Freud's Hotel: DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis (A Multi-Integrative Re-Working of Psychoanalysis): 1.8. On The Dialectic Interplay Between Philosophy and Psychology...On The Distinction Between 'Mutually Inclusive' and 'Mutually Exclusive' Choices -- and A Tribute To Soren Kierkegaard...

Dec. 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 2011..
I saw an assortment of new books in Chapters the other day that I hadn't seen before -- a product of my not having been in this store in about half a year or more....I could have easily walked out of there with $500 worth of books in my hands but a long lineup and bills that needed to be paid got the better of me -- and I walked out empty handed.

One new book that I saw -- I think it was published in 2010 -- offered a new, more 'dynamic, humanistic-existential' interpretation of Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit (TPS)' which was both exciting and frustrating at the same time since that is the same type of message that I have been offering here in Hegel's Hotel since I started writing it in 2006 -- i.e., a more 'psycho-dynamic, humanistic-existential' way of utilizing Hegel's dialectic logic and formula -- which is usually stated in what also might be classified as a 'triadic formula': 1. 'thesis'; 2. 'anti-thesis'; 3. 'synthesis' -- which Freud in 1923 'internalized into the psyche' in the form of: 1. 'id' (thesis); 2. 'superego'(anti-thesis); 3. 'ego' (synthesis). Immediately you can grasp the interconnection here between philosophy and psychology -- at least between Hegelian dialectic philosophy and Freudian dialectic psychology.

We can make 'either/or' choices in the spirit of Aristotle or Kierkegaard; or 'wedged into the middle of Aristotle and Kierkegaard, historically speaking, we can make 'Hegelian dialectically integrative choices' that 'conflate a part of each side of the "either" and the "or" -- into one integrative choice or package.

For example, we can mix 'black' and 'white' and get 'gray'...which comprises an element of 'black' and an element of 'white' to get the final mixture of 'gray' -- what we generally call a 'compromise solution', or in Freud's terminology, a 'compromise-formation'....which is basically a 'synergy' of the two opposing, conflicting polar characteristics, ideas, theories, paradigms, desires, values, beliefs, tensions...

From 'homeostatic or dialectic polar tension between two opposing side', we creatively arrive at some form of better working 'homeostatic or dialectic balance'...that is, assuming you are a Hegelian Dialectic Idealist -- or even a Hegelian Dialectic Pragmatic Semi-Idealist. Two opposing theorists working together (for example, Freud and Adler) -- if you are of a Hegelian Dialectic Idealistic Mindset -- is better for 'The Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Paradigm as a Whole' than two opposing theorists working apart.

If both opposing theorists are dead, or unwilling and/or incapable of working with each other, then that is when you need a good 'Dialectic Integrative or Synergist Theorist' to come along and do for the two opposing theorists what they could not accomplish themselves.

How to synerguze opposing theories -- even multiple opposing theories -- is what I am trying to demonstrate here -- i.e., how to get from 'mutually exclusive either/or choices' to 'mutually inclusive dialectically integrative or synergetic choices' that bring together opposing people in opposing camps who were working against each other and now may enjoy the possibility of 'combining forces in the same, or a more similar, larger paradigm that does not arbitrarily shut people down because they have suddenly come to the end of a 'conceptual and/or theoretical boundary.

Some boundaries may be there for a good reason; others simply restrict and constrict life -- and in this latter case -- we might be better off by 'taking a second serious look at the boundary we have been using' -- and see what we get in its place if 'we let it slide' and/or try out 'the paradigm on the opposite side of the boundary'...sometime a new paradigm...or a larger paradigm that does not restrict our field of vision and create internal screening bias....brings with it the opportunity for new experience, new clinical data....and new life...

Moving on....

Let's quickly examine the principle of 'homeostasis' and/or 'dialectically integrative' and/or 'homeostatically balanced' choices....and then we will finish off with a tribute to Soren Kierkegaard who I have mentioned a number of times now up above...

The mind and body were wonderfully created and constructed such that they give us a full range of choices from the most extremely radical to the most delicately balanced....

Walter B. Cannon called this the 'Wisdom of The Body' and its foundational principle -- no different than the 'mind-psyche-self' - is what he labelled as the principle of 'homeostasis' or in my words, homeostatic-dialectic dialectic balance', which is also often called 'equilibrium'....

What is truly amazing both philosophically and historically here, is that if you take two of our oldest Western 'pre-Socratic philosophers' -- Anaxamander and Heraclitus (Heraclitus being the Western rendition of Lao Tse in The East) -- and you combine Anaximander and Heraclitus with Plato and Aristotle -- you have the four main foundational piller stones of Western culture, evolution, philosophy, psychology, politics, and medicine....

