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By coberst
#1544613
Sex in the Psyche

Humans have an animal nature and an X nature; we have an instinctive force compelling us to survive and to replicate and another force that often works in opposition that compels us to rise above the mundane because we are god-like. We have the power to explore distant planets provide that our latrine does not mal-function. Some have identified this coupling as the organic coupled with the superorganic, and some, as gods with anuses.

Freud labeled our attempt to integrate the organic with the superorganic as “sublimation”; the attempt by humans to heal the ever present war between the organic and superorganic. Sublimation introduces the concept of infantile sexuality, which raises the hackles of all self-respecting gods with repressed anuses and genitalia.

I suspect that one might usefully think of the animal instinctive force as a hydroelectric dam that holds and releases water to drive the turbines that convert the potential energy represented by the stored water into the kinetic energy developed by the turbines in the form of electricity.

Energy for survival and replication is like the river feeding the reservoir contained by the dam. The water stored must constantly flow through the turbines because the energy river is constantly feeding the reservoir; thus there is a constant kinetic energy forced on the animal nature that floods the creature with kinetic energy and must be utilized.

This kinetic energy flowing within the infant is utilized to sustain life and to be dissipated by the child in their childish replication, i.e. sexual, modes; these childish modes of replication, i.e. sexual activity, displays itself in five forms: the oral that is from birth to eight months, the anal from eight months to two years, phallic two to six years, and latency six to twelve. Adult humans utilizes this same energy in ‘a more sophisticated and direct manner’.

“Sublimation is the use made of bodily energy by a soul which sets itself apart from the body;” and as Swift says it is “lifting up of the soul or its Faculties above Matter”. Sublimation is the human effort to direct the “lower bodily” functions toward “higher values”.

Sublimation is an attempt to relate the organic with the superorganic; to heal the war between body and soul. The poet and the astronaut represent the human effort to rise above the body. Sublimation directs the kinetic energy that the body provides for replication and sustenance toward higher values.

Quotes from “Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History” by Norman O. Brown
By stalker
#1546401
Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man’s crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.
By nilof
#1550269
If god created man in his image, god has an anus.

Therefore, god is capable of gay sex, at least if he's the one taking it. :smokin:

*Waits for Dan to facepalm me for posting this comment.*

Anyway, while the theory in itself is interesting, I was already familiar with it.

Freud did a nice work splitting the Subconcious into the Id and the Superego, althoug I am quite sceptical towards his theory on newborns's sexual drives.
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By Potemkin
#1550312
This kinetic energy flowing within the infant is utilized to sustain life and to be dissipated by the child in their childish replication, i.e. sexual, modes; these childish modes of replication, i.e. sexual activity, displays itself in five forms: the oral that is from birth to eight months, the anal from eight months to two years, phallic two to six years, and latency six to twelve. Adult humans utilizes this same energy in ‘a more sophisticated and direct manner’.

Wasn't Norman O. Brown a literary critic from the 1950s?

Anyway, all of this is very dated; the work of Jacques Lacan in the 1960s revolutionised the field of psychoanalysis, replacing the rather schematic stages of oral, anal and phallic infant sexualities with the development of the Imaginary and Symbolic orders through the mirror stage.
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By Nattering Nabob
#1551895
It is true that we have a primative animal nature and that it is active in us to this very day.

We evolved in an additive manner, one function of the brain was added on top of the others while the old functions are still there doing their jobs.

When we evolved, that animal nature did not go away but our modern civilized selves developed on top in the form of a neocortex and frontal lobes. Below these lie the same structures that other animals have. A friend of mine used to refer to these primative brain structures when he would imply that conservatives use their "lizard brains". :lol:

The modern structures of the brain gave rise to consciousness...which is of course only nature's latest survival technique, just like sexual (vice asexual) reproduction, social behavior, and communication.

But this latest survival strategy of the brain (consciousness, which is produced in the most recently evolved structures of the brain) does indeed cause some problems. Other survival strategies have caused problems. It was found that the same condition that causes a predisposal towards sickle cell anemia in Africans also results in a resistance to some other disease (which one I can't remember) so evolutionary advances can also have drawbacks. Another example of an evolutionary advance being a drawback in some cases is that of a fishes fins evolving into legs and feet lessening the ability to swim...and gills evolving into lungs lessening the ability to breath under water resulting in some accidental drownings.

