This overall theory or assumptive paradigm presumes the idea that everyone has both an 'essence' and an 'existence' that is partly similar to, and partly different than, anyone else's and everyone else's unique integration of essence and existence.
Thus, under this working assumption, it is totally to be expected that there is no such thing as any type of 'perfect unity, harmony, and cohesion' between any two or more people -- indeed, not even within one individual person. There is always going to be a greater or lesser degree of covert and/or overt conflict between individuation and unity, separateness and togetherness, closeness and distance, reductionism and wholism, entropy and growth, conservatism and liberalness, the status quo and change....And these make up only a small sample size of the many dichotomies, paradoxes, and bi-polarities that are 'built in' to both man's 'essence' and his 'existence'....Indeed, essence and existence form their own particular bi-polarity....just like 'nature' and 'nurture'....
We cannot escape this seemingly infinite number of active and/or inactive, covert and/or overt, dominant and/or submissive, bi-polarities in our personality. They are probably the biggest part of the 'essence' of what makes us human. Our 'collective bi-polarities' are the biggest part of what make us 'collectively human', whereas how each and everyone of us chooses to cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally deal with each and every one of these bi-polar dichotomies that enters our consciousness -- or doesn't -- is the particular 'trademark' that gives each and everyone of us our own 'unique character'.....our unique character being the particular 'blend' of 'bi-polar and/or unilateral choices' that each and everyone of us makes both habitually-chronically-repetitively, and also, uniquely each and every day...indeed, each and every moment...
Repetition is certainly a part of the essence of being human but so too is the willingness and sometimes the courage needed to 'step outside of our particular safety zone', our particular 'habitual paradigm of existence'. To the extent that we want to make our life a process of 'continually being re-born' -- which is not a process that interests all (some prefer safety, security, rootedness more than they prefer an opportunity for 'creative transcendence and personal growth'...another paradox and bi-polarity of life that demands individual choices) -- but to repeat, the opportunity for creative transcendence and personal growth demands that we be able to continually 'break down' or 'deconstruct' our past and present 'assumptive and lifestyle paradigms' and 'build' or 're-build' changing and/or expanding and/or integrating new ones....
And so it is with Psychoanalysis.
There are some who live and die by the 'authoritative credo' of 'What the Master and/or The Establishment teaches, is what you will learn, and any significant deviation from what The Master -- in this case, usually Freud -- and/or The Wide Variety of Growing and Evolving Psychoanalytic Teaching Establishments that are out there in the world today, are teaching -- well, any significant deviation in this regard, is 'not Psychoanalysis'.
In terms of authoritarianism and 'Secret Societyism', and sticking to particular stagnant and outdated concepts and theories and paradigms, Freud was undoubtedly the worst -- or best -- depending on your point of view. If you are into authoritarianism, conservatism, and sticking with the Classical Freudian status-quo, then Freud was likely your man -- your Master. But all men, all women, and all 'Masters' have limitations and liabilities in their concepts, theories, and paradigms -- both personal and professional -- and usually the two significantly overlap. Furthermore, they usually overlap -- i.e., our 'personal and professional paradigms' -- within the unique paradigm and/or set of paradigms that make up our 'personal transference complexes and templates'. This is what Brian Bird called 'transference as a universal phenomenon', and what I will add as a 'uniquely individual, universal phenomenon'.
Thus, we should not be surprised when we become 'enlightened' as to just how Freud's unique personal transference complexes and templates meshed into his professional ones (call this 'transference sublimation') resulting in the particular configuration of concepts, theories, and paradigm that we now, mostly historically, but not entirely, call 'Classical Psychoanalysis'.
Now, Psychoanalysis today has evolved into something immensely more complicated and integrated, or not integrated, than what Freud called 'Classical Psychoanalysis'. Gone for the most part -- to my knowledge and awareness -- are concepts and theories like 'castration anxiety' and 'penis envy' and perhaps -- as 'Object Relations' becomes more and more of a dominant 'sub-school force' in Psychoanalysis -- gone to, at least partly, are Freud's classic concepts and theories of 'the id' and 'The Oedipal Complex'. Not entirely, to be sure, but Object Relations doesn't really need and/or use these two classic Freudian concepts and theories. Or does it? Perhaps Object Relations needs some semblance of Freud's concept and theory of the id -- and 'the pleasure-unpleasure principle' -- at its rock bottom foundation of Object Relations Theory. I mean 'the drive' to meet and unite with people is both 'contact driven' but sometimes, indeed oftentimes, it is 'sexually and/or aggressively' driven as well. Object Relations needs a 'drive, impulse, traumacy, and fantasy theory' at its base, and for this, Object Relations may be better off leaning back into both 'Pre-Psychoanalytic Freudian Traumacy Theory' and 'Classical Freudian Drive and Fantasy Theory' than to shun and dissociate itself from both of these earlier Psychoanalytic Theories.