The essence of Anaximander's philosophy is his belief that we were/are all born from 'Chaos' (The Apeiron), and like Freud would similarly say, 'to the Earth and to Chaos (Entropy, Death) shall we return...'

The wisdom of Anaximander is shocking as he basically states that history and evolution is both a 'power struggle', and, at the same time, like a game of 'tag', in that 'opposite polarities take turns dominating each other with the 'winner' basking in the temporary 'Sunshine of Existence', while 'the loser' retreats to 'The Shadows' (The Apeiron) to re-energize, re-think, compensate, build stronger offensive and defensive powers....and then one day return to the playing field, return to the 'power battle of existence' -- to re-battle their/our polar nemesis, and one day, if or when things go right, defeat their/our polar nemesis, such that we get time to 'bask in the sunshine of our glory and achievement' while our polar adversary gets a metaphorical or more substantial kick to the sidelines, i.e., thrown into The Shadows, The Darkness of Existence, to nurse his or her or our wounds, and do the same thing that they/we did while they/we were 're-arming and otherwise preparing' ourselves for the next 'dominance vs. submission' power battle....

Anaxamander's perspective on life was basically that life was/is a power battle in which we all take turns winning and losing...and winning and losing again...

Heraclitus, who was probably familiar with Anaximader's philosophy although they did not walk the earth (Ancient Greece) at the same time, had a different perspective on life: opposite polarites are attracted to each other and need each other in order to establish 'a harmonious, working homeostatic or dialectic balance or equilibrium' (he did not use these words; they didn't come along until much, much later, i.e., the 20th century and Cannon) -- the two opposing polar elements are attracted to, and need each other, because they, in effect, compensate for each other's weaknesses and vulnerabilities'....'Two opposite halves make a whole'...

But what is attracted to each other is also repelled by each other, setting up one of the ultimate paradoxes of man's existence: 'freedom and individuality' vs. 'committment to a bipolar and/or multi-polar union'....

Plato recounts a Greek myth of love which he delivers through the speech of Aristophanes in 'The Symposium'....

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From Wikipedia...

Aristophanes

Before launching his speech, Aristophanes warns the group that his eulogy to love may be more absurd than funny. His speech is an explanation of why people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love partner. He begins by explaining that people must understand human nature before they can interpret the origins of love and how it affects the then present time. It is, he says, because in primal times people had doubled bodies, with faces and limbs turned away from one another. As somewhat spherical creatures who wheeled around like clowns doing cartwheels (190a), these original people were very powerful. There were three sexes: the all male, the all female, and the "androgynous," who was half male, half female. The males were said to have descended from the sun, the females from the earth and the androgynous couples from the moon. The creatures tried to scale the heights of heaven and planned to set upon the gods (190b-c). Zeus thought about blasting them to death with thunderbolts, but did not want to deprive himself of their devotions and offerings, so he decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating the two bodies.

Zeus then commanded Apollo to turn their faces around and pulled the skin tight and stitched it up to form the navel which he chose not to heal so Man would always be reminded of this event. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. The women who were separated from women run after their own kind, thus creating lesbians. The men split from other men also run after their own kind and love being embraced by other men (191e). He says some people think homosexuals are shameless, but he thinks they are the bravest, most manly of all (192a), and that many heterosexuals are adulterous men and unfaithful wives (191e). Aristophanes then claims that when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated (192c). This feeling is like a riddle, and cannot be explained. Aristophanes ends on a cautionary note. He says that men should fear the gods, and not neglect to worship them, lest they wield the axe again and we have to go about with our noses split apart (193a). If man works with the god of Love, they will escape this fate and instead find wholeness.

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That life -- and love -- should be so simple....

The lover we 'find' is not always -- indeed, not even often these days -- the lover who we 'keep' and/or 'stay with'...

No, I find that Life, Love, and even Creation and Destruction, are more like the types of 'biochemical reactions' that take place within 'stable' and 'unstable' atoms and molecules...

Sometimes atoms and/or molecules have too many 'electrons' (too much 'yin'), or too many 'protons' (too much 'yang') making for 'instability' within the atom and/or molecule....Sometimes you have 'free radicals' running around and 'blowing up' the stability of a particular atom and/or molecule....Life -- and love -- is often the 'dialectic tension' that is created by the inherent and continually changing nature of the paradox between the 'stability' and 'instability' of the atom/molecule/moment/encounter/relationship....

