Reconstructed and expanded again, October 17th, 2011...
Friedrich Nietzsche, born October 15th, 1844....Died August 25th, 1900...
Maybe I am not doing proper justice to Nietzsche here...but I thought I would pay tribute to him on his birthday by combining two of his more famous quotes...and then adding a little more...
However, before we get there, below is an assortment of original Nietzschean quotes from the website 'Brainy Quotes'...
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Here is one that I really like....
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Another one I like...
Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
Friedrich Nietzsche
And an assortment more...
Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions. (This one sounds like Hegel and/or Nietzsche from his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy'. -- dgb)
Friedrich Nietzsche
This one has a zinger attached to it...
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
They keep coming...
Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Fear is the mother of morality.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Here's the other quote I was looking for...the first and the last one, often highlighted on the tv show, Criminal Minds
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Friedrich Nietzsche
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And now for my integrative creation....for better or for worse...I think I have something worthwhile to add here....
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If we stare too long or too deeply into our own private Abyss, our 'Id Vault' or 'Shadow', we may find a 'Monster' that stares back at us....(Or perhaps the ghost of Nietzsche still trying to free himself from the Abyss of his own insanity)...a 'Monster' -- symbolic or real --ready to pull us down with him....or ready to jump up, out of our Abyss, and into our Conscious Personality...our 'Conscious Ego-as-a-Whole'....to bring either darkness to the light of our day...or conversely....to bring 'light' and 'healing' to the darkness of our day...
Our 'Monster' can be a 'Bad Guy' who brings us nothing but bad will, destruction and self-destruction....and/or our 'Monster'...our 'Id' or 'It' or 'Shadow' can sometimes be a'Superhero' who has the potential to 'cure us' of our 'neurosis' and/or 'psychopathology' or even to cure the 'socio-neurosis' and/or 'socio-psychopathology' of a whole culture that cannot or will not see its own 'neurotic cultural blindspot' or 'centre of socio-psychopathology'....Erich Fromm called this 'the pathology of normalcy' and R.D. Laing and Thomas Szaz -- as well as many other well-known socio-psychologists -- spent much of their professional careers emphasizing the 'neurotic and/or pathological cultural factors' involved in 'individual neurosis and psychopathology' that can be like 'the canary in the coal mine'...
Only there may be thousands and thousands of 'canaries' showing basically the same pathological symtoms -- metaphorically speaking, 'lack of oxygen, vibrancy, passion, movement, and life' -- for example, some form of 'existential neurosis', 'chronic depression', 'covert, overt, and/or displaced/transferred anxiety and/or rage', etc...
Our 'monster from our abyss' could be our own personal 'Compensatory Superhero' to protect us against those might be trying to 'squeeze the existential life and passion out of us'...
These 'cultural pathologies -- disguised as 'cultural norms and written or unwritten laws' in a society that may not be 'normal' at all -- may indeed be hostile to human growth and wellness -- and, in their cultural pathology, these sociopathological norms may contribute to the growth of individual 'psychopathology', 'neurosis', 'mental illness', physical illness, the imprisonment and/or institutionalization of men and women who do not deserve to be imprisoned or institutionalized, and the suppression, repression, oppression... of upper, middle, and/or lower classes for the same or different reasons...
'The Monster', the 'Bad Guy' or 'The Bad Guy turned Superhero' -- such as Nietzsche in his hayday with his 'rhetorically hard-hitting Hammer' -- can be either 'bad' or 'good' depending on the context of the situation -- and what is being 'rhetorically hammered away at' (i.e., 'deconstructed'), metaphorically speaking, of course.
Every 'corrupt' or 'narcissistically pathological' culture needs a 'Bad Guy-Superhero' to stand up with courage against all that needs to be 'culturally detoxified and cleansed'...and against all those with power who abuse and exploit that power, and do not want to see the status-quo changed...who profit or otherwise benefit from the status-quo the way it is -- in ways that are conspiring to hurt and/or even kill innocent people in the process...
Freud could have been one of those Courageous-Bad Guy-Superheroes' (and still partly was one) but he either ran out of ethical-moral courage (Masson's thesis) and/or he simply had other 'fish to fry' -- namely his Dream Theory, Fantasy Theory, Instinctual Impulse Theory, Childhood Sexuality Theory, Oedipal Theory...-- that he thought (he was mistaken) opposed his Traumacy and Seduction Theories...
Professionally speaking, it was not Freud's 'traumacy theory' that his scientific co-workers and superiors were 'all bent out of shape about'...For example, on November 29th, 1895, Freud writes to Fliess that 'I am in top working form, have nine to eleven hours of hard work, six to eight analytic cases a day -- the most beautiful things, of course, all sorts of new material.'
It was not Freud's and Breuer's 'traumacy theory' that was causing the good doctors of Vienna grief but rather Freud's sliding more and more into the 'sexual traumacy etiology' formula -- which evolved into 'The Seduction Theory' of early 1896: Freud theorized -- much to chagrin of his co-author of 'Studies on Hysteria', Breuer, who Freud was becoming more and more estranged from -- that his adult patients had been 'sexually assaulted' and/or, more lightly put, 'seduced' as young children, and that it was 'the repression' of this childhood memory of a 'real event' (or series of memories of such events) that was the underlying 'essential cause' of 'hysteria'. This was the part of Freud's theory -- not entirely supported by even Breuer (Breuer thought that Freud was 'overgeneralizing' which he was, and furthermore, Breuer was more 'politically attuned' to what kind of 'reaction' Freud was going to get if he launched this new theory -- uncompromised and unconditionalized -- on the scientfic community. On both counts, Breuer was right, and on the evening of April 21st, 1896, Freud took the full wrath and ridicule of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society...the leader, Krafft-Ebing, again calling Freud's newest essay and theory a 'scientific fairy tale'....
However, there were underlying 'ethical' (and/or narcissistic, unethical) reasons, at work amongst the scientific community, some of which they would own up to, and some of which, perhaps they wouldn't.
First and foremost, none of the doctors of Vienna wanted to 'probe into the privacy of their patiencts' sexual lives'. There was also the issue of how much 'reality story' a therapist/doctor was getting from his 'hysterical client' vs. how much 'fantasy story' the therapist/doctor might be getting from his patient, with neither the patient nor the well-intentioned doctor perhaps being able to 'sort out what was what' -- how much was 'reality story' and how much was 'fantasy story'. Perhaps, in the end, this too became Freud's own biggest conundrum.
Beneath that, there was the 'unadmitted potential conspiracy theory' advanced by Masson that none of the 'good doctors' wanted anything to do with the legal ramifications of Freud's 'childhood sexual assault' theory, nor in particular, might some of the doctors want anyone prying into their own private sexual lives, and what they might be doing behind their own closed doors at home.
Has any of this really changed today?
The only theory I am prepared to advance at this point in time is that there was a 'Perfect Storm' coming together in the spring of 1896:
1. Freud's advancing 'Dream and Fantasy Theory', some of it perhaps more influenced by Fliess than academics have usually given him credit for. Fliess might have been a far more intelligent man than most of the academics have surmised -- intelligent, assertive, persuasive, self-confident, narcissistic -- even if he and/or some/many of his 'seemingly hare-brained, offside' theories didn't go anywhere except perhaps down a 'neurotic, pathological trail' that Freud unbelievably followed, like a little puppy dog or like a man completely intoxicated and/or in love -- 'starry-eyed, approval-seeking, and submissive' in the context of another man's perceived intellectual superiority and willingness to stand alone in the face of significant social and professional confrontation and ostracism brought on by the man's 'outrageous, risky, new theories' that others are dumbfounded by, and/or abhorred by....There were some heavy-duty, over-idealized and over-idolized 'projective transferences' going on here that suggest that Freud was looking through a mirror at his 'idealized, narcissistic, self'...and Freud for the better part of seventeen years between 1887 and 1904 basically used Fliess as his own private 'psychoanalyst';
2. The Emma Ekstein medical fiasco of February, 1895, with Freud and Fliess as her unintentional 'medical victimizers' -- the incident didn't seem to bother Fliess much even though it was he who left 'the long piece of gauze' in her nasal cavity without telling anyone, and then headed back from Vienna to Berlin. Freud was much more bothered by it -- for the better part of a year he was riddled with guilt -- until, under Fliess' influence -- on April 26th, 1896, Freud writes to Fliess...
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'First of all, Ekstein. I shall be able to prove to you that you were right, that her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing, and probably occurred at the sexually relevant times (the woman, out of resistance, has not yet supplied me with the dates).'
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Ouch! This, to me, reads like Freud himself having difficulty separating 'reality theory' from 'fantasy theory'....'rationalization', 'justification', 'denial'...seemed to have been his relevant 'defence mechanisms'...for what seems like a pretty clear-cut story of two 'medically offside doctors' in this case engaging in an application of Fliess' brand new 'nasal-sexual theory' that Freud bought into and which may have had more to do with their shared 'cocaine misadventures' than anything else that makes sense (and quite possibly, knowing Freud's propensity for 'giving out cocaine like candy in his earlier years' perhaps even Emma Ekstein was involved). Horrifically, Ekstein almost bled to death due to another unsuspecting doctor, weeks later, arriving at the scene of Emma's infected nasal passage that wouldn't heal (Fliess was long gone back to Berlin) -- and pulling at something in her nasal passage that shockingly became visible as the 'lost gauze in her nasal passage' that Fliess put in there -- and then forgot about. Freud put together this 'longing' theory in his April 26th and May 4th letters to Fliess, this 'longing' theory became the essence of Freud's evolving 'fantasy' and 'wish-fulfillment' theory which lay at the heart of his thesis in 'The Interpretation of Dreams', also his new, evolving theory of hysteria...and the essence of what is still known today as 'Classical' Psychoanalysis, built on the ashes of Freud's earlier 'traumacy, sexual traumacy, and/or seduction theories';
3. The Scientific Meeting of the evening of April 21st, 1896 seems to have been the 'icing on the cake' for the demise of the 'traumacy-seduction theories'....Freud partly held on a little longer but by the fall of 1897, he no longer believed in the traumacy and seduction theories; in their place he was just in the process of creating his new 'childhood sexuality' and 'Oedipal' theories...and the rest is history...