With consciousness the drawback is a communication disconnect between the old "animal" structures of the brain and the modern structures responsible for consciousness.

The older structures of the brain "think" in a primative visual mode...hence the symbolism of dreams where pictures and feelings are dominant. Verbal language is a higher function of the brain and is the new kid on the block. Animals did not have a verbal language (or the structures responsible for verbal language) and so the old and the new structures of the brain have a communication problem.


When we "feel uneasy" about something, this is a direct communication from the older structures of the brain, which are still alive and performing their normal functions of warning us about danger and guiding us in our behavior just as they has for millions of years.

The problem is, we function so much in the new language oriented mode that we do not know how to interpret the old form of communication any more. Indeed, many times we do not even recognize it as a communication from a primative part of our brain.

Primative societies were much better at communicating with and understanding the lower brain, presumably because they function less in the higher modes.

They communicate with the lower structures of the brain by following their instincts, by engaging in ritual, and by taking seriously (though perhaps not literally) their dreams, and by being superstitious.


The higher the intellect, the more an indivudual relies on conscious, rational thought to guide him, the more likely he is to ignore the feelings and communications (such as a "hunch") produced by the lower structures of our animal brain.

This lack of communication leads to emotional problems and psychosomatic illness.

Sherlock Holmes was my favorite example of person who relies so much on rational thought produced by the higher structures of the brain that it causes problems in his everyday life.

Did anybody notice what a basket case Sherlock Holmes was? When bored he either fiddled or turned to a 7% Solution of cocaine...he had no friends aside from Dr. Watson, and he had no girl friends. Can some of you internet types relate to this? :lol:



Psychiatric medicine was first practiced in Europe at the hight of the industrial revolution where society had reached it's highest development to that time. People were listening less and less to the old superstitious communications of their lower brains and were instead giving rational thought the greater part of their attention.

This led to emotional disorders and the need for Freud and others. This is because the animal part of our brains are not only still functioning as they have for millions of years, but they get scared and mad and frustrated giving rise to mental (and even physical) illness if we do not recognize their communications.

Does this sound crazy?

Jung called consciousness, being a split from the unconscious as it is, a form of neurosis. A neurosis is a splitting apart of a part of consciousness from the rest of consciousness.

Our natural, everyday consciousness is a form of neurosis. Evolution gave us this condition. It has great benefits but also great drawbacks (i.e. non-communication with our "old selves").

Again I would like to say that this noncommunication is partly because the mode of thought of the old and new are different. One is visual and emotional and the other is verbal and rationsl.

But the "drawback" of course is mainly due to the fact that, as in a neurosis, an actual splitting apart of the old self has taken place. It is this "splitting apart" which gives us our ability to self-reference. This self-referencing is what we normally think of as consciousness.


As I have ranted about before, the stories of Prometheus stealing fire (or consciousness) from the gods and giving it to the human race and the humans being punished via Pandora's box...along with the story of Lucifer (Bringer of Light) tempting Eve to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (or consciousness) and then being punished by expulsion from paradise...these stories are mythologies of the dawn of consciousness in man and tell of the boon and pain caused by the seperation of consciousness from our animal brain.

Ironically, mythology incorporates many communications from the lower brain (symbolic imagery) and the Prometheus/Eden mythologies are themselves the lower brain telling the higher conscious where it came from...



Warning: Marijuana use while reading this post may cause permanant psychosis.
Last edited by Nattering Nabob on 07 Jun 2008 13:39, edited 1 time in total.
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By Potemkin
#1551902
The older structures of the brain "think" in a primative visual mode...hence the symbolism of dreams where pictures and feelings are dominant. Verbal language is a higher function of the brain and is the new kid on the block. Animals did not have a verbal language (or the structures responsible for verbal language) and so the old and the new structures of the brain have a communication problem.

