World in Your Head
(Exploring the Unconscious)
by Michael Tsarion
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There was a time when rational present-day consciousness was not yet separated from the historical psyche, the collective unconscious - Carl Jung
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Would it shock you to learn that thinking is a relatively recent historical phenomenon, and that not too long ago the human mind functioned differently than it does today? Six thousand years ago people didn't think, speak or act as we do. They did not care about individualism, independence or freedom. They did not read, write or record their experiences, and were not inclined to write down their ideas so others could benefit from them. No one cared about the difference between reality and fantasy. They did not worship as we do, and did not ponder who they were in any philosophical sense. The great existential gateway questions - who am I, how did I get here, where am I going, etc - came relatively late in history, although today millions of people still go through life without asking whether their lives have meaning.
Apparently, the brain is the locus of our thought processes. However, people who have suffered major trauma to the left-hemisphere of their brains don't necessarily consider themselves unfortunate. On the contrary, many report living in an ecstatic state, with everything around them appearing strangely alive, vibrant and inexplicably numinous. How is this to be explained? Are they hallucinating? If so, where do their hallucinations come from, and why do we commonly deem hallucinations to be less valid and true than what we take for "normal" mental activity?
And why are these people's lives so drastically transformed and improved by left-brain dysfunction? Does it mean that the left-brain acts as an inhibitor of sorts, denying us ecstatic experiences that once-upon-a-time were quite natural?
Moreover, why is the left-brain divided from the right-brain, and what caused the split? Why are the two hemispheres asymmetrical. That's not what most plastic models of the brain show, and yet actual brain-scans certainly show how different the two sections are from one another.
And then there's the puzzle of what happens at night when we fall into sleep. Why does brain activity not diminish as our bodies become tired and inactive? Where does our awareness go and what makes it return again? Where do dreams and nightmares come from? Do dreams have meaning, and are we right to suppose they do?
Apparently, the brain is the locus of our thought processes. However, people who have suffered major trauma to the left-hemisphere of their brains don't necessarily consider themselves unfortunate. On the contrary, many report living in an ecstatic state, with everything around them appearing strangely alive, vibrant and inexplicably numinous. How is this to be explained? Are they hallucinating? If so, where do their hallucinations come from, and why do we commonly deem hallucinations to be less valid and true than what we take for "normal" mental activity?
And why are these people's lives so drastically transformed and improved by left-brain dysfunction? Does it mean that the left-brain acts as an inhibitor of sorts, denying us ecstatic experiences that once-upon-a-time were quite natural?
Moreover, why is the left-brain divided from the right-brain, and what caused the split? Why are the two hemispheres asymmetrical. That's not what most plastic models of the brain show, and yet actual brain-scans certainly show how different the two sections are from one another.
And then there's the puzzle of what happens at night when we fall into sleep. Why does brain activity not diminish as our bodies become tired and inactive? Where does our awareness go and what makes it return again? Where do dreams and nightmares come from? Do dreams have meaning, and are we right to suppose they do?
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Among Freud’s most important discoveries is the realization that the underlying cause of psychological disturbance is our fear of self-knowledge - Carl Goldberg
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In the final years of the 19th century, Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud began asking deep and sincere questions about the mysteries of consciousness. Taking his cue from previous sages - such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - Freud, under the guise of psychology, introduced the disturbing idea that man is not in fact in complete control of his mind. This revelation shook the foundations of Rationalists who espoused the doctrine that soon all life's mysteries were going to be cast aside forever, courtesy of the intellect. Apparently, they forgot to include the mysteries of consciousness itself.
Speaking about the uneasy interaction between conscious and unconscious hemispheres, Freud suspected that the content of the unconscious, although debarred by ego-structures, preserved a holistic and more real vision of reality. He wrote:
Speaking about the uneasy interaction between conscious and unconscious hemispheres, Freud suspected that the content of the unconscious, although debarred by ego-structures, preserved a holistic and more real vision of reality. He wrote:
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The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world - (Civilization and Its Discontents)
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So in early times, before the advent of ego-consciousness, we enjoyed a more fluid and intense relationship with the cosmos, an intimate rapport now lost.
Sociologist Theodore Roszak agrees, and writes:
Sociologist Theodore Roszak agrees, and writes:
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The id is that very protohuman psychic core that our evolution has spent millions of years molding to fit the planetary environment. Its seeming unruliness deserves a deeper understanding, if only because it grows from a long evolutionary history. In the course of that history its dominant characteristics must have been selected for some good reason - (Where the Wasteland Ends)
…the id conserves from its long maturing process…our treasury of ecological intelligence. Its intractability stems from its deeply ingrained resistance to all social forms that endanger the harmony of the human and the natural; its untamed “selfishness” represents a bond between psyche and cosmos whose distant origins reach back to the initial conditions of the Big Bang - ibid ...Just as there is a “wisdom of the body” which often has a better sense of health than medical science, so too there may be a “wisdom of the id” that knows what sanity is better than any school of psychiatry whose standard of normality is essentially a defense of misconceived social necessity - ibid |
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Are we to take it then that the ego keeps this innate wisdom out of our awareness? If so, what does it mean for our troubles and woes, and what can be done about it? Has it always been that way throughout history?
Theodore Roszak (1933-2011)
Certainly Roszak's perceptive words reinforce Freud's original idea that we are profoundly divided beings. In which case, what can one hemisphere possibly know about the other? What does one side know about its counterpart? Or are there yet more barriers to overcome in comprehension and utterance? If ego-consciousness expresses a belief about the nature and content of the unconscious, are we to automatically accept it? Certain thinkers don't believe so? The ego may act as an intercessor between the hemispheres, but might also abuse its unique position and authority:
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The ego mediates all forms of conflict, whether internally motivated or externally imposed by the demands of objective reality - Jon Mills (The Unconscious Abyss)
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Again, we might ask whether it was always this way. Perhaps, given Roszak's insights, the Self was once probably the chief coordinator of consciousness. Has the servant dethroned the master? Is the ego a usurper, preventing, with its numerous defences, the return of the Imperial Self to its rightful place in consciousness? It explains a great deal?
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung mused on the advent of ego-consciousness and its darker side, saying:
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung mused on the advent of ego-consciousness and its darker side, saying:
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Consciousness is a very recent acquisition of nature, and it is still in an “experimental" state
When man became conscious, the germ of the sickness of disassociation was planted in his soul, for consciousness is at once the highest good and the greatest evil |
Given that the id or unconscious is the soil of ego-consciousness - the ground of our being - might it not be detrimental for us to ignore its counsel? Jung writes:
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If you give up the past you naturally detach from the past; you lose your roots in the soil, your connection with the totem ancestors that dwell in your soul. You turn outward and drift away, and try to conquer other lands because you are exiled from your own soil
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For Jung, and psychologists of his school, the soul and the self are considered identical. It was Erich Neumann, however, who understood the nub of the problem. Given that the unconscious is the psychic analogue of external nature (the Umwelt), might not our fear of nature parallel our fear of our own psyche? Conversely, as both Roszak and Jung argued, might not a renewed respect for nature lead to a lessening of internal anxiety and improved relationship with the id? It's an important message for urbanized types, especially those plagued with neurotic tendencies.
Of course, both Freudians and Jungians recognize the importance of the unconscious. For the former, the presence of the unconscious helps alleviate the ego of psychic burdens, serving as a kind of dumpster into which we cast uncomfortable feelings such as shame, guilt, envy, anger and fear.
For Jung it's the soil of consciousness, the "mother" of the ego-child, as it were. Certainly it is the repository of repressed content, but it might also be something more. It may be a haven for repressed content, a purgatorial place of repose, where lost aspects of Self gather. This leads to an alternative view of neuroses. Perhaps the unconscious, like a black hole, selfishly but rightly returns to itself precious content foolishly rejected and marooned by the ego. It's an intriguing twist.
Of course, both Freudians and Jungians recognize the importance of the unconscious. For the former, the presence of the unconscious helps alleviate the ego of psychic burdens, serving as a kind of dumpster into which we cast uncomfortable feelings such as shame, guilt, envy, anger and fear.
For Jung it's the soil of consciousness, the "mother" of the ego-child, as it were. Certainly it is the repository of repressed content, but it might also be something more. It may be a haven for repressed content, a purgatorial place of repose, where lost aspects of Self gather. This leads to an alternative view of neuroses. Perhaps the unconscious, like a black hole, selfishly but rightly returns to itself precious content foolishly rejected and marooned by the ego. It's an intriguing twist.
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…the wise man discovers in the utmost depths of his soul that he possesses the same Logos as that which animates and governs the cosmos - Mircea Eliade
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Throughout my work I inquire into the various theories about the nature and function of the unconscious. There is certainly more than one take on the subject. But why so very many? How are we to tell which interpretation is right? Some appear contradictory, while others seem extraordinarily pertinent. And it's not only professional psychologists and therapists who express opinions about the subject. Artists, poets and film-makers have also chimed in with provocative theories.
