Still being re-worked....significant changes still in process....it should be completed by the end of Sunday February Feb. 26th, 2012...
Hold your judgments until it is finished, hopefully, tomorrow....dgb, Sat. Feb. 25th, 2012.
I will definitely have to go back over this essay at a later date and try to eliminate all its redundancies caused mainly by writing the essay over two separate weekends....This turned out to be a much longer essay than I planned it to be...it needs to be cut down....dgb, Sunday Feb. 26th, 2012.
1/ Introduction : The Life of A Superman or Superwoman
In this essay, plain and simple, we will explore both the parameters of Freud's creative imagination and brilliance, and at the same time, the limits of this creative briliance, and/or the neurotic force of his personal ego-defenses that hampered -- and shadowed -- his creative brilliance, and partly tanked it.
I am continually amazed by Freud's creative brilliance -- both before and after the critical winter of 1895-1896 when Freud started to turn psychoanalysis upside down, or some might say, right side up. Freud had an astonishing capacity to synthesize old and new ideas but the one 'synthesis' that Freud most needed to make was the one that he never did make -- and that was the synthesis of his 'pre-1897 theories with his 'post-1896' theories. Between 1896 and 1897, there was a 'creative integrative need for a bridge' between his pre-1897 'Reality' Theory and his post-1896 'Fantasy' Theory -- that he never made. That was Freud's major failure in building Psychoanalysis.
As you probably well know by now, I am a 'Multi-Integrative-Dialectic' (MID) or 'Dialectic-Gap-Bridging' (DGB) theorist who takes great pleasure in building connective bridges that other theorists before me -- including Freud -- miss.
That is the whole prinicple, the whole paradigm, of Hegel's Hotel and it applies not only to Psychoanalysis but also to the whole evolution and integration of Western Philosophy-Psychology. Whenever one philospher takes his or her particular philosophy too hard one way (for example, Hegel), and then someone else comes back hard in an opposing way (Marx, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche...), I come into the scene in historical hindsight with my own particular 'post-Hegelian-Humanistic-Existential paradigm', and see if I can 'creatively synthesize' the particular conflicting parties....
A massive theoretical idea and undertaking -- hugely time-consuming -- a non-ending task really, and a metaphor of life because, like life in general, as soon as we 'solve' one problem, or 'resolve' one conflict, there is another one, sure as the night follows the day, always ready to take its place....
Imagination and creativity -- taken together -- is perhaps our most important tool in this regard.
If we confine ourselves strictly to our 'memories' -- particularly our most 'negative, traumatic, gut and heart-wrenching ones' -- then we don't succeed because we are 'mesmerized' and 'blinded' by our past failure(s). stuck in our 'remembered trauma' like a deer caught in the headlights of a fast-approaching vehicle, and we feel incapable of 'mobilizing our necessary resources to 'get around or through our present problem and/or conflict'.
This is the essence of 'anxiety neurosis' or in the opposite case scenario, a 'narcissistic neurosis' where we don't want to get around or through our present problem, because we don't even view it as a problem -- rather there is either 'pleasure' and/or a 'lack of anticipated pain and anguish' attached to our present status quo position that keeps up doing what we do (and/or alternatively, not doing what we should be doing). This is the plight of the 'narcissistic neurotic' or the 'obsessive-compulsive neurotic' or the 'addictive neuroitic' who feels obsessively compelled to continue his or her present line of action (or inaction) even if he or she 'abstractly knows' that it is ultimately going to end in some greater or lesser degree of 'self-destruction' a kind of 'death wish or death instinct' -- but continues to do it anyway.
If we allow our 'imagination and creativity' to 'run wild and free' when it is most needed -- and then, aided by the knowledge, wisdom, and context of our past failures as well as what we need to do to get past our past failures, to get over the 'hump' or 'around the bend' of our past failures and 'likely negative self-concept', as well as the need for a proper grounding in 'Apollonian structure, order, and self-discipline -- then, if we are persistant enough, sometimes even obstinate and aggressive enough -- if we keep 'pounding the rock' as Coach Dwayne Casey would say -- we give ourselves a chance to succeed where in the past we have failed.
We give ourselves the chance, using our 'Will to Self-Empowerment', to be an 'Existential Superman or Superwoman' -- our Nietzschean Existential Challenge.
We use 'rope' or 'ladders' -- or any other 'tool's we need and/or have -- to climb across our existential abysses and up our existential mountains in life, preferably without looking down, because that could be our nemesis, until we finally cross all of our life's barriers, at least all of the ones that are 'blocking' us from this, our chosen, existential goal, and particularly all of our own self-made barriers, our 'fear and trembling' that makes us feel weak at the knees, and if we have embraced enough of our will and passion, been intensely focused enough, applied all of our knowledge, our good and bad past experiences, and our mind and skillset to meet our 'existential challlenge', then we might finally one day be able to look up from our intense focus, gasp at the lack of air around us, spin at the 'dizzying height' that we have climbed to, exalt in the fact that there is nowhere else to climb to -- at least on this mountain -- and celebrate our 'existential freedom and the amazing extent of our Creator-given capabilities', and the fact that we 'beat' all of the challenges, the obstacles, and the traumacies that life had to throw at us....We not only survived -- but we 'survived with a flourish'! At which point we can either 'retire', take a break -- or if our willpower and passion still burns within us, move on to our next life challenge.
This is the life of Nietzsche's much exalted 'Superman or Superwoman'.
What Freud could do amazingly well -- I can do better! (Or so I believe, taking into account his indirect mentorship and fully appreciating my advantage of some 70 odd more years of philosophical and psychological evolution.)
If I didn't believe this within myself, then I wouldn't be sitting here writing this essay at 3:00 in the morning... Without such an 'existential challenge', I would turn off my computer and go back to bed, back to sleep, to wake up at a more comfortable hour.
Without such an existential challenge -- and the belief that I can succeed, I would more likely say to myself: 'Let someone else challenge Freud, the King of Psychoanalysis. I will sit back, watch, and let someone else endure all the grief, the pain, the perceived failures, the self-discipline, and all the thousands of hours that it takes to be 'great' at whatever one drives to be great at -- if we so choose. Usually there are personal transference factors involved that go back to early childhood memories.
If we don't, then we become a 'couch-potato' or we work just hard enough to get by and perhaps to become 'decent' or 'good but not great' at what we do...and/or we exalt vicariously in the triumph of someone else who had the discipline. the will power, the passion and the firepower that we didn't -- or don't....in order to become the Superman or Superwoman of our desires and drives...
Otherwise, we can just sit back and let others do all the hard work, and fantasize about what we could have maybe been, if only this had happened...or that...or this...Ifs, buts, reasons and excuses don't fulfill our dreams...but they are a heck of a lot easier to engage in...
Some people dream -- and then follow up on their dreams by 'doing' what they need to do in order to fulfill their dreams; others follow up their dreams with excuses...and never 'do'...never risk failing, never risk being rejected, never risk the anxiety of climbing over top of their deepest personal fears and abysses...These are our 'existential anxiety neurotics' and I know very well what it is like to be there...Again, it is a lot easier to fantasize than to do...
Ifs, buts, excuses, and ego-defenses deconstruct dreams...and their fulfillment....(although sometimes we can say or do the wrong thing, or say too much, and this too can deconstruct our dreams if it is significant enough -- that is why we have 'ego-defenses' in the first place -- to protect us from our most morally inappropriate desires and drives, emulating from our 'Shadow-Id'.
Don't let your passions destroy your dreams. (I read that on a park sign the other day.)
Which brings us back to the winter of 'Freud's discontent' -- 1895-1896...
The winter of Freud's 'theoretical unclarity'...
Or was it the winter and spring of Freud's 'moral guilt based on ethical impropriety'?
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
On Transference Complexes, Memories, and Dreams as Bi-Polar Paradoxes, Dichotomies, and Often Lifelong Impasses
Finished!...Feb. 19th., 2012...dgb
When I write at night, which is not often, I tend to write in a more free-flowing, free association, loosey goosey, loosely structured, Dionsysian style....At times, these essays can be more psychologically revealing in terms of my own personality, but generally speaking, these essays would not pass anywhere close to academic standards, and so it is, that I usually have to come back and 'repair the damage of my largely non-professional presentation' the next morning...in more logically coherent, more tightly structured, more properly referenced, more Apollonian, style...Such was the situation with this paper here....and hopefully, the presentation is a little better today than it was last night....
Regarding my references, sometimes the references I want to cite I haven't read in 20 or 30 or even more years.. I generally know the book that they came from, but I may be wrong, and this can make for a long detective hunt trying to re-find the quote that I want to reference....If I was writing an academic paper, this would absolutely mean finding the appropriate reference for the quote -- or not using it...because you can't say in an academic paper that 'I think I read it here but I haven't been able to find it yet....' The essay would probably be thrown back at you with a 'D' -- or simply not graded with the professor saying something like; 'Don't you ever hand in an essay like this to me again...' I could certainly see Dr. Masson, as a professor, doing something like this...I once wrote to him last year some time, and said that I thought that Freud had used the analogy of 'finding the source of the Nile' twice -- once regarding The Seduction Theory, and once regarding The Oedipal Theory -- to which he promptly responded -- 'Where?' -- and to which I sheepishly replied that I didn't know where, I would have to look for it...and I still haven't found it, I am assuming now because it doesn't exist. Memories can play tricks on people and on some people more than others....i.e., some people have more reliable memories than others....and 'subjective, narcissistic biases can, in particular, interfere with the 'objective reliablity' of memories....This is much of what makes 'The Seduction Theory vs. Oedipal Theory Controversy' a mind-twisting and wrenching challenge -- especially the deeper you get into it. No memory is likely 100 percent 'factual' unless we are talking about a very simple 'either/or' part of the memory...and even that is not always entirely reliable....In Nietzsche's words, 'There are no facts; just interpretations.' We will explore this dilemma in my next essay on 'The Good and Bad Aspects of The Oedipal Complex Theory'.
Meanwhile, Fritz Perls once asserted in my paraphrased words that the repetition compulsion involves 'unfinished (transference) situations' or 'unfinished (transference) gestalts' where we are cyclically and compulsively trying to 'finish these unfinished transference situations' -- or 'work them through', or 'resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict' -- over and over and over again, usually throughout the course of our lives, with generally not too much success....perhaps partial or even overwhelming success in one or many of our particular endeavors, but seemingly never enough to 'totally clear up our negative self-image and/or whatever else it is that obsessively-compulsively continues to drive us to symbolically return again and again to the scene of one of our early childhood, primal transference scenes'.....
In fact, it does not usually matter how much 'outside success' we experience if inside, we keep telling ourselves (from some introjected and/or self-taught childhood message) that we are 'a failure', 'a loser', and/or 'not worthy of our success'....Thus, we are talking about issues of 'childhood self-esteem' encompassed within 'childhood transference scripts, games, complexes, templates' that become the basis for a lifelong 'self-fulfilling prophecy' (the basis of the transference repetition compulsion) that can either seriously impair and/or 'compulsively stimulate' our evolutionary development, our existential being, and our road to becoming what or who we were/are meant to become....