Actually, Freud and Lacan, along with most other psychoanalysts, believe that dreams are structured verbally rather than visually. As Lacan put it, "the unconscious is structured like a language". The unconscious mind is not the 'oldest' part of the mind; in fact, all the evidence indicates that it post-dates the appearance of language, and arose simultaneously with consciousness. You should not underestimate the role of language in structuring the human mind.
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By Nattering Nabob
#1551913
Actually, Freud and Lacan, along with most other psychoanalysts, believe that dreams are structured verbally rather than visually. As Lacan put it, "the unconscious is structured like a language". The unconscious mind is not the 'oldest' part of the mind; in fact, all the evidence indicates that it post-dates the appearance of language, and arose simultaneously with consciousness. You should not underestimate the role of language in structuring the human mind.




The unconscious may not be the oldest part of the mind, but the unconscious is the filter through which communications from older structures of the brain flow.


I really don't know where the unconscious begins and ends. Is it the left side of the brain? The older part of the brain? The part of the brain from which the conscious is split apart? A combonation of all of these?


I believe that the conscious mind and verbal language are very closely intertwined if that was what you meant.
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By Potemkin
#1551914
The unconscious may not be the oldest part of the mind, but the unconscious is the filter through which communications from older structures of the brain flow.

Could you explain further?

I really don't know where the unconscious begins and ends. Is it the left side of the brain? The older part of the brain? The part of the brain from which the conscious is split apart? A combonation of all of these?

The unconscious seems to be the necessary dialectical counterpart of the conscious mind. It seems to be what gives structure and coherence to our conscious thoughts. After all, it's no accident that the god of dreams was called Morpheus, a name which means 'shaper'. The unconscious mind seems to be structured like a language, and to be the 'shaper' of our conscious minds, which would otherwise be an incoherent mess. It is also the site of repression, of those buried Words which cannot be spoken, as Lacan put it.

I believe that the conscious mind and verbal language are very closely intertwined if that was what you meant.

Agreed, in the sense that it is language which permits abstract symbolic thought, but psychoanalysis from Freud onwards seems to believe that the unconscious mind and language are very closely intertwined.
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By Nattering Nabob
#1551921
The unconscious may not be the oldest part of the mind, but the unconscious is the filter through which communications from older structures of the brain flow.

Could you explain further?



Being most familiar with Jung I will use his viewpoint which I have adopted. Jung defined the unsonscious as anything we are not conscious of. By default, my memories of my childhood which I am not now consciously reliving are unconscious. So is the sensation of my bare feet against the carpet as I type.

He also divided unconscious content into that which could be recalled and that which could not be recalled.

We are unconsciously aware of many things before we are consciously aware of them. For instance, subjects were told to randomly turn cards from one of several decks in front of them and get some kind of reward for a card above a specific value. One of the decks had a higher average value arranged before hand and the subjects unconsciously went to that deck more often than to the others before being told that there was a slight advantage to it.

The unconscious seems to be the necessary dialectical counterpart of the conscious mind. It seems to be what gives structure and coherence to our conscious thoughts. After all, it's no accident that the god of dreams was called Morpheus, a name which means 'shaper'. The unconscious mind seems to be structured like a language, and to be the 'shaper' of our conscious minds, which would otherwise be an incoherent mess. It is also the site of repression, of those buried Words which cannot be spoken, as Lacan put it.


Jung said that the psyche (the totality of our conscious and unsonscious minds) contained many structures which performed the functions of "shaping" which you are describing. These are the Persona, the Shadow, the Anima(us), and the Self. I believe the difference between these and your "shaper" are only semantic.

Agreed, in the sense that it is language which permits abstract symbolic thought, but psychoanalysis from Freud onwards seem to believe that the unconscious mind and language are very closely intertwined.


The unconscious mind sertainly uses language, but IMO it is the symbols to which that language refers which contains the true communication from the unconscious.

For instance I might dream that you, (an old bearded Marxist :lol:) told me that my "house was on fire".

You (a bearded old man) might represent a deeper part of myself communicating that the "house" (houses sometimes represent the larger personality) is on "fire" or is suffering severe distress.

