even if they were still alive, in the spirit of Hegel --  and dialectic-democratic evolution --  I will trumpet their various ideas for them...and seek harmonious integration between these many theorists and their brilliant ideas where before there was only 'mutual righteous rejection, impasse, and abandonment'. 

-- dgb, Jan. 25th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process...

On Manic-Depression, Bi-Polarity Disorder, 'The Splitting of The Personality', Psychosis and Neurosis Combined, Freud, Adler, and Perls Combined, and The Dialectic Use of The 'Mind-Brain' Concept...

Have you ever played the 'What if...Game'? 

Who of us hasn't? The older you get, the easier it is to play this game as you go back over your life history and re-examine all of the different choices you have made -- both 'good' and 'bad' but generally, in this context, humans being human, with an emphasis on the bad ones...

And if you choose to be particularly hard on yourself, then the 'What If?' Game can rather quickly deteriorate  into the 'The Self-Flagellation Game', 'The Self-Torture Game', and 'The Self-Hate Game'...

This can take you down the path of self-alienation, depression, destructive 'splits in the personality', and their various overcompensations (or defenses) -- obsessive-compulsions of the 'narcissistic-addictive' type: excessive food intake, alcoholism, drugs, sex addiction, excessive gambling, manic-depression (bi-polar disorder)...


Quite frankly, I don't like much -- if any -- of the new psychiatric terminology and conceptuology.

I like the old psychiatric jargon, the many of the old Freudian distinctions, and my DGB post-Freudian modifications of these distinctions much better than any of the new distinctions (which don't distinguish)...

'Bi-polar disorder'....What the heck does that mean? We are all bi-polar...Indeed, we are all multiple-bi-polar...I could probably list off a hundred different possible types of 'bi-polar disorders' so the question becomes: 'Which one are we talking about?'

The old 'manic-depression' category was -- and still is -- much easier to understand. And much more to the point with better 'distinguishing power'. Why don't we still use it? It's less abstractive and ambiguous than 'bi-polar disorder'.

A person feels depressed -- perhaps for a prolonged period of time.

For some people, there reaches a point where they feel 'compelled' to 'shake their dead life up' in a rather huge and extreme way to try to get rid of their depression.  So they enter into a 'manic' phase of their 'bi-polar disorder'  -- and basically go 'wild', go 'crazy', living a brief segment of their life in a way that seems to be the extreme opposite of depression -- until they finally 'crash and burn'  from exhaustion, and/or getting into trouble with the law, and/or getting into trouble with the people around them (family, friends, and/or strangers). They could have 'maxed out their credit card', 'slept with half the people in the nation' (I'm exaggerating, embellishing...but you get the idea...)...We all shake our collective heads and yet I am sure also that we all have a significant understanding of how and why this type of 'extreme human behavior' can play itself out...Not too many people want to die before they are dead, not too many people want to corpsify themselves without taking some form of very 'radical self-therapy' to try to 'stop feeling like a living corpse'...

As Nietzsche would say, 'It's human, all too human...'

Worse than the label of 'bi-polar disorder' is how we explain it nowadays -- as a form of 'brain disorder', or a 'bio-chemical disorder' requiring drugs to compensate for this 'physiological problem'....

There are two things I have to say to this:

1. Pharmaceutical drugs are big money; and

2. Drugs are as often as not prescribed as a form of 'social and/or self-control' as opposed to helping people live happier, more productive and satisfying lives.

Now I am not saying that biochemistry does not play a part in manic-depression-bi-polar disorder. Pharmaceutical drugs that 'alter brain chemistry' may play a useful role for those who cannot get along without them. This is not my area of expertise although I have seen pharmaceutical drugs eliminate a schizophrenic's hallucinations. Now should manic-depression be treated with drugs like schizophrenia -- or for that matter -- should any of anxiety or depression or 'mania' be treated with drugs? Or are we just trying to treat the 'symptom' and not the 'cause'? That is a question for a different essay.

But here again, for the thousandth time, we get caught inside the jail of Aristotelean logic that limits our choices to 'either/or' choices...rather than perhaps a better 'multi-integrative' choice...

How can I best explain this?

We must be very wary of getting caught inside 'labels' that do not fit very well with the way nature works.