Freud could have been a Hero for The Women's Rights Movement, and instead, for whatever the reason, he ended up seemingly 'betraying' The Women's Rights Movement, seemingly betraying his female clients -- at least betraying a trust in their credibiltiy to deliver to him, 'true, reality-based memories' -- and in particular, Freud betrayed those women amongst his clients, and indeed, those female clients belonging to the whole history of Psychoanalysis after 1897 who actually were sexually assaulted as children...and treated like they were not...
Ah, Freud could have been a greater hero than he was if only he had known how to 'put Humpty Dumpty back together again -- properly -- which he did not'...
In order to have done this, Freud would have had to hang in there more forcefully with his 'traumacy' and 'seduction' theories which of course he did not -- perhaps he started to 'lose moral courage in the light of The Emma Ekstein affair, and/or in light of professional, political, and economic leverage possibly being used against him 'to help motivate him' -- shall we call it 'negative reinforcement' -- to change his latest 'scientific fairy tale theory', after April 21st, 1896.
We will never know for sure.
Freud's 'Abandonment of The Traumacy-Seduction Theories' remains an essentially, unsolved mystery except in the eyes of those academics and professionals who hang hard on Freud's reasons to Fliess, and later publicly written up reasons for doing what he did back in his obviously very stressful spring of 1896... In one letter to Fliess -- I cannot find the exact letter right now -- Freud wrote that he was 'morally exhausted'....But did he 'morally cave'....or did he hang in there strong enough to do what he thought was 'morally, theoretically, and clinically right' -- that is the question! One thing for sure, he did not write much about childhood sexual abuse for the rest of his life...it is hard not to say that he knew 'which side of his bread was buttered on'....Would any of us have been any different under the extenuating circumstances where none of his professional co-workers and superiors wanted to read or hear about what he had to say in this department? Not that the whole subject matter of 'childhood sexuality' was anymore welcomed, but at least it didn't have any possible 'legal ramifications' attached to it...
The paradoxical part of this whole theoretical and therapeutic conundrum is that you can reach back into most of Freud's and Breuer's case histories and find just as much 'fantasy theory' as you can 'reality theory'...women suppressing their 'fantasies' as well as their 'traumacies'...both 'sexual' and 'non-sexual', 'romantic' and 'non-romantic'...the minute you try to 'compartmentalize' human thinking, feeling, and acting, you are bound to be dissappointed unless you decide to use 'multi-bi-polar compartments' because, otherwise, 'human behavior' will always 'slip outside of your theorized compartments' -- even your/my 'multi-bi-polar ones'....But at least my 'multi-bi-polar compartments' can capture more human behavior than either of Freud's 'reality theory' or 'fantasy theory' taken separately....
You cannot separate man from either of his 'real perceptions' or his 'fantasized perceptions' and try to pretend that you have a theory that covers 'the all of human behavior'...That's what Freud tried to do -- first going the one way, then the opposite way, like physisists first postulated the 'particle theory' of matter and then 'the wave theory' until one 'dialectically integrative' physicist -- I have forgotten which one at this moment -- came up with the brilliant idea of integrating the two opposing theories together in what became known as 'Quantum Physics'....
Freud and Classical Psychoanalysis unfortunately never evolved that far -- at least until now, and what you are reading here -- 'the anal retentive, introjecting' Classical Psychoanalysts continued to buy into the fossilized 'Classical' version of what Freud gave us, and the 'smarter, more flexible, evolving psychoanalysts opted out of Classical Psychoanalysis, and into Object Relations, Self-Psychology, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Bionian Psychoanalysis, or whatever else...
And I am doing what someone should have done a long time ago -- 're-integrating a split personality in Psychoanalysis' -- or today it might be called 'dissociative identity disorder'....'Fantasy' Psychoanalysis (1896-1939) was -- and still is -- the alter-ego of 'Reality Psychoanalysis' (1893-1896)...And Freud couldn't put the two together properly....thus, Psychoanalysis became 'dissociated' from its 'Central, Reality-Processing, Ego -- or that part of the Central Ego dealing with the proper perception, interpretation, and evaluation of reality' once Freud fell in love with 'Instinct Theory, Fantasy Theory, Dream Theory, Childhood Sexuality Theory, and of course...'The Oedipal Complex'....Perhaps Freud's 'Narcissistic Theory' was meant as a 'compromise-formation' between 'ego and self-esteem theory' (Adler) on the one hand, and his sexually based theories on the other hand. Also, Freud's 'death instinct' theory was purposely or non-purposedly used to go back and 'cover up' where Freud's earlier 'Traumacy Theory' went AWOL...
Even Freud had his 'Abysses' and 'Monsters' and he did not always handle them properly...
What have you got holed up down there in your Abyss, or 'locked up in your 'Id Vault'? -- a 'good, life energy' that you are 'over-suppressing', 'over-restraining'? Or a 'toxic, death or destructive energy' that may need the help of a good therapist to help you 'detoxify' and 'heal' it slowly?
If we have 'over-suppressed life energy' trapped down in our Abyss, in our Id Vault, then with or without help, we need to bring it up out of 'The Shadow' of our personality and into our 'Conscious Ego Domain' -- into your interactions with the world to give our life more of the 'passion, intensity, vibrancy, and engagement' that we all need to live a 'full life', not a 'half a life' or an 'estranged life'.
On the other hand, if our Abysss or Id Vault is full of 'toxic, transference complexes', then it would be prudent to be a lot more careful -- probably with professional help -- in the way that we deal with and aim to 'detoxify' or 'tame' these 'bad Monster transference complexes'.
Maybe some of these negative forces shouldn't be released at all -- and in the worst case scenarios -- it may be the person himself who needs to be 'institutionalized' if he or she has shown an inability to 'restrain toxic id forces' in his or her personality that are capable of unleashing 'harmful destruction' on either the world and/or on him or herself. We see this type of person -- the worst of the worst -- in horrific newspaper articles, journals, and/or books, on any 'Criminal Minds' show that we may happen to watch...'the violent serial victimizers'...
Nietzsche's 'Abyss' and 'Monster' were the precursors to Freud's 'Id'....and Jung's 'Shadow'...
When I was writing my earliest papers on 'Transference' back in the 1980s, I once was going to title the largest of these papers: 'Transference: Taming The Dragon'....the idea being that the 'tail of the dragon' was our 'childhood traumatic memories' and 'the head of the dragon was our 'here-and-now transference projections, identifications, compensations, reaction-formations, re-creations, repetition-compulsions, sublimations, dissociations, complexes, ego-games...'.
Our 'transference complexes and/or games' are largely subconscious, very obsessive-compulsive, very addictive, and at times, can be highly destructive and/or self-destructive...or the reverse....brilliantly creative, enlightening, constructive to the ongoing evolution of man and society....
Freud at the toddler age of 3 or 4 was prevented by his dad from 'being enlightened' on just exactly what he saw when he busted in unexpectedly to his parents' bedroom....He spent most of his entire adult life addressing the issue of 'sexuality' relative to 'normal' and 'neurotic' human behavior, spending thousands of hours on this subject matter, 'enlightening himself' where his dad wouldn't...
Alfred Adler had a case of 'rickets' that prevented him from walking until he was four years old, and Adler also came close to dying of pneumonia when he was four years old...Hearing the doctor say to his father, 'Your boy is lost' due to the pneumonia, it was at this young age that Adler decided he was going to be a physician.
Furthermore, Adler introduced Freud and The Vienna Circle to the idea of 'organ inferiority' and 'organ compensation' that later, after Adler had separated from Freud, Adler turned into two of his most important concepts -- 'the inferiority feeling' and 'the (compensatory) striving for superiority' (which can be in either a positive and/or a negative, 'neurotic' or 'pathological' way)...
The closest Freud came to Adler's concept of 'compensation' and 'superiority striving' was towards 1920 (particularly in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', 1920), when Freud started writing about 'the mastery compulsion' but unfortunately Freud left this path and went 'the death instinct' path instead....Bad choice -- Freud would have been better off advancing the idea of 'the mastery compulsion', particularly if he hadn't become 'professionally neurotic' himself because then he could have reached back into his 'full bag of theoretical and therapeutic wisdom' and advanced a theory like this (with Adler's help):
1. 'Traumatic and/or Narcissistic Early Childhood Transference Memory and/or Relationship' leads to....
2. 'Inferiority Feeling and Complex' ('Lifelong Narcissistic/Self-Esteem Injury) which leads to...
3. 'Compensatory Superiority Striving of Different But Interconnected Types (Melanie Klein's 'Positions'; Eric Berne's 'Ego States' such as: 'The Approval-Seeking Child' Position, 'The Angry, Schizoid Child' Position, 'The Angry, Aggressive Child' Position, 'The Narcissistic, Hedonistic, Rebellious Child' Position, 'The Nurturing (and/or 'Approval-Seeking') Parent' Position, 'The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Parent' Position, 'The Righteous, Ethical Parent' Position...)
