Civilization and its Discontents

Civilization and its Discontents via Tumblr (click on image for quotes from the book)

Civilization and its Discontents is an important work written in 1929 (after WWI) by Sigmund Freud in which he proposes a “death instinct” (thanatos) said to exist on both personal and cultural levels.

Freud says tensions arise between personal, instinctual desires their cultural repression. And realizing that mankind is capable of mass destruction, Freud suggests that not only individuals but subcultures and even entire societies can be neurotic.

This might all seem pretty obvious today but in his time, Freud was groundbreaking.

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Censor

Censorship by IsaacMao via Flickr

The censor is a psychological mechanism hypothesized by Sigmund Freud in which threatening or socially inappropriate dream material is toned down. Freud describes the censor through the analogy of professional writing.

To be effective, media writers must consider their audience. If words are too strident or suggestive, an editor rejects or possibly edits an article for publication.

With regard to dreams, Freud believed the censor acts like a newspaper editor. The censor disguises an unconscious wish symbolized in a dream. The stronger the prohibition of the wish by the ego, superego or conscience, the more it will be distorted in the dream, or in a series of dreams.

Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is worth quoting at length here:

A similar difficulty confronts the political writer who has disagreeable truths to tell those in authority. If he presents them undisguised, the authorities will suppress his words…A writer must beware of censorship, and on its account he must soften and distort expression of his opinion…The stricter the censorship, the more far-reaching the disguise and the more ingenious too may be the means employed for putting the reader on the scent of the true meaning. The fact that the phenomena of censorship and of dream-distortion correspond down to their smallest details justifies us in presuming that they are similarly determined.¹

However, Freud’s analogy might not hold up in the 21^st century because it assumes a political writer is concerned with telling the truth and not just with making a living, stomping on an opponent, or winning an election.

As for the idea of the censor itself, it assumes that the brain (and person) works like software filters, merely distorting hidden desires before they reach consciousness. The idea that dreams could be symbolic because they point to something far greater than mundane reality is never considered. Why? Well, Freud was a reductionist atheist. So for most of his life he saw just about everything from a sexual, materialist and conceptual bias, which for spiritually biased people is not entirely wrong but definitely incomplete.

—

¹ Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) trans. James Strachey, London: Pelican, 1976, pp. 223-224.

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Catharsis

Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio, 1509, showing Plato (left) and Aristotle (right) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The term catharsis has deep literary roots, and goes back to Plato and Aristotle.¹  In everyday contemporary usage an experience is called “cathartic” if it helps us release a good deal of pent up emotions. Usually some kind of enhanced intellectual understanding follows.

Catharsis is also used in the arts with much the same meaning, where some dramatic performance – be it theatrical, visual, poetic or musical – compels us to release feelings, this usually followed by some insight into ourselves or into life in general and the human experience.

Sigmund Freud picked up on the ancient and modern usages of catharsis and incorporated the concept into his psychoanalysis, specifically when talking about abreaction.

Today, the term crops up time and again in the arts and music.

—

¹ See this good discussion, “Plato and Aristotle on Tragedy” about the complexities of catharsis: http://classics.uc.edu/~johnson/tragedy/plato&aristotle.html

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Cathexis

Energy and His Eye Made His Eventual Elec- by DerrickT via Flickr

In psychoanalysis, Charles Rycroft says cathexis is a term coined by Sigmund Freud‘s English translators to indicate an “investment” of libidinal (sexual) energy that attaches to an internal object, representation or mental structure.¹ Some years later, Rycroft’s assertion has been expanded on in Wikipedia:

The Greek term cathexis (κάθεξις) was chosen by James Strachey to render the German term Besetzung in his translation of Sigmund Freud‘s complete works.²

Once inside the head, so to speak, the libidinal energy can transfer from one mental structure to another, much like troops positioning around a battlefield.

According to Freud’s theory, cathected energy may attach to one mental process in order to repress another. Sooner or later there’s a build up of energy. This results in psychological dysfunction, or more positively in sublimation, where the energy is redirected toward some socially acceptable outlet (such as creating artwork).

Object cathexis refers to mental energy invested in an external object instead of the self. It should be noted that Freud’s use of the term “object” includes people. “Object” for Freud simply means a recipient of instinctual drives. So an object can be inside one’s own head or outside in the environment.

