From Fichte to Freud: Ten Different Types of Conceptual 'Splitting of The Holistic Self'
Originally written....July 30th, 2011...Newly edited Feb. 3rd, 2013
In this essay here, we will look at 'the splitting of the wholistic Fichtean Ego' into 'The Freudian Ego, Id, and Superego' -- and some further, still evolving, 'DGB splits in the self (psyche, personality, wholistic ego...) that extend beyond the Freudian 'triadic' (ego, id, superego) split....dgb, July 30th, 2011...
..................................................................................................
1. Introduction: Reasons For a Synthesis of Pre-Classical, Classical, and Post-Classical Psychoanalysis into 'Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalysis'
1. You cannot study human psychology properly without having a decent background in the study of philosophy -- philosophy helps to clarify the underlying assumptions of any field of study. This most certainly includes psychology;
2. You cannot properly study human 'desire' and 'fantasy' without studying human 'traumacy', and visa versa. Desire provides the 'human engine' with 'gas' to run on; traumacy creates a 'red flag' in our psyche to warn us how to avoid and/or overcome past traumacies from re-occurring in the future. (Update, Feb. 3, 2013. Paradoxically, real childhood memories -- conscious, pre-conscious, or subconscious -- often sew the seeds or create the springboard for lifelong 'narcissistic fixations', 'transference-core-nuclear-conflicts-and-obsessive-compulsive-attempted-resolution-complexes' aimed at reversing the self-esteem or ego damage or 'narcissistic injury' entailed in the original childhood traumacy memory , or alternatively, repeating the pleasure entailed in a pleasurable childhood moment, encounter, and/or relationship.)
All of this is to say that Pre-Classical Psychoanalytic Theory (Traumacy-Seduction Theory before 1897) cannot exist without Classical Psychoanalytic Theory (post-1897 Fantasy-Instinct Theory) -- and visa versa (update, Feb. 3rd, 2013. -- Add this update to the original principles listed below: and Object Relations as well as Self-Psychology need to be included as well as all the 'derivative' schools of psychology of the main psychoanalysts who were influenced by Freud but who, at some point, chose to move in a different direction than that which was acceptable to Freud, and after Freud died, the ruling faction of The Psychoanalytic Establishment and all, or some, of its interconnected Societies);
3. Similarly, it is just as ridiculous to try to dissociate 'instinct/drive/desire/fantasy theory' (i.e., Classical Psychoanalysis) from 'Object Relations Theory' (the study of relationships) and Self-Psychology Theory (the study of self-object relationships and narcissistic (self-esteem) development no different than it is to dissociate 'instinct theory' from 'the functioning of the ego and the mechanisms of defense' against these same instincts/drives/fantasies;
All of this is to say that Classical Psychoanalysis cannot live without Object Relations Theory any more than it can exist without pre-Classical Traumacy-Seduction Theory. They are all connected -- they just need someone creative enough to intgrate them all together;
4. That's me;
5. Furthermore, Psychoanalysis cannot properly exist without the external 'critical' and 'nurturing' influence of Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional-Analysis, Primal Therapy, Behavioral Therapy, Cognitve Therapy, Massonian 'Deconstructionism', and so on...They all 'dissociated' themselves from Classical Psychoanalysis -- the 'hub' of the wheel -- but they all are still connected to the hub of the Wheel, i.e., 'Psychoanalysis' -- it just needs someone creative enough to show people how they are all still connected to the 'hub of the wheel', Psychoanalysis.
6. Again, that is me;
7. In the spirit of Spinoza -- 'Everything is connected.'
8. In the spirit of Schelling -- 'Everything is dialectically connected.'
9. In the spirit of Bain -- that's me -- 'Everything is dialectically connected a hundred, a thousand, a million, a billion, trillions of times over. Higher than the American Debt Ceiling. This is what I will call being 'quantumly connected'. And from this idea of being 'quantumly connected', which means... putting all of these different academic-scholastic and clinical-therapeutic influences and ideas together, you have what I am doing here in this section of Hegel's Hotel devoted to the study of Psychoanalysis, which I will differentiate from all other 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis -- indeed, this becomes what I would view as a 'Multi-Dialectic-Integrative' School of Psychoanalysis -- by the name of:
10. GAP-DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis -- and in the larger context -- GAP-DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology.
