I am just coming off a six day work week and seem to have lost some of the momentum that I had when I started to write this essay at the beginning of last week....
We will find out very shortly whether I can pick up my 'lost momentum' relative to the direction that this essay was heading last week -- or conversely, and based on today's 'immediacy' -- steer the essay in a somewhat or entirely different direction. I have two days off to write this essay, and hopefully, I can write one or two others as well which are clamoring to get out of my head. -- dgb, dec. 12th, 2011..
1. In and Out of The 'Name Box'
Regarding the name -- 'Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalysis' -- think of this statement:
'If you dialectically engage both the people in your lives, and the ideas in your head, as well as your thoughts, feelings, and actions, in a respectful, egalitarian manner that invites both experiential and conceptual learning -- in other words, passionately integrates your mind, body, heart and soul, and also allows you to think and feel both inside and outside the 'conceptual box, the theoretical box, the paradigm box' -- you will, generally speaking, make 'quantum leaps' in the overall quality, immediacy, and direction of your life. -- dgb
Regarding past names that I still partly hold onto, use, and/or integrate...
GAP or GAAP Psychology -- recognizes the four main psychological cornerstones of what I teach: 1. Gestalt Therapy; 2. Adlerian Psychology; 3. Analytic (Jungian) Psychology; 4. Psychoanalysis. Two other honorable mentions not included in the name above are: 5. Transactional Analysis; and 6. General Semantics and Cognitive Therapy.
Furthermore, we all have different types of 'GAPS' in our thinking, feeling, doing that can be addressed both theoretically and therapeutically with the goal of improving the quality of our lives...
And also, there are 'gaps in theory and therapy' that exist between all the different schools of psychology (and philosophy), including the six different schools of psychology above: these 'gaps' can be 'bridged' and the different schools of psychologiy 'integrated' or 'synthesized'....which leads to this last name and acronym on my own personal name...
DGB(AIN) Psychology as in 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging-And-Integrative-Negotiations....
are still in process...(with every essay that I write...until I die...there is no timeline or deadline on 'personal evolution' except within the 'finite timeline and deadline' of our own lives...)
Or to synthesize two of the names above, we arrive at: 'GAP-DGB' Philosophy-Psychology...
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2. Maps and Territories
I have been in the transportation business almost all my adult life -- so talking about 'maps' and 'territories' comes easily to me, as a driver, as a scheduler, as a dispatcher -- and stepping outside the realm of transportation and 'geography' -- we can move internally into man's psyche and talk about the 'geography of the psyche' and how this subject matter too is very intimately connected to the the metaphor of -- 'maps' and 'territories' -- with the ideal goal being 'better and better structural and associative similarity between the 'map' or 'model' and the 'territory' this map or model is supposed to represent.
Recall that Kant was the first to distinguish between 1. the 'noumenal/objective world' of 'things' that exist above and beyond the finite capabilities of 2. 'the subjective/phenomenal world' of our 'senses' -- i.e., 'our sensory-experiential world' -- that, in turn, leads us deeper and deeper into our 3. 'increasingly abstractive, interpretive world of 'logic', 'associations', 'generalizations' and 'causes' that exist entirely beyond our senses (but should have logical connections to them), and finally, these interpretive generalizations lead us even deeper into 4. our personal 'value generalizations and judgments' and, from these, our 'contextual evaluations' that we attach to our abstractive interpretations and generalizations in order to classify and label particular things and/or processes as being 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'wrong' -- which in turn, lead us, based partly also on particular 5. 'perceived survival needs, self-demands, wishes, and/or wants' to 6. stimulate and motivate the creation of different possible/plausable 'response-choices' and imagined 'action scenarios' that we might play out, which, in turn, we judge based on what we imagine to be each of their likely or possible consequences to our lives -- good, bad, ugly, or ineffectual -- , following which we make, 7. 'executive decisions' -- either radical or mediating and compromising -- on how best to act, or not act, given the certain set of external and/or internal stimuli that are impinging on us and demanding that we act -- or not act -- as best we conclude and see fit based on our imagination and judgment of each of their likely or possible consequences, and the element of risk involved for each.
'No adventure, no gain....' or 'No adventure no loss...' -- either of these axioms could be our more general rule of thumb. Which one we use more often could be partly or mainly a product of our 'abstracted' and/or 'concretized' past experience, and/or it could be a product of our general character makeup -- which again, could be based mainly on our past experience of relative success or failure in our 'risk-taking behaviors'..., culminating in whether we are more likely to view ourselves in a particular risk-taking situation as a 'risk-taker' or conversely, as a 'non-risk-taker' which, translated, usually means a 'comfort, safety, and security-seeker'...
3. Abstraction, Evaluation and Health
This evaluation process or evaluation cycle is what I focused on in my 1979 Honours Thesis, essay, Evaluation and Health -- and this evaluation is primarily the domain of what today I would call our 'Central (Executive and Mediating) Ego' -- which in turn is surrounded by a whole 'network of ego-states' and 'facilitatory ego functions and divisions' -- all of which can be viewed as being like 'special interest lobbyist groups' within the confines of the human psyche and mediated by -- our internal leader which is our 'Central Ego' .
Sound familiar regarding the 'special interest lobbyst groups? That's because both our government and our private corporations can be viewed as 'external reflections or projections' of the structural and dynamic makeup of our internal psyche -- which entails all of the good, bad, and/or ugly' of what we call 'human nature' and/or 'human behavior'.
4. The Ego, The I, and The Self
If we go back to the period of 'German Philosophical Idealism', we will find that the philosopher Johann Fichte used the term 'ego' (I'm not sure whether or not Kant used it) which translates from German to English as basically the word 'I', although in English, we have also become very comfortable using the word 'ego' as well.