In other words, usually these transference-repetition compulsion-serial behavior pattern issues of the type I am thinking about are issues that lie at the core of our psyche, They are what I believe it was either Jacob Moreno or Virginia Satir used to call 'core nuclear conflicts'. This goes hand in hand with Perls calling a dream a 'paradox', an 'impasse', or in my words, a maze that we are stuck in, a house with no doors or windows that we can't see an 'outside perspective', a 'paradigm' that we are stuck inside that we again cannot see an outside perspective....
We remain 'transfixed', like a deer caught in a car's headlights, everyone else can see our way out of our self-created maze except ourselves; for us our 'psychotherapy' remains our 'blindspot'...we make the easy look impossible....we prefer the status-quo....we prefer our self-made prison over anyone trying to show us where the door is to this prison...our prison is our 'safety institution'....our means of 'escaping the responsibility and accountability for our own freedom' (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) rather than risking the failures and/or rejections and/or insecurities and/or potentially 'paralyzing anxiety' that comes with actually 'being free'....'the dizziness of freedom' (Kierkegaard)...of being 'congruent'...of lining up our 'Spiritual Self and Soul' with the behavior of our 'Central Executive Ego', our 'Chief Executive Officer'.....
When I say 'I love myself' or conversely 'I hate myself'....who is the 'I' and who is the 'myself'? The 'I' is 'the judge' which could be any practically any part of our 'wholistic self' but it is probably most likely to be our 'Righteous, Critical Superego' which in turn could either be our 'Introjected Critical Childhood Parent' or our own 'Moral-Ethical Superego' or our own 'Existential Superego' judging the perceived 'failures' of our 'Central Executive Ego' -- the 'myself' in this equation. Or it could be our 'Approval-Seeking Underego' judging the performance of our 'Rebellious Dionysian or Apollonian Underego'....or the other way around....or it could be our 'Nurturing Superego' judging the judgments of our 'Righteous, Critical Superego'....or the other way around....There are a lot of theoretical and therapeutic possibilities within our 'Split Self' or 'Split Psyche' where 'psychotherapy' become the 'evolutionary process' of 'better dialectic-democratic internal integration'...
When you look at my still evolving model of the human psyche, at first glance. it may seem overly large, complicated, and cumbersome, but it is designed to be 'multi-bipolar' and it is designed to accommodate a whole host of different, competing psycho-theoretical and therapeutic systems or paradigms....It is designed to accommodate significant elements of: 1. 'Pre-Classical' and 'Classical' Freudian Theory; 2. Adlerian Theory; 3. Jungian Theory; 4. Kleinian and Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory and Kohutian Narcissistic Theory; 5. Frommian Theory; 6. Gestalt Theory; 7. Bernean Transactional Analysis Theory; 8. elements of Janovian 'Primal Scream' Theory; 9. Cognitive Theory (Ellis and his 'ABC Theory', Beck, Kelly and his 'Personal Constructs', Frank and 'Persuasion and Healing', General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa), and Self-Esteem Theory (Maltz and 'Psycho-Cybernetics', Branden and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem') ; 10. Existential Theory (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Frankl, Choice Theory (Glasser), and Cognitive-Behavioral Theory (Meichenbaum)....You could probably include Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', Carl Rogers 'Congruent vs. Incongruent Self', Horney's 'Our Inner Conflicts', and I am not comfortable enough with the work of either Lacan or Bion to make any comments on them...
Is this overkill? Trying to 'appease' and/or 'integrate' too many different 'theoretical paradigms'? I don't think so....and you can see by my work on Freud that I am certainly not trying very hard to 'appease any psychoanalysts'....as much as Freud remains at the foundation of my 'multi-bipolar, theoretical system'.
My multi-bipolar model can easily be broken down into smaller, simple bipolar dichotomies and conflicts....such as:
1. Our Nurturing Superego vs. Our Righteous, Critical Superego;
2. Our Shadow-Id-Ego (or 'Alter-Ego') vs. Our Central Ego, or alternatively, 'Our Personna';
3. Our Dionysian Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our Apollonian Ego, Superego, or Underego;
4. Our Rebellious, Apollonian or Dionysian Underego vs. Our Approval-Seeking Ego;
5. Our Apollonian (Righteous) or Dionsyian (Hedonistic) Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our 'Romantic' and/or 'Spiritual-Religious' Ego, Superego, or Underego;
6. Our 'Abyss' vs. our 'Womb' vs. our 'Existential Mountain Peak';
7. Our Central Executive Ego and/or our Personna vs. Our 'Genetic, Existential Self' and/or our 'Spiritual Self' and/or our 'Wholistic Self'....
...........................................................................................................
Here's how the DGB model of the psyche currently looks....
A/ Our 'Introjected and/or Compensatory Parent' Ego-State Domain
1. Our Nurturing Superego;
2. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
3. Our Righteous-Critical-Rejecting (Exciting) Superego';
B/ Our'Humanistic-Existential-Decision-Making' Ego-State Domain
4. Our Romantic-Spiritual Ego (as mythologically and/or philosophically reflected by Aphrodite-Venus-Psyche-Eros-Cupid, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling);
5. Our Apollonian, Dionysian, and/or Aphroditean Influenced Shadow-Id Ego;
6. Our Central, Mediating, Executive Ego;
7. Our Personna;
C/ Our'Child' Ego-State Domain
08. Our Apollonian Rebellious Underego;
09. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;
10. Our Approval-Seeking (Disapproval-Avoiding, Co-operative, Compliant) Underego;
D/ Our 'Underworld' Domain
11. Our 'Nietzschean Existential Mountain Peak' (Requiring a 'Rope' To Climb Over Our 'Abyss', Requiring Us To Be Our Own Personal 'Superman or Superwoman', Thus Spoke Zarathrusta...);
12. Our Dream Weaver (Revealing Inner Paradoxes and Impasses, Dangers and Wishes, Lost Love Objects, Unfinished Business of our Day's or Life's Residue, Suppressed Feelings, Transference Complexes...);
13. Our Shadow-Id Vault;
14. Our Shadow-Id;
15. Our Neurological, Biochemical, and Hormonal Influences;
16. Our Personal 'Womb';
17. Our Personal Abyss, Apeiron, Black Hole, Chaos;
18. Our Genetic-Spiritual-Mythological Self (Our Mythological Self...Projecting Outwards into Our External World The Contents and Essence of Our Inner Spiritual Self);
..............................................................................................................
There's a difference between a 'dualistic' and a 'dialectic' conception of man....Freud at different times was both....The dualistic philosopher-psychologist posits something like, say for example, a 'life' vs. 'death' instinct in an 'either/or' fashion....or a 'no conflict resolution is possible' fashion, whereas the dialectic philosopher-psychologist looks for 'dialectic integrations' and/or 'integrative balances' that can lead to 'healthy, balanced, functional behavior' as opposed to dichotomized, radically extreme dysfunctional behavior that goes unilaterally off the charts at one end of a particular bipolar spectrum...or the other....
Dialectic integration does not necessarily lead to 'healthy behavior'. Sadism, Freud would say...and I am paraphrasing here... that sadism was an integration of the 'life' and 'death' instincts, or alternatively, 'the sexual' and 'aggressive' instincts'...
One of the clearest dreams I can still remember dreaming while I was at The University of Waterloo....I dreamt that I was being chased through the campus grounds by German, Nazi soldiers....It was terrifying while I was dreaming it which is probably why I woke up promptly when they finally caught me...I did not want to experience my death while I was dreaming...
'Trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes', 'repetition compulsions', 'serial behavior patterns' -- these are all examples of 'unfinished gestalts' or 'unfinished business'...and since we never seem to 'finish' these 'unfinished gestalts', this would seem to suggest that these repetitive behavior patterns reflect either 'cyclical needs' inside our mind-body, and/or they reflect 'paradoxes' and 'impasses' that we never seem to be able to 'work our way through sufficiently enough to put an end to this ongoing series of repetitive behavior patterns'. In effect, they reflect the existence of a 'core nuclear, transference conflict'....
Now, regarding 'trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes' (try saying that without stumbling or stuttering...'Stuttering' -- now there is a very intriguing anxiety neurotic symptom we could examine sometime...The mouth, the tongue, and the vocal chords become the warzone and central focus for an internal conflict between 'stop' and 'go' on what next I am going to say...The stutterer is ruled by a very harsh, introjected rejecting superego which then is projected out into the external world onto one or more of our perceived 'rejecting transference figures'...which could be either our 'reality' or our 'phantasy')...Regarding our childhood trauma transference complexes, our whole existential world comes to a grinding halt -- and paradoxical impasse -- at the point of our 're-visit' to our primal or childhood transference scene...Metaphorically or symbolically, we always return to the scene of our primal-childhood transference scene....over and over and over and over and over and over...again...often times 'excitedly'....other times 'horrifically'...and again 'traumatically'...
In Perls' words, we develop a 'neurotic blindspot' -- an 'impasse' -- a point at which all psychological growth stops evolving because of a particular 'phobia' resuting from the trauma....But another part of the mind (in my terminology 'the shadow-id' and 'shadow-id-ego' or often labelled as the 'alter ego') creates a 'counter-phobia' -- a 'counter obsessive-compulsion' to battle the dysfunctional element of the 'regressive, dysfunction phobia'...Thus, the 'transference phenomenon' -- or more particularly here, the 'transference counter phobia and obsessive compulsion' -- becomes a form of 'subconscious and oftentimes erotically narcissistic self psychotherapy'....
Freud described all dreams as 'wish fulfilments' (even nightmares like the dream example of the German Nazi soldiers chasing me through the university campus until they finally caught me at which point I promptly woke up...) Alternatively, Perls described all dreams as 'paradoxes' where our 'split or dissociated personality' (my addition) represents both sides of the paradox.
The dream of being 'chased by Nazi soldiers' was actually one specific, frightful example of a whole 'serial dream complex' of being chased by 'bad men' who want to 'hurt or kill me'...or 'confine me'...
My lifelong 'masculine protest' (Adler), 'counter-phobia' and/or 'counter-obsessive-compulsion' can be summarized as: I will not be confined -- not by any one person nor by any one organization.'
Consequently, I am not exclusively a Freudian, I am not exclusively an Adlerian, I am not exclusively a Jungian, I am not exclusively a Gestaltist.... I am both all of these...and none of these to the extent that each 'theoretical paradigm' 'confines' me and prevents me from 'stepping outside the particular paradigm' and investigating other paradigms....That is probably also why I will never be married.....I have 'commitment or confinement phobia'....and 'freedom-o-holism'....the desired freedom to step away from what 'is' and to visit and/or create a new paradigm...that creates a new 'is'...
