Open-Secrets

Tag: psychology

  • Freud’s Psyche – Psyched on Freud

    Neurosis-neurotic-freudHow Neurotic was Sigmund Freud?

    There’s no doubt that Sigmund Freud has made a huge contribution to the evolution and well being of mankind. Freud’s insight into human nature and his exploration of the human psyche laid the groundwork for most western psychological theory and understanding in the world today.

    From Object Relations Theory to Depth Psychology and Self Psychology to Transpersonal Psychology, Freud’s influence is seen throughout them all. Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, D.W. Winnicott and every other pioneer of human psychology owe a debt to Freud.

    But, the question remains – how neurotic was Sigmund Freud? I don’t believe there are very many people on the planet free of some degree of neurosis. Many of Freud’s theories and postulates have come under scrutiny and challenge. This is normal for those pushing the envelope of human understanding and Freud was certainly pushing the envelope in his day.

    Freud and Groucho Marx would have been a great YouTube video. A 4 minute dialogue on cigars could have been one of the great viral videos of all time.

    I think it was my last post that mentioned penis envy that got me to thinking about Freud and his neurosis.

    When it comes to our personal growth and unfoldment, keeping an open mind about our possible blind spots is an invaluable asset. Using our friends to identify these doorways into deeper self-knowledge is great blessing – something Freud seems to have had a problem with.

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  • 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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  • 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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