Usually one of these particular 'ego-positions or states' tends to dominate and becomes what Adler called the person's 'life style (plan)', or what Jung called 'The Personna'...while another particular 'opposing position' (alter-ego) becomes 'suppressed' or 'dissociated' and is pushed back into the 'The Id Vault', 'The Abyss', 'The Shadow'....of the subconscious or 'the strongly restrained conscious (alter-ego)'...
From the 'intra-psychic dynamics' of our different 'ego-states' interacting with each other, and their 'projection' into 'our external world encounters' so too follows the particular dynamics of our 'transference ego-complexes and games'...which we often tend to either play out 'neurotically and erotically with our chosen love partner' or alternatively often play out in 'authoritarian employer/employee relations' or even 'family or friendship relationships' and very often also through 'the sublimation of our transference work energies'....
Such is 'The Universal Nature of Transference Intra-Psychic and Inter-Social Dynamics'
In order to 'tame our transference dragon' -- Nietzsche's Monster -- we need to be able to fully understand all of the 'characteristics' of our dragon and how it can pull us down into our own Private Abyss, our Private Hell...or alternatively, 'break loose' -- like in a 'prison break' (often under the influence of alcohol, drugs, stress, rejection, loss...) and visit us up in our 'Conscious Ego' from the depths of our 'Id Vault'...or 'Nietzschean Abyss' or the 'place of residence' ('Hell') of our 'Faustian Devil'...
Ideally speaking, once we have a full transference understanding of our own unique particular dragon....and its particular strengths, attractions, repulsions, and dangers....
Then perhaps we might be able to look down into our own Private Abyss...and not be quite so afraid...
When we look face to face with our own private dragon...
Perhaps we really have 'tamed' it....
Perhaps we can say to ourselves -- and mean it -- 'I am not going to play this silly, destructive 'Transference Dragon' game anymore...
It may be exciting, scary, dangerous, exhillarating when we win....
But I am tired and getting too old to keep falling off this 'Dragon Roller Coaster game of love and hate...serial seduction and abandonment... lust, power, sexual conquest, and/or rejection...The Don Juan Syndrome, Sexual Addiction, Serial Seductionism and its Neandrathal Cousin -- Serial Sexual Assault....often attractive men in either looks and/or charismatic charm....coming from a subjectively perceived position of 'narcissistic sexual power' and/or its opposite -- with the 'partial id monster' of a rejecting and/or abandoning female transference figure in his childhood (usually the mother) playing a dominant role in this type of man's 'transference psycho-dynamics'.....
Maybe there is an interconnection between our sexual hormones and our Transference Dragon....as our sexual hormones start to slow up, so too does our Transference (Love and Lust) Dragon start to get a little more lethargic....Personally, I would say that 'transference dynamics' tend to escalate and/or remain steady between about 20 and 50 and then start to de-escalate after that with more transference awareness and/or less transference energy....or simply the reluctance to continue to get involved in this type of 'rocky, unstable, high psycho-drama' fashion...
Maybe...
Or maybe not...
Battling with our 'transference dragons' is usually more or less...
A lifelong process....
Those first five or six years are pretty darn critical...
A network of early childhood experiences turned into a network of 'transference learning templates' that create our own private...
'Semi-psychic determinism'...
A ready-made path with a predictable destination and outcome...
Is easier to travel...perhaps...
Than trying to thrash our way through dense, new, uncut forest...with no paths to direct our way...
And no known destination and/or outcome...
New territory can be scary, anxiety-provoking...
With rough terrain,
Mountains...
And new, uncharted abysses...
At four or five years old....
We can make the definitive decision...subconsciously...
That the devil we do know is better than the devil we don't know...
And/or we can bounce back and forth between 'opposite types of devils'...
Or we can play it safe and do our best to 'bury all devils' way down below...
Big life decisions for a four or five year old....
Who certainly doesn't have an 'adult range of experiences' nor an 'adult more logical reasoning process' upon which to draw....
These fast made, early childhood 'prototype', 'template', 'transference' decisions,
Get 'cemented' in fast...
And don't change much over time...
They remain our 'lifelong buddies' -- and/or 'monsters'...
Our 'Bainian Transference Dragons' or 'Nietzschean Abyss Monsters' from down below...
Nietzsche led the way into 'The Psychic Abyss'...
And Freud (The Id) and Jung (The Shadow) followed where Nietzsche left off....
-- dgb, October 15th, 16th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
My son was born on October 15th, 1984...
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Essence Before Existence: A Humanistic-Existential Counter-Thesis To Sartre...and An Expansion of The Id
Under renovation again!...and I think finished....October 15th, 2011....
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1. Introduction: Existence Before Essence or
Essence Before Existence...
Like Sartre -- although Sartre kept changing ideological labels by
which he wanted to be classified under -- I consider myself to
be a 'humanistic-existentialist', albeit not one subscribing to Sartre's 'existence before essence' premise.
'Well, how can you call yourself an 'existentialist' and not believe in the "existence before essence" premise?', you might ask. 'Isn't that the fundamental premise for being called an "existentialist"?'
Historically, there were numerous philosophers who we now call 'existentialists' -- before, during, and after Sartre's lifetime -- who didn't necessarily subscribe to Sartre's 'existence precedes essence' philosophical premise. Since some were long dead -- Kierkegaard, Doestevsky, Nietzsche... -- and didn't get a chance to react to Sartre's philosophical premise.
I don't think that anyone has a right to speak for the dead in this type of capacity, assuming what they may or may not have believed. If there is one thing that can be said about most existentialists, it is perhaps that they are 'very unpredictable' in their thinking and inclined to go down 'thought passages' easily ignored, and/or purposely avoided, by other more 'orthodox' thinkers.
Thus, to assume -- or to try to 'box in' all existentialists -- by saying that they all subscribe to the philosophical premise of 'existence precedes essence' is to make a careless, bogus assumption. Go back to Philosophy 101.
I, for one consider myself to be a 'dialectic-essential-existentialist' or a 'genetic constitutional existentialist'. By this, I mean that I subscribe to the following theory:
That we are all born with certain unique individual talents and capabilites that no one else on earth can exactly duplicate -- and upon this 'genetic, constitutional foundation', we need to give meaning to our own unique existence in a way that, through hard work, and love/passion for what we are doing, 'actualizes' or 'fulfills' to our maximum 'existential potential' the parameters of our genetic, constitutional foundation as loosely laid out by our 'genetic heritage' and/or 'Creator'.
When we find this 'line of work' that 'fits with our spirit/soul', we will know it because we will come alive -- like we are 'in love' with our work or hobby, which you are -- as opposed to being 'totally self-alienated and estranged' from a type of work that we apathetic towards and/or even despise...but basically 'prostitute' ourselves at, in order to bring a paycheque home to put a roof over our head, pay our bills, and feed ourselves and/or our family...
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From Wikipedia
The proposition that existence precedes essence (French: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. To existentialists, the human being—through his consciousness—creates his own values and determines a meaning for his life because, in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. By posing the acts that constitute him, he makes his existence more significant.[1][2]
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The assumption that 'in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value', is shaky at best -- hugely flawed at worst.
Since existentialism is hardly 'one philosophical system' but rather a 'network of similar but different philosophical systems', this seems to be an unwarrented and premature assumption -- especially for someone like Kierkegaard who was a religious philosopher and most assuredly believed in 'the spiritual nature of man', and likewise, for someone like Plato who was perhaps one of the main influencers on all Western religious philosophy, who trumpeted the inherent and constitutional existence of man's 'soul' that gave man's life meaning, direction, inherent identity and value -- that gave man something to 'hang on to' in the face of any and all adversity.
To be sure, we could get into metaphysical arguments about 'when exactly existence starts' but is anyone going to argue that there wasn't something genetically present -- and special -- in Michael Jordan's DNA, in his constitutional makeup, that predisposed him to a game like basketball where he could 'showcase' his immense talents and capabilities -- admittedly mixed with thousands and thousands of hours of hard 'existential' work -- but I could have put in those same thousands and thousands of hours and no one today would be talking about me as the 'greatest basketball player who ever lived'....I would still be playing in school gyms if I was that persistent...
Nor can Michael Jordan do what I can do which is to create and integrate philosophical and psychological theories like not too many men or women alive today.
My point is this: Existentialism starts in our genetics, in our DNA, in our Genetic Potential Self -- and that means 'Essence precedes existence.' I'm onside with Plato and Erich Fromm on this issue; not Sartre. We are all born with unique, individual talents that our Creator gave us to 'actualize'....
If Sartre were alive today, I would ask him how well he would have done trying to 'actualize' his talents as a 'plumber' or an 'electrician' or as a 'hockey player' rather than as a philosopher?
Yes, to be sure, we have the choice to be anything, but it doesn't usually take very long for our friends, our family, ourselves to find out what we are really good at -- if our passion and our talent meet, well, that is what we probably should be doing, and if we work hard in this direction, then the 'sky is the limit' in terms of where we may eventually get to...
Anything significantly less than this and we are probably existentially failing and falling beneath the 'upper potential threshold' of our creative talents and capabilities'....We may finally realize this one day -- maybe in the midst of our 'Post-Mid-Life Crisis' -- when we wake up one morning ...and feel like an 'Insect' or a 'Stranger Within Ourselves'....
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1. Introduction: Existence Before Essence or
Essence Before Existence...
Like Sartre -- although Sartre kept changing ideological labels by
which he wanted to be classified under -- I consider myself to
be a 'humanistic-existentialist', albeit not one subscribing to Sartre's 'existence before essence' premise.