The mind can easily separate things -- and treat things differently -- that Nature doesn't.

For example -- the 'mind' vs. 'brain' distinction.

The 'mind' and 'brain' are like identical twins born together, attached to each other.

Now a set of twins that are born together -- attached to each other -- can separated by a surgeon's knife in a way that the two twins can live separate lives, detached from each other.

Question: Would you let a surgeon into your brain to try to separate your 'mind' from your 'brain'?

I assume the answer is rather obvious: No.

Why? Because no one -- neither us nor the surgeon -- knows where the 'division' is between the 'mind' and the 'brain', nor indeed, if there even is any!

The 'brain' is a 'physical entity' that has 'structural, empirical boundaries'.

But the 'mind' is human concept that has no such physical, structural boundaries.

Does this mean that 'the mind' doesn't exist and/or that we should eliminate it completely as a human concept because it is not 'visible to the human eye'? We don't know where its boundaries lie...

Or should we start using a more 'dialectically integrative concept' such as the 'mind-brain'?

I like this idea much better because I think it takes us to better potential places...

Specifically, the label focuses on the interconnection and the inter-relationship between man's psychology and his or her physiology and bio-chemistry.

For example...

If I wanted to right now, I could 'think' my way into a depression...

I could focus on all the idiotic career mistakes that I have made in the course of my life...

I could focus on all the most traumatic events in my life...

I could focus on all the things that are wrong with my life right now...

And I could start 'torturing' myself about each and everyone of these 'negative events and choices' in my life...In fact, if I seriously wanted to go down this route, this would be 'just another example' of how I could let 'negative choices' -- and their memory -- 'negatively dominate' my life.

This is the 'negative, hanging on Pit Bull bite' of a 'depressed' person who thinks he or she 'can't, or doesn't know how to, or stubbornly won't, choose work their way through, and out of a, depression'.

Working your way through a depression requires a 'faster and stronger emotional bite'.

Both the human mind and the human body are built in such a fashion that they often 'demand closure'. Leaving things -- particularly psychologically traumatic things -- 'unclosed' for a long, extended period of time is often a recipe for 'psychopathology and human neurosis and/or psychosis' to evolve and fester.

This  idea of 'closure and unclosure' comes from both Gestalt Psychology and Gestalt Therapy.

And most ironically, Gestalt Therapy was built -- intentionally or not -- significantly also from early Freud-Breuer Traumacy Theory and Therapy (1893-1895, Studies on Hysteria).

In other words, the whole issue of 'closure and unclosure' also reigned supreme in early Freudian Theory and Therapy (before 1896).

You will perhaps recall that Freud, Breuer, Charcot, Janet...all used hypnosis in the earliest part of the evolution of clinical psychology...and later in the case of Freud, 'the pressure technique' and then the technique of 'free association'....to try to work through the myriad of 'defenses' and 'compensations' (Adler) -- the 'smoke and mirror defensive system' that constitutes much of human behavior --- 'each person's own particular 'Wall' -- in order to get to the underlying 'Essence' of the  person's 'neurotic problem'......a suppressed or repressed 'traumatic memory', a 'neurotic and/or erotic fantasy' (Freud after 1896), a 'narcissistic fixation' (did Freud ever use these two words together? I am not sure at this point...)

At the bottom of the 'neurosis' was generally an 'unaccepted and/or perceived unacceptable' memory, and/or thought, and/or behavior....surrounded by some combination of the relevant emotion/feeling: guilt, anxiety, panic, grief, rage, eroticism, violence...

Implicit in this whole idea -- indeed in the whole history of Psychoanalysis -- is the idea of the 'splitting of the personality' into 'opposing, competing, antagonistic factions'....

And implicit in the idea of the 'splitting of the personality' is the idea of 'bi-polar disorder'....

Early in Freud's career, the 'split' was between the 'conscious' and the 'unconsciously repressed'.

But was the 'unconsciously repressed' that which was 'real' or that which was 'imagined'?  Again the question was posed by Freud according to the Aristotelean dichotomy and dualistic distinction of 'either/or' -- A is A, and B is B, and never the two shall meet: there can never be an integration of AB.