This is the ideal of Hegel's Hotel: A Phenomenology of Spirit For The 21st Century...
I hope I am not confusing you by mixing my metaphors here, but Freud himself, in a different context (on the subject of 'memories') has likened the whole 'multi-dialectic-connection' idea to being like a 'geneological tree'.
The 'geneological tree' metaphor works well for me here, in this context, as well as the 'hotel' and 'rooms in the hotel', and 'hub' and 'spokes extending outwards from the hub' metaphors...They are all trying to get to the idea of a....
'Spinozian-Schellian-Hegelian Quantum Connection'....
This is what, again, I am referring to as 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'(in the larger context of 'DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...)
In this essay, we will focus on the subject of 'the splitting of the human psyche' -- starting with the German Idealistic Philosopher Johann Fichte, and we will finish in this context here with Freud in 1938-39.
Of particular importance to us here are:
'Ten Different Types of Conceptual Splitting of 'The Wholistic Self Into:
01. 'Consciousness' and 'Unconsciousness';
02. 'Dissociated Ego-States' (such as 'ego' and 'alter-ego');
03. 'Pleasure-instincts' and 'Ego-Instincts' (Sexual Instincts and Self-Preservation Instincts);
04. 'Pleasure-Ego' and 'Reality-Ego';
05. 'Life Instincts' and 'Death Instincts';
06. 'The Ego Ideal' and 'Superego';
07. 'The Ego', 'Superego', and 'Id';
08. 'Ego-Splitting';
09. 'Superego-Splitting';
10. 'Id-Splitting'
Let's start with the evolutionary development of the concept of the 'Whole Self' -- the 'I' -- before it/I/we start(s) to get 'conceptually and reductionistically split into however many 'Humpty Dumpty' pieces that we want to split ourselves up into. Say that this is for 'educational' and 'teaching' purposes as long as we do remember to put 'Humpty Dumpty back together again'.
If we don't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, then all of us choose to go this 'conceptual, reductionistic route', face the very real danger of becoming lost 'dissociated, fragmented, alienated, reductionistic, deterministic, automated, objectified -- souls'.
In effect, we lose the 'I' in I.
We can learn by going this route -- just like we would if we were studying the human body with all its different parts and organs and systems...
It's just that -- like studying the human body -- when studying the human mind-brain-psyche -- you can't study the individual pieces without coming back to the 'multi-dialectically united system of the whole' This is what I am calling 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
................................................................................................................
The concept ot the 'ego' was formalized in Freud's famous 1923 essay, The Ego and The Id. However, informally, he had been using the concept of the ego at least as far back as 1894 (The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense) -- and probably before.
Indeed, the concept of the ego stretches back into the philosophy of last decade of the 18th century -- specifically, as far back as the German Idealistic philosophy, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).
Fichte's philosophy was essentially the philosophy of the 'I' in an entirely subjective sense, following partly in the footsteps of Descartes, and perhaps partly in the footsteps of Spinoza. Descartes was 'The Great Subjectivist' -- 'I think, therefore I am.' Spinoza, in contrast, was 'The Great Wholist, The Great Pantheist' -- God, Nature, and Man are all the same thing, all part of the same 'Whole'. God is in Everything, and Everything is a part of God.
Kant preceded Fichte and created 'The Great Subjective-Objective Split'. We cannot 'know' anything 'objectively'; only 'subjectively' as an 'appearance' or a 'phenomenal approximation' of the 'thing-in-itself', the latter of which is beyond the boundaries of our senses -- and therefore, essentially 'unknowable'. Anything that is 'meta-physical' -- 'above and beyond physics', which in this sense, includes physics, indeed, includes everything because even physics requires the use of our senses; everything requires the use of our senses , and therefore, everything is essentially 'unknowable' as 'the thing-in-itself (our 'noumenal/objective world') that is beyond the realm of our senses.
David Hume started Kant's very 'skeptical' line of thinking, indeed, was Kant's greatest philosophical influencer, and even though Kant tried hard to get beyond Hume's 'Ultra-Empiricism and Empirical Skepticism' -- if you take hardline empiricism to its ultimate conclusion you are left with essentially nothing, other than perhaps what you see in front of your face, and Kant took even our 'senses' one step further than Hume in saying that our 'senses are imperfect' and therefore we can 'know nothing' other than what our senses tell us -- and this is our 'subjective-phenomenal world of appearances' as opposed to the ' objective-noumenal world of the things in themselves'.