Plato also was a 'rational idealist' meaning that he believed that everything perfect could be found in our minds alone whereas everything in the 'outside sensory or phenomenal world' is an 'imperfect reflection' of what is 'perfect in our mind'.

In contrast, Aristotle was a 'rational-empiricist' believing that Plato had it 'backwards' -- that everything 'real' must be determined first and foremost through our 'senses', and then from our senses we can jump deeper into 'logical abstractions' as long as these logical abstractions are still connected to 'our real phenomenal world' as determined by a logical connection between our senses and our abstractions that gives us a good, working, functional representation or 'map' of our outside and inside world.

In other words, we need to use our 'senses' first according to Aritotle and then build our 'map of abstracted, conceptual representations' based on our sensory information; not the reverse as Plato idealistically and rationalistically theorized....

It was Aristotle who established 'the law of non-identity' which resulted in 'either/or' logic meaning that a 'thing' cannot be 'A' and 'not A' at the same time. Something cannot be 'white' and 'not white' at the same time, something cannot be an 'animal' and 'not an animal' at the same time, something cannot be a 'vegetable' and 'not a vegetable' at the same time...and so on...

To which both Hegel and later Alfred Korzybski (founder of General Semantics) objected...

In contradistinction to Aristotle, Hegel introduced or at least clearly articulated (as both Kant and Fichte started up this 'dialectic' path before him) the idea of 'dialectic logic' whereby 'A' mixes with 'B' and both 'A' and 'B' -- thus, 'integrated' or 'synthesized' -- take on the characteristics of 'AB'....This happens in genetics every day...

Dialectic logic is the foundation of biological evolution -- the idea that genes synthesize and mutate in order to biologically evolve and survive, both individually and as a species...

In a similar vein, dialectic logic is also the basis of 'conceptual evolution'.....and 'philosophical evolution'...and 'political evolution'....and 'legal evolution' and 'psychological evolution'....indeed, all different aspects of cultural evolution in the history and evolution of man...

It should be added that in genetic evolution, every time that 'A' and 'B' 'fertilize' and 'mix genes' -- resulting in a 'child' or 'offspring' of A and B that we are calling 'AB' -- everyone of these resulting 'AB's' (children, offspring) meaning 'AB1' and 'AB2' and 'AB3' and 'AB4' is going to be 'uniquely different' than all the other 'ABs' in their particular 'gene mix'....

Although each will still carry the similar characteristic of being an 'AB' mix, within that 'AB mix', the possible and actual gene permuations and combinations are biologically and biochemically endless....meaning that no two children will be exactly the same genetically except for identical twins who may start out as being 'genetically identical' but as soon as they both hit the doctor's or nurse's hands crying, they will still start to show their individual differences both 'intra-psychically' and 'socially'....

So too, it is with 'conceptual and theoretical evolution'....

Every time 'ideas metaphorically have sex with each other', the resulting 'conceptual and/or theoretical fertilization' is going to be 'uniquely different' than any prior or following conceptual/theoretical fertilizations/integrations/syntheses. (Sounds very Freudian, doesn't it? All I have to do is finish off with 'The Big Bang Theory' and everyone can go home happy...)

Let us see where this takes us. Let us imagine 1000 psychoanalysts out there. Everyone of them comes from a uniquely different 'conceptual-theoretical-practical' inter-psychoanalytic (and perhaps even 'neo-psychoanalytic' and/or 'non-psychoanalytic') gene pool. Each one of them today would probably have a working knowledge or at least a basic theoretical knowledge of 'Pre-Classical' (Traumacy Theory) Psychoanalysis, 'Classical' (Fantasy Theory) Psychoanalysis, Object Relations, Self Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Bionian Psychoanalysis...and/or whatever else I might have missed...

However, all the individual 'conceptual-theoretical-therapeutic gene mixes' would/will be uniquely different in one respect or another -- and for a client, each experience with each individual psychoanalyst would/will be, at least partly uniquely different, with some general foundational similarities... We may have a 'conservative' Psychoanalyst or a 'wilder' one working within any of the paradigms and/or combinations of paradigms that I have mentioned above....and all will have their different 'personality traits' and their own unique 'transference and counter-transference complexes'...

This psychoanalyst might use 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' while this one might not...Within the underlying or over-riding 'general paradigm of Psychoanalysis', you are going to have a whole host of 'mini-paradigm shifts' if you were to move around from one psychoanalyst to another, and then on again to another...