The 'being chased serial nightmare' can be traced to one of my conscious early memories....not particularly traumatic or frightful...indeed more pleasurable than painful......I was about 6 or 7 years old, in Grade 1 (they had no kindergarten back then where I was going to school...) My classmates and I were playing a game of 'chase and catch' in the playground....the 'primary chaser' was a girl...her name was Cherry...the first girl I fell in love with....the 'secondary chasers' -- or perhaps they should be viewed as the 'primary chasers' -- were all boys in my class....The idea is that Cherry would chase all the boys in my class until she caught and kissed one of them....Then he would become her 'helper' until the next boy was caught -- and kissed....On and on it went, I was one of, if not, the fastest kid(s) in the class because I was the last one caught. I ran my best but I was no match for the whole class of boys chasing me....They finally caught me....and 'constrained me'...leaving me powerless....until Ms. Cherry caught up with the troop...and kissed me.... The kiss was nice...very nice...but I guess you could say that I have had a life long transference complex involving 'constraint-a-phobia'....The counter-impulse, counter-phobia, counter-obsessive-compulsion -- would have to be labelled as a 'constraint-compulsion'....This is my 'blind-spot' or at least one of them....My 'constraint-compulsion' is a 'very sneaky, subconscious, manipulative defense mechanism'....I don't even usually know I'm doing it....There is the 'wish fulfillment' part of the phantasy-nightmare....'The being caught by a transference-surrogate of Cherry....and finding that pleasurable..well, that's a no brainer....but that is never a part of my 'serial nightmare'.....which terrifies me when I have one of these types of 'chase dreams'.....Could the conscious early memory that I have cited here be a 'screen memory' for something much more traumatic? I don't know....I can't -- or won't -- remember anything more horrific and terrifying....But remember...as Freud articulated...neurotic complexes are always 'over-determined'....There have to be other associations...but maybe I am not willing to 'see them through'...and that would bring us to Freud's concept of 'repression'....or somewhere between a 'semi-conscious suppression' and a 'repression'...Hmmm.....Some new insights here for me....
We will stop here...Is this 'resistance'?...Sometimes, even when Freud was at least partly wrong, he was also at least partly right....I shake my head both at his creative brilliance and his obstinately, righteous, stupidly (or more likely dramatically for shock value and impact) overstated, reductionistic overgeneralizations...Both are equally astounding...the latter had much to do with Freud's breakup with Breuer as Breuer knew that Freud was hardly acting like a 'grounded scientist' when he leaped 'ahead of all of his clinical cases' to some of his early, dramatic, theoretical conclusions, most notably 'The Seduction Theory' and then 'flying over to the opposite side of the dialectic spectrum to 'The Oedipus Complex Theory'...Freud overgeneralized on 'repression', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual abuse', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual fantasy', and he overgeneralized or overidealized his rate and degree of 'therapeutic success'...
One of Freud's life paradoxes....caught between the 'wanna be grounded biologist and scientist' and the 'fly high into the sky abstractionist'...He was much better at being the latter...Even Ernest Jones knew this...
'We have already noted his (Freud's) early tendency to speculative rumination, one which he sternly checked. (When? How sternly? It sure didn't last long...My editorial comments.) (Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 34)
'Such considerations made him (Freud) feel the need of intellectual discipline, and everything pointed to science as the supreme opportunity. Science then meant, as it still does to many people, not only objectivity, but above all exactitude, measurement, precision, all the qualities in which Freud knew he was lacking.' (Ibid, p. 34)
One could call this one of Freud's lifelong 'Achilles Heels'...
-- dgb, February 18th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain
When I write at night, which is not often, I tend to write in a more free-flowing, free association, loosey goosey, loosely structured, Dionsysian style....At times, these essays can be more psychologically revealing in terms of my own personality, but generally speaking, these essays would not pass anywhere close to academic standards, and so it is, that I usually have to come back and 'repair the damage of my largely non-professional presentation' the next morning...in more logically coherent, more tightly structured, more properly referenced, more Apollonian, style...Such was the situation with this paper here....and hopefully, the presentation is a little better today than it was last night....
Regarding my references, sometimes the references I want to cite I haven't read in 20 or 30 or even more years.. I generally know the book that they came from, but I may be wrong, and this can make for a long detective hunt trying to re-find the quote that I want to reference....If I was writing an academic paper, this would absolutely mean finding the appropriate reference for the quote -- or not using it...because you can't say in an academic paper that 'I think I read it here but I haven't been able to find it yet....' The essay would probably be thrown back at you with a 'D' -- or simply not graded with the professor saying something like; 'Don't you ever hand in an essay like this to me again...' I could certainly see Dr. Masson, as a professor, doing something like this...I once wrote to him last year some time, and said that I thought that Freud had used the analogy of 'finding the source of the Nile' twice -- once regarding The Seduction Theory, and once regarding The Oedipal Theory -- to which he promptly responded -- 'Where?' -- and to which I sheepishly replied that I didn't know where, I would have to look for it...and I still haven't found it, I am assuming now because it doesn't exist. Memories can play tricks on people and on some people more than others....i.e., some people have more reliable memories than others....and 'subjective, narcissistic biases can, in particular, interfere with the 'objective reliablity' of memories....This is much of what makes 'The Seduction Theory vs. Oedipal Theory Controversy' a mind-twisting and wrenching challenge -- especially the deeper you get into it. No memory is likely 100 percent 'factual' unless we are talking about a very simple 'either/or' part of the memory...and even that is not always entirely reliable....In Nietzsche's words, 'There are no facts; just interpretations.' We will explore this dilemma in my next essay on 'The Good and Bad Aspects of The Oedipal Complex Theory'.
Meanwhile, Fritz Perls once asserted in my paraphrased words that the repetition compulsion involves 'unfinished (transference) situations' or 'unfinished (transference) gestalts' where we are cyclically and compulsively trying to 'finish these unfinished transference situations' -- or 'work them through', or 'resolve a seemingly unresolvable conflict' -- over and over and over again, usually throughout the course of our lives, with generally not too much success....perhaps partial or even overwhelming success in one or many of our particular endeavors, but seemingly never enough to 'totally clear up our negative self-image and/or whatever else it is that obsessively-compulsively continues to drive us to symbolically return again and again to the scene of one of our early childhood, primal transference scenes'.....
In fact, it does not usually matter how much 'outside success' we experience if inside, we keep telling ourselves (from some introjected and/or self-taught childhood message) that we are 'a failure', 'a loser', and/or 'not worthy of our success'....Thus, we are talking about issues of 'childhood self-esteem' encompassed within 'childhood transference scripts, games, complexes, templates' that become the basis for a lifelong 'self-fulfilling prophecy' (the basis of the transference repetition compulsion) that can either seriously impair and/or 'compulsively stimulate' our evolutionary development, our existential being, and our road to becoming what or who we were/are meant to become....
In other words, usually these transference-repetition compulsion-serial behavior pattern issues of the type I am thinking about are issues that lie at the core of our psyche, They are what I believe it was either Jacob Moreno or Virginia Satir used to call 'core nuclear conflicts'. This goes hand in hand with Perls calling a dream a 'paradox', an 'impasse', or in my words, a maze that we are stuck in, a house with no doors or windows that we can't see an 'outside perspective', a 'paradigm' that we are stuck inside that we again cannot see an outside perspective....
We remain 'transfixed', like a deer caught in a car's headlights, everyone else can see our way out of our self-created maze except ourselves; for us our 'psychotherapy' remains our 'blindspot'...we make the easy look impossible....we prefer the status-quo....we prefer our self-made prison over anyone trying to show us where the door is to this prison...our prison is our 'safety institution'....our means of 'escaping the responsibility and accountability for our own freedom' (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) rather than risking the failures and/or rejections and/or insecurities and/or potentially 'paralyzing anxiety' that comes with actually 'being free'....'the dizziness of freedom' (Kierkegaard)...of being 'congruent'...of lining up our 'Spiritual Self and Soul' with the behavior of our 'Central Executive Ego', our 'Chief Executive Officer'.....
When I say 'I love myself' or conversely 'I hate myself'....who is the 'I' and who is the 'myself'? The 'I' is 'the judge' which could be any practically any part of our 'wholistic self' but it is probably most likely to be our 'Righteous, Critical Superego' which in turn could either be our 'Introjected Critical Childhood Parent' or our own 'Moral-Ethical Superego' or our own 'Existential Superego' judging the perceived 'failures' of our 'Central Executive Ego' -- the 'myself' in this equation. Or it could be our 'Approval-Seeking Underego' judging the performance of our 'Rebellious Dionysian or Apollonian Underego'....or the other way around....or it could be our 'Nurturing Superego' judging the judgments of our 'Righteous, Critical Superego'....or the other way around....There are a lot of theoretical and therapeutic possibilities within our 'Split Self' or 'Split Psyche' where 'psychotherapy' become the 'evolutionary process' of 'better dialectic-democratic internal integration'...
When you look at my still evolving model of the human psyche, at first glance. it may seem overly large, complicated, and cumbersome, but it is designed to be 'multi-bipolar' and it is designed to accommodate a whole host of different, competing psycho-theoretical and therapeutic systems or paradigms....It is designed to accommodate significant elements of: 1. 'Pre-Classical' and 'Classical' Freudian Theory; 2. Adlerian Theory; 3. Jungian Theory; 4. Kleinian and Fairbairnian Object Relations Theory and Kohutian Narcissistic Theory; 5. Frommian Theory; 6. Gestalt Theory; 7. Bernean Transactional Analysis Theory; 8. elements of Janovian 'Primal Scream' Theory; 9. Cognitive Theory (Ellis and his 'ABC Theory', Beck, Kelly and his 'Personal Constructs', Frank and 'Persuasion and Healing', General Semantics (Korzybski and Hayakawa), and Self-Esteem Theory (Maltz and 'Psycho-Cybernetics', Branden and 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem') ; 10. Existential Theory (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Kafka, Camus, Frankl, Choice Theory (Glasser), and Cognitive-Behavioral Theory (Meichenbaum)....You could probably include Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', Carl Rogers 'Congruent vs. Incongruent Self', Horney's 'Our Inner Conflicts', and I am not comfortable enough with the work of either Lacan or Bion to make any comments on them...
Is this overkill? Trying to 'appease' and/or 'integrate' too many different 'theoretical paradigms'? I don't think so....and you can see by my work on Freud that I am certainly not trying very hard to 'appease any psychoanalysts'....as much as Freud remains at the foundation of my 'multi-bipolar, theoretical system'.
My multi-bipolar model can easily be broken down into smaller, simple bipolar dichotomies and conflicts....such as:
1. Our Nurturing Superego vs. Our Righteous, Critical Superego;
2. Our Shadow-Id-Ego (or 'Alter-Ego') vs. Our Central Ego, or alternatively, 'Our Personna';
3. Our Dionysian Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our Apollonian Ego, Superego, or Underego;
4. Our Rebellious, Apollonian or Dionysian Underego vs. Our Approval-Seeking Ego;
5. Our Apollonian (Righteous) or Dionsyian (Hedonistic) Ego, Superego, or Underego vs. Our 'Romantic' and/or 'Spiritual-Religious' Ego, Superego, or Underego;
6. Our 'Abyss' vs. our 'Womb' vs. our 'Existential Mountain Peak';
7. Our Central Executive Ego and/or our Personna vs. Our 'Genetic, Existential Self' and/or our 'Spiritual Self' and/or our 'Wholistic Self'....
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Here's how the DGB model of the psyche currently looks....