French surrealist artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau was inclined, for example, to think of the unconscious as the realm from which ideals and ideas emerge to possess our minds. Not only do these semi-parasitical ideas animate minds and stimulate imaginations, they also seduce us into their world, a dark domain from which there is no return.
French surrealist artist and film-maker Jean Cocteau was inclined, for example, to think of the unconscious as the realm from which ideals and ideas emerge to possess our minds. Not only do these semi-parasitical ideas animate minds and stimulate imaginations, they also seduce us into their world, a dark domain from which there is no return.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
A few other artists and poets were inclined to think along similar lines. William Blake, Henri Rousseau, Rene Magritte and George de Chirico, and other surrealists, understood the ambivalent nature of the id. Blake was wary though, realizing that since we don't have direct access to unconscious content, we are bound to question whether what we know about it is accurate. After all, is it logical to trust the word of the ego? What if its descriptions aren't as impartial as we think? What if thinking isn't what we think it is? It's quite a paradox.
Freud was apparently not so skeptical. He believed we can access the recesses of the unconscious. In his therapeutic practice he developed three methods by which to do so. He pioneered the free-association (or talking-cure), hypnosis therapy, and dream therapy. The latter approach assisted therapists to probe a client's unconscious with less ego censorship in the way.
Freud was apparently not so skeptical. He believed we can access the recesses of the unconscious. In his therapeutic practice he developed three methods by which to do so. He pioneered the free-association (or talking-cure), hypnosis therapy, and dream therapy. The latter approach assisted therapists to probe a client's unconscious with less ego censorship in the way.
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Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn first to know yourself. Then you will understand why you were bound to fall ill; and perhaps you will avoid falling ill in future - Sigmund Freud
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For all his optimism and conviction about the efficacy of his therapeutic system, Freud understood that gaining access to the unconscious wasn't a straightforward process. A great deal of deceptiveness is involved on part of the client. Additionally, he discovered that other vexing syndromes are at work in a session. The most puzzling and obstructing of these is what he referred to as "transference." This is evident if and when the client begins treating his therapist as a father or mother figure. It does not usually have a positive outcome.
Freud later discovered that the problem is two-way. When "counter-transference" occurs, the therapist projects their own syndromes onto the unfortunate client. A therapist may nonconsciously treat the client as an inferior idiot, guinea pig, child or pupil. He may become aware of a deep dislike toward the client, or, conversely, may find himself or herself sexually attracted by the client. It all gets quite complicated and can end in disaster. Instead of getting healed, a client can find themselves getting more confused, disgusted and forlorn. Healing the mind often turns out to be far more arduous than healing the body.
It goes without saying that psychopathology occurs due to the tension between conscious and unconscious "drives," or better said needs. Apparently, there's quite a tug-of-war going on between the hemispheres, and few there are to explain it.
Freud attempted to create a model of the psyche, to make things easier. His topographical schemata is as follows:
Freud later discovered that the problem is two-way. When "counter-transference" occurs, the therapist projects their own syndromes onto the unfortunate client. A therapist may nonconsciously treat the client as an inferior idiot, guinea pig, child or pupil. He may become aware of a deep dislike toward the client, or, conversely, may find himself or herself sexually attracted by the client. It all gets quite complicated and can end in disaster. Instead of getting healed, a client can find themselves getting more confused, disgusted and forlorn. Healing the mind often turns out to be far more arduous than healing the body.
It goes without saying that psychopathology occurs due to the tension between conscious and unconscious "drives," or better said needs. Apparently, there's quite a tug-of-war going on between the hemispheres, and few there are to explain it.
Freud attempted to create a model of the psyche, to make things easier. His topographical schemata is as follows:
It is, of course, vital to remember that this is merely a model. One cannot slice open a brain and find any such compartments. It's also a model that has been deftly critiqued by other psychologists.
In any case, according to Freud's convenient map of the psyche, we see that there are three prominent hemispheres of importance: the id, ego and superego. Actually there is an additional structure of importance, the so-called ego-ideal, which is technically part of the superego.
Freud also drew a line between conscious structures and functions and unconscious ones. It is as if there is within us a state of psychic apartheid, and many are the reasons given for it. As said above, the greater part of our psychological structures and functions are permanently outside or beyond waking awareness. We might ask why this is the case?
William Blake, Schwaller de Lubicz, Rudolf Steiner, and psychologists Immanuel Velikovsky and Julian Jaynes believed the division exists because of the effects and aftereffects of ancestral trauma, itself the result of colossal cataclysms that shook the earth in prehistoric times. According to these thinkers, consciousness is not yet healed of the traumatic effects, and is still plagued by disturbances which we experience as the many neurotic complexes and syndromes.
To prevent complete breakdown, a barrier was imposed by the mind on itself. What we know as ego-consciousness could not possibly have come into existence without this limen. With traumatic memories cast into the wilds of the mind, ego-consciousness is free to face the world and process our experiences. Safe behind its defences it developed other structures to assist in its acts of repression. In this sense, the ego's foremost fear is the unconscious. It is always on guard against the titanic tides of the dark unconscious that may one day overwhelm it.
This suggests, especially for Jungians, that the Self was probably the original center of consciousness before the ego took its place.
In any case, Freud's early account of psychopathology was based on a different view. He believed it was daemonic forces from within our own being that caused mental sickness. The flooding in of wild unruly content from the unconscious (or Id) was seen as a kind of dreadful "possession." It may be that in some cases madness is due to the influx of unconscious content breaking through defences erected by the ego. However, not every psychologist sees it this way. Indeed, Anna Freud took a different view than that of her father, although we cannot pause here to discuss in detail her astute theories and school of psychology.
Interestingly, in light of the underlying trauma upon which the whole of ego-consciousness stands, we can see Freud's lifework as the first moment at which, historically speaking, the ego felt itself sufficiently secure enough to turn toward its own workings. It's a good sign. Perhaps healing is occurring after all.
Prior to the advent of psychoanalysis, man was not inclined to introspect. As mentioned earlier, that was only for a few exceptional souls in each epoch. It was the exception rather than the rule, and little has changed. Nevertheless, since Freud's time, more is known about mind by the mind.
There quickly followed other insightful savants - men such as Rank, Adler, Jung, Reich, Fromm and Frankl, and women such as Anna Freud, Klein, Miller and Horney, etc.
In any case, according to Freud's convenient map of the psyche, we see that there are three prominent hemispheres of importance: the id, ego and superego. Actually there is an additional structure of importance, the so-called ego-ideal, which is technically part of the superego.
Freud also drew a line between conscious structures and functions and unconscious ones. It is as if there is within us a state of psychic apartheid, and many are the reasons given for it. As said above, the greater part of our psychological structures and functions are permanently outside or beyond waking awareness. We might ask why this is the case?
William Blake, Schwaller de Lubicz, Rudolf Steiner, and psychologists Immanuel Velikovsky and Julian Jaynes believed the division exists because of the effects and aftereffects of ancestral trauma, itself the result of colossal cataclysms that shook the earth in prehistoric times. According to these thinkers, consciousness is not yet healed of the traumatic effects, and is still plagued by disturbances which we experience as the many neurotic complexes and syndromes.
To prevent complete breakdown, a barrier was imposed by the mind on itself. What we know as ego-consciousness could not possibly have come into existence without this limen. With traumatic memories cast into the wilds of the mind, ego-consciousness is free to face the world and process our experiences. Safe behind its defences it developed other structures to assist in its acts of repression. In this sense, the ego's foremost fear is the unconscious. It is always on guard against the titanic tides of the dark unconscious that may one day overwhelm it.
This suggests, especially for Jungians, that the Self was probably the original center of consciousness before the ego took its place.
In any case, Freud's early account of psychopathology was based on a different view. He believed it was daemonic forces from within our own being that caused mental sickness. The flooding in of wild unruly content from the unconscious (or Id) was seen as a kind of dreadful "possession." It may be that in some cases madness is due to the influx of unconscious content breaking through defences erected by the ego. However, not every psychologist sees it this way. Indeed, Anna Freud took a different view than that of her father, although we cannot pause here to discuss in detail her astute theories and school of psychology.
Interestingly, in light of the underlying trauma upon which the whole of ego-consciousness stands, we can see Freud's lifework as the first moment at which, historically speaking, the ego felt itself sufficiently secure enough to turn toward its own workings. It's a good sign. Perhaps healing is occurring after all.
Prior to the advent of psychoanalysis, man was not inclined to introspect. As mentioned earlier, that was only for a few exceptional souls in each epoch. It was the exception rather than the rule, and little has changed. Nevertheless, since Freud's time, more is known about mind by the mind.
There quickly followed other insightful savants - men such as Rank, Adler, Jung, Reich, Fromm and Frankl, and women such as Anna Freud, Klein, Miller and Horney, etc.