Again, each psychoanalyst is going to be at least partly unique in his or her own particular 'brand' of Psychoanalysis, in terms of his or her unique influences, and in terms of his or her 'anal-rigid-conservative' or 'liberal-rebellious' attitude towards what he or she has been taught -- and either approach could be either publicly acknowledged or publicly denied.

This makes it virtually impossible for me to sit here and say that I have some sort of 'intimate pulse' on what is happening in Psychoanalysis today -- how many psychoanalysts are using some form of 'traumacy theory', how many are not, how many are using 'The Oedipal Theory', and how many are not, how big a deal the concept of 'repression' is in the different 'brands' of Psychoanalysis today, and/or to what extent it is not?

Every time we start talking about a different concept or theory, and how it is practically applied in therapy -- or not -- we are talking about some sort of major or minor 'paradigm shift'....which is going to affect the direction and outcome of therapy....I feel comfortable using the concept of 'The Oedipal Complex' in the way that I will demonstrate in my Freud example later... Why wouldn't the creator of 'The Oedipal Complex Theory' have an intimate example from his own network of 'childhood transference memories' upon which to base this theory?...)

I do not use the concept of 'repression' -- to me this was, and still is, a 'Big Paradigm Stopper' in Psychoanalysis...an example of why Hegel wrote that 'Every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction.'... Freud simply 'overplayed' this theory -- hugely...probably because of his foundational work with Charcot, Breuer, hypnosis, and hysteria...We 'enlargen' the paradigm of Psychoanalysis significantly when we allow ourselves to use 'childhood conscious memories' as 'diagnostic tools' for 'transference complexes' rather than digging around enlessly looking for some 'repressed memory' that may or may not exist, and even if it does not exist, it may not be 'etiologically more significant' than what we can find right in front of our nose, simply by asking a client....'Think back to your earliest childhood memory....Can you share it with me? And perhaps two or three more memories that you remember before or up until the age of about 7 years old?

It has been my experience -- based on my training in Adlerian Psychology -- and extrapolating Adler's precious 'lifestyle diagnostic tool' back into the 'conflict and transference model' of Psychoanalysis -- that we can find a 'theoretical and therapeutic gold mine' here of 'transference complex material' that may only take 20 minutes to 'dig up' rather than 200 hour long sessions....(I may or may not be exaggerating here...)

Instead of 'repression', I use such concepts as 'suppression', 'oppression', 'alienation', 'isolation', 'dissociation', 'exclusion'...'relegated to The Shadows of conciousness or subconcsiciousness'...

I am comfortable using both 'traumacy theory' and 'fantasy theory' in a way that I have 'conceptually and theoretically synthesized' as opposed to 'dissociated' and 'alienated' from each other... Instead, I have brought my Adlerian knowledge back into a Freudian and post-Freudian paradigm where I feel totally comfortable talking about 'conflicts' and 'paradoxes' and 'inconsistencies' and 'object relations' and 'internal power struggles' in a way that Adlerian Psychology wouldn't -- and didn't -- teach me while I was learning there in 80-81.

Adler believed in the assumption of 'unity in the personality'; not 'conflict in the personality' and this was one of the main assumptive differences between Freud and Adler that I had to sort out for myself, with Perls and Gestalt Therapy offering more 'fuel' for this 'assumptive controversy'....Using the same idea that either Freud or Perls first articulated (I know Perls did; I am not sure about Freud), in the same way that 'every part of a dream can be considered to be a part of ourselves', so too it is with our conscious early childhood transference memories. Analysts who look at these memories as being simply 'screen memories', which started with Freud in 1899, are doing themselves a huge disfavour in terms of essentially 'dismissing' valuable theoretical and therapeutic material.

Even if they can be 'structurally associated' with other similar memories before and/or after them, harder or easier to 'dig up', this does not 'dismiss' their own theoretical and therapeutic value in themselves...

Remember, for those of you intimately familiar with Freud's early work, that Freud wrote that 'neurotic symptoms tend to be overdetermined' -- by perhaps a whole series of similarly structured memories, fantasies, and/or dreams/nightmares all 'converging' or 'conflating' on the same neurotic symptom and/or set of neurotic symptoms..everything 'transference related and interconnected'....

Regarding the 'conflict' vs. 'unity' in the personality controversy between Freud and Adler, this was one of my first major 'challenges' to my evolving brand of Hegelian dialectic thinking -- I had to turn what was deemed to be an 'Aristotlean "either/or" decision' -- into a 'synthesized Hegelian dialectic conflict resolution'...which I eventually did although it took me a number of years before I could clearly see my own answer to the controversy...it took even longer once I got into the middle of 'the seduction theory controversy'...