Also of note is how Freud never considers the possibility that pent up libidinal energy could be redirected to the spiritual life. On this score, many saints and mystics attest to the importance of celibacy. Without it, they say, their spiritual work (e.g. intercession) just can’t get done. Many go even further, describing chastity not as a kind of unavoidable necessity but as a great gift and virtue. This positive attitude lead St. Frances de Sales to say

Chastity is the lily among virtues and makes men almost equal to angels.³

Sadly, many people still on a materialistic level of consciousness find this difficult to understand. As a result, some predominantly spiritual people may suffer ridicule and persecution, even by their apparently religious peers. Even more sad, it seems that some potential spiritual sensitives are, themselves, duped by the status quo viewpoint. So instead of flowering into sainthood, they may end up in psychiatric wards.

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—

¹ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, p. 16.

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathexis

³ Cited in The Voice of the Saints, ed. Francis W. Johnston, Tan Books, 1986 [1965], p. 55.

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Dreams

Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, 1944 (Photo credit: Jameswy.Wang)

Dream interpretation is practiced in most cultures and dates back to ancient times. Dreams have been analyzed in Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, African, Australian, as well as North and South American Aboriginal cultures. The overall aim in dream interpretation is to predict, assist and inspire.

Sigmund Freud makes a distinction between the manifest and latent content of dreams. The manifest content is the symbol first remembered by the conscious dreamer. The latent content is what the dream truly signifies, deciphered through the process of psychoanalysis.

The manifest content is usually a distorted, incomplete version of the actual dream, having undergone a process of psychological censorship. And if the latent content strongly threatens the ego, the manifest content may be symbolized two or more symbolic steps away from the ‘true’ meaning of the dream.

Consider the following hypothetical example: If a student’s unconscious homosexual desires for her math teacher conflicted sharply with her conscious attitude, the remembered dream image would be highly abstract, such as two mathematical equations adding up to the same result. During analysis it would be revealed that the patient also enjoyed dreaming about her math class.

In the next dream the patient would be invited for dinner to her math teacher’s home. Further analysis would reveal that, in the second dream, patient and teacher exchanged compliments over dinner.

After continuing psychoanalysis in this manner, the dream censor is finally overcome and the patient would finally realize her lesbian desire for the math teacher. Freud’s idea of the censor was later replaced by his concept of the superego.

Freud’s pupil and psychology superstar in his own right, C. G. Jung, says there are “big” and “little” dreams. Big dreams are often prophetic and stem from the collective unconscious. Little dreams deal with the personal unconscious and usually compensate for a skewed or incomplete conscious attitude.

In some cases the interpretation of a collective, big dream content is distorted by an unexamined personal unconscious. A similar idea was expressed by the thirteenth-century Kabbalists who claimed that dreamers may communicate angels but divine knowledge is often distorted by “subjective wishes” within one’s own “emotional life.”

Jung believes that his approach incorporates and extends both Freud and Alfred Adler‘s ideas. While Freud and Alder recognize libidinal impulses originating from a common psychological storehouse (similar to Jung’s collective unconscious), Jung’s idea of the archetypes tries to spell out the collective psyche to a degree not found in either Freud’s (i.e. eros/thanatos) or Adler’s (i.e. drive for aggression) theories.

More recently, the ancient interest in dreams and their relation to what is now called paranormal and precognitive phenomena has been rekindled by developments in the New Age movement and within depth psychology.

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Koan

Bodhidharma, woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, 1887 via Wikipedia

What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the color of the wind?

These apparently nonsensical questions exemplify the Zen Buddhist koan. Designed to tease the brain, koans push the disciple to reply to a questioning master through intuition instead of conventional logic or accumulated experience.

If the disciple doesn’t get the ‘right’ answer (according to the master’s alleged wisdom) in some Buddhist schools they may be struck by a bamboo rod.

A Freudian thinker might view this as an institutionalized form of sadism and/or masochism that activates a complex which stems from an abusive scene (from childhood or otherwise). Spiritually-minded believers, however, would see that as a simplistic and culturally biased interpretation.

For believers, the koan comes from a legitimate historical and legendary tradition, traceable to the sage Bodhidharma. And its use (and perhaps physical scolding for ‘wrong’ answers) apparently helps the aspirant to achieve satori, which believers say is an ultimate experience that’s difficult to describe.