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

This reminds me of a rather bizarre movie I watched 3 or 4 months ago. (Please don't read any 'projections' into my rather odd choice of a movie that particular night...But I loved it because it completely caught me off guard in terms of what the movie delivered...in terms of human psychology)

In the movie...

A sex (seduction) addict was working his way through a psychiatric institution where his mother was being housed and/or detained. The man had had sex with many of the nurses already but was having a little more trouble seducing one of the nurses. Finally, he successfully managed to 'win her over' and the two of them found an isolated staircase to carry out their mutually desired activities. But the sex addict couldn't get it going enough to 'consummate' the achievement of his seduction.

To which the nurse, in a rather perplexed manner, asked: What's wrong? You've had sex with half the nurses in this institution. What's wrong with me? To which the man, the sex addict, in confused and embarrassed fashion, replied: 'I'm not sure but I think it is because I like you, I have feelings for you...'

To which the nurse replied rather succinctly: 'Well, has it ever occurred to you that the two do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive'?

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


Some historical evidence would suggest that Freud wrestled long and hard over the 'epistemological problem' that was the essence of the clash of his 'Traumacy-Seduction Theory' (1895-1896) vs. his 'Fantasy-Oedipal Theory' (1897 and onwards...)

But again, Freud was thinking unilaterally, not dialectically.

He did not posit the possibility of 'sometimes this' and 'sometimes that'...or the possibility of 'mutual inclusion'...

People love to righteously polarize themselves in 'either/or arguments and groups' until 'cooler heads' can finally start to work out the real and/or imagined differences between the polarized factions...

Modern day psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and clinical psychology is obviously not ignorant to the fact that 'traumacy and fantasy' often exist side by side with each other -- dialectically interconnected to each other -- in the same person...

And yet the whole 'either/or' nature of the 'bi-polar Traumacy-Seduction vs. Fantasy-Oedipal Theory' would suggest that they are.

One only has to pick up any book on 'Serial Profiling' or 'Serial Killers' or watch the show 'Criminal Minds' to see at first hand that often -- indeed generally -- the 'most depraved human sexual fantasies' often go hand and hand with the 'most depraved childhood experiences'.  The depraved childhood experiences become the breeding ground for the later depraved erotic fantasies... The 'victim' in childhood becomes the 'victimizer' in adulthood...This is the work of The Transference-Lifestyle Mastery Compulsion' at its worst...Combined with the Psychoanalytic idea of 'Identification With The Aggressor' (Victimizer, Rejector, Betrayer, Abandoner, Neglecter...)

When we move inwards along the 'bi-polar spectrum' from the 'worst of the worst', then we reach a point where this same phenomenon affects all of us -- not just the most depraved, criminal and/or neurotic-erotic element...

Even a 'psychosis' and/or 'schizophrenia' cannot be properly understood unless it is combined with its underlying 'Transference-Lifestyle Obsessive-Compulsion and Mastery Compulsion'...

It is so easy just to give a psychotic/schizophrenic person an 'anti-psychotic medication' these days, and to be sure, these pills can solve a world of grief in that they can bring a psychotic person back within the 'boundaries of normal day-to-day thinking'....They can help to 'fix' the 'bio-chemical' part of the psychotic/schizophrenic problem...

But the pills certainly do nothing to relieve the 'underlying Transference-Lifestyle Neurosis'....which requires a lot more therapeutic work....

Let me add that the 'biochemical part of the problem' may be either 'genetically caused', 'drug-induced', and/or I have seen some people 'go off the deep end' simply by 'stress-induced factors'...

Let me give you an example of a case that could have involved all of the three factors mentioned above...

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

A man remembers as a childhood memory (6 or 7 years old) an event where he and his father did something very impulsive and potentially disastrous: they walked outside the interior of an Alaskan Ferry travelling from  Alaska to British Columbia during a very bad summer storm of almost hurricane proportions...The boy slipped and almost went under the rail and overboard the ship into the Pacific but was caught and held at the last second by his dad...who brought him back from this almost catastrophic disaster...and then back into the interior of the ship...

In his 20s, this young boy turned man was taking probably an assortment of different drugs at different times but even 'smoking up' seemed to 'trigger' psychotic hallucinations such as: 'planes circling around the area of The Bermuda Triangle and then getting sucked into the vortex of The Triangle'...