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Freud’s revolution was to make us recognize the unconscious aspect of man’s mind and the energy which he uses to repress the awareness of undesirable desires…He was the first scientist to explore the depth, the underworld in man, and that is why his ideas had such an impact on artists and writers at a time when most psychiatrists still refused to take his theories seriously - Erich Fromm
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In his last book Civilization and its Discontents, published in 1929, Freud adopts a philosophical outlook. He stands back from society to question where we're all going. Accepting that society and civilization are essential, he follows the trend of the great historian Oswald Spengler, and poses vital questions about the future of humankind.
According to his workable model of the psyche, Freud asked whether too much acculturation leads to a loss of instinctual roots. The more we embed ourselves in culture, the social hive, the more our core identities are weakened. However, the more we retract from engagement with others, the more we're likely to lose empathy and be flooded with dark content from the daemonic id. In this respect, Freud wrongly views the unconscious as something sinister and potentially destructive. It was his daughter who turned the situation around in terms of the origin of human psychopathology.
His protege Carl Jung couldn't accept this bleak reductive view either. Like Anna Freud and George Groddeck, Jung was inclined to redeem the essential nature of the unconscious. Instead of following Freud's lead, and tracking pathology to the interference of an animalistic antisocial Id, Jung tracked neurotic imbalance to the interference of what he came to call the "Collective Unconscious."
This term alludes to a strata of the psyche which, as it were, functions below personal conscious awareness. Jung was the first man to detect the activty of this nonconscious psychic strata. He was the first to coherently delineate its intrusion into and effects on waking consciousness, not to mention on dreams and fantasies.
One could call this deep strata "mythological." Jung believed it is the immensely gradual accretion of ancient memory and phylogenetic experience - that is the experiences of all humans through the long process of historical time. It is, so to speak, history's "footprint" within us. Without this ancestral race memory there can be no such thing as consciousness at all. Our ego-awareness sits above this fathomless reservoir of unconscious memory. In this sense Jung's work recapitualates the profound insights of forgotten German Idealist Friedrich Schelling.
The content of the Collective Unconscious, although troublesome, uncanny and surreal, is not to be automatically considered identical with that of Freud's antisocial Id. Although "bestial" elements are occasionally evident in the intrusion of content from the Collective Unconscious, and although it is true that such content is for some people radically disturbing, Jung did not think that the deep psyche is necessarily irrational or evil.
Despite his idiosyncratic take on the psyche, Jung wholeheartedly agreed with Anna Freud and her followers about society's crucial role in causing pathological tendencies within its citizens.
If there are aberrant aspects within our being, might they not be symptoms of an abnormal society, or at least of our compulsive dependency on the approval of our fellows in society? In other words, the devilry normally assigned to the id may not be inherent after all. It may originate from the oppressive deviant culture (or Mitwelt) we inhabit, and its incessant demands upon our libido. In this case the forces of the unconscious must be reconceived. Might they not be necessary acts of legitimate rebellion against true evil?
According to his workable model of the psyche, Freud asked whether too much acculturation leads to a loss of instinctual roots. The more we embed ourselves in culture, the social hive, the more our core identities are weakened. However, the more we retract from engagement with others, the more we're likely to lose empathy and be flooded with dark content from the daemonic id. In this respect, Freud wrongly views the unconscious as something sinister and potentially destructive. It was his daughter who turned the situation around in terms of the origin of human psychopathology.
His protege Carl Jung couldn't accept this bleak reductive view either. Like Anna Freud and George Groddeck, Jung was inclined to redeem the essential nature of the unconscious. Instead of following Freud's lead, and tracking pathology to the interference of an animalistic antisocial Id, Jung tracked neurotic imbalance to the interference of what he came to call the "Collective Unconscious."
This term alludes to a strata of the psyche which, as it were, functions below personal conscious awareness. Jung was the first man to detect the activty of this nonconscious psychic strata. He was the first to coherently delineate its intrusion into and effects on waking consciousness, not to mention on dreams and fantasies.
One could call this deep strata "mythological." Jung believed it is the immensely gradual accretion of ancient memory and phylogenetic experience - that is the experiences of all humans through the long process of historical time. It is, so to speak, history's "footprint" within us. Without this ancestral race memory there can be no such thing as consciousness at all. Our ego-awareness sits above this fathomless reservoir of unconscious memory. In this sense Jung's work recapitualates the profound insights of forgotten German Idealist Friedrich Schelling.
The content of the Collective Unconscious, although troublesome, uncanny and surreal, is not to be automatically considered identical with that of Freud's antisocial Id. Although "bestial" elements are occasionally evident in the intrusion of content from the Collective Unconscious, and although it is true that such content is for some people radically disturbing, Jung did not think that the deep psyche is necessarily irrational or evil.
Despite his idiosyncratic take on the psyche, Jung wholeheartedly agreed with Anna Freud and her followers about society's crucial role in causing pathological tendencies within its citizens.
If there are aberrant aspects within our being, might they not be symptoms of an abnormal society, or at least of our compulsive dependency on the approval of our fellows in society? In other words, the devilry normally assigned to the id may not be inherent after all. It may originate from the oppressive deviant culture (or Mitwelt) we inhabit, and its incessant demands upon our libido. In this case the forces of the unconscious must be reconceived. Might they not be necessary acts of legitimate rebellion against true evil?
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The unconscious proper is not formed or created by the individual in response to culture, but exists a priori behind all culture - Dr. Beatrice Hinckle
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As Jung pursued this line of inquiry he alienated himself from Freud, and in 1912 a break with the master occurred that nearly cost Jung his sanity. Rejecting some Freudian principles, he developed his own therapeutic system, known as Analytical Psychology. Volumes can be written on each aspect of his system, but one particular premise is certainly worth discussing here.
As said, Jung's picture of the unconscious wasn't as forbidding and bleak as Freud's. Since we know so little about our ancient past, it's not quite right to suppose the id to contain nothing but bestial antisocial content. We should not attribute our capacities for criminality, rapacity and evil to the essence of our being. As Nietzsche suspected, that kind of thinking may be an unfortunate inheritance from Christianity. What is more, it's a kind of thinking that probably brings about deviancy.
In other words, it's not, as Freud conceived, that man is in his essence wild and bestial, but that false thinking about the Self becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, bringing about evil thought and behavior. It sounds logical, since a new, more positive attitude toward the Self does indeed see evil diminish in the world. Jung raises the question as to whether we are anxious, depressed and dysfunctional because we nonconsciously embody a false picture of Self, one endorsed by professionals and most of Christianized society.
As his insight developed, Jung's account of the unconscious hinged on a vitally important fact. According to Jung the unconscious is by definition specular. This means it acts like a mirror of sorts. Practically it means that the complexion of the unconscious is not constant. It changes based on the attitude of the countenance peering into it. Figuratively speaking, if one encounters the mysteries of the unconscious with an uncaring, curious, skeptical or acquisitive attitude, the face seen gazing back will be abnormal, frightening and threatening. If, on the other hand, one's egoic attitude is positive, caring, grateful and sincere, the face seen gazing back is more likely to be lustrous, welcoming, goodly and angelic. We see from this that Jung's philosophy of mind is essentially Personalistic. The Self is whatever one wants it to be.
As said, Jung's picture of the unconscious wasn't as forbidding and bleak as Freud's. Since we know so little about our ancient past, it's not quite right to suppose the id to contain nothing but bestial antisocial content. We should not attribute our capacities for criminality, rapacity and evil to the essence of our being. As Nietzsche suspected, that kind of thinking may be an unfortunate inheritance from Christianity. What is more, it's a kind of thinking that probably brings about deviancy.
In other words, it's not, as Freud conceived, that man is in his essence wild and bestial, but that false thinking about the Self becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, bringing about evil thought and behavior. It sounds logical, since a new, more positive attitude toward the Self does indeed see evil diminish in the world. Jung raises the question as to whether we are anxious, depressed and dysfunctional because we nonconsciously embody a false picture of Self, one endorsed by professionals and most of Christianized society.
As his insight developed, Jung's account of the unconscious hinged on a vitally important fact. According to Jung the unconscious is by definition specular. This means it acts like a mirror of sorts. Practically it means that the complexion of the unconscious is not constant. It changes based on the attitude of the countenance peering into it. Figuratively speaking, if one encounters the mysteries of the unconscious with an uncaring, curious, skeptical or acquisitive attitude, the face seen gazing back will be abnormal, frightening and threatening. If, on the other hand, one's egoic attitude is positive, caring, grateful and sincere, the face seen gazing back is more likely to be lustrous, welcoming, goodly and angelic. We see from this that Jung's philosophy of mind is essentially Personalistic. The Self is whatever one wants it to be.
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Is the common view correct, that evil lies within our own unconscious, and that we are born evil?