'Well, how can you call yourself an 'existentialist' and not believe in the "existence before essence" premise?', you might ask. 'Isn't that the fundamental premise for being called an "existentialist"?'
Historically, there were numerous philosophers who we now call 'existentialists' -- before, during, and after Sartre's lifetime -- who didn't necessarily subscribe to Sartre's 'existence precedes essence' philosophical premise. Since some were long dead -- Kierkegaard, Doestevsky, Nietzsche... -- and didn't get a chance to react to Sartre's philosophical premise.
I don't think that anyone has a right to speak for the dead in this type of capacity, assuming what they may or may not have believed. If there is one thing that can be said about most existentialists, it is perhaps that they are 'very unpredictable' in their thinking and inclined to go down 'thought passages' easily ignored, and/or purposely avoided, by other more 'orthodox' thinkers.
Thus, to assume -- or to try to 'box in' all existentialists -- by saying that they all subscribe to the philosophical premise of 'existence precedes essence' is to make a careless, bogus assumption. Go back to Philosophy 101.
I, for one consider myself to be a 'dialectic-essential-existentialist' or a 'genetic constitutional existentialist'. By this, I mean that I subscribe to the following theory:
That we are all born with certain unique individual talents and capabilites that no one else on earth can exactly duplicate -- and upon this 'genetic, constitutional foundation', we need to give meaning to our own unique existence in a way that, through hard work, and love/passion for what we are doing, 'actualizes' or 'fulfills' to our maximum 'existential potential' the parameters of our genetic, constitutional foundation as loosely laid out by our 'genetic heritage' and/or 'Creator'.
When we find this 'line of work' that 'fits with our spirit/soul', we will know it because we will come alive -- like we are 'in love' with our work or hobby, which you are -- as opposed to being 'totally self-alienated and estranged' from a type of work that we apathetic towards and/or even despise...but basically 'prostitute' ourselves at, in order to bring a paycheque home to put a roof over our head, pay our bills, and feed ourselves and/or our family...
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From Wikipedia
The proposition that existence precedes essence (French: l'existence précède l'essence) is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence. To existentialists, the human being—through his consciousness—creates his own values and determines a meaning for his life because, in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. By posing the acts that constitute him, he makes his existence more significant.[1][2]
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The assumption that 'in the beginning, the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value', is shaky at best -- hugely flawed at worst.
Since existentialism is hardly 'one philosophical system' but rather a 'network of similar but different philosophical systems', this seems to be an unwarrented and premature assumption -- especially for someone like Kierkegaard who was a religious philosopher and most assuredly believed in 'the spiritual nature of man', and likewise, for someone like Plato who was perhaps one of the main influencers on all Western religious philosophy, who trumpeted the inherent and constitutional existence of man's 'soul' that gave man's life meaning, direction, inherent identity and value -- that gave man something to 'hang on to' in the face of any and all adversity.
To be sure, we could get into metaphysical arguments about 'when exactly existence starts' but is anyone going to argue that there wasn't something genetically present -- and special -- in Michael Jordan's DNA, in his constitutional makeup, that predisposed him to a game like basketball where he could 'showcase' his immense talents and capabilities -- admittedly mixed with thousands and thousands of hours of hard 'existential' work -- but I could have put in those same thousands and thousands of hours and no one today would be talking about me as the 'greatest basketball player who ever lived'....I would still be playing in school gyms if I was that persistent...
Nor can Michael Jordan do what I can do which is to create and integrate philosophical and psychological theories like not too many men or women alive today.
My point is this: Existentialism starts in our genetics, in our DNA, in our Genetic Potential Self -- and that means 'Essence precedes existence.' I'm onside with Plato and Erich Fromm on this issue; not Sartre. We are all born with unique, individual talents that our Creator gave us to 'actualize'....
If Sartre were alive today, I would ask him how well he would have done trying to 'actualize' his talents as a 'plumber' or an 'electrician' or as a 'hockey player' rather than as a philosopher?
Yes, to be sure, we have the choice to be anything, but it doesn't usually take very long for our friends, our family, ourselves to find out what we are really good at -- if our passion and our talent meet, well, that is what we probably should be doing, and if we work hard in this direction, then the 'sky is the limit' in terms of where we may eventually get to...
Anything significantly less than this and we are probably existentially failing and falling beneath the 'upper potential threshold' of our creative talents and capabilities'....We may finally realize this one day -- maybe in the midst of our 'Post-Mid-Life Crisis' -- when we wake up one morning ...and feel like an 'Insect' or a 'Stranger Within Ourselves'....
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As I have argued over and over again in Hegelian fashion, 'every theory, every thesis carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'. Why? Because the minute you assert a particular point of view, you are doing two things at the same time: 1. you are metaphorically shining a flashlight on something you want your audience to see; while 2. at the same time, anything that doesn't show up in the light of your flashlight is going to be relegated to 'the darkness' of seemingly 'non-relevance', 'non- importance' as you are basically dictating to your audience that what what you don't see in my particular theory or thesis, my particular perspective -- 'doesn't exist', or at least is 'background noise or distraction' that you have no need to pay attention to....It is out of this 'background noise' or 'field of seeming irrelevance' -- that theories and theses eventually self-destruct, because like in Psychoanalysis, and in the 'subconscious dynamics of the psyche', 'what you dissociate and push downwards into your subconscious psyche', if it matters, even if you don't think it does matter, it will come back to 'haunt' you -- as 'the return of the repressed or suppressed or oppressed or dissociated or disavowed or displaced, or transferred, or introjected, or projected, or sublimated...' This is very much the 'essence' of Psychoanalysis... The same basic principle, learned from Psychoanalysis, can be applied to all avenues of life: business, marketing, economics, politics, philosophy, religion, architecture, engineering, science, physics, biology, medicine, civil rights... As soon as one 'class' of people is 'preferentialised' and another class of people is 'discriminated against', you have the beginning of 'social distrust', 'resentment', 'anger', 'rage'...and the potential for 'civil violence' as the 'volcanic fire' of inequality continues to build... I think I heard in a survey the other day, that about 80 percent of people hated their job.... Well, you cannot 'hate' your job within a 'Sartrean field of Nothingness'...only within a 'field of Constitutional and/or Genetic Rootedness that is different than what we are doing, and what we hate'... In order to be able to say that you 'hate' something, you basically need a concept like 'the Self or Soul' -- 'My Self or My Soul' -- in order to be able to say something like 'I prostitute myself' or 'I sell myself to the Devil of Capitalism each morning I go to work and do something for 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day that defies and defiles my Self, my Soul'..... 'Yes, I am making a paycheque, and yes, I am bringing home enough money each week to put a roof over my head, to support myself and my family....but in the process, I am killing my Spirit, my Soul...because I am living a 'fraudulent life'...I am living the life of 'The Stranger'... In order for us to be able to say anything like this, there cannot be a 'Blank Tablet' within each of us, there cannot be a 'Constitutional Void of Nothingness' within us; rather, there has to be something -- I call it our 'Genetic Template' that tells each and everyone of us something like: 'Dave, this is what you were meant to be....and that is what you were not meant to be...' 'Man is both the artist and the object of his art.' -- Erich Fromm Under this 'Essence Before Existence' assumption as opposed to Sartre's assumption of 'Existence Before Essence', humanistic-existential ideas like 'self-fulfillment' or 'self-actualization' or 'individuation' come alive just as their 'bipolar opposite' ideas of 'self-alienation' and 'self- fraud' also take on meaning.... These words would have no meaning if we were all made up of a 'Constitutional Void, a Constitutional Nothingness'... The concepts of 'self-actualization' and 'self- alienation' only take on meaning in an assumptive philosophical world that gives relevance to the idea of a man or woman having an individual 'Spirit' and/or 'Soul'...that we are 'constitutionally born' with...that comes from our 'essence', not our 'existence'... 2. The Essential and Existential Id -- Energy, Thought, Feeling, Impulse, Restraint, Behavior... For The Entire Psyche In 1923, Freud 'deposited' the 'life' and 'death' instincts (from 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle, 1920) inside the 'id'. Is there anything that the life and death instincts would not cover in terms of the roots of human thought, feeling, impulse, restraint, and behavior? This being the case, Freud had to be arguing in favor of all psychic energy originating from the 'depths of the id' which in turn manifested itself from the creation of energy in the body, presumably directly or indirectly from the sun, the air, water, and the nutrients in our food from the earth....all coming together in the mitochondria of our cells....and like what happens in a car engine...'exploding into usuable energy'... Some of this energy is deposited into our 'psyche' in the form of 'psychic energy' -- including 'mental energry', 'feeling energy', 'passion', 'sexual drive', 'assertion', 'aggression', and so on.... 'Life energy' can be defined as any form of psychic (and/or bodily) energy that contributes to the growing life force within us, and/or within the people around us... In contradistinction, 'death energy' can be defined as any form of psychic (and/or bodily) energy that contributes to the decaying life force within us, and/or within the people around us....This includes what will be called 'toxic' and/or 'destructive' and/or 'self-destructive' energy... Thus, if we are to accept this foundational premise which is based on Classical Freudian Theory from 1920 and 1923, 'the id' can be viewed as containing any degree of mixture between life and death energy within it -- some of which is 'dissociated' from and/or by 'The Ego-as-a Whole' (or Wholistic Ego) - and/or consciousness and/or from particular 'Ego States'.... At this point, we have started to extend 'Classical' Freudian Theory from 1920 and 1923 -- significantly beyond its 'normal Freudian Classical Theory limits' and into Melanie Klein territory, into Object Relations territory, and into the type of territory where Freud was starting to move towards the end of his life and his last papers such as: 'The Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence' (1938/40) written according to Strachey (and Jones) during Christmas, 1937, dated January 2nd, 1938, and published posthumously in 1940 -- unfinished. Fast forward some 71 years later of psychoanalytic history and evolution -- and you have 'The DGB Model of The Splitting of The Ego' that has been split up like this: 1. The Nurturing-Altruistic Superego, 2. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Selfish) Superego, and 3. The Righteous-Rejecting (Ethical) Superego; 4. The Central Ego Board and/or Therapy Room, 5. The Central, (Mediating) Executive Ego; 6. The Righteous-Rebellious Underego, 7. The Narcissistic-Hedonistic (Selfish) Underego, and 8. The Co-operative (Approval-Seeking) Underego. Particular types of 'id energy' are more likely than not to be associated with particular 'ego states' -- for example, 'righteous energy' with The Righteous Superego and/or Rebellious Underego...'narcissistic energy' with either The Narcissistic Superego and/or Underego, and 'altruistic energy' with either The Nurturing Superego and/or The Co-operative Underego... 'Superego states' and 'underego states' are divided on the basis of 'self-esteem and childhood upbringing factors': 'superego states' with the 'power of a particular parent' and 'superiority feelings' for example, and 'underego states' with the usual 'lack of power' and 'inferiority/insecurity feelings' associated with being a child... Now, in case I haven't properly done this before, let me now emphasize the difference between a 'dualistic pairing of entities' vs. a 'dialectic pairing of entities'... In a 'dualistic pairing of entities' there is an inherent 'power play' going on, a 'competition for opposing values, needs, and/or wants'...whereas in a 'dialectic pairing of entities' there is some movement afoot for 'negotiation, compromise, democracy, equal rights, peace and/or harmony'... The current NBA owners lockout is an example of a 'mixed dualistic and dialectic pairing of opposing, competing entities -- i.e., the owners vs. the players and their union representives -- in which both entities very much want their own way and as big a slice of the pie as they can get but within the realm of trying to reach as 'favorable' an agreement as each side can possibly arrive at -- and have the other side agree to it. Such a state of affairs -- unpredictability between warring dualistic and/or dialectic entities or factions -- is the usual state of affairs within the human psyche -- as it has been with all of human history...both as it has been felt internally, and as it has been 'projected' externally, through politics, religion, mythology, science, medicine, philosophy, business and economics, and back to psychology... 'Monism' is -- from this perspective -- 'half' of any number of possible 'dualisms'; 'pluralism' is the entire field of possible 'dualistic' and/or 'dialectic' entities, and/or 'triadic' or 'trialectic' entities, etc...and 'multi-dualisms' and/or 'multi-dialecticisms' or 'multi-dialectic' systems are any number of dualistic/dialectic/binary systems (or triadic/trialectic systems, etc.) within a greater, pluralistic field or system... Now, at this point, I would like to put in a plug for one of the earliest and greatest philisophers in both Greek and Western history -- one who is usually largely under-recognized, under-appreciated -- for the fact, that he laid down the essential and existential foundation for some 2600 years plus...of Western dualistic and dialectic philosophy, politics, economics, science, religion, and psychology to come.... Indeed, Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' practically anticipated the idea of 'Chaos' and 'Chaos Theory' as well as Hegel's dialectic philosophy, Freud's concept of 'The Id', Jung's concepts of 'The Personna' and 'The Shadow', Foucault's philosophy of 'power', Derrida's concept of 'binary opposites' and 'Deconstruction' (of the 'dominant' opposite such that the 'suppressed' opposite can start to come 'alive' again...), and The Gestalt Psychologists and Gestalt Therapists binary concept of 'figure' vs. '(back)ground'... Indeed, I view Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron' as an 'externalization' of Freud's concept of 'the id' or conversely, Freud's concept of 'the id' as an 'internalization' of Anaxamander's concept of 'The Apeiron'. Both are connected to the idea of 'dark, chaotic disorganization, and competition between opposing entities, brimming over the top with energy -- 'binary energy', 'dualistic energy', 'dialectic energy' -- and the potential for 'synergy' -- or the opposite: 'dominance' vs. 'suppression', 'the exploiting' vs. 'the exploiting', 'the victimizer' vs. 'the victim', 'winners' and 'losers' -- not often on a 'fair field' -- one entity coming out on top and into 'The Sunshine', the other entity being 'forced back into the dark', The Background, The Shadows, The Id, The Apeiron... Inequality -- thy name is humanity -- or rather, the lack of it -- as witnessed over 2600 plus years of human history...both externally and internally...inter-socially, politically, economically, legally... and intra-psychically between 'the dominant' and 'the suppressed'...the Ego and the Id, the Personna and the Shadow...the 'figural' and the 'background'....the 'preferentialized' and the 'dissociated'/ 'rejected... Back and forth goes the teeter totter of life... Anaxamander wrote about it in 'The Fragment'.... He was writing about 'Cosmic Justice'... Hegel might have called it 'the dialectic justice of history and evolution'... 'What goes around comes around...' 'The return of the repressed, the oppressed, the rejected, the suppressed, the dissociated, the projected, the introjected, the disavowed... Freud had a 'hang up' -- a complex -- with 'castration anxiety'... It is too bad he couldn't have gotten beyond that... I'm sure it may have reflected a real fear amongst some Victorian boys...including Freud himself perhaps threatened by his own father with 'the removal of his thing, his manhood' if he didn't behave properly... But beyond this, we see the more inevitable 'clash' of 'wills' between parent and child, father and son, mother and daughter, and the child's fear of 'losing his or her parent(s)' as his or her primary source of 'survival' or 'self-preservation' vs. the child's fear of 'losing his or her own self-identity'..... And within this 'existential' conflict between parent and child, we often see a type of conflict that plays itself out 'in the transference' over and over and over again in the course of a person's life -- particularly in a Capitalist System but no less in the Mao Tse Tung regime, or The Lenin or Stalin regime...in fact, in many tyrannical countries much, much worse... But regardless, of what country, what culture, what religion, what economic system, what political system...it all generally, comes back to this: Hegel's classic depiction of 'The Master/Slave Relationship' -- the 'co-dependence of each on each other and/or 'The Master's wish to keep the status-quo with all of its established benefits' and The Slave's wish to break the status-quo in order to re-establish a sense of 'Selfhood', a sense of freedom, a sense of less rigid authoritarianism, a sense of not being exploited, a sense of more balanced 'equal rights', and a sense of 'living one's life the way one wants to live it'.... The problem with all of this...all of the wishes, the desires, the demands...of The Slave, The Exploited... Is that once all the 'chains' have been broken free of... The Scariest Fear of Them All may be still waiting in The Shadows... And that is man's fear of....his own freedom... (Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom) 'The dizzying -- and sometimes paralyzing -- fear of one's own freedom....(Kierkegaard).... Can leave man -- the slave in man -- running for the Master again... To escape the petrifying freedom of his own existence... A famous author -- through one of his characters -- wrote it this way: 'To be or not to be....that is the question...' In order to break free of the slavery we feel on the outside... We need first to break free of the paralyzing anxiety we feel in the face of freedom -- on the inside.... Otherwise, we will look for -- and complain against -- countless Masters, over and over and over again... Smoke and mirrors to 'distract' us from what is really scaring us inside of us... To paraphase and extend Nietzsche... Be careful when you fight Monsters on the outside... Because The Biggest Monster may be lurking inside of you... To run from our fear by keeping ourselves 'busy' undoing 'the many chains of our existence'.... Distracts us from the real problem of facing the fear of our freedom... Like all of those early Charcot, Breuer, and Freudian cases of hysteria... The 'so-called hysterics' for the most part all 'defeated' the therapists... Because through the hours and hours of painstaking therapeutic work of Breuer, Charcot, or Freud when they finally 'uncovered' 'the source of The Nile, the source of the hysterical symptom -- the repressed memory' -- presto! the symptom was gone like magic....it disappeared into the cosmology of life... But then the next session, the client/patient would 'replace' the 'gone symptom' with 10 new ones!! And after treating a hundred such patients....you can perhaps start to see why Freud was getting more than a little frustrated with 'the traumatic memory' theory... The therapist was 'winning all the tedious individual symptom battles'...and still 'losing the therapeutic war'... Like 'Anna O' was being 'held hostage' by her sick father who (non-purposely) took away her every freedom... So too, did Anna O learn the principle of 'identification with the more powerful person'...and she turned the tables on her therapist (Breuer) keeping him busy, hour after hour, day after day, one symptom after another...until one day she looked at Breuer and said in effect, 'Dr. Breuer, I'm having your baby!' That was the end of their sessions...Dr. Breuer went running back to his wife... Wasn't there a best-seller in the 60s.....'Games People Play' by Dr. Eric Berne... We all play lifelong 'transference games'... We suck people into our 'spider webs'.... And then we say, 'Gotcha!' when we have them trapped... And then we move on to our next victim and play the same game... All over again....attempting to re-establish a sense of 'lost childhood self-esteem'... Until we find someone who knows how to play our game better than we do.... And then we go crashing back down into Nietzsche's Abyss... The Black Pit... To nurse our wounds and figure out whether or not... We want to 're-embrace' life or not.... Sometimes we do.... And then sometimes we erect...bigger and bigger... 'Emotional Fortresses'...complete with 'Body Armour'... Until someone can see inside us again... Or we decide to expose our heart again... And start sending out 'Allusions to Immediacy'.... 'Compromise Formations'... Between what is in our heart...and/or our 'id'....or 'Id-Vault'... And what we throw out there as 'illusions' and 'allusions' -- 'smoke and mirrors'... To get the one we most care for...off our scent... To be or not to be...or to compromise between being and not being... The latter path is probably the most common path... Life fully lived...is too intense... So we 'water' it down a bit...or a lot... On a good day, we look in the mirror and are proud of ourselves.... And our accomplishments, and the people we love and are loved by.... But on a bad day -- or in that potentially gruesome 'post-mid-life crisis' period -- we look in the mirror and we see 'The Stranger'.... And we feel ourselves crashing into 'Nietsche's Abyss'... The Black Pit.... Until someone helps us out of it... Or we gather the strength to pull ourselves out of it again... In this regard, my current model of 'the subconscious', from top to bottom, looks like this: 09. The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver; 10. The ('Bound') Id Vault with Transference Complexes 11. The Learning and Transference Memory Template; 12. The ('Boundless') Id; 13. Nietzsche's Abyss (The Black Pit); 14. The Genetic, Symbolic, and Potential Self -- dgb, October 13th, 2011, -- David Gordon Bain |
Saturday, October 8, 2011
The 'Energy' and 'Object' Platform Upon Which We Build Our Lives....