In short, from my particular point of view, Psychoanalysis -- should become a New, Multi-Dialectic-Interactive-Integrative-Expansive Psychoanalysis for the 21st Century -- and in this regard, needs to both incorporate significant parts of its own historical past -- meaning both Traumacy Theory and Fantasy-Drive Theory with Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology, and also perhaps elements of the likes of Bionian and Lacanian Theory, as well as 'Outside Schools of Psychoanalysis That Used To Be Inside' such as important elements of Adlerian Psychology, Rankian Psychology, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (Ego Psychology), Gestalt Therapy and other forms of Humanistic-Existentialism....as well as keep expanding in new, and wonderfully creative, meaningful directions.
In this latter respect, we need to treat Psychoanalysis like a 'person' -- full of both 'healthy, growing' and 'neurotic, entropic, self-destructive' capabilities....and in Rank's words 'unlearn' the types of concepts, theories, and procedures that are not taking us anywhere, and/or are taking us down a 'neurotic, entropic, self-destructive' path....
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en·tro·py (
n
tr
-p
)
n. pl. en·tro·pies
1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.
2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
5. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.
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This is what I call a truly 'Multi-Dialectic-Interactive-Integrative-Expansive School of Psychology...and it is my goal within Hegel's Hotel to 'show a path -- obviously, it won't be perfect, it will have flaws in its own right that others will pick apart and deconstruct -- down this multi-dialectic-interactive-integrative-synergetic-expansive route'....
Think of Classical Psychoanalysis as being like the 'hub' of a wheel in a bicycle with spokes leaving the hub at all different angles and directions....There is a dialectic interaction between the hub and the spokes of the wheel that propels the bicycle forward in the direction that we wish to steer 'the whole bicycle' using the 'combined angle diversity of all the different spokes attached to, and propelling outwards from, the hub'...
However, the original 'Freudian, Classical Psychoanalysis' was a highly 'Exclusive, Secret Society' -- very 'anal-selective' and 'anal-retentive', a 'projection-sublimation' of 'The Master's' own personality. Freud said that 'what Adler was doing was no good', and 'what Jung was doing was no good', and 'what Rank was doing was no good'.....and....therefore, 'take these Adlerian spokes' off the wheel, and 'take these Jungian spokes off the wheel'...and 'take these Rankian spokes off the wheel'...and before long you had a 'bicycle', if you still want to call it that, that that was barely running on a few highly selective Freudian spokes....The 'bicycle creation' had come to match 'the personality of its creator' -- highly 'anal-retentive' with lots of 'entropy' in the system -- a concept-phenomenon that Freud himself emphasized after bringing it over from physics -- and metaphorically speaking, 'the death force' that Freud had created inside Psychoanalysis was slowly squeezing out its 'life force'....Many of the 'life forces' had been taken out of the system, or never entered into the system in the first place -- a product of Freud's 'over-reductionist, anal-retentive' personality...
None of these editorial comments are really new, of course -- other critics have been stating essentially the same thing in similar or different words for the last 90 years or so...over 100 years if you go back to Joseph Breuer's criticisms of Freud's theoretical reductionism...
To a certain extent, Modern Day Psychoanalysis is now trying to put some of these 'old Psychoanalytic spokes-- e.g. traumacy theory' back on the wheel, as well as some 'new or newer ones (Object Relations, Self Psychology, Attachment Theory, Bionian Theory, Lacanian Theory...')....
Without this evolving, modern-day, process, and an inclusion of some earlier excluded concepts and theories, and/or additions of some new ones, the old Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis would have probably 'grounded itself' -- run out of 'forward propulsion' from 'lack of number and angle diversity of spokes in the wheel' -- it would have died from 'entropy' like all organisms and systems eventually do....The only way to keep a system such as Psychoanalysis alive is to 'pump new energy' into the system to counteract the destructive effects of entropy....
To an even greater extent than Modern Day Psychoanalysis, that is what I am doing here -- adding more 'energy' into the Psychoanalytic System -- more so than Modern Day Psychoanalysis because I do not feel confined and restricted by keeping Adler's, or Jung's, or Rank's, or Berne's, or Janov's, or Perls', or Masson's work out of the system...
