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.
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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'?
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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...
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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...