Plato said that we are driven by three different energy centres -- the mind, the heart, and the loins....
Then about my age...Father Time starts to kick in...and perhaps create a fright....I call this our 'Post-Mid-Life Crisis' -- which is likely to set in just before we are about to enter 'Senior Citizenship' (which a lot of Baby Boomers are about now) -- and any number and type of issues may be raising their scary head if they haven't raised it before now: health, money, aging, dying, love or lack of it, family, work, friends, parents, kids, taxes, bills, retirement or the practical impossibility of it....
We may start to reflect back on how good or bad our choices were along the way....and where our worst choices occured....and why we don't have certain objects now that we feel we should have had if we hadn't messed up along the way....like a nice house, more money, a much more lucrative career, better health, better capability of helping our parents, etc...
A very astute existential writer (Kafka) called this period...'The Trial'....
Or find ourselves failing life before we get to our final 'Existential Trial'...
Then another very astute existential writer (Camus) called this....
Living the life of 'The Stranger'....
If we do not want to continue to lead the self-alienated, shallow, hollow, false life of a Stranger...
Then, if you haven't read it already, read Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford University...
And see if one of the most creative men who lived on this planet the past 30 plus years or so can't pull you back in the right direction again...
I just happen to have a portion of his speech in my email sent to me from my dad....my own main visionary mentor...a day or so ago...
-- dgb, October 8th, 2011
Then there are the energy objects....to use the Psycho-analytic technical term.....sexual objects, romantic objects...intellectual objects, friends and family objects, pet objects, work objects, hobby objects...self-objects....house objects, car objects...computer objects....addictive objects....obsessive-compulsive objects...money objects...other goods and service objects...
On such a platform...and all the endless possible variations and permutations from this basic platform....we build our lives....
Then about my age...Father Time starts to kick in...and perhaps create a fright....I call this our 'Post-Mid-Life Crisis' -- which is likely to set in just before we are about to enter 'Senior Citizenship' (which a lot of Baby Boomers are about now) -- and any number and type of issues may be raising their scary head if they haven't raised it before now: health, money, aging, dying, love or lack of it, family, work, friends, parents, kids, taxes, bills, retirement or the practical impossibility of it....
We may start to reflect back on how good or bad our choices were along the way....and where our worst choices occured....and why we don't have certain objects now that we feel we should have had if we hadn't messed up along the way....like a nice house, more money, a much more lucrative career, better health, better capability of helping our parents, etc...
A very astute existential writer (Kafka) called this period...'The Trial'....
And if we decide that we have failed or lost our 'Trial'...regarding how well we lived our life....
Or find ourselves failing life before we get to our final 'Existential Trial'...
Then another very astute existential writer (Camus) called this....
Living the life of 'The Stranger'....
If we do not want to continue to lead the self-alienated, shallow, hollow, false life of a Stranger...
Then, if you haven't read it already, read Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford University...
And see if one of the most creative men who lived on this planet the past 30 plus years or so can't pull you back in the right direction again...
I just happen to have a portion of his speech in my email sent to me from my dad....my own main visionary mentor...a day or so ago...
-- dgb, October 8th, 2011
-- David Gordon Bain
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Collision of 'Reality-Based' and 'Fantasy-Based' Psychoanalysis -- and How They Both Need Each Other: An Introduction To Dialectic Reality-Fantasy Based Psychoanalysis
Under construction...October 8th, 2011...
Introduction
Back when I first approached this subject matter around June 2011 (if not before) of 're-defining the id', I asked the question: How would Freud have defined the 'id' differently if he had created the concept in 1893 as opposed to 1923? Once I had my answer to this question, then the next logical step was to integrate this new 'pre-1897' definition of the id with Freud's much later 1923 definition of the id.
If you think about it, Freud was already 'half way towards this integration' when he created 'the life and death instincts' in 1920, and then followed up this classic paper (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) with 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923. Because once Freud 'deposited' the life and death instincts in 'the id', then the id became the 'depository' or 'reservoir' of all 'psychic energy' -- some of which would later be 'transposed' to 'the ego' and 'the superego' -- such as 'the ego instincts'.
In effect, what Freud did in 1920 with his creation of the death instinct was he substituted the death instinct for his pre-1897 'traumacy theory'.
For example, one of the 'new series of clinical phenomena' that Freud had to deal with leading into 1920 is what today we would call 'post-traumatic stress syndrome'. Specifically, in the 1910 to 1920 era, Freud had to deal with 'war shocked' soldiers who had 'recurring nightmare dreams' that could not logically or realistically be viewed in accordance with Freud's 1900 thesis that 'all dreams were wish-fulfillments'. Enter 'the death instinct' to provide an alternative explanation. His pre-1897 'traumacy theory' would have provided a better explanation.
I can accept 'the death instinct' in a limited capacity. Indeed, I like to use the death instinct integratively with traumacy theory.
The thesis here is that 'significant traumacy in a person's life can lead to toxic, death forces or energy (worded otherwise, toxic, destructive, and/or life-inhibiting energy) formulating in a person's personality, specifically, in that part of the personality that I have come to refer to as 'The Shadow-Id Vault' -- or 'The Dissociated It Box'.
Let us see how I first began to develop this thesis in the following June 1st, 2011 essay (which I forgot I even wrote) that provides the assumptive and logical foundation for some of the essays that I am still writing today....as well as elements of my October thinking...
-- dgb, October 7th, 2011...
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If we assume that the brilliance of Freud's creative thought was in the 'entirety of his thought' -- say from 1893 (which is the beginning of his early psychoanalytic publications) to 1939 (when he died) -- and that Freud made a big theoretical and clinical mistake in 1896 (which I know that some, or many, of you may not agree with me here) -- then the logical follow-up to this 'Freud made a big mistake in 1896' assumption -- is to 'fix' what Freud could or would not fix himself over the remainder of his career: i.e., integrating his post-1896 'fantasy-impulse' work with his pre-1897 'real memory' and 'traumacy-seduction' work.
It remains a matter of significant debate -- but one that probably never will be definitively resolved because no one has access to everything Freud was thinking back in 1896 (The 'Freud-Fliess Letters' are the closest historical artifacts we still have in this regard) -- whether Freud made this 'postulated big theoretical and clinical mistake' intentionally, non-intentionally, and/or 'neuroticly and/or erotically' and/or somewhere in between. More on this to come.
The critical Freud to Fliess letter in my opinion is the letter of May 4th, 1896 as Freud hashed over with Fliess the two critical professional mishaps that were 'eating at him' during the composition of this letter.
Coincidentally or non-coincidentally, Freud largely 'wiped out' much of his thinking between the years 1893 to 1896 in his post-May 4th, 1896 'revolutionized' thinking, in what I believe to have been a 'neurotic display' of his own personal defense mechamism at work as he basically tried to 'cover up' and 'smooth over' the two hugely stressful professional events in his life at this time, mentioned above: 1. the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco that he and Fliess were involved in, in the spring of 1895; and 2. the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology meeting of April 21st, 1896, in which Freud seems to have been basically 'professionally ostracized' for writing 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' in which, Freud linked the phenomenon of hysteria to 'childhood sexual seduction and/or more violent sexual assault'.
This essay -- looking back at it now from the hindsight mirror of the 21st century -- seems to have hit a very sensitive nerve among the strictly male audience making up The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology.
Unless you want to try to argue that Freud's essay that was read this night was very 'clinically unempirical' (which I don't think it was although it was probably 'overgeneralized') -- then otherwise, it seems to have been the case that Freud had hit on a 'professional taboo'. He had entered into the realm of what today we would call 'professionally and politically incorrect subject matter' -- and/or simply 'professionally and politically avoided subject matter'. Like a politician trying to approach the subject of 'abortion'. And even now, the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' is not an easily approached subject matter...
Now, let's go back 105 years and we should not have too much trouble imagining that the strictly male audience did not want to hear about, or otherwise have anything to do with the issue of 'childhoood sexual assault' -- let alone trying to grasp the clinical and logical connection between 'childhood sexual seduction/assault' and 'adult hysteria' and/or other forms of 'psycho-neurosis'.
Krafft-Ebing, the leader of the Vienna April 21st, 1896 meeting, called Freud's thesis a 'scientific fairy tale'. And it seemed like Freud had a whole roomful of 'ridiculers' that night.
