psychoanalysis

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If self delusion and irrationality work, then so be it.

Humans have a supreme talent for fooling themselves.

ruveyn

I agree. I think this for me is core to 'the human condition': natural intellectual animals living thoroughly within civilization rather than within nature as our pre-human ancestors did. But don't forget that civilization for all it's troubles, has provided and continues to provide great benefits to us, ones which we not be able to have in a state of nature. Civilization is basically here to stay so the question is how best to optomise that civilization and ones individual life within it.

Last edited by Saturn on 06 Jan 2012, 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not necessarily BS but you'll have to explain what on earth you're talking about for those of us non-initiates.

Go into a thread about Psychoanalysis, get a statement of Existentialism

The ego defense mechanism of acting out (through your colorful meme) may be indicative of a borderline personality structure. It may be suspected that you were deprived of mother's milk—on the receiving end of the "bad breast"—and thus cycle through periods of idealization and devaluation. In this case, you see the analyst as a sort of surrogate father figure, devaluing him and his sage advice about the good/bad breast phenomenon. This transference could lead to a breakdown of the therapeutic alliance, so it is necessary for you to re-enact the developmental stage of weaning by suckling upon the analyst's strap-on mammories with baby bottles of warm milk attached. Then you will come to the developmental stage of realizing that the very same breast that sustains you (i.e., the good breast) is also the breast that frustrate you (i.e., the bad breast) and your grandiose, infantile urges, enacted in the schizoid-paranoid position. After this, you will need to start dealing with the Oedipal complex, castration anxiety, etc., eventually reaching the genital stage of psychological maturity.

At which point you are finally ready to don the strap-on mammaries yourself.

don't you think it might be the nature of social organisation within civilisation, rather than civilisation itself, that might be the problem? for instance, don't you think that authoritarian conditioning might well be a source of trauma?

Last edited by peebo on 06 Jan 2012, 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

erich fromm's fear of freedom is interesting on a somewhat related note:

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... rg&cad=rja

Congratulations, you have learned the first lesson of clinical medical practice. Sometimes the most effective treatment is the sugar pill or the saline injection.

To say 'the nature of social organisation within civilization' is, to me, another way of saying 'the nature of civilization' or the nature of 'a particular civilization', and to this extent I would agree with you, that that is 'the problem'. However, I do find it hard to see how, in practice, any form of civilization and the various sub-forms within that, can be immune to generating fundamental difficulties in terms of individual psychic life. And this is because any state of culture rather than of nature demands the sublimation of natural inclinations in exchange for the aggregated benefits of the civilized state. What is more, within a civilization, natural desires will express themselves in one way or another and this will lead to social and economic injustice, among other things, where some get what they want at the expense of others not getting what they want.

I think authoritarian conditioning is at least a major source of trauma. For Freud, at least, I understand, the early Freud, the primal authoritarian trauma is the one inflicted by the father on the son by barring his full enjoyment of the mother. The corresponding electra complex on the female side, I find less compelling, but the general idea, for me, significantly illuminates, the causes for individual and collective, what has come to be known as, psychic dysfunction. For Freud, the authoritarian rules and norms of society by which we are all conditioned, are the father writ large. So we have trauma occuring through the conditioning by the family and by the wider state and culture as a whole.

How do you see it?

Looks like a very interesting big-picture account of things. Thanks for the link. Definitely looks on topic for me!

I actually find this quite persuasive as a candidate course of therapy. I think there are difficulties, though. I'm not convinced that the goal of psychological maturity is anything but an ideal. This would go towards explaining why so many, particularly Americans, spend so long in therapy but, as I understand from anecdote, struggle to make clear progress. This would also partly explain the cult-like appeal of psychoanalysis: the current state of unworthiness, the path to liberation, and the gurus to be followed along the way.

Anyone else have a view on this?

but surely civilisation can be egalitarian and tolerant? disparity of wealth and the atomising, alienating effects of capitalism are what i would see as the problems.



aye i think it's a big factor. the education system, pressure to conform, tendency towards bullying and authoritarian relationships, economic precarity, working long hours under pressure in meaningless low paid demeaning work, living in claustrophobic and overcrowded environments etc. all of these are contributory factors.

see also erich fromm's the sane society, a critical synopsis of which can be found here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick ... /fromm.htm


see also here: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/fromm.html

I think civilzation can be improved upon but I think it is an authoritarian or even violent act to establish a civilization, as against the state of nature, in the first place. This is why I think that authority is inherent to civilzation. I think it could be possible for civilization to be less authoritarian, more egalitarian and generally better in aggregate for its members, but I find it hard to see how some kind of utopian civilization is possible in practice.