Open-Secrets

Author: John

  • Knowing, Knowledge & Understanding

    Knowing-knowledge-understandingI have a friend who teaches psychology. Let’s call him Dr. since he has a Ph.D. in psychology. The Dr. is an okay guy. Nice enough, friendly and a little quirky. He’s a hybrid of Bart Simpson and Alfalfa.

    The Dr. is a good illustration for knowing vs. knowing; knowledge vs. knowledge; and understanding vs. understanding.

    Let me explain –

    The Dr. has an in-depth knowledge of psychology, he knows a lot about it, he understands it enough to teach it. But the Dr.’s knowledge, knowing and understanding is mostly mental or intellectual. He relates to his emotions from an intellectual orientation.

    The fact that he relates to them says a lot about the situation. He doesn’t live them or embody them. He understands them intellectually. The richness of knowing them intimately is missing from his experience. They are not integrated into his experience in a way that deepens his lived sense of the human experience.

    His understanding of the human psyche is also limited by his intellectual position. He knows all the buzz words, but doesn’t feel a personal curiosity or challenge around exploring the deeper dimensions of the self. He understands things clearly.

    The Dr.’s life is a little bit of a mess. He struggles with success and relationships. His knowing, knowledge and understanding of psychology gets in his way. It’s a defense against a significant aspect of the human condition – vulnerability.

    He uses his knowing, knowledge and understanding as a means to try and control his life and events around him. A large part of this is trying to control his emotions.

    The whole thing is in the way of knowing, knowledge and understanding.

     

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  • Ego Ideal – Is There an Ideal Ego?

    Ego-idealOh, the ego ideal! What misery this little psychodynamic bug-a-boo causes us.

    What is ego ideal?

    Early on, Freud used both expressions ‘ideal ego‘ and ‘ego ideal’. Later, Freud (1921), (1923) abandoned the use of ‘ideal ego’ using the term ‘ego ideal’ which then became integrated into the term ‘super-ego’.

    The ego ideal is the standard which the superego uses to continually beat the crap out of us. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t! There is no pleasing the superego.

    What is really tragic about the situation is that most of us are being constantly tortured by the anti-libidinal force inherent in the superego while we try to effect an extreme makeover of themselves to become their ego ideal. All of this to finally get the love, acceptance, peace or understanding we deeply crave.

    The ego ideal is deeply intertwined with the punitive part of our consciousness. The righteous have used this in the name of God, country, and the common good to beat, batter, and bruise others for their own good.

    Taking the time to observe our minds and constant self-chatter reveals how much demeaning comparison is active in our daily lives.

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  • Object Relations Theory

    Object-relationshipUnderstanding object relations theory gives one invaluable insight into themselves and others.

    Object Relations Theory is the idea that the ego-self exists in relation to other objects, which may be external or internal. The internal objects are internalized versions of external objects, primarily formed from early interactions with the environment (primarily parents).

    Three fundamental “affects” that can exist between the self and the other:

    • attachment
    • frustration
    • rejection

    Object relations is a way the mind organizes information. The mind is always relating and comparing what is happening to the past – looking for understanding and meaning. At a Object-relationssubconscious level, object relations is how we project the past onto the present. We rarely see others or events as they are – we see the past and interact with the past.

    Object relations are not just about people. An idea, and ideal, your car, your house, your situation – all of these are part of object relations in your subconscious mind.

    Object relations theory helps explain “our buttons” and those endless cycles we continue to go through. Digging down into the dark grey matter is not pleasant at times, but it can be freeing.

     

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  • Castration Complex

    KendollThe core of the castration complex is castration anxiety. Castration anxiety literally means the fear that one’s testicles will be chopped off.

    The other day, I was talking to a friend who related to me a dream in which he was a Roman soldier standing at the bedside of his frail, ailing, 80–year old mother. In this lucid dream, he was aware of being this fierce, fearless Centurion and yet, at his mother’s bedside, he realized she had all the power!

    As we talked about this, the castration complex naturally came up. Many people suffer from some degree of the castration complex. Notice I said people and not just men. There are phallic women who have their penises in this pot also.