A/ Our 'Introjected and/or Compensatory Parent' Ego-State Domain
1. Our Nurturing Superego;
2. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
3. Our Righteous-Critical-Rejecting (Exciting) Superego';
B/ Our'Humanistic-Existential-Decision-Making' Ego-State Domain
4. Our Romantic-Spiritual Ego (as mythologically and/or philosophically reflected by Aphrodite-Venus-Psyche-Eros-Cupid, Rousseau, Goethe, Schelling);
5. Our Apollonian, Dionysian, and/or Aphroditean Influenced Shadow-Id Ego;
6. Our Central, Mediating, Executive Ego;
7. Our Personna;
C/ Our'Child' Ego-State Domain
08. Our Apollonian Rebellious Underego;
09. Our Dionysian-Narcissistic-Hedonistic Underego;
10. Our Approval-Seeking (Disapproval-Avoiding, Co-operative, Compliant) Underego;
D/ Our 'Underworld' Domain
11. Our 'Nietzschean Existential Mountain Peak' (Requiring a 'Rope' To Climb Over Our 'Abyss', Requiring Us To Be Our Own Personal 'Superman or Superwoman', Thus Spoke Zarathrusta...);
12. Our Dream Weaver (Revealing Inner Paradoxes and Impasses, Dangers and Wishes, Lost Love Objects, Unfinished Business of our Day's or Life's Residue, Suppressed Feelings, Transference Complexes...);
13. Our Shadow-Id Vault;
14. Our Shadow-Id;
15. Our Neurological, Biochemical, and Hormonal Influences;
16. Our Personal 'Womb';
17. Our Personal Abyss, Apeiron, Black Hole, Chaos;
18. Our Genetic-Spiritual-Mythological Self (Our Mythological Self...Projecting Outwards into Our External World The Contents and Essence of Our Inner Spiritual Self);
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There's a difference between a 'dualistic' and a 'dialectic' conception of man....Freud at different times was both....The dualistic philosopher-psychologist posits something like, say for example, a 'life' vs. 'death' instinct in an 'either/or' fashion....or a 'no conflict resolution is possible' fashion, whereas the dialectic philosopher-psychologist looks for 'dialectic integrations' and/or 'integrative balances' that can lead to 'healthy, balanced, functional behavior' as opposed to dichotomized, radically extreme dysfunctional behavior that goes unilaterally off the charts at one end of a particular bipolar spectrum...or the other....
Dialectic integration does not necessarily lead to 'healthy behavior'. Sadism, Freud would say...and I am paraphrasing here... that sadism was an integration of the 'life' and 'death' instincts, or alternatively, 'the sexual' and 'aggressive' instincts'...
One of the clearest dreams I can still remember dreaming while I was at The University of Waterloo....I dreamt that I was being chased through the campus grounds by German, Nazi soldiers....It was terrifying while I was dreaming it which is probably why I woke up promptly when they finally caught me...I did not want to experience my death while I was dreaming...
'Trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes', 'repetition compulsions', 'serial behavior patterns' -- these are all examples of 'unfinished gestalts' or 'unfinished business'...and since we never seem to 'finish' these 'unfinished gestalts', this would seem to suggest that these repetitive behavior patterns reflect either 'cyclical needs' inside our mind-body, and/or they reflect 'paradoxes' and 'impasses' that we never seem to be able to 'work our way through sufficiently enough to put an end to this ongoing series of repetitive behavior patterns'. In effect, they reflect the existence of a 'core nuclear, transference conflict'....
Now, regarding 'trauma-and/or-narcissistic fixation-transference-neurotic complexes' (try saying that without stumbling or stuttering...'Stuttering' -- now there is a very intriguing anxiety neurotic symptom we could examine sometime...The mouth, the tongue, and the vocal chords become the warzone and central focus for an internal conflict between 'stop' and 'go' on what next I am going to say...The stutterer is ruled by a very harsh, introjected rejecting superego which then is projected out into the external world onto one or more of our perceived 'rejecting transference figures'...which could be either our 'reality' or our 'phantasy')...Regarding our childhood trauma transference complexes, our whole existential world comes to a grinding halt -- and paradoxical impasse -- at the point of our 're-visit' to our primal or childhood transference scene...Metaphorically or symbolically, we always return to the scene of our primal-childhood transference scene....over and over and over and over and over and over...again...often times 'excitedly'....other times 'horrifically'...and again 'traumatically'...
In Perls' words, we develop a 'neurotic blindspot' -- an 'impasse' -- a point at which all psychological growth stops evolving because of a particular 'phobia' resuting from the trauma....But another part of the mind (in my terminology 'the shadow-id' and 'shadow-id-ego' or often labelled as the 'alter ego') creates a 'counter-phobia' -- a 'counter obsessive-compulsion' to battle the dysfunctional element of the 'regressive, dysfunction phobia'...Thus, the 'transference phenomenon' -- or more particularly here, the 'transference counter phobia and obsessive compulsion' -- becomes a form of 'subconscious and oftentimes erotically narcissistic self psychotherapy'....
Freud described all dreams as 'wish fulfilments' (even nightmares like the dream example of the German Nazi soldiers chasing me through the university campus until they finally caught me at which point I promptly woke up...) Alternatively, Perls described all dreams as 'paradoxes' where our 'split or dissociated personality' (my addition) represents both sides of the paradox.
The dream of being 'chased by Nazi soldiers' was actually one specific, frightful example of a whole 'serial dream complex' of being chased by 'bad men' who want to 'hurt or kill me'...or 'confine me'...
My lifelong 'masculine protest' (Adler), 'counter-phobia' and/or 'counter-obsessive-compulsion' can be summarized as: I will not be confined -- not by any one person nor by any one organization.'
Consequently, I am not exclusively a Freudian, I am not exclusively an Adlerian, I am not exclusively a Jungian, I am not exclusively a Gestaltist.... I am both all of these...and none of these to the extent that each 'theoretical paradigm' 'confines' me and prevents me from 'stepping outside the particular paradigm' and investigating other paradigms....That is probably also why I will never be married.....I have 'commitment or confinement phobia'....and 'freedom-o-holism'....the desired freedom to step away from what 'is' and to visit and/or create a new paradigm...that creates a new 'is'...
The 'being chased serial nightmare' can be traced to one of my conscious early memories....not particularly traumatic or frightful...indeed more pleasurable than painful......I was about 6 or 7 years old, in Grade 1 (they had no kindergarten back then where I was going to school...) My classmates and I were playing a game of 'chase and catch' in the playground....the 'primary chaser' was a girl...her name was Cherry...the first girl I fell in love with....the 'secondary chasers' -- or perhaps they should be viewed as the 'primary chasers' -- were all boys in my class....The idea is that Cherry would chase all the boys in my class until she caught and kissed one of them....Then he would become her 'helper' until the next boy was caught -- and kissed....On and on it went, I was one of, if not, the fastest kid(s) in the class because I was the last one caught. I ran my best but I was no match for the whole class of boys chasing me....They finally caught me....and 'constrained me'...leaving me powerless....until Ms. Cherry caught up with the troop...and kissed me.... The kiss was nice...very nice...but I guess you could say that I have had a life long transference complex involving 'constraint-a-phobia'....The counter-impulse, counter-phobia, counter-obsessive-compulsion -- would have to be labelled as a 'constraint-compulsion'....This is my 'blind-spot' or at least one of them....My 'constraint-compulsion' is a 'very sneaky, subconscious, manipulative defense mechanism'....I don't even usually know I'm doing it....There is the 'wish fulfillment' part of the phantasy-nightmare....'The being caught by a transference-surrogate of Cherry....and finding that pleasurable..well, that's a no brainer....but that is never a part of my 'serial nightmare'.....which terrifies me when I have one of these types of 'chase dreams'.....Could the conscious early memory that I have cited here be a 'screen memory' for something much more traumatic? I don't know....I can't -- or won't -- remember anything more horrific and terrifying....But remember...as Freud articulated...neurotic complexes are always 'over-determined'....There have to be other associations...but maybe I am not willing to 'see them through'...and that would bring us to Freud's concept of 'repression'....or somewhere between a 'semi-conscious suppression' and a 'repression'...Hmmm.....Some new insights here for me....
We will stop here...Is this 'resistance'?...Sometimes, even when Freud was at least partly wrong, he was also at least partly right....I shake my head both at his creative brilliance and his obstinately, righteous, stupidly (or more likely dramatically for shock value and impact) overstated, reductionistic overgeneralizations...Both are equally astounding...the latter had much to do with Freud's breakup with Breuer as Breuer knew that Freud was hardly acting like a 'grounded scientist' when he leaped 'ahead of all of his clinical cases' to some of his early, dramatic, theoretical conclusions, most notably 'The Seduction Theory' and then 'flying over to the opposite side of the dialectic spectrum to 'The Oedipus Complex Theory'...Freud overgeneralized on 'repression', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual abuse', he overgeneralized on 'childhood sexual fantasy', and he overgeneralized or overidealized his rate and degree of 'therapeutic success'...
One of Freud's life paradoxes....caught between the 'wanna be grounded biologist and scientist' and the 'fly high into the sky abstractionist'...He was much better at being the latter...Even Ernest Jones knew this...
'We have already noted his (Freud's) early tendency to speculative rumination, one which he sternly checked. (When? How sternly? It sure didn't last long...My editorial comments.) (Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953, 1981, p. 34)
'Such considerations made him (Freud) feel the need of intellectual discipline, and everything pointed to science as the supreme opportunity. Science then meant, as it still does to many people, not only objectivity, but above all exactitude, measurement, precision, all the qualities in which Freud knew he was lacking.' (Ibid, p. 34)
One could call this one of Freud's lifelong 'Achilles Heels'...
-- dgb, February 18th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain
Different Ways of Defining and Describing 'Neurosis'
Updated...Feb. 18th, 2012...dgb
The term 'neurosis' stems back at least to the beginning of Freud's work in Psychoanalysis in the early 1890s, back to the point where the science of neurology first started to overlap with the art and science of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy.
Perhaps the easiest and quickest association between the name 'neurosis' and what it it is/was used to define/describe is the idea and experience of 'nervousness' and/or 'bad nerves'. This is particularly relevant in what Freud referred to as 'anxiety neurosis'.
For the longest while -- many years -- Freud equated anxiety neurosis with the idea of 'blocked sexual excitement and energy' (or 'libido'). It wasn't until very late in his career that Freud finally relented this position and more appropriately defined anxiety as that feeling/emotion that can best be equated with the perception of danger. This doesn't totally reject Freud's previous postion of 'blocked sexual excitement' because who doesn't often/usually feel at least partly 'nervous' or 'anxious' when their mind-body is 'filling up with sexual excitement' particularly in the close proximity to a 'perceived sexual object/person'.
Here are some internet definitions/descriptions of 'neurosis'.
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Neurosis
1. A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety) but not usually a severe loss of touch with reality. Contrast with psychosis which does involve a more severe loss of touch with reality.
2. (in nontechnical use) Excessive and irrational anxiety or obsession.
3. Neurosis is a term generally used to describe a nonpsychotic mental illness which triggers feelings of distress and anxiety and impairs functioning.
4. Wikipedia....Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms.[1] It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic. The term essentially describes an "invisible injury" and the resulting condition, and is no longer in official use by the scientific, medical, and psychiatric communities.