No doubt in my mind, this evening was an 'ego-traumacy' for Freud....of greater or lesser proportion....and certainly a reaction to his latest essay that he was not entirely expecting...The particular 'proportion' of his ego-traumacy that night -- and his later reaction to it -- may go a long way towards explaining or not explaining Freud's 'abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory' which 'coincidentally' started to occur almost immediately after this meeting...or maybe even before...as Freud's 'wish-fulfillment' and/or 'longing' theory was just starting to gain serious momentum with 'The Interpretation of Dreams' racing through his head (and Freud looking for an excuse, rationalization, justification...to alleviate his Emma Ekstein guilt by getting himself and Fliess off the 'accountability hook' for being responsible for the huge Ekstein nasal surgery mishap that almost cost her her life, and did cost her serious facial disfigurement...
The 50 million dollar question remains: Did Freud 'morally' and/or 'ethically' and/or 'neurotically' cave in, in the wake of these two 'ego-traumatic' events of February, 1895 (Emma Ekstein) and April 21st, 1896 (The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society Meeting), in such a way that he 'permanently disfigured' what was to become 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- or did he not?
Worded otherwise, did the Emma Ekstein medical mishap that was still darkly on Freud's mind more than a year after it had gone down, in combination with the professional, economic, and/or personal fear/panic (due to his professional ostracization from his medical peers and superiors -- and more importantly, from the absence of their 'client referrals'), 'motivate' Freud to 'bend', 'distort', and 'disfigure' Psychoanalysis in a way that he wouldn't have to return to the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' -- ever again -- particularly as it applied to the 'father-daughter relationship'?...
Or was 'The Oedipal Complex' and the whole subject matter of 'Childhood Sexuality' -- which was developed shortly thereafter -- developed not because Freud had any 'ulterior motive' of moving his subject matter away from 'childhood sexual abuse' because he was covering up for many Victorian fathers, some of whom might have been his friends and/or colleagues (and/or had the power to professionally hurt him) but rather because Freud truly believed that he had falsely believed his previous theory, now didn't believe it any longer, and was now heading down a different corridor -- still believing in repression and the pleasure-pain principle but looking now at 'the birth and evolution of childhood instinctual sexual drive rather than 'presexual sexual shock'.
Let us examine the timeline here because it could take some of the fire out of Masson's theory of 'Freud losing moral courage'... Or maybe not...
...........................................................................................................
On October 15th, 1895, Freud defines hysteria as follows:
Hysteria: Definition 1: 'Hysteria is the consequence of presexual sexual shock.
Obsessional Neurosis: Definition 1: Obsessional neurosis is the consequence of a presexual sexual pleasure, which is later transformed into self-reproach. "Presexual" means actually before puberty, before the release of sexual substances, the relevant events become effective only as memories.' (October 15th, 1895, Letter to Fliess).
Freud states elsewhere that 'obsessional neurosis' -- at least of the type that he is talking about here -- presupposes a 'pre-puberty, sexually active male' -- usually an older brother -- seducing and/or assaulting a younger sister in a manner that 'copies' or 'repeats' an earlier instance in which the older brother was sexually seduced and/or assaulted by an adult, usually one of the parents...and now the older brother has taken over the role of the offending adult....
..................................................................................................
December 8th, 1895, Freud writes to Fliess:
Definition 2 of Hysteria:
'Have I written to you that obsessional ideas are invariably reproaches, while at the root of hysteria there is always conflict (sexual pleasure along with possibly accompanying unpleasure). This is a new way of expressing the clinical solution.'
..........................
Here, Freud's definition of 'obsessional ideas' or 'obsessional neurosis' doesn't seemed to have changed -- the emphasis again is the essence of 'self-reproach' although the question might be asked: Self-reproach against what? To which I would reply on Freud's behalf: Self-reproaches against perceived 'transgressive sexual or id behavior' -- or at least the 'impulse' towards such 'perceived transgressive sexual behavior'...
Freud in the second definition above of hysteria no longer talks about 'presexual sexual shock' -- which was probably a great definitional loss -- and instead starts to emphasize the idea of 'presexual sexual pleasure' with the possible accompaniment of unpleasure (guilt?morality? ethics? modesty?) which makes hysteria start to sound more like 'obsessional neurosis' with the only distinguishing difference between them now the more 'passive' role of a prepuberty female vs. the more 'active' role of a prepuberty male....Gone is the 'shock-traumacy-seduction-assault' factor in hysteria -- and this was in early December, 1895, long before his 'professional collision with The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on April 21st, 1896.
However, on January 1, 1896, in a letter to Fliess, Freud seems to return to his earlier formulation of hysteria in which he writes:
'This first stage of hysteria may be described as 'fright hysteria'; its primary symptom is the manifestation of fright accompanied by a gap in the psyche. To what age this first hysterical overwhelming of the ego can occur is still unknown'.
To be continued....
Introduction
Back when I first approached this subject matter around June 2011 (if not before) of 're-defining the id', I asked the question: How would Freud have defined the 'id' differently if he had created the concept in 1893 as opposed to 1923? Once I had my answer to this question, then the next logical step was to integrate this new 'pre-1897' definition of the id with Freud's much later 1923 definition of the id.
If you think about it, Freud was already 'half way towards this integration' when he created 'the life and death instincts' in 1920, and then followed up this classic paper (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) with 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923. Because once Freud 'deposited' the life and death instincts in 'the id', then the id became the 'depository' or 'reservoir' of all 'psychic energy' -- some of which would later be 'transposed' to 'the ego' and 'the superego' -- such as 'the ego instincts'.
In effect, what Freud did in 1920 with his creation of the death instinct was he substituted the death instinct for his pre-1897 'traumacy theory'.
For example, one of the 'new series of clinical phenomena' that Freud had to deal with leading into 1920 is what today we would call 'post-traumatic stress syndrome'. Specifically, in the 1910 to 1920 era, Freud had to deal with 'war shocked' soldiers who had 'recurring nightmare dreams' that could not logically or realistically be viewed in accordance with Freud's 1900 thesis that 'all dreams were wish-fulfillments'. Enter 'the death instinct' to provide an alternative explanation. His pre-1897 'traumacy theory' would have provided a better explanation.
I can accept 'the death instinct' in a limited capacity. Indeed, I like to use the death instinct integratively with traumacy theory.
The thesis here is that 'significant traumacy in a person's life can lead to toxic, death forces or energy (worded otherwise, toxic, destructive, and/or life-inhibiting energy) formulating in a person's personality, specifically, in that part of the personality that I have come to refer to as 'The Shadow-Id Vault' -- or 'The Dissociated It Box'.
Let us see how I first began to develop this thesis in the following June 1st, 2011 essay (which I forgot I even wrote) that provides the assumptive and logical foundation for some of the essays that I am still writing today....as well as elements of my October thinking...
-- dgb, October 7th, 2011...
................................................................................................
If we assume that the brilliance of Freud's creative thought was in the 'entirety of his thought' -- say from 1893 (which is the beginning of his early psychoanalytic publications) to 1939 (when he died) -- and that Freud made a big theoretical and clinical mistake in 1896 (which I know that some, or many, of you may not agree with me here) -- then the logical follow-up to this 'Freud made a big mistake in 1896' assumption -- is to 'fix' what Freud could or would not fix himself over the remainder of his career: i.e., integrating his post-1896 'fantasy-impulse' work with his pre-1897 'real memory' and 'traumacy-seduction' work.
It remains a matter of significant debate -- but one that probably never will be definitively resolved because no one has access to everything Freud was thinking back in 1896 (The 'Freud-Fliess Letters' are the closest historical artifacts we still have in this regard) -- whether Freud made this 'postulated big theoretical and clinical mistake' intentionally, non-intentionally, and/or 'neuroticly and/or erotically' and/or somewhere in between. More on this to come.
The critical Freud to Fliess letter in my opinion is the letter of May 4th, 1896 as Freud hashed over with Fliess the two critical professional mishaps that were 'eating at him' during the composition of this letter.
Coincidentally or non-coincidentally, Freud largely 'wiped out' much of his thinking between the years 1893 to 1896 in his post-May 4th, 1896 'revolutionized' thinking, in what I believe to have been a 'neurotic display' of his own personal defense mechamism at work as he basically tried to 'cover up' and 'smooth over' the two hugely stressful professional events in his life at this time, mentioned above: 1. the Emma Ekstein medical fiasco that he and Fliess were involved in, in the spring of 1895; and 2. the Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology meeting of April 21st, 1896, in which Freud seems to have been basically 'professionally ostracized' for writing 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' in which, Freud linked the phenomenon of hysteria to 'childhood sexual seduction and/or more violent sexual assault'.
This essay -- looking back at it now from the hindsight mirror of the 21st century -- seems to have hit a very sensitive nerve among the strictly male audience making up The Vienna Society for Psychiatry and Neurology.
Unless you want to try to argue that Freud's essay that was read this night was very 'clinically unempirical' (which I don't think it was although it was probably 'overgeneralized') -- then otherwise, it seems to have been the case that Freud had hit on a 'professional taboo'. He had entered into the realm of what today we would call 'professionally and politically incorrect subject matter' -- and/or simply 'professionally and politically avoided subject matter'. Like a politician trying to approach the subject of 'abortion'. And even now, the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' is not an easily approached subject matter...
Now, let's go back 105 years and we should not have too much trouble imagining that the strictly male audience did not want to hear about, or otherwise have anything to do with the issue of 'childhoood sexual assault' -- let alone trying to grasp the clinical and logical connection between 'childhood sexual seduction/assault' and 'adult hysteria' and/or other forms of 'psycho-neurosis'.