This, I would say most definitely, makes my particular 'brand' of 'Expansive-Boundary-Breaking-Multi-Dialectic-Interactive-Integrative-Synergetic Psychoanalysis' the most unorthodox but all-encompassing brand of Psychoanalysis in the world today....with potentially 'the liveliest life force' and 'anti-entropic defensive forces' within its overall dynamic, theoretical-therapeutic system-process...
To be sure, you could say that this brand of 'All-Expansive Psychoanalysis' is also limited by the character and knowledge of its creator -- 'yours truly, DGB, me' -- and by the unique configuration of my evolving theoretical paradigm -- but it is a lot larger and livelier a multi-dialectic-system-process than any other Psychoanalytic system or process -- or any other school of psychology for that matter (I even incorporate more philosophy than anyone else) -- that is out there....
Enough of my own 'chest-beating'....
Crucial to this particular system-process is....
1. The idea of 'The Genetic Dialectic Self-Potential Self' which includes all of our inherent more generic species-wide skills, talents, abilities, etc., as well as our more unique individual skills, talents, abilities, with the first type including our ability to use mythological symbols and archetypes in our inherent 'primal-picture-mythological-symbol-imagery-thinking process'; Freud distinguished between what he called 'the primary process' (ruled by 'the pleasure principle') and 'the secondary process' (ruled by 'the reality principle' which in turn, although Freud didn't explicitly state this, is ruled more by 'the unpleasure principle', meaning those things that we need to do survive and function better but don't want to do; thus, the pleasure principle is ruled by internal drive and passion whereas the unpleasure principle requires more 'cognitive willpower' and fear of pain and/or negative consequences as opposed to being internally driven by pleasure and passion...); thirdly, I am distinguishing 'the primal process' from 'the primary process' which the former involves the use of 'symbolic-mythological picture imagery' as opposed to 'the pursuit of pleasure'...);
2. The idea of The Unborn Baby in 'The Womb Room' which -- assuming that everything is going right -- is like 'The Garden of Eden' where 'each and every need (aside from maybe 'change of fetal position' is mother-delivered', and to be contrasted sharply by 'nature's eventual expulsion of the 'in the process of being born baby from the womb';
3. The idea of 'The Great Existential Abyss of Freedom' which the newborn baby is harshly exposed to -- involving both a separation from the womb and a separation from the baby's complete 'symbiotic attachment' with the mother; to 'go backwards' is impossible can remain a 'lifelong wish' -- or 'partial wish' -- or 'temporary wish' -- or 'surrogate replacement wish' -- in the throes of great environmental and/or internal stress-- creating the first core nuclear conflict in the newborn baby between ' a wish for 'Primal Dependence' and 'Attachment-Unity to The Mother or Mother-Surrogate' and 'the wish for Self-Individuation, Self-Empowerment, and Existential Independence'...
4. The idea of the wish and search for a 'Mother-Surrogate' and/or a 'Surrogate Comfort Womb Room' and/or 'Surrogate Comfort Pleasures' all of which may turn into 'Surrogate Comfort and/or Safety Addictions' that in turn may incorporate -- the likes of 'normal' 'transitional toys' such as 'soothers', 'blankets', 'teddy bears' and the like....to later in life 'food addictions', 'drug addictions', 'alcohol addictions, 'sex addictions', 'shopping addictions', 'obsessive-compulsions', 'physical comfort rooms', 'metaphorical-conceptual comfort boxes' that we are afraid to step out of in the face of 'the individual, existential need to constantly be re-born....to constantly re-create ourselves outside of our self-perceived paradigm-boxes' (influences here: Rank, Fromm);
5. The idea of the development of more 'unique, individual customized' core nuclear conflicts during both 'The Pre-Oedipal' and 'The Oedipal Phase' of human development taking into account 'the whole Family and Non-Family Constellation of Traumacy-Non-Traumacy-Learning-Transference Factors, Co-Factors, and Evolving Fantasies, Compensations, Impulses, Ego Defensive Processes, Complexes and Templates' that will provide 'the more or less deterministic' elements or templates of our evolving character type (including our genetically passed on skills, capabilities, talents, and character predispositions...that is certainly, as Freud wrote in his classic 1912 paper, 'The Dynamics of Transference', amenable to some change and modification over time (with the introduction and effect of new experiences, new awarenesses, new compensations and behavioral strategies, etc...added onto, or replacing, our old cognitive-emotional mindsets and behavioral strategies...), but still, there is usually a 'core repetition and projective re-creation compulsion' that is very, very resistant to change, and just does not totally go away...often or usually...'til death do us part'....
That is where we will leave our presently evolving theoretical system for today....
Best wishes to everyone and their friends and families for the holiday season and the new year...
-- dgb, Dec. 24th, 2012...
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations and Creations...
-- Are Still in Process...