Today, I see all types of 'working and non-working or functional and dysfunctional differences' between some people who are 'more or less conflicted' than others, as well as the fact that we can all go through different periods of 'high', 'medium', and 'low' intra-psychic and/or social conflict, often the two types of conflict going hand and hand with each other...the intra-psychic type being 'projected outwards' into our social environment, and the 'social type' being 'introjected inwards' into the different psychic structures and/or dynamics of our personality....

Regarding Kierkegaard...

A distinction can be made betwen our Kierkgaardian 'either/or' choices and our Hegelian 'dialectically integrative' choices. In the first instance, I could either continue to write, or go back to bed, or go downstairs and make another coffee and/or some breakfast....All of these choices are more or less mutually exclusive relative to 'moment to moment choices'.....Our lives, from moment to moment, are built at least partly -- and significantly -- on these types of moment to moment Kierkgaardian choices...Do I write about Hegelian 'dialectically integrative choices, compromises, syntheses'? Or do I write about 'symptoms' and different types of 'obsessional neuroses'? Or do I use the one topic to 'dialectically bridge the gap between the two topics' -- and thus, demonstrate how seemingly 'mutually exclusive' topic choices can be 'cross-fertilized, integrated, synthesized' to form 'mutually inclusive' choices that are interconnected with each other?

In Kierkegaard's case, he perhaps made the 'ultimate Kierkgaardian either/or choice' in his lifetime: he chose to largerly isolate himself inside his particular brand of 'religious existential philosophy' rather than marry the woman he loved.....Ouch! that was a very harsh existential choice -- one that he probably/definitely spent a lot of time regretting afterwards, especially when he saw his 'ex-fiancee' get married to another man in the same town....

Now, at this point in time, I can only do a 'mini-analysis' of Kierkegaard's character based on Donald Palmer's work from 'Kierkegaard For Beginners' (1996). It seems, according to Palmer, that there were only three people of significant importance in Soren Kierkegaard's life -- his father (Michael Kierkegaard), his (ex)-fiancee (Regina Olsen), and the editor (Meier Goldschmidt) of the local (comical/satirical) newspaper (The Corsair). One wonders where Soren's mother and seven brothers (five of whom died prematurely) fit into this equation but...hey, let's go with what we have here...and perhaps a little more...Perusing very quickly through the beginning of Patrick Gardiner's book, 'Kierkegaard: A Very Short Introduction' (1988), I find a few more valuable tidbits about Kierkgaard's childhood -- enough to start to buiid a 'transference profile' of Kierkegaard's character....

What I don't have -- the most valuable information that a 'transference profiler' can have regarding the makeup of a particular person's character structure and psycho-dynamics, including their unique 'ego-defenses' and 'transference obsessional neuroses' -- is any of Kierkegaard's 'conscious childhood memories'.....

In Freud's case, Ernest Jones, through his famous or infamous biography of Freud, has given the world a series of Freud's earliest conscious childhood memories (even though he lightly dismisses them as quickly as he recites them due to the Freudian bias of 'repressed memories and fantasies' meaning much, much more than 'easily retrieved, conscious early childhood memories that became so important in Adler's work -- anyways, the Freud 'conscious early memories' are a 'God-Send' for me in putting together a much more reliable 'transference profile'; in this case here, with Kierkegaard, again, we have to work with what I have, and what I don't have, at least at this point in time, is any of his conscious, early memories...

Still, we have some significant childhood pieces to work with...

Here's an interesting piece of trivia....Did you know that Kierkegaard and Freud were born one day -- and 43 years -- apart? Kierkegaard died when he was 42 in 1855. He was born on May 5th, 1813; Freud was born on May 6th, 1856. Both liked to smoke cigars and both could be seen at the live theatre -- with their cigars.

Their respective temperments seem to have been quite a bit different, however. Freud was treated like a royal prince in his family -- particularly by his mom. A relatively secure child is going to, in all likelihood, become a relatively secure adult. If anything, Freud was pampered as a child -- and expected to be treated royally -- he was an 'Establishment Child' for the most part, and once Freud got through, for the most part, 'shocking the world' (let's say after 1905 and 'Three Essays on Sexuality'), Freud, more or less settled into an 'Establishment lifestyle', delivering one more major 'shocker essay' to us in 1920 with 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle'. His 1938 'Splitting of The Ego' was just a 'tease' as if he anticipated and was foreshadowing the way that Psychoanalysis was going to evolve in hands of Melanie Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip, and others...