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Jung's approach differed from Freud because he didn't rely only on conversation and words. He had his clients paint pictures, take retreats in nature and consider animal symbolism. He encouraged them to pay attention to odd happenings around them, strange "synchronicities," and to heed changes in their physical bodies. Like Freud he emphasized the importance of dream symbolism, the chief portal into the mysteries of the unconscious.
This leads us to the superlative work of another neo-Freudian, the great Wilhelm Reich. Chiefly inspired by the therapeutic approach of George Groddeck, Reich focused almost entirely on the "language of the body." His methods were later taken up and adapted by Arthur Janov, Alexander Lowen, Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, Fredericl Matthias Alexander and Randolf Stone.
Deconstructing Freud's working but simplistic psychic model, Reich believed that psychology was in fact weakened in its efficiency as a healing modality because it neglected the soma or body. Psychology was in fact psychosomatic. He argued that pathology is the result of bioenergetic deficiencies. These deficiencies and weaknesses of libido are the result of what he called "armoring," which, in turn, is a pathological response to domestic and societal pressures and abuses. For Reicheans, physical and mental pathology is part of a deeper malady known as "Emotional Plague." And everyone has it.
As to common theories of the "unconscious," they too must be deconstructed. Reich did not accept the reductionist Freudian schemata. Although it explains a great deal, it also omits vital facts. As far as Reich was concerned, things make greater sense once we see the body as the unconscious.
So, rather than some cobweb filled attic or dungeon in the mind, the thing we pay no attention to, the thing we neglect and find distasteful - the thing mysterious to us - is our own physical body.
Consequently, there can be no question of deep healing until we come out of the head and recognize ourselves as corporeal bioenergetic creatures. Reich's dynamic therapy involved the awakening and redirection of bioenergy, the dissipation of body-armoring, and revivification of the orgonic field or lifeforce at one's core. Indeed, the center of the body is, for Reich, the true unconscious level, the middle flow of energy and musculature constitutes the superego, while the surface of the body constitutes the ego. Therefore pathology is not, as Freud thought, based on inhibited or warped sexuality, but the inhibition and paralysis of lifeforce throughout the body.
This leads us to the superlative work of another neo-Freudian, the great Wilhelm Reich. Chiefly inspired by the therapeutic approach of George Groddeck, Reich focused almost entirely on the "language of the body." His methods were later taken up and adapted by Arthur Janov, Alexander Lowen, Ida Rolf, Moshe Feldenkrais, Fredericl Matthias Alexander and Randolf Stone.
Deconstructing Freud's working but simplistic psychic model, Reich believed that psychology was in fact weakened in its efficiency as a healing modality because it neglected the soma or body. Psychology was in fact psychosomatic. He argued that pathology is the result of bioenergetic deficiencies. These deficiencies and weaknesses of libido are the result of what he called "armoring," which, in turn, is a pathological response to domestic and societal pressures and abuses. For Reicheans, physical and mental pathology is part of a deeper malady known as "Emotional Plague." And everyone has it.
As to common theories of the "unconscious," they too must be deconstructed. Reich did not accept the reductionist Freudian schemata. Although it explains a great deal, it also omits vital facts. As far as Reich was concerned, things make greater sense once we see the body as the unconscious.
So, rather than some cobweb filled attic or dungeon in the mind, the thing we pay no attention to, the thing we neglect and find distasteful - the thing mysterious to us - is our own physical body.
Consequently, there can be no question of deep healing until we come out of the head and recognize ourselves as corporeal bioenergetic creatures. Reich's dynamic therapy involved the awakening and redirection of bioenergy, the dissipation of body-armoring, and revivification of the orgonic field or lifeforce at one's core. Indeed, the center of the body is, for Reich, the true unconscious level, the middle flow of energy and musculature constitutes the superego, while the surface of the body constitutes the ego. Therefore pathology is not, as Freud thought, based on inhibited or warped sexuality, but the inhibition and paralysis of lifeforce throughout the body.
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The basis of psyche is soma, and in evolution the soma came first. The psyche began as an imaginative elaboration of physical functioning, having as its most important duty the binding together of past experiences, potentialities, and the present moment’s awareness, and expectancy for the future
- D. W. Winicott |
Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957)
Given that our society is heavily armored and pathological - and given that we inhabit an ultra-feminized anti-psychological culture - it's not easy to change the status quo for the better. This is particularly difficult with parents who blindly raise their children to be highly armored. Reich's desire was to instruct the world on the prevalence of Emotional Plague, so parents and teachers become more sensitive to children whose natural energies are unarmored before culture's irrational impositions are encountered. Reich's dream was repeatedly obstructed. He was made a pariah in Austria and Germany, deported from Norway, condemned by the world as a charlatan, and finally arrested and jailed. He died in federal prison in 1957, the first man in America to have his books, papers and equipment burned by the authorities.
I see a strong correlation between Reich's bioenergetic theory and praxis and Jung's definition of the archetype known as the "Shadow." In my opinion - sticking closely to the Reichean model - the body and the Shadow are one and the same. Therefore, so-called Shadow-Work is to be regarded as the systematic reduction of armoring and Emotional Plague. This redefinition is essential. It not only deconstructs Freud's topographical schemata, it fulfills it.
Another of Freud's close associates to break with the master, was Otto Rank, Freud's long-serving secretary. Rank went on to develop a unique system of his own. Called "Will Therapy," his focus wasn't so much on a person's infancy, but on the quality of their life in the here and now. Rank was reluctant to carry on sessions for months or years on end, listening to endless accounts about a client's childhood. He warily realized that what he heard were just that - accounts. They may have no relation to what actually happened in real time. They are merely one's memories, which could be true, but in most cases were probably embellishments and distortions. In any case, they cannot easily be falsified. One must take the client's word for most of it, and Rank was not entirely confident in this regard. He knew how many malingerers there are, having dealt with the steady flow of wealthy self-absorbed clients lining up at Freud's door each day, looking for "fatherly" advice. He wanted psychoanalysis to free and empower people, not infantilize them.
I see a strong correlation between Reich's bioenergetic theory and praxis and Jung's definition of the archetype known as the "Shadow." In my opinion - sticking closely to the Reichean model - the body and the Shadow are one and the same. Therefore, so-called Shadow-Work is to be regarded as the systematic reduction of armoring and Emotional Plague. This redefinition is essential. It not only deconstructs Freud's topographical schemata, it fulfills it.
Another of Freud's close associates to break with the master, was Otto Rank, Freud's long-serving secretary. Rank went on to develop a unique system of his own. Called "Will Therapy," his focus wasn't so much on a person's infancy, but on the quality of their life in the here and now. Rank was reluctant to carry on sessions for months or years on end, listening to endless accounts about a client's childhood. He warily realized that what he heard were just that - accounts. They may have no relation to what actually happened in real time. They are merely one's memories, which could be true, but in most cases were probably embellishments and distortions. In any case, they cannot easily be falsified. One must take the client's word for most of it, and Rank was not entirely confident in this regard. He knew how many malingerers there are, having dealt with the steady flow of wealthy self-absorbed clients lining up at Freud's door each day, looking for "fatherly" advice. He wanted psychoanalysis to free and empower people, not infantilize them.
Otto Rank (1884-1939)
Rank's foremost book precipitated his break with Freud. Entitled The Trauma of Birth, it is a superlative critique of the theory of the Oedipus Complex. Rank's perceptive ideas on the subject were summarily dismissed by Freud and his circle. Hinterlanded as he was, Rank bravely continued his career, becoming one of the most profound and respected thinkers of the 20th century. His account of the nature of the unconscious is breathtakingly original and insightful.
In terms of his clientele and their problems, Rank understood that their reflections on childhood experiences change for the better as their present lives become productive and satisfactory. Their memories aren't as dark and their attitudes not so bitter and accusative. As a result his focus became the client's quality of existence in the present.
As for the unconscious, he first took a pragmatic attitude. It's partly a state of simple ignorance or unknowing. I don't know what it's like to fly in a helicopter or be an elephant. I don't know what it's like in St. Petersburg or on the dark side of the moon. I don't know a lot of things, and may never know about them. Therefore, it can be said that I'm "unconscious" of them. That's certainly one working definition of the state, said Rank. In fact, in terms of what we call "the future," one is almost entirely unconscious, like everyone else. He meant that the state simply refers to anything outside one's immediate attention and focus.
Pertaining to his theories expressed in The Trauma of Birth, Rank went many steps further in his understanding and description of the unconscious. His most controversial theory was an adaptation of Freud's famous Oedipus Complex paradigm. He argued that despite a child's ascent to adulthood, they secretly desire a return to the relative comfort of the womb. Since this is physically impossible, we conjure the fantasy of what may be called the "surrogate womb." That is, we invent environments which replicate a womb-like state. A look at the average city environment, with its many architectural edifices, shapes and forms (civic centers, arenas, malls, churches and cinemas, etc), convinced Rank that this syndrome is perpetually at work beneath the level of conscious awareness.