Did you follow all that? Philosophy -- and epistemology (a subdivision of philosophy that focuses on the study of knowledge) -- will drive you crazy if you let it. There is a point at which we all have to say -- 'Enough is enough' -- and come back to 'pragmatic, workable reality' unless we are independently wealthy, have too much time on our hands, and like to 'fly our brain to its outer limits' for some unGodly, masochistic reason...
Suffice is to say here, that Kant 'divided our wholistic world' into two halves: 'our subjective-phenomenal world of appearances'; and our 'objective-noumenal world of things in themselves' that can't be 'known' in their ultimate 'objectivity'.
And for this, he drove many philosophers, academics, and students alike 'off the deep end of subjective and/or objective sanity'. My advice is to 'jump off the Kantian Ship' before you get to this point of 'impending epistemologica insanity'.
Fichte tried to repair Kant's very psychologically disturbing 'subjective-objective split'. However, he tried to do this using 'the ostrich's and/or psychotic's approach'.
Deny objective (noumenal) reality.
If we can't 'know' it, then it doesn't exist.
Retreat into your subjective 'Platonic Palace of Beauty and Peace'. (For Plato -- paradoxically, if things aren't confusing enough for you yet -- this 'inner world of Platonic Peace' was the 'real world of perfection' and, in contra-distinction, it was the 'objective, external world' that was the 'imperfect world of outer appearances'!!) I told you philosophy would drive you crazy if you take some of these 'off the charts' philosophical thinkers too seriously.
Coming back to Fichte -- for Fichte, there was no 'objective reality', just 'subjective reality', and we could all 'join in and share one big, happy subjective reality together' -- at least 'nationalistically' speaking (Fichte was the Father of German Nationalism...which took supremely righteous, nationalistic Germans down a rather bad path...(See...Hitler and Nazi Germany...You have to understand where Fichte was coming from as, he was not so 'subjectively out of tune with the German World that he did not see and feel the effects of Napoleon and his army at least partly destroying his country, land, and people...They eventually held him back, with help from The Prussian Army -- we are talking Germany in 1813 here... No wonder the Germans didn't like the French too much in two -- as attested by two, still to come -- World Wars...
'For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.' I believe Newton said that...
The idea applies pretty well to psychology, philosophy, politics, economics, history, and war as well as physics...
Indeed, Hegel's 'dialectic law' can be viewed as a philosophical re-statement of Newton's third law of motion and classical mechanics...which in turn is a 'formalization' of what Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Lao Tse all basically had to say in partly similar, partly different ways, in ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy...
Opposites will either attract each other and/or fight with each other...
Money, property and terrirtory, sex, power, and revenge...all play a dramatic role in the way of the world...
Opposites generally aim to overpower each other when they are not trying to attract each other, complement each other, have sex with each other, and/or have offspring with each other...Often, seemingly paradoxically, all of these tendencies 'crash and conflate' together...at least temporarily until stability can be restored or the union breaks apart...
This is the way of the world...DGB Post-Hegelian, Dialectic-Quantum Philosophy-Psychology 101...
...........................................................................................................
With Fichte, the 'ego' and the 'I' were essentially the same thing -- a division between 'subject' and 'object' was under way. Inside the human psyche, the 'ego' was in the process of becoming a more 'objectified' or 'thingified' version of the more 'subjectively experienced phenomenological I'.
Nietsche would take this 'subtle splitting of the ego' one step further than Fichte
without really putting two 'psychological labels' on Nietzsche's splt between what amounted to the 'Dionysian Ego' vs. 'The Apollonian Ego'.
In between Fichte and Nietzsche (besides Hegel), there was Schopenhauer -- the ultimate philosophical pessimist and cynic (maybe Diogenes and Hobbes both rivaled him).
Schopenhauer started to develop the 'philosophy-psychology' of 'the id' just as Fichte and Nietzsche were starting to develop the philosophy-psychology of the 'ego'. Freud didn't give much recognition to his philosophical influences but he owned Nietzsche's collected works...And by the time he wrote 'The Ego and The Id' (1923), he had to be pretty familiar with Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Freud (1856-1939). lived for a while at the same time, a country or two apart from each other -- Freud was 11 and a half years younger than Nietzsche. For the last 10 years of his life (1890 to 1900), Nietzsche was basically out of commission in a mental institution. (If Nietzsche had lived in France, Freud, Charcot, and Janet might have 'bumped into' Nietzsche...I wonder if 'hypnotism' might have helped Nietzsche....probably not...
So Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Breuer, Charcot, and Janet -- as well as his 'empirical science influences' in physiology, neurology, biology, biochemistry, genetics, and evolution theory (Brucke, Helmholz, Fechner -- the principle of equilibrium -- Darwin...) -- cemented a 'synthesized' philosophical-scientific-psychological foundation in Freud's mind for what would inspire Freud to create the continually evolving school of 'Psychoanalysis' starting from the late 1880s and ending in 1938-1939 -- a span of some 50 years.
Beginning about 1894 with 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense', Freud, based on his clinical observations, started to 'split up the psyche', first between 'consciousness' and 'unconsciousness', with the 'ego' originally only referring to the conscious part of the personality. Thus, at this point we would have to say that Freud made a division between 'The Wholistic Self' and 'The Ego' where the ego only reflected the conscious elements in the personality.
This idea, Freud would change much later in his career (formalized in 1923 with his publication of The Ego and The Id), concluding that there wee 'unconscious elements of the ego' just like with the 'superego' and the 'id'. But it is important to recognize that, starting in 1894, 'the ego' -- unlike with Fichte, where ego and The Wholistic Self, i.e., our entire 'I', were the same thing -- Freud utilized the concept of the ego to reflect only a particular part of our whole psyche, at the beginning, only the conscious, 'reality based' part as opposed to the unconscious 'sexually traumatic' part. After, 1896, the 'repressed sexually traumatic part' would become the 'repressed sexually instinctive and impulsive part' as Freud moved more and more into 'genetic instinctual theory' as opposed to 'socially traumatic theory'.
In 1911, (Formulations on The Two Principles of Mental Functioning), Freud drew up another split in the personality that created some new problems -- a distinction between 'the pleasure instincts' and 'the ego instincts'. The pleasure instincts were primarily -- if not exclusively -- about the sexual instincts; in contrast the ego-instincts were about problem-solving, conflict-resolving, and self-preservation.
However, this created a bit of a problem in that up to that point -- say between 1900 and 1910, 'instincts' originated in the unconscious, not the conscious ego, and there was no written Freudian concept of 'ego-instincts'. That changed in a small 1910 essay (S.E. V.11, p. 214.) on psychogenic disturbances in vision, and then it appeared again in the 1911 paper cited above in the form of the distinction between 'pleasure instincts' and 'ego instincts'. One could further ask the question, if we are to call all 'ego-activity' -- 'instincts' -- then can't it easily be argued that some 'ego-instincts' are 'pleasurable'?
To be sure, I wouldn't be spending the thousands of hours on the work that I am doing in Hegel's Hotel if I didn't find the 'ego-activity' pleasurable...Thus, 'pleasure-instincts' and 'ego-instincts' can merge -- and it doesn't have to be only when I am thinking about sex! Freud seemed to be going down a deadend here, and shortly thereafter, the distinction disappeared.
The distinction between the sexual instincts and the self-preservation instincts would remain, and in 1920 they would become 'lumped together' as opposed to 'conflicting with each other' under the one heading of the 'life instinct' which then were contrasted against the 'death instinct'. Freud always liked to work with 'dualism' (dialectic bi-polarities) -- it's just the dualities kept changing faster than many readers, students, and even some scholars could keep up with them.
So Freud was 'splitting up the instincts' both in the conscious and in the unconscious, or in the ego
and in the id, and very briefly the ego was split up to into the 'reality ego' and the 'pleasure ego'
which in 1923 would be replaced by the ego and the id.
There was even a brief split between the 'ego-ideal' and the 'superego' (the superego being the 'enforcement agency' for the ego ideal), until the ego ideal disappeared leaving only the superego.
But otherwise, Freud left the 'superego' in one piece. Others would not.
Object Relations and Transactional Analysis would divide up the 'superego' into different compartments. For example, Transactional Analysis, in a simpler technical language, would differentiate between 'The (Internalized) Nurturing Parent' and 'The (Internalized) Critical Parent'. I've added 'The (Internalized) Narcissistic Parent'.