Besides, Freud's wish to 'shock' or 'astonish' the world was from an entirely different place of psychic being -- like a 'magician shocking and astonishing an audience' -- than Kierkegaard who was usually writing from a place -- like Doestevsky -- of supreme pain and anguish, morbid guilt and grief, and wicked sarcasm stemming from underlying anger, bordering on barely contained, suppressed rage... Where did all this pent up morbid guilt and grief and rage come from? Kierkegaard was like a walking time bomb ready to explode....and he essentially 'creatively and emotionally exploded in the essays that he wrote'... In this regard, we can actually draw a line of 'emotional similarity' between Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Doestevsky, Nietzsche, and perhaps if we stretched it out far enough, Voltaire, Marx, Foucault, and Derrida...Freud -- although he could appreciate the anguish and the essence of this group (or at least the first four who lived predominantly before him), was probably more like Hegel, more at home in a middle to upper class environment, and more at home 'making the rules' once he had established his 'foothold of power' with people coming from around the world to meet him....No one came to meet Kierkegaard....He was a man who predominantly lived -- and died -- alone...at least once he turned his back on his fiancee....marriage and family.....Kierkegaard lived the life of a morbid man who believed that he was cursed -- and not capable of being 'normal'....As Palmer writes...'Kierkegaard was sacrificed -- or almost sacrificed -- on the alter of his dad's religiosity.' (p. 5).....Sounds like Nietzsche's childhood...

In Soren's case, Palmer writes that there is the hint of sexual impropriety regarding his dad and the family maid while his wife was on her death bed....That maid would become Michael Kierkegaard's second wife -- and Soren's mother.

It seems likely that Soren's father 'projected' the full rage of his own ethical and religious guilt on his son...Palmer writes that there is a passage in The Bible according to which...'The sins of the father will be visited upon by the sons.' (p. 8)

Well, something passed into little Soren's psyche -- and it wasn't healthy...From Palmer's book, we have a quote that seems to be from Soren: 'As a child I had already been made into an old man.' (p. 7)

Soren had another lifelong problem -- or let us say 'challenge'. A weak spine that he was ridiculed and bullied by other school kids because of his presumably 'hunched over' appearance...

Soren learned to fight back with words using his superior intellect and sarcasm...as he honed in on other people's vulnerabilities....an 'ego defense' that he used for his entire life....

It was a good way of keeping people at a distance...hurting them before they could hurt him....but it backfired with the editor of The Corsair -- because the editor, Meir Goldschmidt -- could play this 'game' as well, or better, than Soren, plus he had the advantage of a public newspaper to ridicule Soren over and over and over again until Soren was the laughing stock of Copenhagen....Almost sounds like 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'... only there was no woman to love him because he had rejected the only woman who did...

Ah, Soren.....you 'recreated your own misery in the template of your childhood -- and rejected the only two people who liked or love you -- your fiancee, and the editor of The Corsair who very much admired you until you belittled his newspaper and then he turned on you....Call that a 'self-fulfilling prophecy'...or Freud would call it your own private 'repetition compulsion'....your own private 'death instinct wish'...

But man, it took a while for people to recognize your philosophical greatness -- almost a hundred years before they learned the importance in academic circles of 'personal subjectivity' from you....and the importance of the 'living in the concrete moment'....

Soren Kierkegaard, you were the bridge between Hegel and Nietzsche, between Hegel and Existentialism -- in fact, you are usually referred to as 'the father of existentialism' -- with Fichte (The Subjectivity of The Ego), Schelling (Romantic Dialectic Unity), Schopenhauer (Cosmic Narcissism and Absurdity), and Doestevsky (Notes From The Underground) all contributing along the way...

Here is some of you at your best....courtesy of Brainy Quotes....

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Soren Kierkegaard Quotes

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A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Soren Kierkegaard

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Soren Kierkegaard

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
Soren Kierkegaard

Be that self which one truly is.
Soren Kierkegaard

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearences.
Soren Kierkegaard

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
Soren Kierkegaard

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
Soren Kierkegaard

Don't forget to love yourself.
Soren Kierkegaard

During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
Soren Kierkegaard

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
Soren Kierkegaard

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
Soren Kierkegaard

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Soren Kierkegaard

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
Soren Kierkegaard

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.
Soren Kierkegaard

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.
Soren Kierkegaard

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
Soren Kierkegaard

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