One cannot physically return to their mother's womb, but they can manufacture a simulacrum or replica of the embryonic state. This not only accounts for the urban environment in which one exists as a citizen, but also for the design of many homes, civic centers and sports arenas. It accounts for our political allegiances and support for certain parties and leaders. It's the origin, says Rank, of Crowd Consciousness.
Psychologist Gustave Le Bon agreed, saying that the Mass Mind unquestionably serves as a surrogate womb. Both men saw the panopticanization of society as a manifestation of this nonconscious compulsion. It is certainly the key to our understanding of Communitarian movements and their utopian visions of a future paradisal "Global Village." It is also, says Rank, the reason why so many neurotic types recoil from engagement with reality. They come for therapy to lie flat on a couch in a darkened room, close their eyes and talk endlessly about their childhoods. What's really going on here? asked Rank. Does it not all seem rather odd?
So it was that he formed his theory of the unconscious. The surrogate environment isn't only to be found in feminized civic-scapes, malls, arenas and neighborhoods. It is also to be found psychically. The surrogate womb exists within our heads, in the form of the unconscious. We carry the womb within our minds, a place into which we frequently retreat to imagine, fantasize and inflate ourselves. It's a place of repose and recuperation, sealed off from the world. It's the place into which we go naturally at night. Meaning that for ten hours or so, we get to experience the sense of forgetfulness and immersion once experienced during the pre-Oedipal stage when everything was provided on tap and reality wasn't as intrusive, challenging, obstructive and discomfiting. We might even say that what we call "mind" is the epitome of the surrogate womb.
Humans crave uroboric repose, and sign on for the alluring promises of the Globalists. They want to get their minds off their minds. Hence, says Rank, the advent of psychoanalysis. The neurotic personality type, flooded by the pressures of reality - exhausted by adult life and in a fit of self-deception - develops innumerable "hang-ups" to be treated by specialists. Instead of getting better, they get worse. Indeed, the world has worsened despite years of therapy, and Rank wasn't amused. His deep inquiry took him to the roots of the problem. Psychopathology exists, he believed, not because it is actual but fictive. It is a pseudo-pathology demanding treatment from father-like experts and counselors in environments replicating a safe, quiet, womb-like environment.
In terms of his clientele and their problems, Rank understood that their reflections on childhood experiences change for the better as their present lives become productive and satisfactory. Their memories aren't as dark and their attitudes not so bitter and accusative. As a result his focus became the client's quality of existence in the present.
As for the unconscious, he first took a pragmatic attitude. It's partly a state of simple ignorance or unknowing. I don't know what it's like to fly in a helicopter or be an elephant. I don't know what it's like in St. Petersburg or on the dark side of the moon. I don't know a lot of things, and may never know about them. Therefore, it can be said that I'm "unconscious" of them. That's certainly one working definition of the state, said Rank. In fact, in terms of what we call "the future," one is almost entirely unconscious, like everyone else. He meant that the state simply refers to anything outside one's immediate attention and focus.
Pertaining to his theories expressed in The Trauma of Birth, Rank went many steps further in his understanding and description of the unconscious. His most controversial theory was an adaptation of Freud's famous Oedipus Complex paradigm. He argued that despite a child's ascent to adulthood, they secretly desire a return to the relative comfort of the womb. Since this is physically impossible, we conjure the fantasy of what may be called the "surrogate womb." That is, we invent environments which replicate a womb-like state. A look at the average city environment, with its many architectural edifices, shapes and forms (civic centers, arenas, malls, churches and cinemas, etc), convinced Rank that this syndrome is perpetually at work beneath the level of conscious awareness.
One cannot physically return to their mother's womb, but they can manufacture a simulacrum or replica of the embryonic state. This not only accounts for the urban environment in which one exists as a citizen, but also for the design of many homes, civic centers and sports arenas. It accounts for our political allegiances and support for certain parties and leaders. It's the origin, says Rank, of Crowd Consciousness.
Psychologist Gustave Le Bon agreed, saying that the Mass Mind unquestionably serves as a surrogate womb. Both men saw the panopticanization of society as a manifestation of this nonconscious compulsion. It is certainly the key to our understanding of Communitarian movements and their utopian visions of a future paradisal "Global Village." It is also, says Rank, the reason why so many neurotic types recoil from engagement with reality. They come for therapy to lie flat on a couch in a darkened room, close their eyes and talk endlessly about their childhoods. What's really going on here? asked Rank. Does it not all seem rather odd?
So it was that he formed his theory of the unconscious. The surrogate environment isn't only to be found in feminized civic-scapes, malls, arenas and neighborhoods. It is also to be found psychically. The surrogate womb exists within our heads, in the form of the unconscious. We carry the womb within our minds, a place into which we frequently retreat to imagine, fantasize and inflate ourselves. It's a place of repose and recuperation, sealed off from the world. It's the place into which we go naturally at night. Meaning that for ten hours or so, we get to experience the sense of forgetfulness and immersion once experienced during the pre-Oedipal stage when everything was provided on tap and reality wasn't as intrusive, challenging, obstructive and discomfiting. We might even say that what we call "mind" is the epitome of the surrogate womb.
Humans crave uroboric repose, and sign on for the alluring promises of the Globalists. They want to get their minds off their minds. Hence, says Rank, the advent of psychoanalysis. The neurotic personality type, flooded by the pressures of reality - exhausted by adult life and in a fit of self-deception - develops innumerable "hang-ups" to be treated by specialists. Instead of getting better, they get worse. Indeed, the world has worsened despite years of therapy, and Rank wasn't amused. His deep inquiry took him to the roots of the problem. Psychopathology exists, he believed, not because it is actual but fictive. It is a pseudo-pathology demanding treatment from father-like experts and counselors in environments replicating a safe, quiet, womb-like environment.
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…every desire and every pleasure is drenched with the yearning to come once again into the mother’s body - George Groddeck
…even when the umbilical cord is cut there remains a deep craving to undo the separation, to return to the womb or to find a new situation of absolute protection and security - Erich Fromm I had already reached the conclusion that the human being is dominated from the moment of birth onwards by a continuous regressive trend toward the reestablishment of the intrauterine situation, and holds fast to this unswervingly by, as it were, magical-hallucinatory means, by the aid of positive and negative hallucinations - Sandor Ferenczi Uroboric mysticism is a longing for a womb-like return to an illusory paradise, a failure to ground oneself in the world - John P. Conger |
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Rank also believed that psychiatrists are a kind of priesthood, similar to that found in religion. Like Nietzsche before him, Rank thought that the passivity and docility found in humans - their craving for hierarchies and patriarchs - was first installed by Christianity. Psychiatrists constitute a modern hegemony which stigmatizes humanity. The priest sees man as a "sinner," while the psychiatrist treats him as a pervert or deviant. Rank's ideas in this regard inspired writer and critic Karl Krauss and libertarian psychologist Thomas Szasz, who had much to say about the institutionalization and panopticanization of humanity.
In books such as The Myth of Mental Illness, Szasz addresses the penchant for malingering in humans who have ceased accepting responsibility for their lives. He also addresses the duplicity of medical institutions which habitually categorize deviant people not as evil but as mentally unfit or "diseased." Consequently, the mentally disturbed patient or inmate has no reason to see himself as the one to blame for his antisocial behavior, and society need not judge him as a moral agent. Evil is simply caused by misfirings in the brain. The cure is being produced in some expensive, brightly-lit chemistry lab somewhere, so all is well. The lads in the white-coats will come through for us, come what may.
In books such as The Myth of Mental Illness, Szasz addresses the penchant for malingering in humans who have ceased accepting responsibility for their lives. He also addresses the duplicity of medical institutions which habitually categorize deviant people not as evil but as mentally unfit or "diseased." Consequently, the mentally disturbed patient or inmate has no reason to see himself as the one to blame for his antisocial behavior, and society need not judge him as a moral agent. Evil is simply caused by misfirings in the brain. The cure is being produced in some expensive, brightly-lit chemistry lab somewhere, so all is well. The lads in the white-coats will come through for us, come what may.
Thomas Szasz (1920-2012)
Neo-Freudian psychologist Karen Horney also addressed the problem of malingering. Taking her cue from Freud, she offered a modified theory of the superego and its function. Focusing on the fourth part of Freud's schemata, the ego-ideal, she stressed the importance of the self-image generated within one in accordance with the influence of parents and society. Since this influence is, as Anna Freud showed, largely malignant, one's self-image is bound to be insufficient. It is often at loggerheads with the deeper original Self-image preserved by the conscience and Imperial Self.
This latter image is suppressed and rejected by the ego which seeks security by modeling itself on what is externally approved of. This conformity to the demands and norms of parents and society has a direct bearing, says Horney, on the advent of psychopathology. The superego and ego-ideal are unquestionably the causes of most neurotic tendencies. The false self-image they generate clashes with a child's authentic Self-image, ensuring that homeostasis is permanently disturbed.