In this essay here, we will look at 'the splitting of the wholistic Fichtean Ego' into 'The Freudian Ego, Id, and Superego' -- and some further, still evolving, 'DGB splits in the self (psyche, personality, wholistic ego...) that extend beyond the Freudian 'triadic' (ego, id, superego) split....dgb, July 30th, 2011...
..................................................................................................
1. Introduction: Reasons For a Synthesis of Pre-Classical, Classical, and Post-Classical Psychoanalysis into 'Quantum-Dialectic Psychoanalysis'
1. You cannot study human psychology properly without having a decent background in the study of philosophy -- philosophy helps to clarify the underlying assumptions of any field of study. This most certainly includes psychology;
2. You cannot properly study human 'desire' and 'fantasy' without studying human 'traumacy', and visa versa. Desire provides the 'human engine' with 'gas' to run on; traumacy creates a 'red flag' in our psyche to warn us how to avoid and/or overcome past traumacies from re-occurring in the future. (Update, Feb. 3, 2013. Paradoxically, real childhood memories -- conscious, pre-conscious, or subconscious -- often sew the seeds or create the springboard for lifelong 'narcissistic fixations', 'transference-core-nuclear-conflicts-and-obsessive-compulsive-attempted-resolution-complexes' aimed at reversing the self-esteem or ego damage or 'narcissistic injury' entailed in the original childhood traumacy memory , or alternatively, repeating the pleasure entailed in a pleasurable childhood moment, encounter, and/or relationship.)
All of this is to say that Pre-Classical Psychoanalytic Theory (Traumacy-Seduction Theory before 1897) cannot exist without Classical Psychoanalytic Theory (post-1897 Fantasy-Instinct Theory) -- and visa versa (update, Feb. 3rd, 2013. -- Add this update to the original principles listed below: and Object Relations as well as Self-Psychology need to be included as well as all the 'derivative' schools of psychology of the main psychoanalysts who were influenced by Freud but who, at some point, chose to move in a different direction than that which was acceptable to Freud, and after Freud died, the ruling faction of The Psychoanalytic Establishment and all, or some, of its interconnected Societies);
3. Similarly, it is just as ridiculous to try to dissociate 'instinct/drive/desire/fantasy theory' (i.e., Classical Psychoanalysis) from 'Object Relations Theory' (the study of relationships) and Self-Psychology Theory (the study of self-object relationships and narcissistic (self-esteem) development no different than it is to dissociate 'instinct theory' from 'the functioning of the ego and the mechanisms of defense' against these same instincts/drives/fantasies;
All of this is to say that Classical Psychoanalysis cannot live without Object Relations Theory any more than it can exist without pre-Classical Traumacy-Seduction Theory. They are all connected -- they just need someone creative enough to intgrate them all together;
4. That's me;
5. Furthermore, Psychoanalysis cannot properly exist without the external 'critical' and 'nurturing' influence of Adlerian Psychology, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional-Analysis, Primal Therapy, Behavioral Therapy, Cognitve Therapy, Massonian 'Deconstructionism', and so on...They all 'dissociated' themselves from Classical Psychoanalysis -- the 'hub' of the wheel -- but they all are still connected to the hub of the Wheel, i.e., 'Psychoanalysis' -- it just needs someone creative enough to show people how they are all still connected to the 'hub of the wheel', Psychoanalysis.
6. Again, that is me;
7. In the spirit of Spinoza -- 'Everything is connected.'
8. In the spirit of Schelling -- 'Everything is dialectically connected.'
9. In the spirit of Bain -- that's me -- 'Everything is dialectically connected a hundred, a thousand, a million, a billion, trillions of times over. Higher than the American Debt Ceiling. This is what I will call being 'quantumly connected'. And from this idea of being 'quantumly connected', which means... putting all of these different academic-scholastic and clinical-therapeutic influences and ideas together, you have what I am doing here in this section of Hegel's Hotel devoted to the study of Psychoanalysis, which I will differentiate from all other 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis -- indeed, this becomes what I would view as a 'Multi-Dialectic-Integrative' School of Psychoanalysis -- by the name of:
10. GAP-DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis -- and in the larger context -- GAP-DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology.
This is the ideal of Hegel's Hotel: A Phenomenology of Spirit For The 21st Century...