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¹ “Kōans originate in the sayings and events in the lives of sages and legendary figures, usually those authorized to teach in a lineage that regards Bodhidharma (c. 5th–6th century) as its ancestor. Kōans reflect the enlightened or awakened state of such persons and sometimes confound the habit of discursive thought or shock the mind into awareness.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dan)

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Masochism

Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar via Wikipedia

Masochism is a Freudian term denoting a sexual perversion in which a person says they become sexually aroused and enjoy it when another person inflicts pain on them.

While this phenomenon was once entirely underground, a fairly recent Canadian TV documentary revealed that some people believe they are doing nothing wrong by spanking or being spanked for a fee in a controlled situation.

Typically a client takes a submissive, bound posture while a ‘dominatrix’, usually dressed in black leather, spanks them on the exposed buttocks.

The practice might possibly involve unresolved psychological complexes caused by early abuse mingled with a mythic fascination with the aggressive or perhaps evil side of medieval history (e.g. warfare, exploitation, torture).

Meanwhile, several court cases can be found on the web where people are being legally charged for such activities taking place in what is technically called a ‘common bawdy house.’

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• Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, p. 88.

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Numinous

contemplation: alicepopkorn / Alice / Cornelia Kopp

Professors of Religious Studies often say the term numinous was coined by the German Lutheran scholar Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) to describe personal experiences of spiritual power.

But as far back as 1647 Nathaniel Ward wrote in The simple cobler of Aggawam in America:

The Will of a King is very numinous; it hath a kinde of vast universality in it.¹

 

The term derives from the Latin numen, usually translated as “the presence of a god or goddess” or the “will, manifestation or power of a deity.”

The most ancient example is in a text of Accius cited by Varro: “Alia hic sanctitudo est aliud nomen et numen Iouis” (“Here, the holiness of Jupiter is one thing, the name and power of Jupiter another).”²

For Otto, numinosity originates from outside the self. But as a personal experience, one perceives it within the self. A higher process than the magical, the numinous takes many forms. Not one to jumble all spiritual experiences into an artificial homogeneity, Otto says the numinous has primitive, daemonic and dark sides, as well as an elevated, noble and pure character.

Otto calls the absolute and purest experience of the numen “the Holy.” Unlike the darker, dimmer aspects of the numinous, this apparently highest aspect involves an experience marked by a feeling of “Awefulness,” “Overpoweringness,” “Energy” or “Urgency.”

Sometimes Otto implies that the numinous is identical among all religions. Other times he reveals a definite Christian bias, suggesting that the numinosity experienced through the Bible and by various Christian mystics is ultimate and uncorrupted.

From today’s standards, Otto’s definition of numinosity might seem a bit vague and unsystematic. But his work is rightly regarded as a milestone and continues to have a profound influence on depth psychology and comparative religion.

The term numinous was adapted by C. G. Jung to depict a spiritual experience involving some kind of alteration of ego-based consciousness–i.e. “altered states.”

For Jung, we experience numinosity when an archetype of the collective unconscious is activated. Depending on combined factors such as the psyche’s condition, degree of ego stability, and the nature of archetypal source, numinosity is either psychologically healing or destructive.

Joseph Campbell says that numen finds parallel expression in the “Melanesian mana, Dakotan wakon, Ironquoian orenda and Algonquian manitu.”

But it’s unwarranted to blindly assume that these terms necessarily point to identical spiritual presences and related experiences.

Along these lines, the Romanian scholar, Mircea Eliade, says numinosity exhibits diverse intensities, qualities and effects. And from the perspective of dance, Deidre Sklar adds:

While the experience alternately called presence, or unity, or numinosity may be the same across spiritual traditions, “ways of doing” are different. Presence comes in a multitude of flavors. “The virgin,” is different than “Buddha” or “God the Father.” Kneeling in prayer before the virgin is a different bodily experience than sitting cross-legged in meditation. Both the natures of the divinities and the ritual practices performed in their names are elaborated in distinct communities to do different work upon soma.³

Sigmund Freud reduced the numinous to a person recalling a unified “oceanic bliss” that every fetus apparently feels within the mother’s womb. Perhaps Freud’s greatest shortcoming was his inability – or perhaps unwillingness – to study spirituality on its own terms, at its own level of experience. This sad state of affairs has been repeated and reinforced by those who uncritically accept a materialist paradigm instead of looking at spiritual development with open eyes.