As we enter society, we are more inclined to deny our true Self-image or Self-schema. The irrational demands of parents and society take precedence, demanding conformity and obedience. However, we're not free and adjusted after we conform, because our adoption of the counterfeit image incurs a cache of shame and self-loathing to arise within us, which in turn causes yet more destabilization and repression. This syndrome was chiefly addressed by Existentialist Psychologists, whose school was indebted to the teachings of Otto Rank and Martin Heidegger.
Horney viewed psychotherapy as a rather illegitimate process. Like Rank, she was highly skeptical about a client's motives. Is it really an authentic quest for truth and healing that brings them to therapy? Horney didn't believe so. She asserts that the client seeks treatment for ailments that are not legitimate. Consequently, their hang-ups are not necessarily to be believed. They are often mere window-dressing, standing in the way of deeper syndromes which the client prefers to avoid. These acts of self-deception, meant to dupe the therapist, constitute a client's actual derangement.
The client blithely minimizes and denies their true underlying problems. However, as Horney realized, such syndromes rise to the surface to incite sincere existential change and maturation. This threatens the client's introjected socially-approved self-image, not to mention their domestic and social commitments. So, rather than deal with their true emotional problems, a barrage of pseudo-problems are slyly devised. The object of the charade is to enter therapy in order to get a superficial "spring clean," before returning to the abnormal society feeling oh so much better. The therapist's job is akin to that of a car-mechanic, paid to improve my "function," not my soul.
This latter image is suppressed and rejected by the ego which seeks security by modeling itself on what is externally approved of. This conformity to the demands and norms of parents and society has a direct bearing, says Horney, on the advent of psychopathology. The superego and ego-ideal are unquestionably the causes of most neurotic tendencies. The false self-image they generate clashes with a child's authentic Self-image, ensuring that homeostasis is permanently disturbed.
As we enter society, we are more inclined to deny our true Self-image or Self-schema. The irrational demands of parents and society take precedence, demanding conformity and obedience. However, we're not free and adjusted after we conform, because our adoption of the counterfeit image incurs a cache of shame and self-loathing to arise within us, which in turn causes yet more destabilization and repression. This syndrome was chiefly addressed by Existentialist Psychologists, whose school was indebted to the teachings of Otto Rank and Martin Heidegger.
Horney viewed psychotherapy as a rather illegitimate process. Like Rank, she was highly skeptical about a client's motives. Is it really an authentic quest for truth and healing that brings them to therapy? Horney didn't believe so. She asserts that the client seeks treatment for ailments that are not legitimate. Consequently, their hang-ups are not necessarily to be believed. They are often mere window-dressing, standing in the way of deeper syndromes which the client prefers to avoid. These acts of self-deception, meant to dupe the therapist, constitute a client's actual derangement.
The client blithely minimizes and denies their true underlying problems. However, as Horney realized, such syndromes rise to the surface to incite sincere existential change and maturation. This threatens the client's introjected socially-approved self-image, not to mention their domestic and social commitments. So, rather than deal with their true emotional problems, a barrage of pseudo-problems are slyly devised. The object of the charade is to enter therapy in order to get a superficial "spring clean," before returning to the abnormal society feeling oh so much better. The therapist's job is akin to that of a car-mechanic, paid to improve my "function," not my soul.
Therapists know that, after hours of consultation, the last question or comment from a client, as they exit the room, invariably reveals what is really on their mind. Why, they ponder, are we so loath to confront our supposed psychic dysfunction? Karen Horney supplied the answer.
Horney, however, was not willing to fly around the room with a client in deep self-denial. She wouldn't let herself be manipulated and duped. Following the advice of Rank, she devised her system to break down a malingering client's false persona. She sought to penetrate and undermine what she called their contrived "Idealized Image."
Of course Horney and Rank were quite correct. Like Sartre, Krauss and Szasz, they were right to worry about the wider ramifications of these antics. Won't it lead not only to more self-deception but to a culture supportive of victimology? Jean Paul Sartre certainly warned of our penchant for denying responsibility. Now, instead of being able to blame mom and dad, the bullies at school, or the "government," one can blame their pesky "drives" and "complexes." You see, it's my libido doctor...nothing I can do about it...I have these hang-ups you know...a terrible fear of women, black cats and Russians...
No, sorry, says Sartre, societies are already schizogenic enough without this. Horney agreed. Of course there are affronts and difficulties from living in society and facing reality, but things can only worsen if individuals, in their desire to escape responsibility, develop all kinds of pseudo-complaints, pretending to themselves that they're genuinely seeking advice and committing to a better life.
Of course Horney and Rank were quite correct. Like Sartre, Krauss and Szasz, they were right to worry about the wider ramifications of these antics. Won't it lead not only to more self-deception but to a culture supportive of victimology? Jean Paul Sartre certainly warned of our penchant for denying responsibility. Now, instead of being able to blame mom and dad, the bullies at school, or the "government," one can blame their pesky "drives" and "complexes." You see, it's my libido doctor...nothing I can do about it...I have these hang-ups you know...a terrible fear of women, black cats and Russians...
No, sorry, says Sartre, societies are already schizogenic enough without this. Horney agreed. Of course there are affronts and difficulties from living in society and facing reality, but things can only worsen if individuals, in their desire to escape responsibility, develop all kinds of pseudo-complaints, pretending to themselves that they're genuinely seeking advice and committing to a better life.
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
Nowadays, the neurotic type prefers consulting a psychiatrist who will solve their problems by prescribing some pill or other. No need for therapy from psychologists too smart to fall for my masquerade.
As far as the unconscious goes, Horney's experiences show us that the client uses their Idealized Image to shield their essential nature. So divorced are they from their true Self-image and conscience, that they are incapable of facing unconscious content which seeks to break through their facade. This intrusion is experienced in the form of troublesome emotions and moods which must be fixed by a quick "tune-up." Efficiency must be maintained...time is money...hail the Providers!
The Idealized Image is designed so a person effectively receives external approval on tap. It hardens all the more should this approval be forthcoming, and the damage to the Self is complete. However, it does not rest there. That which is natural and organic can't be permanently hinterlanded or killed off. As Freud and Jung emphasized, we must prepare for the "return of the repressed." Often, therefore, a person in this predicament is driven to consult a therapist when their counterfeit image begins to shake or crack. For such a person, therapy is not about resurrecting the true Self, but patching-up and reinforcing its nemesis, the false self.
One of the most intriguing accounts of the unconscious comes from the late psychologist Julian Jaynes. He addressed the development of consciousness from the prehistoric period, and, like Immanuel Velikovsky, did subscribe to the theory that harrowing traumatic events caused major psychic destabilization. The result of this is the divided brain. Unfortunately, a few glosses are all we get about the theory.
Signs of trauma are also preserved in the peculiar capacities of the brain. One of these being the phenomenon of the "space" within the head in which we imagine thinking occurs. It's a metaphorical space, nothing more, probably gleaned from the movement of breath from the outer world to the inner and back again. In any case, it is the reason we suppose an internal "world" of thought. Most people never notice or question the fallacy. It seems that mental acts are, from the start, illusory. What does this portend for the veracity of thought in general, and what might be the alternative mode of cognition? It's all quite paradoxical and inexplicable.
As far as the unconscious goes, Horney's experiences show us that the client uses their Idealized Image to shield their essential nature. So divorced are they from their true Self-image and conscience, that they are incapable of facing unconscious content which seeks to break through their facade. This intrusion is experienced in the form of troublesome emotions and moods which must be fixed by a quick "tune-up." Efficiency must be maintained...time is money...hail the Providers!
The Idealized Image is designed so a person effectively receives external approval on tap. It hardens all the more should this approval be forthcoming, and the damage to the Self is complete. However, it does not rest there. That which is natural and organic can't be permanently hinterlanded or killed off. As Freud and Jung emphasized, we must prepare for the "return of the repressed." Often, therefore, a person in this predicament is driven to consult a therapist when their counterfeit image begins to shake or crack. For such a person, therapy is not about resurrecting the true Self, but patching-up and reinforcing its nemesis, the false self.
One of the most intriguing accounts of the unconscious comes from the late psychologist Julian Jaynes. He addressed the development of consciousness from the prehistoric period, and, like Immanuel Velikovsky, did subscribe to the theory that harrowing traumatic events caused major psychic destabilization. The result of this is the divided brain. Unfortunately, a few glosses are all we get about the theory.
Signs of trauma are also preserved in the peculiar capacities of the brain. One of these being the phenomenon of the "space" within the head in which we imagine thinking occurs. It's a metaphorical space, nothing more, probably gleaned from the movement of breath from the outer world to the inner and back again. In any case, it is the reason we suppose an internal "world" of thought. Most people never notice or question the fallacy. It seems that mental acts are, from the start, illusory. What does this portend for the veracity of thought in general, and what might be the alternative mode of cognition? It's all quite paradoxical and inexplicable.