I might instead dream a picture of my "house on fire".
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By Potemkin
#1551979
Ah, you're a Jungian. That explains a lot. :p
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By Wellsy
#15078397
The status of the unconscious is curious as it seems a valid inference although the inferred nature of it is mysterious. Especially as mentioned above that psychoanalysis has since moved on from Freuds reference to a nature/instincts prior to socialization. He had a complex but agnostic approach to the development of psychology split between phenomenology and physiology.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1930/mind.htm
Freud’s attempt resides in the tendency to extend the meaningful connections and dependences of mental phenomena to the area of the unconscious. He assumes that behind the conscious phenomena are unconscious ones that determine them and that may be reconstructed by analyzing their traces and interpreting their manifestations. But the same Spranger reproaches Freud severely and points to a curious theoretical error in his theory. He says that whereas Freud has overcome physiological materialism, a psychological materialism continues to exist: the tacit metaphysical presupposition that the presence of sexual drives is self-evident, whereas all others must be understood on their basis.
And indeed the attempt to create a psychology by means of the concept of the unconscious is an ambiguous attempt. On the one hand, it is related with idealist psychology insofar as it fulfills the ordinance to explain mental phenomena by mental ones. On the other hand, inasmuch as he introduces the idea of the strictest determinism of all mental manifestations and reduces their basis to an organic, biological drive, namely the reproductive instinct, Freud remains on materialistic grounds.
...
In such a state of affairs Freud speaks of the existence of unconscious mental processes. Freud is only prepared to renounce his hypothesis about their existence when someone describes these facts in a more concrete scientific way, and until that time he holds fast to this hypothesis and in surprise shrugs his shoulders, dismissing what is said as unintelligible, when someone objects to him that here the unconscious is nothing real in a scientific sense.
It is unclear how something unreal at the same time produces effects of such tangible reality as an obsessional action. We have to look into that, as Freud’s theory belongs to the most complex of all conceptions of the unconscious. As we see, on the one hand, for Freud the unconscious is something real which actually causes the obsessional action and is not just a label or a way of speaking. With this he, as it were, directly objects to Münsterberg’s claim. On the other hand, however, Freud does not clarify the nature of this unconscious.
It seems to us that here Freud creates a certain concept which is difficult to imagine visually but which often exists in theories of physics. An unconscious idea, he says, is “a phenomenal impossibility just as a weightless, frictionless ether is a physical phenomenal impossibility. It is no more and no less unthinkable than the mathematical conception √-l.” In the opinion of the author, it is permissible to. use such concepts. We just must clearly understand that we speak of abstract concepts and not of facts.
But this is exactly the weak side of psychoanalysis pointed out by Spranger. On the one hand, the unconscious for Freud is a way to describe certain facts, i.e., a system of conventional concepts; on the other hand, he insists that the unconscious is a fact which exerts such a manifest influence as an obsessional action does. In another book, Freud himself says that he would be happy to replace all these psychological terms by physiological ones, but that contemporary physiology does not provide him with such concepts.
...
In his time Freud as well proposed the feature of the connection with words and pointed out that the unconscious is formed by precisely those ideas that are disconnected from words.
Several of Freud’s critics who are inclined to equate the unconscious with the unsocial and the unsocial with the nonverbal also pointed to the intimate link between verbalization and the conscious awareness of processes. Watson, too, sees in verbalization the main distinguishing characteristic of the conscious, he openly states that everything which Freud called unconscious is actually nonverbal. From Ibis statement Watson draws two conclusions that are highly interesting. According to the first one, we cannot remember the earliest childhood events, because they took place when our behavior was not yet verbalized and therefore the earliest part of our life will remain unconscious forever. The second conclusion points to a weak point of psychoanalysis, which is that the physician attempts to influence the unconscious, i.e., unverbalized processes, by means of a conversation, i.e., by means of verbal reactions.


Which makes curious to the update by Lacan and competing ideas of the conscious considering this sense of the unconscious as thought bot yet tied words.
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-65642018000200200&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en
Vygotsky states that any movement/gesture is performed, initially, unconsciously; the will generates a movement, an act, actions, words; then it causes a secondary reaction, that is, the meaning given to the movement performed becomes the basis of the consciousness. In this sense, the historical and social experience precedes the consciousness. It is important to note that in talking about the unconscious actualization of a movement/gesture based on the historical and social foundations of the human being, Vygotsky makes no reference to a possible “coded language” of psychological processes as proposed by psychoanalysis.