I hope I am not confusing you by mixing my metaphors here, but Freud himself, in a different context (on the subject of 'memories') has likened the whole 'multi-dialectic-connection' idea to being like a 'geneological tree'.
The 'geneological tree' metaphor works well for me here, in this context, as well as the 'hotel' and 'rooms in the hotel', and 'hub' and 'spokes extending outwards from the hub' metaphors...They are all trying to get to the idea of a....
'Spinozian-Schellian-Hegelian Quantum Connection'....
This is what, again, I am referring to as 'DGB Quantum Psychoanalysis'(in the larger context of 'DGB Quantum Philosophy-Psychology-Politics...)
In this essay, we will focus on the subject of 'the splitting of the human psyche' -- starting with the German Idealistic Philosopher Johann Fichte, and we will finish in this context here with Freud in 1938-39.
Of particular importance to us here are:
'Ten Different Types of Conceptual Splitting of 'The Wholistic Self Into:
01. 'Consciousness' and 'Unconsciousness';
02. 'Dissociated Ego-States' (such as 'ego' and 'alter-ego');
03. 'Pleasure-instincts' and 'Ego-Instincts' (Sexual Instincts and Self-Preservation Instincts);
04. 'Pleasure-Ego' and 'Reality-Ego';
05. 'Life Instincts' and 'Death Instincts';
06. 'The Ego Ideal' and 'Superego';
07. 'The Ego', 'Superego', and 'Id';
08. 'Ego-Splitting';
09. 'Superego-Splitting';
10. 'Id-Splitting'
Let's start with the evolutionary development of the concept of the 'Whole Self' -- the 'I' -- before it/I/we start(s) to get 'conceptually and reductionistically split into however many 'Humpty Dumpty' pieces that we want to split ourselves up into. Say that this is for 'educational' and 'teaching' purposes as long as we do remember to put 'Humpty Dumpty back together again'.
If we don't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, then all of us choose to go this 'conceptual, reductionistic route', face the very real danger of becoming lost 'dissociated, fragmented, alienated, reductionistic, deterministic, automated, objectified -- souls'.
In effect, we lose the 'I' in I.
We can learn by going this route -- just like we would if we were studying the human body with all its different parts and organs and systems...
It's just that -- like studying the human body -- when studying the human mind-brain-psyche -- you can't study the individual pieces without coming back to the 'multi-dialectically united system of the whole' This is what I am calling 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
................................................................................................................
The concept ot the 'ego' was formalized in Freud's famous 1923 essay, The Ego and The Id. However, informally, he had been using the concept of the ego at least as far back as 1894 (The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense) -- and probably before.
Indeed, the concept of the ego stretches back into the philosophy of last decade of the 18th century -- specifically, as far back as the German Idealistic philosophy, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814).
Fichte's philosophy was essentially the philosophy of the 'I' in an entirely subjective sense, following partly in the footsteps of Descartes, and perhaps partly in the footsteps of Spinoza. Descartes was 'The Great Subjectivist' -- 'I think, therefore I am.' Spinoza, in contrast, was 'The Great Wholist, The Great Pantheist' -- God, Nature, and Man are all the same thing, all part of the same 'Whole'. God is in Everything, and Everything is a part of God.
Kant preceded Fichte and created 'The Great Subjective-Objective Split'. We cannot 'know' anything 'objectively'; only 'subjectively' as an 'appearance' or a 'phenomenal approximation' of the 'thing-in-itself', the latter of which is beyond the boundaries of our senses -- and therefore, essentially 'unknowable'. Anything that is 'meta-physical' -- 'above and beyond physics', which in this sense, includes physics, indeed, includes everything because even physics requires the use of our senses; everything requires the use of our senses , and therefore, everything is essentially 'unknowable' as 'the thing-in-itself (our 'noumenal/objective world') that is beyond the realm of our senses.
David Hume started Kant's very 'skeptical' line of thinking, indeed, was Kant's greatest philosophical influencer, and even though Kant tried hard to get beyond Hume's 'Ultra-Empiricism and Empirical Skepticism' -- if you take hardline empiricism to its ultimate conclusion you are left with essentially nothing, other than perhaps what you see in front of your face, and Kant took even our 'senses' one step further than Hume in saying that our 'senses are imperfect' and therefore we can 'know nothing' other than what our senses tell us -- and this is our 'subjective-phenomenal world of appearances' as opposed to the ' objective-noumenal world of the things in themselves'.