Julian Jaynes (1920-1997)
One philosopher with a cogent answer for such imponderables was Benedetto Croce, who reminded readers that the principle capacity and function of mind is image-making. It is, as Ayn Rand called it, the power of conception. It's no mystery, Mr. Jaynes, says the Crocean...The internal space is simply a convenient and necessary image conjured by a mind whose main function is image-making. End of story.
For thinkers such as Blake, Croce, Rank, Holderlin and Rilke, etc, the true definition of man - and the unconscious - becomes evident when we define man as Artist. How else can the deep mind be understood? It's not only the result of our racial memory - the myriad happenings throughout time immemorial - but the unfathomable font from which our imagination draws the imagery that is the true basis of consciousness and thinking. Only by adopting a Aesthetic perspective on life can the mysteries of humankind be sufficiently clarified.
Consequently, the unconscious is not only an epiphenomenon of humankind's ancestral image-making and art-making capacities, it is the source of it. Mind does not have "ideas," because an idea is actually an image. And the point is secure once we remember that what we take ourselves to be is, again, nothing less than an image. What we call Self is an image generated by the Self. We are in our essence pure Art.
For thinkers such as Blake, Croce, Rank, Holderlin and Rilke, etc, the true definition of man - and the unconscious - becomes evident when we define man as Artist. How else can the deep mind be understood? It's not only the result of our racial memory - the myriad happenings throughout time immemorial - but the unfathomable font from which our imagination draws the imagery that is the true basis of consciousness and thinking. Only by adopting a Aesthetic perspective on life can the mysteries of humankind be sufficiently clarified.
Consequently, the unconscious is not only an epiphenomenon of humankind's ancestral image-making and art-making capacities, it is the source of it. Mind does not have "ideas," because an idea is actually an image. And the point is secure once we remember that what we take ourselves to be is, again, nothing less than an image. What we call Self is an image generated by the Self. We are in our essence pure Art.
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In your own bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth; and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow - William Blake
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The American psychologist Ernest Hilgard discovered that at the deepest layer of the mind exists what he referred to as the "Hidden Observer." After years of detailed experimentation into brainwave states and cognitive changes brought on by deep hypnosis, researchers discovered that there is a part of the mind which cannot be coerced, and which has an omnidirectional awareness of all that occurs to us on the everyday level.
Hilgard's research substantiates that of Carl Jung who also believed that the true Self operates as a kind of central archetype governing all other mental functions. It is as if we merely respond not to our own thinking, but to that of the Self. Indeed, what we call our thinking gets in the way of the real thing. The directives of the Self are flaunted by the ego time and again, leading to chaos. Neuroses is then to be understood as the result of constant violations committed by the ego on the Self.
Hilgard's research substantiates that of Carl Jung who also believed that the true Self operates as a kind of central archetype governing all other mental functions. It is as if we merely respond not to our own thinking, but to that of the Self. Indeed, what we call our thinking gets in the way of the real thing. The directives of the Self are flaunted by the ego time and again, leading to chaos. Neuroses is then to be understood as the result of constant violations committed by the ego on the Self.
The Hidden Observer. Long known to exist by science.
The philosophers Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling and Georg Hegel had much to say about the origins and nature of the unconscious. Indeed, it was Schelling - the forgotten philosopher - who first coined the word "unconscious."
As far as Schelling was concerned, the unconscious is the repository of antique memory. In fact, it is nature's footprint within us. Long before Jung came up with the theory of the "Collective Unconscious," Schelling knew that the unconscious psyche is imprinted with the primordial images of humankind's collective phylogenetic experience. He recognized that Man as Artist seeks to express this in his artworks, and will not feel sane or purposeful if thwarted in this endeavor. The greatest art speaks not only of immediate events and conditions, but bears within it traces of nostalgia for what has past. The psyche stands upon the vast misty mountain of the past, and emanates from it. As Freud said: Nothing in the psyche is lost or forgotten.
As far as Schelling was concerned, the unconscious is the repository of antique memory. In fact, it is nature's footprint within us. Long before Jung came up with the theory of the "Collective Unconscious," Schelling knew that the unconscious psyche is imprinted with the primordial images of humankind's collective phylogenetic experience. He recognized that Man as Artist seeks to express this in his artworks, and will not feel sane or purposeful if thwarted in this endeavor. The greatest art speaks not only of immediate events and conditions, but bears within it traces of nostalgia for what has past. The psyche stands upon the vast misty mountain of the past, and emanates from it. As Freud said: Nothing in the psyche is lost or forgotten.
Friedrich Schelling (1775-1812)
Kant understood the unconscious to be a psychic replication and corollary of the greater unknowable mysteries impenetrable to human intellect. The supreme mystery he called the Noumenon or Noumenal. The world accessible to the intellect he called the Phenomenal. It is not surprising, he surmised, to find in ourselves the equivalent of the former, as a constant reminder of our proximity to the Noumenon of which we can know nothing. We must, he said, clip the wings of reason and make way for faith. Additionally, we must live a scrupulously moral life, in preparation for the Noumenal to one day communicate with us in its own subtle way.
Hegel's take was quite different. Like Schelling, his focus was history. However, both men's conception of history went further than just the human phylogenetic process. History and time are the consequences of a far grander and more august process - that of Geist or Spirit. Unlike Kant, they didn't think of Spirit as being beyond time and space. Rather, time and space are perceivable manifestations of Spirit.
What we know as mind in both modalities - conscious and unconscious - cannot be complete unless we comprehend this vast mysterious movement of Spirit. Its great journey toward the final point of potency and awareness is etched, as it were, in our unconscious. Schelling stressed that the upper systems of cognition, efficient and unique as they are, can never penetrate into their own foundations to know for sure how consciousness arises. The upper systems - the ego or left-brain - can only offer inadequate accounts and speculations. They are self-inhibited, their very acts of inquiry prohibiting all but partial understanding. It is similar to the situation perplexing Quantum Theorists. The very act of observation changes what is seen. Perception, rather than clarifying what exists, obscures it.
Hegel took a different and more pragmatic tack. What there is to see is all there is to see, so let's get on with it. Don't keep speaking about impenetrable mysteries. Let's celebrate what reason and intellect do now and have availed us. More will be discovered in time, so let that be our focus.
Hegel's take was quite different. Like Schelling, his focus was history. However, both men's conception of history went further than just the human phylogenetic process. History and time are the consequences of a far grander and more august process - that of Geist or Spirit. Unlike Kant, they didn't think of Spirit as being beyond time and space. Rather, time and space are perceivable manifestations of Spirit.
What we know as mind in both modalities - conscious and unconscious - cannot be complete unless we comprehend this vast mysterious movement of Spirit. Its great journey toward the final point of potency and awareness is etched, as it were, in our unconscious. Schelling stressed that the upper systems of cognition, efficient and unique as they are, can never penetrate into their own foundations to know for sure how consciousness arises. The upper systems - the ego or left-brain - can only offer inadequate accounts and speculations. They are self-inhibited, their very acts of inquiry prohibiting all but partial understanding. It is similar to the situation perplexing Quantum Theorists. The very act of observation changes what is seen. Perception, rather than clarifying what exists, obscures it.
Hegel took a different and more pragmatic tack. What there is to see is all there is to see, so let's get on with it. Don't keep speaking about impenetrable mysteries. Let's celebrate what reason and intellect do now and have availed us. More will be discovered in time, so let that be our focus.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831)
Child psychologists Melanie Klein and Alice Miller - following in the footsteps of Wilhelm Reich, Anna Freud and Karen Horney - decided that the unconscious is to be understood as the repository of a child's fury at all kinds of mistreatment and abuse from parents.
Since a child's rage cannot be openly expressed toward the all-powerful demigods, it must be concealed and repressed. When this process breaks down, rage gets expressed in various oblique ways. Crying, tantrums, insomnia, nightmares, untidiness, bed-wetting, teeth-grinding, nail-biting, tics, speech-impediments, sibling rivalry, lack of cleanliness, fascination with bodily secretions and emissions, spitting, plucking, cursing, stubbornness, lying, delinquency and criminality all arise from legitimate but denied emotions. Many childhood ailments, including colic, asthma, insomnia, restlessness, hyperactivity, nearsightedness, dyslexia, breakouts, bullying, withdrawal, etc, also speak of underlying emotional disturbances born from concealed loathing.
Physically and incessantly clinging to one's parent also betrays hatred rather than legitimate need. The child clings to disguise from the parent its true feelings. It's just one instance of infantile shame and duplicity, aroused by the necessity of appeasing the egos of the powerful ones using fear and threat to control weak dependents. It takes a while for a child to discover why it wants to murder those it loves.