Before Otto, Jung, Campbell, Eliade and Freud, the philosopher Immanuel Kant spoke to a realm of the noumena. The noumena are objects and events independent of the senses. Although Kant claimed that we cannot know the character of a particular noumenon, he believed we can ascertain the existence of noumena by virtue of the “intelligible order of things” in the observable world of phenomena.

It should be noted that the terms noumena and numinous are not directly related, etymologically speaking. This has lead some scholars to dismiss any possible semantic connections between the two terms. But even if two words are etymologically unrelated, this  does not necessarily mean their connoted meanings have no relation. In short, some believe that Kant’s noumena may be sources of numinous experience but are not the numinous itself. Examples could be found in religious schools (and their attendant mystics) leaning toward naturalistic pantheism, such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism.

But the idea of numinosity isn’t quite that simple. Indeed, mystics from various traditions write about different “levels” and types of numinous experience. And even within a single spiritual tradition, descriptions of the numinous vary dramatically in terms of both quality and intensity.

Consider, for example, the ordinary Christian churchgoer who claims to feel an invisible peaceful presence inside a Church in comparison to a full-fledged saint like St. Teresa of Ávila who describes a variety of all-absorbing states of numinous rapture.

In Paradise Lost the celebrated poet John Milton depicts Satan’s dismay when he sees the dingy gloom of hell that he’s confined himself to after losing the glorious light of heaven.

“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,” Said then the lost archangel, “this the seat That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom For that celestial light?”

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¹ Oxford English Dictionary.

² Schilling, Robert. “Numen.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. Vol. 10. 2^nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 6753-6754. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale.

³ Deidre Sklar, “Reprise: On Dance Ethnography.” Dance Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 Summer, 2000: 70-77, p. 72.

At Earthpages.org:

• An Outline of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy
• C. G. Jung and Numinosity
• Celibacy, Sex and Spirituality

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Oedipus Complex

Oedipus at Colonus by Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust 1788 French Oil (5): Photographed by mharrsch / Mary Harrsch

In Greek myth Oedipus was the king of Thebes who, in trying to avoid a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, actually unwittingly did so.

The celebrated Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud named one of his most important ideas after the tragic story of Oedipus.

According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, an Oedipal complex develops after the male infant becomes fixated to his mother during the Oedipal phase of ego development (ages 3-5).

During this time, the infant develops bizarre beliefs which only a child’s mind could produce. He sees or perhaps hears his father and mother lovemaking (called the “primal scene”) and perceives his father as a threat.

His fear intensifies when seeing the father’s penis, which leads the child to irrationally assume that he, himself, has been castrated. The child then demonizes the father and identifies with his apparently ‘all-good’ mother.

He resolves this potent complex by eventually identifying with the father and the external, worldly demands that the father represents to the child.

If his complex goes unresolved, his choice of – and demands from – lovers and marriage partners in subsequent years reflects lingering unconscious infantile, mother-based expectations, which are unrealistic and not grounded in the reality principle.

Freud believed that this was a natural process.

Current trends in psychoanalysis trace the Oedipus complex to earlier conflicts apparently present in the first few years of psychosexual ego development.

While some say that psychoanalysis is a science, others see it as a joke with little or not empirical support to validate its fanciful claims. Although the spirit of Freud’s approach is still present within psychiatry, especially with the almost unquestioned status of the concept of the “unconscious,” the actual content of many of his ideas has fallen by the wayside.

As such, most countries recognize medical psychiatry as a credible discipline (with legal powers and associated responsibilities) while giving less weight to non-medical psychologists and social workers.¹

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¹ In Canada, for instance, psychiatry is covered by national health care whereas non-medical therapies (such as Jungian and other holistic psychological approaches) are not.

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Object

Freuds ( tipo andy warhol ): Paulo Marquez

In Freudian theory the object is that which a subject directs energy toward in an attempt to gratify instinctual desires.

Just how a person relates to the object varies according to their psychological maturity.

In Freudian discourse the object usually refers to another person, aspects of a person, or a full or partial symbolic representation of a person.

When an object refers to another complete person replete with human rights and dignity, the object is a whole object.

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References:

• Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin 1977, p. 100.

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