Psychoanalysis on George's Blog

The Denial of Death

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:53 -0500

Summary

“The Denial of Death” is Ernest Becker’s pivotal contribution to the intersection of psychology and philosophy. Rooted in psychoanalytic insights, Becker presents a framework later known as Terror Management Theory, or TMT. The central premise is that to function, one must find a way to ignore or mitigate the central fact of existence: its inevitable end. Becker argues that humanity engages in various strategies to suppress or forget this reality. For example, someone might sacrifice their life for a concept like freedom or, alternatively, for avarice. In the first case, Becker suggests that dying for ‘freedom’ is an attempt to attach oneself to a concept larger than oneself, thereby achieving vicarious immortality as the concept of ‘freedom’ lives on. Similarly, in pursuing greed, a person operates under the conception of a certain cultural hero (e.g., the gangster, the successful stockbroker), seeking to become this hero for self-justification. Becker posits that no culture has, or probably ever will, avoid evading death’s implications.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:42 -0500

Summary

A collaborative autobiography by the man the myth the legend C.G. Jung. As an additional note, after reading this, I then listened to one of the “Very short introduction” books on Jung which was largely unnecessary after reading this book except that it put a little more meat on the bones of his theories.

Thoughts

It is difficult to review books sometimes because books have so many different uses. Some books are for fun, some are works of art, others are descriptive. So should you rate on how much you enjoyed a book? How well it was written? I think I prefer to review a book on how well it did what it set out to do, and this book did really well. Jung’s memory of his life is incredible. From his ability to recall a dream he had when he was three, to his structured accounts of his various travels, one thing this book did was made me realize how little of my life I could retell if I was forced to. There is no way I could discuss all the ideas this book brought up, so I’ll just give a few impressions. The first one is that if Jung had been born a couple hundred years early, or in a different part of the world, he most definitely would have become a shaman. His unique psyche revealed things to him that I think most people would never be able to experience. The second thing I noticed was that the parallels between priests and psychologists also include the fact that when it comes to both, your mileage may vary. When it comes to allowing myself to be psychoanalyzed, it seems like I would want an extended character reference…. an autobiography perhaps? People/C.G. Jung

Freud

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:09 -0500

Sigmund Freud A great primer that doesn’t throw the baby out with the repressed infantile sexual instincts.

Civilization and Its Discontents

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:10 -0500

There was a lot packed into this short book, or long essay. Nearing the end of his life, and the end of the period of peace between WW1 and WW2 Freud was still Freuding. This book is ostensibly about the restrictions that civilization imposes on individuals, but probably more importantly in the psychoanalytic field it further sketches out a new primal drive in human nature, namely aggression. For most of his life Freud had looked at human nature through the lens of the “Pleasure principle” which is that all actions humans take can be explained in avoidance to unpleasure. This principle ran into problems, one example is how the mind seems to relive traumatic experiences over and over again. Enter the “death drive”, the main assertion of this book was that our two main drives (pleasure and aggression) are antagonistic to civilization. In that sense, civilization can be conceived of as a mechanism of repression and redirection of those drives towards behaviors that are beneficial to the group. He has called this process “Eros” and the later drive has come to be known as “Thanatos”. Eros is a work of unification at the cost of individual desire, i.e. civilization. The question (or warning) of this book is that Eros doesn’t seem to care about the individual at all, it will sacrifice the individual completely to achieve its goal of unification which will perhaps make living life in wonderful unity not worth it in the end. There is so much more inside this short book, it is widely considered one of Freud’s most important works. I would recommend it to anyone, no matter their views on Freud’s other ideas. This book has also tied in with thoughts I was already having in regard to the exclusivity inherent in inclusivity, the need for Orwell’s two-minute hate, etc etc.

Man's Search for Meaning

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:39 -0500

The author is a neuroscientist and psychologist who is also a concentration camp survivor. The first half of the book is split between an autobiographical description of his experience in the camps as well as some psychoanalysis on himself and other inmates and guards. After being released he founds a new school of psychology called “logotherapy”. The second half of the book talks more about what this school of psychology is and how it works. To boil down this guy’s philosophy is as follows:

The Second Sex

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:29 -0500

And upon completion of this book, I would like to please receive a paper certificate that indicates my commitment to the advance of woman’s equality in society. Furthermore, I would like to be acknowledged as being a forerunner in the movement to bring about a peaceful conclusion to the war between the sexes. To put it shortly I feel as though I have solved all issues based on sex and am equipped to fully exercise my god given authority over women now that I have a complete understanding of them. Jokes aside this was a very dense book, but had many valuable insights nestled in there. Published in 1949 the information, descriptions, and approach of this book are unavoidably dated, due to the fact that it has been so influential in shaping modern conceptions of “the plight of womankind”. That being said I feel as though our upbringing and indoctrination created similar expectations about women as those widely held in the 50s. So, this book was ‘convicting’ more so for me than it probably would be for most people in our modern culture. Split into two volumes the first volume discusses what “woman” is. Looking first at biological examples from various insects, animals and eventually humans. Then with this foundation she transitions from the physiological to the psychological. While critical of most thinkers (like Freud and Adler) that had attempted to analysis woman’s condition it is easy to tell that she was heavily influenced by their form of analysis. I’ve seen/heard many people talk about how she completely disagreed with these thinkers, but that is not how I read it. For example, the Freudian concept about women suffering from penis envy, is rebaptized in her thought as the fact that women are envious of the privileges that come along with having a penis. This is a long and interesting (to me) conversation but long story short, I don’t see this view as a complete contradiction, but more of a reformation. She ends volume 1 with an in depth look at the various mythical styling that are given to women. In particular focusing on a handful of author’s depictions as a case study. Noting that each of these different types of mythologies make heavy use of mystery when describing woman. This mystery is largely responsible for creating this idea of the “other” where woman isn’t another subjective free acting human, but something else. Volume 2 then describes woman’s experience from infancy to old age. This section was actually very interesting to me, and I feel like I learned a fair bit that I was not aware of previously. To summarize, the distance between the starting line and the finish line of becoming a unified self is much longer and more confusing for women than it is for men. There are many more opportunities for women to stop halfway on the path to individualization than there are for men thanks in large part (but not entirely) to the path society has set out for them. She then cycles through many stereotypes of women and provides a psychoanalysis of each case which would always start off with me thinking she was insane, or overstating things and by the end, everything she said started making sense. The book concludes with her talking about why there haven’t been very many great women authors, artists, etc. Put simply (do not strike me dead Simone) women have to first convince themselves and the world that they are competent individuals. This initial effort takes so much energy and time that they are left with little energy to go further. This “going further” is essential in becoming great. Few men achieve it even with having a head start, which explains why even fewer women achieve it, and why “Wuthering Heights, in spite of its stature, does not have the scope of Brothers Karamazov” (Had to sneak in a Dostoevsky plug in there). You cannot expect a black slave to write a transcendent epic like Moby Dick, because the experiences that allowed the author to create the epic are not open to the slave. This book was, as I said dense. Some parts were slow, others interesting. But most modern ideas about birth control, abortion and economic equality of the sexes, and objectification have their birthplace in this book. I could definitely see re-reading some of these sections again to be reminded of some of the insights she presented. Great stuff

Totem and Taboo

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:31:53 -0500

Someone let Freud loose in the field of Anthropology! Spurred on by works from his rival Jung, Freud investigates the connections of totems, exogamy, taboos, religious and neurotic thoughts. A collection of four essays Freud initially investigates (or attempts to) the origins of “Incest Dread”, that is to say why incest became a taboo to begin with. From there he considers the correlation between Taboo and emotional conflict. He demonstrates this with some fascinating deconstructions of certain ceremonies to honor a king which required severe austerities that (in the school of psychoanalysis) demonstrates the peoples wish to honor but also torture the king. To prevent harm from coming to the king, but also prevent the king from harming. The subtitle of the book is Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics. This is looked at in depth in the third essay investigating the similar power that animist and neurotics both attribute to thought. In many cases elaborate rituals are created to propitiate themselves of actions that were only committed in the psychic and perhaps subconscious realm. The fourth and final essays is a sort of climax where he attempts to tie everything together and put a Freudian bow on it. In this brilliant essay he argues that our entire society is built off of a real or imaginary event that has given us generational guilt (i.e., original sin). This guilt is the origin of all religion. Drawing from one of Darwin’s speculations about human society possibly being constructed similarly to gorilla’s social structure, that is one alpha male with a harem. The original act then was the brothers (whom the alpha male kicked out) united to murder their father. The father that they loved, feared, and respected. At the end of the day, you gotta go back to Oedipus.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:32:11 -0500

Written by Jordan Peterson’s daddy himself this book was really quite enjoyable. I preferred it over some of the books I’ve read from Freud. It is a collection of 11 essays that cover various topics from dreams to metaphysics. Opening the book, the reader is asked to make two assumptions. Assumption one, the subconscious exists. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal in a post Freud world (which Jung is post Freud) there is still some debate. The second assumption is that there exists in humans a soul. This is still up for heated debate today, but if you accept these two assumptions daddy Jung takes you on a ride, explaining his approach to psychoanalysis, modern man vs primitive man and the overlap between the two. The waning effectiveness of the church to treat psychoses due to the approach of the education system. This is one of those books like a C.S Lewis book where everything he says just makes sense. Made for an enjoyable read but I also know whenever I am feeling that comfortable with what someone is saying it means that I have not been educated enough in contra-ideas. Overall, I’d highly recommend, it’s given me much to think about and I will definitely be returning to re-read later on.