Krafft-Ebing, the leader of the Vienna April 21st, 1896 meeting, called Freud's thesis a 'scientific fairy tale'. And it seemed like Freud had a whole roomful of 'ridiculers' that night.
No doubt in my mind, this evening was an 'ego-traumacy' for Freud....of greater or lesser proportion....and certainly a reaction to his latest essay that he was not entirely expecting...The particular 'proportion' of his ego-traumacy that night -- and his later reaction to it -- may go a long way towards explaining or not explaining Freud's 'abandonment of the traumacy-seduction theory' which 'coincidentally' started to occur almost immediately after this meeting...or maybe even before...as Freud's 'wish-fulfillment' and/or 'longing' theory was just starting to gain serious momentum with 'The Interpretation of Dreams' racing through his head (and Freud looking for an excuse, rationalization, justification...to alleviate his Emma Ekstein guilt by getting himself and Fliess off the 'accountability hook' for being responsible for the huge Ekstein nasal surgery mishap that almost cost her her life, and did cost her serious facial disfigurement...
The 50 million dollar question remains: Did Freud 'morally' and/or 'ethically' and/or 'neurotically' cave in, in the wake of these two 'ego-traumatic' events of February, 1895 (Emma Ekstein) and April 21st, 1896 (The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society Meeting), in such a way that he 'permanently disfigured' what was to become 'Classical' Psychoanalysis -- or did he not?
Worded otherwise, did the Emma Ekstein medical mishap that was still darkly on Freud's mind more than a year after it had gone down, in combination with the professional, economic, and/or personal fear/panic (due to his professional ostracization from his medical peers and superiors -- and more importantly, from the absence of their 'client referrals'), 'motivate' Freud to 'bend', 'distort', and 'disfigure' Psychoanalysis in a way that he wouldn't have to return to the subject of 'childhood sexual abuse' -- ever again -- particularly as it applied to the 'father-daughter relationship'?...
Or was 'The Oedipal Complex' and the whole subject matter of 'Childhood Sexuality' -- which was developed shortly thereafter -- developed not because Freud had any 'ulterior motive' of moving his subject matter away from 'childhood sexual abuse' because he was covering up for many Victorian fathers, some of whom might have been his friends and/or colleagues (and/or had the power to professionally hurt him) but rather because Freud truly believed that he had falsely believed his previous theory, now didn't believe it any longer, and was now heading down a different corridor -- still believing in repression and the pleasure-pain principle but looking now at 'the birth and evolution of childhood instinctual sexual drive rather than 'presexual sexual shock'.
Let us examine the timeline here because it could take some of the fire out of Masson's theory of 'Freud losing moral courage'... Or maybe not...
...........................................................................................................
On October 15th, 1895, Freud defines hysteria as follows:
Hysteria: Definition 1: 'Hysteria is the consequence of presexual sexual shock.
Obsessional Neurosis: Definition 1: Obsessional neurosis is the consequence of a presexual sexual pleasure, which is later transformed into self-reproach. "Presexual" means actually before puberty, before the release of sexual substances, the relevant events become effective only as memories.' (October 15th, 1895, Letter to Fliess).
Freud states elsewhere that 'obsessional neurosis' -- at least of the type that he is talking about here -- presupposes a 'pre-puberty, sexually active male' -- usually an older brother -- seducing and/or assaulting a younger sister in a manner that 'copies' or 'repeats' an earlier instance in which the older brother was sexually seduced and/or assaulted by an adult, usually one of the parents...and now the older brother has taken over the role of the offending adult....
..................................................................................................
December 8th, 1895, Freud writes to Fliess:
Definition 2 of Hysteria:
'Have I written to you that obsessional ideas are invariably reproaches, while at the root of hysteria there is always conflict (sexual pleasure along with possibly accompanying unpleasure). This is a new way of expressing the clinical solution.'
..........................
Here, Freud's definition of 'obsessional ideas' or 'obsessional neurosis' doesn't seemed to have changed -- the emphasis again is the essence of 'self-reproach' although the question might be asked: Self-reproach against what? To which I would reply on Freud's behalf: Self-reproaches against perceived 'transgressive sexual or id behavior' -- or at least the 'impulse' towards such 'perceived transgressive sexual behavior'...
Freud in the second definition above of hysteria no longer talks about 'presexual sexual shock' -- which was probably a great definitional loss -- and instead starts to emphasize the idea of 'presexual sexual pleasure' with the possible accompaniment of unpleasure (guilt?morality? ethics? modesty?) which makes hysteria start to sound more like 'obsessional neurosis' with the only distinguishing difference between them now the more 'passive' role of a prepuberty female vs. the more 'active' role of a prepuberty male....Gone is the 'shock-traumacy-seduction-assault' factor in hysteria -- and this was in early December, 1895, long before his 'professional collision with The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society on April 21st, 1896.
However, on January 1, 1896, in a letter to Fliess, Freud seems to return to his earlier formulation of hysteria in which he writes:
'This first stage of hysteria may be described as 'fright hysteria'; its primary symptom is the manifestation of fright accompanied by a gap in the psyche. To what age this first hysterical overwhelming of the ego can occur is still unknown'.
To be continued....
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Newest DGB Multi-Integrative Working Model of The Human Psyche
Updated Nov. 19th, 2011....
My newest working model of the human of the human psyche is more complicated and/or more sophisticated than probably all of the other working models out there, but still it is capable of being fully substantiated by clinical observation, clinical history, the integration of other well-established models, and logical rational-empirical argument...
Without further explanation and 'topologically' listed from top to bottom, the '16 Compartment' model now looks like this:
A/ Mainly Conscious (In Awareness) Dynamic and Structural Elements in The Psyche
Main Thinking Dynamics: Secondary Process...Rational-Empirical to greater or lesser extent, negotiating, compromising, mediating, asserting, persuading, organized, consistent, coherent, abstracting, generalizing, distinguishing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, agreeing, disagreeing, choosing, deciding...
1. 'The Nurturing-Altruistic Superior Egp';
2. 'The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superior Ego';
3. 'The Righteous-Ethical (Rejecting) Superior Ego';
4. 'The Co-operative (Disapproval Avoiding, Phobic) Inferior Ego';
5. 'The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Inferior Ego';
6. 'The Rebellious-Righteous (Paranoid-Confrontational or Paranoid-Schizoid/Distancing) Inferior Ego';
7. 'The Central Ego and Mediation/Self-Psychotherapy/Executive Decision Board Room
B/ Dynamic and Structural Preconscious and/or Subconscious Elements in The Psyche
Main Thinking Dynamics: Emotional, Picture-Symbolic, Pleasure Principle, Primary and Primal Goals, Desires, Fantasies, Often Uncivil and Unethical, Raw and Uncensored, Romantic, Sexual, Sometimes Anxiety-Ridden From Previous Traumacy, Sometimes Angry and Hateful, Jealous, Envious...Spiritual, Religious, Mythological, Artistic, Creative, Destructive, Paradoxical, Inconsistent...
08. 'The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver';
09. 'The Shadow-Id Vault (SIV)
10. The Learning and Transference Templates (and 'Neurotic Complexes');
11. 'The Black Hole' (or alternatively, 'Nietzsche's Abyss', or 'Anaximander's Apeiron');
12. 'The Genetic Template and Potential Existential Self'
I will break apart and start to explain this multi-integrative model, compartment by compartment, shortly...
-- dgb, updated November 19th, 2011
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
My newest working model of the human of the human psyche is more complicated and/or more sophisticated than probably all of the other working models out there, but still it is capable of being fully substantiated by clinical observation, clinical history, the integration of other well-established models, and logical rational-empirical argument...
Without further explanation and 'topologically' listed from top to bottom, the '16 Compartment' model now looks like this:
A/ Mainly Conscious (In Awareness) Dynamic and Structural Elements in The Psyche
Main Thinking Dynamics: Secondary Process...Rational-Empirical to greater or lesser extent, negotiating, compromising, mediating, asserting, persuading, organized, consistent, coherent, abstracting, generalizing, distinguishing, classifying, comparing, contrasting, agreeing, disagreeing, choosing, deciding...
1. 'The Nurturing-Altruistic Superior Egp';
2. 'The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Superior Ego';
3. 'The Righteous-Ethical (Rejecting) Superior Ego';
4. 'The Co-operative (Disapproval Avoiding, Phobic) Inferior Ego';
5. 'The Narcissistic-Hedonistic Inferior Ego';
6. 'The Rebellious-Righteous (Paranoid-Confrontational or Paranoid-Schizoid/Distancing) Inferior Ego';
7. 'The Central Ego and Mediation/Self-Psychotherapy/Executive Decision Board Room
B/ Dynamic and Structural Preconscious and/or Subconscious Elements in The Psyche
Main Thinking Dynamics: Emotional, Picture-Symbolic, Pleasure Principle, Primary and Primal Goals, Desires, Fantasies, Often Uncivil and Unethical, Raw and Uncensored, Romantic, Sexual, Sometimes Anxiety-Ridden From Previous Traumacy, Sometimes Angry and Hateful, Jealous, Envious...Spiritual, Religious, Mythological, Artistic, Creative, Destructive, Paradoxical, Inconsistent...
08. 'The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver';
09. 'The Shadow-Id Vault (SIV)
10. The Learning and Transference Templates (and 'Neurotic Complexes');
11. 'The Black Hole' (or alternatively, 'Nietzsche's Abyss', or 'Anaximander's Apeiron');
12. 'The Genetic Template and Potential Existential Self'
I will break apart and start to explain this multi-integrative model, compartment by compartment, shortly...
-- dgb, updated November 19th, 2011
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
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