I am in the process of starting to build an integrative psychoanalytic blogsite...You can find it evolving as we speak at this URL listed below....
http://hegelshoteldgbpsychoanalysis.blogspot.com/
The more civil we become, the more rules and laws that are made, the more politically correct we become, the more life becomes 'staged' -- as opposed to 'real'.
We lose the spontaneity, the creativity, the risk, the courage, of the 'real encounter'.
Our life, and our love, gets locked and lost behind a steel armour-plate, or wthin an iron vault -- the one we wear into the office every day to 'present our professional self', and/or the one we build more and more for every love relationship that has gone bad on us.
We protect ourselves from identifying who we really are, and give away no hidden vulnerablities, but in the process we lose the 'I and Thou, Here and Now' of a real encounter, a real relationship...one where we wear our heart on our sleeve -- and say, in effect, 'Hey world, for better and/or for worse, this is me.'
As young people, we experience real encounters and real love, when we truly let ourselves go in the presence of someone we deeply care about.
But then we learn about the inherent risks of letting ourselves go so completely....how it can come back to almost destroy us in a powerful, intimate relationship gone bad.
There has to be a balance in mutual self-disclosure, or one person does indeed become more vulnerable than the other. Nobody wants to be 'played'. Nobody wants to be the victim of someone else's manipulations unless perhaps both are playing by the same rules, perhaps trying to 'out-manipulate' each other -- and know it.
There is the 'transference love' of 'over-idealizing' another person who we really don't know very well. Don't underestimate this type of love because it can be powerful even if it is 'over-inflated exuberance and infatuation'. But be wary. High, unrealistic expectations can be impossible to live up to -- like Obama's image from his campaign speeches -- optimistic, hopeful, striving for a better America...a better, more united, less racist and hateful world...
Great ideals, to be sure, but most of them buried beneath an earthquake of 'narcissistic realism'...
The man couldn't live up to the near 'flawless' image and the personna that he portrayed... How could anyone? Jesus Christ perhaps...but that is mythological idealization and idolization projected outwards....We all look for heroes and idols who can make our world a better world, make ourselves feel better about ourselves...We all partly want to -- but don't believe -- we can fully live up to 'these ideals' ourselves...
'Beware false (and/or over over-inflated, overly perfectionistic) ideals and idols...They will bury us under the same earthquake of -- let's say, 'human fallibility' -- if we take them too righteously, too seriously, too perfectionistic -- and don't allow some room for human tolerance (which is definitely not the same as saying that we should ignore all narcissistic transgressions...)
Transference love can spark 'chemistry' and lead to a deeper, more profound love.
But it can also be fleeting and 'turn' as fast as Freud turned 'The Seduction Theory' into 'The Oedipal Theory'....(As a side note, I think that Freud quickly hid 'his real clinical, therapeutic self' on May 4th, 1896 behind a 'steel iron plate' in his own subconsious and replaced it just as quickly with a still 'provocatively shocking' but much more 'Professionally and Politically Correct Personna' that the Victorian doctors liked a lot better...because it didn't point an accusing finger at perhaps their own narcissistic transgressions...) With every significant 'trauma' in our own lives, we can all generally quickly learn to do the same...
Behind, or within, transference love, there is the potential for a much deeper type of romantic and/or friendship love that comes with really learning to know someone at their most intimate levels -- without turning our back on them when we come into contact with their own perceived and/or hidden weaknesses, their compensations, their complexes and things about them that we may really have a lot of trouble dealing with. (Look in the mirror and this may be the same thing that we have the most trouble dealing with in ourselves as well -- and/or our polar opposite.)
When we can't get by these 'relationship impasses' and take the relationship to a deeper level...and intstead, we or our partner turns and walks away...for good....over time, over the years, these jaded, broken relationships take a high physical and emotional toll on our psyches...We lose the 'real us'...we lose the ability to live and love at the deepest levels... We begin to operate more and more by the principle of....'No risk...no loss'...
With each further love relationship gone bad, and/or moment of 'professional weakness and vulnerability' that comes back to haunt us, we learn -- or at least we attempt to learn -- how to compensate from our perceived past mistakes, and perhaps, in the process, get better and better at 'idealizing and mastering our own Public Personna'....
In effect, we become....
The man or woman behind the iron plate...
This is not the path to 'Self-Enlightenment'....
But rather the path to greater and greater 'Self-Protection'...
The Path to Self and Social Alienation....
Want to know how to fix this problem, and turn it around...
Pay more attention to your five or six year old son or daughter, or grandson or grandaughter....
Watch how they play and interact....
And are real....
In the end, we all balance different components of our 'Real Inner Self' with our 'Social Personna' which may reflect greater or lesser degrees of who we really are...
It's a matter of ...
Are we 'findng' more and more of our Self....
Or 'losing' more and more of our Self...
With each passing relationship that we are involved in,
With each passing encounter,
With each passing transaction....
That we make....
Or don't make....
-- dgb, June 30th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