Did you follow all that? Philosophy -- and epistemology (a subdivision of philosophy that focuses on the study of knowledge) -- will drive you crazy if you let it. There is a point at which we all have to say -- 'Enough is enough' -- and come back to 'pragmatic, workable reality' unless we are independently wealthy, have too much time on our hands, and like to 'fly our brain to its outer limits' for some unGodly, masochistic reason...
Suffice is to say here, that Kant 'divided our wholistic world' into two halves: 'our subjective-phenomenal world of appearances'; and our 'objective-noumenal world of things in themselves' that can't be 'known' in their ultimate 'objectivity'.
And for this, he drove many philosophers, academics, and students alike 'off the deep end of subjective and/or objective sanity'. My advice is to 'jump off the Kantian Ship' before you get to this point of 'impending epistemologica insanity'.
Fichte tried to repair Kant's very psychologically disturbing 'subjective-objective split'. However, he tried to do this using 'the ostrich's and/or psychotic's approach'.
Deny objective (noumenal) reality.
If we can't 'know' it, then it doesn't exist.
Retreat into your subjective 'Platonic Palace of Beauty and Peace'. (For Plato -- paradoxically, if things aren't confusing enough for you yet -- this 'inner world of Platonic Peace' was the 'real world of perfection' and, in contra-distinction, it was the 'objective, external world' that was the 'imperfect world of outer appearances'!!) I told you philosophy would drive you crazy if you take some of these 'off the charts' philosophical thinkers too seriously.
Coming back to Fichte -- for Fichte, there was no 'objective reality', just 'subjective reality', and we could all 'join in and share one big, happy subjective reality together' -- at least 'nationalistically' speaking (Fichte was the Father of German Nationalism...which took supremely righteous, nationalistic Germans down a rather bad path...(See...Hitler and Nazi Germany...You have to understand where Fichte was coming from as, he was not so 'subjectively out of tune with the German World that he did not see and feel the effects of Napoleon and his army at least partly destroying his country, land, and people...They eventually held him back, with help from The Prussian Army -- we are talking Germany in 1813 here... No wonder the Germans didn't like the French too much in two -- as attested by two, still to come -- World Wars...
'For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.' I believe Newton said that...
The idea applies pretty well to psychology, philosophy, politics, economics, history, and war as well as physics...
Indeed, Hegel's 'dialectic law' can be viewed as a philosophical re-statement of Newton's third law of motion and classical mechanics...which in turn is a 'formalization' of what Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Lao Tse all basically had to say in partly similar, partly different ways, in ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy...
Opposites will either attract each other and/or fight with each other...
Money, property and terrirtory, sex, power, and revenge...all play a dramatic role in the way of the world...
Opposites generally aim to overpower each other when they are not trying to attract each other, complement each other, have sex with each other, and/or have offspring with each other...Often, seemingly paradoxically, all of these tendencies 'crash and conflate' together...at least temporarily until stability can be restored or the union breaks apart...
This is the way of the world...DGB Post-Hegelian, Dialectic-Quantum Philosophy-Psychology 101...
...........................................................................................................
With Fichte, the 'ego' and the 'I' were essentially the same thing -- a division between 'subject' and 'object' was under way. Inside the human psyche, the 'ego' was in the process of becoming a more 'objectified' or 'thingified' version of the more 'subjectively experienced phenomenological I'.
Nietsche would take this 'subtle splitting of the ego' one step further than Fichte
without really putting two 'psychological labels' on Nietzsche's splt between what amounted to the 'Dionysian Ego' vs. 'The Apollonian Ego'.
In between Fichte and Nietzsche (besides Hegel), there was Schopenhauer -- the ultimate philosophical pessimist and cynic (maybe Diogenes and Hobbes both rivaled him).
Schopenhauer started to develop the 'philosophy-psychology' of 'the id' just as Fichte and Nietzsche were starting to develop the philosophy-psychology of the 'ego'. Freud didn't give much recognition to his philosophical influences but he owned Nietzsche's collected works...And by the time he wrote 'The Ego and The Id' (1923), he had to be pretty familiar with Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Freud (1856-1939). lived for a while at the same time, a country or two apart from each other -- Freud was 11 and a half years younger than Nietzsche. For the last 10 years of his life (1890 to 1900), Nietzsche was basically out of commission in a mental institution. (If Nietzsche had lived in France, Freud, Charcot, and Janet might have 'bumped into' Nietzsche...I wonder if 'hypnotism' might have helped Nietzsche....probably not...
So Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Breuer, Charcot, and Janet -- as well as his 'empirical science influences' in physiology, neurology, biology, biochemistry, genetics, and evolution theory (Brucke, Helmholz, Fechner -- the principle of equilibrium -- Darwin...) -- cemented a 'synthesized' philosophical-scientific-psychological foundation in Freud's mind for what would inspire Freud to create the continually evolving school of 'Psychoanalysis' starting from the late 1880s and ending in 1938-1939 -- a span of some 50 years.
Beginning about 1894 with 'The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense', Freud, based on his clinical observations, started to 'split up the psyche', first between 'consciousness' and 'unconsciousness', with the 'ego' originally only referring to the conscious part of the personality. Thus, at this point we would have to say that Freud made a division between 'The Wholistic Self' and 'The Ego' where the ego only reflected the conscious elements in the personality.
This idea, Freud would change much later in his career (formalized in 1923 with his publication of The Ego and The Id), concluding that there wee 'unconscious elements of the ego' just like with the 'superego' and the 'id'. But it is important to recognize that, starting in 1894, 'the ego' -- unlike with Fichte, where ego and The Wholistic Self, i.e., our entire 'I', were the same thing -- Freud utilized the concept of the ego to reflect only a particular part of our whole psyche, at the beginning, only the conscious, 'reality based' part as opposed to the unconscious 'sexually traumatic' part. After, 1896, the 'repressed sexually traumatic part' would become the 'repressed sexually instinctive and impulsive part' as Freud moved more and more into 'genetic instinctual theory' as opposed to 'socially traumatic theory'.
In 1911, (Formulations on The Two Principles of Mental Functioning), Freud drew up another split in the personality that created some new problems -- a distinction between 'the pleasure instincts' and 'the ego instincts'. The pleasure instincts were primarily -- if not exclusively -- about the sexual instincts; in contrast the ego-instincts were about problem-solving, conflict-resolving, and self-preservation.
However, this created a bit of a problem in that up to that point -- say between 1900 and 1910, 'instincts' originated in the unconscious, not the conscious ego, and there was no written Freudian concept of 'ego-instincts'. That changed in a small 1910 essay (S.E. V.11, p. 214.) on psychogenic disturbances in vision, and then it appeared again in the 1911 paper cited above in the form of the distinction between 'pleasure instincts' and 'ego instincts'. One could further ask the question, if we are to call all 'ego-activity' -- 'instincts' -- then can't it easily be argued that some 'ego-instincts' are 'pleasurable'?
To be sure, I wouldn't be spending the thousands of hours on the work that I am doing in Hegel's Hotel if I didn't find the 'ego-activity' pleasurable...Thus, 'pleasure-instincts' and 'ego-instincts' can merge -- and it doesn't have to be only when I am thinking about sex! Freud seemed to be going down a deadend here, and shortly thereafter, the distinction disappeared.
The distinction between the sexual instincts and the self-preservation instincts would remain, and in 1920 they would become 'lumped together' as opposed to 'conflicting with each other' under the one heading of the 'life instinct' which then were contrasted against the 'death instinct'. Freud always liked to work with 'dualism' (dialectic bi-polarities) -- it's just the dualities kept changing faster than many readers, students, and even some scholars could keep up with them.
So Freud was 'splitting up the instincts' both in the conscious and in the unconscious, or in the ego
and in the id, and very briefly the ego was split up to into the 'reality ego' and the 'pleasure ego'
which in 1923 would be replaced by the ego and the id.
There was even a brief split between the 'ego-ideal' and the 'superego' (the superego being the 'enforcement agency' for the ego ideal), until the ego ideal disappeared leaving only the superego.
But otherwise, Freud left the 'superego' in one piece. Others would not.
Object Relations and Transactional Analysis would divide up the 'superego' into different compartments. For example, Transactional Analysis, in a simpler technical language, would differentiate between 'The (Internalized) Nurturing Parent' and 'The (Internalized) Critical Parent'. I've added 'The (Internalized) Narcissistic Parent'.