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Since most of my work here is Freudian and/or Psychoanalytically based, and Freud used the term extensively, and broke it up into sub-categories, I will do the same although my sub-categories will be partly different. I still think it is a useful term although the term 'disorder' generally replaces it today.
Three broad 'mental health disorders' that are commonly differentiated from each other are: 1. 'Bi-Polar Disorder' (which usually means 'Manic-Depression Disorder'); 2. 'Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder' (which usually refers to what Freud would have classified as 'Anal' Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders; in contrast, the 'Oral' Obsessive-Compulsions are usually classified as 'Addictions' -- more on this distinction later); 3. 'Borderline Personality Disorder' which based on my understanding of this diagnostic category refers to a person who 'borders' between 'neurosis' and 'psychosis' and the only way that he or she can 'keep it together' is by subscribing to 'tight, anal-retentive, often obsessive-compulsive, defense mechanisms' that are designed to ward off 'extreme feelings of internal anxiety/panic'. High stress levels such as the loss of a job and/or the loss of a loved one are often likely to push this type of person 'over the top', resulting in the possibility of a 'nervous (psychotic) breakdown', and perhaps even hospitalization. Of course, if the intensity of 'stressor(s)' is strong enough, we don't necessarily need to be diagnosed as a 'borderline personality' for something of this order to happen. It is just that borderline personality 'neurotics' tend to be more prone to these types of breakdowns....
Another way of defining and describing 'neurosis' is by using the principle of 'homeostatic (or dialectic) balance'. This can be applied either 'culturally' or 'politically' or 'legally' or 'religiously' (which gets us into the problem of 'ethical relativism') or it can be applied 'trans-culturally' in terms of 'individual and social/civil needs and rights'.
Using the 'trans-cultural' -- in this case 'biological-medical' approach -- if a person has 'the flu', it doesn't matter what country or culture they live in; they still have 'the flu'. The 'bio-medical model or paradigm' works 'across different countries and cultures'.
In the case of 'psychological disorders', the 'bio-medical' approach doesn't always work as neatly and precisely. Schizophrenia is still schizophrenia but oftentimes -- indeed, almost always -- social, political, family, cultural, political, legal, economic, religious and/or philosophical factors all have to be taken into account in order to fully and properly understand this form of 'psychotic' illness as well as other forms of non-psychotic illness -- i.e., 'a non-psychotic, neurotic disorder' -- that we are dealing with. Psychotic illnesses may involve genetics, drugs, brain-neurological dysfunction -- as well as social and internal psychological stressors.
Mental health issues need to be place in a 'socio-economic-political-legal context' in order to be understood properly. Sometimes it may be the particular 'society' or 'culture' or 'religion' or 'political-legal landscape' that is more 'neurotic' than a thousand or a million particular individuals within this socio-economic-political-legal context that are trying to adapt in 'dysfunctional' ways to a 'dysfunctional environment' -- and that includes particularly more than any othe relevant factor the context of the 'nuclear family' which is the source of the main 'cogntive-emotional templates' that we develop as we are 'evolving' and/or 'de-volving' as children.
On a cultural-historical level, in Freud's Victorian time, you have to factor in 'the different types of individual neurosis' with what might be called the 'Victorian culture's distorted and/or overly-restrictive, views on human sexuality' that created what might be called a 'Socio-Cultural Pathology of Sexual Normalcy' in this cultural and family environment.
More specifically, in Freud's time, there was a whole network of 'neurotic socio-cultural fears and negative socio-cultural judgments and defenses' -- some reflected by Freud himself -- concerning the phenomenon of masturbation. You had a whole set of negative perceptions, interpretations, judgments, values, and directives around this alleged 'social problem' of 'masturbation'.
We laugh at this now but back then, 'the negative perception regarding the dangers of masturbation' caused a whole host of negative 'individual and social neurotic problems'. If a mom caught her little boy 'playing with himself', she might say, 'Quit playing with yourself or your dad will cut it off!' This, I would speculate, must have been something that Freud actually experienced and feared in his early childhood -- theoretically generalized many years later in his professional career under the concept and theory of 'castration anxiety'.
The concept of castration anxiety doesn't work too well for me as a theorist today -- except perhaps in a metaphorical sense -- but similar, associated concepts like '(sexual) peformance anxiety' (fear of not being able to sexually perform properly) -- particularly relevent now amongst an 'aging masculine (and feminine) baby boomer population' -- i.e., fear of loss of one's masculine and/or feminine prowess and capabilities and a resulting loss of 'masculine or feminine self-esteem' connected often to an 'internal raging against aging'...) -- all of these 'inter-connected, neurotic anxieties' connected in turn to 'loss of self-identity' and/or 'loss of (sexual) self-esteem' do seem to be very relevant today...in partly similar, partly different ways, for both men and women....
Alfred Adler's abandoned concept of 'The Masculine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a man to perceive and evaluate himself as a 'real man') is still highly relevant today, and my extrapolation and extension of the above concept into 'The Feminine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a woman to feel like a 'real woman') would seem to me to be equally just as currently relevant -- and a potential source of high level stress, distress, anxiety, rage, and/or depression...
Similarily, a seemingly outdated Freudian concept (that feminists have loved to hate) of 'penis envy' could/can be updated as well and fit into the syndrome of 'masculine and feminine protest neuroses'. Both men and women have 'sexually specific assets' that can be the 'lust' of the opposite (and/or same) sex. But 'lust' is not the same concept and phenomenon as 'envy'. 'Sexual envy' is more likely to be a 'same sex phenomenon, less so an opposite sex phenomenon'. Thus, a woman is more likely to 'lust' a penis, and 'envy' another woman's 'body shape', or 'breasts', or 'popularity among men'....It is actually more likely to be a man who is more prone to 'envy' another man's 'penis' or 'youth' or 'body shape' or 'popularity among women'....Thus, the 'long rejected Freudian concept and theory of women having 'penis envy' Freud equated mainly with the wrong sex...It is more likely to be a 'man's issue' rather than a woman's.
Freud distinguished between the 'psycho-neuroses' (childhood neuroses) and the 'actual neuroses' (present-day, adult neuroses). This distinction is still relevant today although I use different terminology -- 'the transference ('childhood' or 'there and then') neuroses vs. 'the existential ('here-and-now') neuroses. In most actual cases, transference neuroses and existential neuroses converge and join together into the 'same overall neurotic complex' -- in Freud's words, most neuroses (or neurotic complexes) are 'overdetermined'.
Freud's supposed 1896 'dilemma' regarding his 'conflict' between '(sexual and/or romantic traumacy' and 'instinct-fantasy' theory basically amount to 'opposite sides of the same coin' -- or the mythological image of 'Janus' -- one side looking back to the past, while the other side looks to the present and future. 'Sexual fantasies' are often 'narcissistic fixations/fetishes' and/or 'narcissistic-defensive compensations' against 'childhood ego-traumacies'.....
A 'childhood rejection and/or abandoment by a woman' might lead to the 'rejected child' -- as an adult -- becoming an 'abandoning philander' to 'internally prove to himself' -- symbolically speaking -- that his childhood rejector was wrong in rejecting him, and that he isn't/wasn't 'worthy of being rejected'....But then, this same 'rejected child syndrome' can lead to the phenomenon of 'identification with the childhood rejector' in which case the 'rejected child who was rejected by an adult woman (his mother or someone else)' becomes in the here-and-now a 'rejecting male adult who seduces women 'serially' -- and then promptly abandons them after he has seduced them'....
'Neurasthenia' was an interesting diagnostic category back in Freud's early, pre-1900 work. (He may have even used this category after 1900.) It can be equated with the idea of 'psychic lethargy and/or depression -- no energy, no libido, a lack of enthusiasm for life'...a technical word for a common human problem...
I think that the diagnostic category is still useful and can be sub-divided into 'transference neurasthenia' and 'existential neurasthenia'. The first is a 'carry-over' from our childhood life; the second is connected to 'here-and-now' factors such as: loss of love, loss of job, aging, health issues, 'lack of meaning in life', etc...
Freud had an interesting association between neurasthenia and sexual factors -- 'too much masturbation', according to Freud, will leave a person 'burnt out and energy-deprived, lethargic' (but happy -- sorry, I couldn't resist). That's like the more recent question of whether or not an athlete should have sex before an athletic performance...If the athlete is 'exhausted' after the sexual performance -- and it's just before the game -- probably not. But if he is 'up and still full of energy' -- a 'pre-game warmup' so to speak -- then, why not? No over-riding 'generalization' seems appropriate...except perhaps...'whatever works'...
Alternatively, a more logical and likely associative connection between neurasthenia and sexual factors ('sexual neurasthenia') would seem to me to be -- neurasthenia (lethargy, depression...) is more likely to be prevalent in situations where a person's life is 'sexless', i.e., not enough sensual and sexual touch...When the blood circulation is flowing properly, depression, apathy, lethargy, lifelessness -- neurasthenia -- generally is not likely to be an issue...unless the particular issues go deeper than simply a lack of 'touch' and 'hedonistic pleasure'... There may be underlying 'romantic' and/or 'spirituality' and/or 'more general self-esteem/self-identity, transference and/or existential issues'....
All neuroses -- like all medical disorders -- can generally be classified into either or both of these two types: 'too much of something'....and/or....'not enough of something'... the neuroses of 'toxic overload' and/or the neuroses of 'nutritional deficiency'...
This is based on our principle of 'homeostatic/dialectic balance and imbalance'...
Too much impulse or not enough impulse...too much restraint or not enough restraint...too much 'Apollonianism' or too much 'Dionysianism'....too much 'approval-seeking' or too much 'narcissism'...too much 'righteousness' or too much 'rebelliousness/anarchy'... Too much 'anal-retentiveness' or too much 'anal-explosiveness'...Too much 'oral receptiveness' or not enough 'oral receptiveness'...Too much protection of 'self-boundaries' or not enough protection of 'self-boundaries'... Too much living 'from the neck up'...or too much living 'from the neck down'... Too much 'giving'...or too much 'getting'....Too much 'anxiety and 'phobia' and/or too much'obsessive-compulsion' and/or 'avoiding'...
Too much 'agressiveness'...or not enough 'assertiveness'...Too much 'social sensitivity and empathy' or not enough 'social sensitivity and empathy'....Too much talking and not enough listening...or too much listening and not enough talking...Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'doing'...or too much 'doing' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'feeling' or too much 'feeling' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'eating' and not enough 'exercising' or too much 'exercising' and not enough 'eating'...
Another two distinctions can be made between the 'anxiety-avoidance' neuroses and the 'narcissistic' (social transgression) neuroses....as well as between the 'distancing' neuroses and the 'hanging on' and/or 'stalking' neuroses...