Brief summaries of Lacan ive been exposed to seem to bot follow Freuds attempt to base the unconscious on sexual instincts but instead subjectivity is born in a separation from reality via language. It creates the subject object divide in a complex way as the self isn’t a unitary whole and has no direct experience of what is real but only a symbolic sense of things via language. We can’t experience it outside of language. And the unconscious is even based in language as man raised as a human being is inherently alienated from reality. At least this is my best effort at trying to make sense of somethings crudely.
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By Godstud
#15078446
God doesn't have an anus. That is proven by the fact that he doesn't give a shit.




:D
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By Wellsy
#15085306
I’ve been reading some articles from LacanOnline and must admit sime skepticism towards my possibly crude and superficial impression of Freud and the unconscious. Such as Freud basing his views on the biological instincts but this is different from drive assertedly via Lacan.

But most interesting is the very ontology of the unconscious which seems quite an elaborate concept.
https://www.lacanonline.com/2010/10/what-does-psychoanalysis-have-to-do-with-psychology/
A more general point can be made here, which is that it is Lacan’s belief that the unconscious is not a part of the mind. It is not for him some kind of deep recess in which unacknowledged thoughts dwell, but rather something at the level of the symbolic. The dream, as an example of this, is therefore not for him a psychological production as much as it is a symbolic production:

“When Freud puts something in his text, it is always extremely important. And when he mentions to Fliess, in a letter, what a revelation it had been for him when he read the passage in which Fechner says that one can only conceive of dreams as being located in another psychic locality, one must give this note its full weight. This is precisely what I am telling you – the psychic locality in question is not psychic, it is quite simply the symbolic dimension, which is of another order…. It is placed and defines itself in another locality, governed by different local laws, the place of the symbolic exchange, which is not to be confused, although it is embodied in it, with the spatio-temporal dimension in which we can locate human behaviour. The structural laws of the dream, like those of language, are to be found elsewhere, in another locality, whether we call it psychic or not” (Seminar II, p.131).

This provides us another reason why the object of psychoanalysis is not a psychological one. In the same way that we cannot think of the unconscious as being the negative, or the underside, of consciousness, Lacan is eager for us to reject the easy idea that the unconscious is a spatio-temporal entity.

The implication for dream analysis is that we should pay less attention to the psychology of the dreamer and more to the text or wording of his dream, the signifiers that it employs.”

This perhaps opens up a better avenue of seeing the mind in relation to the social. It is also interesting to see how psychoanalysis seems strongly emphasized in a critical line of outlining the limits of what is even possible for humans. That we fall under many illusions like an unending pursuit of our desires but really only as a pursuit if desire itself than of any real object.

Also finding discussion on the idea of whether affect can be unconscious or specifically repressed is quite interesting.
Psychoanalysis is quite something than anything currently contemporary psychology which it may well recreate the false solutions psychoanalysis poses as a false hope.
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By jakell
#15085340
Lacan's musings are very woolly, the least he could do is suggest a utility for positing that unconscious to be 'elsewhere', otherwise it just seems that he is introducing an unnecessary complexity for no apparent reason.

He tries to mollify this with "the psychic locality in question is not psychic, it is quite simply the symbolic dimension, which is of another order", but this doesn't look like a simplification to me - the introduction/invention of a new dimension that is external to the human mind and experience.
By late
#15085349
jakell wrote:
He tries to mollify this with "the psychic locality in question is not psychic, it is quite simply the symbolic dimension, which is of another order", but this doesn't look like a simplification to me - the introduction/invention of a new dimension that is external to the human mind and experience.



That sounds like Jung.
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By jakell
#15085371
I haven't read much Jung, but am aware of him second-hand via such people as Peterson, I would imagine though that, due to the regard he is held in, he would at least give a reason why we should consider the Unconscious to be in 'another dimension' and not a part of the mind.
A reason not to do this would be simply that 'The Mind' is not starkly defined in the first place, so to start delineating related things seems pretty premature.

I don't know much about Lacan, but I've heard him associated with the Postmodernists, so I wouldn't be surprised if he is simply parasitising and finessing the work of others to create an unearned niche for himself.

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