Well, I am on a roll...the third essay I have started today although I doubt if I will finish this one today....Still, the creative juices are flowing...
Let me turn your psychological and philosophical world upside down and inside out in this essay....
If you read my last essay, you will see that we have established the connection between 'instincts' and 'ego functions' as ego functions are created in both the conscious and subconsdious mind to satisfy the 'internal acute and/or chronic tensions' produced by 'the instincts' -- the 'life' and 'death' instincts in Freud's 1920 conceptuology...and beyond...
Did I tell you that we also 'turn our instincts and ego-functions into Gods'?
No, I don't think I told you that part.
We turn our instincts and ego-functions into Gods via the psychological means of 'subconcious, creative projection'.
Pick a God -- for example, any Greek God -- and you have the essence and mythological embellishment of a 'projected human instinct and ego-function' that came originally from inside the human mind, not outside.
However, since we don't often see how we 'project onto things' because this is normally a 'subconscious' process, i.e., it generally happens out of 'conscious awareness', we therefore assume that our 'God' came -- or comes -- from outside, not inside our human psyche....And we don't only project onto and into 'Gods' and 'myths' -- we project onto and into -- everything! Including Hegel's Hotel!
If you are brave enough, here is an exercise you can try. Pick a God -- any God or Hero or Guru, human or superhuman, or both -- and put that God into an 'empty chair'. Talk to your God, telling Him or Her how you idealize Him or Her. Tell your God in what way, what characteristics, what ideals, what beliefs, what values, you'idealize' and 'idolize' them...
Then'flip seats' and sit on the previously empty chair now playing the part of your 'God' talking to you. Let your God tell you how well and/or how poorly you are living up to, or not living up to, the 'ideals' that you have projected onto your 'God'...And in this manner, bring out the stark bipolarity between your 'Godly Superiority Complex' and your 'Ungodly Inferiority Complex'....and become aware of your congruences and your discrepancies, your Godly strengths, and your ungodly deficiencies and weaknesses...and how big a 'gap' there is between them...
Note what you have learned about yourself and seek to 'integrate' the 'dissociation' between your 'Godly Topdog' and your 'Ungodly Underdog'...Find where you can meet more in the middle to create less internal stress in your life and more effective, creative production...
Our 'Internal -- or External -- Gods' often take on the psychic role of our 'Harsh, Righteous, Rejecting Superego' and together with our victimized but manipulative Ungodly Underdog or Underego, we start to play an 'Unfitting Game' which otherwise, if it devolves seriously enough, can be called 'The Self-Torture Game'....not a great way to live our life but most people I imagine know full well what I am talking about and 'play this game' with greater or lesser regularity....
Neither playing The Self-Torture Game acutely and/or playing it chronically is usually a good thing for our psyche, except perhaps to the extent that it helps to turn us into better, more productive people...But generally, this process is more likely to be self-destructive, self-hurting...and non-productive as our underego or underdog keeps trying to find new and creative-destructive ways to 'escape the harsh criticism of our righteous superego/topdog.
Let us define two new terms.
In this regard, I want to integrate another part of Jungian Psychology with Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis...which I have already taken some steps in this direction in previous essays...between 'Id Psychology' and 'Shadow Psychology'...
From these two partly similar, partly different, paths of psychology comes the following DGB Jungian-Freudian integrative concept:
The 'Shadow-Id Dissociation Vault' or 'The SID Vault' for short...
The SID Vault is meant to join together pre 1897 Freudian Traumacy Psychology with post-1896 Freudian Instinct and Fantasy Psychology as well as Jungian 'Shadow' Psychology with Freudian Traumacy and Id Psychology.
Let me distinguish here between 'The ID Vault' which contains the 'life' and 'death' instincts' as articulated by Freud and further expanded on by me below which in turn is contained by the larger SID Vault which contains 'traumacies' and/or other 'dissociated or suppressed ideas or expriences or characteristics as well as the 'instinctive impulses' of The Id (Vault) that are deemed too threatening to let out of what might be metaphorically referred to as our internal 'Psychiatric Ward'...or worded otherwise, our 'Quarantine Room'...
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Quarantine is compulsory isolation, typically to contain the spread of something considered dangerous, often but not always disease. The word comes from the Italian (seventeenth century Venetian) quarantena, meaning forty-day period. Quarantine can be applied to humans, but also to animals of various kinds. (From Wikipedia, on the internet...)
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Now the SID Vault (Jungian and Freudian theory integrated by yours truly) -- which contains the ID Vault (a DGB extension of Classical Psychoanalysis) -- can be viewed as the main 'engine' of the psyche with communicative connections to both 'the heart' and 'the loins'...as well as 'The Central Ego', 'The Auxillary Egos'....and 'the mind-brain-psyche' as a whole...assuming all transportation and communicative functions are in proper working order....
When these transportation and communicative functions are not in proper working order, we get what might be called 'clog ups' like in a 'beaver pond' where bacteria and fungi, and algae, can start to grow, and like a 'blod clot' that is a serious danger sign and an accident -- like a stroke or heart attack -- waiting to happen...
In the human psyche, when 'Traumacy-Transference ID (Impulse-Defense) Complexes' start to 'clot together', we get similar types of 'symptomatic, neurotic symtoms and behaviors' that can be likened to 'blood clots' in the personality. The Circulation-Tranportation-Communication-Creative-Dialectic Integration Process in the pesonality, in effect, has broken down and is non-functioning, at least in the area of the 'Traumacy-Impulse-Defense Transference Clot'.
Are you still with me?
A lot of this is Classic Freudian psychology -- wholistically summarized in a dialectically integrative manner that includes both Traumacy-Seduction Theory as well as Instinct-Fantasy Theory...
With some significant Jungian Mythological Psychology and Shadow Psychology integrated into the picture as well...
Let's now pursue Jungian Shadow Theory a little further...
The Shadow in Jungian psychology 'shadows' the Personna in the same way that I will say here that it 'shadows' The Central Ego...
The 'Alter-ego' of what dominates in The Central Ego is suppressed, disowned, and confined inside The SID Vault....
Until something happens...a stressful psychological trigger...a death in the family, a lost job, a divorce or separation, serious conflicts with the wife, husband, and/or children...or alternatively, perhaps...a defensive, compensatory outlet.... drug and/or alcohol ingestion past a point of 'self-control'...
And then all Hell starts to break loose in The SID Box as 'an inmate' or 'an assortment of different inmates' escape custody from the Quarantine Room...and start to go Helter, Skelter in the personality....
You get the drift?
Dionysus or Satan or whoever 'the inmate' is comes blasting out of The SID Box like a volcano erupting....Hell hath no fury like a SID Box erupting...
Mr. Hyde....meet Dr. Jeckyl....or throw Dr. Jeckyl aside like a rag doll...
This is what has in Freudian circles been called...
The Return of The Repressed....
Or stated otherwise here....
The Return of The Suppressed...
The Dissociated...
The Estranged...
The Alienated....
The Disenfranchised...
The Ridiculed...
The Rejected...
The Forgotten...
Any questions?
-- dgb, June 7th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