This raises the whole 'subject-object' conundrum and controversy which goes back at least to Kant and his 'Kant Know' thesis. According to Kant, we 'cant know' what is in our completely 'objective (noumenal) world' because this world of 'things' and 'processes' is outside of, and beyond, the realm of our imperfect 'sensory and rational-empirical (phenomenal) world'... Thus, our objective-noumenal world -- being above and beyond the capabilities of our phenomenal-subjective world -- can also be viewed and labelled as our 'metaphysical world' -- a world that we cannot know (or as I would say, cannot know completely and perfectly).
Stuck inside this 'subjective-objective Kantian Split' is our 'I' (subject) and 'ego' (object). Our 'subjective I' is capable of perceving, interpreting, analzying, and judging our 'objective ego'....within the realm of its capability as an 'imperfectly perceiving, interpreting, analyzing, and judging mind-brain system'...
Of which, for the purpose of our 'map' and 'territory' metaphor or analogy, and the goal of 'teaching' and 'learning' purposes, we can 'sub-divide' or 'sub-classify' the objective ego into 'sub-compartments' or 'ego-states' -- Freud was heading in this direction (at least partly) at the very end of his career and life in 1938 when he wrote his small but evolutionary essay on 'ego-splitting'. Melanie Klein was heading in this same direction -- perhaps she even influenced Freud, or he, her -- when she created the first 'alternative' school of Psychoanalysis which is now referred to as 'Object Relations' (which Eric Berne turned into 'Transactional Analysis').
From an integration of all the different schools of psychology listed above -- I have created 'Quantum-Dialectic Pscyhoanalysis' or 'GAP-DGB Philosophy-Psychology'.
My '14 Compartment Model' of the Ego, the Self, the I....'splits' the ego into these sub-compartments:
1. The Nurturing Superego;
2. The Narcissistic Superego;
3. The Righteous-Rejecting Superego;
4. The Approval-Seeking (Compliant, Co-operative) Underego;
5. The Narcissistic Underego;
6. The Righteous-Rebellious Underego;
7. The Central Ego which can be sub-divided, Jungian style, into:
7a. The Personna; and 7b. The Shadow;
8. The Dream and Fantasy Weaver;
9. The Superego-Id-Defensive (SID) Vault;
10. The Memory-Learning-Transference (MLT) Template;
11. The Nietzschean 'Superman or Superwoman' of Existential Self-Actualization and Self-Achievement;
12. The Nietzschean Abyss of Self-Defeat (Guilt, Anxiety, Panic, Depression, Grief, Hopelessness, Anger, Rage, Hate, Self-Hate...);
13. Biological/Hormonal Influences on The Id-Ego-Superego-Self;
14. The Genetic Potenetial Self (GPS).
This model may or may not seem relatively simple or complex -- depending on your perspective -- but, one way or the other, it has taken me almost 40 years to build (1972-2011). It is an extension of my 1979 model of what I now call 'The Central Ego'.
Maps, models, concepts, theories, and paradigms -- are only as good as their relative functional usefulness, and as the cognitive theorist, George Kelly (1955, the year I was born) once wrote -- and I am paraphasing from my distant memory going back to my work in the 70s -- all concepts, theories (or 'constructs' in Kelly's terminology) have both a focus and range of usefulness -- meaning that once we extend these contructs 'outside of, or beyond, their range of usefulness, they start to lose their functionality, and instead become -- 'dysfunctional'.
Now, at this point Kelly's thinking starts to merge with Hegel's dialectic thinking (although I am sure that Kelly didn't see the association) -- and, in fact, it is only now, at this exact moment in time, that I see the associative linke between Hegel's dialectic thinking and Kelly's cognitive theorizing.
Specifically, one-sided, unilateral theories and/or constructs are going to run out of 'real estate' or 'territory' faster than than 'dialectic or bipolar or multi-bipolar or multi-paradigm theories' which can cover significantly more 'territory'...
Thus, a 'trauma-fantasy' dialectic, bipolar theory has the capability of being functionally superior to either a unilateral 'trauma' theory or a unilateral 'fantasy' theory, both of which are going to run out of 'functional usefulness' faster than a well-defined and articulated trauma-fantasy bipolar theory that can cover twice as much 'human phenomenology'.
Thus, when Hegel asserted that 'every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'...this has dialectic evolutionary implications, specifically...
That a one-sided, unilateral theory is going to deconstruct or self-destruct faster than a well articulated dialectic, bipolar theory such as in physics a 'particle-wavelength' theory which is superior to both a 'particle' theory and a 'wavelength' theory in and by themselves...With the evolution of the bipolar particle-wavelength theory, physics took a 'quantum leap' into the realm of 'Quantum Physics'...
And we can do the same in both psychology and, more specifically, Psychoanalysis...
Thus, the latest name for my 'Underground School of Psychoanalysis' -- 'Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalysis...
Keep reading me and you will see some 'quantum leaps' in the evolution of Psychoanalytic Theory...
-- dgb, Dec. 12th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging-And-Integrative-Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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If you are interested in checking out further references to the work of George Kelly and some of the early cognitve theorists, which evolved in one direction into 'cognitve-behavior theory and therapy' of which I wrote my honours thesis for one of the pioneers and best recognized theorists and therapists in this area -- Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, 1979, at The University of Waterloo, you can find the essay below on the internet...as I just did...
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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Basic Principles and Applications
Robert L. LeahyAmerican Institute for Cognitive Therapy, NYC
and Weill-Cornell University Medical College
Reprinted with permission of Jason Aronson Publishers. © 1996
Jason Aronson.
This book may be purchased at www.Aronson.com
CHAPTER 2
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
OF COGNITIVE THERAPY
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