Finally, I will make the distinction between the 'impulsive neuroses' -- exploding impulses from 'The Shadow-Id Vault' up to the 'Central Ego'; vs. the 'overly-restraining, 'anal-defensive' neuroses of 'squashed impulses'...held back, or sent back, impulses from The Central Ego to the ego-defensive restraints of the 'Shadow-Id Vault'
What Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and other medical professionals called 'hysteria' back in their time -- a predominantly 'female neurosis' -- might best be viewed today as the 'cultural over-suppression of women -- and the sexuality of women' (and/or 'the masculine abuse' of the sexuality of women). These women were often stuck in their homes, often nursing sick fathers, caught between biological and psychological sexual impulses and cultural -- predominantly 'patriarchal' -- sexual restraints, and too often sexual abuses...and often these 'transference and existential self-cultural neuroses' showed up in the form of 'strange bodily and/or medical symptoms' without any perceived 'organic medical cause'...After May 1896, Freud would come to believe that the 'primary cause' of these 'hysterical neuroses' was 'repressed childhood sexual activity, fixations, fetishes, and/or impulsive fantasy' as opposed to before May 1896 when he took the more or less opposite viewpoint -- that hysteria was primarily caused by 'repressed childhood sexual traumacy/manipulation/exploitation/assault'....There's a pretty wide gulf between the two theories -- a controversial issue that is still causing disagreement and grief, both inside and outside the psychoanalytic community today...An unresolved theoretical and therapeutic conflict issue of huge proportions that I have addressed, and continue to address, in many of my 'bi-polar, dialectic-integrative essays', yesterday, today, and tomorrow...
Which theory was 'right'? Or were they both partly right and partly wrong? Or was one theory right in some cases; the other theory right in a different set of cases? Maybe they were both sometimes a part of the same 'neurotic complex and/or syndrome'. All of these issues I have addressed in essays gone past, as well as new essays still coming in the future....
Freud kept fighting with his 'either/or' dilemma of 'which theory was right' and 'which theory was wrong' -- or so we are led to believe -- and my historical hindsight vision of the situation is that Freud should have integrated both 'partial theoies' into one bigger, more 'synthesized' bi-polar theory... where the 'clinical exposition of a particular case' dictated what part of the theory was most utilized; not choosing 'half a bi-polar theory' and using 'the same half' to dictate how a therapist/psychoanalyst should approach the opposite half......'Seek first to understand; then to be understood'. (This was one of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989). Freud often lost his sense of seeking first to understand his clients -- especially after 1896 -- in the 'game' of trying to 'communicate, persuade, and enforce his own personal, theoretical and therapeutic understandings that had a propensity to overstate and overgeneralize the clinical facts, first in one direction (before May 1896) and then in the opposite direction (after April 1896)...
The difference between a 'learning disability' and a 'neurotic learning disorder' is that in the first case, a person has trouble making the necessary associations to constitute what we call 'learning' and/or the person has trouble 'remembering' these associations -- this may be because of a 'neurological-biochemical-brain dysfunction' (or it may be because of 'lack of interest and/or desire to make the associative connection'; in contrast, with a 'neurotic learning disorder', a person in effect 'learns too much', he or she puts together 'bad, dysfunctional, associations' or as Freud called them -- 'false connections' -- which come back to haunt and hurt the person in later situations that are deemed 'similar' or 'the same' but may be 'significantly different' in important ways that are essentially missed. Freud was a significant, serial 'culprit' in generating his own 'associatively reductionistic and/or overly stated false connections'...
Transference 'counter-phobic', 'obsessive-compulsive' neuroses occur when we subconsciously take an adult scene that is partly similar, partly different than our 'earlier (usually childhood) traumacy scene' -- and we find ways of 'manipulating' the new scene until we have effectively turned it into a 'symbolic re-creation' of our earlier childhood scene. The 'transference goal or game' here is to 'turn this later scene into a re-creation of our earlier scene' so that we can use the present scene in an attempt to 'master' a 'surrogate adult transference figure' in a sexual and/or aggressive manner so as to attempt to 'undo the psychological message' that we keep repeating to ourselves courtesy of our childhood rejecting transference figure that we are 'weak, rejectable, helpless and/or not worthy' in the presence of our perceived more powerful, more worthy 'childhood/adult transference figure'...
With 'learning', we need a balance -- just like everything else in life -- between 'more than not enough' (of the 'right' type of learning) and 'less than too much' (of the 'wrong' type of learning).
The same goes for 'distinguishing differences' -- between 'not distinguishing enough differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people..., and 'distinguishing too many differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people...that or who may still hold a certain 'core commonality' that should be registered...relative to present and/or future interpretations, evaluations, and decisions...
That completes our little discussion about 'neurosis' today...
-- dgb, April 10th, 11th, 2011, updated Feb. 18th, 2012....
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
The term 'neurosis' stems back at least to the beginning of Freud's work in Psychoanalysis in the early 1890s, back to the point where the science of neurology first started to overlap with the art and science of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy.
Perhaps the easiest and quickest association between the name 'neurosis' and what it it is/was used to define/describe is the idea and experience of 'nervousness' and/or 'bad nerves'. This is particularly relevant in what Freud referred to as 'anxiety neurosis'.
For the longest while -- many years -- Freud equated anxiety neurosis with the idea of 'blocked sexual excitement and energy' (or 'libido'). It wasn't until very late in his career that Freud finally relented this position and more appropriately defined anxiety as that feeling/emotion that can best be equated with the perception of danger. This doesn't totally reject Freud's previous postion of 'blocked sexual excitement' because who doesn't often/usually feel at least partly 'nervous' or 'anxious' when their mind-body is 'filling up with sexual excitement' particularly in the close proximity to a 'perceived sexual object/person'.
Here are some internet definitions/descriptions of 'neurosis'.
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Neurosis
1. A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety) but not usually a severe loss of touch with reality. Contrast with psychosis which does involve a more severe loss of touch with reality.
2. (in nontechnical use) Excessive and irrational anxiety or obsession.
3. Neurosis is a term generally used to describe a nonpsychotic mental illness which triggers feelings of distress and anxiety and impairs functioning.
4. Wikipedia....Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms.[1] It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic. The term essentially describes an "invisible injury" and the resulting condition, and is no longer in official use by the scientific, medical, and psychiatric communities.
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Since most of my work here is Freudian and/or Psychoanalytically based, and Freud used the term extensively, and broke it up into sub-categories, I will do the same although my sub-categories will be partly different. I still think it is a useful term although the term 'disorder' generally replaces it today.
Three broad 'mental health disorders' that are commonly differentiated from each other are: 1. 'Bi-Polar Disorder' (which usually means 'Manic-Depression Disorder'); 2. 'Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder' (which usually refers to what Freud would have classified as 'Anal' Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders; in contrast, the 'Oral' Obsessive-Compulsions are usually classified as 'Addictions' -- more on this distinction later); 3. 'Borderline Personality Disorder' which based on my understanding of this diagnostic category refers to a person who 'borders' between 'neurosis' and 'psychosis' and the only way that he or she can 'keep it together' is by subscribing to 'tight, anal-retentive, often obsessive-compulsive, defense mechanisms' that are designed to ward off 'extreme feelings of internal anxiety/panic'. High stress levels such as the loss of a job and/or the loss of a loved one are often likely to push this type of person 'over the top', resulting in the possibility of a 'nervous (psychotic) breakdown', and perhaps even hospitalization. Of course, if the intensity of 'stressor(s)' is strong enough, we don't necessarily need to be diagnosed as a 'borderline personality' for something of this order to happen. It is just that borderline personality 'neurotics' tend to be more prone to these types of breakdowns....
Another way of defining and describing 'neurosis' is by using the principle of 'homeostatic (or dialectic) balance'. This can be applied either 'culturally' or 'politically' or 'legally' or 'religiously' (which gets us into the problem of 'ethical relativism') or it can be applied 'trans-culturally' in terms of 'individual and social/civil needs and rights'.
Using the 'trans-cultural' -- in this case 'biological-medical' approach -- if a person has 'the flu', it doesn't matter what country or culture they live in; they still have 'the flu'. The 'bio-medical model or paradigm' works 'across different countries and cultures'.
In the case of 'psychological disorders', the 'bio-medical' approach doesn't always work as neatly and precisely. Schizophrenia is still schizophrenia but oftentimes -- indeed, almost always -- social, political, family, cultural, political, legal, economic, religious and/or philosophical factors all have to be taken into account in order to fully and properly understand this form of 'psychotic' illness as well as other forms of non-psychotic illness -- i.e., 'a non-psychotic, neurotic disorder' -- that we are dealing with. Psychotic illnesses may involve genetics, drugs, brain-neurological dysfunction -- as well as social and internal psychological stressors.
Mental health issues need to be place in a 'socio-economic-political-legal context' in order to be understood properly. Sometimes it may be the particular 'society' or 'culture' or 'religion' or 'political-legal landscape' that is more 'neurotic' than a thousand or a million particular individuals within this socio-economic-political-legal context that are trying to adapt in 'dysfunctional' ways to a 'dysfunctional environment' -- and that includes particularly more than any othe relevant factor the context of the 'nuclear family' which is the source of the main 'cogntive-emotional templates' that we develop as we are 'evolving' and/or 'de-volving' as children.
On a cultural-historical level, in Freud's Victorian time, you have to factor in 'the different types of individual neurosis' with what might be called the 'Victorian culture's distorted and/or overly-restrictive, views on human sexuality' that created what might be called a 'Socio-Cultural Pathology of Sexual Normalcy' in this cultural and family environment.
More specifically, in Freud's time, there was a whole network of 'neurotic socio-cultural fears and negative socio-cultural judgments and defenses' -- some reflected by Freud himself -- concerning the phenomenon of masturbation. You had a whole set of negative perceptions, interpretations, judgments, values, and directives around this alleged 'social problem' of 'masturbation'.
We laugh at this now but back then, 'the negative perception regarding the dangers of masturbation' caused a whole host of negative 'individual and social neurotic problems'. If a mom caught her little boy 'playing with himself', she might say, 'Quit playing with yourself or your dad will cut it off!' This, I would speculate, must have been something that Freud actually experienced and feared in his early childhood -- theoretically generalized many years later in his professional career under the concept and theory of 'castration anxiety'.
The concept of castration anxiety doesn't work too well for me as a theorist today -- except perhaps in a metaphorical sense -- but similar, associated concepts like '(sexual) peformance anxiety' (fear of not being able to sexually perform properly) -- particularly relevent now amongst an 'aging masculine (and feminine) baby boomer population' -- i.e., fear of loss of one's masculine and/or feminine prowess and capabilities and a resulting loss of 'masculine or feminine self-esteem' connected often to an 'internal raging against aging'...) -- all of these 'inter-connected, neurotic anxieties' connected in turn to 'loss of self-identity' and/or 'loss of (sexual) self-esteem' do seem to be very relevant today...in partly similar, partly different ways, for both men and women....
Alfred Adler's abandoned concept of 'The Masculine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a man to perceive and evaluate himself as a 'real man') is still highly relevant today, and my extrapolation and extension of the above concept into 'The Feminine Protest' (the perceived social and internalized self need and demand for a woman to feel like a 'real woman') would seem to me to be equally just as currently relevant -- and a potential source of high level stress, distress, anxiety, rage, and/or depression...