Since a child's rage cannot be openly expressed toward the all-powerful demigods, it must be concealed and repressed. When this process breaks down, rage gets expressed in various oblique ways. Crying, tantrums, insomnia, nightmares, untidiness, bed-wetting, teeth-grinding, nail-biting, tics, speech-impediments, sibling rivalry, lack of cleanliness, fascination with bodily secretions and emissions, spitting, plucking, cursing, stubbornness, lying, delinquency and criminality all arise from legitimate but denied emotions. Many childhood ailments, including colic, asthma, insomnia, restlessness, hyperactivity, nearsightedness, dyslexia, breakouts, bullying, withdrawal, etc, also speak of underlying emotional disturbances born from concealed loathing.
Physically and incessantly clinging to one's parent also betrays hatred rather than legitimate need. The child clings to disguise from the parent its true feelings. It's just one instance of infantile shame and duplicity, aroused by the necessity of appeasing the egos of the powerful ones using fear and threat to control weak dependents. It takes a while for a child to discover why it wants to murder those it loves.
Melanie Klein (1882-1960)
Klein particularly noticed that when playacting children obliquely express through fantasy their true intent toward detested parents. When household items are broken, plucked or defaced, when toy trains or cars are crashed together or smashed, when dolls are mutilated, when action-figures are armed to the teeth and pitted against rival monsters, when violent video-games are played, and when weapons of one kind or another are coveted as presents - swords, daggers, guns, lasers, martial arts paraphernalia, spikes, studs, etc - a child or young adult seeks to alleviate the tensions which subliminally bother them, legitimate tensions caused by outright Adultism.
Their identification with powerful, heroic characters stems from the same predicament. Their perverse interest in anti-heroic figures is a clearer sign of their secreted syndrome. Nightmares about burglars or arsonists, and fantasies about witches, werewolves, vampires and demons, etc, bespeaks their hope of finding powerful physical and spiritual allies in their fight against hated parents. This interest can carry over into teen years, betrayed by an interest in wearing dirty or ripped clothes (as if they've been in a fight to the death), sharp weapons, video-games, graffiti, aggressive music, horror-movies, zombies, violent pornography, thugs, serial-killers, martial arts, war, poisons, chemicals, etc.
In short, this theory of the unconscious views it as a necessary hiding place, in which boiling emotions of rage, shame, guilt and contempt are concealed. Not one in ten million parents are aware of it, either in themselves or their children.
Their identification with powerful, heroic characters stems from the same predicament. Their perverse interest in anti-heroic figures is a clearer sign of their secreted syndrome. Nightmares about burglars or arsonists, and fantasies about witches, werewolves, vampires and demons, etc, bespeaks their hope of finding powerful physical and spiritual allies in their fight against hated parents. This interest can carry over into teen years, betrayed by an interest in wearing dirty or ripped clothes (as if they've been in a fight to the death), sharp weapons, video-games, graffiti, aggressive music, horror-movies, zombies, violent pornography, thugs, serial-killers, martial arts, war, poisons, chemicals, etc.
In short, this theory of the unconscious views it as a necessary hiding place, in which boiling emotions of rage, shame, guilt and contempt are concealed. Not one in ten million parents are aware of it, either in themselves or their children.
I'm incapable of love...so I must find reasons for not loving you...and you must help me, is that clear!?
One theory of the unconscious I omitted is that which deems it the cache of the deep empathy compelling us to reach out toward other people in the world. Without this natural reservoir of empathy we'd never pass through the autistic and semiotic levels to willingly greet the world. We'd remain regressed and world-hating.
Indeed, without being able to access empathy, we'd have no concern for our own being, no sorge or Self-care. Compromised as it often is by parental demagoguery, it is this role of the unconscious which makes it possible for us to deconstruct and discard incongruous parental imagos. Regardless of the inadequate image which parents forcibly install within us, we are free to remove it in favor of something more authentic and wholesome. Thanks to our imaginations and conscience, we scan the world for icons and heroes in an attempt to identify with more realistic imagos.
This leads us to the question of psychology's ultimate value. I maintain that it is of great value, and say so fully aware of its many defects and failings. I am also aware of the poignant critiques of Sartre, Kraus, Szasz, Laing and others.
Nevertheless, for all that, I ask by what other means are we able to come across the phenomenon of Adultism and problem of childhood angst? How else do we learn about armoring and Emotional Plague? What other subject alerts us to the conflict between superego and conscience? What other subject champions introversion, introspection, Self-knowledge and Self-expression? What subject speaks of the process of individuation and cultivation of Self-esteem? How else are we to understand bizarre self-destructive behavior, and what other subject makes psychopathology a central issue? What other subject offers us the chance to heal completely?
Shall we turn instead to TV talking-heads, life-coaches, Indian gurus, table-tappers, psychic hotlines and tea-leaf readers? Are modern neuroscientists intent on alerting people to their penchant for regression to an infantile level? Do these ivory-towered “white-coats” warn us about society’s dreadful penchant for collectivism, group-think and mob-rule? Do they instruct us about our inauthentically and immersion in abnormal cultures, and warn about universal regression and ultra-feminization? Do they address the deep ancestral trauma underlying consciousness, showing how it disaffects humanity in innumerable ways? Do they provide us with solutions to trauma's detrimental effects? Are they instructing us in the difference between the Will-to-Power and Will-to-Meaning? Do they remind us that it is a basic need of humans to know themselves? Do they honor a subject teaching us to observe, understand and change dysfunctional and destructive modes of thought and behavior? No, they do not!
Given that we are beings in the process of soul-making, it follows that the onus is on each of us, as individuals, to respect psychoanalysis and related studies, since they direct us to acknowledge ourselves not only as humans among humans, but as beings in the process of becoming.
In short, are we capable of freeing ourselves from suffering by avoiding introspection and Self-observation, from asking sincere questions about the most complex phenomenon in the universe - our own minds?
Indeed, without being able to access empathy, we'd have no concern for our own being, no sorge or Self-care. Compromised as it often is by parental demagoguery, it is this role of the unconscious which makes it possible for us to deconstruct and discard incongruous parental imagos. Regardless of the inadequate image which parents forcibly install within us, we are free to remove it in favor of something more authentic and wholesome. Thanks to our imaginations and conscience, we scan the world for icons and heroes in an attempt to identify with more realistic imagos.
This leads us to the question of psychology's ultimate value. I maintain that it is of great value, and say so fully aware of its many defects and failings. I am also aware of the poignant critiques of Sartre, Kraus, Szasz, Laing and others.
Nevertheless, for all that, I ask by what other means are we able to come across the phenomenon of Adultism and problem of childhood angst? How else do we learn about armoring and Emotional Plague? What other subject alerts us to the conflict between superego and conscience? What other subject champions introversion, introspection, Self-knowledge and Self-expression? What subject speaks of the process of individuation and cultivation of Self-esteem? How else are we to understand bizarre self-destructive behavior, and what other subject makes psychopathology a central issue? What other subject offers us the chance to heal completely?
Shall we turn instead to TV talking-heads, life-coaches, Indian gurus, table-tappers, psychic hotlines and tea-leaf readers? Are modern neuroscientists intent on alerting people to their penchant for regression to an infantile level? Do these ivory-towered “white-coats” warn us about society’s dreadful penchant for collectivism, group-think and mob-rule? Do they instruct us about our inauthentically and immersion in abnormal cultures, and warn about universal regression and ultra-feminization? Do they address the deep ancestral trauma underlying consciousness, showing how it disaffects humanity in innumerable ways? Do they provide us with solutions to trauma's detrimental effects? Are they instructing us in the difference between the Will-to-Power and Will-to-Meaning? Do they remind us that it is a basic need of humans to know themselves? Do they honor a subject teaching us to observe, understand and change dysfunctional and destructive modes of thought and behavior? No, they do not!
Given that we are beings in the process of soul-making, it follows that the onus is on each of us, as individuals, to respect psychoanalysis and related studies, since they direct us to acknowledge ourselves not only as humans among humans, but as beings in the process of becoming.
In short, are we capable of freeing ourselves from suffering by avoiding introspection and Self-observation, from asking sincere questions about the most complex phenomenon in the universe - our own minds?
And when you sleep...where do you go?
This short sketch in no way exhausts theories pertaining to the origins and nature of the unconscious. However, after a lifetime of study into this fascinating subject, I believe these to be among the most important concepts for laymen and specialists alike.
In conclusion, for those intrigued by arguments in favor of introversion, introspection, subjectivity and nonconscious processes, I recommend Bettelheim’s Freud and Man’s Soul, von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious, and L. L. Whyte’s The Unconscious Before Freud.
In conclusion, for those intrigued by arguments in favor of introversion, introspection, subjectivity and nonconscious processes, I recommend Bettelheim’s Freud and Man’s Soul, von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious, and L. L. Whyte’s The Unconscious Before Freud.
. . .
Michael Tsarion (2020)