    As we explored castration anxiety and it’s relationship to loss of love and power, the image of the Ken doll arose. My friend said he felt like a Ken doll standing there at the foot of the bed – all buffed out and handsome with no genitals.

    Most men I know want to hang on to their penis and testicles – so to speak. Few show an interest in discovering and exploring castration anxiety or the castration complex and the issues of love and power around it.

    It was an interesting evening sipping wine, watching the sun set on Mt. Diablo and talking Ken, castration and the missing genitalia fear!

     

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  • Psychological Splitting

    SplittingThe good, the bad and the ugly. I never thought that Eli Wallach was that ugly, but whatever.

    I seem to be more sensitive recently to how much splitting or polarity exists in the world. Good vs, Bad or Good vs. Evil seem to be at the forefront of things. I’m sure this is related to the presidential race and the never-ending, moronic, self-defeating partisan politics that we, in the U.S., are burdened with these days.

    And though political rivals like James Caraville, Bill First and others seem to be able to sit down together to sell Coca Cola when it comes to working together to resolve some of the country’s and world’s problems – the abyss between two sides each seeing themselves as right (so to speak) once again rears it’s ugly head.

    This whole good/bad thing begins in infancy as a psychological process known as splitting.

    At the beginning, in childhood, there is a relationship between the child and the mother, the parents, the environment. When the relationship is difficult or painful, the child deals with it by splitting the difficult from the easy, the love from the hatred. But to do that, you have to do it with your mind, because it is not real. You have to split your perception. You have to split your mind. You have to believe something that is not there. That is the beginning of mental structure. You have to split the reality into this and that, split mother into good mother and bad mother. Well, your mother is never all good or all bad. She is a mixture. So if you split her into good mother and bad mother, and you have to remember this and that, you are creating something in your mind that is not really there. In time, that becomes the mental relationship that you re-enact in your life relationships. So there is the idealized mother, there is a frustrating mother, and there is the attacking mother. And your relationships with those three parts are what become re-enacted in your life as mental relationships. – A.H. Almaas on Psychological Splitting

    This is not something we can blame on improper parenting, it is one of the fundamental dynamics that gets laid down in the brain that forms the rudimentary basis for discrimination, linear thinking and self-reflection. The problems associated with splitting arise as a result of arrested development – the maturation and evolution of the person and the mind stop at a level that continue to rely on “half-baked” goods.

    Maturing to the point where we can see people and situations in their entirety – the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful – is a sign of real progress. It probably won’t help to sell Coke, but it could result in the ability and capacity for more people to work together for something other than profit.

     

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  • Loss of Self vs. Self is Lost

    No-selfLoss of Self – What does it mean? What is lost? Is the experience similar to being lost?

    Buddhism and other non-dual teachings say there is no self to lose. Others say the self is an ontolgical reality that has various levels or degrees of manifestation including those bound and confined within the world of object relations and conceptualization.

    Many are seeking the True Self. Do they want to lose the False Self and find some notion of a new and improved self? I think this sense of wanting to find or be a true self is an inherent dynamic within the soul for authenticity, to be what one really is.

    It’s the concept of that “one,” the individual consciousness, that is in question here. The biggest misunderstanding, as I see it, is conceptualizing or reifying the notion of a true self according to one’s current belief structure.

    The challenge of “spiritual experience” is that it is mostly co-opted by the ego mind. Experience gets categorized and filed according to the past, the familiar and the comfortable.

    Loss of Self at the ego level is mostly terrifying as the mind interprets this as actual death or going insane or some other existential disaster.

    In fact, the experience of loss of self is liberating if one is able to relax into the experience. This involves letting go of the compulsion of staying one step ahead of one’s experience.

    Free-falling into experience as it unfolds without the immediate need to control or understand is challenging. What seems to help facilitate the process is a sense of loving curiosity that is more centered in the heart than the head.

    Looking at the world today, I can only see loss of a few zillion selfs as a positive thing. Indeed, the world might improve overnight if we forget the past and let the self go.

    Does loss of self mean loss of identity, loss of control, loss if the individual? What are your thoughts – experiences?

     

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Open-Secrets