Well, it doesn't take too much 'associative work' here to symbolically connect the first childhood memory with the later adult phantasy (the term 'phantasy', in Melanie Klein fashion, meant to include a 'negative, nightmarish' fantasy...)

Furthermore, it can be stated that this man's whole existence -- his whole life all the way into his 50s -- had/has been built around the idea of preventing the 'return of the ocean nightmare', and the 'return of the traumatic panic attack associated with it'.  The overwhelming fear then is basically this: the 'fear of getting sucked into a vortex, an ocean hole of impending death'...The compensatory behvavior needed to ward off this potential anxiety/panic attack is the perceived badly needed and reassured security of 'constant environmental supports in place' (government agencies, family) to basically 'hold him above water'. As Adler would say, the inferiority feeling is the feeling of 'basically losing control of his life' if this security support system isn't in place properly. With it, he can function fine -- he has his neurotic safeguards in place; without these safeguards, and his rather strict 'anal-retentive' routine, he would be a walking anxiety nightmare, with panic attacks built around the prospect of not being able to economically and existentially support himself and keep himself 'out of the deadly waters below'.

We must remember what Adler said about 'early recollections':

'Among all psychological expressions, some of the most revealing are the individual's memories. His memories are the reminders he carries about with him of his own limits and of the meaning of circumstances. There are no "chance memories": out of the incalculable number of impressions which meet an individual, he chooses to remember only those which he feels, however darkly, to have a bearing on his situation. Thus his memories represent his "Story of My Life"; a story he repeats to himself to warn him or comfort him, to keep him concentrated on his goal, and to prepare him by means of past experiences, so that he will meet the future with an already tested style of action.' (Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler, p. 351, taken from Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean To You, 1931, p. 73)
In Hegel's Hotel, and DGB Psychology, Freud, Breuer, Janet, Adler, Perls, Jung, Klein, Fairbairn, Berne, Masson, and more all come together for purposes of the multi-dialectic evolution of clinical psychology and psychotherapy.
In the example above, we have an example of what I mean by a 'Transference-Lifestyle Complex'. In this particular person's case, the person's combination of 're-creation, repetition, and mastery compulsion' worked itself in a particular way, a particular direction which was protecting the person -- safeguarding him -- against his greatest life fear which was a lack of any kind of confidence in his own abilites to survive in a hostile world that threatened without these safeguards in place to 'bury him at the bottom of the ocean'.

I am late for work.

That is enough for today.

Postscript: Jan. 24th, 2010

A quick self-analysis:

Part of my own transference-lifestyle complex is my 'dawdling and then rushing because -- from my  dawdling and my not paying attention to what is going on around me --  I have made myself late'.

I get so caught up in 'the world of ideas inside my head' that I become oblivous to time marching on with or without me, and real life responsibilities and time deadlines that are being forgotten or avoided in the process...One of my first memories was of my walking slowly home from school when I was about 5 or 6, Grade 1, not a care in the world, my thoughts taking me out of the real world, and my body on automatic pilot, until I reached home. Then, to my horror, I looked up at the clock, saw that it was only recess and not lunch, my mom was surprised to see me, tried to calm me down and tell me not to panic, as I turned around and sprinted back to school, my adrenaline on overdrive, doing reord time and getting there in the school yard just as the bell was ringing...

Yesterday (when this was mainly written), my roomate was chastising me for leaving myself barely enough time to get work, while my girlfriend was doing the same to me over the phone as I was still on the computer trying to finish this essay. For sure, I was pushing my time requirements for a 40 minute drive to get to work -- assuming no complications. Finally, I sprinted out the door, did a beeline to work in my Ford Winstar, doing 120 kms most of the way down the 404 from Newmarket to Toronto and east on the 401 to Scarboro...fortunately, no complications with traffic...I got there 10 minutes before my shift started. I was smug. I was trying to phone both my girlfriend and my roomate to brag about my getting to work 10 minutes early, but my cell phone was dead. I hadn't charged it properly. And so I started my shift.)

Our childhood early memories define us...and/or what we are striving to re-create, repeat, avoid, and/or master....



-- dgb, Jan. 23rd-24th, 2010

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...