Similarily, a seemingly outdated Freudian concept (that feminists have loved to hate) of 'penis envy' could/can be updated as well and fit into the syndrome of 'masculine and feminine protest neuroses'. Both men and women have 'sexually specific assets' that can be the 'lust' of the opposite (and/or same) sex. But 'lust' is not the same concept and phenomenon as 'envy'. 'Sexual envy' is more likely to be a 'same sex phenomenon, less so an opposite sex phenomenon'. Thus, a woman is more likely to 'lust' a penis, and 'envy' another woman's 'body shape', or 'breasts', or 'popularity among men'....It is actually more likely to be a man who is more prone to 'envy' another man's 'penis' or 'youth' or 'body shape' or 'popularity among women'....Thus, the 'long rejected Freudian concept and theory of women having 'penis envy' Freud equated mainly with the wrong sex...It is more likely to be a 'man's issue' rather than a woman's.
Freud distinguished between the 'psycho-neuroses' (childhood neuroses) and the 'actual neuroses' (present-day, adult neuroses). This distinction is still relevant today although I use different terminology -- 'the transference ('childhood' or 'there and then') neuroses vs. 'the existential ('here-and-now') neuroses. In most actual cases, transference neuroses and existential neuroses converge and join together into the 'same overall neurotic complex' -- in Freud's words, most neuroses (or neurotic complexes) are 'overdetermined'.
Freud's supposed 1896 'dilemma' regarding his 'conflict' between '(sexual and/or romantic traumacy' and 'instinct-fantasy' theory basically amount to 'opposite sides of the same coin' -- or the mythological image of 'Janus' -- one side looking back to the past, while the other side looks to the present and future. 'Sexual fantasies' are often 'narcissistic fixations/fetishes' and/or 'narcissistic-defensive compensations' against 'childhood ego-traumacies'.....
A 'childhood rejection and/or abandoment by a woman' might lead to the 'rejected child' -- as an adult -- becoming an 'abandoning philander' to 'internally prove to himself' -- symbolically speaking -- that his childhood rejector was wrong in rejecting him, and that he isn't/wasn't 'worthy of being rejected'....But then, this same 'rejected child syndrome' can lead to the phenomenon of 'identification with the childhood rejector' in which case the 'rejected child who was rejected by an adult woman (his mother or someone else)' becomes in the here-and-now a 'rejecting male adult who seduces women 'serially' -- and then promptly abandons them after he has seduced them'....
'Neurasthenia' was an interesting diagnostic category back in Freud's early, pre-1900 work. (He may have even used this category after 1900.) It can be equated with the idea of 'psychic lethargy and/or depression -- no energy, no libido, a lack of enthusiasm for life'...a technical word for a common human problem...
I think that the diagnostic category is still useful and can be sub-divided into 'transference neurasthenia' and 'existential neurasthenia'. The first is a 'carry-over' from our childhood life; the second is connected to 'here-and-now' factors such as: loss of love, loss of job, aging, health issues, 'lack of meaning in life', etc...
Freud had an interesting association between neurasthenia and sexual factors -- 'too much masturbation', according to Freud, will leave a person 'burnt out and energy-deprived, lethargic' (but happy -- sorry, I couldn't resist). That's like the more recent question of whether or not an athlete should have sex before an athletic performance...If the athlete is 'exhausted' after the sexual performance -- and it's just before the game -- probably not. But if he is 'up and still full of energy' -- a 'pre-game warmup' so to speak -- then, why not? No over-riding 'generalization' seems appropriate...except perhaps...'whatever works'...
Alternatively, a more logical and likely associative connection between neurasthenia and sexual factors ('sexual neurasthenia') would seem to me to be -- neurasthenia (lethargy, depression...) is more likely to be prevalent in situations where a person's life is 'sexless', i.e., not enough sensual and sexual touch...When the blood circulation is flowing properly, depression, apathy, lethargy, lifelessness -- neurasthenia -- generally is not likely to be an issue...unless the particular issues go deeper than simply a lack of 'touch' and 'hedonistic pleasure'... There may be underlying 'romantic' and/or 'spirituality' and/or 'more general self-esteem/self-identity, transference and/or existential issues'....
All neuroses -- like all medical disorders -- can generally be classified into either or both of these two types: 'too much of something'....and/or....'not enough of something'... the neuroses of 'toxic overload' and/or the neuroses of 'nutritional deficiency'...
This is based on our principle of 'homeostatic/dialectic balance and imbalance'...
Too much impulse or not enough impulse...too much restraint or not enough restraint...too much 'Apollonianism' or too much 'Dionysianism'....too much 'approval-seeking' or too much 'narcissism'...too much 'righteousness' or too much 'rebelliousness/anarchy'... Too much 'anal-retentiveness' or too much 'anal-explosiveness'...Too much 'oral receptiveness' or not enough 'oral receptiveness'...Too much protection of 'self-boundaries' or not enough protection of 'self-boundaries'... Too much living 'from the neck up'...or too much living 'from the neck down'... Too much 'giving'...or too much 'getting'....Too much 'anxiety and 'phobia' and/or too much'obsessive-compulsion' and/or 'avoiding'...
Too much 'agressiveness'...or not enough 'assertiveness'...Too much 'social sensitivity and empathy' or not enough 'social sensitivity and empathy'....Too much talking and not enough listening...or too much listening and not enough talking...Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'doing'...or too much 'doing' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'thinking' and not enough 'feeling' or too much 'feeling' and not enough 'thinking'... Too much 'eating' and not enough 'exercising' or too much 'exercising' and not enough 'eating'...
Another two distinctions can be made between the 'anxiety-avoidance' neuroses and the 'narcissistic' (social transgression) neuroses....as well as between the 'distancing' neuroses and the 'hanging on' and/or 'stalking' neuroses...
Finally, I will make the distinction between the 'impulsive neuroses' -- exploding impulses from 'The Shadow-Id Vault' up to the 'Central Ego'; vs. the 'overly-restraining, 'anal-defensive' neuroses of 'squashed impulses'...held back, or sent back, impulses from The Central Ego to the ego-defensive restraints of the 'Shadow-Id Vault'
What Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and other medical professionals called 'hysteria' back in their time -- a predominantly 'female neurosis' -- might best be viewed today as the 'cultural over-suppression of women -- and the sexuality of women' (and/or 'the masculine abuse' of the sexuality of women). These women were often stuck in their homes, often nursing sick fathers, caught between biological and psychological sexual impulses and cultural -- predominantly 'patriarchal' -- sexual restraints, and too often sexual abuses...and often these 'transference and existential self-cultural neuroses' showed up in the form of 'strange bodily and/or medical symptoms' without any perceived 'organic medical cause'...After May 1896, Freud would come to believe that the 'primary cause' of these 'hysterical neuroses' was 'repressed childhood sexual activity, fixations, fetishes, and/or impulsive fantasy' as opposed to before May 1896 when he took the more or less opposite viewpoint -- that hysteria was primarily caused by 'repressed childhood sexual traumacy/manipulation/exploitation/assault'....There's a pretty wide gulf between the two theories -- a controversial issue that is still causing disagreement and grief, both inside and outside the psychoanalytic community today...An unresolved theoretical and therapeutic conflict issue of huge proportions that I have addressed, and continue to address, in many of my 'bi-polar, dialectic-integrative essays', yesterday, today, and tomorrow...
Which theory was 'right'? Or were they both partly right and partly wrong? Or was one theory right in some cases; the other theory right in a different set of cases? Maybe they were both sometimes a part of the same 'neurotic complex and/or syndrome'. All of these issues I have addressed in essays gone past, as well as new essays still coming in the future....
Freud kept fighting with his 'either/or' dilemma of 'which theory was right' and 'which theory was wrong' -- or so we are led to believe -- and my historical hindsight vision of the situation is that Freud should have integrated both 'partial theoies' into one bigger, more 'synthesized' bi-polar theory... where the 'clinical exposition of a particular case' dictated what part of the theory was most utilized; not choosing 'half a bi-polar theory' and using 'the same half' to dictate how a therapist/psychoanalyst should approach the opposite half......'Seek first to understand; then to be understood'. (This was one of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1989). Freud often lost his sense of seeking first to understand his clients -- especially after 1896 -- in the 'game' of trying to 'communicate, persuade, and enforce his own personal, theoretical and therapeutic understandings that had a propensity to overstate and overgeneralize the clinical facts, first in one direction (before May 1896) and then in the opposite direction (after April 1896)...
The difference between a 'learning disability' and a 'neurotic learning disorder' is that in the first case, a person has trouble making the necessary associations to constitute what we call 'learning' and/or the person has trouble 'remembering' these associations -- this may be because of a 'neurological-biochemical-brain dysfunction' (or it may be because of 'lack of interest and/or desire to make the associative connection'; in contrast, with a 'neurotic learning disorder', a person in effect 'learns too much', he or she puts together 'bad, dysfunctional, associations' or as Freud called them -- 'false connections' -- which come back to haunt and hurt the person in later situations that are deemed 'similar' or 'the same' but may be 'significantly different' in important ways that are essentially missed. Freud was a significant, serial 'culprit' in generating his own 'associatively reductionistic and/or overly stated false connections'...
Transference 'counter-phobic', 'obsessive-compulsive' neuroses occur when we subconsciously take an adult scene that is partly similar, partly different than our 'earlier (usually childhood) traumacy scene' -- and we find ways of 'manipulating' the new scene until we have effectively turned it into a 'symbolic re-creation' of our earlier childhood scene. The 'transference goal or game' here is to 'turn this later scene into a re-creation of our earlier scene' so that we can use the present scene in an attempt to 'master' a 'surrogate adult transference figure' in a sexual and/or aggressive manner so as to attempt to 'undo the psychological message' that we keep repeating to ourselves courtesy of our childhood rejecting transference figure that we are 'weak, rejectable, helpless and/or not worthy' in the presence of our perceived more powerful, more worthy 'childhood/adult transference figure'...
With 'learning', we need a balance -- just like everything else in life -- between 'more than not enough' (of the 'right' type of learning) and 'less than too much' (of the 'wrong' type of learning).
The same goes for 'distinguishing differences' -- between 'not distinguishing enough differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people..., and 'distinguishing too many differences' between different situations, different contexts, different people...that or who may still hold a certain 'core commonality' that should be registered...relative to present and/or future interpretations, evaluations, and decisions...
That completes our little discussion about 'neurosis' today...
-- dgb, April 10th, 11th, 2011, updated Feb. 18th, 2012....
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Comparing 9 Other Models of The Psyche/Personality With My Own Multi-Integrative, '16 Compartment' DGB Model of The Psyche/Personality
All else being equal, simpler is usually preferrable to more complicated and convoluted... However, there is also a time when 'larger, more integrative, multi-dialectic models' may have their functional advantage as the larger, integrative model may minimize some of the disadvantages and limitations of the smaller, less integrative models.
Remember: Every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction (including mine). But just like 'The Quantum-Dialectic Model' in physics, maybe two or more opposing theories integrated together can carry us further in terms of their combined overall 'evolutionary functionality' than any smaller, more 'unilateral' theory standing by its lonesome on a solitary hill, with a flag on top of this hill, like Napoleon with his white stallion, narcissistically proclaiming to to the world around him: 'This is my territory, only my territory, and thou shalt not trespass -- or meet my cannon!'
The relative simplicity of the '3 compartment' Freudian model of the psyche (id, ego, superego), much like the even simpler '2 compartment' Gestalt model (topdog/underdog) is much of what makes each of these 'clinically used' models attractive.
It should be added that both the Freudian and the Gestalt model are 'bipolar' or 'dialectic' in that they involve 'opposite sides of the personality' either in conflict with each other, or in unity with each other, or somewhere in between. These models have their philosophical foundations in the most ancient Greek philosophies/philosophers -- specifically, Anaximander and Heraclitus who both examined opposite forces in the world as well as in the personality; the same can be said about Lao Tse and ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly Daoism, and more particularly, the bipolar concepts of 'yin' (feminine forces) and 'yang' (masculine forces).
In the Freudian model, the 'id' and 'superego' are usually at odds with each other (instinctual impulses vs. social restraints) with 'the ego' playing the combined roles of 'Primary Stimulus Perceiver, Interpreter, and Evaluator', 'Central Mediator Between Opposing Internal/External Forces', 'Compromise Creator and Negotiator', 'Conflict Resolver', and 'Chief Executive Officer'.
In the Gestalt model, the concept of the 'Central Integrating Ego' is basically assumed as 'the topdog' and 'underdog' parts of our personality try -- and/or don't try -- to work out their 'conflicting/competing differences' with each other.
The same goes for the Jungian model as again a study in 'bipolarities in the personality' is in order: first, between The Conscious and Unconscious Parts of The Personality or Psyche, then between The 'Personal' and 'Collective' Unconscious, then between The competing/conflicting 'Archetypes of: The 'Personna' and 'Shadow', 'The Animus' (in women) and 'The Anima' (in men), with the archetype of 'The Self' being the 'Central, Unconscious Integrating Force in The Personality/Psyche'.
'Dissociations/alienations' can happen between any and/or all of these bipolar parts in the personality that all have a biological, psychological, and evolutionary function, but each or any can become 'inflated' or 'deflated', 'dominant' or 'suppressed/repressed', 'in balance' or 'out of balance', 'unified' or, as stated above, dissociated/alienated/disconnected.
The different 'Object Relations' and 'Transactional Analysis' models that exist out there today all focus on the concept of 'ego-state' which involves dividing the 'ego' as defined by Freud into different bipolar 'ego-states' or 'competing/conflicting 'ego-instincts and/or functions'.
Alfred Adler's model of the personality/psyche is asserted to be 'unified' as opposed to 'conflicted' and/or 'bipolar' but Adler's concepts of 'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' can easily be turned into 'competing ego states' such as the Gestalt concepts of 'topdog' vs. 'underdog' or 'inferiority' vs. 'superiority complexes' or 'under-ego' vs. 'super-ego' or 'superior-ego', which is one of the 'extrapolating features' of my own 16 compartment model.
Finally, the 'Humanistic-Existential' models of the personality that exist out there -- Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, for example -- all trumpet the idea of 'self-actualization', which were preceded by what Jung called 'individuation', and before Jung by Nietzsche with his concepts such as 'The Dionysian vs. Apollonian Personalities' (and ideally, a nice balance between the two bipolar parts of the personality), 'The Will To Power', 'The Abyss', 'The Rope', and 'The Superman'.
A bipolarity can be seen in all these 'humanistic-existential' regards between the 'alienated and/or self-alientated' person on the one hand, vs. the more 'self-actualized' or 'self-fulfilled' or 'individuated' person on the other hand. This is deemed to be one of the most important distinctions between the 'healthy' and 'unhealty' personality by anyone claiming to be a 'humanistic-existentialist' out there.
I forgot one model. The 'Cognitive' models, the 'Cognitive-Behavioral' models, and The 'Korzybski-Hayakawa-General Semantic' model all strive to improve or enhance 'rational-empirical perceiving, interpreting, evaluating, and communicating functions' within what will be called in my model 'The Central Ego'.
Bring all of these partly different, partly similar models -- I count about 9 of them: 1. Ancient Bipolar/Dialectic Philosophy Models; 2. Nietzsche; 3. Freud; 4. Jung; 5. Adler; 6. Klein and The Object Relationists; 7. Berne and Transactional Analysis; 8. Eric Fromm and The Humanistic Existentialists; 9. Korzybski, Ellis, Beck, Meichenbaum, and the Cogitive-(Behavioral) Psychologists.
You should find all 9 of these different models of the personality at least partly captured in my 16 compartment model below.
The DGB Model of The Psyche
A/ The Conscious Personality
01. The Nurturing-(Encouraging-Supportive) Superego;
02. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
03. The Righteous-Critical-(Rejecting/Exciting) Superego;
04. The (Conscious) Shadow-Id;
05. The Central Ego;
06. The Personna;
07. The Co-Operative-Compliant-Disapproval-(Conflict)-Avoiding Underego;
08. The Rebellious-(Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Underego;
09. The Rebellious-(Righteous-Criticial-Rejecting) Underego;
B/ The Subconscious Personality
10. The Dream Weaver;
11. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id Vault;
12. The Memory-Learning-Transference Templates and Complexes;
13. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id;
14. The (Nietzschean Existential) Abyss;
15. The (Nietzschean Existential) Mountain;
16. The Genetic Potential Self (Our 'GPS').
Perhaps this will make my model look at least a little less foreign to my academic readers, and/or professional social workers, psychologists, and/or psychotherapists.
Enough for today...
-- dgb, Feb. 4th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations and Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
Remember: Every theory carries the seeds of its own self-destruction (including mine). But just like 'The Quantum-Dialectic Model' in physics, maybe two or more opposing theories integrated together can carry us further in terms of their combined overall 'evolutionary functionality' than any smaller, more 'unilateral' theory standing by its lonesome on a solitary hill, with a flag on top of this hill, like Napoleon with his white stallion, narcissistically proclaiming to to the world around him: 'This is my territory, only my territory, and thou shalt not trespass -- or meet my cannon!'
The relative simplicity of the '3 compartment' Freudian model of the psyche (id, ego, superego), much like the even simpler '2 compartment' Gestalt model (topdog/underdog) is much of what makes each of these 'clinically used' models attractive.
It should be added that both the Freudian and the Gestalt model are 'bipolar' or 'dialectic' in that they involve 'opposite sides of the personality' either in conflict with each other, or in unity with each other, or somewhere in between. These models have their philosophical foundations in the most ancient Greek philosophies/philosophers -- specifically, Anaximander and Heraclitus who both examined opposite forces in the world as well as in the personality; the same can be said about Lao Tse and ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly Daoism, and more particularly, the bipolar concepts of 'yin' (feminine forces) and 'yang' (masculine forces).
In the Freudian model, the 'id' and 'superego' are usually at odds with each other (instinctual impulses vs. social restraints) with 'the ego' playing the combined roles of 'Primary Stimulus Perceiver, Interpreter, and Evaluator', 'Central Mediator Between Opposing Internal/External Forces', 'Compromise Creator and Negotiator', 'Conflict Resolver', and 'Chief Executive Officer'.
In the Gestalt model, the concept of the 'Central Integrating Ego' is basically assumed as 'the topdog' and 'underdog' parts of our personality try -- and/or don't try -- to work out their 'conflicting/competing differences' with each other.
The same goes for the Jungian model as again a study in 'bipolarities in the personality' is in order: first, between The Conscious and Unconscious Parts of The Personality or Psyche, then between The 'Personal' and 'Collective' Unconscious, then between The competing/conflicting 'Archetypes of: The 'Personna' and 'Shadow', 'The Animus' (in women) and 'The Anima' (in men), with the archetype of 'The Self' being the 'Central, Unconscious Integrating Force in The Personality/Psyche'.
'Dissociations/alienations' can happen between any and/or all of these bipolar parts in the personality that all have a biological, psychological, and evolutionary function, but each or any can become 'inflated' or 'deflated', 'dominant' or 'suppressed/repressed', 'in balance' or 'out of balance', 'unified' or, as stated above, dissociated/alienated/disconnected.
The different 'Object Relations' and 'Transactional Analysis' models that exist out there today all focus on the concept of 'ego-state' which involves dividing the 'ego' as defined by Freud into different bipolar 'ego-states' or 'competing/conflicting 'ego-instincts and/or functions'.
Alfred Adler's model of the personality/psyche is asserted to be 'unified' as opposed to 'conflicted' and/or 'bipolar' but Adler's concepts of 'inferiority feelings' and 'superiority striving' can easily be turned into 'competing ego states' such as the Gestalt concepts of 'topdog' vs. 'underdog' or 'inferiority' vs. 'superiority complexes' or 'under-ego' vs. 'super-ego' or 'superior-ego', which is one of the 'extrapolating features' of my own 16 compartment model.
Finally, the 'Humanistic-Existential' models of the personality that exist out there -- Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, for example -- all trumpet the idea of 'self-actualization', which were preceded by what Jung called 'individuation', and before Jung by Nietzsche with his concepts such as 'The Dionysian vs. Apollonian Personalities' (and ideally, a nice balance between the two bipolar parts of the personality), 'The Will To Power', 'The Abyss', 'The Rope', and 'The Superman'.
A bipolarity can be seen in all these 'humanistic-existential' regards between the 'alienated and/or self-alientated' person on the one hand, vs. the more 'self-actualized' or 'self-fulfilled' or 'individuated' person on the other hand. This is deemed to be one of the most important distinctions between the 'healthy' and 'unhealty' personality by anyone claiming to be a 'humanistic-existentialist' out there.
I forgot one model. The 'Cognitive' models, the 'Cognitive-Behavioral' models, and The 'Korzybski-Hayakawa-General Semantic' model all strive to improve or enhance 'rational-empirical perceiving, interpreting, evaluating, and communicating functions' within what will be called in my model 'The Central Ego'.
Bring all of these partly different, partly similar models -- I count about 9 of them: 1. Ancient Bipolar/Dialectic Philosophy Models; 2. Nietzsche; 3. Freud; 4. Jung; 5. Adler; 6. Klein and The Object Relationists; 7. Berne and Transactional Analysis; 8. Eric Fromm and The Humanistic Existentialists; 9. Korzybski, Ellis, Beck, Meichenbaum, and the Cogitive-(Behavioral) Psychologists.
You should find all 9 of these different models of the personality at least partly captured in my 16 compartment model below.
The DGB Model of The Psyche
A/ The Conscious Personality
01. The Nurturing-(Encouraging-Supportive) Superego;
02. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superego;
03. The Righteous-Critical-(Rejecting/Exciting) Superego;
04. The (Conscious) Shadow-Id;
05. The Central Ego;
06. The Personna;
07. The Co-Operative-Compliant-Disapproval-(Conflict)-Avoiding Underego;
08. The Rebellious-(Narcissistic-Hedonistic) Underego;
09. The Rebellious-(Righteous-Criticial-Rejecting) Underego;
B/ The Subconscious Personality
10. The Dream Weaver;
11. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id Vault;
12. The Memory-Learning-Transference Templates and Complexes;
13. The (Subconscious) Shadow-Id;
14. The (Nietzschean Existential) Abyss;
15. The (Nietzschean Existential) Mountain;
16. The Genetic Potential Self (Our 'GPS').
Perhaps this will make my model look at least a little less foreign to my academic readers, and/or professional social workers, psychologists, and/or psychotherapists.
Enough for today...
-- dgb, Feb. 4th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain,
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations and Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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